  Yet if this early epistolary treatise does not contain revolutionary opinions, it does signify a guiding principle that runs through Ficino’s career: “philosophy” and the “history of philosophy” are closely tied. Another way to put this is that for Ficino, imitative exegesis represented a way to philosophize. Ficino regarded himself as a Platonist, but this did not mean that he was interested in finding Plato’s intentions in a historicist manner. Instead, he saw himself as one member of a venerable sequence of interpreters who added to a store of wisdom that God allowed progressively to unfold. Each of these “prisci theologi,” or “ancient theologians,” had his part to play in discovering, documenting, and elaborating the truth contained in the writings of Plato and other ancient sages, a truth to which these sages may not have been fully privy, acting as they were as vessels of divine truth.