Building the Canon through the Classics: Imitation and Variation in Renaissance Italy (1350-1580) 9789004398030, 9004398031

Table of contents :
Building the Canon through the Classics: Imitation and Variation in Renaissance
Italy (1350–1580)
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Notes on the Editor
Notes on Contributors
1 Introduction
2 Boccaccio as Homer: A Recently Discovered Self-portrait and the 'modern' Canon
3 In the Center of the Kaleidoscope: Ovidian Poetic Image and Boccaccio's Self-Representation in De Mulieribus Claris
4 The Place of the Father: The Reception of Homer in the Renaissance Canon
5 Politian: The Philologer as Artist
6 Humanistic Biographies of Horace and His Inclusion in the Fifteenth-century Literary Canon
7 Editing Vernacular Classics in the Early Sixteenth Century: Ancient Models and Modern Solutions
8 Building the Canon in 1530s Rome: Colocci's epigrammatari as a Test Case
9 The Literary Canon and the Visual Arts: From the Three Crowns to Ariosto and Tasso
10 'Re-figuring' Lucian of Samosata: Authorship and Literary Canon in Early Modern Italy
Index of Names
Index of Places

Citation preview

Building the Canon through the Classics

Metaforms studies in the reception of classical antiquity

Editors-in-Chief Almut-Barbara Renger (Freie Universität Berlin) Jon Solomon (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) John T. Hamilton (Harvard University) Editorial Board Kyriakos Demetriou (University of Cyprus) Constanze Güthenke (Oxford University) Miriam Leonard (University College London) Mira Seo (Yale-nus College)

volume 15

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/srca

Building the Canon through the Classics Imitation and Variation in Renaissance Italy (1350–1580)

Edited by

Eloisa Morra

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Due sportelli di libreria con scaffali di libri di musica (1720–1730), “Museo internazionale e biblioteca della musica di Bologna”. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Morra, Eloisa, 1988- editor. Title: Building the canon through the classics : imitation and variation in Renaissance Italy (1350-1550) / edited by Eloisa Morra. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2019] | Series: Metaforms studies in the reception of classical antiquity, ISSN 2212-9405 ; volume 15 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019012579 (print) | LCCN 2019019094 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004398030 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004398023 (hardback :¬alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Italian literature--History and criticism. | Italian literature--Classical influences. | Canon (Literature) | Imitation in literature. Classification: LCC PQ4075 (ebook) | LCC PQ4075 .B85 2019 (print) | DDC 850.9--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2019012579

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2212-9405 ISBN 978-90-04-39802-3 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-39803-0 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgements  vii List of Illustrations  viii Notes on the Editor  ix Notes on Contributors  x 1 Introduction  1 Eloisa Morra 2

Boccaccio as Homer: A Recently Discovered Self-portrait and the ‘modern’ Canon  13 Maddalena Signorini

3

In the Center of the Kaleidoscope: Ovidian Poetic Image and Boccaccio’s Self-Representation in De Mulieribus Claris  27 Talita Janine Juliani

4

The Place of the Father: The Reception of Homer in the Renaissance Canon  47 Valentina Prosperi

5

Politian: The Philologer as Artist  70 Jaspreet Boparai

6

Humanistic Biographies of Horace and His Inclusion in the Fifteenth-century Literary Canon  96 Giacomo Comiati

7

Editing Vernacular Classics in the Early Sixteenth Century: Ancient Models and Modern Solutions  126 Carlo Caruso

8

Building the Canon in 1530s Rome: Colocci’s epigrammatari as a Test Case  146 Nadia Cannata

vi

Contents

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The Literary Canon and the Visual Arts: From the Three Crowns to Ariosto and Tasso  158 Federica Caneparo

10

‘Re-figuring’ Lucian of Samosata: Authorship and Literary Canon in Early Modern Italy  187 Irene Fantappiè Index of Names  217 Index of Places  225

Acknowledgements This volume originates from a conference titled Building the Canon. Italian Renaissance and the creation of a literary tradition, held at Harvard University (usa) in December 2015 and co-organized by Marco Romani Mistretta and myself. I am grateful to Marco for his invaluable help in organizing the event and for our stimulating conversations involving the Italian Renaissance and the classical tradition. My deepest gratitude goes to the Departments of Classics and Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard, Villa i Tatti - The Harvard Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies, and the General Consulate of Italy in Boston for their support, and to the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto for the support received during the concluding stages of the publication process. I am also grateful to Lina Bolzoni, Marcello Ciccuto, and James Hankins for their generous guidance and encouragement. My deepest gratitude goes to Giulia Moriconi and Kim Fiona Plus for their advice and readiness to reply to editorial questions. Special thanks should be extended to the anonymous readers for their feedback, and to all the contributors for enthusiastically embracing this project. E.M.

Illustrations 2.1 Toledo, Archivo y Biblioteca Capitulares, Zelada 104.6, c. 267v (from: cursi, La scrittura e i libri, pl. ixa) Credits: Archivo y Biblioteca Capitu­ lares, Toledo.  25 2.2 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, plut. 34.49, c. ivv (from: Boccaccio autore e copista, pl. on p. 206) Credits: Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence.  26 2.3 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, ii.ii.38, c. 3v (from: Boccaccio autore e copista, pl. on p. 80) Credits: Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence.  26 9.1 Pierino da Vinci, The Death of Count Ugolino and his Sons, 1548/49, Liechtenstein, The Princely Collections. Credits: Liechtenstein, The Princely Collections, Vaduz — Vienna/scala, Florence.  183 9.2 Luca Signorelli, Triumph of Chastity, about 1509, from the palace of Pandolfo Petrucci in Siena, now in London, National Gallery. Credits: London, The National Gallery, National Gallery Picture Library, London.  184 9.3 Nicolò dell’Abate, Story of Prasildo and Tisbina, 1540s, formerly in Scandiano, Rocca dei Boiardo, now in Modena, deposits of the Galleria Estense. Credits: Galleria Estense, Modena.  184 9.4 Girolamo Mirola, Ruggiero on Alcina’s Island, 1563 ca, Parma, Palazzo Ducale (Palazzo del Giardino). Credits: Pinacoteca Stuard, Palazzo del Giardino, Parma.  185 9.5 Girolamo Mirola, Erminia and the Shepherds, 1628, Parma, Palazzo Ducale (Palazzo del Giardino). Credits: Pinacoteca Stuard, Palazzo del Giardino, Parma.  185 9.6 Francesco Torbido detto il Moro (attr.), The “lieta brigata,” post 1546, Bagnolo di Lonigo (Vicenza), Villa Pisani Bonetti. Credits: Owners Villa Pisani Bonetti.  186

Notes on the Editor Eloisa Morra is Assistant Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto. She earned a Ph.D in Italian Studies from Harvard University in 2017, completed her B.A. and M.A. at the Scuola Normale Superiore, and was a Visiting Scholar Researcher at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon. At Harvard she taught at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, co-curated a research exhibition at the Pusey Library and several projects at the Harvard Art Museums. Her published articles and essays explore interdisciplinary issues at the crossroads of textual and visual studies, classicism and vanguardism, the Renaissance and Italy’s modernism. Her monograph “Un allegro fischiettare nelle tenebre. Ritratto di Toti Scialoja” addresses this contemporary poet-painter’s interart/intermedia practices by studying his archive and manuscripts; it was published by Quodlibet Studio in 2014, and received a Special mention at the Edinburgh Gadda Prize 2015. She is currently completing a book on Carlo Emilio Gadda, arguably Italy’s greatest modernist writer.

Notes on Contributors Jaspreet Boparai trained initially as a classicist, and was the final student of the late Professor Philip Ford; his was the last-ever PhD awarded in the Department of neo-Latin at Cambridge. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford; the Courtauld Institute of Art; the Warburg Institute; the École Normale Supérieure in Paris; and Clare College, Cambridge, where he completed a dissertation on the history of classical scholarship. His research interests are divided between Latin literature and the history of art, and focus on the classical tradition in Italy and France between 1300 and 1700. Federica Caneparo is a Postdoctoral fellow in Italian Studies at the University of Chicago. She earned her Ph.D. at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy, where she focused on Italian literature and Early Modern art history. She also received a “diploma di specializzazione” (Italian post-graduate program) in Medieval and Early Modern art history from the University of Pisa. Her monograph Di molte figure adornato. L’Orlando furioso nei cicli pittorici tra Cinque e Seicento (Officina Libraria, Milan 2015) investigates frescoes inspired to Ludovico Ariosto’s poem Orlando furioso by offering a close reading of every cycle, and analyzing their role in the process of its canonization as a new classic. Federica’s research interests include the history of the book, the culture of Italian Renaissance, art and politics, and the relation between visual arts and literature. Nadia Cannata is Associate Professor in History of the Italian language at the University of Rome – La Sapienza. During the academic year 1997-1998 she was a Fellow at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti in Florence and in 2001–2002 held a Leverhulme Trust Grant from the British Academy. Her research interest span from the history of the printed book in Italy during the early Renaissance and its bearing on the history of Italian literature and language in the same period, to matters regarding the critical edition and textual analysis of vernacular and neo-latin poetry; textual bibliography; the relationship between literature and fine arts during the early Renaissance; linguistic treatises and the teoria cortigiana in the Cinquecento; public script in late Antiquity and Early Modern Europe.

Notes on Contributors

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Carlo Caruso is Professor of Italian Philology at the University of Siena and Honorary Professor at Durham University. He is the author of Adonis: The Myth of the Dying God in the Italian Renaissance (2013), the editor of The Life of Texts: Evidence in Textual Production, Transmission and Reception (2018), and the co-editor of Italy and the Classical Tradition: Language, Thought and Poetry 1300–1600 (2009) and La filologia in Italia nel Rinascimento (2018). He has published critical editions of Paolo Rolli, Libretti per musica (1993); Paolo Giovio, Ritratti (1999); and Diomede Borghese, Orazioni accademiche (2009). Between 2013 and 2016 he worked on the project ‘Italian Vernacular Classics and Textual Scholarship, 1270–1870,’ for which he had been awarded a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust. Giacomo Comiati is Postdoctoral research fellow at Oxford University, working within the ahrcfunded project ‘Petrarch Commentary and Exegesis in Renaissance Italy, c.1350c.1650.’ He read Italian and Latin at the University of Padua, while he attended the Scuola Galileiana di Studi Superiori. He graduated in Italian Philology in 2012, and then took his PhD in Italian Studies at the University of Warwick with a project on the reception of the Latin poet Horace in the Italian Renaissance. He later became a fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies (ias) at Warwick and, then, junior research fellow at the Dahlem Humanities Center of the Freie Universität in Berlin (Germany). His research interests include the Renaissance reception of Latin antiquity, Petrarch’s works, Italian Petrarchism, late sixteenth-century Venetian poetry, Italian Courtly literature, and Renaissance Latin poetry Irene Fantappiè holds a “Eigene Stelle” at the Freie Universität Berlin’s Institut für Romanische Philologie. She earned her PhD from University of Bologna and a M.A. degree from the same university, and spent research periods at Heidelberg University and University College London. She has been “Humboldt” fellow and subsequently a research fellow at Humboldt Universität in Berlin, and a visiting scholar at Columbia University. She is responsible of the 3rd research unit of the firb project Storia e mappe digitali della letteratura tedesca in Italia nel Novecento (Università di Roma La Sapienza). Among her publications: Karl Kraus e Shakespeare (2012), L’autore esposto (2016), Renaissance Rewritings (2017, edited with H. Pfeiffer e T. Roth). Her current research project explores Lucian’s reception in Cinquecento Italian literature.

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Talita Janine Juliani received her Ph.D. from the University of Campinas, Brazil, in 2016, after spending a research period at the University of Florence. She is currently an assistant professor of Classics at the Federal University of São Paulo. Her research interests center on the Renaissance’s reception of Classics and on Literary Career studies, as well as on poetic self-representation. She has published numerous essays on Ovid’s vestigia in Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris and is now preparing both a Portuguese translation of the Novellino (with Nápoli, T.A.) and a study on the authorial image of the elegiac Roman poet Sulpicia. Valentina Prosperi is Associate Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Sassari. She earned her PhD in Latin Literature from the University of Pisa in 2001 and received a Andrew Mellon Scholarship from Harvard University Center—Villa i Tatti in 2006. Her primary research interest is the revival and reception of classical antiquity in the Renaissance. She is the author of two monographs: Di soavi licor gli orli del vaso. La fortuna di Lucrezio dall’Umanesimo alla Controriforma (Aragno 2004) and Omero sconfitto - ricerche sul mito di Troia dall’antichità al Rinascimento (Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura 2013). Maddalena Signorini is Associate Professor of Paleography at the University of Rome—Tor Vergata (2006–). She graduated in Latin Paleography at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1985 and got her PhD in Greek and Latin Paleography from the same university in 1994. She was director of the Mellon Summer Research Institute in Italian Paleography at the Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles 2007, 2009, 2014) and director of the Mellon Summer Research Institute in Italian Paleography at the Newberry Library (Chicago, 2011). Her main research interests lie in Medieval literacy, the first documents of writing in Romance vernaculars, and more broadly, on the production, dissemination, tradition and preservation of texts in the vernacular. She has published widely on Petrarch and his writings, on his library and—in more recent years—also on Boccaccio’s.

Chapter 1

Introduction Eloisa Morra The aim of this book is to show the multiple evolutionary pathways which led to the formation of the literary canon in Renaissance Italy.1 The Renaissance — to be intended as a “long fifteenth century,” spanning from 1350 to 1580 — proved to be a crucial moment for the relationship between tradition and translation, imitation and variation. Authors such as Petrarch and Boccaccio approached the classics as auctoritates which needed to be reread and studied with a more accurate eye, which began the focus of the Humanists on philology and the tradition of texts. At the same time, this rediscovery had to deal with the concurrent formation of a literary tradition in the vernacular, and the need to give this new tradition the same authority and nobility as the classics. Little work has been done to show how the Latinate and the vernacular tendencies were different, but still linked in many ways, and how authors writing in the two languages perceived their work as unified.2 The very same notion of a bilingual literature opens the door to many questions: where, and how was the Italian literary canon formed? Through which channels of mediation did the Humanists and fourteenth century intellectuals shape the formation of a new canon, which included both classical as well as vernacular authors? How did authors writing in the vernacular relate to classical auctoritates? Which self-representational strategies did they borrow from them, and how did their relationship with auctoritates change over time? These are just some of the issues that classicists and Renaissance literary scholars address in this book. In this book, the formation of a literary canon in Renaissance Italy is examined from angles which could help us to rethink this very notion. First of all, this collection of essays addresses the idea of ‘canon’ itself, analyzing when and in what forms it emerged. Focusing on the notion of tradition, contributors identify the criteria which lead certain works and authors to be included within the canon, and how Renaissance authors perceived its construction in different ways. Later essays confront the notion of translation, determining the ways in which the emergence of an ancient literary canon interacts with 1 On the notion of canon in the Renaissance see: Quondam 1999; Dionisotti 2002; Mazzacurati 1985; Caruso 2009; Bolzoni 2012. 2 With the exception of Mc Laughlin 1995; Hankins 2001.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004398030_002

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the urge to bestow a similar ‘authority’ on some later and contemporaneous authors. However, the reader will see that the discussion immediately problematizes this conventional divide. Thomas Greene and Terence Cave3 show how even if the debates of the Humanists and Cinquecento literati led to a clearly delineated list of models — Vergil and Cicero for the classics, Petrarch and Boccaccio for the vernacular — authors would always have to face the inevitable sense of distance between themselves and their models, which they perceived as very far from their contemporary intellectual world. Reading Petrarch’s Posteritati could give us a sense of this double feeling of separation and exile from what is perceived to be a Golden Age: Incubui unice, inter multa, ad notitiam vetustatis, quoniam michi semper aetas ista displicuit; ut, nisi me amor carorum in diversum traheret, qua­ libet etate natus esse semper optaverim, et hanc oblivisci, nisus animo me aliis semper inserere.4 From Petrarch onward, the formation of the canon had been based on a sense of nostalgia. To him and other authors of the Renaissance, the classics constituted a truer reality than actual life, an alternative to a contemporary world in which they did not fit. For this reason, the classics could not just be mechanically imitated or emulated, but instead needed to be translated into a new c­ultural context. The writer would have to make an effort to relate to the classical auctoritas in a respectful, but still original way, carrying out what Greene defined as an “implicit necromantic metaphor: a resuscitation.”5 Tracing the complexity of this interaction which was based on the relationship between imitation and variation required scholars to adopt different methods in the various essays collected here. Textual criticism, cultural and classical reception, intertextuality, historical analysis, literary theory, and text and image studies are some of the methodologies which have proved necessary to address the topic. This book is organized chronologically; it begins with the rise of interest in ancient texts that developed during the time of the

3 Cave 1979; Greene 1982. 4 Petrarch 1955, Posteritati, p. 6: “Tra le tante attività, mi dedicai singolarmente a conoscere il mondo antico, giacché questa età presente a me è sempre dispiaciuta, tanto che se l’affetto per i miei cari non mi indirizzasse diversamente, sempre avrei preferito d’esser nato in qualunque altra età; e questa mi sono sforzato di dimenticarla, sempre inserendomi spiritualmente in altre.” See also F. Rico 2003. 5 Greene 1982: p. 32.

Introduction

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“protohumanists,”6 Boccaccio and Petrarch, and it concludes with Pietro Aretino’s rediscovery of Lucian in the mid-Cinquecento. As far as can be determined, Boccaccio and Aretino, author of the Dialogo (traditionally considered as the father of anticlassicism) shared a similar veneration for the classics, and a sense of responsibility towards their legacy. As shown in Maddalena Signorini and Irene Fantappiè’s essays, Italian literati from the mid-fourteenth century to 1580 considered the classics not just as authorities on which to build, but also as milestones in terms of self-fashioning. Both Boccaccio and Aretino were pretty conscious of the power of having ancient models — respectively, Ovid and Lucian — at their disposal, and aimed at translating those authorial personae into their intellectual worlds. What has changed over the centuries is the relationship between imitation and variation, as well as the different methods of memorization and reading of the auctoritates. Reading these essays chronologically offers the possibility to visualize the evolution of the relationship between authors and auctoritates, clearly showing the transition from a Humanistic model based on the scrupulous memorization of the sources to a more creative model of readership, aimed not just at emulating the classics but at reproducing their inner mechanisms without diminishing the authorial identity of the modern Renaissance writer.7 A second, crucial aspect which emerges from the collection of these essays is that this evolution did not take place merely through debates between single authors. From the rise of Humanism to the Cinquecento, a variety of ­personages8 — literati, philologers, publishers, artists — shaped in multiple ways the very same notion and forms of the canon. Canon-making and readership models in the Renaissance were often the result of a collaborative act, one that was continuously evolving according to the different combinations of authors, texts, and literary geographies. Far from positioning themselves at the margins of social life, intellectuals were an active part of a cultural web: they traveled widely, exchanged letters and books, copied the works of others, and — as in the case of the collaboration between Aldo Manutio and Pietro Bembo presented in Carlo Caruso’s essay — often united their diverse competences so as to better fulfill a cultural project.9 The space of formation of the literary canon in Renaissance Italy is then to be intended as a dynamic web which also needs to be studied in its material 6 Witt 2000. 7 Bolzoni 2012. 8 Cfr. Baxandall 1988. 9 See Celenza 2017.

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aspects, those being the publishing houses and libraries (both private and public) in which the different models of imitation and variation took place. For instance, Signorini’s essay shows how the organization of Trecento libraries somehow reflects, in itself, the new interests and scholarly procedures from which the making of a modern canon arose. In the mid-fifteenth century this canon originated from the painstaking searches and surveys of old European libraries carried out by northern Italian intellectuals looking for manuscripts containing Latin authors who were not well-known at the time. The philological work required to restore texts and languages to their pristine state resulted in a profound renovation of the old canon of the Classics. Petrarch and Boccaccio’s libraries, as well as those of Coluccio Salutati and Sozomeno da Pistoia, fully illustrate this metamorphosis: at first the collections are rather varied and co­ m­prise quite a few authors, but subsequently the canon of Classics narrowed down progressively to an exclusive selection of writers. A parallel effort in the same direction is made by Jaspreet Boparai, who analyses Politian’s library and his competences as a Hellenist, underlining how much his Greek canon differs from the Latin one. Studying these authors’ libraries can tell us a lot about their work habits, along with the strengths of and gaps in their education. Most of all, analyzing their corpus of books — including the notes and commentaries in both other authors’ and their own works — can give us a hint as to their identities as readers, as well as unveiling their modus operandi. Following this thread, the essays in the first part of the book study this process of selection by readers and the fortune (and misfortune) of certain classical authors. This means dealing with the two interconnected issues of mediation and self-reflection, which should be considered in parallel with the notions of imitation and variation. Both are forms of translation, and are highly important indicators of the trends in the formation of the literary canon during the long Cinquecento. Authors’ self-reflections and projections indicate the common perceptions of a specific author, unveiling that writer’s rhetorical strategies over time. At the same time, any ‘impartial’ mediation is, of course, a clue which reveals the reader-mediator’s own predilections and idiosyncrasies. These two factors are intertwined, the traditional borders between mediation and self-reflection being blurred from the Middle Ages on. The inner duplicity of canon-making is apparent in the case of the protohumanists: Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Salutati’s libraries reflect their new scholarly interest in the classics, with this interest being a mirror of their inner predilections, and of their own personal ‘classical canons.’ At the same time, Petrarch and Boccaccio — and later other intellectuals — presented themselves as founding authors of a ‘modern’ canon, to be perceived as such by their peers. A rather significant stage of this self-presentation process is represented by

Introduction

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the recently discovered portrait of Homer, which is believed to be Boccaccio’s autograph, drawn on the last folio of the first of his three Dante anthologies (Toledo, Zelada104.6) written between 1348 and 1355. It bears the inscription, in Boccaccio’s hand, Homero poeta sovrano, as in Inf. iv, 88. However Maddalena Signorini shows how the features drawn as Homer belong unequivocally to Boccaccio, thus including him as “settimo tra cotanto senno” among the selected group of five ancient poets (plus Dante) who are conversing in Limbo. The portrait is strikingly similar to the likeness of Boccaccio later adopted by Raphael in the Parnassus of the Vatican Segnatura, and testifies to the paths which led to the identification of the iconography of Boccaccio, to serve as a representation of this newly established literary canon. While Signorini focuses on a case in which authority was built through a clear parallelism with a recognized auctor, Talita Juliani’s essay deals with an opposite self-representative strategy adopted by the author of the Decameron. Within an analysis of Ovid’s Tristia in Boccaccio’s proem and conclusio of De mulieribus claris, she discusses some aspects of Ovidian exilic poetry that develop specific authorial images. Among such self-representations, Juliani highlights those passages in which the author invalidates his own work, and belittles himself (this belittlement being in itself an element of “sphragis,” or authorial representation). This “self-deprecation” seems to provide the means for “self-definition” as well as “self-canonization,” and it also generates a certain nuance of irony. Boccaccio’s operation is crucial for two reasons: first, he adopts Ovid’s scheme of recusatio without acknowledging his source; secondly, he is the first of our authors who shows a “critic consciousness” that observes the text “from outside,”10 contributing in a substantial way to the construction of an authorial image. While in Boccaccio and Petrarch’s era the notions of imitation and the construction of their authorial personae were not considered as contradictory, by the end of the fifteenth century things had radically changed. The rise of Ciceronianism significantly affected the fortune of some classical authors, as well as being a catalyst for the formation of different positions towards classical imitatio. Valentina Prosperi’s essay demonstrates how the progressive standardization and lack of flexibility of the Humanist canon led to the exclusion of Homer from the literary panorama. Not only that, as an historian, Homer was forced to compete (and lose) with other ancient texts that recorded the Trojan War and were seen as more trustworthy. Most of all, his style suffered from competition against those of Virgil and Cicero; Renaissance tastes could not easily adjust to the archaisms of Homeric poetry. On the other hand, Jaspreet 10

Conte 2014.

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Boparai sheds light on a moment in time when some authors began to question the traditional Humanistic take on imitatio. It is no accident that the first to elaborate an original alternative is Politian, one of the few writers in Italy who had the benefit of a trilingual education. What stands out most in Boparai’s analysis is the freedom with which Politian tried to overcome his gaps as a Hellenist, while attempting to reconstruct Greek tragedy in his dramatic poem in the vernacular, the Orfeo (1480). He had to cobble together elements from Seneca and Theocritus to fudge the form’s structure, style and conventions. Manuscripts of Pindar and the tragedians were certainly available for him to read in Florence, where he had the run of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s famous library: why did he not read them, then? Boparai shows how not only did Politian have a radically different notion of what ‘classical Greek’ was and meant, but he was also aiming at fully expressing his own authorial self. Ten years after composing Orfeo, this position was made explicit during Politian’s debate on Ciceronianism with the writer Paolo Cortesi. While in his letters Cortesi invoked Cicero as the only possible model of imitation, and could not even consider the possibility of an author attempting to create his own original style (“Eloquentiae una est ars, una forma, una imago. Qui vero ab ea declinant, saepe distorti, saepe claudi reperiuntur”11), Politian took the opposite stance. He harshly criticized the lack of originality of Ciceronian imitators, considering them as monkeys whose passive imitation of the classics obliterated every sign of originality (“Nam qui tantum ridicula ista quae vocatis liniamenta contemplantur attoniti, nec illa ipsa, mihi crede satis repraesentant, et impetum quodammodo retardant ingenii sui, currentique velut obstant et, ut utar plautino verbo, remoram faciunt”12). He later summarized his view on imitatio in a famous letter from 1490: Carent enim quae scribunt isti viribus et vita; carent actu, carent affectu, carent indole, iacent, dormiunt, stertunt. Nihil ibi verum, nihil solidum, nihil efficax. Non exprimis, inquit aliquis, Ciceronem. Quid tum? non enim sum Cicero; me tament, ut opinor, exprimo.13 This is one of the first and most famous statements on the legitimacy of individual style in the Western world.14 Politian’s work starts a new — and more 11 12 13

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Garin 1952, pp. 908–909. Idem, pp. 910. Politian’s remarks echo Pico’s ones on the same subject. Idem, pp. 902–903: “Quanti scrivono in tal modo mancano di forza, di vita; mancano di energia, di affetto, di indole; sono sdraiati, dormono, russano. Non dicono niente di vero, niente di solido, niente di efficace. Tu non ti esprimi come Cicerone, dice qualcuno. Ebbene? Io non sono Cicerone; io esprimo me stesso.” On style and inclusivity see Ginzburg 1998.

Introduction

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adventurous — model of imitation and variation, which is the object of the second part of the volume of essays collected here. One can trace the origins of a more creative model of readership and authorship in a rich galaxy of operations “around the text” which took place concurrently with the beginnings of the printing press revolution. The creation of anthologies, the addition of commentaries, indexes, or an iconographic apparatus to classical and vernacular texts — all these operations imply a new interaction between origin and originality,15 which puts the emphasis on variation and on the author-reader’s ability to reconstruct the different rhetorical and textual strata of a text. In all these examples, the knowledge and memorization of classical texts (along with the readers’ skill in tracing all its references, and possibly being able to rewrite it) is a powerful tool to reinforce the cultural enterprise of the time and to orient some authors’ reception in a specific direction. Giacomo Comiati and Carlo Caruso’s essays offer complementary casestudies on this topic. Comiati’s analysis of Horace’s fortune in the Renaissance through the lens of his Humanistic biographies is an interesting case of what translation theorists would define as “domestication.”16 Comiati demonstrates how those humanists who admired Horace’s works made many efforts to soften, justify, or deny the Latin poet’s relationship with Epicurus so as to include his work as part of the literary canon, to be taught in schools and universities. Among their strategies, the operation of cutting down or deforming several episodes mentioned in classical sources so as to present Horace’s biography in the most moral light is worth noting. In this light, the most significant of Horace’s biographies is undoubtedly Pietro Crinito’s, initially conceived to be included in his Libri de Poetis latinos, a literary history of Latin poetry. It is no accident that Crinito’s biography of Horace appeared in the Giunti edition of Horace’s poems in 1503, and was later reprinted by the Aldine printing press in 1519; publishers immediately understood that format and paratexts were powerful tools for influencing the reader’s perception on a subject, and not just an ornamental premise to the author’s work. Among them, Aldo Manutio was the most attentive to what others perceived as mere formalities. His most notable invention is certainly the modern system of punctuation, created in Venice in February 1496 together with Pietro Bembo, and subsequently developed into a most successful notation system, notably found in the Aldine octavo volumes published from 1501 on. Caruso casts some light on the circumstances surrounding the notation system’s appearance, while investigating its ties with the practice of early modern textual scholarship and literary criticism. In particular, he links certain aspects of the new system to the influence exercised by 15 16

Quint 1983. Venuti 1998.

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Classical scholarship in Venice at the turn of the century, and the perception of the Greek language as a potential model for the Italian vernacular. Initially not well-received, mostly because it implied a notable participation on the part of the reader, Manutio and Bembo’s revolutionary system was one of the first steps towards a modern edition of texts. Another revolution that was not accepted in the very beginning of this transformation of language notation was Manutio’s daring comparison between classical and vernacular authors, which would play a crucial role in the ‘Renaissance of the moderns’ canon.17 Nadia Cannata, Irene Fantappiè and Federica Caneparo’s essays focus on the later stages of operations “around the text,” displaying the evolution of the canon around 1520–1580. This period is, first of all, a moment in which the emphasis had definitely shifted from timeless auctoritates to historical auctores. The proliferation of books in the age of print not only allowed readers access to a wider selection of texts and editions, but also to a more adventurous comparison between the old canon and the new one. In addition, the proliferation of texts led to the necessity of rethinking the modes of reading and memorization, which should respond to much more immediate needs than in the past. Lina Bolzoni has brilliantly shown how this shift produced radical changes within the treatises on memory, which (one can think of the Ramist tradition, but also of Giulio Camillo’s works) would gradually include significant visual components, often illustrated by the best artists of the time.18 It is not surprising, then, to note how the evolution of studies on the art of memory and reading of a text influenced Cinquecento literature, in which — because texts were no longer seen as unmodifiable entities, but rather as an ars combinatoria at the disposal of the reader and author — visuality would have a much greater role to play, both in terms of the hybridization of forms and in canon-building. The interdisciplinary experiments undertaken in the Rome of the 1530s play a crucial part in this scenario: the Belvedere Courtyard combined ancient and modern in a new, yet powerful way, displaying “a projection of how things should have been — even if it had never happened that way.”19 The work which best epitomizes this cultural turn is undoubtedly Raphael’s Parnassus in the Vatican Segnatura. Unlike other galleries of viri illustri, which included only men of antiquity,20 there, ancient philosophers and modern poets and painters sit together. Even with their differences, they shared the same level of

17 18 19 20

Mazzacurati 1985. Bolzoni 2005, 2012, 2014. Cannata 2017. Donato 1985.

Introduction

9

authority, embodying the birth of a modern canon. Raphael’s operation was also innovative because it depicted the new “modern giants” dal vero. Michelangelo, Leonardo, himself, and the three Crowns are dressed in the modern style and are depicted showing their actual facial traits.21 Thus, iconography becomes more and more a means of legitimization in canon-building, being able to add an immediate temporal dimension to the writings. Nadia Cannata’s essay adds a further dimension to this cultural milieu by analyzing a monumental anthology of epigrams compiled in Rome in the same period. It is no surprise, in fact, that Angelo Colocci’s epigrammatari stems from the same root as Raphael’s Segnatura, Vasari’s Lives and Giovio’s Museum of Illustrious Men.22 Colocci used Planudes’s Greek anthology as a conceptual framework, aiming at constituting a ‘definitive’ timeless model: a Greek format including both ancient and modern epigrams, the tersest and wittiest poetic genre. The canon works both for the genre and, more importantly, for the use of the past in contemporary literature. Much like cabinets, galleries and museums, Colocci aspired to embrace the macrocosm of Latin culture as the only truly universal culture: each individual poem may be likened to a portrait in a hall of fame, designed to reunite in defiance of time a universal canon from the classical imitators of Greek epigrams to modern interpreters. The most complex and embodied representation of the new canon is Colocci’s section Pictura vel images, in which both ancient and modern ekphrasis were combined, putting Latin and vernacular authors in a dialogue which is finally carried out at the same level. Actual images would then be an integral part of a new way of recombining antiquity and modernity: as Cannata puts it, “their evidence functioned also to support the existence of an ideal canon: not just to bring it to life, thanks to the vividness of the image, but to make it real and confirm the existence in history of the paradigm the museums sets in front of the beholder’s eye.”23 Federica Caneparo’s essay on the figurative fortune of the Three Crowns and the Ferrarese Crowns analyses the different formats and locations in which pictorial representations of canonical texts were present as a thermometer to show the evolution of literary tastes between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Caneparo also focusses on a moment in which a ‘new’ canon in the vernacular had already emerged, in parallel with the new Classical canon, and 21 22 23

We know for sure that he depicted them thanks to comparisons with other portraits, including Boccaccio’s self-portrait analyzed in the beginning of this volume, and also because Vasari included the very same “ritratti dal vero” in his Vite. Cannata 2017 p. 77. Cannata 2018.

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on how their multiple visual translations (into paintings and frescos, as well as sculptures, cassoni, and maiolica) influenced the process of canonization. Most patrons aimed at collecting visual translations of famous episodes of the Commedia, the Decameron or the Orlando Furioso for their private palaces and houses. Far from giving a comprehensive and objective interpretation of these texts, they selected specific episodes according to their needs, often to fulfill their dynastic aspirations; in any case, these misinterpretations or “private canonizations” are significant in showing how the “new classics” in the vernacular gradually came alongside the classical tales in the houses of the patrons, as well as in the mental landscape of readers.24 Most of all, Caneparo’s analysis concretely demonstrates how often artists anticipated literati and intellectuals’ conclusions on canon-building, including within their pictorial canon works which, at the time, were still not considered to be at the same level as the classics. A fitting example is the Orlando Furioso, in many ways a turning point in terms of the pictorial (and, in general, visual) translations of the new classics. Highly debated amongst intellectuals, the poem found the immediate favor of readers and artists, who promptly started interpreting Ariosto’s stories “by mirroring the plurality of tones and themes in the poem, which managed to establish itself among critics and readers as a cultural phenomenon.”25 It is evident that such a complex set of operations (commentaries, indexes, florilegia, anthologies, visual translations) as the one analyzed in the second part of our volume were meant not only to be read and seen, but also to be remembered and imitated. They offered the tools for memorization of the text, and as well as its rewriting. This shift generated a new notion of author, which does not conform with either that of the individual subject or with a mere intra-textual construction. Irene Fantappiè’s essay deals specifically with the ultimate consequences of this radical change, showing how in the late Renaissance authorship was conceived as a product of self-fashioning strategies, as a poetic ‘self-authorization’ geared towards the creation of cultural and social dynamics. Pietro Aretino is one of the best examples of a man of letters who strategically fashions his authorship in terms of poetic, cultural and social ‘self-authorization,’ adopting a provocative anti-classical stance fostered by his well-known lack of familiarity with Latin and Greek. However, Fantappiè demonstrates how, through a profound knowledge of Lucian’s texts and poetic modes, Aretino brings to its apex the movement begun by the proto-humanists. Aretino does not limit himself to quoting specific Lucian tropes (particularly his provocative rewritings 24 25

Bolzoni 2014. Caneparo 2018.

Introduction

11

of the Iliad and the Odyssey); he tries to translate Lucian’s voice, his authorial persona, into his space of action, paradoxically transforming Lucian into a classical model of anti-classicism. In his hands, tradition is not a paradigm, but rather a repertoire of texts capable of infinite modifications. Yet Aretino depicted himself as the only true heir to Lucian, claiming that poligrafi like Niccolò Franco translated only the most superficial and satirical parts of Lucian’s oeuvre into the vernacular. Aretino’s anticlassicism, then, appears as a more complex way of refiguring the notions of imitation-emulation and variation. Even in the Mannerist, artificial mid-Cinquecento, authors could not escape the idea of dialoguing with ancient texts, as a modern Orpheus in the Ade: “A morti scrivono coloro; le scritture de quali non sono da persona letta giamai; o se pure alcuno legge; sono que tali uomini di volgo, che non hanno giudicio, et così le malvagie cose leggono; come le buone: per che essi morti si possono alle scritture dirittamente chiamare.”26 Bibliography Baxandall, M. (1988) Painting and experience in fifteenth century Italy, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Bembo, P. (2001) Prose della volgar lingua. L’editio princeps del 1525 riscontrata con l’autografo Vaticano latino 3210, ed. by Claudio Vela, Bologna, CLUEB. Bolzoni, L. (1995) La stanza della memoria. Modelli letterari e iconografici nell’età della stampa, Torino, Einaudi. Bolzoni, L. (2012) Il lettore creativo. Percorsi cinquecenteschi fra memoria, gioco, scrittura, Napoli, Guida. Bolzoni, L. (2014) L’Orlando Furioso nello specchio delle immagini, direzione scientifica di Bolzoni L., Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Treccani. Cannata, N. (2017) Giorgio Vasari, Paolo Giovio, Portrait Collection and the Rethorics of Images, in Giorgio Vasari and the birth of the museum, ed. Maia Wellington Gathan, Routledge, London/New York. Caruso, C. and Laird, A. (2009) Italy and the classical tradition. Language, Thought and Poetry 1300-1600, London, Bloomsbury. Cave, T. (1979) The Cornucopian Text. Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance, Oxford, Clarendon. Celenza, C. (2017) The intellectual world of the Italian Renaissance. Language, philosophy, and the search for meaning, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

26

P. Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua, 1, XIX 13 p. 48. On Orpheus’ myth see Segal 1989.

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Conte, G. (2014) Dell’imitazione. Furto e originalità, Pisa, Edizioni della Normale. Dionisotti, C. (2002) Scritti sul Bembo, a cura di Vela C., Torino, Einaudi. Donato, M.M. (1985) Gli eroi romani tra storia ed exemplum. I primi cicli umanistici di Uomini Famosi, in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, Ed. S. Settis, Torino, Einaudi. Garin, E. (1952) Prosatori latini del Quattrocento, Milano-Napoli, Ricciardi. Ginzburg, C. (1998) Stile. Inclusione ed esclusione, in Ginzburg C., Occhiacci di legno. Nove riflessioni sulla distanza, Milano, Feltrinelli: 136–170. Grafton, A. (1997) Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press. Greene, T.M. (1982) The Light in Troy. Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry, New Haven- London, Yale University Press. Hankins, J. (2001) The Lost Continent: Neo-Latin Literature and the Birth of European Vernacular Literatures, Cambridge, The Harvard Library Bulletin. Mazzacurati, G. (1985) Il Rinascimento dei moderni. La crisi culturale del XVI secolo e la negazione delle origini, Bologna, il Mulino. Mc Laughlin, M. (1995) Literary Imitation in the Renaissance. The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo, Oxford/New York, Clarendon Press. Petrarch, F. (1955) Posteritati, ed. P.G. Ricci, in Prose, ed. G. Martellotti, P.G. Ricci, E. Carrara. E. Bianchi, Milan-Naples, Ricciardi 1955. Quint, D. (1983) Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature, New Haven-London, Yale University Press. Quondam, A. (1999) Rinascimento e classicismo. Materiali per l’analisi del sistema culturale di Antico regime, Roma, Bulzoni. Rico, F. (2003) Il nucleo della “Posteritati” (e le autobiografie di Petrarca), in Motivi e forme delle “Familiari”, ed. Claudia Berra, Milan, Cisalpino, 1–19. Segal, C. (1989) Orpheus. The Myth of the Poet, Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University. Venuti, L. (1998) “Strategies of Translation.” In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. Ed. Mona Baker. London/New York, Routledge. 240–244.

Chapter 2

Boccaccio as Homer: A Recently Discovered Self-portrait and the ‘modern’ Canon Maddalena Signorini The ways through which Italian Humanists at the dawn of the Renaissance were able to develop a canon which spread throughout Europe, are the indica­ tors of a complex cultural process, which still bears some relevance to us today, as our gathering here in Cambridge (Mass.) somehow demonstrates. Although the phenomenon can be investigated from different angles, usu­ ally we look at this question from the point of view of literature, mostly by trying to identify the classical sources resounding in Renaissance texts, and the use made of them, as models or as hidden themes within the new texts. Naturally the conditio sine qua non for an author to enter any canon (in our case the canon of classical authors), is him being known and read, and there­ fore by extension, the availability of his texts in a given milieu. To this end the study of the material composition of the private libraries belonging to leading humanists is of the greatest interest for us. In other words, the analyse of the libraries of a few key protagonists of the Humanist movement is one possible way to reveal the genesis of the canon. B.L. Ullman, R. Sabbadini, G. Billano­ vich, and A. de la Mare have already taught us as much. Giovanni Boccaccio – like other founding authors of the Italian pre-­ Humanism – as well as creating the basis of the formation of that canon, in­ troduced himself as a relevant constituent of it and as a founding author of a ‘modern’ canon and he was also perceived as such by his peers. In particular I would like to investigate how Giovanni Boccaccio acknowledgeds himself as part of a canon of modern authors stretching back all the way to antiquity and establishing his continuity with the ancient as if in a kaleidoscopic reflection. In April 2012 Marco Cursi and Sandro Bertelli made an important and thrill­ ing discovery: a profile of quite remarkable dimensions, though now nearly invisible, on the last page of the oldest of the three copies in which Boccaccio acted as editor of the Comedia.1 1 Toledo, Archivo y Biblioteca Capitulares, Zelada 104.6, f. 267v: Sandro Bertelli, and Marco Cursi, “Novità sull’autografo Toledano di Giovanni Boccaccio. Una data e un disegno scono­ sciuti”, Critica del testo 15/1 (2012): 287–295; Marco Cursi, La scrittura e i libri di Giovanni

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004398030_003

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The drawing is accompanied by two captions both in Boccaccio’s hand as is the portrait itself.2 The top one, in the vernacular, identifies the subject: homero poeta sovrano; the other, in Greek characters but in Latin, functions as a signature: HOαννEC ΔE XEPϑαΛΔΩ Π[Hνξ]HT (Ioannes de Certaldo p[inx]it)3 (pl. 1). The manuscript was recently dated between 1348 and 13554 but the por­ trait was added later, probably after the end of the 1350s.5 This implies that its realization happens to be very close to the period when Boccaccio and the Greek monk Leonzio Pilato were working together on the Latin version of the Odyssey – 1360–1362 – a date which is further confirmed by the recent discover of Leonzio’s autograph manuscript.6 On the basis of the first caption, the profile so far has been identified with Homer’s portrait, even though it doesn’t match at all with the usual iconogra­ phy of the poet. We do not know which models they had in Florence in the mid Trecento but we do know, however, how Boccaccio imagined Homer from his own words: B ­ occaccio (Roma: Viella, 2013), 105–106, pl. ixa; Sandro Bertelli, and Marco Cursi, “Homero poeta sovrano”. Dentro l’officina di Giovanni Boccaccio. Studi sugli autografi in volgare e su Boccaccio dantista, eds. Sandro Bertelli, and Davide Cappi (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2014), 131–136, pls. 29–30, 32; Sandro Bertelli, and Marco Cursi, “Ancora sul ritratto di Omero nel ms. Toledano,” Rivista di studi danteschi xiv/1 (2014): 170–180, pls. 1–2; Sandro Bertelli, “L’immagine di Omero nel Dante toledano”. Boccaccio letterato. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Firenze – Certaldo, 10–12 ott. 2013), eds. Michaelangiola Marchiaro, and Stefano Zamponi (Firenze: Accademia della Crusca, 2015), 266–268. 2 A different opinion is held by Francesca Pasut, “Boccaccio disegnatore”. Boccaccio autore e copista, 59 and, more recently, in “Una recente scoperta e il rebus di Boccaccio disegnatore”. Boccaccio letterato, 177–188 who does not think the portrait is autograph. An elaborated in­ terpretation of the drawing – that shares some points of contact with my conclusions – is independently presented by Fabio Vendruscolo, “Nuove ipotesi sul ritratto riscoperto nel Toledano autografo di Boccaccio”, Archivum mentis 4 (2015): 153–161. He claims that the upper caption is not in the hand of Boccaccio and that the portrait – originally drawn by Boccac­ cio, and representing generically a poet – was transformed into a portrait of Boccaccio by an artist belonging to the milieu of the dantist Luca Martini in the Cinquecento. The conclusion seems rather untenable on several grounds, but mostly in the light of the extended analysis provided by Bertelli, and Cursi, “Homero poeta sovrano”, 136, and demonstrating both draw­ ing and caption to be realizated by Boccaccio’s hand. 3 Deciphered by Stefano Martinelli Tempesta, and Marco Petoletti, “Il ritratto di Omero e la firma greca di Boccaccio”, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 54 (2013): 399–409; the last word could be either be read as ϕ[Ηνξ]Ητ (finxit). 4 Cursi, La scrittura e i libri, 31; a different date can be found in Bertelli, “L’immagine di Omero”, 266: «fine del sesto o inizi del settimo decennio». 5 Bertelli, and Cursi, “Homero poeta sovrano”, 136. 6 Marco Cursi, “Boccaccio lettore di Omero: le postille autografe all’Odissea”, Studi sul Boccaccio 43 (2015): 5–27.

Boccaccio as Homer

15

Fu Omero nel mangiare e nel bere moderatissimo, e non solamente fu di brieve e poco sonno, ma quello prese con gran disagio, per ciò che, o povertà o astinenza che ne fosse cagione, il suo dormire era in su un pezo di rete di funi alquanto sospeso da terra, senza alcuni altri panni. Fu, oltre a ciò, poverissimo tanto che, essendo cieco, non aveva di che potesse dare le spese ad un fanciullo che il guidasse per la via, quando in parte alcuna andar volesse: e la sua povertà era volontaria, per ciò che delle temporali sustanze niente si curava. Fu di piccola statura, con poca barba e con pochi capelli; di mansueto animo e d’onesta vita e di poche parole (Esp. iv xi 88).7 Bertelli had already noticed the discrepancies between the text and the draw­ ing and had attributed it to their different chronology, since the Esposizioni are datable to much later than the Toledo Comedy.8 However, as we all know, modern Homer iconography repeats some char­ acteristics deriving basically from three archaic models9 which show Homer as an old man, since he is the archetypical epic singer, with a long beard and long hair divided in the middle, often held by a band on the forehead, attri­ butes of the hero; he is usually blind, even though we cannot trace a unique iconographical model as Pliny had already noticed: Non est praetereundum et novicium inventum, siquidem non ex auro argentove, at certe ex aere in bibliothecis dicantur illis, quorum inmortales animae in locis iisdem locuntur, quin immo etiam quae non sunt finguntur, pariuntque desideria non traditos vultus, sicut in Homero evenit (Nh, xxxv, 9). Also, it should be remembered that «when artists in the mid-Quattrocento illustrated the Greek myths, they looked to classical literature as a source, but did not seem to relate the themes they saw on the sarcophagi to those which they knew from Homer and Ovid».10 7 8 9 10

Giovanni Boccaccio, Tutte le opere, 6. Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante, ed. Giorgio Padoan (Milano: Mondadori, 1994), 195. Bertelli, and Cursi, “Homero poeta sovrano”, 134 and pl. 33a-d. Guido A. Mansuelli, “Omero”. Enciclopedia dell’arte antica, classica e orientale (Roma: Treccani, 1963), v, 686,689; Luciano Laurenzi, Ritratti greci (Firenze: Sansoni, 1990), 87–88 nr. 6–7, pl. ii, 95–96 nr. 23, pl.vii, 136–137 nr. 113, pl. xlv. Phyllis P. Bober, and Ruth Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture. A Handbook of Sources (London: Miller, 1991), 47. Vasari recognize Homer with no hesitations when he speaks of the Parnassus in Raphael’s life: «Sonvi ritratti di natural tutti i più fa­ mosi et antichi e moderni poeti […] e per cominciare da un capo, quivi è […] Omero che, cieco con la testa elevata cantando versi, ha a’ piedi uno che gli scrive» (Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, eds. Licia, and Carlo L. Ragghianti (Milano: Rizzoli, 1971), ii, 770, quoted by Victoria Kirkham, “Le tre corone e l’iconografia di Boccac­ cio”. Boccaccio letterato, 453–484: 463.

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Signorini

But in fact, if we look synoptically at the xiv and xv century illustrations representing Homer in the Comedy,11 we can easily find out that there is a fixed iconography that displays Homer as an old man, sometimes blind, always with a beard and grasping in his right hand a sword as he is the first to sing of battles, as Boccaccio certaintly knows.12 Another relevant portrait of Homer is the one preserved in a miniature drawn on the front fly-leaf of a manuscript copied presumably around 1415 by the humanist Sozomeno da Pistoia and containing the Iliad.13 In the miniature one can see – on a bright blue background – the Greek poet seated at his desk. This iconography is very ancient and dates back to the late Antiquity. Homer is, as usual, represented as an old and bearded man, his gaze lost, his left hand on the book, the right hand holding the pen. An important feature in this portrait is also the golden laurel wreath that Homer wears on the head, a feature that, as we will see in a moment, is commonly tought of as constituing a specific at­ tribute of poets dating back to antiquity. It, in fact, was conceived during the late Middle Ages.14 On these basis I think the drawing cannot possibly represent Homer, the supreme poet. So, if he isn’t Homer, who might this man be? Rather fattish as he is, double chinned, unbearded, with a piercing glaze, dressed all’antica and crowned with a laurel wreath? I believe it may be Boccaccio himself. It has been noticed that Boccaccio, unlike Dante and Petrarch, doesn’t have an image that has resulted in an archetypical model for his official 11

12 13

14

Peter Brieger, Millard Meiss, Charles S. Singleton, Illuminated Manuscripts of the Divine Comedy (Princeton: University Press, 1969), i, 121–122 and ii, pls. 67–78. For a portrait of Homer in the Duomo in Orvieto (end of the xv century) where he is displayed as old and blind, see Stanley Meltzoff, Botticelli, Signorelli and Savonarola. Theologica poetica and painting from Boccaccio to Poliziano (Firenze: Olschki, 1987), 318. And also see the nice xv century pen drawing on the margin of the Anthologia graeca (Venetiis: apud Petrum & Ioan. Mariam Nicolinos Sabienses impensa Melchioris Sessae, 1550) where Homer is represented in full figure sitting, old, bearded and holding the stick. (https://readingmar ginalia.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/divine-homer/). For further bibliographical references see Vendruscolo, “Nuove ipotesi”, 154 nota 5. Esp. iv xii 86: e però a lui, e non ad alcuno degli altri, la [la spada] discrive in mano, per ciò che il primo fu che si creda che in istilo metrico scrivesse di guerre e di battaglie e per consequente pare che, chi dopo lui scritto n’ha, l’abbia avuto da lui. Pistoia, Biblioteca Forteguerriana, A.55. On the manuscript see I. Ceccherini, Sozomeno da Pistoia (1387–1458). Scrittura e libri di un umanista (Firenze: L.S. Olschki, 2016), 347–349, nr. 82 and David Speranzi, “Appendice iv: I codici greci di Sozomeno da Pistoia”, 379–402: 391, 393, in the same volume; the Homer’s portrait can be seen at https://www.comune. pistoia.it/media/92/Omero.JPG. Nadia Cannata, and Maddalena Signorini, “«Per trionfar o Cesare o poeta»: la corona d’alloro e le insegne del poeta moderno”. Dai pochi ai molti. Studi in onore di Roberto Antonelli, eds. Paolo Canettieri, and Arianna Punzi (Roma: Viella, 2014), 439–473.

Boccaccio as Homer

17

­iconography.15 However we do have two portraits, both datable within the Trecento, where Boccaccio’s head is not too different to the one we have in the Toledo manuscript. The first (pl. 2) is particularly important for us because it is dated 1379, Au­ gust 20, only five years after Boccaccio’s death, and because it was executed at the Santo Spirito convent through the commission of his Prior fra’ Martino da Signa, heir and custodian of Boccaccio’s library.16 Here the miniature functions as a visual commentary to the copy of the Buccolicum carmen deriving directly from Boccaccio’s original autograph, today preserved in the Biblioteca Riccar­ diana which still carries the old Santo Spirito’s shelf-mark V.12.17 In the illustration that opens the book we see Boccaccio seated behind a pulpit talking to the Augustinian friars, among whom we can probably identify the prior Martino da Signa himself in the figure raising his hand. Boccaccio shows a rather bold if not fat figure – un otre / non pien di vento ma di piombo grave – quite close to the way he describes himself in his Rime,18 in the act of conversing with his Muse that tells him: Ave frater, laurum dignum te concipe sertum; to whom Boccaccio humbly answers: Fateor indignum fronde fore tempora tali / Ast ubi Caliope mandat quoque persequar ipse. The profile of the head is – likely the Toledan one – rather bulky and charac­ terized by a very evident double chin. If one considers the institution for which 15

Maria Monica Donato, “Per la fortuna monumentale di Giovanni Boccaccio fra i grandi fiorentini: notizie e problemi”, Studi sul Boccaccio 17 (1988): 287–342 and Ead., “Il primo ritratto documentato di Dante e il problema dell’iconografia trecentesca. Conferme, no­ vità e anticipazioni dopo due restauri”. Dante e la fabbrica della Commedia. Atti del Con­ vegno internazionale di studi (Ravenna, 14–16 settembre 2006), eds. Alfredo Cottignoli, Donatino Domini, Giorgio Gruppioni (Ravenna: Longo editore, 2008), 355–380; see also the studies of Victoria Kirkham, “A Preliminary List of Boccaccio Portraits from the 14th to the Mid-16th Centuries”, Studi sul Boccaccio 15 (1985–1986): 167–188; “Portratits of Boc­ caccio”, ibid. 16 (1987): 275–305; “L’immagine del Boccaccio nella memoria tardo-gotica e rinascimentale”. Boccaccio visualizzato. Narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento. i: Saggi generali con una prospettva dal barocco a oggi, ed. Vittore Branca (Torino: Einaudi, 1999), 85–144; and, in “Le tre corone”, 471–472, for example, she under­ lines a different tradition of Boccaccio’s portraits descending from the fresco in the Flo­ rentine Palazzo del Proconsolo. 16 Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, plut. 34.49, f. ivv; Boccaccio autore e copista, 213–214 nr. 43 and pl. on p. 206. 17 Antonia Mazza, “L’inventario della ‘parva libraria’ di Santo Spirito e la biblioteca del Boccaccio”, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 9 (1966): 1–71: 46: «Item in eodem banco v liber , bucolicorum carmen domini Iohannis Bocaci, conpletus, copertus viride, cuius principium est Tindare, non satius etc., finis vero in penultima carta nec spernere munus etc.». 18 Sonnet cxxii, 9–10: Giovanni Boccaccio, Tutte le opere, 5/1. Rime, ed. Vittore Branca (Mi­ lano: Mondadori, 1992), 95; the sonnet is considered not authentic in Giovanni Boccaccio, Le Rime, ed. Antonio Lanza (Roma: Aracne, 2010), 321, C.

18

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the miniature was produced and the execution date so close to Boccaccio’s death, it is reasonable to maintain that it is a true to life portrait, based on the memories of people who had known Boccaccio when he was still alive. The second miniature (pl. 3) is a fine portrait of his full figure, executed in ink and contained in the opening page of a manuscipt dated 1397.19 The min­ iature is by an artist from the Florentine school and, in all likelihood, it derives from the image of Boccaccio then visible in the aula minor of the Palazzo della Signoria, where he formed part of the cycle of the Uomini illustri now lost, in­ spired by the Liber de origine civitatis Florentine by Filippo Villani. The metrical cartidges which adorned the drawings that functioned as captions had been written by Coluccio Salutati.20 In this case too the iconography is almost contemporary and authoritative. In it Boccaccio is again featured as a rather bulky man. His profile, in particular, shows striking similarities with the Toledo portrait because of the double chin, the pointed nose and the wide rounded forehead. These first portraits so clearly characterized are followed along all the Quat­ trocento by a long series of rather stereotyped book initials, in which Boc­ caccio as author, always wearing a hood, is often quite fat, even when lacking other characteristics for his identification.21 Another aspect that should be discussed about the toledan portrait is the presence of the laurel wreath. This is a rather crucial aspect in this drawing, although it seems of no relevance for the modern public since we take it for granted: Boccaccio, together with Dante and Petrarch, constitute the so called tre corone and are, as a consequence, crowned. By the Cinquecento this feature was so well established that it could become even a subject of satire.22 However the idea of representing a poet not only crowned with a laurel wreath, but following with his crown and dress an iconography all’antica,

19 Firenze, bnc, ii.ii.38, f. 3v; Boccaccio autore e copista, 79–81 nr. 5 and pl. on p. 80; on the drawing see: Bernhard Degenhart, and Annegrit Schmitt, Corpus der italienischen Zeichnungen, 1300–1450. Teil i: Sud – und Mittelitalien, Band 1: Katalog 1–167 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1968), 195–197 nr. 101, Taf. 154b. 20 Donato, Per la fortuna, 295–296; Ead., “Gli eroi romani tra storia ed exemplum: i primi cicli umanistici di Uomini Famosi”. Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, ed. Salvatore Settis (Torino: Einaudi, 1985), ii, 95–152: 127–128. 21 See for example in Boccaccio autore e copista, 112, 151, 155 (with the laurel wreath). 22 See the gorgeous ink drawing, probably school of Leonardo, today kept in Venice, Gal­ lerie dell’Accademia and reproduced in Nicoletta Maraschio, and Marco Biffi, La lingua di Giovanni Boccaccio, ICoN (Italian Culture on the Net), 40: http://www.bsu.by/Cache/ pdf/258793.pdf. In Kirkham, “Le tre corone”, 475–484 it can be found a list of the iconog­ raphic occurrences of the tre corone theme.

Boccaccio as Homer

19

which derives from the coins featuring the Roman emperors, was rather un­ common in the mid-Trecento.23 Boccaccio made use of this iconography at least two more times: for the head of Claudianus – Par. lat. 8082 – datable in the early 1350’s and, much later, for the so-called portrait of Martialis (1370–72, Ambr. C 67 sup.).24 It is not pos­ sible now to explore this vast theme, but I must at least say that the image of the crowned poet was created during the mid Trecento, and that Boccaccio’s crowned head represents one among the most ancient documents of it after the very famous miniature painted by Simone Martini for Francesco Petrarca at the beginning of the 1340s which represents a crowned Virgil dressed all’antica.25 I should also add that at the beginning of the Cinquecento we find a very similar Boccaccio, fat, no beard, double chinned, with a big spacious forehead in Raphael’s Parnassus. It should also be noticed that among the modern po­ ets depicted there are Dante and Petrarch, both wearing a hood according to the traditional iconography much more established than Boccaccio’s, whereas Boccaccio wears only the laurel wreath, as in our drawing, thus establishing a fine iconographical thread which can also be found in some late Quattrocento woodcuts. Possibly depending on the Parnassus is the very similar Boccaccio’s image in the famous painting by Vasari featuring the canon of the Six Tuscan Poets. Here all the individual features of the poets, according to Vasari’s own testimony, are based on faithful images following a philological reconstruction of the visual representation:26 l’anno 1544 (…) sentendomi indisposto e stracco da infinite fatiche, fui forzato tornarmene a Fiorenza, dove feci alcuni quadri e fra gli altri uno, in cui era Dante, Petrarca, Guido Cavalcanti, il Boccaccio, Cino da Pistoia 23 24

Cannata, and Signorini, “«Per trionfar o Cesare o poeta»”, see especially 468–470. Maurizio Fiorilla, Marginalia figurati nei codici di Petrarca (Firenze: Olschki, 2005), 44–47 and 67–73 (Claudianus); Marco Petoletti, “Il Marziale autografo di Giovanni Boccaccio”, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 46 (2005), 35–55 and, on the manuscript date, Marco Cursi, “Boccaccio: autografie vere o presunte. Novità su tradizione e trasmissione delle sue op­ era”, Studj romanzi n.s., 3 (2007), 135–163 (Martialis); more recently a description of the two manuscripts along with a reproduction of the drawings can be found in: Cursi, Marco, and Maurizio Fiorilla. “Giovanni Boccaccio”. In Autografi dei letterati italiani. Le Origini e il Trecento, i, edited by Giuseppina Brunetti, Maurizio Fiorilla, Marco Petoletti, 43–103. Roma: Salerno Editrice, 2013, 69–70, 55 nr. 11, fig. 31a and 53 nr. 21, fig. 31b; and in Boccaccio autore e copista, 370–372 nr. 74 (pl. on p. 371, Claudianus) and 336–337 nr. 58 (Martialis). 25 Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, A 79 inf.; Cannata, and Signorini, “«Per trionfar o Cesare o poeta»”, 464–470. 26 Vasari, Le vite, iii, 724.

20

Signorini

e Guittone d’Arezzo, il quale fu poi di Luca Martini, cavato dalle teste an­ tiche loro accuratamente: del quale ne sono state fatte poi molte copie. The last thing that still wants an explanation is the rationale, and significance, of Boccaccio’s self-portrait under the species of Homer. It seems to me that the question should be dealt with in parallel by looking at the caption homero poeta sovrano together with the study of the manuscript within which Boc­ caccio included that drawing. The caption, as is obvious, quotes unequivocally Inf. iv, 88, that is to say the meeting in Limbo of Dante and la bella scola, namely Homer, Ovid, Horace and Lucan, a small canon of ancient authors who represented for Dante, togeth­ er with Virgil, the highest peaks of the literary genres they practiced. Homer, Vergil and Dante form a group consistent as regards genre, style and topic. As we know, the ancient authors invite Dante into their group so that he became sesto fra cotanto senno (iv, 102). I should add that the Toledo manuscript is not merely a copy of the Comedy which Boccaccio decided to transcribe for his own use. It rather constitutes the first stage of a work of textual edition of Dante’s poem as well as a proposition of a new modern canon, as will become evident in his third copy, the Chigiano, that includes Dante, Petrarch, himself, and later, Cavalcanti too.27 In the Toledo manuscript this idea is still in progress. But if we look at the table of contents we can see that Boccaccio alternated in the copy between texts by Dante and himself rather regularly, as if it were a theatrical dialogue of two characters occupying a similar space on the stage.28 The drawing in which the poet represents himself crowned by the laurel might consequently be referring – as the caption suggests – to a Boccaccio being welcomed in that very bella scola, so graduating the poet as settimo fra cotanto senno. Such reading of it would also explain the use on Boccaccio’s part of Greek letters, which might otherwise seem a mere exercise in erudition:29 the use of the Greek alphabet – relevant for the caption of a contemporary representation of Homer – would clearly constitute more than a hint for the 27 28

29

Boccaccio autore e copista, 247–287; Dentro l’officina. G. Boccaccio, Vita di Dante (ff. 1r-27r); D. Alighieri, Vita nuova (ff. 29r-46v ); G. Boccaccio, Raccoglimento Inf. (ff. 48r-51r); D. Alighieri, Inferno (ff. 52r-116v); G. Boccaccio, Raccoglimento Purg. (ff. 117r–120r); D. Alighieri, Purgatorio (ff. 121r-187v); G. Boccaccio, Raccoglimento Par. (ff. 188r-190v); D. Alighieri, Paradiso (ff. 191r-256r); D. Alighieri, Rime (ff. 257r-266v). An exercise that might also have been suggested by the study of Greek and by the transla­ tion of the two Homeric poems Boccaccio entrusted Leonzio with. In this case the date of the drawing should be moved to the early 1360s (see above notes 4 and 26).

Boccaccio as Homer

21

personification of Boccaccio as a modern day Homer. And the dilemma con­ cerning the reading of the last word as either finxit or pinxit, might be partly solved: be it as it may, it could be seen as characteristic of Boccaccio the inter­ play of the two concepts,30 and therefore the idea of painting and representing Homer’s head through his own features. 1

Final Note

A few days after the Harvard meeting the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, 13 Dicembre 2015, suppl. La Domenica, 29–30. published two pen sketches drawn by Italo Calvino: the first features two crowned busts – Calvino himself and Vergil-, while the second represents a bust of an old, bearded Homer, wearing, rather ironically, a pair of glasses. In the same month of December I presented this paper at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome at a Round Table entitled Boccaccio ritrovato: dal ritratto di Omero alle postille sull’Odissea to which Marco Cursi, Marco Petoletti and Lucia Battaglia Ricci also took part. In 2018 Lucia Battaglia Ricci published an article (“L’Omero di Boccaccio”. In Boccaccio: gli antichi e i moderni, a cura di Anna Maria Cabrini e Alfonso D’Agostino, 7–45. Milano: LediPublishing, 2018) where she illustrates brilliantly the changing views Boccaccio held of Homer, and especially how this view changed after he worked with Leonzio Pilato between 1360 and 1362. As we have seen, it is possible that in these very years he added the portrait in the Toledo manuscript of the Comedia. In the last pages of her study (36–45) Lu­ cia Battaglia Ricci essentially agrees with my proposal to read the drawing as a self-portrait of Boccaccio, and adds new and coherent evidences when she speaks of his «autocelebrazione» (36) and of a «gioco di travestimenti che in­ veste, e travolge, le identità dei due personaggi implicati, l’antico poeta corona­ to d’alloro e il suo lettore (e “mediatore”) moderno: un altro “poeta”. Il sospetto che qui avanzo come ipotesi, è che questa effigie sia l’ennesima, raffinatissima “maschera” inventata da (…) Giovanni Boccaccio» (38–39).

30

Boccaccio would certainly have known the text of the third of the three explicative cartigli that Petrarch included in the miniature by Simone Martini that opens the Virgilio Ambrosiano (cfr. above note 25): «Mantua Virgilium qui talia carmine finxit / Sena tulit Symonem digito qui talia pinxit» (c. iiv): Marco Baglio, “Le note di Francesco Petrarca sul foglio di guardia”. Francesco Petrarca, Le postille del Virgilio Ambrosiano, eds. Marco Baglio, Antonietta Nebuloni Testa, Marco Petoletti (Padova: Antenore, 2006), 183–193: 193.

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Bibliography Baglio, M. (2006) “Le note di Francesco Petrarca sul foglio di guardia”. In Francesco Petrarca, Le postille del Virgilio Ambrosiano, edited by Marco Baglio - Antonietta Nebuloni Testa - Marco Petoletti, 183–193. Padova: Antenore. Battaglia Ricci, L. (2018) “L’Omero di Boccaccio”. In Boccaccio: gli antichi e i moderni, a cura di Anna Maria Cabrini e Alfonso D’Agostino, 7–45. Milano: LediPublishing. Bertelli, S. (2015) “L’immagine di Omero nel Dante toledano”. In Boccaccio letterato. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Firenze – Certaldo, 10–12 ott. 2013), edited by Michaelangiola Marchiaro, Stefano Zamponi, 266–268. Firenze: Accademia della Crusca. Bertelli, S. and Cursi, M. (2014) “Ancora sul ritratto di Omero nel ms. Toledano,” Rivista di studi danteschi xiv/1: 170–180. Bertelli, S. and Cursi, M. (2014) “Homero poeta sovrano”. In Dentro l’officina di Giovanni Boccaccio. Studi sugli autografi in volgare e su Boccaccio dantista, edited by San­ dro Bertelli, and Davide Cappi, 131–136. Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Bertelli, S. and Cursi, M. (2012) “Novità sull’autografo Tollerano di Giovanni Boccaccio. Una data e un disegno sconosciuti”, Critica del testo 15/1 (2012): 287–295. Bober, Phyllis P., and Rubinstein, R. (1991) Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture. A Handbook of Sources. London: Miller. Boccaccio, G. (2010) Le Rime, edited by Antonio Lanza. Roma: Aracne. Boccaccio, G. (1992) Tutte le opere, 5/1. Rime, edited by Vittore Branca. Milano: Mondadori. Boccaccio, G. (1994) Tutte le opere, 6. Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante, edited by Giorgio Padoan. Milano: Mondadori. Brieger, P, Millard M., Singleton, C.S. (1969) Illuminated Manuscripts of the Divine Comedy. Princeton: University Press. Cannata, N. and Signorini. M. (2014) “«Per trionfar o Cesare o poeta»: la corona d’alloro e le insegne del poeta moderno”. In Dai pochi ai molti. Studi in onore di Roberto Antonelli, edited by Paolo Canettieri, and Arianna Punzi, 439–473. Roma: Viella. Ceccherini, I. (2016) Sozomeno da Pistoia (1387–1458). Scrittura e libri di un umanista, Firenze: L.S. Olschki. Cursi, M. (2017) “Boccaccio: autografie vere o presunte. Novità su tradizione e trasmis­ sione delle sue opera”, Studj romanzi n.s., 3: 135–163. Cursi, M. (2015) “Boccaccio lettore di Omero: le postille autografe all’Odissea”, Studi sul Boccaccio 43: 5–27. Cursi, M. (2013) La scrittura e i libri di Giovanni Boccaccio. Roma: Viella. Cursi, M. and Fiorilla, M. (2013) “Giovanni Boccaccio”. In Autografi dei letterati italiani. Le Origini e il Trecento, I, edited by Giuseppina Brunetti, Maurizio Fiorilla, Marco Petoletti, 43–103. Roma: Salerno Editrice.

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Degenhart, Bernhard, and Annegrit Schmitt (1968) Corpus der italienischen Zeichnungen, 1300–1450. Teil I: Sud –und Mittelitalien, Band 1: Katalog 1–167. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag. Bertelli, S. and Cappi, D. (2014) eds. Dentro l’officina di Giovanni Boccaccio. Studi sugli autografi in volgare e su Boccaccio dantista, Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Donato, M. M. (1985) “Gli eroi romani tra storia ed exemplum: i primi cicli umanistici di Uomini Famosi”. In Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, edited by Salvatore Settis, II, 95–152. Torino: Einaudi. Donato, M. M. (1988) “Per la fortuna monumentale di Giovanni Boccaccio fra i grandi fiorentini: notizie e problemi”, Studi sul Boccaccio 17: 287–342. Donato, M. M. (2008) “Il primo ritratto documentato di Dante e il problema dell’iconografia trecentesca. Conferme, novità e anticipazioni dopo due restauri”. In Dante e la fabbrica della Commedia. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi (Ravenna, 14–16 settembre 2006), edited by Alfredo Cottignoli, Donatino Domini, Giorgio Gruppioni, 355–380. Ravenna: Longo editore. Fiorilla, M. (2005) Marginalia figurati nei codici di Petrarca. Firenze: Olschki. Kirkham, V. (1999) “L’immagine del Boccaccio nella memoria tardo-gotica e rinasci­ mentale”. In Boccaccio visualizzato. Narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento. I: Saggi generali con una prospettva dal barocco a oggi, edited by Vittore Branca, 85–144. Torino: Einaudi. Kirkham, V. (1987) “Portraits of Boccaccio”, Studi sul Boccaccio 16: 275–305. Kirkham, V. (1985–1986) “A Preliminary List of Boccaccio Portraits from the 14th to the Mid-16th Centuries”, Studi sul Boccaccio 15: 167–188. Kirkham, V. (2015) “Le tre corone e l’iconografia di Boccaccio”. In Boccaccio letterato. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Firenze – Certaldo, 10–12 ott. 2013), edited by Michaelangiola Marchiaro, Stefano Zamponi, 453–484. Firenze: Accademia della Crusca. Laurenzi, L. (1990) Ritratti greci. Firenze: Sansoni. Mansuelli, Guido A. (1963) “Omero”. In Enciclopedia dell’arte antica, classica e orientale, V, 686–689. Roma: Treccani. Maraschio, N., and Biffi, M. La lingua di Giovanni Boccaccio, ICoN (Italian Culture on the Net). Martinelli Tempesta, S. and Petoletti, M. (2013) “Il ritratto di Omero e la firma greca di Boccaccio”, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 54: 399–409. Mazza, A. (1966) “L’inventario della ‘parva libraria’ di Santo Spirito e la biblioteca del Boccaccio”, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 9: 1–71. Meltzoff, S. (1987) Botticelli, Signorelli and Savonarola. Theologica poetica and painting from Boccaccio to Poliziano. Firenze: Olschki. Pasut, F. (2013) “Boccaccio disegnatore”. In Boccaccio autore e copista. [Catalogo del­ la Mostra (Firenze, 11 ott. 2013 – 11 gen. 2014)], edited by Teresa De Robertis, Carla

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Maria Monti, Marco Petoletti, Giuliano Tanturli, Stefano Zamponi, 51–59. Firenze: Mandragora. Pasut, F. (2015) “Una recente scoperta e il rebus di Boccaccio disegnatore”. In Boccaccio letterato. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Firenze – Certaldo, 10–12 ott. 2013), edited by Michaelangiola Marchiaro, Stefano Zamponi, 177–188. Firenze: Ac­ cademia della Crusca. Petoletti, M. (2005) “Il Marziale autografo di Giovanni Boccaccio”, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 46, 35–55. La Repubblica, 13 Dicembre 2015, suppl. La Domenica, pp. 29–30. Speranzi, D. (2016) “Appendice iv: I codici greci di Sozomeno da Pistoia”. In I. Cec­ cherini, Sozomeno da Pistoia (1387–1458). Scrittura e libri di un umanista, Firenze: L.S. Olschki, 379–402. Vasari, G. (1971) Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, edited by Licia, and Carlo L. Ragghianti. Milano: Rizzoli. Vendruscolo, F. (2015) “Nuove ipotesi sul ritratto riscoperto nel Toledano autografo di Boccaccio”, Archivum mentis 4: 153–161. https://readingmarginalia.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/divine-homer/ http://www.bsu.by/Cache/pdf/258793.pdf

Boccaccio as Homer

Figure 2.1 TOLEDO, Archivo y Biblioteca Capitulares, Zelada 104.6, c. 267v (from: CURSI, La scrittura e i libri, pl. ixa) Credits: Archivo y Biblioteca Capitulares, Toledo.

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Signorini

Figure 2.2 FIRENZE, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, plut. 34.49, c. ivv (from: Boccaccio autore e copista, pl. on p. 206) Credits: Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence.

Figure 2.3 FIRENZE, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, ii.ii.38, c. 3v (from: Boccaccio autore e copista, pl. on p. 80) Credits: Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence.

Chapter 3

In the Center of the Kaleidoscope: Ovidian Poetic Image and Boccaccio’s Self-Representation in De Mulieribus Claris Talita Janine Juliani* 1

Changing Patterns: Authorial Images Over Time

By considering the Roman poet Ovid (43 bc–17 ad) as a set of pieces inside a kaleidoscope—his works and everything surrounding his literary production serving as different and rearranged pieces1 that, from time to time, are seen from different angles—this contribution seeks to offer a closer observation of how some Ovidian vestigia were combined and understood by one of his successors,2 Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). Specifically, this chapter seeks to analyze the relationship between Ovid’s authorial images in Tristia (9–12 ad) and certain nuances of Boccaccio’s self-representations in the dedication, proem, and conclusion of De Mulieribus Claris, a catalog of women’s biographies written by the fourteenth-century author between 1361 and 1362.3

* This contribution began while I was a Ph.D. student, and some of its aspects were later incorporated into my dissertation (Juliani 2016). I would like to thank the São Paulo Research Foundation for supporting me financially during my Ph.D. program (fapesp; No. 2012/05738-5), and also the University of Campinas (unicamp) and my adviser, Dr. Isabella Tardin Cardoso. In addition, I thank Professor Mario Alberto Labate from the University of Florence for helping me to address the questions developed in this chapter while I was studying in Italy. 1 For more on reception theory and intertextuality, see Hardie (2013). 2 If we consider Ovid’s presence in literature over time, we will certainly have an enormous quantity of material, since this author in particular has been widely referenced in literature and in all kinds of arts, and this reception has been broadly studied. See, for example, Martindale (1990), Martindale (1993), Martindale and Richard (2006), Dimmick (2002), Hexter (1986), Kilgour (2012), Orlandi (1978), Smarr (1987), Smarr (1991), Wilkinson (1965), and Volume 13 of Mediavalia, which was fully dedicated to the study of Ovid in medieval culture (Desmond 1989). 3 In a more general way, research on the relationship between Ovid’s poems and Boccaccio’s texts tend to privilege the Decameron (1348–1351) much more than any other Boccaccian work. For examples, see, Quaglio (1967), Hollander (1977), Hollander (1993), Velli (1979), Piguet (1985), Mazzotta (1986), Smarr (1987), Smarr (1991), Forni (1992), Rossi (1993), Tateo

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004398030_004

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With these images, a poet who “disqualifies” his work and “depreciates” himself (interpretations that appear in conventional authorial representations, such as the sphragis) by characterizing an oeuvre as a libellus will be the focus of the considerations herein. Firstly, my analysis of selected verses of Tristia will consider certain Callimachean and Neoteric topics, as well as the idea of continuity of literary careers in Ovid’s Tristia; then, I will assess such topics and ideas in selected passages from De Mulieribus Claris. Finally, with this discussion, I will attempt to demonstrate how Boccaccio seems to have used self-depreciating strategies taken from Ovid as a way to show–just as the Roman poet did—not real modesty, but, in fact, his knowledge of the Canon and its poetic foundations in order to insert his work and his authorial image into the poetic tradition. 2

Libellus, Canon, and Irony

It is known that Ovid’s poems in Tristia defined an exilic authorial representation4 model on which several authors of posterity (for instance, Dante, Petrarch, Milton, and Victor Hugo) based their own images.5 In fact, Möller6 emphasizes the idea of an exilic Ovidian authorial image as being an artistic construction,7 one that seems to be interwoven with different

4 5

6 7

(1998), Surdich (2001), Labate (2006), and Barchiesi and Hardie (2010). Meanwhile, the number of studies that focus on the relationship between Ovid’s texts and De Mulieribus Claris (1361–1362) are sparser. They include Kolsky (2004) and Filosa (2012). For an elaboration of De Mulieribus Claris, see Ricci (1959), Ricci (1985), and Zaccaria (1963). For more on Ovid’s banishment, see, Thibault (1964), Korten (1992), and Claassen (2008). See the chapters by Zambon (23–40), Houghton (41–58), Green (85–102), and Cox (173–188) in Ingleheart (2011). These chapters discuss the image of an exiled author in Dante, Petrarca, Milton, and Vitor Hugo texts, respectively. With regards to Ovid’s specific authorial representation, the book edited by Hardie and Moore (2010) has two chapters dedicated to analyzing the presence of the Ovidian literary career in works by other authors (Barchiesi and Hardie and Kilgour, respectively), and I would like to emphasize the chapter written by Barchiesi and Hardie because of their contribution to the study of Boccaccio’s reception of Ovid’s authorial image and the influence of this image on the construction of his literary representation during the Trecento. I thank the author of this article for allowing me read it before published via my adviser, Dr. Isabella Tardin Cardoso (University of Campinas). “It is probable that Ovid’s withdrawal mode is only presented on an inner fictional level as the ideal artistic-autobiographical way of life. In Tristia and Epistulae it is obviously important to him to visualize the possible living conditions of an exiled person. Place, time, and sensual

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aspects of the image of an exiled man. According to Harrison (2002, 90), Ovid became more mournful and miserable in Tristia (i, i, 122) if compared to the same plaintive tone seen in the love elegy genre. In his exilic poems, Ovid also presents himself as being self-conscious of a supposed decline in the quality of his poetry (see also Harrison 2002, 89–90), especially when his exilic texts are compared to the ones written when he still lived in Rome (see Tristia, i, i, 11–14; 35–40). According to Tarrant (2002), however, Ovid presents himself in the exilic poetry as an author in search of ways to canonize his works and his own image.8 In addition to these representations, Ovid “self-evaluates” and also “measures” possible critics in several passages of his Tristia. In regards to this tone of “self-deprecation” and “modesty” in Ovid’s verses, Claassen (2008, 78) recalls the Callimachean ascendance of “self-deprecation” processes on Ovidian literature. In works by Callimachus and his followers, the anticipation of critics and the consequent injury of his own work (as if not worthy of acknowledgment) may appear in form of certain specific tropes,9 such as the figure of modesty and the recusatio, which are normally presented as “‘rejection’ of epic poetry on aesthetic grounds,”10 but which are, however, often covered by a declaration of a lack of poetic ability.11

perception play a crucial role in connecting the singular parts of his work with each other…. Ovid’s poetry consistently highlights the unbridgeable gap between art and life without giving the reader a proper chance to span it” (Möller 2019, 1332). 8 Ovid compares his situation to the Homeric text of Iliad in Ex Ponto 2, 7, 34 (Tarrant 2002, 30) and himself to Virgil in Remedia (395–396) (Tarrant 2002, 24). Presenting the influence of Ovid’s art (even if against Augustean morality) as the cause of his exile would be, according to Tarrant (2002), a way of confirming his own talent. See Tristia ii. 9 “Allusions to either moral harm to others or harm done to its creator by his past poetry sometimes introduce a positive evaluation of the therapeutic value to their author of the present poems (as in Tr. 5.1). Conversely, defense and moral vindications of his past work occasionally lead to an ostensibly negative view of the poet’s present creative powers. Such denigrations of the poet’s present abilities are typical of Callimachean recusatio (refusal to attempt epic because of ostensibly meagre ability), frequently hiding a strongly positive view.” (Claassen 2008, 78). 10 See Schmitzer (2015). 11 For the recusatio on Callimachus, see the prologues of the Aetia. Other examples can be seen in Virgil’s Eclogues vi, 3–5 and Propertius iii, 3 as well as in Horace’s Odes iv, 15, 1–4. Lyne (1995, 37–38) argues that, among its literary tropes, the recusatio appears in different forms in much of Latin literature, and is frequently associated with Roman Elegy (according to Lyne’s interpretation of Horace’s Odes 2.12 and 1.6 and 1.1). It is also a part of Callimachean aesthetics to refuse long poems. See Conte (1994, 38), Vasconcellos (1991), and Werner (2012).

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With that in mind, let us remember that Gian Biaggio Conte ([1991] 2012) stated that, when poets justify their literary choices, an author’s image “shows” itself more clearly.12 Along the same vein, Depew and Obbink (2000) reinforced the idea that, in addition to the self-referentially used in metaliterary speech, this self-reflexivity as a hat tip to other texts of the literary tradition and possible relations established between them.13 In the case of Ovid, some scholars (Owen 1967, McKeown 1989, and Ingleheart 2010 among them) believe that these aspects may be associated with Ovid’s use of the word libellus to designate his own literary work. These studies also note the programmatic function of such a designation and associate it with the presence of Callimachean14—and also Neoteric15—precepts in Ovid’s works. In fact, turning to Ovid’s books of Tristia, it is noticeable that, with exception of Tristia’s Book iii (which I will reference again later), Ovid initiates each book of his elegiac exilic poems by denominating it as a libellus, or mentioning the “smallness” of his work. In the first verse of Tristia i, 1 Ovid calls his oeuvre a parve liber, or a “small book” when he writes, “Parve—nec invideo—sine me, liber, ibis in urbem” (Tristia i, 1, 1: “Little book, you will go without me—and I grudge it not—to the city”).16 As we can see, the poet tells us in this verse that the book shall go to Rome without him; he is in Tomis. Furthermore, the second book of Tristia begins with Ovid referring to his work as a set of “little books.” or libelli: “Quid mihi vobiscum est, infelix cura, libelli,/ingenio perii qui miser ipse meo?” (Tristia ii, 12 Discussing Remedia amoris, Conte (2012) says : “Al mezzo di Remedia amoris, in posizione rilevata, Ovidio sospende momentaneamente il corso degli insegnamenti curativi per lasciare spazio alla dichiarazione di poetica. È d’uso mediare queste dichiarazione nel registro della polemica letteraria: alcuni malevoli hanno biasimato Ovidio per gli audaci insegnamenti dell’Ars amatoria, e la tradizione polemistica (di ascendenza callimachea) vuole che nel giustificare le proprie scelte di tecnica letteraria il poeta accusi anche l’invidia del detrattori (v.389, livor) e vanti il proprio nome di autore, si riprometta anzi successi sempre più grandi.” See also Cardoso (2005) on metaliterature and the creation of images that have influence over the literary audience. 13 “The form and content of literature are set apart somehow from the uses of ordinary language: that is, literary discourse is ‘marked.’ This tendency implies, as Segal and Conte, among others, have pointed out, that genre entails the self-referentiality of all special speech. It is a code that not only mediates between a literary work and cultural discourses and social functions, but also, at the same time, self-reflexively signals a text’s relation to a body of other texts” (Depew and Obbink 2000). 14 The extent to which the poetry of the Hellenistic poet Callimachus has influenced Roman poets is well known (see Hunter 2006 and Hunter 2012). 15 On the debt of elegy to Callimachean poetry principles via Catullus, see Bessone (2013, 42). 16 All English translations of Tristia referenced herein are from Wheeler in Ovid (1939).

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1, 1–2: “What have I to do with you, ye books, ill-starred object of my toil, - I, ruined and wretched through my own talent?”).17 At least at its beginning, the third book of Tristia gives voice to the author, and not the other way around, in the line, “Missus in hanc venio timide liber exulis urbem” (Tristia iii, 1, 1: “Though sent to this city I come in fear, an exile’s book”). On this occasion, the book is not referred to as libellus. However, when the poet starts to speak again himself (still in the third book), he uses the same characterization of his poems: “Hoc satis in titulo est. Etenim maiora libelli/ Et diuturna magis sunt monimenta mihi” (Tristia iii, 3, 77–78: “This for the inscription; my books are a greater and more enduring memorial”).18 Unsurprisingly, the Roman poet continues to refer to his works as libelli19 in the fourth book, when he writes, “Siqua meis fuerint, ut erunt, vitiosa libellis/ Excusata suo tempore, lector, habe.” (Tristia iv, 1, 1–2: “Whatever faults you may find—and you will find them—in my books, hold them absolved, reader”), as well as in the fifth book, when he writes, “Hunc quoque de Getico, nostri studiose, libellum/ Litore praemissis quattuor adde meis.” (Tristia v, 1, 1–2: “Add this book also to the four I have already sent, my devoted friend, from the Getic shore”). In the translations by Wheeler (1939) quoted herein, libellus is the diminutive form of liber, or a book. However, libellus may also be used to refer to a

17 18

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Interestingly, in the next pentameter, the idea of an author who has perished by his own verses is reinforced: “Ingenio perii qui miser ipse meo?” (Tristia ii, 1–2). Other references to the books that reduce Tristia to libelli can be explored in Book iii, 7. In that poem, Ovid, perhaps referring to Ars amatoria, designates it with the aforementioned diminutive: “Forsitan exemplo, quia me laesere libelli, / Tu quoque sis poenae fata secuta meae” (Tristia iii, 7, 27–28: “perchance from the example of the injury that verse has done me thou too mayst have experienced in thought the fate of my punishment”). See also: “Nos quoque delectant, quamvis nocuere, libelli,/Quodque mihi telum vulnera fecit, amo” (Tristia iv, 1, 35–36: “I also find pleasure in my books though they have injured me, and I love the very weapon that made my wounds”); “Interea nostri quid agant, nisi triste, libelli?” (Tristia v, 1, 47: “Meanwhile what should be the theme of my verse except sorrow?”); “Da veniam potius, vel totos tolle libellos? / Si mihi quod prodest hoc tibi, lector, obest” (Tristia v, 1, 65–66: “Indulge me rather, or else away with my books, if that, reader, which helps me harms you”); “Te canerem solum, meriti memor, inque libellis / Crevisset sine te pagina nulla meis.” (Tristia v, 9, 3–4; “Of thee alone would I have sung in please of memory thy service; in my books no page would have been completed without thee”); “Haec meus argutis, si tu paterere, libellis / Poneret in multa luce videnda labor” (Tristia v, 9, 23–24: “These things, if thou wouldst permit, my toil would place in eloquent books in a bright light to be seen of all”); “Quanta tibi dederim nostris monumenta libellis / O mihi me coniunx carior, ipsa vides” (Tristia v, 14, 1–2: “What a memorial I have reared to thee in my books, O my wife, dearer to me than myself, thou seest”).

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small book that is a part of something larger Owen 1967.20 To go beyond the discussion of the materiality of books, or of the shapes and sizes of books in ancient times,21 Romano (1915) argues that, if the word liber was used to describe only a portion of a greater work, there would be no reason for the use of the word in the diminutive. Therefore, the difference between these two words (liber versus libellus) may imply other semantic distinctions. Consequently, it is important to note that such a qualification does not depict Ovid’s Tristia merely as a small book (in contrast to an epic oeuvre), but also as a “plain work” in the rhetorical strategy mentioned previously (see Williams 1994, 50–53 and Ingleheart 2011, 7). Romano (1915) also hypothesizes that the use of libellus rather than liber could be an attempt at feigned modesty by the author.22 In the same direction as the relation between the use of the term libellus and modesty, let us consider the epigram that introduces the elegy book of Amores,23 and its first verse in particular: “Qui modo Nasonis fueramus quinque libelli.” In this case, it is important to note the use of the word libellus again.24 In light of the fact that Amores is Ovid’s first work (Conte 1994, 343), McKeown (1987, 3) mentions that the poet begins his career with an “ironic depreciation” of this own text. That is because Ovid suggests in the first verses of his Amores that the reader will face a smaller burden reading his amatory work, since he 20 “Libelli, diminutive of liber: a papyrus roll, means with Ovid sometimes (1) as here, books of poetry; poems, so iii.1.71; 14.25; iv.1.1, 35; v. 1. 65; 9.3; 14.1, (2) the several books of a complete work in the singular i, 2.1)” (Owen 1967, 121). Still is his commentary on Book ii of Tristia, Owen (1967, 122) reminds us that only in Tristia i, 7, 33 (“Hos quoque sex versus, in prima fronte libelli”) does Ovid use the word libellus to designate the Metamorphoses as a whole, i.e, representing a complete work and not only a part of it. 21 “Anche Quintiliano che é addirittura meticoloso nella proprietà del linguaggio dice: finem imponere egresso destinatum modum volumini (Inst. Orat. ix, 146) e non ‘libro,’ mentre quando accenna, nella distribuzione della materia o in qualsiasi altra circonstanza, al contenuto dice sempre e costantemente ‘liber’” (Romano 1915, 457–458). 22 “E poi, se a ‘liber’ si volesse ad ogni costo attribuire quest’ultimo significato, ne verrebbe di logica conseguenza che ‘libellus’ sui diminutivo dovrebbe indicare libreto, cioè libro di piccola mole e nulla più; mentre invece tale significato ‘libellus’ non lo assume quasi mai, ma serve piuttosto, con senso dispregiativo, a nascondere la finta modestia dell’autore” (Romano 1915, 458). 23 See Ovidian verses (in the Kenney 1995 edition of Amores, Epigramma Ipsius, 5). Qui modo Nasonis fueramus quinque libelli, tres sumus; hoc illi praetulit auctor opus. ut iam nulla tibi nos sit legisse voluptas, at levior demptis poena duobus erit. 24 McKeown reaffirms that libellus and liber are used by Ovid without distinction, but also that the diminutive, in this case, “may express affection” (1987, 5).

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has removed two books from the original five. The scholar also highlights the “charge” of depreciation observable in Ovid’s epigram of Amores and in Ovid’s exilic texts, asserting that this kind of humorous movement of “self-deprecation” is not presented in the same way in any of Ovid’s other works.25 Still according to McKeown (1987), a humorous tone is also employed in these verses; Ovid is already referring to the literary tradition that he is enjoying: the Callimachean tradition that prefers less extensive texts. In fact, this kind of movement is not something new in Ovid’s poems.26 However, McKeown (1987) adds, Ovid demonstrates his filiation without changing the precepts of his own work, and in doing so, employs a sort of strategy of “wittly oversimplifying Callimachean principles.”27 Therefore, it is in this ironical tone that the process of “showing”28 the reader how literature is made can also be read.29 Thus, with the denomination of Tristia’s texts as libelli, what the Roman poet is displaying, may not, in fact, be modesty per se. It is possible that he is not saying that any given libellus is only a part of the whole Tristia. While presenting his poem as part of the reception of the sophisticated Hellenistic poetry in Rome, he would be building feign, ironic modesty30 and claiming his place in the already famous Canon formed by his predecessors. Along this same vein, Ingleheart (2010, 24) argues that, by calling Tristia ii a libellus, Ovid is once more demonstrating interest in the literary past. But to the same scholar, Ovid’s act is not only reworking previous literature and 25

“The humor of the epigram helps to set the tone for the Amores. In suggesting, however, that the second edition will be less of a burden to the reader, Ovid achieves the humor here in a highly untypical manner. Nowhere else in the Amores, or in any of the other works written before exile, does he express such a depreciatory opinion of his poetic talent, even in this obviously ironic way” (McKeown 1989). 26 On Callimachean canon in Ovid, See Acosta-Hughes (2012). 27 “In declaring that he prefers the briefer second edition to the first, Ovid may be wittly oversimplifying Callimachean principles. Callimachus’ belief that poetry should be subtle and carefully wrought led him to prefer small scale genres to the more ambitious; cf. esp. frg. 1, Ap. 105ff., Epigr. 27, 28. Ovid takes no account of Callimachus’ reason for preferring brevity, the cultivation of a Moῦσα λεπταλέη: there is no generic distinction between the two editions, the original books also having been collections of poems written κατὰ λεπτόν” (McKeown 1987, 2). 28 See Cardoso 2005. 29 In Conte’s ([1991] 2012, 54) exploration of Ovid’s ironic mood in general: “Ma l’ironia di Ovidio non funziona come um tropo (spostamento antifrastico, figura enantiosemica che secondo la struttura del ‘negare affermando’ rovescia il senso dei singoli enunciati elegiaci), ma è piuttosto l’indizio di una consapevolezza critica cha dal di fuori ‘assiste’ alla formazione del testo e ne disvela le pratiche implicite.” 30 On Ovid’s irony, see Frécaut (1972), Boyd (1997), and Krupp (2009).

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emphasizing Tristia’s elegiac elements from the entire Graeco-Roman tradition that he references (Tristia ii 363–468); the poet is also asserting that the literary past he “is necessarily most concerned with is his own, and three libelli in particular, those of the Ars amatoria” (Ingleheart 2010, 22). The presence of such “proto-elegiac elements” (Ingleheart 2010, 24) in a text that supposedly rejects the Ars amatoria would not be, then, a rejection of elegiac poetry, but a demonstration of continuity in his corpus.31 These observations regarding the continuity of the Ovidian corpus have already been sustained by Schiesaro (2002), who emphasizes the omnipresence of elegiac love in the whole set of Ovidian texts, including the exilic ones.32 With this in mind, let us focus on the idea of the term libellus expressing this doubly allusive function in Tristia: his “little books” are not only referring to Helenistic aesthetic; they are also alluding to the previous libelli of Ovid’s love poetry. Now, let us skip ahead in time and observe the use of the same term libellus in the fourteenth century, in Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris. 3

A Libellus in the Fourteenth Century: Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris

I would like to start by mentioning that I am aware of the implications that such a description33 of an oeuvre is different on many levels in Boccaccio’s 31

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“Secondly, Ovid’s reading practice here does not appear very different from his usual method of reworking previous literature in order to emphasize its proto-elegiac elements (see 363–468, 371–380 nn.); the major departure is that here Ovid’s characteristic privileging of love elegy becomes more explicitly a reading practice which can inform close readings of the entire Graeco-Roman tradition. Most important of all, however, is the fact that this elegiacized literary history comes within a poem and broader corpus of exile poetry which purport to reject erotic poetry such as the Ars, advertising the exile poetry’s radical departure from Ovid’s previous work; Ovid’s reading of the elegiac ethos into the wider literary tradition therefore serves to undermine his rejection of erotic poetry, and to suggest continuity throughout his corpus” (Ingleheart 2010). On the same subject, see Dos Santos (2015). Searching for the word libellus on Oxford Latin Dictionary (Glare 1982), the lexicon brings a first entry very simple and direct: “a small work written for publication, volume, book” (1a). Other meanings gathered for the word are related to the “materiality” of the libellus (e.g. “a book used for notes or records” [2], “a formal communication, document, dispatch, report, memorial, a list, inventory” [3], “a document containing a request, petition” [3b]), while other senses are relative to defamation and slander (Law) (“a defamatory publication” [1b], “a document containing an accusation” [3c], “(leg) a statement of the facts of a case” [3d]), and it would be also related to the sphere of entertainment (“a notice exhibited in public” [4], and “a program of an entertainment” [5]). The same senses are listed

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De Mulieribus Claris and in Ovid’s Tristia, which were written at very different times and which belong to different literary genres, as well as to different social and cultural contexts.34 However, when we consider Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus, we see that the use of the noun libellus (and its variants or analogous expressions) to designate the catalog of women is recurrent. In the first lines of the dedication to Andrea Acciaiuoli35 there is a reference to the oeuvre as a libellus: “in eximiam muliebris sexus laudem ac amicorum solatium, potius quam in magnum rei publice commodum, libellum scripsi (De Mulieribus, Dedication, §1: “I wrote—more for my friend’s pleasure than for the benefit of the broader public—a slim volume in praise of women” (my emphasis).36 Still in the dedication, a reference to the book as something “tiny” appears again on the following passage: “tanquam benemerito tuo fulgori huius libelli tituli munus adiecisse velim…” (De Mulieribus, Dedication, §6: “I should like to increase your well-deserved fame by dedicating this little book to you”). At another point in the dedication, Boccaccio states, “in desiderium mictendi illum humilem devotumque ante solium sue celsitudinis incidi” (De Mulieribus, Dedication, §3: “and I was strongly tempted to lace this humble and pious work before Her Majesty’s throne”). In front of the greatness of the Queen Joana, he compares his work to a small flame when he states, “Tandem, quia adeo ingens regius fulgor est et opusculi tenuis et fere semisopita favillula” (De Mulieribus, Dedication, §4: “In the end, however, as her royal luster is so dazzling and the flickering flame of my little book so small and weak”). Then, Boccaccio asks the chosen one, Andrea Acciaiuoli, to receive his “small gift” in the statement, “grato animo munusculum scolastici hominis suscipias” (De Mulieribus, Dedication, §7: “accept with favor this small gift from a scholar”). Meanwhile, in the Proem of De Mulieribus, the author of Certaldo points out one of his catalog utilities and refers to his book as “opusculum” when he writes, “sed id restaurasse by the ThLL. and a consultation of the word libellus in dictionaries of Medieval Latin (Latham [1965] 1989, and Niermeyer 1954–1976) gave us almost the same kind of semantics, however, it seems that in this period the diminutive is mainly connected to the world of Law (e.g., “accusatory libel” [1], “condemnatory notice” [3], “treaty document” [8]) and defamatory situations (e.g., “slanderous libel”[2]). 34 Curtius (1996, 126–130), in discussing the topics of “feign modesty,” remember us of the captatio beneuolentia and other uses of the topic that were appreciated by Medieval and Renaissance authors. On the debate around intertextuality, context and reception of a text in a specific “historical moment,” cf. Conte (2014). On that same discussion and its relation to Boccaccio’s Buccolicum, see Fonseca Jr. (2016). 35 Andrea Acciaiuoli was the sister of Niccolò Acciaiuoli (1310–1365), a powerful Florentine man and Boccaccio’s friend. 36 All De Mulieribus Claris translations provided herein are from Brown in Boccaccio (2001).

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quod quarundam turpitudinibus venustatis opusculo demptum videtur” (De Mulieribus, Proem, §7: “it will also restore to his little book the attractiveness lost as a result of the shameful exploits of certain of its heroines”). Finally, Boccaccio concludes his book by again referring to it as an “opusculum” in the statement, “ut ab initio opusculi huius testatus sum” (De Mulieribus, Conclusion, §4: “as I stated in the beginning of this book”). Such a characterization in the first lines of De Mulieribus seems emblematic. First of all, it is meaningful that Boccaccio features De Mulieribus as a libellus in specific places (the dedication, proem, and conclusion), as Ovid did in Amores and Tristia.37 These parallels suggest that the Renaissance author may have selected Ovidian elements that best served his own literary purposes (Reinhardt 1999, 147) in order give the De Mulieribus, at least at first sight, a representation of a meager, modest work. Nevertheless, the use of the same word libellus alone cannot attest to Boccaccio’s construction of his catalog or even of his literary self in that image given Ovid’s interpretation of Hellenistic poetry in his texts. Furthermore, another investigation would be necessary to examine a disguised presence of the principles of Callimachean poetry in Boccaccio’s texts in the fourteenth century.38 In fact, the word libellus and the refusal to write extensive poetry were both present in significant ways by classical Roman Poets, for example, 37

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I have tried to track the idea of an exiled author drawn by Ovid’s Tristia in Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus. It is known that Boccaccio knew Tristia’s verses well, since the Renaissance author mentions some of them in a small biography (§116–126) on Ovid in his Esposizione sopra la Commedia di Dante (1374–75). Boccaccio quotes Tristia iv, 10, 3–4, and also verses 103, 207–208 from Tristia ii. See Boccaccio ([1965] 1994) and Ghisalberti (1946) on Boccaccio’s role as Ovid’s biographer. A secondary bibliography on the Callimachean influence on Boccaccio’s texts still needs to be developed. In the case of De Mulieribus in particular, the author seems to be making some indirect allusions to this influence. For example: Boccaccio starts his catalog of women with a kind of disguised recusatio, claiming that his work is too small to fit the greatness of the Queen Joana: “Tandem, quia adeo ingens regius fulgor est et opusculi tenuis et fere semisopita favillula” (De Mulieribus, Dedication, §4). Then, in the Proem of De mulieribus, Boccaccio says that he is writing something new, something that has never been done before: “Sane miratus sum plurimum adeo modicum apud huisce viros potuisse mulieres, ut nullam memorie gratiam in speciali aliqua descriptione consecute sint, cum liquido ex amplioribus historiis constet quasdam tam strenue quam fortiter egisse non nulla” (De Mulieribus, Proem §3: “What surprises me is how little attention women have attracted from writers of this genre, and the absence of any work devoted especially to their memory, even though lengthier histories show clearly that some women have performed acts requiring vigor and courage”). There is also the topic of preferring smaller works, as we are trying to argue in this paper. I am aware that these hypotheses—about Callimachean principles in Boccaccio’s texts (probably through Ovid and other Roman authors) – are very incipient, and require much more extensive consideration.

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as is the case of Catullus (84–54 bc).39 More common points, however, can be found between the verses of Tristia and the aforementioned Boccaccian texts to corroborate the filiation I am trying to attribute to Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus. One example of the aspects that indicate Ovid’s poetic image under the authorial persona of De Mulieribus,40 includes the passage in which Ovid explains that, to write well, a poet would need animo sereno, secessum, and otia (Tristia i, 1, 39 and 41), elements that were lacking in his exile.41 In De Mulieribus, Boccaccio also signalizes a kind of displacement as a condition of his writings in the assertion, “Pridie mulierum egregia, paululum ab inerti vulgo semotus” (Dedication, §1: “A short time ago, gracious lady, at a moment when I was able to isolate myself from the idle mob”). It is known that Boccaccio’s own “banishment” is much different from Ovid’s exile: the Roman poet would have been forced to leave his city, while Boccaccio departed on

39

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On the presence of Catullus’ in the Renaissance, see Gaisser (1993) and Conte (1994, 152). There are many studies on Catullus’ libellus (namely in the first verse of his first poem) and the supposedly modest tone of such a designation, but useful examples include Merrill (1893), Ellis (1889), Ronconi (1971), Clausen (2007), and Copley (2007). For a more extensive discussion on Boccaccio’s poetic image in De Mulieribus as a reflection of Ovid’s authorial representation, I recall some contributions in my Ph.D. dissertation (Juliani 2016), and in Chapters 2 and 3 in particular (the foundation for part of the discussion offered herein). Let us consider these verses: Vt peragas mandata, liber, culpabere forsan Ingeniique minor laude ferere mei. Iudicis officium est ut res, ita tempora rerum Quaerere. Quaesito tempore tutus eris. Carmina proveniunt animo deducta sereno; Nubila sunt subitis tempora nostra malis. Carmina secessum scribentis et otia quaerunt; Me mare, me venti, me fera iactat hiems. Carminibus metus omnis obest; ego perditus ensem Haesurum iugulo iam puto iamque meo. Haec quoque quod facio, iudex mirabitur aequus, Scriptaque cum venia qualiacumque leget (Tristia i, 1, 35–46), the Wheeler [1924] 1939 translation of which is: “Though you should carry out my directions you will be criticized perchance, my book, and regarded as beneath the glory of my genius. Tis a judge’s duty to investigate both the circumstances and the time of an act. If they ask the time you will be secure. Poetry comes fine spun from a mind at peace; my days are clouded with unexpected woes. Poetry requires the writer to be in privacy and ease; I am harassed by the sea, by gales, by wintry storms. Poetry is injured by any fear; I in my ruin am ever and ever expecting a sword to pierce my throat. Even the making of such verse as this will surprise a fair-minded critic and he will read these verses with indulgence, however poor they are” (4–7).

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­account of old age (if we are to believe Giorgio 2007).42 Despite this difference, an echo of the Ovidian condition as an exiled poet also seems to be present in Boccaccio’s prose. Furthermore, Boccaccio seems to take advantage of his departure to qualify the crowd as iners43 (lacking skill) and also to highlight the tranquility brought by distance when he says, “a ceteris fere solutus curis” (De Mulieribus, Dedication, §1). In this way, the fourteenth-century author had exactly what the ­Roman poet did not have in Tomis; that is, a “calm spirit,” or an “animo sereno” (Tristia i,1, 39), “isolation,” or “secessum” (Tristia i, 1, 41), and “idleness,” or “otia” (Tristia i, 1, 41).44 In De Mulieribus, these elements suggest that Boccaccio’s authorial image follows a certain pattern based on Ovid’s methods of exilic representation: both are grounded on metaliterary discussion, and both reveal to the reader certain aspects of the elaborated ways in which their apparently humble literature is made. Therefore, the designation of De Mulieribus as a libellus is consistent with the way that Boccaccio pictures his authorial image: that he is taking what he has received from literary tradition, especially that of one of his favorite authors, Ovid.45 As was highlighted by Putnam (2004, xii) regarding the works of Maffeo Vegio (1407–1458), an author who lived soon after Boccaccio, it was a common practice among Renaissance writers to continue works of pagan authors, whether to amend them, to correct them, or to complete them on a thematic, rhetorical, or poetic continuum within a pre-established corpus (Ingleheart 2010, Chiecchi in Branca 1994). Furthermore, those parallels settled between 42

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Chiecchi (in Branca 1994, 618) emphasizes political matters as the reason for Boccaccio’s supposed exile in the following passage: “La composizione coincide con una delle stagioni più oscure della biografia boccacciana. Malvisto dal governo di Firenze, in quanto amico di qualche congiurato, non ricoperse più cariche pubbliche sino al 1365; esiliatosi volontariamente a Certaldo, esasperò i motivi del suo distacco dal mondo comunale, attraverso la visione polemica della democrazia fiorentina; oppresso da condizioni economiche non certo floride, si disponeva al viaggio per Napoli, dal quale riceverà una cocente delusione; immerso nel rivolgimento culturale indicato dall’episodio del Beato Petroni, ebbe necessità dell’intervento premuroso ed equilibrato del Petrarca.” See the Oxford Latin Dictionary (Glare 1982), definition 1: “lacking skill, clumsy, crude,” but remember that in+ars, “artless,” an archaic meaning of the word. Aspects of authorial modesty are noted also in Ovid’s epistle to Augustus (see Barchiesi 1993 and Barchiesi 1997), and these elements are reflected in De Mulieribus’s dedication. On Boccaccio’s relation to literature, politics, and Queen Joana see Zaccaria (1970), Franklin (2006); Kolsky (2003), Kolsky (2005), and Auerbach (2007). On Boccaccio’s reader see also Anselmi et al. (2013). “Yet Boccaccio’s desire to rescue Ovid reveals a sympathy that cannot allow Ovid to remain entirely a negative figure” (Smarr 1991, 140).

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ancient and modern works would be understood by the Renaissance reader, whose “classicizing instincts” (Putnam 2004 xii) would be evoked in order to allow the same readers to understand a work—De Mulieribus, for i­nstance—as a classical, canonical oeuvre.46 With the idea of Boccaccio’s insertion within a canon in mind, and coming back to the discussion about the use of the word libellus and the interpretations that might come along with it, the characterization of De Mulieribus as a “modest” work in Ovidian patterns can be drawn more clearly. As it was highlighted by Vitti (2013), an unpretentious designation of Boccaccio’s text and authorial representation in De Mulieribus is associated precisely with the use of the diminutive libellus and the use of the expression scholasticus homo to refer to the author himself, in the dedication of the women’s catalog (§7). Indeed, says Vitti (2013), scholasticus homo could be read as “uomo di scuola” (251) or as a “letterato” (251), but also offers the connotation of an “erudite,” a more plausible meaning to be attributed to scholasticus if we consider that the Dedication—and the catalog as a whole—were written with major stylistic ability or “abilità stilistica” (251):47 a heritage of poetic and rhetorical tradition that preceded Boccaccio. Thus, the “erudite” connotation of the word scholasticus would be an ironical reference to a reader who was also erudite. In this sense, if Ingleheart (2010, 24) may argue that Ovid’s use of libellus at the beginning of Tristia’s second book is referring to the universe of tenuous things and of elegiac elements of Callimachean inspiration, and is therefore reinforcing them rather than denying them, then it is possible to argue that Boccaccio’s use of the same poetic and rhetoric sources as Ovid would allow him to reinforce the feminine trope in De Mulieribus, a trope to which Boccaccio had dedicated too much attention, according to some of his contemporary critics, and which is even referred to by the author himself at the beginning of the fourth journey of the 46

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I would like to reconsider Barchiesi and Hardie’s chapter (2010, 80), in which the two scholars suggests that Boccaccio’s Decameron can be seen as an attempt of the fourteenth-century writer to construct a continuity of Ovid’s Ars amatoria. I owe very much to this study to the development of my own quest for Boccaccio’s authorial representation. “Nella dedica del De mulieribus claris a Andrea Acciaiuoli, contessa di Altaviila, Boccaccio sostiene di aver scritto un libellus a lode delle donne (in eximiam mulieribris sexus laudem) e a compiacimento degli amici (amicorum solatium), più che a vantaggio dello Stato (potius quam in magnum rei publice commodum, 18). Più sotto qualifica l’opera come un munusculum scolastici hominis (20): un piccolo dono, cioè, di un uomo di scuola, di un letterato; ma scholasticus ha pure il significato più estensivo di ‘erudito’ e non sarebbe da escludere un compiaciuto assenso per tale specifica interpretazione, che si dilata e si disperde all’interno di una dedica costruita con grande abilità stilistica e suggestione retorica” (Vitti 2013, 251).

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Decameron.48 Along this vein, I would like to suggest that, in De Mulieribus, the recurrence of Ovidian poetic elements typical of Tristia might indicate that his catalog of women could function—or be understood—as a continuity of the Decameron, particularly because both of them are focused on the same central theme, i.e., women. Through a kind of feigned modesty—in a book that, akin to the Tristia, it is not small or unpretentious at all—Boccaccio makes his reader doubt the sincerity of his topics, and also gives his readers a hint of the traditions he is taking into account. The effects of this allusion not only put into question the strong morality attributed to his De Mulieribus by later critics, but also force us to rethink the very literary importance of the Boccaccian libellus, and, more broadly, what is known about the Boccaccian literary curriculum itself. It does not merely quote Ovidian pieces; instead, it provides thematic and lexical parallels to Ovidian works. By going beyond superficial quotations and by utilizing subtle allusions, Boccaccio’s kaleidoscope in De Mulieribus Claris seems to mirror a wider modus faciendi of the Ovidian libellus, including its programmatic function and its role in the self-construction of respective authorial images.49 In this sense, Boccaccio’s use of the Ovidian material, including Ovidian irony, reflects Boccaccio’s familiarity with the working mechanisms of the Canon that he is referring to. In this process of revealing to the readers some of the methods used to create literature, Boccaccio also frames an authorial representation that is at once a poetic construct: it is as if the author was telling the readers who know of both his writings and Ovid’s writings that he himself was also drawn from a model in order to establish himself as a model. In the end, his access of the poetic sources of a Canon is a way to, revere the literary tradition while somehow trying to insert himself into it. 48

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“Sono adunque, discrete donne, stati alcuni che, queste novellette leggendo, hanno detto che voi mi piacete troppo e che onesta cosa non è che io tanto diletto prenda di piacervi e di consolarvi, ed alcuni han detto peggio, di commendarvi, come io fo. Altri, più maturamente mostrando di voler dire, hanno detto che alla mia età non sta bene l’andare omai dietro a queste cose, cioè a ragionar di donne o a compiacer loro. E molti, molto teneri della mia fama mostrandosi, dicono che io farei più saviamente a starmi con le Muse in Parnaso che con queste ciance mescolarmi tra voi” (Boccaccio, Decameron, Introduction to the fourth journey, § 5–6). Bérard suggests that, in the Boccaccian literary production as a whole, there is a process of representation (mimesis) that evokes the “pleasure of recognition” both in author and reader. In his view, the reading of Boccaccio’s texts would provide a “catharsis che risulta dall’esercizio conoscitivo e dalla messa a distanza estetica dei fatti raccontati, e non invece dal proposito di un’edificazione morale” (Bérard 2015, 392). Therefore, the reading is transformed into “puro piacere ludico” (Bérard 2015, 392).

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Conte, G.B. (1994) Latin literature. A history. Translated by. Joseph B. Solodow. Londres: John Hopkins University Press. Conte, G.B. (1991) 2012. “L’amore senza elegia. I Remedio contro l’amore e la logica di un genere.” In: Generi e Lettori. Lucrezio, l’elegia d’amore, l’enciclopedia di Plinio. Pisa: Edizioni Normale. Conte, G.B. (2014) Dell’imitazione: Furto e originalità. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale. Copley, F.O. (2007) “Catullus, c.1.” In: Oxford Readings in Classical Studies. Catullus, edited by Julia Haig Gaisser, 27–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Curtius, E.R. (1996) Literatura Européia e Idade Média Latina. Tradução Teodoro ­Cabral e Paulo Rónai. São Paulo: Editora Hucitec e Editora da Universidade de São Paulo. Delcorno, C. (1995) “Ironia/parodia.” In: Lessico critico Decameroniano, a cura di Renzo Bragantini e Pier Massimo Forni, 162–191. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri Editore. Depew, M. and Obbink, D. (2000) Introduction to Matrices of Genre. Authors, canons and society by Mary Depew and Dirk Obbink, 1–14. Harvard University Press. Desmond, Marilynn R. (1989) Mediaevalia: A Journal of Medieval Studies (Ovid in Medieval Culture: A Special Issue), no. 13, The Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies of the State University of New York at Binghamton. Dimmick, J. (2002) “Ovid in the Middle Ages: authority and poetry.” In: The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, edited by Philip Hardie, 264–287. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dos Santos, L.S. (2015) “Autobiografia e a presença da Ars amatoria nos Tristia de Ovídio.” Diss., University of Campinas. Ellis, R. (1889) A commentary on Catullus. Clarendon Press. Filosa, E. (2012) Tre studi sul De mulieribus claris. Milano: Edizioni Universitaire di Lettere Economia Diritto. Fonseca Jr., A. (2016) “Olympia de Giovanni Boccaccio: gêneros e memória poética virgiliana.” Diss., University of Campinas. Forni, P.M. (1992) Forme complesse nel Decameron. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore. Franklin, M. (2006) Boccaccio’s Heroines: Power and Virtue in Renaissance Society (Women and Gender in early modern world). Ashgate Publishing. Frécaut, J.M. (1972) L’esprit e l’humour chez Ovide. Presses Universitaires de Grenoble. Gaisser, J.H. (1993) Catullus and his Renaissance Readers. Clarendon: Oxford University Press. Ghisalberti, F. (1946) “Medieval Biographies of Ovid.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes, 9: 10–59. Giorgio, D. (2007) Percorsi autobiografici da Boccaccio a Peppino de Filippo. Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche italiane. Glare, P. (1982) Oxford Latin dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon.

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Guglielminetti, M. (1977) Memoria e scrittura. L’autobiografia da Dante a Celliini. ­Torino: Einaudi. Habinek, T. and Alessandro, S. (2004) The Roman Cultural Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hardie, P. (2002) Cambridge Companion to Ovid. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hardie, P. (2013) “Redeeming the Text, Reception Studies, and the Renaissance.” Classical Reception Journal, Vol. 5, Iss. 2: 190–198. Hardie, P. and Moore, H. (2010) Classical Literary careers and their reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harrison, S. (2002) “Ovid and genre: evolutions of an elegist.” In: Cambridge Companion to Ovid, edited by Philip Hardie, 79–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hexter, R.J. (1986) Ovid and medieval schooling. Studies in medieval school commentaries on Ovid’s Ars amatoria, Epistulae ex Ponto, and Epistulae heroidum. München: Arbeo-Ges. Hollander, R. (1977) Boccaccio’s Two Venuses. New York: Columbia University Press. Hollander, R. (1993) “The Proem of the Decameron: Boccaccio between Ovid and Dante.” In: Miscellanea di Studi Danteschi in memoria di Silvio Pasquazi. Volume I. a cura di Alfonso Paolella, Vincenzo Placella, Giovanni Del Turco, 102–107. Napoli: Federico & Ardia. Hunter, R.L. (2006) The shadow of Callimachus. Studies in the reception of Hellenistic poetry at Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hunter, R. (2012) “Callimachus and Roman Elegy.” In: A Companion to Roman Love Elegy, edited by Barbara Gold, 155–171. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Ingleheart, J. (2010) A commentary on Ovid, Tristia, Book 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ingleheart, J. (2011) Two thousand years of solitude. Exile after Ovid. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Juliani, T.J. (2011) “Sobre as mulheres famosas (1361–1362) de Giovanni Boccaccio.” Diss., University of Campinas. Juliani, T.J. (2016) “Vestígios de Ovídio em Sobre as mulheres famosas (De mulieribus claris, 1361–1362) de Giovanni Boccaccio.” PhD diss., University of Campinas. Kilgour, M. (2012) Milton and the Metamorphosis of Ovid. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kolsky, S. (2004) The genealogy of women: studies in Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Kolsky, S. (2005) Ghost of Boccaccio: Writings on Famous Women in Renaissance Italy. Brepols Publishers. Knox, D. (1989) Ironia. Medieval and Renaissance Ideas on Irony. E.J. Brill.

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Werner, E. (2012) Os hinos de Calímaco. Poesia e Poética. São Paulo: Humanitas. Wheeler, A.L. (1925) “Topics from the life of Ovid.” AJP 46: 1–28. Wilkinson, L.P. (1965) Ovid recalled. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, G.D. (1994) Banished voices: readings in Ovid’s exile poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zaccaria, V. (1967) 1970. Introduzione al De Mulieribus Claris. Vol. X della colezione Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio. a cura di Vittore Branca e Vittorio Zaccaria, 3–16. Verona, Milano: Arnaldo Mondadori Editore. Zaccaria, V. (1963) “Le fasi redazionali del De Mulieribus.” Studi sul Boccaccio, 1:253–332.

Chapter 4

The Place of the Father: The Reception of Homer in the Renaissance Canon Valentina Prosperi This paper will explore how and why, in the face of uninterrupted praise for the poet Homer, Italian humanists did little to promote the acceptance of Homer’s poetry into the canon. I will also try to detail how it has been possible for the millennia-long canonization of Homer as the father of Poetry to actively prevent us present-day readers from acknowledging the vastness of Homer’s failure to become part of the Renaissance canon. Unlike other classical authors, Homer never left the West’s collective memory. Despite the material impossibility of reading his poems, his name remained revered, and his role as founder was always acknowledged by poets and men of letters. His place of birth, his physical appearance even, were the object of speculation and contributed greatly to keeping Homer’s memory alive. While this shift in the collective perception from the unavailable poems to the man behind them ensured Homer’s lively presence in the Medieval canon, it became a serious limitation to a renewed and deeper appreciation of Homer’s poetry once it made its return to the West. The medieval attitude towards Homer, of deference towards an undefined authoritative figure, is well represented by Dante. In Inferno iv, 86–88 Virgil introduces Dante to the “bella scola” of the greatest ancient poets: Homer comes before Horace, Ovid and Lucan, “as lord”, “with a sword in his hand”.1 In this visual depiction of the canon, Homer is thus given first place. However, one cannot help noticing that “as high and unconditional Dante’s praise is for Homer, his representation of him is just as bland and generic”,2 even devoid of any references to his blindness, or to the discussion about his birthplace, all information available to Dante through Latin sources.3 1 Dante If. iv 86–88: “Mira colui con quella spada in mano/ che vien dinanzi ai tre sì come sire:/ quelli è Omero poeta sovrano;/ l’altro è Orazio satiro che vene;/ Ovidio è ‘l terzo, e l’ultimo Lucano”. The superiority of Homer on every other poet is again put forward in Pg. xxii 101–102, where Virgil defines him as “quel Greco / che le Muse lattar più ch’altri mai”. 2 Martellotti 1973, 146: “Quanto alta e incondizionata è la lode di O., altrettanto vaga e scolorita è la rappresentazione di lui”. 3 E. g. Cicero, Tusc. v, 39, 144; Pro Archia 8.19.

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Conversely, the main figures of the next generation, Boccaccio and Petrarch, actively endeavoured to bring Homer back. Petrarch always strove to flesh out Homer’s ghost through whatever bits of information he could retrieve from classical sources. Thus he sketched his portrait (in the Africa4) and commented on the question of his birthplace (Bucolicum carmen, Familiares5). His interest in Homer was self-avowedly an early one, and only came second (in time) to his interest in Virgil.6 What’s more, even before he commissioned Leontius Pilatus with the translation of Homer’s works, Petrarch’s philological awareness enabled him to detect Homer’s authorship amidst the commonplaces of the Middle Ages. Already in 1349 he knew for a fact that the Ilias latina had nothing to do with Homer, as the work was “alterius nescio cuius scolastici”.7 This shows a clarity of vision that we should not underestimate, considering that, as we shall see, printings of the Ilias latina circulated under the name of Homer well into the 16th century. The fact that his relationship with Homer was at the beginning not substantiated by a direct knowledge of his works, did not hinder Petrarch from voicing the highest consideration for the Greek poet: the same appreciation in fact that he reserved for the ancient master he knew (and loved) best, Virgil. A passage from the Trionfo della Fama is in this sense exemplary: Virgil and Homer walk side by side, in perfect equality. Throughout his works, Petrarch underlines that Homer and Virgil are equals: Homer’s pre-eminence is strictly chronological.8 Early on, an ancient tradition well known to Petrarch had turned the relationship between Virgil and Homer into a comparison, that is, an inherently conflictual relationship.9 In the fifth Book of the Saturnalia, as 4 Petrarch, Africa, ix. 166–170. 5 Fam. x 4 to his brother Gherardo. The 1349 letter to Gherardo is probably the best summary of Petrarch’s general knowledge of Homer before he had access to his translated works. It is largely a commentary on the Parthenias (1347), the first Eclogue of the Bucolicum Carmen, which staged a rivalry between shepherds Monicus and Silvius, due to competing literary traditions: Christian for the former, classical for the latter. 6 Fam. x 4, 25. 7 Ivi. 8 Petrarch, Trionfo della Fama iii, 10–17: Homer is qualified as “quello ardente/ vecchio a cui fur le Muse tanto amiche/ ch’Argo e Micena e Troia se ne sente./ Questo cantò gli errori e le fatiche/ del figliuol di Laerte, e d’una diva,/ primo pintor delle memorie antiche”. His merit is on a par with Virgil’s and the two proceed “A man a man”. Petrarchan references to the equal worth of Homer and Virgil include: De vita ii, 504; Fam. vi, 4, 12; x, 4, 25 ss; xxiv, 5, 3; 11, 9 (letter to Virgil: “tecum spatiatur Homerus”); 12, 18 ss (letter to Homer, see infra); Rer. ii, 25, 3; 45. In the first eclogue (Partenias) of the Bucolicum Carmen Homer is with Virgil the paragon of classical epic poetry. 9 The model would have been the fifth book of Macrobius’ Saturnalia, although countless references in Servius and other commentators highlight the indebtedness of Virgil to Homer.

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Robin Sowerby has remarked, Macrobius weighs “Homer and Virgil equally in the balance and … he finds Virgil when compared to Homer alternately locu­ pletior and gracilior”. However, it is also true that the comparison “is fought on Virgil’s ground, that the primary focus throughout is on the Roman poet and that the categories of praise are very much those of the Roman grammatical tradition. The predominant impression is one of duos praecipuos vates idem loquentes (‘the two foremost poets saying the same thing’) (v, 3, 16). The juxtaposition of passage after passage establishes the close relation for all to see, but crucial differences between the two poets (indeed the very notion of difference) remain unexplored”.10 In the wake of Macrobius, Petrarch puts the two poets on an equal footing, but this professed equality however needs some nuancing as its implications are momentous. In claiming that Virgil has caught up with (although not surpassed11) his older master, Petrarch is giving the canon a double head. If this automatically translates as a success for Virgil, who came second in the timeline, the opposite is true for Homer. Petrarch’s judgement foreshadows Homer’s fate in the canon for the next two centuries: not simply equalled by Virgil, but largely surpassed by him. With no access to Homer in the original, Petrarch stopped short of declaring Virgil the better poet; subsequent critics were not so restrained, and indeed used Virgil as a paragon with which to judge Homer. The circumstances of Petrarch’s encounter and subsequent relationship with Homer are well worth retelling. Not only do they make a fascinating story in themselves, but they set the way for Homer’s circulation and reception for the following two centuries. In the Fam. 18.12 Petrarch expresses his gratitude to Nicolaus Sigerus, a Byzantine ambassador, for giving him a manuscript of the Homeric poems as a present. In the letter, Petrarch rejoices at having Homer in the original language “non in alienum sermonem violento alveo derivatum, sed ex ipsis greci eloquii scatebris purum et incorruptum et qualis primum divino illi perfluxit ingenio”.12 However he regrets in the most vivid terms that he is unable to read the poems: sine qua [Sigerus’ translation] Homerus tuus apud me mutus, imo vero ego apud illum surdus sum. Gaudeo tamen vel aspectu [of the manuscript] solo et sepe illum amplexus ac suspirans dico: ‘o magne vir, quam 10 11 12

Sowerby 1997–98 A, 51. Fam. vi, 4, 12 is worth considering: Virgil is contrasted with Cicero, since Virgil only equalled his master, Homer; Cicero surpassed his own, Demosthenes (“alter ducem suum attigit, alter a tergo liquit”). Fam. xviii, 2, 6.

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cupide te audirem! sed aurium mearum alteram mors [of the Greek monk Barlaam]13 obstruxit, alteram longinquitas invisa terrarum’» Familiares xviii.2.10

Despite Petrarch’s presumable ill will at learning Greek,14 we can, I believe, take him at his word as he expresses his longing to read Homer in such moving terms. The proof is, that only a few years later, in the winter of 1358–59, Petrarch had Leontius Pilatus, a Calabrian who styled himself as Greek, translate the Homeric poems.15 Petrarch at first commissioned Leontius with the translation of the first five books of the Iliad. Later, and with Boccaccio’s decisive help,16 Leontius translated both Homeric poems in their entirety.17 As soon as the poems were available, though, something quite unexpected happened. To reverse Petrarch’s metaphor, the Homer translated by Leontius was no longer mute for his audience; it was the audience instead who now gave him a very chilly reception. The reason for this is twofold. On the one hand, Homer suffered from competition with Virgil: Renaissance taste could not easily adjust to the archaisms of Homeric poetry. On the other hand, as a “historian”, Homer was forced to compete (and lose) with other ancient texts that recorded the Trojan War and were seen as more trustworthy. At first, Italian humanists deflected their disappointment onto the translator. The general disappointment took the semblance of an anxious search for a better Latin translation than Leontius’s: one 13 14

15 16

17

Petrarch had learned some very basic skills in Greek from the Calabrian monk – later bishop of Gerace – Barlaam, who he met in Avignon in 1342. On Barlaam: Impellizzeri 1964, Gemmiti 1989, Fyrigios 1989. On the matter of Petrarch’s attempts to learn Greek: Roberto Weiss, Per la storia degli studi greci del Petrarca: il Triglossos [1952]; Notes on Petrarch and Homer [1953]; Petrarca e il mondo greco [1952–1953], now in Weiss 1977. On Petrarch and his knowledge of Plato: Fenzi 2001. On Leontius’ Homeric translations, the reference work is Pertusi 1964; important additions include Di Benedetto 1969, Pade 2001, Pade 2002, Pade 2008, Pade 2011, Pontani 2002–2003, Hankins 2002–2003. Boccaccio hosted Leontius in his house and in 1360 obtained for him in Florence the first publicly subsidized chair of Greek literature: G. Boccaccio, Gen. Deor. Gent. xv, 7: «ipse insuper fui qui primus meis sumptibus Omeri libros et alios quosdam grecos in etruriam revocavi»; on Leontius’ teaching: Ricci 1952. A balanced reassessment of Boccaccio’s role in having Homer’s poems translated is now Falzone 2005: Falzone rightly stresses how de Nolhac 1965 prejudicially favours Petrarch. See also Cursi 2014 and Battaglia Ricci 2018 for recent findings and discussions on Boccaccio’s study of Homer. Petrarch had his secretary Giovanni Malpaghini copy Leontius’ originals in two elegant manuscripts which he interspersed with hand-written notes: the Codd. Parisinus Latinus 7880.1 and 7880.2. Both manuscripts are now published: Rossi 2003 and Rossi 2016.

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that would be up to the task of giving voice to the father of poetry and of all arts. In the generation following Petrarch, the Latin translation was championed by Coluccio Salutati. The Florentine chancellor, himself ignorant of Greek, pleaded with many humanists to give the Iliad the proper Latin poetic version it deserved. However, if we look more closely at Salutati’s programme, we shall see how it had actually set itself up for defeat. Salutati, indeed, aimed for an impossible outcome: to change the Iliad “from a poem dressed in a Greek cloak to one clothed in a Roman toga”. In other words, Homer could claim his place as head of the canon and as Virgil’s model only if he could conform, in language and form, to the poet who in Homer’s long vacancy had actually superseded him: Virgil. As Robin Sowerby has shown, for “the humanists of the Italian Renaissance with little Greek and little will to persevere with the language” and who were “the heirs both to the Roman grammatical tradition and to Christian imitation of Virgil in epic” the comparison with Virgil soon led to a “seemingly slight but radical adaptation of Macrobius”. Where Macrobius had pointed out that Virgil had selected a narrower subject matter for his epic than Homer, humanists were quick to rejoin that the Roman poet had showed better discernment.18 However, Homer’s failure in Italian Humanism cannot be entirely explained due to his being in competition with Virgil. Other subtler and deeper reasons, and other less obvious competitors than Virgil, concurred to make Homer one of the least circulated classical texts of the Renaissance. The interest of Homer’s early modern readers and translators focused almost exclusively on the Iliad. Scholars have interpreted this as another sign of Virgil’s role in shifting the humanistic approach to Homer.19 And certainly the humanists’ wish to finally become acquainted with the model of their model Virgil can hardly be overestimated. It must be stressed though that within the Homeric corpus, over the Odyssey, the Iliad was the poem of the Trojan War, one of the founding events of the Western world, and one that had never left the European collective memory. In fact quite the opposite was true: the myth having been charged with dynastic issues in the Middle Ages, on the seminal template of the Aeneid, it was only natural for the Iliad to attract the extra interest of those wishing to read about those ancient, epochal events. This is why two unlikely competitors insinuated themselves into the contest for the highest post in the classical Canon. Neither of them were classical nor poets: they were not even authentic. But they could count on a consolidated 18 19

Sowerby 1997–98 A, 53. See for instance Fabbri 1983.

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status as documentary sources of the Trojan War acquired in the centuries of Homer’s absence. The texts have long been recognised as the artifacts of two unknown, Second-Sophistic Greek authors. They are presented in the form of journals, eye-witness records from the frontline of the War of Troy and circulated under the fictional names of the purported authors, soldiers of the rival Greek and Trojan armies: Dictys the Cretan and Dares the Phrygian. They are known as Ephemeris belli Troiani and De excidio Troiae historia. Due to a recent surge in interest20 in what had been long considered little more than a literary curiosity, Ephemeris and De excidio have been reassigned to a narrative sub-genre that has been denominated by pseudo-documentarism,21 however this definition is unnecessary and the texts can safely be assigned to the realm of fiction.22 As is often the case, the uncertainties and waverings in the scholarship point to a crucial issue in the history of these two texts: the irresistible historical vocation of narratives that were conceived bona fide as fiction.23 Dictys and Dares owe their very existence to Homer and in order to be interpreted correctly, they need their readers to recognize their interplay (in the form of parody and disruption) with the Iliad.24 This is perfectly compliant 20

On Dictys and Dares there has been a recent surge in scholarly interest, after decades of neglect. The critical editions are still by Eisenhut 1958 and Meister 1873. New papyri fragments of the Greek Dictys have been retrieved and published: for a thorough discussion Gainsford 2012, 67–68; cfr. Hatzilambrou & Obbink 2009. Essential reading on Dictys for the last hundred years includes: Fürst 1901 and 1902; Griffin 1907; Merkle 1989; Merkle 1994 and 1996 have started the recent discussion on the question of genre relating to Dictys and Dares; on the Greek Dictys and its diffusion in the Byzantine world: Gainsford 2012. On Dares: Beschorner 1992 provides an excellent commentary and discussion of relevant points; on the availability of Dares’ manuscript between the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Faivre D’Arcier 2006; de Carlos Villamarìn 2008. Besides the old English translation by Frazer 1966, new French and Italian translations are now available: Dictys Cretensis 1988, Dares Phrygius 2011, Dictys Cretensis 2015. On Dictys and Dares in relation to Homer: Clarke 1981: Ch. 1 “Homer Romanticized”. Dictys and Dares have also benefited from two bibliographical reviews: Bessi 2005 and Lentano and Zanusso 2015; a recent collection of essays on Dictys and Dares (Brescia, Lentano, Scafoglio, Zanusso 2018) provides valuable research; the entry Dares in the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum (Clark 2016) is also a good addition to the scholarship; much attention has been devoted to the role of Dictys and Dares in fostering medieval Trojan genealogies: Goldwyn 2018, Truitt 2018. 21 Pseudo-documentaries are, in Hansen’s definition, texts connected by “[their] author’s untrue allegation that he (or she) has come upon an authentic document of some sort that he (or she) is drawing upon or passing on to his (or her) readers”. Hansen 2003. See the discussion and further arguments in Nì Mheallaigh 2008. 22 The chapter by Nì Mheallaigh 2012 would seem to be proof that Dictys’ reintegration into the realm of fiction is now a matter of fact. 23 Prosperi 2008. 24 As Timpanaro 1987 has pointed out.

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with the general characters of the Second Sophistic, for which parody or critical distanciation are just one of the ways of channelling the all-pervasive relevance of Homer.25 However, as soon as new, less intellectually wary audiences became incapable of projecting the Dictys-Dares narrative onto the appropriate backdrop (the Iliad), the two texts lost all appearance of being fictional and were in fact mistaken for authentic documents. This was a momentous misunderstanding, enhanced by the texts’ Latin translators26 via the addition of validating paratexts, which stressed their documentary reliability. This shift in genre ultimately made Dictys and Dares (now historiographers) two formidable foils for the poet Homer in terms of their pretence to greater antiquity, their claim to eyewitness reports and above all for their open attacks on poetical fiction (dubbed as falsity).27 Moreover, in the universal periodization created by Eusebius, the pre-existing classical periodization had been integrated with, not replaced by, the fundamental synchronisms of Christianity, and the War of Troy had maintained its landmark significance.28 When Isidorus of Seville named Dares Phrygius as the primus apud gentiles who had recorded this defining event,29 Dares entered the rosters as the first pagan historian: an unlikely distinction that he would maintain for centuries to come. Dictys and Dares survived the Middle Ages unscathed in their role as truthful recorders of the War of Troy. Indeed their readership increased considerably, through manuscript copying and literary reworkings of their narratives. Among these, the Roman de Troie by Benoit de Saint Maure – which was 25 26

27

28 29

See now especially Kim 2010. The generic shift from fiction to historiography had already happened at the time of the Latin translation. The translators, whether or not they were aware of the truthfulness of the originals, show great perception in singling out and enhancing the trappings of documentary verisimilitude. Thus Dictys’ translator, Lucius Septimius, confirms the text’s authenticity and duplicates the tale of its miraculous retrieval in a prefatory epistle and prologue of his own contriving. Dares’ translator adds a prefatory letter to his version written in the name of no less than Cornelius Nepos, sending the precious document to another illustrious historian, Sallustius. I won’t go into the reasons that made it possible for Dictys and Dares and not for other playfully pseudo-documentary Second-Sophistic texts to be, as it were, taken seriously. It was a random combination of form and content that made them extremely akin to classical Greek historiography (cfr. my discussion: Prosperi 2013, 9–20, and Prosperi 2016). Brugnoli 1989, 25–26. “Historiam autem apud nos primus Moyses de initio mundi conscripsit. Apud gentiles vero primus Dares Phrygius de Graecis et Troianis historiam edidit, quam in foliis palmarum ab eo conscriptam esse ferunt. Post Daretem autem in Graecia Herodotus historiam primus habitus est”. Isidorus Hispalensis, Etymologiae, i.42, 1–2: De primis auctoribus historiarum.

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i­mmensely popular and which then itself became a source of a thick web of Troy-related narratives – helped to maintain Dictys and Dares firmly at the top of the canon throughout the entire Middle Ages. With the beginning of the early modern age, Dictys and Dares became even more popular: their reputation sanctioned by critical editions and numerous printings. In the meantime, Homer disappeared from view, reduced to a mere name, the target nonetheless for harsh comments on the unreliability of poets when it came to historical facts (a diatribe that also involved Virgil on the issue of the Trojan War).30 At the end of the Middle Ages the expectations and speculations surrounding the name of Homer were schizophrenic to say the least. On the one hand, his fame had never faded, and he was universally known as the “Father of poetry”, the head of the canon. On the other, the general opinion regarding the Iliad was biased by a distrust in poetry as a legitimate vehicle for history (the War of Troy). And this prejudice had been reinforced over the centuries by a long-standing familiarity with Trojan sources other than the Iliad: supposedly trustworthy, well-documented, Latin sources: the narratives of Dictys and Dares. The very champions of Homer’s return to the West, Petrarch31 and Boccaccio32 reveal a strong acquaintance with, and trust in, Dictys and Dares, which they freely use as a touchstone to comment on Homer and occasionally on Virgil. If continuity with the Middle Ages is an essential factor for a correct understanding of Humanism, it is almost impossible to overestimate its importance when it comes to the Trojan myth. Even a very superficial look at the lapse of time between the 14th and 15th centuries reveals that at all levels, in all realms of civic and cultural life, the Trojan myth, as popularized by Dictys and Dares, was ubiquitous. 30 See Punzi 1997. 31 There is no shortage of evidence that Petrarch knew and trusted Dictys and Dares as providing accurate first-hand reports of the Trojan war. Not only did he own – in Ms. Par. Lat. 5690 – a complete transcript of the Ephemeris, but we can assume that he had read it and interpreted it as a historical text. True to mediaeval practice, Dictys was also drawn upon by Petrarch to comment on other classical texts: the Ephemeris is quoted as an ‘auctoritas’ (authority) on old age alongside Cicero in the Seniles; his description of Chiron’s cave is quoted in Petrarch’s marginal glosses to Statius’ Achilleid. As for Dares, the De excidio is the unnamed main source in the De viris illustribus’ biography of Hercules. Dictys and Dares are openly classified as historians in a passage from a draft of the Triumph of Fame. The two authors are named among those «that help us reinforce our feeble memory through the aid of sound documents» («ond’ave appoggi ed elimenti / nostra memoria fragile e digiuna»), that is, among historians. (Prosperi 2014.) 32 Boccaccio copied a large fragment of Joseph of Exeter’s Ylias, a 12th century poem that drew from Dares; several passages in the Genealogie deorum gentilium reveal Boccaccio’s direct knowledge of Dictys and Dares (Pade 2011.).

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In the 15th century iconography, oral culture, romance epics, dynastic claims to antiquity, local legends of how their city was founded were all imbued by episodes of the myth as recounted by Dictys and Dares. This continuity is particularly striking as it invests the very humanists who promoted Homer’s return to Italian Renaissance culture: Petrarch and Boccaccio handled Dictys and Dares and all the derived medieval sources on the Trojan myth with much more confidence than they ever did with Homer. Exceptions to this rule, which applied throughout the whole of the Renaissance, do not stand up to closer scrutiny: the distinction that Momigliano made between a “high-brow” humanism, contemptuous of Dictys and Dares, and a “middle-brow” humanism more inclined to accept them, needs rethinking.33 One significant example: Coluccio Salutati openly condemned Dictys and Dares as forgers34 – with a clarity of vision that was unique for the time. Meanwhile – completely ignorant of Greek – he did more than anybody else at the time to promote the learning of Greek in Italy. Nonetheless, he turned to Dares’s text to glean the details of Hector’s countenance when his patron asked for it35 and even composed a text on the Trojan war which was blatantly reminiscent of Dictys and Dares.36 Less than thirty years later, another humanist and early reader of Homer Francesco Filelfo, who was proud of his Greek literacy, was misled into preferring another Troy-related text over the Iliad, a text that he prized for being ancient and pristine, and not yet known, much less trite, in the Western world. He did not realise that the text he had unearthed, for all its fine detailing of the ‘real story’ of the Trojan war, was in fact another variation on Dictys and Dares, being none other than the Trojan Discourse by Dio Chrisostom. In this bravura piece, Dio rhetorically reversed the Trojan story, claiming that the Greek army at Troy had in fact been defeated, and blaming the perpetuation of a false reporting37 on Homer’s dishonesty. Blind to Dio’s irony, Filelfo gives his own critique of Homer and of Virgil imitator Homeri: mendacious poets, not to be trusted on historical matters.38 33 34

35 36 37 38

Momigliano 1960, 47. “Aliud autem apud Latinos non memini me legisse, nisi penes Guidonem de Columna Messana, qui, Dictym Daretaque secutus, librum qui Troianus vulgo dicitur ex duabus illis hystoriis compilavit et ex duobus apochryphis unum fecit, quem omnes quos eruditos vidi floccifaciunt, utpote carentem tam gravitate quam fide” Salutati, letter to Malatesta di Pandolfo Malatesta, 25 september 1401, in Salutati 1896, 546. Prosperi 2013. Prosperi 2014. On Dio and the Trojan Discourse: Desideri 1978, 431–434; Swain 2000, 18; Brancacci 1985, 288. Mestre 1990, Saïd 2000. F. Filelfo, Prefatory letter to Leonardo Bruni in: Dio Chrisostomus 1499, cc. nn: «At dicent fastidiosi quidam. Nonne Virgilius illa quaeque diligenter viderat, quae ad Aeneae

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Pope Nicholas v had singled out Filelfo as the designated heir to take over the Iliad’s translation from the late Marsuppini. When the pope passed away, the project of a comprehensive Latin translation was aborted,39 but Filelfo continued to study and comment on the Homeric poems. In 1429, he planned to teach Homer at university, and Homeric references and bits of translated Iliad lines often crop up in his writings.40 Ironically, for Filelfo the consciousness of his own superior Greek erudition, because it made him customarily suspicious of Homer’s ‘falsifications’ regarding the War of Troy, simultaneously steered him towards another Homer-centric Second-Sophistic divertissement. Significantly, his translation met with remarkable success.41 In the preceding age, Dictys and Dares and the derived tradition had acted as material caveats to the Virgilian narrative of the Trojan war, often in the form of glosses. The extent to which humanism picked up and revived the same practice in relation to Homer is striking. In the eyes of 15th century humanists, the discovery of Homer’s stylistic weaknesses reinforced the long-standing censure of the Iliad as a falsification of the historical truth. Homer’s two-sided deficiency (stylistic and historical) thus took the old medieval form of the commented text. To be circulated, the Iliad had to be equipped with a complex apparatus of “truthful” historical sources. Dio Chrisostom, Dictys, Dares and other texts physically surrounded the Homeric text to give a reliable and truthful account of the Trojan war. In the meantime, such “historical” sources enjoyed a large and unquestioned popularity among the new humanistic audiences, which is immediately perceivable from the respective lists of incunabula. The entry Homerus of the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue consists of 13 items printed before 1500. However, only four of these actually relate to Homer: the editio princeps of Homer’s works in Greek by the Byzantine humanist Demetrios Chalkondyles,42 the unfinished Latin translation by Niccolò della Valle,43 and two Brescia printings of Lorenzo Valla’s Latin translation of the Iliad.44

­Troianorumque laudem spectare viderent? quasi Aegyptiorum linguae litteraturaeve cognitionem Virgilius tenuerit et non Homeri potius imitator fuerit.» 39 Fabbri 1983, 240. 40 Calderini 1913 collects the fragments of Filelfo’s Homeric translations (never longer than 16 verses each). 41 Composed by Filelfo in 1428, on his return journey from Constantinople, the translation was reprinted four times by the end of the 15th century, twice in Italy: Dio Chrysostomus 1492, Dio Chrysostomus 1494, Dio Chrysostomus 1499, Dio Chrysostomus 1500. 42 Homerus 1489. 43 Homerus 1474 A. 44 Respectively: Homerus 1474 B. Homerus 1497.

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As for the remaining nine items, six are printings of the Batrachomyo­ machia,45 believed at the time to be the work of Homer; the last three are printings of the Ilias latina, an imperial-age Latin epitome of the Iliad in hexameters. Assigned to an otherwise unknown Pindarus Thebanus,46 this short poem gained vast popularity throughout the centuries as a surrogate of the Iliad. It is striking that in the same year (1488) as Homer’s ill-fated princeps,47 the Ilias latina appeared in print still bearing his name. Regarding Dictys and Dares on the other hand, the number of printings of their works is all the more impressive. In Italy and by the year 1500, there were seven impressions. Dictys: Mondovì 1472/73,48 Milan 1477.49 Dares: Venice 1472,50 Rome [after] 1478,51 and Rome 1488.52 Even the first critical edition of Ephemeris and De excidio conjoined, edited by Francesco Faraone, came to light by the end of the 15th century. It was printed in Messina in 1498,53 and swiftly reprinted in Venice the year after.54 In terms of the rest of Europe, the reality of Homer’s minor position in the age of the rediscovery of Greek was reinforced. Outside of Italy there are no editions of the major poems nor of the Batrachomyomachia before 1500. The Ilias latina had seven impressions; Dictys one; Dares three. While De excidio and Ephemeris received early philological attention,55 Homer’s poems were all but ignored by prominent philologists for most of the 16th century. With the 16th century, Homer’s diffusion crosses Italy’s borders and takes on the character of a fully-fledged European intellectual journey. However, even on the larger European scene, the Iliad’s versio latina makes very slow, uncertain progress, as Sowerby remarked.56 45 *Homerus 1474, *Homerus 1475 A, *Homerus 1475 B, *Homerus 1486, *Homerus 1492, *Homerus 1498. 46 Baebius Italicus 1476, Baebius Italicus 1488, Baebius Italicus 1492. The Ilias latina is in fact the work of a Baebius Italicus, as Marco Scaffai has demonstrated: Baebius Italicus, 1982. 47 On the princeps of Homer: Ridolfi 1954, Pontani 2005. 48 Dictys Cretensis 1472–1473. 49 Dictys Cretensis 1477. 50 Dares Phrygius 1472. 51 Dares Phrygius 1478. 52 Dares Phrygius 1488. 53 Dictys Cretensis 1498. 54 Dictys Cretensis 1499. 55 Faraone’s edition was reprinted several times, also outside of Italy. But other early editions of Dictys and Dares reveal the same wish to give proper editorial care to what were perceived as fundamental historical documents, such as the 1477 Milan impression of Dictys by little-known humanist Masellus Venia (Prosperi 2013, 93). 56 Sowerby 1996, 162: «The Latin version of Homer in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has a surprisingly chequered history … It is chiefly interesting today for what it can tell us of what Casaubon calls the iniquitous fate of Homer in his times».

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It is as if, even on a European scale, the evidently insufficient resources devoted to Homer’s translation and circulation reveal the persistence of a constitutive diffidence or dissatisfaction that still needed to be overcome since the first Western rediscovery of Homer. In the 16th century, the lack of a Latin translation finally worthy of the Iliad is above all the reflection of a lack of conviction on the part of scholars and men of letters.57 Hence the tribute to “Homer father of poetry” on frontispieces is an empty iteration contradicted by the content of the actual volumes. One of the clearest signs of the slow and patchy progress of Homer’s poems and of the Iliad especially is, once again, the unabashed deployment of pseudo-Trojan chronicles as a cautionary, exegetical integration to Homer. We could say that in the 16th century Homer’s ill fate is corollary to Dictys and Dares’ affirmation. As the century moved forward, Ephemeris and De excidio maintained their status as history books. Their relevance in fact increased and they appeared as opening texts of an ambitious editorial project, the series of ancient Greek historians by the Venetian printer, Giolito de Ferrari.58 At times, they also provided a supplement to newly retrieved ancient historical texts, such as Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheca historica. But most prominently, they crept into several 16th century impressions of the Iliad, where already in the frontispieces they carved for themselves the role of Homeromastix. If we turn to France, we see how the pre-existing, mediaeval myth of the monarchy’s Trojan genealogy fosters literary works which subsume the redivivus Homer within the familiar web of Dictys and Dares. The case in point is Jehan Samxon’s compilation of Dictys, Dares, Guido delle Colonne and the Iliad, which he read in Valla’s Latin version and translated into French.59 Elsewhere, the phenomenon is equally evident; we see it in place in one of the most 57

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Sowerby 1996, 197: «…the poor state of the versio is certainly a reflection of the poor state of Homeric studies and while the failure to produce a better one was often a failure of knowledge and scholarship it was also a failure of conviction and will. If Homer had seriously been felt to be the Prince of Poets as he is often called on the title pages of editions, then his text and its interpretation would have called forth the kind of sustained scholarly enterprise and attention accorded to the New Testament or to Virgil». The complete title for the Collana’s first volume (Dictys Cretensis 1570) reads as follows: Ditte candiotto e Darete frigio della guerra Troiana, tradotti per Thomaso Porcacchi da Castiglione Arretino: Il quale v’ha aggiunto l’ordine che s’ha da tener nella Concatenation dell’historie, et le Vite di tutti quelli historici antichi Greci, de’ quali è formata la sua Col­ lana. Et questo, secondo l’ordine da lui posto, è il primo Anello d’essa Collana historica. The initiative of the Collana historica was due to the Aretine author, Tomaso Porcacchi; on the publishing partnership between Giolito and Porcacchi: Nuovo & Coppens 2005, 460; on the originality of the Collana as editorial product: Favalier 2012. Samxon 1530. On the reception of Homer in France: Hepp 1961–62; more recently Ford 2009, Ford 2007.

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r­eprinted Basel editions of the Iliad, Jakob Kündig’s.60 This edition presents the Latin metric translation of the Iliad by Niccolò della Valle and Vincentius Opsopoeus, but preceded by Joseph Iscanus’ Ilias. Ilias, in turn, is mistakenly announced in the title page as the metric version by Cornelius Nepos of Dares’ narrative of the Trojan war: Daretis Phrygii … de bello Troiano, in quo ipse mili­ tavit, Libri … sex, à Cornelio Nepote, Latino carmine Heroico donati, et Crispo Sal­ lustio dedicati, nunc primum in lucem aediti. In the title page Homer is formally regaled with the title of princeps poetarum, but Dares reaps the double crown of primus historicorum ac poetarum omnium. The volume also contains the already mentioned Ilias latina ascribed to Pindarus Thebanus, which would have been much more familiar to readers and more suited to their taste. The 1573 Basel edition by Pietro Perna also presents the Opsopoeus and Della Valle Latin version of the Iliad, with integrations by Eobanus Hessus.61 However, Homer is on the title page as only one, and the last one at that, of the “principal writers on the Trojan war”, the others being our old friends Dictys and Dares. Ten years later, with the young French humanist Jean de Sponde’s edition of Homer’s works,62 Western readers are presented with a much desired advancement in Homeric scholarship. This is in fact the first edition of Homer’s works (which will remain the only one until the 18th century) to be accompanied by an organic commentary, «a distillation in Latin of the Greek tradition».63 However, despite his doubtless merits towards Homer, de Sponde again deferred to a traditional inclusion of late-antique and medieval materials in his volume. He included Joseph of Exeter’s Ilias and Pindarus Thebanus’ Ilias La­ tina as they had appeared in Kündig’s 1541 Basel edition. In the Argumentum Iliadis that precedes the Iliad, De Sponde considers the different sources he had available on the War of Troy and voices his perplexity. It is a fact, he remarks, that many before Homer sang of the Trojan War, some even as the war was being waged (“adhuc flagrante Troiano bello”). This is why, despite his own and many others’ doubts as to Dares and Dictys’ authenticity – he says – he preferred to suspend judgement and keep the versified Dares (i.e. Joseph Iscanus) in the volume.64

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Homerus 1541. Homerus 1573: cfr. Ford 2007, 364. Homerus 1583. Sowerby 1996, 182. “Fuerunt autem multi Poetae, qui ante Homerum hoc ipsum argumentum tractarunt… Fuit porro Corinnus, ut scribit Suidas, qui Iliada scripsit… adhuc flagrante Troiano bello… Dares etiam Phrygius et Dictys Cretensis bellum illud scriptis mandarunt: quorum libri quidem circumferuntur, sed a multis putantur nothi ac adulterini. Nos iudicio suspenso eos admittimus: e quibus Daretem Phrygium carmine paraphrastico donatum a Cornelio

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Either through sincere reliance, or, as in De Sponde’s case, iudicio suspenso, widely differing texts were gathered to undermine and limit the Iliad’s influence even by the end of the 16th century. The impression is that even the incipient distrust for the traditional narratives of Dictys and Dares, far from captivating more readers in favour of Homer, deflected them instead in a search for more authoritative but still anti-Homeric “historical” sources. As the basis for his own edition, De Sponde chose the 1570 Geneva printed text of the Iliad and Odyssey, the one edited by Cretan humanist, Franciscus Portus.65 As is clear from the title page, Portus indulged his readers’ desire to know “the whole story” of Troy by printing two late antique Greek epyllia on the rape of Helen and the fall of Troy: Colluthus’ Rape of Helen and Triphiodorus’ Excidium Ilii.66 Colluthus’ poem was also accompanied by explicative notes67 which commented on the text according to the version of facts given by Dictys and Dares. The Greek text of Colluthus and Triphiodorus was printed by Aldus as early as 1505, in a volume68 comprising a third, more hefty work: Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica.69 Quintus’ Posthomerica had a long record of being read as a supplement to Homer’s work: the text is transcribed in between the Iliad and the Odyssey in many manuscripts.70 The 16th century picks up on this complementary/antagonistic relationship and emphasizes it. As stated in the Aldine of 1505, Quintus is the author of fourteen books of events overlooked by Homer, (Quinti Calabri derelictorum ab Homero libri quatuordecim). Even when Quintus’ work is printed in its own right, the Iliad’s implied inadequacy features on the title page: this is clear for instance in the 1569 Basel printing of Quintus, that stresses the Posthomerica’s role as a much needed supplement to Homer’s narrative: Quinti Calabri antiquissimi et sapientissimi poetae Praetermissorum ab Homero libri quatuordecim, quibus Troianam historiam ab Homero derelic­ tam graviter et splendide prosecutus est.71 The general advancement of Greek scholarship in 16th century Europe did not thus lead to any perceivable advancement in the circulation and reputation

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67 68 69 70 71

Nepote ad calcem Iliadis excudi iussimus”: Jean de Sponde, Argumentum totius Iliadis, in Homeri quae exstant omnia, pp. 43–44. Homerus 1570. On Colluthus: C. Cadau, Studies in Colluthus’ “Abduction of Helen”. Mnemosyne supple­ ments. Late Antique literature, 380. Leiden: Brill, 2015. For humanistic editions of Colluthus: see the bibliography in Colluthus 1968, xliii–xliv. On Colluthus and Triphiodorus as “supplements” to Homer see Karavas 2018. On Triphiodorus: Miguélez-Cavero 2013. The notes were reprinted from the work of the German Reformation humanist, Michael Neander (Michael Neumann 1525–1595): Colluthus 1574. Quintus Smyrnaeus 1505. On Quintus, most recently: Quintus Smyrnaeus 2013, Maciver 2012, Maciver 2018, Bär 2009. Maciver 2012, 8, n. 6. Quintus Smyrnaeus 1569.

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of the Iliad. Quite the opposite: in the 16th century, editors, printers, translators of Homer’s works, all fostered the parallel circulation of other Greek and Latin texts that they and their audience perceived as necessary for a correct (and thus better) understanding of the historical facts blurred in Homer’s Iliad. As the early example of Filelfo’s translation of Dio’s Trojan discourse foreshadowed, not only did the unflappable Dictys and Dares maintain and improve their status and pre-eminence over Homer: other newly-recovered Greek texts were also put to use to “correct” and “complete” the Iliad’s narrative. The editorial fate of Dio’s text provides the best example of this pattern in the Renaissance response to Homer. After several reprints of Filelfo’s version,72 the De Ilio non capto again became the focus of anti-Homeric debate in the 1585 edition by German humanist, Lorenz Rhodoman (Rhodomannus). A consummate Greek scholar, Rhodoman published the oration in aggressively antiHomeric mode, as announced by the frontispiece: Homerus confutatus a Dione Chrysostomo.73 The title already reads as a summary of all the customary accusations against Homer: Homer will be refuted by Dio (Homerus confutatus a Di­ one Chrysostomo); the Iliad’s narrative, mendaciously favourable to the Greeks (pleraque in Homeri Poësi commentitia esse & falsa, ad laudem Graecorum), will be reversed with sound and detailed arguments (rationibus luculentis ac proba­ bilibus); and reading Dio will be of the greatest importance (Argumentum sane magnificum & apprime utile) for those wishing to advance themselves in the knowledge of the Trojan War through the study not only of Homer and other poets, but of actual historians. In the bilingual metric epistle that precedes the text of the oration, Rhodoman attacks what he sees as Homer’s “falsifications”, of a moral, religious and factual order. His own translation of Dio’s oration, he contends, will morally edify young people and help re-establish the truth that Homer has mystified. The volume is completed by scholia that offer many learned references to other relevant texts, first and foremost Dictys and Dares. Finally, Rhodoman reprinted Discourse xi in his edition of Quintus Smyrnaeus (1604),74 a paradoxical tribute to the best philology of the time. The 72 73

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The list of printings of Dio’s Discourse xi since the 15th century is in Dio Chrysostomus 2003, 27–28. Dio Chrysostomus 1585; the title page reads: Homerus confutatus a Dione Chrysostomo, philosopho, ut Antiquo & Sapiente, ita paucis hactenus noto & lecto, in oratione de Ilio non capto: qua & historia belli Troiani verisimilior exponitur, & rationibus luculentis ac proba­ bilibus ostenditur, pleraq. in Homeri Poësi commentitia esse & falsa, ad laudem Graecorum, qui tamen eo bello victi, & vituperationem Troianorum, qui victores exstiterunt, conficta: Ar­ gumentum sane magnificum & apprime utile omnibus, qui non modo in Homeri aliorumque Poëtarum, sed etiam historicorum, qui res Troianas tractant vel attingunt, lectione, cum fructu versari cupiunt, Rostochii, Typis Stephani Myliandri, Anno 1585. Quintus Smyrnaeus 1604. Cf. Bär 2009, Chap. 1.

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volume presents the War of Troy epitomised, introduced, commented on, and reconstructed in a number of ancient texts. Especially noticeable is Rhodoman’s metrical synopsis of the Trojan War, in Greek and Latin hexameters on facing pages. Without going to the extreme of recanting the mythical events as in Dio’s version, Rhodoman presents a complete narrative of the Trojan War, which dutifully begins at the beginning and only ends at the end, piecing together all the sources he had available, from Dictys and Dares, to the Greek tragedies, to Ovid and other poets. Rhodoman had no qualms in offering his own poetical artifact as substitute for a text, the Iliad, which was now leaving the 16th century in hardly better shape than it had entered it. Bibliography

A – Primary Sources

Baebius Italicus. 1476. Homerus, Iliados epitome, (the Ilias Latina attributed to ­Pindarus Thebanus [i.e. Baebius Italicus]). [Venice: Filippo di Pietro, about 1476]. ISTC: ih00305000. Baebius Italicus. 1488. Homerus, Iliados epitome, (the Ilias Latina attributed to ­Pindarus Thebanus [i.e. Baebius Italicus]). Parma: Angelus Ugoletus, 1 May 1488. ISTC: ih00305500. Baebius Italicus. 1492. Homerus, Iliados epitome, (the Ilias Latina attributed to Pindarus Thebanus [i.e. Baebius Italicus]). Parma: Angelus Ugoletus, 1 June 1492. ISTC: ih00306000. Baebius Italicus. 1982. Ilias Latina. Edited by Marco Scaffai. Bologna: Patron. Colluthus. 1574. Coluthi Raptus Helenae cum versione et expositione. Edited and translated by Michael Neumann. In Opus Aureum, Pars ii. Avenione: ap. J. Crispinum. Colluthus. 1968. Il ratto di Elena. Edited by Enrico Livrea. Bologna: Patron. Dares Phrygius, 1472. Dares Phrygius De excidio Troiae historia. Prelim: Cornelius Nepos, Pseudo-, Epistola ad Sallustium Crispum. [Venice: Florentius de Argentina, about 1472]. ISTC: id00041000. Dares Phrygius, 1478. Dares Phrygius De excidio Troiae historia, [Rome: Apud Sanctum Marcum (Vitus Puecher)?, after 1478], ISTC: id00041600. Dares Phrygius, 1488. Dares Phrygius De excidio Troiae historia, [Rome: Stephan Plannck, about 1488]. ISTC: id00042000. Dares Phrygius. 1873. De excidio Troiae historia. Edited by Ferdinand Otto Meister. Lipsiae: Teubner. Dares Phrygius. 2011. La storia della distruzione di Troia. Edited by Gabriele Garbugino. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.

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Dictys Cretensis, 1472–73. Dictys Cretensis Historia Troiana, [Mondovì, Antonius Mathiae and Baltasar Corderius]. ISTC: id00184500. Dictys Cretensis, 1477. Dictys Cretensis Historia Troiana. Tr: Lucius Septimius. Ed: Masellus Venia. Milan: [Simon Magniagus], 19 May 1477. ISTC: id00185000. Dictys Cretensis, 1498. Dictys Cretensis Historia Troiana. Tr: Lucius Septimius. Ed: F­ranciscus Faragonius. Add: Dares Phrygius, Pseudo-, De Excidio Troiae historia; Cornelius Nepos, Pseudo-, Epistola ad Sallustium Crispum. Messina: Guilelmus Schonberger, 7 May 1498; 20 May. ISTC: id00186000. Dictys Cretensis, 1499. Dictys Cretensis Historia Troiana. Tr. Lucius Septimius. Ed: Franciscus Faragonius. Add: Dares Phrygius, Pseudo-: De excidio Troiae historia; Cornelius Nepos, Pseudo-: Epistola ad Sallustium Crispium. Venice: Christophorus de Pensis, de Mandello, 1 Feb. 1499; 1 Mar. 1499.ISTC: id00187000. Dictys Cretensis. 1570. Ditte candiotto e Darete frigio della guerra Troiana. Translated by Tomaso Porcacchi. Venice: Gabriel Giolito di Ferrari. Dictys Cretensis. 1958. Ephemeridos Belli Troiani libri A Lucio Septimio ex Graeco In Latinum sermonem translati. Accedit papyrus Dictys Graeci ad Tebtunim inventa. Edited by Werner Eisenhut. Lipsiae: Teubner. Dictys Cretensis. 1998. Récits inédits sur la guerre de Troie. (L’Iliade latine de Baebius Ita­ licus, l’Éphéméride de la guerre de Troie de Dictys de Crète, Histoire de la destruction de Troie de Darès de Phrygie). Edited by Gérard Fry. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Dictys Cretensis. 2015. Ditti di Creta, L’altra Iliade. Il diario di guerra di un soldato greco con la Storia della distruzione di Troia di Darete Frigio e i testi bizantini sulla guerra troiana: Giovanni Malala, Costantino Manasse, Giorgio Cedreno, Ciriaco d’Ancona. Edited by Emanuele Lelli. Milano: Bompiani. Dio Chrisostomus. 1492. [De Troia non capta:] Ilii captivitatem non fuisse. Tr: Franciscus Philelphus. Ed: Nicolaus Lucarus. Cremona: Bernardinus de Misintis and Caesar Parmensis, 22 July 1492. ISTC: id00206000. Dio Chrisostomus. 1494. De Troia non capta (Tr: Franciscus Philelphus). With additions by Nicolaus Lucarus and Petrus Maria Camarinus. Paris: Félix Baligault 1494. ISTC: id00207000. Dio Chrisostomus. 1499. [De Troia non capta:] Illi captivitatem non fuisse. Tr: Franciscus Philelphus. Add: Petronius Arbiter: Satyrici fragmenta quae extant. Venice: Bernardinus Venetus, de Vitalibus, 18–23 July 1499. ISTC: id00208000. Dio Chrisostomus, 1500. De Troia non capta. Tr: Franciscus Philelphus. Ed: Nicolaus Lucarus. Paris: Antoine Denidel, for Robert de Gourmont, [about 1500]. ISTC: id00209000. Dio Chrysostomus. 1585. Homerus confutatus a Dione Chrysostomo. Rostochii: Typis Stephani Myliandri. Dio Chrysostomus. 2003. Troiano. Or. xi. Edited by Gustavo Vagnone, Roma: Edizioni dell’Ateneo.

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Homerus. 1474 A. Iliados libri aliqui. (Tr. Nicolaus De Valle). Rome: Johannes Philippus de Lignamine, 1 Feb. 1474. ISTC ih00310000. Homerus. 1474 B. Ilias. Translated by Lorenzo Valla. Brescia: Henricus de Colonia, and Statius Gallicus, 24 Nov. 1474. ISTC ih00311000. Homerus. [1488/89]. Homerus, Opera, (ed. Demetrius Chalcondylas), Florence: [Printer of Vergilius (C 6061)], for Bernardus and Nerius Nerlius and Demetrius Damilas, [not before 13 Jan. 1488/89] ISTC: ih00300000. Homerus. 1497. Ilias. Translated by Lorenzo Valla. Brescia: Baptista Farfengus, for Franciscus Laurinus, 6 Sept. 1497. ISTC ih00312000. *Homerus. 1474 ca. Batrachomyomachia. [Greek and Latin]. Tr: Carolus Marsuppinus Aretinus. [Brescia: Thomas Ferrandus, about 1474]. ISTC ih00300800. *Homerus. 1475 A. Batrachomyomachia [Latin]. Tr: Carolus Marsuppinus Aretinus. [Venice: Printer of Datus, ‘Elegantiolae’ (H 5969*), about 1475]. ISTC ih00302000. *Homerus. 1475 B. Batrachomyomachia. Translated by Giorgio Sommariva. [Venice: Nicolaus Jenson?, about 1475]. ISTC ih00304400. *Homerus. 1486. Batrachomyomachia, with a gloss [Greek]. Venice: Laonicus [and Alexander], 22 Apr. 1486. ISTC ih00301000. *Homerus. 1492. Batrachomyomachia. [Latin]. Tr: Carolus Marsuppinus Aretinus. Add: Marcus Valerius Martialis and Antipater Sidonius: Carmina. Parma: Angelus Ugoletus, 25 July 1492. ISTC: ih00303000. *Homerus. 1498. Batrachomyomachia [Latin]. Tr: Carolus Marsuppinus Aretinus. Add: Marcus Valerius Martialis and Antipater Sidonius: Carmina. Modena: Dominicus Rocociolus, 20 Mar. 1498. ISTC: ih00304000. Homerus. 1541. Daretis Phrygii poetarum et Historicorum omnium primi, de bello Troia­ no, in quo ipse militavit, Libri (quibus multis seculis caruimus) sex, à Cornelio Nepote, Latino carmine Heroico donati, et Crispo Sallustio dedicati, nunc primùm in lucem ae­ diti. Item, Pindari Thebani Homericae Iliados Epitome, suauissimis numeris exarata. Ad haec, Homeri Poetarum Principis Ilias, quatenus à Nicolao Valla, & V. Obsopoeo carmine reddita. Basileae, [Jacob Kündig], mense Martio 1541. Homerus. 1570. Ὁμήρου Ἰλιάς κὰι ᾽Ωδύσσεια. Homeri Ilias et Odyssea. secunda editio. ­Quibus originem et exitum belli Troiani addidimus. Coluthi Helenae raptum et Try­ phiodori Ilii excidium. Latine omnia ad verbum exposita, apud Crispinum: [Geneva] 1570. Homerus. 1573. Belli Troiani scriptores praecipui, Dictys Cretensis, Dares Phrygius et Homerus, Omnes iampridem latio iure donati, nunc vero a mendis expurgati, et in unum volumen digesti. Basileae, Per Petrum Pernam, 1573. Homerus. 1583. Homeri quae exstant omnia Ilias, Odyssea, Batrachomyomachia, Hymni, Poematia aliquot. Cum Latina versione omnium quae circumferuntur emendatiss. aliquot locis iam castigatiore. Perpetuis item iustisque in Iliada simul et Odysseam Io. Spondani Mauleonensis Commentariis. Pindari quinetiam Thebani Epitome Iliados Latinis versib. et Daretis Phrygii de bello Troiano libri, à Corn. Nepote eleganter latino

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versi carmine. Indices Homeri textus et Commentariorum locupletissimi. Basileae, Eusebii Episcopii, 1583 Quintus Smyrnaeus. 1505. Kointou Kalabrou Paraleipomenon Omerou, biblia tessares­ kaideka. Quinti Calabri Derelictorum ab Homero libri quatuordecim. [Venice: Aldo.] Quintus Smyrnaeus. 1569. Quinti Calabri antiquissimi et sapientissimi poetae Praeter­ missorum ab Homero libri quatuordecim, quibus Troianam historiam ab Homero de­ relictam graviter et splendide prosecutus est. Basileae: per Sixtum Henricpetri. Quintus Smyrnaeus. 1604. Ἰλιας Κοιντου Σμυρναιου; seu Quinti Calabri paraleipomena, id est derelicta ab Homero xiv. libris comprehensa: In quibus Historiam Belli Troiani, ab interitu Hectoris ad excidium et calamitosi Graecorum reditus Homerico oratio­ nis genere persequitur. Latine olim reddita et correcta a L. Rhodomano. Nunc accessit epitome gemina, tum Homeri et Cointi, tum universa [sic] Historiæ Trojanæ. Itemque Dionis Chrysostomi Oratio, De Ilio non capto. Auctore et interprete eodem. Gr. & Lat. Hanoviæ : Typis Wechelianis apud C. Marnium, 1604. Quintus Smyrnaeus. 2013. Il seguito dell’Iliade di Omero. Edited by Emanuele Lelli. Milano: Bompiani. Rossi, Tiziano. 2003. Il codice parigino latino 7880.1 – Iliade di Omero tradotta in latino da Leonzio Pilato con le postille di Francesco Petrarca. Milano: Libreria Malavasi. Rossi, Tiziano. 2016. Il codice parigino latino 7880.2 – Odissea di Omero tradotta in latino da Leonzio Pilato con le postille di Francesco Petrarca. Milano: Libreria Malavasi. Salutati, Coluccio. 1896. Epistolario, vol. iii. Edited by Francesco Novati. Roma: Forzani e C. Samxon, Jehan. 1530. Les Iliades de Homère, poète grec et grant hystoriographe, avecques les prémisses et commencemens de Guyon de Coulonne, souverain hystoriographe. Ad­ ditions et séquences de Darès Phrigius et de Dictys de Crète. Paris: Jean Petit.



B – Secondary Sources

Bär, S. (2009) Quintus Smyrnaeus «Posthomerica» 1. Die Wiedergeburt des Epos aus dem Geiste der Amazonomachie. Mit einem Kommentar zu den Versen 1–219. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Battaglia Ricci, L. (2018) “l’Omero di Boccaccio” in Boccaccio: gli antichi e i moderni edited by Anna Maria Cabrini e Alfonso D’Agostino, 7–45. Milano: Ledizioni. Beschorner, A. (1992) Untersuchungen zu Dares Phrygius. Tübingen: Narr. Brancacci, A. (1985) Rhetorike Philosophousa - Dione Crisostomo nella cultura antica e bizantina. Napoli: Bibliopolis. Brescia, G., Lentano, M. Scafoglio, G., Zanusso, G. (2018) (eds.). Revival and Revision of the Trojan Myth, Studies on Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius. Hildesheim- ZürichNew York: Olms. Brugnoli, G. (1989) “Curiosissimus excerptor.” In Gerolamo e la biografia letteraria. Edited by Aldo Ceresa Gastaldo, 23–43; 25–26. Genova: Facoltà di lettere, Dipartimento di archeologia, filologia classica e loro tradizioni.

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Cadau, C. (2015) Studies in Colluthus’ “Abduction of Helen.” Mnemosyne Supplements. Late Antique literature, 380. Leiden: Brill. Calderini, A. (1913) “Ricerche intorno alla Biblioteca e agli studi greci di Francesco Filelfo.” Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica xx, 204–424. Clarke, H. (1981) Homer’s Readers—A Historical Introduction to the Iliad and the Odys­ sey. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Cursi, M. (2014) “Homero poeta sovrano”, in Dentro l’officina di Giovanni Boccaccio. Stu­ di sugli autografi in volgare e su Boccaccio dantista, edited by S. Bertelli e D. Cappi. 131–136. Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. De Carlos Villamarìn, H. (2008) “Dares Frigio y el concepto de la historia den Isidoro de Sevilla”, in Poétique de la Chronique. L’écriture des textes historiographiques au Moyen Âge (Péninsule Ibérique et France) edited by Amaia Arizaleta, 11–25. Toulouse: Éditions Meridiennes. Desideri, P. (1978) Dione di Prusa - Un intellettuale greco nell’impero romano, MessinaFirenze: D’Anna. Di Benedetto, F. (1969) “Leonzio, Omero e le ‘Pandette’.” Italia Medioevale e Umanistica xii: 53–112. Erdas, D. (2012) “Dares (51).” Brill’s New Jacoby. Editor in Chief: Ian Worthington (­ University of Missouri). Brill Online, 2012. Reference. BNJ-contributors. 17 ­November 2012 http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-jacoby/ dares-51-a51. Fabbri, R. (1983) “I «campioni» di traduzione omerica di Francesco Filelfo.” Maia xxxv: 237–249. Faivre D’Arcier, L. (2006) Histoire et géographie d’un mythe. La circulation des manu­ scrits du De excidio Troiae de Darès le Phrygien (viiie–xve siècles). Paris: École des chartes. Falzone, P. (2005) “Leonzio Pilato.” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani vol. 64. Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 2005, 630–635. Favalier, S. (2012) “Penser un nouveau produit éditorial: Tommaso Porcacchi, Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari et leur “Collana historica””, Reforme, Humanisme, Renaissance 74, 161–184. Fenzi, E. (2001) “Platone, Agostino, Petrarca.” in L’adorabile vescovo di Ippona: Atti del Convegno di Paola 24–25 maggio 2000, edited by Franca Ela Consolino, 305–340. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino. Fera, V. (2002–2003) “Petrarca lettore dell’Iliade.” Quaderni Petrarcheschi 12–13: 141–154. Ford, P. (2007) De Troie à Ithaque: réception des épopées homériques à la Renaissance. Genève: Droz. Ford, P. (2009) “Achille vs. Ulysse: la réception de l’Iliade et de l’Odyssée à la Renaissance.” In Révolutions homériques. Edited by Glenn W. Most, Larry F. Norman and Sophie Rabau, 47–68, Pisa: Edizioni della Normale.

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Frazer, R.M (1966) The Trojan War. The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phry­ gian. London: Bloomington. Fürst, J. (1901) “Untersuchungen zur Ephemeris des Diktys von Kreta” (1. and 2. Teile), Philologus 60, 229–60, 330–59. Fürst, J. (1902) “Untersuchungen zur Ephemeris des Diktys von Kreta” (3. und 4. Teile), Philologus 61, 374–440, 593–622. Fyrigos, A. (1989) “Barlaam e Petrarca.” Studi petrarcheschi n. s.: 179–200. Gainsford, P. (2012) “Diktys of Crete.” The Cambridge Classical Journal 58, 58–87. Gemmiti, D. (1989) “Barlaam Calabro tra cultura bizantina e preumanesimo italiano.” Studi e ricerche sull’Oriente cristiano, 12: 59–149. Goldwyn, A. (2018) “Trojan Pasts, Medieval Presents: Epic Continuation in Eleventh to Thirteenth Century Genealogical Histories.” in Brill’s Companion to Prequels, Se­ quels, and Retellings of Classical Epic. Edited by Robert Simms, 154–174. Leiden: Brill. Griffin, N. (1907) Dares and Dictys—An introduction to the study of Medieval versions of the story of Troy. Baltimore: J.H. Furst Co. Hankins, J. (2002–2003) “Greek Studies in Italy: From Petrarch to Bruni.” Quaderni P­ etrarcheschi 12–13: 329–339. Hansen, W. (2003) “Strategies of Authentication in Ancient Popular Literature.” In The Ancient Novel and Beyond. Edited by Stelios Panayotakis, Maaike Zimmerman and Wytse Keulen, 301–314. Leiden: Brill. Hepp, N. (1961–1962) “Homère en France au XVIe siècle.” Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, ii. Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche xcvi: 389–508. Hatzilambrou, R. and Obbink, D. (2009) “4944. Dictys Cretensis, Bellum Troianum V 15–17”, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 73: 88–103. Impellizzeri, S. (1964) “Barlaam calabro.” In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani vi. Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 392–397. Karavas, O. (2018) “Triphiodorus’ The Sack of Troy and Colluthus’ The Rape of Helen: A Sequel and a Prequel from Late Antiquity.” in Brill’s Companion to Prequels, Sequels, and Retellings of Classical Epic. Edited by Robert Simms, 52–70. Leiden: Brill. Kim, L. (2010) Homer between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lentano, M. (2014) “Come si (ri)scrive la storia. Darete Frigio e il mito Troiano”, Eugenio Amato, Élisabeth Gaucher-RÉmond, Giampiero Scafoglio (eds.), La lÉgende de Troie de l’AntiquitÉ Tardive au Moyen Âge. Variations, innovations, modifications et rÉÉcri­ tures, dir. Atlantide, n° 2, http://atlantide.univ-nantes.fr. Maciver, C.A. (2012) Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica - Engaging Homer in Late Antiq­ uity. Leiden-Boston: Brill. Maciver, C.A. (2018) “Program and Poetics in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica” in Brill’s Companion to Prequels, Sequels, and Retellings of Classical Epic. Edited by Robert Simms, 71–89. Leiden: Brill.

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Martellotti, G. (1973) “Omero.” In Enciclopedia Dantesca iv, Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 145–148. Merkle, S. (1989) Die Ephemeris belli Troiani des Diktys von Kreta. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang. Merkle, S. (1994) “Telling the True Story of the Trojan War: the Eyewitness Account of Dictys of Crete”, in The Search for the Ancient Novel, edited by James Tatum, 183–196. Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Merkle, S. (1996) “The Truth and Nothing but the Truth: Dictys and Dares”, in The Novel in the Ancient World, edited by Gareth Schmeling, 563–580. Leiden: Brill. Mestre, F. (1990) “Homère, entre Dion Chrysostome et Philostrate.” Anuari Filologìa Barcelona. Studia Graeca et Latina xiii D 1, 89–101. Miguélez-Cavero, L. (2013) ‘The Sack of Troy’: A General Study and a Commentary. Texte und Kommentare, Bd 45. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter. Momigliano, A. (1960) “Erodoto e la storiografia moderna. Alcuni problemi presentati ad un convegno di umanisti.” In Arnaldo Momigliano, Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici, 45–56. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Nì Mheallaigh, K. (2012) “Pseudo-Documentarism and the Limits of Ancient Fiction”, American Journal of Philology 129.3, 403–431. Nì Mheallaigh, K. (2008) “Lost in translation: The Phoenician Journal of Dictys of Crete.” In The Romance between Greece and the East. Edited by Tim Whitmarsh and Stuart Thomson, 196–210. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nuovo, A. and Coppens, C. (2005) I Giolito e la stampa nell’Italia del xvi secolo. Genève: Droz. Pade, M. (2001) “Un nuovo testimone dell’Iliade di Leonzio Pilato.” In Posthomerica iii, edited by Franco Montanari and Franco Pittaluga, 87–102. Genova: Dipartimento di Archeologia, Filologia Classica e loro Tradizioni. Pade, M. (2002) “Leonzio Pilato e Boccaccio: le fonti del De Montibus e la cultura greco-latina di Leonzio”, Quaderni Petrarcheschi 12–13: 257–275. Pade, M. (2008) “The Fortuna of Leontius Pilatus’s Homer. With an Edition of Pier Candido Decembrio’s «Why Homer’s Greek Verses Are Rendered in Latin Prose».” In Classica et Beneventana: Essays Presented to Virginia Brown on the Occasion of her 65th Birthday. Edited by Frank Thomas Coulson and Anna Grotans, 149–172. Turnhout: Brepols. Pade, M. (2011) “Boccaccio, Leonzio, and the Transformation of the Greek Myths.” In Homère à la Renaissance. Mythe et transfigurations. Edited by Luisa Capodieci and Philip Ford, 27–40. Rome: Somogy. Pertusi, A. (1964) Leonzio Pilato fra Petrarca e Boccaccio - Le sue versioni omeriche negli autografi di Venezia e la cultura greca del primo Umanesimo. Venezia-Roma: Olschki. Pontani, F. (2002–2003) “L’Odissea di Petrarca e gli scoli di Leonzio”, Quaderni Pe­ trarcheschi 12–13: 295–328.

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Pontani, F. (2005) Sguardi su Ulisse. La tradizione esegetica greca all’«Odissea», Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Prosperi, V. (2008) “Ditti e Darete tra fiction e storia nel Rinascimento italiano – prime note su un problema di statuto.” In Studi offerti ad Alessandro Perutelli. Edited by Guido Paduano et al. Roma: Aracne. Prosperi, V. (2013) Omero sconfitto. Ricerche sulla Guerra di Troia dall’antichità al Rinas­ cimento. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Prosperi, V. (2014) “The Trojan Chronicles of Dictys and Dares in the Early Italian Humanism: a Reassessment”, Atlantide 2, 1–10. Prosperi, V. (2016) “The Trojan War - Between History and Myth.” in Splendide Mendax: Rethinking Fakes and Forgers in Classical, Late Antique and Christian Literature, edited by Javier Martinez, Edmund Cueva, 93–111. Groningen: Berkhuis. Punzi, A. (1997) “Omero Sire?.” In Posthomerica I - Dall’Antichità al Rinascimento, edited by Franco Montanari and Stefano Pittaluga, 85–98. Genova: Pubblicazioni del D.AR. FI.CL.ET. Ricci, P.G. (1952) “La prima cattedra di greco in Firenze.” Rinascimento iii: 159–165. Ridolfi, R. (1954) “Nuovi contributi alla storia della stampa nel secolo xv: ii. Lo «Stampatore del Virgilius, C. 6061 e l’edizione principe di Omero.” La Bibliofilia 57.2, 85–101. Saïd, S. (2000) “Dio’s Use of Mythology.” In Dio Chrysostom - Politics, Letters, and Phi­ losophy. Edited by Simon Swain, 161–186. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press. Sowerby, R. (1997–1998) (A). “Early Humanist Failure with Homer.” International Jour­ nal of the Classical tradition: 37–63. Sowerby, R. (1997–1998) (B). “Early Humanist Failure with Homer.” International Jour­ nal of the Classical tradition: 165–174. Sowerby, R. (1996) “The Homeric Versio Latina”, Illinois Classical Studies xxi, 161–202. Swain, S. (2000) “Reception and Interpretation”. In Dio Chrysostom - Politics, Letters, and Philosophy. edited by Simon Swain, 13–50. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press. Timpanaro, S. (1987) “Sulla composizione e la tecnica narrativa dell’Ephemeris di ­Ditti–Settimio”. In Filologia e forme letterarie, studi offerti a Francesco della Corte, vol. iv. Edited by Sandro Boldrini, 169–215. Urbino: Università degli Studi di Urbino. Weiss, R. (1977) Medieval and Humanist Greek. Collected Essays. Padova: Antenore.

Chapter 5

Politian: The Philologer as Artist Jaspreet Boparai Politian (1454–1494) was the most learned and brilliant among Lorenzo de’ Medici’s courtiers in Florence; there is no more innovative or influential figure among Renaissance humanists—certainly none who made such a wide range of lasting contributions to classical philology.1 In 1480 Politian was installed as the chair of Poetry and Rhetoric at the Studio in Florence (the city university, effectively): this suited his interests not merely as a scholar, but also as a writer: he first came to Lorenzo the Magnificent’s attention with a precociously sensitive translation of the second book of the Iliad into Latin hexameters, completed before he turned sixteen; his original verses in Latin and Italian include the epyllion Le Stanze per la giostra (begun 1475; abandoned ca. 1478), the ‘protoopera’ Orfeo (1480) and the Sylvae (1482–1486)—all of which enjoyed considerable esteem from their first publication, and occupy a position of unique prestige within quattrocento Italian literature; his Latin letters, his 1489 Miscellanea and his Panepistemon and Lamia of the 1490s (orations on Aristotle) are tours de force of Latin style and rhetoric.2 Politian’s achievements as both a 1 The sole complete biography of Politian (Mencke 1736) contains a great deal of valuable data, particularly on the neo-Latin reception of Politian’s work, and records biographical details and anecdotes unavailable elsewhere. William Roscoe’s once-famous life of Lorenzo de’ Medici (Roscoe 1796) remains the fullest introduction in English to Politian’s life and milieu, though for scholarly purposes Anthony Grafton’s chapter on Politian in his life of Joseph Scaliger (Grafton 1977; included in Grafton 1983) is more suitable, particularly if supplemented by Glenn Most’s translation of Sebastiano Timpanaro’s The Genesis of Lachmann’s Method (Timpanaro 2005), not to mention Nigel Wilson’s discussions of Politian in From Byzantium to Italy (Wilson 1992); the latest edition of Scribes and Scholars (Reynolds and Wilson 2013), provides, in addition to context on Politian’s contributions to philology, an up-to-date bibliography. Ida Maïer’s Ange Politien: La formation d’un poète humaniste (Maïer 1966) is matchless, though complete only up to the year 1480; Paolo Orvieto’s Poliziano e l’ambiente mediceo (Orvieto 2009) is for the moment the most complete, thorough book-length introduction to Politian, with an unusually helpful bibliographical essay as an appendix. For a provocative, contrarian assessment of Politian’s life and achievements Peter Godman’s From Poliziano To Machiavelli (Godman 1998) may be recommended. 2 The first modern critical editions of Politian’s work were produced by Isidore Del Lungo (Politian 1867) and the poet Giosué Carducci (Politian 1863), though since Alessandro Perosa’s editio princeps of the Sylva in scabiem (Politian 1954) numerous editions have been produced of an unusually high standard, of Politian’s unpublished notes and commentaries as well

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poet and a philologist mean that it is difficult to describe his career without the use of superlatives. If an oeuvre’s afterlife is a measure of eminence, then even a partial list of Politian’s literary admirers and emulators is singularly impressive: Ronsard and Du Bellay in France; Spenser, Chapman, Milton and Pope among the English poets, and Sir Thomas Browne and Robert Burton among seventeenth-century prose writers; this is not to mention his continuing high standing in the eyes of classical philologists; Dr. Johnson as well as A.E. Housman aspired to be like him.3 Since the 400th anniversary of Politian’s birth in 1954, studies as well as critical editions of his work have proliferated, particularly in Italy.4 Most of this has been in the form of articles, generally focussing on single aspects or specific details of Politian’s vast output as a poet, philologist, translator or prose writer.5 There have been attempts at more comprehensive studies, concentrating on Politian’s literary oeuvre, as a balance against the intensely philological critical editions of his work; notable books in this vein have been published by Vittore Branca and Mario Martelli in Italy, and Émilie Séris in France.6 General as work meant for more public circulation; among editors currently active one may single out Francesco Bausi (Politian 1996, 2003, 2006b), Paola Megna (Politian 2007, 2012a; Megna 2009), Filippomaria Pontani (Politian 2002) and Luigi Silvano (Politian 2010). Shane Butler’s ongoing edition of the letters for the I Tatti Renaissance Library provides a critical text in addition to an English translation; for the moment only the first of a projected three volumes is available (Politian 2006a). Much of Politian’s prose especially remains to be edited to the standards of modern scholarship; for the moment Ida Maïer’s three-volume Opera omnia (Politian 1971a), which reprints the 1553 Basel edition of Politian’s works (itself based on the Aldine edition of 1498), along with Del Lungo’s edition in the second volume and a third volume of miscellaneous materials, is an essential resource. Translations of Politian’s works into English remain scarce: David Quint’s version of the Stanze (second edition: University Park, PA 1993), Charles Fantazzi’s English rendition of the Silvae for the I Tatti Renaissance Library (Cambridge, MA 2004) and Christopher Celenza’s new edition of the Lamia (New York and Leiden 2010) are all based on reliable critical editions. 3 Mencke 1734 remains the essential starting point for work on the early-modern reception of Politian, though a close study of his influence and later circulation remains a desideratum. Politian’s recent French translators Émilie Séris (Politian 2006c) and Danielle Sonnier (Politian 2011) as well as his editor Francesco Bausi (Politian 2006b) list many of his admirers in passing in the introductions to their respective editions; Renzo Lo Cascio collects a wide range of eulogies and appreciations, mainly from famous Italian critics and scholars, in order to provide at least a sense of Politian’s reputation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (see Lo Cascio 1970: 163–240). 4 See Orvieto 2009: 397–405. 5 The three richest, most extensive collections of articles are: Poliziano e il suo tempo (1957), Poliziano nel suo tempo (Secchi Tarugi ed. 1996) and Agnolo Poliziano: poeta scrittore filologo (Fera and Martelli eds. 1998). Articles on Politian have been widely dispersed; all recent commentaries and critical editions have featured indispensible bibliographies. 6 See Branca 1983; Martelli 1995; Séris 2002.

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criticism and interpretation of Politian’s work is rarer than might be expected for a figure of his reputation. This is a consequence not merely of his unusual verbal precision and intellectual difficulty, but of the sheer mass of material that must be digested in order to make sense of everything he wrote. Paola Megna’s recent exhaustive critical edition and commentary on a single chapter of the Miscellanea is exemplary in the scale and breadth of topics touched on: virtually everything Politian wrote demands this degree of close attention, so complicated is the relationship of his oeuvre in lexis, syntax and expression to an extensive network of ancient and early-modern texts.7 Clearly his is a daunting body of work. Yet for all this, Politian was not omniscient; the limits of his knowledge, and the lacunae in his reading, are worth exploring— particularly with respect to his Greek. 1

Politian’s Greek Readings: Visible Boundaries

Politian’s Greek never matched the virtuoso confidence of his Latin; this is as true of his skills as a palaeographer as of his linguistic and philological talents. He seems unusually shy to discuss the textual traditions of Greek authors, the dates of Greek manuscripts, or the various scripts used in them, given his willingness to voice opinions about Latin manuscripts.8 This relative reticence might be based on the fact that he had a much narrower or more eccentric range of Greek texts available to him; whereas his mastery of Latin language and literature from Plautus to late antiquity can generally be taken for granted. E.B. Fryde’s 1996 study Greek Manuscripts in the Private Library of the Medici 1469–1510 is to be used with caution;9 yet the general picture he provides of manuscripts available to Politian must be broadly reliable for the present purposes. The library of his patron was obviously the one most easily available; it is reasonable to treat it as the main collection with which he worked. A precise, accurate inventory of the Medici library would be impossible to establish; by Fryde’s educated guess there would have been at least 565 Greek manuscripts in the collection at the time of Politian’s death in 1494, up to 200 of which were added in the summer of 1492 by Janus Lascaris.10 7 8 9

10

Politian 2012a (Megna). Fryde 1996: 26. Cf., e.g., Cao 2001: 250: there is little real evidence for Politian’s having owned Francesco Filelfo’s manuscript of Sextus Empiricus. Indeed Fryde seems throughout his study to have a confidence in his speculative conclusions that might appear exaggerated, or even misplaced, after a careful examination of his footnotes and citations. Fryde 1996: 1, 26–29.

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Politian had a different notion of a classical-Greek ‘canon’ from a modern classicist’s; or at least he read a very different body of texts. Fryde has assembled a rough list of ‘Greek mss in the Medici Library certainly, or probably, used by Politian; manuscripts commissioned by him for the Medici Library; [and] manuscripts possessed by him.’11 The range of authors here may be telling: there are poets and poetry here: Hesiod, Theognis, Aratus, Theocritus, Apollonius; the Homeric Hymns, the Greek Anthology; yet the majority of works in this list seem to be prose: Lucian, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Xenophon and a great deal of Plutarch. More to the point, most manuscripts in this (admittedly perhaps unreliable) list are of miscellaneous scientific works or works of Hellenistic or Imperial-era scholarship, as well as antique or Byzantine commentaries, scholia and anthologies: Strabo, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Galen; Pollux grammaticus’s Onomasticon and other lexicographic or grammatical texts; Eustathius’s commentary on Homer; commentaries on Aristotle; Athenaeus’s miscellaneous Deipnosophistae; the anthology of Stobaeus. This does not closely resemble the ‘traditional’ classical curriculum as commonly understood today – a version of the Byzantine school curriculum as filtered through 19th-century Oxford:12 Lysias, the tragedians, Herodotus and Thucydides, to name a few, are absent from this list. Politian’s Hellenism was by no means quite so relentlessly focussed on fifth-century Athens as modern visions of ancient Greece tend to be. Today a classicist may take for granted the easy availability of Greek literature in cheap, reasonably reliable editions. Even with privileged access to one of the great libraries of Renaissance Italy, Politian had no such luxury, and took his Greek texts where he could find them, often copying out lengthy extracts himself. Where he could not copy out a text, he copied out Byzantine commentaries on them, or combed anthologies and the like for such scraps of rare authors as he could find. There was little unusual about this in his context. Luigi Silvano has given a minutely detailed description of MS Par. Gr. 3069 from the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, a surviving miscellany of Politian’s notes on Greek texts, along with transcribed extracts from Greek authors; all this was produced between 1483 and April 1494.13 There are extracts from all 48 books of Nonnus’s Dionysiaca, and passages from Plutarch, Polybius and Cassius Dio, as well as the philosophers Porphyry, Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrho; though most of the transcribed excerpts here are from Alexandrian, Imperial-Greek and Byzantine-era commentators and epitomists: Herodian

11 12 13

Ibid. 821–826. See Wilson 1983: 13–27 for a detailed discussion. See Politian 2010 (Silvano): xxxvi–lix.

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grammaticus, the dream interpreter Artemidorus, Ammonius grammaticus and nameless scholiasts on writers from Lycophron and Apollonius Rhodius to Aristotle and Artemidorus. There are excerpts from the scholia to Euripides’ Hippolytus and Aeschylus’s Agamemnon and Eumenides, as well as the Clouds, Frogs, Ecclesiazusae, Birds, Lysistrata, Wasps and Peace of Aristophanes. This is a great deal of material for 500 or so sides of tiny handwriting (when the 70 or so leaves of course material on the Odyssey in the volume are ignored). No text was evidently copied out in full. Note how the transcriptions of Athenian dramatists are only second-hand. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; yet (except in the case of hexameter and elegy) Politian’s knowledge of Greek verse often seems to coincide suspiciously with what one might find in scholia, or excerpted in late-antique anthologies. Politian shows little sign of any preoccupation with classical drama. The unfinished second ‘century’ of Politian’s Miscellanea (1494) is a very different work from the original 1489 Miscellanea, which concentrates mainly on matters related to Latin poetry (with a few famous chapters on Aristotle and Callimachus). The later collection engages more with Greek, but not with Greek verse: Aristotle, Athenaeus, Galen, Pausanias and Plutarch are the starting points for many discussions; but again Homer, Hesiod, Theognis, Pindar, the tragedians, Theocritus, Aratus and Apollonius Rhodius are minor concerns (where mentioned at all). Callimachus figures largely in two chapters, 10 and 57; but Cicero, Martial, Pliny, Suetonius, Terence—and (among the Greeks) A­ristotle—dominate the Miscellaneorum centuria secunda. Chapter 47, on a lost play by Euripides, does not demonstrate familiarity with any of the Euripidean dramas supposed by Fryde to be in the Medici library.14 It is reasonable to question whether Politian ever read a complete Greek drama, or an entire Pindaric ode.15 Today Sophocles’ Antigone, Euripides’ Medea and the Aeschylean Prometheus Bound are all standard texts for beginning Hellenists; clearly Greek studies in fifteenth-century Florence were part of a very different world.

14 15

Politian 1978 (Branca and Pastore Stocchi): 83–85; for a (probably over-generous) speculative catalogue of the Medici library mss see Fryde 1996: 765–834. Ida Maïer (1966: 381) makes the mistake in her catalogue of Politian’s manuscripts of assuming that Politian transcribed scholia to Sophocles the tragedian without having transcribed the text itself; in fact Politian transcribed passages from a commentary on Apollonius Rhodius by Sophocleus, a grammarian of the 2nd century AD in the Laurentian Library MS 32.45. See Fryde 1996 (2: 781). Politian was not known to have made use of the somewhat larger collection of tragedies and Aristophanic comedies available in the Convent of St. Mark in Florence (see Pertusi 1960: 115–116).

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Cobbling Together a Commentary

Systematic reference materials such as classical dictionaries, and even reliable grammars, were simply not available to Politian; in order to acquire knowledge of Greek literature he had to exercise his memory and imagination a great deal, and make do with unpromising, even chaotic resources. His notes from his second course on Suetonius (given in 1490–1491, eight years after the first)16 reveal glimpses of just how heavily he relied on Second-Sophistic texts and Byzantine commentaries for his Greek knowledge. The surviving notes on Suetonius’s life of Julius Caesar predictably make heavy use of Plutarch’s biography; more interesting is his open and frequent use of the Suda to confirm or discuss stray details and incidental curiosities.17 As a commentator on this text Politian digresses and rambles to a degree unusual for him; this is perhaps in keeping with the character of Suetonius’s Lives. At the end of chapter 30 of the life of Caesar, Suetonius notes how, according to Cicero (De officiis iii. 82), Caesar was fond of quoting lines 524–525 of Euripides’ Phoenician Women; Politian’s note on this is of interest for its avoidance of the play itself as a topic of discussion: quod existimasse videbatur et cicero scribens de officiis libro tertio semper. Antiqua lectio sic habet: Cicero scribens De officiis libro tertio semper Caesarem in ore habuisse: est in Phoinissis: εἴπερ γὰρ ἀδικεῖν χρὴ τυραννίδος περὶ κάλλιστον ἀδίκημα τἄλλα εὐσεβεῖν χρέων, Euripidis versus, quod sic ipse convertit. [i.] Sed quoniam mihi ordo perturbatus ac praepositus videtur, suspicor ita legendum: Quod existimasse videbatur et Cicero scribens De officiis tertio libro semper Caesarem in ore habuisse ex Phoenissis Euripidis versus, quod sic ipse convertit. [ii.] Ceterum, ut opinor, studiosus aliquis, quaesitos ipsos graecos Euripidis versus ascripserit, ut fit, margini quos de inde in contextum Suetonii verborum librarius aliquis, parum peritus, admisit. [iii.] Hoc scio locum autem de suspicione pendere potius quam de argumento. [iv.] Ceterum nec apud ipsum quidem Ciceronem vetusta lectio ipsos habet Euripidis versus, sed latinos dumtaxat conversos; solet enim Cicero in latina oratione non plus graece loqui quam in graeca latine, sicut ipse de se ait in I. Tusculanarum Quaestionum. [v.] Quod tamen ad epistolas eius non pertinet.18 16 See Cesarini Martinelli 1996: 468–469 and 476–477, which confirm Gianna Gardenal (Politian 1975: 5–6) on the dates of these courses. 17 Politian 1975 (Gardenal): 56, 57, 59 et passim. 18 Ibid.: 61: ‘cicero was seemingly also of this opinion when he wrote in the third book of his de officiis: The old manuscript reading is thus: ‘Cicero writes in the third book of De officiis that Caesar was fond of repeating [this line], which is from

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Politian’s suggested emendation is relevant to his reading of the text; and his discussion of Cicero is to be expected, given that Cicero was an important source for Suetonius in this Life; though the lack of material about Euripides here is suspicious. Not long afterwards, Politian is by no means shy to translate a long passage from book V of Athenaeus’s Deipnosophistae with the thinnest of pretexts.19 Politian loves to ramble on in detail about classical texts; why is he relatively tight-lipped about Euripides? Later on in the same commentary, Politian quotes Euripides in a gloss on a line in chapter 82 (Suetonius’s account of Caesar’s murder); he passes over in silence Caesar’s famous last words καὶ σὺ τεκνὸν, preferring to draw attention to the way Caesar tried to remain decently covered as he fell: quo honestius caderet. Euripides in tragoedia Hecuba de Polixena: πολλὴν πρόνοιαν εἶχεν εὐσχημῶς πεσεῖν. Quod et ad Vestalem damnatam transtulit in epistolis Plinius; Ovidius quoque in Fastis de Lucretia: Tunc quoque iam moriens, ne non procumbat honeste respicit: haec etiam cura cadentis erat.20 What is odd is that this note is found five pages earlier on a cancelled leaf of the same manuscript, repeated almost word-for-word, except that ‘Euripides in tragoedia Hecuba de Polixena’ is written as ‘Euripides de Iphigenia.’ Perhaps this is an easy slip to make. It sounds like the sort of line that might have been said about Iphigenia when Agamemnon sacrificed her at Aulis, even if no such

19 20

[Euripides’] Phoenician Women: If one must commit injustice, it is best to do so for the sake of tyranny, whilst being God-fearing in everything else.’ [i.] But as the word order seems to me jumbled out of order, I conjecture that it ought to read: ‘Cicero was seemingly also of this opinion when he wrote in the third book of his De officiis that Caesar always repeated certain lines from Euripides’ Phoenician Women, which he thus translated ….’ [ii.] As for the rest: I imagine that some zealous reader found Euripides’ Greek verses and wrote them in the margin, as usually happens, whence some ignorant copyist inserted them into this passage of Suetonius. [iii.] Of course I know this point depends more on a hunch than on evidence. [iv.] On the other hand, the oldest available reading of the relevant passage in Cicero does not have Euripides’ lines, merely a Latin version; because Cicero habitually never used more Greek in Latin writing than he used Latin in a Greek text, as he says in the first book of the Tusculan Disputations. [v.] Though this does not apply to his letters.’ Ibid.: 63–65. Ibid.: 68: ‘that he might fall more decently: Euripides, in his tragedy the Hecuba, on Polyxena: She took great care to fall decently to the ground. Which Pliny in his letters also transferred to the condemned Vestal virgin; Ovid also says this in his Fasti about Lucretia: Even in dying she took care to sink decently to the floor; this was her thought even as she fell.’ The references are to line 565 of the Hecuba; Pliny, Epistles iv.xi.10; Ovid, Fasti ii. 833–834.

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line will be found in Euripides’s Iphigenia in Aulis (or even Iphigenia Among the Taurians). Polyxena was sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles after the Trojan War; although there are certain parallels and connections between her story and Iphigenia’s, Iphigenia is nowhere mentioned in the text of the play. It is difficult to see how Politian could have made a mistake like this if he actually knew the text of the Hecuba, rather than stray lines from it as quoted in other sources. Politian’s marginal notes on the Georgics in his copy of Vergil’s works (circa 1483) contain further suspicious Euripides references: [Georgics i.9:] acheloia. Angelus: apud antiquissimos Graecos auctores, id quod Macrobius multis comprobat [Macrobius Saturnalia V.xviii.4], proprie in aquae significatione ponebatur Achelous, qua significatione et Aristophanes comicus eodem teste in comedia Colato [frag. 351 Kock] utitur et cur sic loqui sint soliti tum Ephorus notissimus scriptor historiarum cum vero Dydymys grammaticorum longe eruditiccimus ostendunt; qui et Euripidis [fr. 530 Nauck] auctoritate declarat. Pro qua libet atque Acheloum poni solitum. Qui haec explicatius volet ex ipso Macrobii libro petat. angelus: Plato in Phaedro: ἥ τε αὖ πηγὴ χαριεστάτη ὑπὸ τῆς πλατάνου ῥεῖ μάλα ψυχροῦ ὕδατος, ὥστε γε τῷ ποδὶ τεκμήρασθαι. Νυμφῶν τέ τινων καὶ Ἀχελῴου ἱερὸν ἀπὸ τῶν κορῶν τε καὶ ἀγαλμάτων ἔοικεν εἶναι etc. [Phaedrus 230b] Ovidius in 5o Fastorum: Donec eras mixtus nullis, Acheloe, racemis. [Fasti V.343] Euripides in Pentheo [sic] describens ipsius domus incendium, ut videbatur: ὃ δ᾽ ὡς ἐσεῖδε, δώματ᾽ αἴθεσθαι δοκῶν, ᾖσσ᾽ ἐκεῖσε κᾆτ᾽ ἐκεῖσε, δμωσὶν Ἀχελῷον φέρειν ἐννέπων. [Bacchae 624–626] Idem in eadem: Ἀχελῴου θύγατερ,

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πότνι᾽ εὐπάρθενε Δίρκα, [Bacchae 519–520] Euripides in Andromacha: ἐκ χρυσηλάτων τευχέων χερὶ σπείρουσαν Ἀχελῴου δρόσον [Andromache 166–167]21 Here the main clues to an indirect source are the mis-titling of the Bacchae as the Pentheus; the fact that the Bacchae quotations are out of order is less of a smoking gun. Still, the open reliance on Macrobius, and the way in which the Euripides quotations are organised as they might have been in a lexicon or some other such Byzantine reference material, do not suggest a first-hand acquaintance with the Bacchae or Andromache, though both plays were potentially available to Politian somewhere in Florence at the time. Politian does occasionally discuss Greek drama, in his commentaries and in both ‘centuries’ of his Miscellanea; though these discussions prove little about what he had actually managed to read: his capacious memory meant that he retained an extraordinary amount of material even on texts that were lost to him. The 1481 commentary on the Ovidian epistle of Sappho to Phaon 21

Politian 1990 (Castano Musicò): 6: ‘acheloia. Politian’s note: in the most ancient Greek writers, as Macrobius conclusively demonstrates, ‘Achelous’ was used properly to mean ‘water,’ as Aristophanes (according to Macrobius) also says in his comedy Colatus; thus both the famous historian Ephorus and Didymus, the most learned of grammarians, used to use the term as well. He proves this using Euripides as an example. Achelous is generally used on that account. Anybody who wants a clearer account can find all this in Macrobius. ‘Politian’s note: Plato in the Phaedrus: The stream flows charmingly under the planetree, with the coolest water, to judge with my foot. From the figurines and statues the spot appears to be sacred to Achelous and some nymphs etc. ‘Ovid in the 5th book of the Fasti: As long as you, Achelous, were mixed with no grapes. ‘Euripides, in the Pentheus [sic], describes the apparent burning of Pentheus’s house: [Pentheus] saw this and, think that his house was on fire, ran in every direction, ordering his servants to bring Achelous [=water]. ‘Likewise in the same play: Daughter of Achelous, Lady Dirce, fair maiden.’ ‘Euripides in the Andromache: scattering Achelous’s waters by hand from my golden vessels.’

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is a breath-taking display of Politian’s resourcefulness: he manages to mine unpromising source material for an impressive range of quotations from (and facts on) Sappho. A comparison of all the fragments from Sappho quoted here with Lobel and Page’s Poetarum Lesbiorum fragmenta reveals that all Politian’s citations must have been found in Eustathius, Maximus Tyrius and other such commentaries. Only two poems by Sappho (quoted by Longinus and Dionysus of Halicarnassus) survived in the manuscript tradition—neither of which Politian seems to have read by the composition of these notes; other than scattered quotations, Sappho’s work was essentially lost, until the gradual recovery of some further fragments from papyrus. The text of this Ovidian poem had only recently been discovered; Politian’s adversaries Giorgio Merula (Venice 1471) and Domizio Calderini (Brescia 1476) had already composed studies of it though Politian’s was the first course on it.22 Even now controversy remains as to whether this epistle of Sappho to Phaon really is Ovid’s work. Politian says little about its attribution except to assert its authenticity before summarising it;23 the praelectio is more of an excuse to talk about Sappho, and collect testimonia. Cum multae igitur tam apud Graecos quam apud nostros insignes poeta virtute mulieres exstiterint, una tamen Sappho haec est, quae inter omnes facile principatum obtinet, adeoque omnium eius lyrica opera indicio probata sunt, ut neque Strabo θαυμαστόν τι χρῆμα [Strabo xiii. ii.3] appellare eam dubitet, neque Plato elegantissime hoc disticho quasi decimam attribuere Musis dubitaverit: Ἐννέα τὰς Μούσας φασὶ μέν τινες· ὡς ὀλιγώρως· ἠνίδε καὶ Σαπφὼ Λεσβόθεν ἡ δεκάτη. [Anthologia Palatina ix.dvi] Itaque et Socrates ille Platonicus in Phaedro negat admirari se amatoriam Lysiae orationem, quam sibi Myrrhinusius ostenderit Phaedrus πλῆρες τὸ στῆθος ἒχων ὥσπερ ἀγγεῖον, ἀλλοτρίων ναμάτων ἤ που Σαπφοῦς τῆς καλῆς [Plato Phaedrus 235c; quoted from Maximus Tyrius’s paraphrase xviii.7b]—ita enim illam a carminum elegantia appellat, quamvis et brevi statura esset, ut Maximus quoque Tyrius ait, et nigro esset colore [Maximus Tyrius xviii.7c–d]24 22 23 24

Politian 1971b (Lazzeri): xii. Ibid.: 9. Ibid.: 5: ‘[ … ] Although there have been many women distinguished for poetical skill both amongst the Greeks and ourselves, still, there is only one Sappho, who easily earns first

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From here the passage carries on, collecting scraps of information from Strabo, the Suidas, Plutarch, Lucian and Pliny. This passage is paraphrased, translated or half-copied from Maximus Tyrius; Politian seems to be going through his sources in order here, gathering any data that might talk around his subject. His task becomes harder, once he decides to talk about the poetry of a poetess whose work he is unable to read: Libros composuit lyricos novem [sc. Sappho], unde Tullius Laurotes eleganter dixit singulas Musas florem unum singulis iis libellis impertisse: ἢν δέ με Μουσέων αἰτήσας χάριν, ὧν ἀρ’ ἑκάστης δαίμονος ἄνθος ἐμῇ θῆκα παρ’ ἐννέαδι, γνώσεαι, ὡς Ἀίδεω σκότον ἔκφυγον. [Palatine Anthology vii.xvii.5–7] Eadem et plectrum prima invenit et praeter lyricos versus elegias quoque, epigrammata neniasque composuit. Sed et Sapphus ἐπιθαλαμίους magnopere Dionysius Alicarnassius laudat [Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ars rhetorica 4.1]. Usa autem est eolica lingua, unde in Magia apuleius: ‘etiam mulier lesbia, lascive illa quidem […], ut nobis insolentiam linguae suae dulcidine carminum commendet.’ [Apuleius Apologia 9] Hanc Horatius imitatus est itaque in epistola: ‘temperat Alcei musam pede mascula Sappho.’ [Horace, Epistles i.xix.28; ‘Alcei’ is a slip for ‘Archilochi’ in the original] Eadem, ut Plutarchus in libro de musica testatur, harmoniam invenit quam μιξολυδιστί vocant, ut etiam auctor est Aristoxenus…25 place out of all of them, and of all her work the lyric poems are evidently the best, because Strabo does not hesitate to call them something wonderful, nor did Plato waver in most graciously granting her a tenth place among the Muses (as it were) in this distich: They say that there are nine Muses – carelessly: Because Sappho of Lesbos is the tenth.  Thus Plato’s Socrates declines to admit any admiration for Lysias’s speech on love, when Myrrhinusian Phaedrus showed himself to have his heart full like a bucket, with streams other than beautiful Sappho’s.  She was called beautiful on account of the elegance of her poems, as she was rather short of stature, as Maximus Tyrius, and black of colour.’ 25 Ibid.: 6–7: ‘[Sappho] composed nine volumes of lyric verse; on that account Tullius Laurotes elegantly says that each Muse bestowed a flower on each volume: If you ask about me for the sake of the Muses, from each of whom I took a flower to lay beside my nine [anthologies], you will find that I escaped the shadow of Death.

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Even in the commentary to this verse epistle Politian tries to fit in references to Sappho wherever possible: in his gloss on the very opening of the poem she is the first topic of discussion even though this is a line-by-line commentary and the excuse appears tenuous: nunquid. Interrogatio, figura coniuncta ironiae, quae et amantis ingenio et ipsius nimirum Sapphus moribus convenit. Unde Tyrius de illa: καὶ εἰρωνεύεται αὐτὰ ἐκεῖνα τοῦ Σωκράτους. [Maximus Tyrius xviii.9d] Sed et ipse omnino Amor quasi εἴρων aliquis est, unde illum Socrates σοφιστήν, ipsa in poematis Sappho μυθοπλόκον vocat. [Sappho frag. 188 Lobel-Page] Unde eleganter in Amore fugitivo Moschus: Si flentem cernes, ne mox fallare caveto, et si arridebet, magis attrahe; et oscula si fors ferre volet, fugito: sunt noxia et oscula, in ipsis suntque venena labris. [moschus, Amor fugitivus 25–28 in Politian’s own 1473 translation]26 Horace’s odes are quoted throughout this commentary, being well known to convey something of Sappho, even if one might not be precisely clear on what that ‘something’ would be: [8] barbitos. Pollux: ὧν εἴδη τῶν μὲν κρουομένων λύρα, κιθάρα, βάρβιτον, [Pollux 4.59] et paulo post ostendit Aristophanem verbo usum βαρβιτίζειν. [frag. 752 Koch