Plutarch
De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet

De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet is one of the treatises included in Plutarch’s Moralia. While it has attracted the attention of a wide range of scholars throughout history, both its text and content have not yet been satisfactorily established and interpreted as a whole. Two different but complementary aspects have contributed to this state of affairs: the first aspect concerns the interventions in the text to solve textual difficulties; the second concerns the scholarly interpretation of the structure and contents of the treatise. The main objective of the present project is to offer a consistent, comprehensive analysis of De facie as a whole. This objective can be divided in three sub-objectives: to offer 1) a study of the Greek text; 2) a study of the treatise as a literary creation that necessarily reflects and conveys a coherent worldview; and 3) a study of the philosophical contents that casts light on the meaning of the treatise and the goals of Plutarch. In order to reach these sub-objectives, I provide a new critical edition of the text furnished with both a critical apparatus and a text critical commentary in order to assess all the textual difficulties and problems posed by De facie; I also provide two other studies, literary and philosophical, which in turn intend to give an overview of previous approaches and to overcome the inconsistencies and partialities, with an aim to offer a solid and overarching understanding of the treatise.

Dissertation: http://hdl.handle.net/11370/ebcf6912-9b15-4e3e-a277-09b88a7c6324