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Michael J. B. Allen: Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer. Pp. 274. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1981. £18.50.

Michael J. B. Allen, the editor of Marsilio Ficino's Philebus Commentary (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1975), has now turned his attention to Ficino's comments on Plato's Phaedrus. This book is in fact a critical edition and translation of Ficino's comments on the Phaedrus, together with a critical edition of Ficino's Latin translation of the central myth in the dialogue, Phaedrus 243E-257A, and texts and translations of seven other passages from other works of Ficino in which the Phaedrus myth is expounded. In a helpful and scholarly introduction A. discusses Ficino's view of the Phaedrus and his particular interest in the myth. He also sets out the complex history of Ficino's comments on the dialogue: what is presented in the editions of Ficino's Opera omnia as one commentary may in fact be divided into an introductory 'argumentum', a short commentary proper and a series of 'summae' which combine summary and comment. This useful edition will be primarily of interest to students of Renaissance Platonism but those concerned with Platonism in antiquity may like to see how an influential portion of Plato's work was interpreted by his Renaissance translator. In particular students of ancient Neoplatonism may be interested in the influence exerted on Ficino by the interpretations of Plotinus, Proclus and Hermias, evident in the acknowledgements he makes to these writers and traced by A. in the notes accompanying this edition.