Insults and rebuke · Lexicon

From the book

Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

Marsilio Ficino · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordCanes are dogs and latrare barking; these are polemical metaphors when applied to opponents.
In the Platonic TheologyFicino calls dissenters barking dogs when asserting what he presents as the certain Platonic doctrine of Ideas.
In this editionThe translation retains the sharpness instead of neutralizing the voice.
A place to readThe barking-dogs image accompanies the claimed Platonic consensus.

Meaning

Canes are dogs and latrare barking; these are polemical metaphors when applied to opponents. Carere means lacking, but a rebuke about lacking perception or rational soul need not function as a literal metaphysical classification.

Use in the book

Ficino calls dissenters barking dogs when asserting what he presents as the certain Platonic doctrine of Ideas. The targets remain unnamed in this passage. He later tells Lucretius to be silent and plays on sensus: anyone denying perception to the ordering source is himself said to lack sense. The final sentence of Book III likewise says that someone who fails to recognize the definition of rational soul lacks rational soul. These are rhetorical sanctions attached to contested or concluding claims. They express confidence, impatience, and pressure toward assent; they do not add independent evidence for the claims. In particular, the closing rebuke should not be treated as an exception excluding philosophical opponents from the metaphysical kind whose definition has just been defended.

Selected annotated passages.

Places to read

II.11.22The barking-dogs image accompanies the claimed Platonic consensus.
II.13.14Taceat introduces the address against Lucretius.
II.13.19A repeated sensus-family rebuke links perception with rational ordering.
III.2.30The closing denial of rational soul functions as polemical emphasis.

Translation in this edition

The translation retains the sharpness instead of neutralizing the voice. No individual should be identified as one of the “dogs” without additional checked evidence. The ordinary negative verb and its argumentative use both belong in the lexical explanation.

canis / latrare

canis / latrare. Printed forms: canes; latrant.

Dog / bark. Unnamed dissenters are derided through animal imagery; the insult is not additional evidence for the claimed Platonic consensus. References: II.11.22. See Insults and rebuke.