Bacon, Francis. De Sapientia Veterum Liber. Londini: Excudebat Robertus Barkerus, 1609.
1609 Latin Original Digital Copy: British Library / Early English Books Online
Bacon, Francis. The Wisedome of the Ancients. Translated by Sir Arthur Gorges. London: Imprinted by John Bill, 1619.
1619 English Translation Digital Copy: Folger Shakespeare Library / Early English Books Online
Bacon, Francis. Philosophical Studies c.1611–c.1619. Edited by Graham Rees. The Oxford Francis Bacon, vol. 6. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
The Definitive Text: Volume 6 contains the complete, authoritative Latin text of De Sapientia Veterum collated against surviving 1609 copies and Bacon’s 1625 revisions.
Dual-Language Layout: It features a facing-page format, pairing the critical Latin text directly with a precise, modern English translation.
Textual apparatus: It provides extensive modern art-historical and philosophical commentaries by Graham Rees, tracking how Bacon’s mythological interpretations directly served his development of the Instauratio Magna and his polemics against Aristotelian natural philosophy.
On the featured image
Gowy, Jacob Peter. The Fall of Icarus. 1635–1637. Oil on canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Commissioned between 1636 and 1638 for the decoration of the Torre de la Parada, a royal hunting lodge near Madrid, under the direction of Peter Paul Rubens. It entered the collection of the Royal Palace of Madrid following the war of the Spanish Succession and was later transferred to the Museo del Prado.
