Three Very Different Translators: Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon and Richard Thomson

Abstract

"As a rule, medieval versions tended to function as replacements of the original Greek text: very few contemporaries could read Greek, and so they were not equipped to take issue with the equations of their translators. Moreover, most medieval trans- lations were of works of Greek science, and of the technical manuals of medicine and philosophy, practical works with no pretensions to literary merit....I shall suggest that the idea of translations as replacements retained its currency in the sixteenth century, but that it coexisted with an awareness that specific claims about replacement would not survive scrutiny."