Girolamo Cardano

Emperor Nero Girolamo Cardano

In September 1562 the Basel press of Sebastian Henricum Petri published a two-volume edition of miscellaneous works by Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576?), the famous Milanese polymath. The first volume consisted of the Somniorum Synesiorum Omnis Generis Insomnia Explicantes, a work dealing with dreams, their classification, origin and interpretation. The second volume contained eleven shorter philosophical and medical treaties, among which was the Neronis Encomium, a new biographical treatment of Nero, the much-maligned Roman emperor. It is a work that still has much to teach us, four and a half centuries later. Angelo Paratico, a Milanese editor and writer now based in Verona, has made the first translation of this important work into English.