Gli Apophthegmata Laconica di Plutarco nella traduzione latina di Antonio Cassarino: studio ed edizione di una fonte del Panormita

The thesis examines the role played by the Latin translation of Plutarch’s Apophthegmata Laconica, produced by Antonio Cassarino, within the framework of humanistic culture in Aragonese Naples and, more specifically, in the construction of the political ideology developed around the figure of Alfonso the Magnanimous. The study lies at the intersection of translation history, humanistic philology, and the history of political thought, adopting as its privileged perspective the relationship between Cassarino’s translational activity and the literary and ideological project of Antonio Beccadelli, known as Panormita. Beginning with a biographical and intellectual reconstruction of Cassarino, the thesis highlights how his work as a translator from Greek—particularly of Plutarch and Plato—responds to a conception of translation understood not as a mere scholarly exercise, but as a munus civile, serving the ethical and political formation of its readers and guiding governmental action. In this context, the Apophthegmata Laconica assume strategic significance: the concise, sententious, and exemplary character of the Spartan sayings lends itself to reuse by Panormita in the composition of the Dicta aut facta Alfonsi regis, a key work of Neapolitan “monarchical” Humanism. Through codicological and philological analysis of the Vatican manuscripts associated with Panormita’s circle, the thesis reconstructs the textual tradition of Cassarino’s translation, identifies its Greek source, and clarifies its linguistic and stylistic choices, including comparison with the version by Francesco Filelfo. What emerges is a picture in which the Plutarchean translation becomes a reservoir of exempla and models of virtue, destined to converge in a coherent project of political legitimation. Finally, the critical edition of Cassarino’s Apophthegmata Laconica, complete with critical apparatus and commentary notes, provides the textual foundation for a broader reflection on the relationship between translation, rewriting, and the construction of the sovereign’s image in fifteenth-century Italian Humanism.