Il Bellum Alexandrinum e il Bellum Africum volgarizzati da Pier Candido Decembrio per Inigo d'Avalos

This essay serves an introduction to the critical edition of one part (specifically the Bellum Alexandrinum and the Bellum Africum) of the vernacular translation of the Corpus Caesarianum that Pier Candido Decembrio did in 1438 on commission from Filippo Maria Visconti. Together with the rest of the second section of this corpus, these two books, whose text is notoriously spurious and difficult, are dedicated to Inigo d'Avalos, a prominent figure in the Visconti court of that time. A linguistic analysis of the vernacular text shows that the Latin exemplar used by Decembrio is a manuscript bearing unique variants which he carefully selected for this work. Basing on these variants, the Latin exemplar used by Decembrio is identified with strong evidence as a still existing manuscript of the Saxon State Library in Dresden.