Plutarco, Erasmo e l'educazione del giovane governante: il percorso parallelo dell'Ad principem ineruditum e dell'Institutio principis christiani

If we consider, as some scholars, the Aut regem aut fatuum nasci oportere of Erasmus of Rotterdam, a sort of preliminary essay of the Institutio principis Christiani, cannot be ignored a relevant difference between these works: although there are significant analogies concerning the main arguments, in the first one are almost completely missing the numerous references to the Plutarch's political Moralia that we can find in the second. Erasmus spent some years in Venice and worked at the first Greek edition of Plutarch's Moralia. In this article I highlight how he was able to use this period in finding Plutarchean elements - passages, metaphors, quotations - able to effectively support the political ideas he had already explained, although more briefly, in the Aut regem. I do it through a comparison between some passages of the Aut regem and of the Institutio and through the analysis of the Plutarchean excerpts that Erasmus uses in this second work.