Issues in Translation. Plutarch’s Moralia Translated from Greek into Latin by Iacopo d’Angelo

The Latin translations of Plutarch made by Iacopo d’Angelo (ca. 1370– 1411) have been often criticized for his Latin style, regarded as inelegant, and his misunderstandings of Greek. The present work will focus on Iacopo’s translations of three treatises from Plutarch’s Moralia, namely the two works On the Virtue and Fortune of Alexander the Great, and the one On the Fortune of the Romans, in order to show that most of the criticisms, today still repeated, were made by Iacopo’s enemy, Leonardo Bruni. In fact, some mistakes and misinterpretations by Iacopo depended on the lack of basic tools in his age, such as a Greek or bilingual lexicon, and on the condition of the Greek manuscript he used for his translations.