Book review

Review of De recta Latini Græcique sermonis pronuntiatione dialogus. Édition, traduction et commentaire. By Désiré Érasme de Rotterdam. Traduit par †Jacques Chomarat ( Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance , 658).

Édité par Christine Bénévent, Geneviève Clerico, Bernard Colombat et Colette Nativel. Genève: Droz, 2024. ISBN 978-2-600-06541-2 € 63.51

This new edition, with translation and commentary, of Erasmus of Rotterdam’s dialogue on the correct pronunciation of Latin and Greek has had a long history, which started in the summer of 1969 as the late Jacques Chomarat’s (1925–1998) doctoral research. This intricate history is set out in the “Avant-propos” (pp. 7–9) by Colette Nativel and is briefly recapitulated here as it helps one understand the composition of the volume. Chomarat’s PhD project was abandoned in 1971, when he found out that the ASD volume of the text was being prepared by Maria Cytowska (1973Cytowska, M. ed. 1973 “De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Ordinis primi tomus quartus, 1–103. Amsterdam: North-Holland. (Also abbreviated as ASD I-4.)Cytowska, M. ed. 1973 “De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Ordinis primi tomus quartus, 1–103. Amsterdam: North-Holland. (Also abbreviated as ASD I-4.) = ASD I-4) as part of the new series that has since become the standard edition of Erasmus’s oeuvre and is now almost finished. This new book offers the French translation Chomarat had already prepared as part of his doctoral work, on which he appears to have worked until the end of his life. Initially, two separate teams sought to disclose the fruits of Chomarat’s work (Colette Nativel and Christine Bénévent, on the one hand, and Geneviève Clerico, on the other), until they found out about their shared endeavor and they joined forces. Finally, the classicist and historian of linguistics Bernard Colombat was added to the group. The research team decided to use the final version on Chomarat’s personal computer as the basis for the translation rather than the older manuscript version entrusted to Clerico or the excerpts that appeared in different versions scattered among his publications. The acknowledgments (p. 11) suggest that Chr. Bénévent and G. Clerico were the main driving forces behind the book, and that they relied on the advice of many specialists in (and beyond) the Francophone world for the completion of the work.

Chomarat’s translation faces the Latin text (pp. 110–343), the principles for both of which are briefly outlined at the beginning, together with the conventions adopted in the notes (pp. 13–15). This translation was taken over with only limited correction vis-à-vis the files that were found on Chomarat’s computer (p. 8). Seeing that the original introduction and notes by Chomarat were too concise for a good comprehension of the text, a new lengthy preface was produced by Bénévent and Clerico (pp. 17–95), into which some of Chomarat’s initial material has been incorporated. The preface is visually supported by a brief iconographic dossier (pp. 103–109). Bénévent and Clerico have also provided the text with an extensive apparatus of notes, into which Chomarat’s material was once more incorporated (pp. 345–422). As an appendix to the preface, Clerico has added a discussion of the Erasmian pronunciation as proposed in De recta pronuntiatione, henceforth DRP, with special reference to the French context (pp. 97–102). The original Latin text was prepared by B. Colombat on the basis of Cytowska (1973)Cytowska, M. ed. 1973 “De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Ordinis primi tomus quartus, 1–103. Amsterdam: North-Holland. (Also abbreviated as ASD I-4.)Cytowska, M. ed. 1973 “De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Ordinis primi tomus quartus, 1–103. Amsterdam: North-Holland. (Also abbreviated as ASD I-4.), offering also the marginalia of the printed editions and the main variants of the three principal editions of the text from 1528, 1529, and 1540. Colombat edited the bibliography (pp. 423–447) and revised the indices, partly based on Chomarat’s work. This included updating an index of proper names and languages (pp. 449–452) and an index of Latin and Greek grammatical and pedagogical terms (pp. 453–461), as well as adding a general index of proper names (pp. 471–477). The former two refer to the page numbers of the ASD edition, whereas the latter refers to the pages of the new Droz publication. Kees Meerhoff prepared the index of vernacular (especially sixteenth-century Dutch) words, which follows a brief introduction (pp. 463–470) and refers to the page numbers of the ASD edition. The navigation of the book is facilitated by a detailed table of contents (pp. 479–481), which also records the section titles the editors have added to the French translation of the Latin text, thus allowing the reader to conveniently browse through the DRP.

The book’s main contribution undoubtedly lies in its provision of the first modern French translation of the DRP, a text that poses considerable challenges due to its numerous puns and technical treatments of orthography and pronunciation. The fact that two teams of Francophone scholars independently valued the translation enough to see it through the press sufficiently certifies this judgment (cf. pp. 8–9). As a non-native, I can only subscribe to their judgment of the high quality of Chomarat’s work. He has succeeded in rendering the sometimes forced and obscure syntax into smooth French phrases. One example may suffice, taken from the very end of the DRP, where the two main protagonists, Lion and Bear, part their ways and express their hope that they will be able to educate their catuli (‘whelps’) so that they become human-like:

ours: Eh bien, toi, vraiment, comme on dit, tu bâtes un bœuf ou quelque chose de plus absurde! Si j’étais capable d’être professeur, j’ai chez moi qui instruire. Mais voici le travail que je te promets, cher Lion. Toi, par tous les moyens possibles cherche quelqu’un qui soit capable de se voir confier cet emploi; moi, de mon côté je rechercherai autant que je pourrai; et, après avoir mis nos réflexions en commun nous veillerons à ce que nos loupiots puissent paraître nés d’êtres humains.(p. 340)

There are only very few instances where the translation seems to be missing the point. For instance, a couple of lines before the abovementioned passage, Bear describes how the speaking of Greek in an unnamed academy (but rightly identified with the Aldine one by the editors) started out. The Latin and the French read (p. 340–341):

VRSUS: Initio submoleste, ne dicam dolo, uerum pauculis diebus successit facilitas, mox et iucunditas non sine fructu maximo.

ours: Au début un peu péniblement, pour ne pas dire: en trichant, mais au bout de quelques jours survint la facilité, puis même le plaisir non sans un très grand profit.

Here, the phrase ne dicam dolo is an interjection meaning ‘to be honest’ (or in French something like à vrai dire), which qualifies — as a hedging device — the difficulty of beginning to speak the language. Thus, they were not talking Greek en trichant (‘by cheating’), as per the French. Such slips of the translator’s pen are, however, rare, making Chomarat’s achievement a welcome addition to the range of modern languages in which the DRP is available (German, English, Modern Greek, and Spanish: see the list on pp. 423–424) — especially since French features relatively prominently in the DRP.

It was also a wise decision to maintain the forms cited in Latin, Greek, and other languages in the French translation to keep the text intelligible, although it would have been perhaps more convenient to add French glosses to the main text rather than relegating them to the endnotes, where they are harder to consult for the reader. To gain further space, the Greek could have been offered only in transcription and not in both the original alphabet and the transcription. (The interested reader could look at the original text if they wanted to see the version in the Greek alphabet.) The editors can be pardoned since this decision would have compromised even further the balance between the word count of the translation and the original. The notes to the translation furthermore vary in length and content. Next to translations of Latin and Greek examples, they offer cross-references to other parts of the book, to various works by Erasmus as well as his numerous sources. The notes also usefully explain realia, although sometimes in telegram style, which may cause confusion.

Next to the annotated translation, there is one further major contribution to Erasmian scholarship and the history of linguistics thanks to the contents of both the lengthy preface and the short introduction to the vernacular index. For the reader’s sake, I survey the contents briefly here. The preface starts out with the question of Classical Latin and Greek as living languages, an issue at the heart of the DRP. Yet, the historical era with which Bénévent and Clerico start is not Erasmus’s early sixteenth century but the French mid-twentieth century, during which Latin as an international language was promoted in the wake of World War II and following the example of the Renaissance. Arguably, the success of Latin (and Greek) in the Renaissance was much greater than in post-war France, with Latin actually serving as the lingua franca and Greek being practiced as an educational side among a select group of scholars — as Bear relates in the dialogue (pp. 336–341). If it is not the success of active language use that connects the two movements, then the emphasis on the reconstructed pronunciation does (p. 19), even if the annex argues that the modalities of this pronunciation were contested and the modern Erasmian pronunciation does not entirely (or solely) originate with Erasmus.

The preface then explores the making of the DRP (pp. 20–31), a text which the authors argue not to “have mobilized the attention of researchers and critics as much as the Moriae encomium, the Colloquia, or the Ciceronianus” (p. 20, all English translations are mine). Erasmus expected the DRP to be a great success, but with its three authorized editions it was much less the case than for the Ciceronianus, his dialogue about the degree to which Cicero was to be imitated and — notably — the principal companion text of the DRP in the editions Erasmus supervised. Hence, the authors argue that the DRP should be read in the Ciceronianus’s light, though not exclusively. Next, the preface extensively treats the main challenge Erasmus took on with his dialogue: fighting corrupt speech (pp. 31–48). The main point of orientation for this fight is antiquity, which in speech, too, should guide the humanist to correctness. Grammar is the absolute basis, part of which involves the correct pronunciation of the two languages that mattered in the framing of the DRP: Classical Latin and Greek. The key competences were speaking, reading, and writing (p. 35).

The authors also situate the DRP in the personal development of Erasmus, offering a more objective view of his motives to write the dialogue than in much of previous scholarship. They nuance Erasmus’s narcissism as his main motivation to write the text, situating his preoccupation with Greek pronunciation within the context of his journey to Italy, especially his experience at the Aldine press, where he met Girolamo Aleandro, one of the first Italian scholars interested in pronunciation (pp. 35–40). The authors also deem it unlikely that he was simply taking revenge on Italians who branded him a barbarian by pointing out their errors against Latin, since he advocated in the first place to reframe the division between cultivated Italians and the barbarians to a distinction between learned scholars and the general public (pp. 40–41). In doing so, Bénévent and Clerico advocate a multitude of motivations, including next to more personal motivations also a religious dimension. The authors grant that this religious aspect is not prominent in the text, but they argue that it may be foregrounded in the marked choice of the word sermo in the title — the very word he used to translate λόγος (lógos) at the outset of the gospel of John (pp. 42–44). The choice for sermo would in this reading “symbolically testify to the link established between the ambition of a grammatical project and the fundamental challenges of translating the evangelical text” (p. 43). While these religious claims may seem far-fetched to some readers, the authors do convincingly lay out Erasmus’s more immediate aims with the dialogue, dedicated to the young Maximilian of Burgundy: to teach him about the corrupted pronunciation of the day in a pleasant form (docere and placere, p. 44). This incorrect speech needed to be remedied, which would lead to greater stability in an age of “radical pessimism” (p. 46) about the world and its variability in all things human, including human language(s). To this end, the pronunciation of the two well-described and codified languages of antiquity needed to be restored to its correct state.

In the next section, the authors survey Erasmus’s sources and method for his restoration of Latin and Greek pronunciation and address a major paradox in the DRP: the fact that the author discussed pronunciation in writing (pp. 48–70), a tension with which Erasmus also played throughout the dialogue. For Latin (pp. 48–55), Erasmus relied heavily on existing works, especially from antiquity — a debt explored in the preface in summary and emerging also from the numerous footnotes. Refreshing is the integration of book history with the history of linguistics to assess the sources available to Erasmus, which include the grammatical works of Marius Victorinus, published in 1527, only one year before the DRP. Ancient works were Erasmus’s main source, notably Terentianus Maurus, Victorinus, and especially Quintilian. Through the vast array of sources, which show variation through time and space, Erasmus sought to establish an “atemporal model” (p. 52) that could serve as a reference point for his contemporaries, without being entirely blind to the chronology of the language. Erasmus accessed these ancient Latin sources partly through the work of his (earlier) contemporaries, most notably Giovanni Tortelli’s De orthographia, but also the work of Antonio de Nebrija and Heinrich Bebel.

The authors then turn to the Greek sources (pp. 55–63), after briefly discussing the place of Greek in Erasmus’s life and humanist culture, especially as part of the tandem with Latin, expressed in the well-known phrase in utraque lingua (‘in both languages’). Greek grammarians figure much less among Erasmus’s sources, the most cited Ancient Greek author being Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Instead, the author of the DRP relied heavily on recent work by Greek émigrés, especially Theodore Gaza, whose grammar manual he partly translated (books 1–2). Western Hellenists are barely mentioned in the DRP, even though Erasmus was obviously familiar with them. Following the work of Ingram Bywater in the early twentieth century, the authors of the preface survey the ones that were of great importance for Erasmus: Aldo Manuzio, Girolamo Aleandro, and Antonio de Nebrija.

As indicated above, the authors investigate to some detail the paradox of discussing pronunciation in writing. The dialogue format serves to create the illusion of the spoken word, which Lion and Bear attempt to uphold — as witnessed by passages where the same vowels in the same words are being repeated, but different pronunciations are presupposed (e.g. pp. 210–211). Erasmus commented on the need of introducing new letters to adequately represent sound (pp. 64–66), focused on reconstructing sounds according to their ancient pronunciation without paying much attention to variation (pp. 66–67), largely ignored epigraphic evidence (pp. 67–68), and adopted “the principle of Quintilian”, according to which one should write as one pronounced (pp. 69–70).

The next section of the preface deals with pedagogical aspects of the DRP (pp. 70–89), especially the strategic ways in which Erasmus shaped the text as a treatise of education — hence the section title “The tricks of the teacher” (“Les ruses du pédagogue”). Qualifying the DRP as “an Erasmian banquet” (pp. 70–71), the authors tease out a selection of connections and intertexts with other works by Erasmus, especially those belonging to the pedagogical portion of his oeuvre (Ordo I). These include the Colloquia, De pueris instituendis, De ratione studii, and the Institutio matrimonii Christiani, whereas the connections with other Ordines are likewise numerous, including his Adagia (Ordo II), his correspondence (Ordo III), and his biblical scholarship (Ordines VI–VII), but most of these remain to be further explored. The authors then discuss the DRP as a treatise of liberal education (pp. 72–77), tailored to children, which can be usefully summarized as follows according to Chomarat (p. 72, in my English rendering):

Featuring two animals as the main protagonists, the underpinning idea of the treatise is that the liberal arts — including correct pronunciation — are constitutive for the formation of man: “at homines, mihi crede, non nascuntur, sed finguntur” (‘but man is — believe me — not born, but formed’, my translation), as he put it in his De pueris instituendis (ASD I-2, ed. Margolin 1971Margolin, Jean-Claude ed. 1971 “De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Ordinis primi tomus secundus, 1–78. Amsterdam: North-Holland. (ASD I-2.)Margolin, Jean-Claude ed. 1971 “De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Ordinis primi tomus secundus, 1–78. Amsterdam: North-Holland. (ASD I-2.): 31). The dialogue in a way serves as “a manual of elementary education” (p. 75), “destined for teachers” (p. 76), in an era when there was a cultural contest about this primary form of teaching (p. 77). As an elementary teaching manual addressed to Maximilian of Burgundy, Erasmus’s DRP inserted plenty of information on vernacular languages that his dedicatee knew and that helped to clarify Classical Latin and Greek pronunciation. As such, the text is a “dialogue of languages” (p. 79), in which the vernacular languages are “omnipresent” (pp. 77–84). Indeed, their presence goes beyond Maximilian’s knowledge of varieties of Dutch and French to include English, Frisian, German, and Italian. Not only are the sounds of the vernaculars used to clarify Latin and Greek pronunciation, but national pronunciations of Latin (and Greek) are assessed throughout. They are ranked at the end of the work (pp. 334–335), with Italians featuring first, before the English, while the French are the worst. The Germans and the Spanish are in between. About the Dutch nothing is said here, even though it is the most prominent vernacular language in the DRP in terms of exemplification in the main text (through Latin equivalents) and in the margins (in the original Dutch) (pp. 83–84).

The final part of the section discusses the multiple meanings of “us” in the DRP (pp. 84–89), which can refer to “us, the Dutch”, “us, users of Latin”, and especially also “us, humanists of the North”, which receives further support from the minor texts which Erasmus had feature next to the DRP in the authorized editions. Particularly, the October 1529 edition served as a “‘promotion’ of northern humanism” (p. 86), by including various materials by these scholars, most notably an unedited oration by Rodolphus Agricola, the founding father of northern humanism for Erasmus (pp. 87–88). According to the authors (inspired by the work of Alexandre Vanautgaerden), the northern appropriation of Italian humanism also emerges from the October 1529 edition in various typographic ways, revolving around Johann Froben, whom Erasmus perhaps consciously crafted as a Philhellenic printer and the new northern Aldus (pp. 88–89).

The final section of the preface succinctly outlines the reception of the text in terms of (posthumous) editions and modern translations (pp. 89–95). The section concludes with some reflections on the legacy of the text for both Latin and Greek pronunciation, emphasizing the need for further scholarship.

In sum, the preface provides a convenient synthesis of — mainly Franco­phone — scholarship on the DRP, adding a fresh perspective by the attention for book-historical detail. The preface is followed by an outline of Erasmian pronunciation in the French school system by Clerico, which discusses the points of agreement (pp. 97–98) and the uncertainties (pp. 98–99). This annex concludes with some brief pointers about the Erasmian heritage in France in the sixteenth century and today (pp. 100–102). The introduction to the vernacular index by Meerhoff (pp. 463–465), finally, assesses the considerable impact of the DRP on the Dutch linguistic tradition.

The extensive survey of the composition and contents of the book shows that the new Erasmian publication has much to offer to scholarship. The book is well-documented, attempts to provide an honest assessment of the success of the DRP, and adequately situates the text in the oeuvre of Erasmus. On a formal level, the typography is esthetically appealing, whereas the cover shows a nice image of a bear and a lion from a fifteenth-century French manuscript that seems otherwise alien to the DRP.

While the value of the new publication remains unquestioned, the reader may wish to exercise caution on two fronts. On the one hand, there are some issues with the Latin text provided. On the other hand, the bibliographical scope of the scholarship in the paratexts is somewhat disappointing in certain respects. Firstly, the Latin text is presented as following Cytowska (1973)Cytowska, M. ed. 1973 “De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Ordinis primi tomus quartus, 1–103. Amsterdam: North-Holland. (Also abbreviated as ASD I-4.)Cytowska, M. ed. 1973 “De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Ordinis primi tomus quartus, 1–103. Amsterdam: North-Holland. (Also abbreviated as ASD I-4.), but several errors throughout the text suggest that the edition started from an online text (a likely candidate being Vicifons),11.See https://​la​.wikisource​.org​/wiki​/De​_recta​_latini​_graecique​_sermonis​_pronuntiatione​_1643, last consulted on 23 December 2025. which was subsequently corrected using the ASD edition — but only partly so. Several errors confirm this hypothesis, e.g.:

• p. 135:

  • “es ærario” pro “ex aerario” (ASD I-4, p. 20)

  • “unus Canonicos an unus Ludimagister” pro “unus Canonicus an unus Ludimagister” (ASD I-4, p. 21)

• p. 141: “altem penes magistratum'” pro “altera penes magistratum” (ASD I-4,
        p. 23)

• p. 145:

  • “in collegiis sine pædagogiis” pro “in collegiis siue paedagogiis” (ASD I-4, p. 24)

  • “tum huic disciplinas” pro “tum huic disciplinae” (ASD I-4, p. 25)

• p. 339: “dictiones Græcis” pro “dictiones Graecas” (ASD I-4, p. 101)

This incomplete list focuses on the beginning and the end of the text and disregards some other typos found in the new edition that are absent from the Vicifons text (e.g. “epistoma” pro “epistola” on p. 113, “non natis est nosse” pro “non satis est nosse” on p. 141, “adiectiis” pro “adiectitiis” on p. 331). Perhaps a new edition of the text may not have been necessary, given the introduction of mistakes and the fact that the critical apparatus largely copies Cytowska’s (1973)Cytowska, M. ed. 1973 “De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Ordinis primi tomus quartus, 1–103. Amsterdam: North-Holland. (Also abbreviated as ASD I-4.)Cytowska, M. ed. 1973 “De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Ordinis primi tomus quartus, 1–103. Amsterdam: North-Holland. (Also abbreviated as ASD I-4.), as is acknowledged.22.The critical apparatus shows occasional copy mistakes, too, as on p. 335, note b, where the nonsensical “quidam B : quidam A” should read “quidam B : quidem A” following the ASD edition (I-4, p. 101). Other minor typographical infelicities include ill-placed wordbreaks (e.g. “que-madmodum” on p. 321, “Pirc-kheimer” on p. 371) and occasional slips of the pen as in “de optimo bene dicendi” (p. 23) instead of “de optimo genere dicendi”; “Corapetræus” pro “Coracopetræus” (p. 35, twice); “προσότητός” / “prosótētós” pro “ποσότητός” / “posótētós” (p. 59); “Postdam” pro “Potsdam” (p. 92). The claim that Πάρεργον “is badly spelled as άρεργομ” in the edition USTC 631324 (p. 90) may have arisen from unfamiliarity with early modern Greek spelling (see https://​www​.ustc​.ac​.uk​/editions​/631324, last accessed 23 December 2025). I did not find the misspelling in the two digitized copies I found of this edition (preserved in Munich and Bamberg): see the Verzeichnis der Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts, VD 16 E 3610, http://​gateway​-bayern​.de​/VD16+E+3610, last accessed 23 December 2025.

Secondly, the bibliography in the preface is relatively strongly oriented toward France, which may result in a misleading picture of certain aspects discussed in the preface. This holds in particular for the history of Greek grammar, for which Hummel (2007)Hummel, Pascale 2007 De lingua Graeca: Histoire de l’histoire de la langue grecque. Bern etc.: Peter Lang.Hummel, Pascale 2007 De lingua Graeca: Histoire de l’histoire de la langue grecque. Bern etc.: Peter Lang. is used as the main reference, despite Donnet’s (2008)Donnet, Daniel 2008 “ De lingua Graeca: A propos d’un ouvrage récent”. L’Antiquité Classique 77.321–327. Donnet, Daniel 2008 “De lingua Graeca: A propos d’un ouvrage récent”. L’Antiquité Classique 771.321–327. well-documented objections about this problematic work and the availability of more recent scholarship like Rollo (2012)Rollo, Antonio 2012 Gli Erotemata tra Crisolora e Guarino. Percorsi dei Classici 21. Messina: Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi Umanistici.Rollo, Antonio 2012 Gli Erotemata tra Crisolora e Guarino. Percorsi dei Classici 21. Messina: Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi Umanistici. for Manuel Chrysoloras.33. Kukenheim (1951)Kukenheim, Louis 1951 Contributions à l’histoire de la grammaire grecque, latine et hébraïque à l’époque de la Renaissance. Leiden: E. J. Brill.Kukenheim, Louis 1951 Contributions à l’histoire de la grammaire grecque, latine et hébraïque à l’époque de la Renaissance. Leiden: E. J. Brill. is still used, too, which despite all its merits has become outdated by now, especially for the Erotemata. Consulting Rollo’s work would probably have led to more nuanced statements about Chrysoloras’s grammar, which was allegedly “published for the first time in Florence in 1484” (p. 33). This statement is misleading, since the grammar book was of course published in manuscript form already during Chrysoloras’s lifetime (he died in 1415); hence, the work circulated decades before the first printing of the book, which is no doubt meant. Also, Chrysoloras was not the first to occupy a Greek chair in the west, as is suggested following Jean-Christophe Saladin (p. 59, n. 200). Instead, Leontius Pilatus served as the first public teacher of Greek in Italy, a fact since long established (see Baldi 2021Baldi, Davide 2021 “L’insegnamento del greco a Firenze da Leonzio Pilato a Pier Vettori (1360–1583)”. Studium Florentinum: L’istruzione superiore a Firenze fra XIV e XVI secolo, ed. by Lorenzo Fabbri, 83–146. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.Baldi, Davide 2021 “L’insegnamento del greco a Firenze da Leonzio Pilato a Pier Vettori (1360–1583)”. Studium Florentinum: L’istruzione superiore a Firenze fra XIV e XVI secolo, ed. by Lorenzo Fabbri, 83–146. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.: 83–85, with the literature cited). A similar objection in terms of publication date can be made about the Greek grammar of Constantine Lascaris, which is claimed to “go back to 1476” (p. 60, n. 210), even though it has been established that this book circulated in manuscript no later than the mid-1460s (Nuti 2014Nuti, Erika 2014 Longa est via: Forme e contenuti dello studio grammaticale dalla Bisanzio paleologa al tardo Rinascimento veneziano. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.Nuti, Erika 2014 Longa est via: Forme e contenuti dello studio grammaticale dalla Bisanzio paleologa al tardo Rinascimento veneziano. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.: 118).

More generally, the account of the Greek revival seems somewhat simplistic (pp. 33–34), hailing 1453 as the main turning point causing the influx of Greek migrants, even though scholars like Harris (1995)Harris, Jonathan 1995 Greek Emigres in the West, 1400–1520. Camberley: Porphyrogenitus.Harris, Jonathan 1995 Greek Emigres in the West, 1400–1520. Camberley: Porphyrogenitus. have long established the gradual nature of the process. On a microlevel, the relevance of the Low Countries and Leuven context for Erasmus’s ideas on Greek pronunciation could have received a more adequate assessment, seeing that he must not only have been aware of Ceratinus’s Libellus (discussed on pp. 37, 62–63, 90) but also of the reconstructed pronunciation included in Adrien Amerot’s 1520 Leuven grammar in the footsteps of Aleandro (Van Rooy 2022Van Rooy, Raf 2022 “Half a Millennium of Greek Grammar in Leuven”. Ex Officina: Stories from the Stacks of KU Leuven Libraries, 7–9.Van Rooy, Raf 2022 “Half a Millennium of Greek Grammar in Leuven”. Ex Officina: Stories from the Stacks of KU Leuven Libraries, 7–9.), an important fact not mentioned in the discussion. In this context, it is also a bit odd to see the DRP described as the first monograph on pronunciation (p. 75), while Ceratinus’s 1527 Libellus — admittedly much shorter than the DRP but also more systematic — is quoted several times.

As a final example, when rightly stating that Erasmus is not really interested in epigraphic evidence throughout the DRP (pp. 67–68), the last paragraph rather infelicitously concludes that Italians were uniquely positioned to study epigraphic evidence, except for Justus Lipsius later in the century. This overgeneralizing statement disregards the antiquarian turn that occurred in the sixteenth century to a large extent also in northern humanism and went far beyond Lipsius, who did not work alone on the collection mentioned (p. 68, n. 236) but in fact published Martinus Smetius’s collection that circulated widely before it was printed in 1588, both in Italy and in the Low Countries (Vagenheim 2006Vagenheim, Ginette 2006 “Juste Lipse et l’édition du recueil d’inscriptions latines de Martinus Smetius”. De Gulden Passer 84.45–67.Vagenheim, Ginette 2006 “Juste Lipse et l’édition du recueil d’inscriptions latines de Martinus Smetius”. De Gulden Passer 841.45–67.).

Next to these two main concerns, one can note some further minor points of improvement. In a few cases, the utility of the notes seems questionable, for instance, when in note 70 an obvious pun on dictatura and dictare is explained very generally as “[a]nother example of the kind of wordplay Erasmus likes” (p. 352). In other cases, one may have expected a note (e.g. on p. 318, where one can find a somewhat obscure discussion of the accentus gravis in θὴ in the DRP). Some readers may have the impression that the notes hover between scholarly annotation and didactic aims — perhaps not unfit for a hybrid manual like the DRP, but the result is an occasional lack of consistency in the annotation. The placing of the notes is not always straightforward either, since numerous notes provide glosses of terms that may precede or follow the footnote reference by several lines, even across different sections. Going beyond the notes, I can note that certain references are not included in the bibliography, e.g. Bénévent (2014) (cited p. 88, n. 305) and Peiffer (2016) (cited p. 371). Finally, the sources of certain quotes are not always indicated (e.g. on p. 78, n. 265, explaining the “acousticiens” of the translation).

In conclusion, this new edition with introduction, translation, and notes is useful for Erasmian scholars and historians of linguistics on two accounts. On the one hand, the publication makes the DRP finally available in a fluent French translation, with notes that are much more detailed than the ASD edition by Cytowska (1973)Cytowska, M. ed. 1973 “De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Ordinis primi tomus quartus, 1–103. Amsterdam: North-Holland. (Also abbreviated as ASD I-4.)Cytowska, M. ed. 1973 “De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Ordinis primi tomus quartus, 1–103. Amsterdam: North-Holland. (Also abbreviated as ASD I-4.), as they incorporate more recent scholarship and take into account other modern translations of the work. On the other hand, the lengthy preface provides a useful new synthesis about several important aspects of the DRP, especially with regard to its sources and its editorial history, albeit through a primordially French lens, which has led to a distorted representation of certain elements such as the history of Greek grammar. The main caveat regards, however, the Latin text, which should be consulted with caution and preferably read in another edition like Cytowska’s (1973)Cytowska, M. ed. 1973 “De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Ordinis primi tomus quartus, 1–103. Amsterdam: North-Holland. (Also abbreviated as ASD I-4.)Cytowska, M. ed. 1973 “De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata. Ordinis primi tomus quartus, 1–103. Amsterdam: North-Holland. (Also abbreviated as ASD I-4.). Yet, despite these two shortcomings, the book still has much to offer to scholars, and especially to historians of linguistics. They will benefit not only from the new French translation, but also from Meerhoff’s brief contribution on the Dutch in the DRP and, most notably, from the detailed synthesis of grammatical and other sources used by Erasmus in his DRP.