Libraries

In the inventory of goods of the Inca Garcilaso, appears in folio 522r (the sixth of the list) a book of Josefo with the abbreviated title De antiquitatibus. The work of Flavius ​​Josephus, originally written in Greek, was printed in Latin in 1539 in Lyon (Lugdunum). Its title, as it is recorded in the Inventory, seems to correspond to the second volume De antiquitatibus Iudaeorum libri X posteriores. Whatever volume the Inca Garcilaso possessed, it is interesting to think on the presence of this work in his library.

The work of Flavio Josefo has twenty volumes. The first ten are a sort of commentary of the Biblia Septuaginta where the author shows the antiquity of its people in the context of the Roman Judea. The other ten volumes, following the strategy of the comment and the gloss (comento y glosa), are about the Greek historical texts, related with the history if its people from the times of Herod. This Jew-Roman author, that imitated the Antigüedades romanas of Dionisio de Halicarnaso, created a historical method very original and elaborated from his De antiquitatibus: the use of grammatical persons, the different poetical genres, the psychological characters and the transcendental intervention of fate, among his subjects and strategies.