La lettera di Giovanni Dondi dall’Orologio al veronese Gasparo Squaro su Seneca, Epistulae ad Lucilium, 7, 3-5,

A close friend and correspondent of Petrarch, Giovanni Dondi dell’Orologio († 1388), physician and scientist, left a group of letters surviving only in the MS Venezia Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana lat. XIV 223 (4340). One of them is addressed to another friend of Petrarch, Gasparo Squaro de’ Broaspini from Verona. Here Giovanni Dondi, urged by Gasparo’s request, offers an accurate explanation of a passage of Seneca (Ep. 7, 3-5), which was quite obscure to Gasparo. Moreover, Dondi adds some reflections about the variae lectiones of this passage that he found in different witnesses. After a detailed introduction concerning Giovanni Dondi’s letter collection and its cultural background, there is provided the first critical edition of Dondi’s letter to Gasparo Squaro, with some observations concerning the 14th century manuscript transmission of Seneca’s Epistulae ad Lucilium.