XO18 Themistii peripatetici lucidissimi paraphrasi in libros quatuor Aristotelis De coelo nunc primum in lucem edita, Moyse Alatino Hebraeo Spoletino medico, ac philosopho interprete

Themistii peripatetici lucidissimi paraphrasi in libros quatuor Aristotelis De coelo nunc primum in lucem edita, Moyse Alatino Hebraeo Spoletino medico, ac philosopho interprete (Venice: Apud Simonem Galignanum de Karera, 1574)

Penn Libraries, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Folio GrC Ar466 Ef4 1574

The Aristotelian scholar Themistius (4th century) was the focus of attention for one of the most famous humanists of the late fifteenth century, Ermolao Barbaro (1454-1493). Barbaro translated several Themistian paraphrases into Latin but could not translate the one On the Heavens because it did not survive in Greek, only in Hebrew. It was Mosé Alatino (d. 1605), a Jewish doctor and philosopher from Spoleto, who translated the text into Latin. The Hebrew paraphrase had been, in its turn, translated from Arabic, and Alatino needed an assistant to help interpret some Arabic expressions still found in the Hebrew version.