The Observationes in M. T. Ciceronem of Marius Nizolius

Abstract

Nizolius' Observationes is a lexicon of Latin based exclusively on the writings of Cicero. It was one of the best-known dictionaries from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Pagani has counted nearly seventy printings of various editions between 1535 to 1630. An edition was printed in England as late as 1820. Leibnitz wrote that the lexicon would last as long as Cicero. The historian Arnold Toynbee has remarked that he was brought up on Nizolius in the Latin school. This work has today been all but forgotten. The light of recognition is now begining to fall upon Nizolius' De veris principiis… philosophandi (Parma, 1553); the notice given to it is deserved, but the continuing almost total neglect of the lexicon is not justified. The De veris principiis has substance to contribute to our understanding of Renaissance philosophy; the Observationes offers a thread for a history of Ciceronianism in modern times.