What moral or allegorical lessons can Homer's epics teach? Six essays by Christophoros Kondoleon, a 16th-century Greek scholar working in Rome during the last phase of Italian humanism, illustrate the moral qualities (esp. the autourgia) of the heroes, provide close readings of the two proems and of the description of Agamemnon's panoply in Iliad 11, answer a collection of miscellaneous, mostly philosophical "Homeric questions", and gather passages "on the good general (and soldier) according to Homer". While sometimes overtly indebted to the approaches of earlier Homerists (from Aristotle to ancient scholia, from Porphyry to Eustathios of Thessalonike, etc.), Kondoleon's treatises are unique both as original products in their own right, and as the only truly exegetical writings on Homer in Greek humanism. The present book provides the first critical edition (in two cases, the editio princeps) of these texts, with facing Italian translation and an introductory essay sketching their main features, their cultural significance, and some of their sources.
