Scholarship across borders: Thomas Savile’s translation of Geminus’s Phaenomena

Travelling between the libraries and scholarly coteries of continental Europe (1588–91), Thomas Savile, mathematician and humanist, undertook a translation of Geminus’s Phaenomena, an introduction to astronomy dating from the first century bce. Savile began his translation at Breslau, at the home of Andreas Dudith, and continued to edit his Latin prose at the vast private library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli at Padua. Here Savile accessed another translation of Geminus, namely Abraham de Balmes’ Latin translation of a Hebrew translation of an Arabic translation of the Greek original. It was through this version and its rich textual history that Savile was able to make some ingenious emendations to the Greek. Savile’s translation was thus a product not only of the rich network of scholars and libraries he was able to access on the Continent, but also of an enduring engagement in northern Italy with Arabic and Hebrew scholarship in Latin translation.