Note 1979 — Chapter LX
Reading edition
As has been pointed out by HL XXI, 147, in the case of the “new translation” of the Ethics, dated in the colophon in 1282, whereas Aquinas died in 1274. Quetif and Echard (1719), I, 390, had argued, however, that this date was when the MS was copied and not when the translation was made; but this is far-fetched as most of William’s translations are similarly dated. Certainly William’s labors as a translator did not cease with his elevation to the archbishopric of Corinth, since he translated Galen De alimentis in 1277 and works by Proclus in 1281.
Quetif and Echard, in order to maintain the cooperation supposed to exist between William and Aquinas, also hold that William’s translation of the Elementatio theologica of Proclus made at Viterbo in 1268 was from the Arabic and not from the Greek, since Aquinas says in his commentary on that work that the Greek text had not yet been found. This conclusion is also drawn by HL XXI, 148.