Matter provide the first ever translation of the Latin Ogdoas, a series of eight dialogues written by the fifteenth-century author Alberto Alfieri. While neither the author nor his work are particularly well-known, Weinberg and Matter set out, not only to rectify this lacuna, but more importantly, to justify its importance in Renaissance studies; two goals they deftly accomplish. The extensive introduction to the Ogdoas begins with a biography of Alfieri (1-4): a grammar teacher who, at the time of writing, the Ogdoas, resided in Genoa in the colony of Caffa, in modern Crimea, and who was, by birth, a Milanese subject. Alfieri himself provides these geographical touchstones in the Ogdoas prologue, which are utilized to date both Alfieri and his text. Milanese and Genoese political events figure prominently in the Ogdoas as well as their ruling families, the Visconti and Adorno respectively. This is of primary interest because the dialogues purport to have taken place in the afterlife among the deceased members of these ruling families as they muse on subjects of civic virtue and just leadership. The irony of this is not lost on our editors who acknowledge the historical inaccuracy or, more precisely, historical omissions, which they attribute to Alfieri's bias "particularly when it concerns the lives and deeds of statesmen with whom the author wants to ingratiate himself " (42).
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