Step by step and even verse: Translation of Lucian as a tool for Greek learning in the early modern period

Translations from Greek into Latin made by humanists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are usually divided into two categories, the literary and the ad verbum, the latter specifically designed as an aid to students in the first throes of learning the new language. While research into the versions made of Lucian, a standard beginners' author during this period, confirms that such a distinction reflects contemporary assessments, nonetheless, in practice a third type of translation had begun to emerge by the early sixteenth century, which attempted to bridge the gap between the two. This paper examines the results of the different approaches adopted to Latinising two of Lucian's popular Olympian dialogues (one Dialogue of the Gods, one Dialogue of the Sea-Gods) by four different translators, Erasmus, Ottomar Luscinius, Giacinto Arpino and Titus Livius Guidoloctus, and attempts to discover the categories to which they belonged.