Gli scritti di Galileo Galilei su Plutarco di Cheronea

Around 1588, the time of the probable writing of Galilei’s first manuscripts, there was already a certain availability of texts on Plutarch’s moral works. At that time the arrival of Greek codices in the West had already taken place with the consequent humanist rediscovery of Plutarch, and there had also been the 1509 editio princeps of the Greek text of the Moralia for the types of Aldo Manuzio. This article shows how Galileo Galilei treated the following Plutarch’s opuscola: De cohibenda ira, De vitioso pudore, Quomodo adulator ab amico internoscatur, De capienda ex inimicis utilitate, De liberis educandis, De garrulitate, Septem sapientium convivium, De laude ipsius, De tranquillitate animi. This text by Galilei is presented as a treatise that sheds light on a field of interests in moral philosophy that is in fact original in the context of his eminently scientific and epistemological studies.