Abstract
The focus of this article is the mind of a young French botanist who visits the islands of the Aegean Sea in 1547. Although he is not a professional classicist, he is on the alert for survivals of classical culture among the Greek-speaking natives on Crete, Chios and Lemnos. His chief concern, as a patented Renaissance intellectual, is to find an explanation for the total absence of learning in the Greek world, which appears to him as an antique setting filled with ruined marble and ruined minds. Not given to nostalgia or pathos, he observes the flora and fauna described by Galen and Dioscorides: Nature, at least, remains constant.
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The book went through many editions in the sixteenth century. All references here are to the 1555 edition published by the new Plantin firm in Antwerp, a beautiful, pocket-sized volume in the collection of the Newberry Library in Chicago. Belon's life has to be pieced together from autobiographical comments in his own books. This is what Dr. Delaunay, a physician from Le Mans, did in a useful and readable series of articles published in theRevue du Seizième Siècle in the 1920s, under the title of “La vie aventureuse de Pierre Belon” (IX [1922], 251–268 and X [1923], 2–34). Considerable information about Frenchmen in the East and, in particular, Aramon's embassy, can be found in the memoir written by Aramon's secretary, Jean Chesneau, which was published by Ch. Scheffer, under the title ofLe voyage de M. d'Aramon (Paris, 1887) as volume 8 of the seriesRecueil de voyages et de documents pour servir à l'histoire de la géographie.
Characteristic of the later Romantic travelers' attitudes and poses is Châteaubriand's reply to his erudite guide atop the citadel of Argos. Urged to “search every stone and every inscription”, he answered that, for him, standing on a peak “was enough to awaken in his memory the smiling images of fable and history”. Cited by Olga Augustinos,French Odysseys. Greece in French Travel Literature from the Renaissance to the Romantic Era (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 191. (See the review by the present writer inIJCT I:4 [Spring 1995], 161–163.)
Observations, 272.
Ibid. Observations, 254
In addition to Delaunay (see note 1) also Henri Potez, “Deux années de la Renaissance”,Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, XIII (1906), 458–498 and 658–692, which is based on unpublished letters written by Denys Lambin in 1552, 1553 and 1554, that is, while Belon was writing hisObservations. Lambin sheds much light, in a gossipy and partisan way, on the circle of young intellectuals around the Cardinal de Tournon.
Observations, preface.
In the dedication to the Cardinal, he promises to translate Dioscorides into French.
Observations, 2 v.
Ibid. Observations. 135: “Oculairement observé”.
Pierre de La Ramée,Dialectique (Paris, 1555). References are to Michel Dassonville's modern edition (Geneva, Droz, 1964), 52.
Observations, 2 v.
Ibid. Observations, 67.
Loc. cit. Observations.
Observations, 62 v. It is the fact that Greek monks are not idle that impresses Belon: “ils sortent de leurs monasteres de grand matin, chacun avec son outil à la main”. Further, he admires the rough communism of their lives: “Chacun travaille pour le menage de son monastere… travaillans tous en commun”.
Observations, 50.
Ibid.Observations, 77 v.
Among other sources for this point of view, Cicero,De legibus 1.x.30:nullam dissimilitudinem esse in genere.
Observations, 67.
Ibid.Observations, 7: “Les Autheurs de toutes bonnes sciences & disciplines que nous reverons pour le jour d'huy, sont pour la meilleure partie issus de Gréce.”
Observations, 3 v.
Ibid.Observations, 69.
Ibid.Observations, 7, v, 9.
Ibid.Observations, 10 v.
Ibid.Observations, 38 v. “De l'ancienne maniere de danser avec les armes, nommée pyrrhica saltatio.”
Ibid.Observations, 55. On Vulcan (Hephaistos), the crippled god who landed on Lemnos when ejected from Mt. Olympus, see s.v. “Hephaistos” in: Pauly-Wissowa,Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft 8.1 (1913), c. 311–c. 366.
Observations, 14.
Ibid.Observations, 205 v.
Ibid.Observations, 200 v.
Ibid.Observations, 257 v.
Ibid.Observations, 295 v.
Ibid.Observations, 13.
Ibid.Observations, 208.
Ibid.Observations, 41–54.
Ibid.Observations, 267 v.
Ibid.Observations, 235.
Ibid.Observations, 182.
Ibid.Observations, 188.
Ibid.Observations, 195.
Ibid.Observations, 178.
Ibid.Observations, 103. He is capable of appreciating the “merveilleuse structure” and the “grand artifice” of the columns of a Roman temple.
Ibid.Observations, 4 on “utilité publicque” as the chief motive of his research activities.
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Huppert, G. Antiquity observed: A French naturalist in the Aegean Sea in 1547. International Journal of the Classical Tradition 2, 275–283 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02678625
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02678625