Per un possibile episodio della fortuna del giovane Erasmo in Italia (e per l’esegesi di Machiavelli, «Discorsi», I pr. e II, 2). Paolo Orlandini e gli «Antibarbari»

This article provides an edition of a little-known Latin text by Paolo Orlandini († 1519), a Camaldolese monk and pupil of Marsilio Ficino. Entitled 'Symposium praecellentiae', the dialogue discusses and analyzes the causes of the preeminence of the ancients and the inferiority of the moderns. The aim of the first part of the essay is to illustrate the fifteenth-century premises of the theses set forth in the dialogue. In particular, it focuses on the history of the most unusual thesis, which ascribes the cause of the impossibility for the moderns to restore the political, military and literary values of antiquity to the anthropological change introduced by the Christian religion. The second part presents the dialogue, discusses its date and circumstances of composition, and finally suggests the 'Antibarbari' by Erasmus of Rotterdam as its main (but possibly indirect) source.