Cicero Refused to Die : Ciceronian Influence Through the Centuries [1 ed.] 9789004244764, 9789004243446

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Cicero Refused to Die

Presenting the Past Central Issues in Medieval and Early Modern Studies Across the Disciplines

General Editor

Nancy van Deusen

VOLUME 4

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

Cicero Refused to Die Ciceronian Influence through the Centuries

Edited by

Nancy van Deusen

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2013

Cover illustration: The Colosseum in Rome. © Photograph with kind permission of the Copy Center, Claremont University Consortium Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cicero refused to die: Ciceronian influence through the centuries / edited by Nancy van Deusen.   pages cm. -- (Presenting the past, ISSN 1875-2799; VOLUME 4)  Includes index.  ISBN 978-90-04-24344-6 (alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-24476-4 (e-book) 1. Cicero, Marcus Tullius--Influence. I. Van Deusen, Nancy (Nancy Elizabeth) editor of compilation.  B553.C535 2013  937’.05092--dc23 2013002790

ISSN 1875-2799 ISBN 978-90-04-24344-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-24476-4 (e-book) Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. 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.

CONTENTS List of Contributors������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������vii Introduction: Cicero Refused to Die: Ciceronian Influence through the Centuries  Nancy van Deusen������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 1 Coluccio Salutati’s View of the History of the Latin Language  Christopher S. Celenza����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 5 Reading the Classics in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: New Manuscript Discoveries  Frank Coulson������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������21 Cicero Redivivus Apud Scurras: Some Early Medieval Treatments of the Great Orator  Michael W. Herren����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������39 Cicero through Quintilian’s Eyes in the Middle Ages  Nancy van Deusen����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������47 Dreaming the Dream of Scipio  Leonard Michael Koff����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������65 “For I Hadde Red of Affrycan Byforn:” Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis and Chaucer’s Early Dream Visions  Timothy A. Shonk������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������85 Colloquia Familiaria: An Aspect of Ciceronianism Reconsidered  Terence Tunberg����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 123 Ciceronian Echoes in Marsilio Ficino  Valery Rees��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 141 Ciceronian Rhetoric and Oratory from St. Augustine to Guarino da Verona  John O. Ward����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 163

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Cicero’s Portrait and the Roman Villa  George L. Gorse������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 197 List of Figure Locations�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 209 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 211

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Christopher S. Celenza, Johns Hopkins University Frank Coulson, Ohio State University Nancy van Deusen, Claremont Graduate University George L. Gorse, Pomona College Michael Herren, York University, Toronto Leonard Michael Koff, University of California, Los Angeles Valery Rees, School of Economic Science, London Timothy A. Shonk, Eastern Illinois University Terence Tunberg, University of Kentucky John O. Ward, University of Sydney

INTRODUCTION CICERO REFUSED TO DIE Nancy van Deusen In light of Plutarch’s account of the last moments of Cicero’s life, the title of this volume, “Cicero Refused to Die,” appears to be ironic. In Plutarch’s account, reported by Anthony Everitt,1 Cicero, fleeing from Brutus and Octavian, had put himself in the hands of his servants who then took him to his villa, about sixty miles south of Caeta, near Formiae—a villa that he had used frequently as a retreat from the heat of the summer. In Plutarch’s account as the boat was being rowed to land, a flock of crows approached, cawing loudly. They perched on both ends of the sail, and pecked at the ends of the ropes. Despite the fact that everyone thought this to be a bad omen, Cicero disembarked and went into the house to rest. Then, accordingly to Plutarch, “Most of the crows perched around the window, making a tremendous cawing. One of them flew down to the bed where Cicero was lying with his head all covered up, and little by little began to drag the garment away from his face with its beak. When the servants saw this they reproached themselves for standing by as spectators waiting for their master to be murdered, and doing nothing to defend him, while these wild brute creatures were helping him and caring for him in his undeserved ill fortune. So partly by entreaty and partly by force, they took him up and carried him in his litter towards the sea.” Too late. Cicero’s murderers were already at the door, which they broke down, whereupon they quickly found Cicero and with three sword strokes cut off his head and hands.2 Details differ in the accounts that have come down to us, but on one there is agreement: Cicero met death with containment, courage, and resolution. At times timid, petulant, even insecure in daily life, Cicero, apparently at his death, refused to be defeated by what seems to us to be

1 Anthony Everitt, Cicero. The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician (New York, 2003), pp. 317–18. 2 Everitt’s account of Cicero’s death is based on Plutarch, Livy (quoted by Seneca the Elder), and Appian: Plutarch, Life of Cicero XLVII 6, Seneca the Elder, Suasoriae VI 19, Plut Cic XLIX 1.

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an inconceivable turn of misfortune, a thoroughly ignominious death of one who has been named the greatest Roman politician, one of the greatest Latin writers and philosophers; and surely one of very few great orators in the Latin language. As such, Cicero, in spite, also, of the fact that his life, as his death, was regarded variously, has refused to die. How so? What qualities are responsible for Cicero’s magnetism and influence? Through his letters to his friend Atticus, virtually unknown in antiquity, discovered by Petrarch, the idealized, heroic, portrait of Cicero, the philosopher, lawyer, politician, was combined with a man of conflicting, even quite petty, emotions and impulses. Perhaps, however, it is the very human Cicero that has proven to be so arresting, offering encouragement, that in spite of his flaws, his occasional quite apparent lack of judgment (in marrying for a brief period of time, for example, his teenage ward), his overwhelming grief at the death of his daughter, Tullia, his spite towards his enemies and petulance shown to his friends, his blistering sarcasm, ribald sense of humor—in spite of character traits that can be seen to balance out his formidable talent, intelligence, and attainment, Cicero’s influence has remained for over two millennia. Quintilian, in his frequent quotation and depiction of Cicero as the ultimate master of the rhetorical discipline, the most effective master of rhetoric and the discipline of persuasion, perhaps, who had ever lived, is careful to mention that his presentation of Cicero’s life and work is a mosaic of desirable modular traits, completely and faithfully representing no one. Quintilian’s “Cicero” is constructed for purposes of instruction.3 This volume in the series, “Presenting the Past: Central Issues in Medieval and Early Modern Studies Across the Disciplines,” explores the life, work, tradition, influence, and usefulness, of Cicero’s monumental 3 There is a distinction to be made here between a deliberately constructed figura and legends that have accumulated concerning, for example, Virgil. Jan M. Ziolkowski in his introduction to the reprint of Domenico Comparetti’s Vergil in the Middle Ages, trans. E.F.M. Benecke, originally published 1885 (Princeton, 1997), points out that “The legends which first surfaced around the middle of the twelfth century, converted Vergil into a magician, endowed him with supernatural powers, and attributed to him characteristics that had been ascribed to the other prophet-sages and magicians whom he soon overshadowed” (p. viii), and further (p. xv), “Although Comparetti may be remembered most often in conjunction with the fantastic legends of the magician Vergil, he expended just as much effort in satisfying the need for ‘an adequate history of the classical studies of the Middle Ages;’” cf. p. 21. Comparisons of, and allusions to, as well as analogies between, Virgil and Cicero abound, also, for example in the constructed “Cicero” of Quintilian, who quotes Cicero much more frequently than Virgil, using the two writers for quite different purposes. It is of interest to note the comparative reception of these two analogous, yet quite distinctive, writers that maintained such an influence for such a long period of time.



introduction: cicero refused to die3

attainment, the “majesty of speech possessed by learned antiquity” (Christopher S. Celenza), and the sheer materiality of subject matter and language (Frank Coulson). We will regard tools of thought and word, education as inner transformation, and the contingent re-discovery and re-appropriation of the Latin language in what has now become known as “Neo-Latin” explored by Terence Tunberg in his article, “Colloquia familiaria: an Aspect of Ciceronianism Reconsidered.” At each of these junctures Cicero stands ready to instruct, give advice, and urge us on. As John Ward has stated, in his comprehensive contribution to this volume, “Ciceronian Rhetoric and Oratory from St. Augustine to Guarino da Verona,” “There are many Ciceros. There is the Cicero of the Epistulae, there is the Cicero of the orations, of the mature rhetorical treatises, of the philosophical works, and, behind all these there is the real Cicero, one of the most remarkable men of a most remarkable period, and one whose varied and pioneering life was crowned with tragedy.” This “real Cicero” was, most of all, to be imitated, not only in antiquity when one’s character, upbringing, and refinement were judged according to the correctness and sophistication with which one handled the Latin language; but in the Middle Ages and far beyond, throughout many centuries in which Latin was, again as Tunberg points out, “a nearly universal vehicle for communication in all sorts of arts, sciences, disciplines, in both secular and ecclesiastical administration, but had been no one’s native language for many centuries.” How Cicero and his manners of handling the Latin language should be imitated—whether this in fact was possible—was another question accompanied by much discussion and debate. There was a significant division between a group of humanists who argued that Cicero alone constituted the appropriate model for Neo-Latin prose and their opponents who took a more eclectic position and asserted that Neo-Latin writers should draw elements of expression from a variety of authors (Tunberg). Much earlier on, Quintilian seems to have struck a middle way. While relying for hundreds of quotations on Cicero, Quintilian nevertheless mentions a large group of writers/orators who could and should be emulated—names that would in all probability have otherwise disappeared from mention and memory. Cicero refused to die—with all of his figures, characters, situations, and pieces of advice to orators, or good sense for simply living a productive, reasonable, even contented life, with friends, within a profession, even a tumultuous one, and in old age. We find Cicero here and there, emulated by Marsilio Ficino (discussed by Valery Rees), within an evocation of the Roman villa, which played such an important role in Cicero’s life (see the

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contribution of George L. Gorse). We know from Plutarch, Livy, and from Cicero himself through his letters that he spent as much of his time as he could in his villas outside of Rome, even retiring from public life more than once only to return again into the fray. Finally, The Dream of Scipio, with its commentary by Macrobius, in addition to the presentation of Cicero to be found in the Art of Rhetoric of Quintilian, Cicero, the real as well as an imagined persona, greatly influenced, even arbitrated to some extent, the intellectual culture of the Middle Ages. We listen to the voices of Leonard M. Koff (“Dreaming the Dream of Scipio”), and Timothy A. Shonk (“‘For I hadde red of Affrycan byforn,’ Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis and Chaucer’s Early Dream Visions”). Quintilian made a good deal of Cicero’s sense of humor, which, apparently got him into a good deal of trouble. Michael Herren, in his contribution to this volume, “Cicero’s Humor,” discusses this aspect of Cicero’s personality, without which any appraisal of the man and his continuing influence would be incomplete. A final question could be raised, namely, that of Cicero’s influence today, in politics, or in contemporary education, and for what reasons. Admittedly, the study of Latin is not considered as necessary as it was even a generation ago. If students no longer learn Latin reading Cicero, what then can be gained from reading his writings and becoming acquainted with his points of view? Can it be that today, finally, Cicero is no longer a living influence as he was on the discipline of persuasion, that is, public speaking, as a vade mecum, a wise and stable counselor at one’s side, giving good advice on choosing and keeping friends, what to do as one faces retirement from public life and confronts the vicissitudes of old age, how to make use of solitude in productive and pleasant ways in order to gain renewed strength and personal vigor? Perhaps at no time are these issues as questions and answers so relevant, and, on the other hand, the absence of good counsel so strategic. It is to be hoped that this volume will not only place Cicero in his pivotal position within the culture of classical antiquity, influencing in even self-evident ways mental directions and topics of an extended European Middle Ages, but will also serve as an incentive to read again what Cicero wrote: his extended rhetorical essays written in the midst of his own political career (De oratore, 55 b.c., De re publica, 54 b.c., De legibus, 52–43 b.c.), as well as his philosophical works (De natura deorum, 45–44 b.c., De finibus bonorum et malorum, De divinatione, De fato, De officiis). As long as there is interest in discernment, in good, efficient, and effective, government with a foundation in justice, clarity, and consensus—for which Cicero fought unrelentingly—and in “the good life,” in youth as well as in old age, Cicero will refuse to die.

COLUCCIO SALUTATI’S VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE Christopher S. Celenza Coluccio Salutati’s conception of the history of the Latin language evolved in a context of conversation and debate. The discussions within which his thoughts on this problem are found are contained in a series of letters from the last decade of the fourteenth century and the first decade of the fifteenth.1 The 1390s saw Salutati emerge as the center of Florentine humanism, a father figure around whom Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, and a number of other young members of Florence’s next intellectual generation gathered. Since 1375, Salutati had held the post of Chancellor of Florence, a very powerful position in Florence’s republican government, which made him in effect Florence’s chief letter-writer and as such one of its principal diplomatic presences, as the republic dealt with domestic and foreign matters. Salutati stuck to traditional medieval forms of address in his public correspondence; politics was no place for innovation.2 Yet his private letters manifest many of his most definitive statements on problems, such as the nature of the Latin language, that became the subject of sharper and more focused discussions in the decades to come. One of the most important, if not always overtly articulated, problems of the “long fifteenth century,” from the time when Petrarch (1304–74) was in his full maturity to the 1520s, had to do with the nature of the Latin

1 The following abbreviations will be employed in this study: Salutati, Epistolario = Coluccio Salutati, Epistolario, ed. F. Novati, 4 vols, Fonti per la storia d’Italia 15–18 (Rome, 1891–1911); McLaughlin, Imitation = M. McLaughlin, Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo (Oxford, 1995); Witt, Hercules = R.G. Witt, Hercules at the Crossroads: The Life, Works, and Thought of Coluccio Salutati (Durham, NC, 1983); Witt, Footsteps = R.G. Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Leiden, 2003). Recent literature on Salutati can be found in R. Cardini, P. Viti, eds., Coluccio Salutati e Firenze: Ideologia e formazione dello Stato (Florence, 2008); T. DeRobertis, G. Tanturli, and S. Zamponi, Coluccio Salutati e l’invenzione dell’umanesimo (Florence, 2008). 2 See R.G. Witt, Coluccio Salutati and his Public Letters (Geneva, 1976), and McLaughlin, Imitation, 67–78.

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language and its utility as an instrument of culture.3 Humanists in the immediate generation after Salutati began gradually to amass evidence, from sources like Varro, Cicero’s Brutus, and Aulus Gellius, to name just some, that ancient Roman Latin had been a natural, rather than an artificial, language: a tongue learned from birth which possessed different degrees of refinement, naturally enough, but one that was employed by wide varieties of the ancient populace, whose social strata possessed vastly differing levels of education. Another way of putting this (as Silvia Rizzo has done) is that, in discovering that ancient Roman Latin had once been a living language, fifteenth-century humanists discovered that Latin was also a dead language, learned in their own day only though formal education.4 As that debate came to an end, there seemed two avenues for Latin and its use: on the one hand, there was the use of an eclectic but classically based Latin as a kind of code. This was the choice, to give one example, of Angelo Poliziano, whose deliberately eclectic Latin style concealed both deep learning and the expansion of the Latin canon that the fifteenth century, now behind him, had achieved. On the other, there was the use of a basically Ciceronian prose, classicizing enough to be respectable by now evolved Renaissance standards, but uniform enough that it could serve as an instrument of culture translatable across the newly emerging sovereign states of western Europe. The year 1540, when Alessandro Citolini wrote, in defense of the vernacular, that “Latin is dead and buried in books,” was still far away in Salutati’s day.5 Salutati’s thoughts, however, have an important place in the history of how Latin was perceived. One of Salutati’s correspondents, the well-regarded educator, notary, and diplomat Giovanni Conversino da Ravenna, had been a student of Salutati’s mentor, Pietro da Moglio, perhaps the foremost Italian teacher

3 For literature on this problem, see C.S. Celenza, “End Game: Humanist Latin in the Late Fifteenth Century,” in Y. Maes, J. Papy, W. Verbaal, eds., Latinitas Perennis II: Appropriation and Latin Literature (Leiden, 2009), pp. 201–42; especially important is M. Tavoni, Latino, grammatica, volgare: Storia di una questione umanistica (Padua, 1984). See also C.S. Celenza, “Petrarch, Latin, and Italian Renaissance Latinity,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 35 (2005), 509–36. 4 See S. Rizzo, Ricerche sul latino umanistico (Rome, 2002), pp. 75–86. 5 Alessandro Citolini, Lettera in difesa della lingua volgare (Venice, 1551; original publication date 1540), 6r; see M. Faithfull, “The Concept of ‘Living Language’ in Cincquecento Vernacular Philology,” Modern Language Review 48 (1953), 278–82, at 281; M. Wyatt, The Italian Encounter with Tudor England (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 204–08; Celenza, “Endgame,” pp. 240–41.



coluccio salutati’s view of the history of latin7

of rhetoric in the middle of the fourteenth century.6 At some point in the early 1390s Conversino had done two things in a letter addressed to Salutati: Conversino had praised him to a degree that Salutati thought excessive; and Conversino had addressed Salutati in Latin using the plural, vos, as opposed to the singular, tu. Salutati’s debate with Conversino and its echoes are significant. Together they allow us to see the Chancellor’s thoughts on the problem of the evolution of the Latin language and the way his theories evolved in the context of epistolary exchange. One can assume that these exchanges reflect some of the less formal but presumably frequent disputationes that the Chancellor held with his contemporaries, so much a part of humanist life. Observing the contours of the debate we see that this specific theme, the use of the singular tu as opposed to the honorific vos, seemed particularly resonant to Salutati, something he came to believe was a tick, albeit occasionally still a necessary one. Through the debate ran ideas related to logic, social standing, the politics of friendship, and the history and evolution of Latin prose, in which Cicero was seen as representing the unquestioned apogee. The theme had surfaced in an exchange with Antonio Loschi, the Milanese colleague with whom Salutati had nourished a close relationship despite the difficult status of the politics between the two cities of Florence and Milan.7 Salutati employs a series of arguments in this letter, almost all of which he will repeat in some form in his later exchanges with Conversino. There is a bit of humor: “Do you find me to be,” he asks Loschi, “Geryon of the three bodies, Aegaeon of the hundred heads, or Euryulus of Praeneste, whom Virgil portrays with three lives?” Why speak to one person as if he were many? “What an error, and how great, to lie so openly because of a zeal for flattery!”8 Salutati’s use of mythological examples leads to an attempt to bring Greek into the picture: “Tell me,” Salutati says, “if you were writing the same thing in Greek, what number would you then employ? Polymetric or dual? For they are said to have a dual number; indeed the singular is strictly speaking not a number; they have

6 There is a portrait of Conversino in B. Kohl, “Introduction,” in Giovanni Conversino da Ravenna, Dragmalogia de eligibili vite genere, ed. and trans. H. Lanneau Eaker (Cranbury, NJ, 1980), pp. 13–30; see also idem, “Conversino, Giovanni,” in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 28 (Rome, 1983), pp. 574–78. 7 The letter is dated 29 September 1392 and is edited in Salutati, Epistolario 2.394–99. 8 Ibid., 2.395: “… responde michi: repperistine me tricorporem Geryonem, centimanum Egeona vel Herilum Prenestinum, quem trianimem finxit Maro? … et quis et quantum error est blandiendi studio tam aperte mentiri!”

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one [plural locution] that is spoken of about two, another used when there are more than two.”9 “Finally,” Salutati continues, in a passage that is worth quoting extensively: if this manner of speaking has been devised for the sake of honor, why, if you are speaking about me to someone else, do you not dignify me with such an honorific? Or maybe it is the case that when speech is directed to me, I am addressed in the plural because I hold the rank of a secondary person, but that when you speak about me to someone else I exist then in the condition of a third person, and then I return to that unity from which we had departed and we cease to be plural? And how foolish (and what sort of foolishness is it?) thanks to the force of a degraded custom to apply lying fiction to honor? And what number exists that can be compared in dignity and perfection with the Monad? Or is what I have heard on more than one occasion from a little woman true? Once she was speaking to me flatteringly in the plural. Now she could have been a mother and so I did not want to make her seem dishonorable in the eyes of other women, and so I warned all of those who were there, praising, to put these foolish practices aside. But with a quick wit she responded that the honorific of plurality was owed; or rather, to use her words, “you must be addressed in such a way because of your prudence, wealth, and age.” But if this were true, if one man precedes another in those three things, then with what differentiating factor should we distinguish the remarks we address to them? If plurality is owed to the prudent man, what then do we offer to the one who is more prudent? And how will we think it fit to address the most prudent? Believe me, my dear Antonio, these things are foolish, and they must be kept far from the holy sanctuary of friendship, within which it is unsuitable to find anything feigned, pretended, or worthy of laughter.10    9 Ibid.: “dic michi, si grece scriberes, quem tunc, hac stante sententia, numerum adhiberes? Polymetrum an dualem? Duplicem enim habere dicuntur; singularis equidem proprie numerus non est; unum qui de duobus dicatur, alterum qui de pluribus quam duo sint.” 10 Ibid., 2.395–96: “Denique si modus iste loquendi honoris gratia repertus est, cur si de me loquaris ad alterum, tali me honorificentia non dignaris? An forte, cum ad me sermo dirigitur, quia secunde persone gradum teneo, sum plures; cum autem de me dicas ad alterum stemque tunc in habitudine tertie persone, redeo in illam unde discesseram unitatem et desinimus esse plures? Et quantum et quale ridiculum est depravate consuetudinis vi ad honorem ducere quod mentiaris aut finxeris? Et quis numerus est, qui dignitate et perfectione possit cum Monade comparari? An forte verum est quod semel de muliercula quadam audivi? Cum mecum enim pluraliter blandiens loqueretur, et ego, quia mater esse poterat nec inhonorabilis inter alias esset feminas, monuissem quod illas ineptias dimitteret, laudantibus cum admiratione cunctis qui aderant, subita dicacitate respondit pluralitatis honorificentiam deberi vel, ut suis utar verbis, vos oportere dici prudentie, divitiis et etati. Quod si verum esset, quando tribus illis unus alterum antecederet, qua differentia locutiones ad eos directas distinguere deberemus? Si pluralitas debetur prudenti, quid prudentiori reddemus, qua prudentissimum compellatione dignabimur? Inepta, crede michi, sunt hec, Antoni carissime, et que a sacris amicicie penetralibus arceri debeant, intra que nichil decet fictum, nichil simulatum, nichil ridiculum reperiri.”



coluccio salutati’s view of the history of latin9

Before moving on to other things in the letter, Salutati begs Loschi in the future not to address him in this way: From here on, then, address me in such a way that the words match the realities. And don’t get it into your head that you need to lie about me and, also, don’t attribute to honor what is really (and according to reason) inglorious, dishonorable, and contemptible.11

Salutati’s basic stock of argumentation is fully present in this letter: addressing one person in the plural indicates a lapse of logic; it represents a mistaken sense of social relations among presumably equal friends, a disjuncture that represents the worst of the modern age: fawning, womanly servility; and it finally signals a lack of respect for the reasonable precedent of antiquity.12 These themes surfaced again, in a more developed form, in Salutati’s exchanges with Conversino. Salutati’s 1394 exchange with Conversino also contains the first seeds of an argument that later received fuller treatment: Salutati’s conviction, so important for the later development of humanist theories of language, that the Latin language itself had, over time, evolved and gone through phases. The underlying assumption was that it was appropriate and necessary to use history to argue about a relevant point of discussion; and again, it was a conversation that propelled the debate. In January 1394, Conversino wrote Salutati asking to be taken into his circle of friendship. Conversino fills his epistle with many of the standard elements of such letters, and the tone overall is one of subordination. He begins by stating that the crowd always wonders at the power of eloquence; even so (that is, even since Conversino’s taste is elevated above that of the crowd), Conversino himself could not help but wonder at Salutati’s eloquence.13 Eighteen years ago, Conversino had read Salutati’s letter to the Pope, and since then he has had a burning desire to be loved by Salutati, “to become yours.”14 Conversino alludes here to Salutati’s 11 Ibid., 2.396: “Posthac igitur sic mecum loquere, quod rebus verba conveniant, nec in animum inducas tuum michi de me mentiendum fore; neque, quod vere et rationabiliter inglorium est, inhonorabile et despicatum ad honorem attribuas.” 12 The dyad masculinity/Latinity runs throughout much of Renaissance humanist Latin literature, even as it also suffused ancient Latinity; see C.S. Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s Legacy (Baltimore/London, 2004), pp. 115– 33; and J. Farrell, Latin Language and Latin Culture, from Ancient to Modern Times (Cambridge, UK, 2001), pp. 52–83. 13 Salutati, Epistolario 4.305–08, at 305. 14 Ibid., 306: “… vestram mox in dilectionem exarsi, fierique vester optavi.”

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correspondence during the Florentine war with the Papacy, undertaken soon after Salutati was elected to the Chancellorship in April of 1375.15 Yet, the tone seems out of balance, after a fashion. Conversino was not much younger than Salutati (he was born in 1343, whereas Salutati had been born in 1331) and by the 1390s had attained a certain reputation himself as a successful bureaucrat as well as educator, eventually counting Guarino da Verona and Vittorino da Feltre among his students. How to explain his obsequious tenor? Though from Ravenna, perhaps his longterm posting in Ragusa may have induced a sense of being an outsider, something that might have made him approach his professional relationships cautiously and with a sense of deference. Perhaps Salutati’s reputation awed him to such an extent that he felt he had no choice but to approach Salutati in that way. Whatever Conversino’s motivations, Salutati clearly considered the letter to have struck the wrong tone, and in his response, Salutati makes his opinions clear. It is somewhat ironic that in the letter to which Conversino referred in which Salutati had addressed the Pope, Salutati himself had used the plural honorific vos. Yet he did believe that there was a separation to be made between public and private letters.16 Custom demanded that propriety be preserved in official correspondence, but in the restricted, necessarily elite, extra-institutional community that Salutati was helping to create, social relations needed to be carefully constructed. So Salutati begins his letter to Conversino positively, with a lengthy salutation that mentions Conversino’s identity as a teacher (insigni … magistro) and as a chancellor (cancellario incliti domini Patavini), and ends referring to him as a brother, and as a dearest and greatest friend (fratri et amico karissimo et optimo).17 And he begins the letter itself by stressing how it would be impossible to say how welcome Conversino’s letter had been.18 It is as if Salutati wants to reassure Conversino at the outset that the two correspondents stand on equal footing. As Salutati proceeds in his letter, his critique is twofold. First, though he admits that everyone is delighted by praise, Conversino’s praise had been so great as to seem excessive: “… I myself came to deem the things with which you so elegantly adorned me not praises but rather the most 15 See R.G. Witt, Coluccio Salutati and his Public Letters (Geneva, 1976), pp. 95–97. 16 See Witt, Coluccio Salutati and his Public Letters. 17 Salutati, Epistolario 2.404–11, at 404. 18 Ibid.: “Dici non potest, vir insignis, frater et amice karissime, quam grate quamque iocunde michi fuerint littere tue …”.



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serious censures and the bitterest warnings. After all, whoever praises someone beyond the truth is either laughing at that man or is in error …”19 It is true that among the ancients we find figures like Themistocles, Marcus Fulvius, Pompey, and others who preferred even to die for the sake of glory. These desires are not appropriate for a Christian: “Let it be absent from me as a Christian man to take glory in the knowledge that puffs one up with pride … I know, if I do not deceive myself, that there is nothing praiseworthy in me …”20 Salutati knows that Paul in his first Letter to the Corinthians is correct when he asks “What do you have that you have not received? If you have received something why do you take glory in it as if you hadn’t received it?”21 In other words, if the talents we possess represent gifts from God and are not really of our own doing, then it is really God to whom praise is owed. Salutati devoted about half of this sizeable letter to this argument designed to stave off excessive praise, so it was clearly important to him. The next argument follows. Salutati begins: Among the honors you attributed to me, I was wonder-struck that you had addressed me in the plural. As your writings attest, you have seen much. Tell me, I ask you, whom among the ancients will you cite who did not address in the singular, I will not only say a friend or even equals, but also lords and princes of the world?22

The first step in Salutati’s argument is to return to the ancients. He then begins naming names; Salutati does not report the dates in the passage that follows, but they are useful, given that they allow us to see that Salutati is not reckoning with a recognizable (to us) historical chronology here: Read Jerome, who was so eloquent in his letters, read the father who has received much honor, Augustine [354–430], who treated not only familiar

19 Ibid., 2.405: “semper etenim has commendationum adoreas suspectas habui; cumque modum transiverint, sicut iste, quibis me tam eleganter decoras, non laudes, sed reprehensiones gravissimas aut monitiones acerrimas reputavi.” 20 Ibid., 2.407: “Michi veri christiano homini absit, ut glorier in scientia que inflat … scio, nec me decipio, in me nichil meum esse laudandum …” 21 Ibid., 2.408: “… superintonat apostolice reprehensionis oraculum: quid habes, quod non accepisti? Si autem accepisti, quid gloriaris quasi non acceperis?” Salutati alludes to 1 Cor 4:7. 22 Salutati, Epistolario 2.408: “Inter honorificentias autem, quas michi tribuis, miratus sum quod me fueris pluraliter allocutus. Vidisti, sicuti scripta testantur tua, non pauca. Dic, queso, quem antiquorum adduces, qui non amicum dicam vel pares, sed etiam dominos et mundi principes non singulari numero compellaverit?”

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christopher s. celenza matters in his letters but also serious ones. Read, please, Ambrose, Augustine’s equal in gravity, read Gregory [590–604] and Sidonius [430–85]; read that fount of eloquence, Cicero, and Pliny the Younger; if you happen to get your hands on his books, read Quintus Symmachus [498–514], or at least what we have seen of his collected into florilegia. Consider Seneca and the others who happened to exist in those days, some of whose letters are found mixed with Augustine, Jerome, and Cicero. Read Ausonius [310–94] if you want: whom will you present who offers the fawning flattery of plurality?23

It is obvious, if we consider the figures named and the sequence in which they appear, that at this stage Salutati is lumping together authors from quite diverse chronological periods, considering the writers mentioned as, more or less, an undifferentiated unity, at least for the purposes of the question at hand. The real point is clear: Salutati argues that he sees a great disjuncture between the character of the man, Conversino, whose literary endeavors have indicated his great learning, and the way Conversino is choosing to express himself. If (Salutati’s argument goes) Conversino has proven himself to be an apt emulator of such great men, as he has; if he has respected and followed the sobriety of antiquity; if he flees the frivolity of the moderns and the trifles of the unlearned; if Salutati did not find in Conversino’s style that majesty of speech possessed by learned antiquity; Salutati writes: “I would then bear with an equitable spirit that you were living according to the character of our age, that you were mixing together the softness of speech with these servile blandishments of character.”24 As Salutati continues, we hear the central point: “Now, when you speak like the ancients, why then do you not also live like the ancients?”25 Salutati addresses Conversino using the language of honor: “Warring in the camps of eloquence with the ancients, why like a faithless deserter 23 Ibid., 2.408–09: “Lege Hieronymum, qui tam mellifluus fuit in epistolis; lege patrem multe venerationis Augustinum, qui non familiaria solum, sed seria suis epistolis explicavit. Lege, precor, germane severitatis Ambrosium; lege Gregorium atque Sidonium; lege fontem eloquentie Ciceronem Pliniumque Secundum; lege, si forsan totus venit in manus tuas, Q. Symmachum, vel saltem quantum eius vidimus defloratum. Considera Senecam et alios, qui istorum temporibus inciderunt, quorum alique presertim cum Augustino, Hieronymo et Cicerone permixte reperiuntur epistole. Lege, si libet, Ausonium: quem dabis qui pluralitatis adulationem exhibeat?” 24 Ibid., 2.409: “Si modernorum lascivia, sique imperitorum nugis efflueres, si non esset in stilo tuo illa dicendi maiestas, quam habuit erudite vetustas, paterer equo animo te moribus nostri temporis vivere et molliciem dicendi morumque serviles has blandicias permiscere.” 25 Ibid.: “Nunc vero, cum loquaris ut prisci, cur etiam non vivis ut prisci?”



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(perfidus transfuga) will you speak, with the moderns, in a fawning way?”26 Cicero is called on stage: how would Conversino respond to Cicero if Cicero were to say, “My dear Giovanni, what rule of mine, what example moves you that, when you are writing to one man, you address him in the plural as if you were speaking to the senate?”27 “Cicero,” here, turns out to be an important imaginary interlocutor, asking a series of other questions about Conversino’s language. Cicero’s presence is all the more noteworthy since it serves to foreshadow the eventual solution at the which the fifteenth century arrived after five intellectual generations of discussion and debate: that the basic Latin prose taught in schools and used in appropriate venues was to be Ciceronian, broadly construed. This solution should not be understood as the caricature described by Erasmus in his 1528 Ciceronianus, whereby “Ciceronians” refused to endorse Latin words or expressions not found in any form in Cicero. The solution, rather, was that described by Paolo Cortesi, in a wellknown debate with Poliziano.28 Cicero was the model for two reasons. First, none could doubt that he was the most successful Latin prose writer of antiquity: “No one after Cicero garnered such praise for writing, except those reared and raised by him, almost as if it were done by the nourishment of milk.”29 Prose writers should imitate Cicero, according to Cortesi, not like an ape, but rather as a son imitates a father, so that, though many similarities are manifest, the son still “possesses in the context of this similitude something of his own, that is inborn and different.”30 This position, to the effect that a measured Ciceronianism needed to be the international standard, recapitulated the fifteenth century’s discovery that ancient Latin had been a living, natural language and that its “modern” users needed models, “pilgrims without a guide” as they were when

26 Ibid.: “Cumque milites in castris eloquentie cum antiquis, cur quasi perfidus trans­ fuga blandiendo loqueris cum modernis?” 27 Ibid.: “Quid responderes Ciceroni nostro si diceret: mi Iohannes, qua mea regula quove meo moveris exemplo, ut ad unum scribens, quasi litteras ad senatum dirigas, illum pluraliter alloquaris?” 28 See Celenza, “End Game,” for literature. 29 Paolo Cortesi, in E. Garin, ed., Prosatori latini del Quattrocento (Milan/Naples, 1952), pp. 904–11, at p. 906: “Ausim nunc etiam affirmare idem quod saepe: neminem post Marcum Tullium in scribendo laudem consecutum praeter unum aut alterum, qui non sit ab eo eductus et tamquam lactis nutrimento educatus.” For the text of the Ciceronianus see Erasmus, “Dialogus ciceronianus,” Opera omnia, 1–2 (Amsterdam, 1971), pp. 599–710; and for an English translation, with a valuable introductory study, see Erasmus, “The Ciceronian,” in The Collected Works of Erasmus, 28 (Toronto, 1986), pp. 323–448. 30 Cortesi, in Garin, Prosatori, p. 906; and see Celenza, “End Game,” p. 206.

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writing Latin, as Cortesi described it.31 Salutati’s use of Cicero as an interlocutor, then, serves to highlight the unquestioned respect in which Cicero was held early in the history of the humanist experience. Salutati ends the letter by telling Giovanni that he had no need of flattery to gain Salutati’s friendship, that, indeed, Salutati accepts him as a friend in the highest degree. Their exchange evolves in a more historical direction in Conversino’s response to Salutati. Conversino raises the issue of time, perhaps the central problem in humanists’ changing understanding of the nature of the Latin language over the one hundred and fifty year span from Petrarch’s maturity to the era of Pietro Bembo.32 Owing to a mistaken medieval reading of Lucan (35–65 a.d.), Conversino believed that the plural honorific vos was first used when Julius Caesar took control of the Roman republic.33 John of Salisbury, Dante, Fazio degli Uberti, the author of the Leys d’Amors, and others, not to mention Salutati himself up to the year 1384, all believed that the honorific vos entered the Latin lexicon then, but that, at least in ancient times, it was used rarely.34 Conversino repeats the traditional interpretation of the lines of Lucan as well as the notion that it was only used rarely in antiquity and now has become too common.35 Then he argues that the use of vos in this way should not be construed as a sign of flattery if we can find it once or twice in Gregory the Great, other holy figures, and more recently in the correspondence of the Florentine republic itself.36 Moreover, times have changed, and perhaps it is asking too much to have one’s life match one’s speech: “If your life is such as your speech, then without any doubt you excel all mortal men in the honor of your life.”37 Doesn’t even Salutati himself in some of his correspondence use the honorific plural, even, at times, with those who are unworthy of extraordinary honor?38 Conversino knows well that Salutati’s friendship cannot be bought with flattery, and he had no intention of attempting

31 Cortesi, in Garin, Prosatori, p. 906; and see Celenza, “End Game,” p. 205. 32 Conversino to Salutati, in Salutati, Epistolario 4.308–14. 33 Lucan, Pharsalia 5.385–86: “namque omnes voces per quas iam tempore tanto / mentimur dominis, haec primum repperit aetas.” (“For this age discovered first all the words we have used for so long now to lie to our rulers.”) 34 See the lengthy note of Novati, in Salutati, Epistolario 2.418–19. 35 Salutati, Epistolario 4.309–10. 36 Ibid., 4.310. 37 Ibid., 4.312: “… si qualis oratio talis est tibi vita, omnes proculdubio mortales vite honore excellis …” 38 Ibid.



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such a vile act.39 Even still, is it sensible to say that virtue should have no prize?40 Moreover, Conversino refuses to accept that acceding to modern usage somehow implies a lack of Christian humility: “If I were to please men, does that also mean I am not a servant of Christ?”41 Never the less, Conversino will henceforth use tu with Salutati, in order to follow Salutati’s wishes. This initial phase of the exchange opens up an entire world of humanist dynamics. Conversino’s first letter to Salutati had in truth been somewhat wooden, whereas stimulated by Salutati’s challenge he allowed his thought to flow more easily, and real conversation could begin. Salutati’s next letter (his response, in effect, to Conversino’s response) shows the Chancellor sticking to his point that the honorific vos does indeed imply a kind of servility, even as he moves on to lament that almost all nations nowadays, and especially the French, seem to know almost no other way to fashion their language.42 Moreover, it is one thing to tolerate courtly customs, another to allow courtly usages to corrupt grammatica, “which is,” Salutati says, repeating a well-worn medieval position, “the interpreter and the entryway to all of the arts.”43 Again Salutati writes of ancient usage, but this time he is more precise, in terms of genre, as he attacks the royal “we.” In Macrobius’s report, the edicts of the ancient praetors were all in the singular. Though Conversino had cited Gregory, Salutati cannot accept this example, since in those few cases when Gregory the Great did use the honorific plural vos, it can be attributed to his proselytizing need to accommodate to the mode of speaking of those who were far away. The same can be said for Pope Nicholas I (858–867).44 When, then, did this modern usage really arise? Salutati here says that he does not think “that this vanity began with Caesar when he became dictator, but rather many centuries later; when, though, I don’t know.”45 Even into the age of Valentinian (364–75), the ancient custom survived.

39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid.: “quid est ergo: si hominibus placerem, servus Christi non essem?” 42 Salutati, Epistolario 2.411–27, at 413. 43 Ibid., 2.414: “… grammaticam, que cunctarum artium interpres et ostiaria est …” 44 Ibid., 2.415–16. Salutati had in mind Gregory’s letters to Augustine, the famous missionary to England, in Gregory, Epistulae 11.36 and 11.39. Novati (pp. 416–17, n. 2) points out that Nicholas I used both “tu” and “voi.” 45 Salutati, Epistolario 2.418–19: “Non puto quod hec vanitas inceperit cum Cesare dictatore; sed post plura secula; quando tamen ignoro.”

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We find the modern usage occasionally in Ennodius (474–521).46 As to Conversino’s example of the Florentine chancery, Salutati maintains that the chancery employs the honorific vos only out of custom.47 He moves then to a theological discussion on the superiority of unity, specifically on the nobility of the Monad, since it symbolizes divine unity. Salutati ends amplifying some of his earlier points on the need for Christian humility and the tendency of the plural honorific to signal an abhorrent vanity.48 Their friendly exchange continued along these lines in the succeeding few letters. To return to Salutati’s conception of the history of the Latin language, we can assume that this matter, unresolved as it was, continued to preoccupy him. So, soon thereafter, in August of 1395, Salutati presented his view of the course of Latin. He did so in a letter to Cardinal Bartolommeo Oliari of Padua; and Salutati tellingly begins the letter with a lengthy explanation of why he is addressing the Cardinal in the singular, recapitulating as he does so all his earlier arguments.49 Then Salutati comes to the point. The Cardinal had said in a letter that Salutati was considered the finest letter writer not only among the epistolographers of his own age but even from among the ancients; that he superseded even Cassiodorus.50 It cannot be the case, Salutati avers, since antiquity supersedes modernity by an almost unimaginable extent.51 Here is where Salutati’s historical sketch begins; and tellingly and unsurprisingly, there is an enunciation of a kind of golden age, followed by decline: Without doubt that ancient era flourished with every sort of literary study, and it was on that account so strong when it came to eloquence that posterity, however intense its efforts at imitation, could not preserve that majesty of speech and that zenith of eloquence. Now there did remain, in their immediate successors, a certain similarity and a kind of trace of antiquity; but soon thereafter, as posterity forsook that entire style of writing, and as with the very passing of time that early glory, hardly noticeably, passed away, thereafter there was a departure from Cicero, the prince of eloquence, with a dissimilarity that became ever more manifest. True, there were from 46 Ibid., 2.419. 47 Ibid., 2.419–20: “ambulamus in istis allocutionibus per antecessorum vestigia; et que a maioribus recepta est, licet irrationabilis et corrupta, non auderem consuetudinem immutare.” 48 Ibid., 2.420–26. 49 Ibid., 3.76–91, at 77–78. 50 Ibid., 3.79. 51 Ibid.: “… tenet gradum suum insuperata vetustas.”



coluccio salutati’s view of the history of latin17 time to time a few who seemed to emerge from among their contemporaries and who consequently seemed to the rather unlearned to attain to that earlier sublime level. If you don’t believe me, it behooves you to place the writers themselves before your eyes.52

Clear beyond doubt, to Salutati, is the centrality of Cicero. If one considers that the height of ancient eloquence is to be placed in Cicero and in Cicero’s era (Salutati asserts this judgment as a self-evident truth), then the first step is to present a short portrait of those writers found in Cicero’s day, including a number whom he knows (and who are now known) primarily from Cicero’s correspondence.53 Salutati moves on to the next era. For convenience and heuristic value, it will be useful again to indicate their dates. Salutati lists Seneca (3 b.c.-65 a.d.), Valerius Maximus (20 b.c.-50 a.d.), and Livy (59 b.c.-17 a.d.). Tacitus (56–117) does not find himself in the same rank as these earlier writers.54 Then come Suetonius, Pliny the Younger (63–113), Martianus Capella (fl. fifth c.), Apuleius (123/5–80), Macrobius (fl. 395–423), and others (the ordering is Salutati’s), “in whose writings it can be seen … to what extent that majesty of ancient speech which reached its apex in Cicero had diminished.”55 Church fathers come next, and Salutati again places in one group figures whose dates span a number of centuries: Cassiodorus (490–585), Ambrose, Symmachus (ob. 514), Jerome, Augustine, Ennodius (474–521), Sidonius (430–85), and others. All lived in a time of an eloquence that had revived “in a certain way” (quodammodo), though if Salutati speaks more truly, they all form part of one age in which a few were still able to raise their style to an appropriate level.56 Then there occurs a momentous change and we find ourselves in the time of what we might term the “plural” medieval writers, which is to say, 52 Ibid., 3.80: “Floruit proculdubio seculum illud priscum omni studio literarum, et adeo in eloquentia valuit, quod non potuerit imitatrix quanvis et studiosa posteritas illam dicendi maiestatem et culmen eloquentie conservare. Mansit tamen in proximis successoribus similitudo quedam et aliquale vestigium antiquitatis; sed, paulatim ab illa scribendi soliditate discedente posteritate, cum ipso temporis lapsu latenter primum decus illud effluxit, deinde manifestiore dissimilitudine ab eloquentie principe Cicerone discessum est. Fuerunt pauci tamen per tempora, qui adeo viderentur inter coevos emergere, quod ad illam attingere sublimitatem ab imperitioribus putarentur. Hec non michi credas velim, sed ipsos scriptores ante oculos tibi ponas.” 53 Ibid., 3.80–81. 54 Ibid., 3.81–82. 55 Ibid., 3.82: “… in quorum scriptis percipitur quantum tractu temporis ornatus ille locutionis effloruit quantumque maiestas illa prisci sermonis, que cum Cicerone summum apicem tenuit, imminuta est.” 56 Ibid.

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writers who had fallen into such decadence of style that they could only be referred to in the plural: “Ivos, Bernards, Hildeberts, Peters of Blois, Peters of Abelard, … Johns of Salisbury and many others who never worried themselves too much about eloquence.”57 They cannot even be compared to any of those ancient writers, from whom they differ as much in style as they do in temporal distance.58 Commenting on his own time, Salutati writes: “the study of literature has risen somewhat in our day; and the first cultivator of eloquence was your own Paduan, [Albertino da] Mussato, as well as Geri d’Arezzo, the greatest imitator … of the orator Pliny the Younger.”59 Salutati ends his historical survey: Those Florentine lights have also risen: I will pass over Dante Alighieri, the highest glory of vernacular eloquence, who can be compared to no one who has flourished in our day or even to any of the ancients in his knowledge or intelligence. Petrarch and Boccaccio have also come forth, all of whose works, if I am not mistaken, posterity will celebrate. Even still, I think that no one capable of judging rightly is unaware how much they differ in capacity of speaking from those ancients.60

How then could Salutati ever imagine that he might come out ahead of Cassiodorus, when he cannot be preferred not only to any of the ancients but also to any of the moderns? Ending on this trope of humility, perhaps Salutati considered the written phase of this debate over: the Latin language, so the argument seems to have gone, went through phases of evolution that one could roughly chart, with its apogee in the time of Cicero (when no one would have dreamed of using the plural honorific). Latin eloquence was then kept alive by a number of writers up to about the sixth century; it declined thereafter, arriving at its nadir in the era of the scholastics, and then,

57 Ibid., 3.83: “… inciderint enim licet Ivones, Bernardi, Hildeberti, Petri Blesenses, Petri Abaelardi, Riccardi de Pophis, Iohannes Saberii et alii plures, qui sibi nimis de eloquentia blanditi sunt.” 58 Ibid., 3.84. 59 Ibid., 3.84: “Emerserunt parumper nostro seculo studia litterarum; et primus eloquentie cultor fuit conterraneus tuus Musattus Patavinus, fuit et Gerius Aretinus, maximus Plinii Secundi oratoris, qui alterius eiusdem nominis sororis nepos fuit, imitator.” 60 Ibid., 3.84: “… emerserunt et ista lumina florentina; ut summum vulgaris eloquentie decus et nulli scientia vel ingenio comparandum qui nostris temprobus floruit, aut etiam cuipiam antiquorum, Dantem Alligherium, pretermittam; Petrarca scilicet et Bocaccius, quorum opera cuncta, ni fallor, posteritas celebrabit: qui tamen quantum ab illis priscis differant facultate dicendi nullum arbitror qui recte iudicare valeat ignorare.”



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beginning with the Paduan Albertino Mussato, the study of Latin literature began its slow upward progress, even if it was obvious how great the distance might be between even the best modern writers and the giants of antiquity.61 If Salutati considered this debate over, how surprised he must have been almost ten years later, when his circle of young admirers began to turn the tables, scrutinizing, as pupils sometimes do, every word of the master. For a letter that Salutati had written much earlier, in July 1379, in which he had argued that Petrarch was indeed to be preferred to the writers of antiquity, now came back to haunt him; and Salutati found himself in the position of having to defend the modern age against Poggio Bracciolini.62 He accomplishes this task first by chiding Poggio’s arrogance and over-reliance on polemicism. Second, there is an argument from Christianity: those like Petrarch who knew and possessed the true faith were necessarily superior to any of the gentile ancients in wisdom. Third, and more substantively, Salutati makes an argument that Latin had evolved over time. The practice of the best authors, in whatever period they were writing, was to take the language of their day and elevate it to a higher standard (as Cicero himself had argued).63 Though Salutati does not put it this way, the argument he makes resembles a trope of medieval philosophy, later to be featured in the thought of Marsilio Ficino, in which one highlighted the “first in each genus,” or primum in aliquo genere.64 If each age is a genus, then each age must have its primum, or in this case its primus, Cicero, who should indeed be considered the height of eloquence, but only because his age was the most eloquent and he stood atop the writers of his epoch in ability. Therefore, Poggio’s insistence on sounding like Cicero, as well as his denigration of those who do not, represented a misunderstanding of authentic creativity, which meant situating oneself prudently and unblinkingly in the historical moment in which one lived and then striving for excellence according to the parameters of that time. It is as if Salutati is criticizing Poggio for being a-historical, for not understanding that times, and Latinity, had changed; in short, Salutati is making the

61 For recent literature on Mussato, see Witt, Footsteps, pp. 117–73. 62 Salutati, Epistolario 4.126–46. 63 See Cicero, De oratore 1.3.12, and Salutati, Epistolario 4.142. 64 For Ficino, see his Platonic Theology 1.3.4, ed. and trans. Hankins and Allen, pp. 30–31, and the classic discussion of P.O. Kristeller, in his Il pensiero filosofico di Marsilio Ficino (rev. ed., Florence, 1988), pp. 153–79.

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critique, if only implicitly, that Poggio cannot just wish away the world in which he lived by imitating an ancient author. As one can imagine, this argument might undermine the Chancellor’s position regarding the tu/vos question; and yet one should not blame the lion in winter, who died less than a year later, on 4 May 1406. Poggio, Bruni, Valla, Poliziano, and other humanists all, generation by generation, wrestled with the question of how to balance imitation with creativity, the need for rules with the imperatives of freedom, the love of order with history’s propensity toward multiplicity. It was a debate that ramified and echoed for the next century, until a solution of sorts was found in the era of Pietro Bembo. But that lies beyond the scope of this paper.

READING THE CLASSICS IN THE TWELFTH-CENTURY RENAISSANCE: NEW MANUSCRIPT DISCOVERIES Frank Coulson In recent years, our knowledge of the circulation and study of the Latin classics in the Middle Ages has been vastly increased due to the publication of Birger Munk Olsen’s seminal studies and the continued publication of volumes of the Catalogus translationum et commentariorum.1 In the present article, I shall focus my attention on new manuscript discoveries made thanks to these two projects, emphasizing in particular the medieval reception of the poetic corpus of Ovid, which I am currently researching for a forthcoming volume of the Catalogus; and, in particular, I shall address how such manuscript discoveries can enhance and compel a reevaluation of a commentator’s influence and significance. I. Newly Discovered Manuscripts of Anthologies and Accessus Earlier studies have underlined the importance of manuscript anthologies for the circulation of medieval introductions (accessus) to the auctores. In particular, an important collection of accessus ad auctores edited by Huygens has provided access to a wide range of medieval criticism on classical and late antique authors.2 A newly discovered manuscript in 1 Birger Munk Olsen, L’étude des auteurs classiques latins aux IXe et XIIe siècles, 4 vols (Paris, 1982–2009) and his supplementary articles “Chronique des manuscrits classiques latins (IXe-XIIe siècles),” Revue d’histoire des textes 21 (1991), 37–76; “Chronique des manuscrits classiques latins (IXe-XIIe siècles), II,” Revue d’histoire des textes 24 (1994), 199–249; “Chronique des manuscrits classiques latins (IXe-XIIe siècles), III,” Revue d’histoire des textes 27 (1997), 29–85, “Chronique des manuscrits classiques latins (IXe-XIIe siècles), IV,” Revue d’histoire des textes 30 (2000), 123–188, and his “Chronique des manuscrits latins (IXe-XIIe siècles),V,” Revue d’histoire des textes 32 (2002), 73–106. The Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, 8 vols (Washington, DC, 1960-) is currently edited by Greti Dinkova-Bruun. 2 Ed. R.B.C. Huygens, Accessus ad auctores. Bernard d’Utrecht. Conrad d’Hirsau: Dialogus super auctores, (2nd ed. Leiden, 1970). Translations of the accessus contained in the collection edited by Huygens are found in Alastair J. Minnis and Alexander B. Scott, Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c.1100-c.1375 (Oxford, 1988, 1991), pp. 20–30, and A.G. Elliot, “Accessus ad Auctores: Twelfth-century Introductions to Ovid,” Allegorica 5 (1980), 6–48. A new edition and translation of the Accessus ad auctores by Stephen Wheeler is forthcoming from Western Michigan University Press.

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the  Royal Library of Copenhagen, currently housed in the relatively little-known manuscript collection of Johann Albert Fabricius (1668– 1736),3 contains a highly comprehensive and eclectic anthology of commentaries and accessus to the classics. Fabricius 29 2o transmits a remarkably varied collection of late twelfth and early thirteenth-century commentaries and accessus, primarily to the poetry of Ovid.4 In addition to William of Orléans’ accessus and commentary to the Metamorphoses (fols. 1ra-5vb) and Arnulf of Orléans’ accessus and glosses to the Fasti (fols. 31va-44vb), the manuscript contains commentaries to Statius’s epic poem the Achilleis (fols. 19rb-24va), Claudian’s De raptu Proserpinae (fols. 24va-28va), Avianus’s Fabulae (fols. 28vb-31rb), and anonymous commentaries on the Tristia (fols. 6va-11ra), Heroides (fols. 11ra-19rb), and Epistulae ex Ponto (fols. 46ra-55va). The commentary on Claudian, it may be noted, is of some importance since it transmits a strain of gloss not identified in the Catalogus volume on Claudian.5 The collection of accessus ad auctores found in Fabricius 29 2o (fols. 5vb-6rb) transmits introductions to the Heroides (fol. 5vb), the Amores (fols. 5vb-6ra), the Ars amatoria (fol. 6ra), the Remedia amoris (fol. 6ra), the Fasti (fol. 6ra), the Tristia (fol. 6ra-b), the Epistulae ex Ponto (fol. 6rb), and the Ibis (fol. 6rb). The collection is similar in its structure and approach to the collection of accessus ad auctores transmitted in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 19474 and clm 19475,6 though the selection of authors in Fabricius 29 2o is more restricted in scope. Of the eight accessus to the poetry of Ovid listed above, those to the Heroides (fol. 5vb), Amores (fol. 5vb-6ra), Ars amatoria (fol. 5ra), Remedia amoris (fol. 6ra), and Tristia (fol. 6ra-b) have been previously edited and will therefore not be discussed in this article.7 The accessus to the Fasti (fol. 6ra), the Epistulae ex Ponto (fol. 6rb), and the Ibis (fol. 6rb), however, are to date unedited. The accessus to the Fasti (fol. 6ra) begins with an elaborate and somewhat unusual introduction to the three categories (de quo, qualiter, et ad quid), which the author will treat more fully subsequently. 3 Fabricius was a German philologist and collector of manuscripts of some note. His manuscript collection now at the Royal Library (divided into folio and quarto volumes) consists mainly of manuscripts post 1600. I am indebted to the late Judson Allen who kindly brought this manuscript to my attention. 4 For a full description of the texts transmitted in Fabricius 29 2o and references to critical editions and studies thereof, see below, Appendix 1. 5 See Amy K. Clarke, “Claudius Claudianus,” in Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, ed. F. Edward Cranz (Washington, 1976), vol. 3, pp. 141–71. 6 Edited in Huygens, Accessus ad auctores (See n. 2). 7 For editions of the text, see below, Appendix 1.



new manuscript discoveries23

The author alludes to the proverbial adage attributed to Bernard of Chartres8 that, just as dwarfs who are placed on the backs of giants can see much further, so he will elucidate more clearly for the reader the subject matter and intention of the present work. The explanations, moreover, will not obfuscate the meaning of the poem but, like a mirror, will serve to clarify it. The subject matter (materia) of the Fasti consists of a poetic treatment of the dies fasti. The poem was originally composed in 12 books, of which six books have been lost. In addition, the commentator remarks that the Fasti remained unedited by Ovid on account of his precipitous departure into exile. The poem was written for and dedicated to Germanicus Caesar in order to persuade him to intercede with the emperor Augustus on Ovid’s behalf. The accessus concludes with the traditional statement concerning the philosophical category under which the poem is to be placed. Ovid is considered to be both ethicus and physicus: ethicus, because he treats of morals; physicus, because he treats of the rising and setting of the constellations. Accessus to the Fasti, fol. 6ra  “Sepius irritant animum demissa per aurem quam que sunt oculis subiecta fidelibus.” Hac igitur de causa non ut ceci palpantes parietem, sed tamquam nani super humeros gigantum longius intuentes, Germanici futuri pontificis Nasonica precepta de cerimoniis gentilium temporumque circumstanciis metrice prosequendo fidem prosequimur  5 occultam, “nec fumum ex fulgore set ex fumo dare lucem,” quia per huius operis edicionem quasi per speculum intuemur quid, quare, quomodo, quando fas est dici et fari. Propterea non indigne opus nostr[or]um Fastorum speculum placuit appellari. Perstringendum est igitur de quo agit actor, et qualiter, et ad quid. 10 In ipso enim titulo patet de quo agat qui talis est: Ouidii Fastorum liber primus incipit. Bene dicitur primus quia sequitur secundus, duodecim etenimfuere, ipso attestante vbi ait:  Sex ego Fastorum scripsi tociensque libellos,   cumque suo finem mense libellus habet.

15

Quorum licet medietas sit sublata, tamen saltum lune complebimus et tocius Kalendarii rationem. Quod opus maxime su

plementum desiderat siue correctionem, cum opus ipsius propter exilii tempestatem remanserit incorrectum. Ait enim in libro Tristium consequenter:20  Idque tuo scriptum nuper sub nomine, Cesar,   et tibi sacratum sors mea rupit opus 8 Cited in John of Salisbury, Metalogicon 3.4.

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frank coulson vbi Fastorum dicitur et materia subsequentis operis declaratur. A fastis enim licitis diebus vtpote dignioribus potius quam a nefastis intitulatur. Sic habito de quo agat, habetur materia  qualiter agit ad Germanicum futurum pontificem, cerimoniorum ordinem scribit dicens:

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 Excipe pacato, Cesar Germanice, uultu   hoc opus. Sic habito de quo agat, habetur intentio ad quid agit ut apud  Augustum quem offenderat Germanicum habeat intercessorem. Sic habito ad quid agat, habetur vtilitas. Eticus est auctor et phisicus: eticus in doctrina morum; phisicus in assignatione ortus et occasus signorum. In tria opus suum diuidit: in propositionem,in inuocationem, in narrationem. In propositione tractatum premisit; in inuocatione opus commendat; in narratione soluit. In premissione auditorem aure captat beniuolum; in commendatione docilem; in solutione inueniat attentum. Proponit hic: tempora etc. Inuocat vbi dicit: excipe pacato etc. Narrat ubi dicit: tempora digereret. Proponens materiam prelibat dicens canam etc.

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1–2 Hor., Ars poet. 180–181 2 Jerome, Commentarii in Isaiam 16.59 3 Bernard of Chartres, cited in John of Salisbury, Metalogicon 3.4 19–20 Tr. 2.551–552 5–6 Hor., Ars poet. 143 13–14 Tr. 2.549–550 25–26 Fasti 1.3–4 34 Fasti 1.1 Fasti 1. 3 35 Fasti 1.27 Fasti 1.2 1 sepius Ms., rectius, segnius 21 et sup. lin. add. librarius

2 non sup. lin. add. librarius 27 agat scripsi: agit Ms.

The accessus to the Epistulae ex Ponto (fol. 6rb) links the subject matter of the present collection with that of Ovid’s earlier poem, the Tristia, in which the poet treated of the tribulations he encountered during his voyage into exile and his period of exile. The intention of the poet (intentio auctoris) in writing the collection is to entreat his friends at Rome to intercede with the emperor Augustus to mitigate the emperor’s wrath, while the usefulness of the poem (utilitas) lies in the oblivion of present and past ills which it affords Ovid. Our commentator concludes that the Epistulae ex Ponto were originally intended as individual letters to Ovid’s friends and were only subsequently assembled into a collection for the benefit of readers. Accessus to the Epistulae ex Ponto, fol. 6rb   In precedenti et hoc opere eadem est materia. Ait enim:



new manuscript discoveries25    Res eadem titulo differt, et epistula cui sit     non occultato nomine missa docet. Super hoc itaque amicos conquerentes prohibet dicens:    Neue metu falso nimium trepidate, Quirites,     non offendatur ne pietate deus.

5

 Intentio sua est quod ab amicis suis impetret quod usque ad loci mutacionem nitantur iram Cesaris temperare, vnde illud:  Vt meritam nobis minuat, non finiat, iram,   suppliciter uestros quisque rogate deos.

10

 Vtilitas est tam presencium malorum quam preteritorum obliuio. Vnde ait:   Consequor ex illis casus obliuia nostri:  hanc messem satis est si mea reddit humus.  Titulus talis est: Ouidii de Ponto primus liber incipit. Bene dicit primus quia sequitur secundus, sunt etenim quattuor. Titulus a loco sumitur. Sciendum est, licet quattuor libros hic diximus, sic lectores, non auctorem suimet dixisse. Ait enim:

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 Non liber ut fiet, et uti sua cuique daretur   littera, propositum curaque nostra fuit.  Postmodo collectas vtcumque sine ordine iunxi:   Hoc opus electum ne mihi forte putes.

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Loquitur uero de moribus amicorum dicens Naso Thomithane etc.  1 In precedenti: id est in Tristibus 2–3 Pont. 1.1.17–18 5–6 Tr. 1.5.37–38 13–14 Pont. 1.5.55–56 19–22 Pont. 3.9.51–54  9–10 Pont. 1.10.43–44

The accessus to the Ibis9 (fol. 6rb) relates how Ovid employs the literary form of the invective to denigrate in his biting verses one of his detractors, who had attempted to seduce his wife after Ovid’s forced departure from Rome. The intention of the author (intentio auctoris) is purely pragmatic, namely to deter others from perpetrating such misdeeds or to undermine his detractor, while the usefulness of the work (utilitas operis) resides either in the pleasure it affords the reader or the derision and scorn it heaps upon the poet’s enemy. Accessus to the Ibis, fol. 6rb Auctor iste Ouidius cum propter culpam suam ab Augusto Cesare ad Pontum insulam missus esset in exilium, inuidus quidam eius uxorem quam Rome reliquerat de incestu sollicitauit, quod ubi comperit, post librum de Ponto hunc librum contra eum scripsit,

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frank coulson in quo materiam habet inuidum et aduersarium suum, quem ualde mordaciter inprecatoriis confodit carminibus. Intencio sua est dehortari quemlibet ne quis alterius uxorem de illicito amore sollicitet, uel ut emulum suum confundat. Vtilitas est delectacio uel inuidi derisio et perturbacio. Titulus talis est: Ouidius in Ybin, id est contra Ybin, incipit. Nam ybis, ybidis est ciconia, auis inmunda,  quia rostro sua purgat posteriora. Et idcirco propter auis illius immundiciam Ouidius suum aduersarium et conriualem, qui cum uxore sua mechabatur, Ybin uocauit, quod non est nomen eius propriumsed pocius ab Ouidio fictum. In principio autem huius libri conqueritur Ouidius quod per suum aduersarium nunc inuectiua scribere cogatur qui de amore semper carmina componere consueuerat. More ergo aliorum poetarum primo proponit , secundo inuocat ibi dii maris, tertio narrat ibi in loca ab Elisiis. 9–10 cf. Balbus, Catholicon (Ibis)  14 Ibis 1

5

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15 Ibis 65   Ibis 171

Piacenza, Archivio Capitolare di S. Antonino, Cassetta C. 48, fr. 4 The four fragmentary leaves transmitted in Cassetta C. 48 of the Archivio Capitolare di S. Antonino in Piacenza contain remnants of commentaries and accessus to Ovid, Statius, Sallust and Priscian.10 The accessus to the Ovidian corpus found on fols. 2r-3v is relatively unique among its twelfth-century counterparts in that it provides a life of the poet and a fuller treatment of the individual poems. The accessus begins with a brief overview of Ovid’s familial background and his early life. Plubius, an inhabitant of the town of Pelignum, founded by the Trojan warrior Sulmus after the fall of Troy, produced two sons, Ovidius and Lucius. Both were schooled in the art of rhetoric, and after Lucius’s early death, Ovid established himself at Rome as a senator and a renowned poet. His first work, the Fasti, was written at the behest of the Roman senators, while his second work, the Ars amatoria (here given the title De amore) and written in three books, provided instruction to Roman youth on the cultivation of love. The Remedia amoris was composed after the Ars amatoria as an antidote to the mad passion that poem had inspired in the Roman youth. The Amores, here given its medieval title of Sine titulo, is viewed as an autobiographical collection in which Ovid relates

9 The most extensive treatment of the medieval and humanistic reception of the Ibis remains Antonio La Penna, Scholia in P. Ovidi Nasonis Ibin (Florence, 1959). 10 The fragment is fully catalogued in Anna Riva, La Biblioteca Capitolare di S. Antonino di Piacenza (secoli XII-XV) (Piacenza, 1997), pp. 176–77, and Munk Olsen, “Chronique, IV,” 168.



new manuscript discoveries27

his youthful liaisons and amatory transgressions. The author of the accessus again imputes a moral purpose to the collection, namely to dissuade youth from such heedless follies. The list concludes with reference to those poems thought by medieval scholars to be genuine works written by Ovid in the early stages of his career, to wit the De Philomena, the De nuce, in addition to the certifiably Ovidian Medicamina faciei femineae. Ovid was exiled to Tomi for two reasons: on account of the enmity of Augustus caused by the Ars amatoria, and because he saw Augustus committing sodomy. In the latter part of the accessus, our author details those works (Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto, Heroides and the Metamorphoses [here cited as the Ovidius magnus]) which he maintains were written after Ovid’s banishment to Tomi on the Black Sea. The Tristia was composed as a lament for his sorrows; the Heroides treats of incestuous and chaste love in order to dissuade the reader from the former and encourage him to embrace the latter; while the Epistulae ex Ponto and the Metamorphoses were written by Ovid to regain the goodwill of the Emperor. The Epistulae ex Ponto accomplish this by explicitly urging Ovid’s friends to intercede with the Emperor on his behalf, while the Metamorphoses does so by demonstrating in the course of its 15 books of wondrous transformations that the final apotheosis of Julius Caesar did indeed take place. In addition, the Metamorphoses provide the reader with diverse background to ancient mythology. Piacenza, Archivio Capitolare di S. Antonino, Cassetta C. 48, fr. 4, fols. 2r-3v (s. XIIex.) (fol. 2r) Sulmus quidam Troianus fuit ueniens in Italiam quamdam emit prouinciam quam a suo nomine Sulmonem uocauit, in quam quoddam oppidum edificauit quod Pelignum apellauit, in quo natus est quidam qui uocatus est Plubius, qui duos filios generauit: Ouidium et Lucium. Ambos tradidit  literali studio et ambo[s] prouecti in arte poetica, set Lucius preualuit. Quo mortuo, Ouidius successit et mansit in curia cumque egregius haberetur uersificator, a senatoribus est rogatus ut librum de Fastis eis componeret, quorum petitioni aquiescens ipsum descripsit, in quo habuit materiam ipsos fastos, intencionem  uero uarias instructiones dignitatum. Finalis casa est quod perlecto hoc libro diuersarum instructionem noticiam habebimus. Postea rogatus a uiris et a mulieribus fecit librum De amore, in tres libros distinguens. In primo ostendit duo, scilicet ostendit ubi uiri debeant inuenire et quomodo  debeant mulieres capere; in secundo, docet quomodo debeant uiri amorem prolongare, id est mulieres ad suum amorem tenere[s].

5

10

15

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frank coulson Hos duos facit uiris, tercium mulieribus, in quo monet eas ut non sint moleste uiris et sat conuenienter acquirant amatores et caueant ab eis. In hoc libro sunt materia uiri et mulieres uel ipsa ars amandi.  20 Intentio sua est docere uiros et mulieres amare, uel dare precepta in arte amandi. Vtilitas est quod perlecto hoc libro uiri et mulieres habeant noticiam de arte amandi. Set quia leserat uiros et mulieres in preceptis male intellectis et quia furiam amoris non poterant temperare pocius peribant quam talem amorem possent expellere, uolens 25 eos sibi reconciliare, librum de Remediis scripsit, in quo docuit eos et eas pocius talem amorem dimittere quam uri uel mori. Materia huius libri sunt uiri et mulieres furiose amantes uel furiosus amor. Intentio sua est docere qua ratione furiosus amor sit contemperandus. Vtilitas est quod perlecto hoc libro siemus malum amorem uel  30 furiosum deuitare. In quarto loco scripsit librum Sine titulo, in quo collegit omnia turpia que conmiserat cum mulieribus. Materia huius libri sunt multe et uarie amice. Intentio sua est tractare de illis et de his que commiserat cum eis. Vtilitas est quod perlecto hoc libro siemus cauere a talibus. Postea fecit omnes 35 alios libros in quibus tegit aliquid de amore, id est De Philomena, De pulice, De nuce, De medicamine faciei, et ceteros. Propter Ouidium De arte amandi habebatur multis in odio et quia dicebatur conturb [it]asse regem, etiam inuenerat eum in sodomitico, erat exosus illi.His de causis accusatus et  40 demnatus, missus est in exilium in Pontum insulam. In itinere fecit Ouidium Tristium, in quo est ostendens suam miseriam ideoque est materia miseria sua. Intentio sua est tractare de sua miseria. Vtilitas sua est quod perlecto hoc libro siemus quare nostram miseriam debeamus plangere et misericordiam 45 amicorum uel dominorum postulare. Cum moraretur in Ponto insula rogatus ab omnibus illius terre ut faceret librum de casto et incesto amore, fecit Ouidium Epistularum, in quo fecit mentionem de casto et incesto amore, et quia omnis actoritas est a Grecis, non posuit exempla Latinorum set tamen 50 Grecorum uirorum et mulierum. Materia sunt in hoc libro uiri et mulieres caste et inceste amantes, uel castus et incestus amor. Intentio sua est tractare de casto et incesto amore. Vtilitas est quod perlecto hoc libro siemus castum amorem conseruare et incestum deuitare. Et quia regis 55 amiciciam uolebat, fecit Ouidium De Ponto, in quo fecit multas epistolas quas Romanis amicis misit ut eorum intercessione regis amiciciam recuperaret, in quo amici sunt materia. Intentio sua est multis modis amicos exorare ut ad regem intercedant pro eo. Vtilitas est quod perlecto hoc libro sciemus qualiter amicos in necessitate 60 debeamus rogare. Postremo scripsit Ouidium Magnum, in quo ostendit regem debere transformari, idem ut et ne hoc uideatur impossibile, multas diuersas transformationes premittit. Et titulauit ab opere Incipit liber Metamorphoseos, meta id est de,



new manuscript discoveries29 morphoseis id est transformacio, inde metamorphoseis, id est de  transformatione, in quo est materia ipse rex principaliter, secundario res transformande uel fabule. Intentio sua est ostendere multas et diuersas res transformatas et postremo ipsum regem. Vtilitas est quod perlecto hoc libro sciemus noticiam fabularum ettransformationum. Sed et quia fecimus mencionem de transformatione, uidendum est quot modis fiat transformatio. Transformatio tribus modis fit. Quidam mutantur mente et non corpore, sicut Agaue et Peteus. Quidam mutantur corpore et non mente, sicut socii Vlixis. Quidam mutantur corpore et mente, sicut Tereus et Progne et Filomena. Et quia fecimus mencionem de exulatis, uideamus quot modis dicantur.  Quatuor modis dicuntur: proscripti, inscripti, exules, relegati. Proscripti dicuntur quo res publicantur et mittuntur in exilium sine spe reuertendi. Inscripti dicuntur quorum res publicantur et mittuntur in exilium sub spe reuertendi. Exules dicuntur quorum res non publicantur sed mittuntur in exilium sub spe reuertendi. Relegati dicuntur quorum res publicantur et non mittuntur in exilium sed manent in ciuitate sub tutela parentum uel dominorum.

65

70

75

80

11 inuenire] conuenire MS.ac secundo scripsi: secunda MS. 30 Pontum scripsi: portum MS. 55 exulatis MS.pc: exultatis MS.ac

II. New Manuscripts of Twelfth-Century Commentaries on the Classics At the end of the twelfth century, a wave of interest in the Ovidian corpus manifests itself at Orléans in the school commentaries written by three named masters: Arnulf of Orléans, whose floruit was about 1180; Fulco of Orléans, who was a near contemporary of Arnulf; and William of Orléans, who a generation later wrote a complete commentary on all of Ovid’s works entitled the Versus bursarii.11 Some 50 years after William, Orléanais scholarship on Ovid was to reach its apogee with the so-called “Vulgate” commentary on the Metamorphoses, composed in the Loire valley, possibly at Orléans about 1260, and which incorporates verbatim into its glosses much of the earlier work of Arnulf and William. The earliest studies of Orléanais scholarship on the classics, particularly the studies of Fausto Ghisalberti, were severely impeded by the lack 11 See Wilken Engelbrecht, “Carmina Pieridum multo vigilata labore/exponi, nulla certius urbe reor: Orléans and the Reception of Ovid in the aetas Ovidiana in School Commentaries,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 41 (2006), 209–26 and his “Fulco, Arnulf, and William: Twelfth-century Views on Ovid in Orléans,” Journal of Medieval Latin 18 (2008), 52–73.

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of manuscript material then available.12 Ghisalberti, for example, knew of only one quite damaged manuscript copy of Arnulf of Orleans’s seminal commentary on the Metamorphoses. Our own work on the medieval corpus of commentaries has uncovered vast quantities of new manuscript material which attests to the importance and wide-spread dissemination of Arnulf’s commentary, documenting not only its migration from Orléans to Renaissance Italy, but also the varied physical formats in which the commentary was transmitted.13 First, we have uncovered several new twelfth-century witnesses, which transmit the commentary in the catena format and represent the most important and earliest manuscripts of the text. These are Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 7205, fols. 29ra-58va, and Weimar, Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, Q 91, fols. 1r-19r.14 Further, we have been able to trace the influence of Arnulf’s glosses throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and to show that Arnulf’s glosses were still being copied and read in fifteenth-century Italy by such humanist scholars as Zomino of Pistoia15 and Damianus da Paolo.16 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canon. Class. Lat. 1, a late 13th-century manuscript of Italian origin, is perhaps one of the most interesting representatives of this later class of manuscripts, for it consists of an anthology of Ovidian texts with marginal commentaries principally drawn from the Orléanais commentators Arnulf and William. It seems of some importance to underline that the catalogues of this manuscript often allude to the texts of Ovid while making minimal mention of the commentaries and accessus which accompany all the texts in the margins.17 Thus we can now conclude with some certainty that Arnulf’s commentary, far from having limited 12 See, in particular, his “Arnolfo d’Orléans, un cultore di Ovidio nel secolo XII,” Memorie del Reale Istituto di Scienze e Lettere 24 (1932), 157–234 and Fausto Ghisalberti, “Mediaeval Biographies of Ovid,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 9 (1946), 10–59. 13 The question of the physical format of the commentary is treated fully in David T. Gura, A Study and Edition of Arnulf of Orléans’s Grammatical Commentary to the Metamorphoses, Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 2010, and his “From the Orléanais to Pistoia: The Survival of the Catena Commentary,” Manuscripta 54 (2010), 171–188. 14 Catalogue in Gura, A study 15 For Zomino, see Lucia C. Martinelli, “Sozomeno maestro e filologo,” Interpres 11 (1991), 7–92 and Albinia C. de la Mare, The Handwriting of Italian Humanists (Oxford, 1973), esp. pp. 91–105. 16 See Gura, “From the Orléanais,” esp 183–84. 17 See, for example, Franco Munari, Catalogue of the MSS of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (London, 1957) and E.H. Alton et al., “A Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Ovid’s Fasti,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 24 (1977), 37–63.



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influence, was perhaps the most long-lived and influential interpretation on the Metamorphoses. In addition to the previously mentioned manuscript, Canon. Class. Lat 1, two other manuscripts attesting to the wide circulation of Orléanais commentaries on Ovid have come to light. Bern, Burgerbibliothek 478, dating to the thirteenth century, contains an anthology of Ovidian poetry which includes the Amores, Ars amatoria, Heroides, Remedia amoris, Fasti, Tristia, and Epistulae ex Ponto. All texts contain accessus and glosses. Though the text of the Heroides is defective, beginning only with Heroides 21, the extant section of the commentary seems very close in wording to William of Orléans’s commentary in his Versus bursarii.18 In addition, the manuscript also contains Arnulf of Orléans’s commentary to the Amores and William of Orléans’s commentary to the Remedia amoris. Frankfurt am Main, Stadt und Universitätsbibliothek, Barth. 110, a manuscript dating to the thirteenth century, represents a final important anthology containing Fulco of Orléans commentary on the Amores and a collection of important accessus to Ovidian works. The manuscript, as noted by Wilken Engelbrecht, is the only medieval manuscript of Ovid’s works which transmits Heroides 15 (Epistula Sapphus).19 Lastly, our work for the Catalogus volume on Ovid has compelled a reevaluation of the mid thirteenth-century commentary on the Meta­ morphoses labelled “The Vulgate Commentary.” Luigi Castiglioni, who discovered the Vulgate commentary and first signalled its importance,  knew of only four manuscripts.20 I have now increased that number to 21.21 Though the earliest manuscripts of the commentary date to around 1260 and are of central French origin, at least two of the later 18 Hermannus Hagen, Catalogus codicum Bernensium (Bibliotheca Bongarsiana) (Bern, 1975; repr. New York, 1974), p. 413 notes that the gloss is very close to another Ovid manuscript in the Burgerbibliothek, 512, which does contain the gloss of William. 19 See Wilken Engelbrecht, “Der Francofortanus und die Epistula Sapphus,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 28 (1993), 51–57. 20 See Luigi Castiglioni, “Spogli riccardian,” Bollettino di filologia classica 27 (1920), 162–66. I have written on the Vulgate commentary previously. See Frank T. Coulson, “Ovid’s Transformations in Medieval France (ca.1100-ca.1350),” in Metamorphosis. The Changing Face of Ovid in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Alison Keith, Stephen Rupp, eds. (Toronto, 2007), pp. 33–60. See also Frank T. Coulson, “Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the School Tradition of France, 1180–1400: Texts, Manuscript Traditions, Manuscript Settings,” in Ovid in the Middle Ages, James Clark, Frank T. Coulson, Kathryn McKinley, eds. (Cambridge, 2011). 21 The manuscripts are listed in Frank T. Coulson and Bruno Roy, Incipitarium Ovidianum. A Finding Guide for Texts Related to the Study of Ovid in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Turnhout, 2000), no. 421.

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manuscripts are written in mid-fourteenth century Italian hands.22 And there is clear evidence that many of the manuscripts were owned and annotated by later owners who were themselves masters. For example, manuscript Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 1598 has an ownership mark which relates: “This manuscript is the property of the monastery of St. Stephen at Dijon, but if master William will give the monastery two francs, it can be returned to him.” Vat. lat. 1598 also shows clear evidence of being carefully annotated and corrected by a second hand. Sometimes this second hand offers an opinion, often worded with Housmanian vigor, on the various interpretations put forward by the original Vulgate commentator. At other times, the correcting hand, when confronted with a textual crux or what is politely termed a locus desperatus, will attempt to emend the passage, or in exasperation will just erase the offending passage--a procedure which, while not producing an improved text, must have been emotionally very rewarding. The Vulgate commentary circulated widely in northern Europe and Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and may be considered to be the most influential commentary on the Metamorphoses from the High Middle Ages. Fausto Ghisalberti claimed a preeminent position for it as the commentary through which Dante read his Ovid.23 Though the Vulgate commentary was never printed, it has been shown to have influenced the commentary of Raphaelis Regius, printed in Venice in 1493.24 In conclusion, our survey of newly discovered manuscripts containing  medieval commentaries and accessus to classical authors (primarily Ovid) has underlined the importance of the Catalogus project for our knowledge of the circulation and influence of literary criticism on the auctores. Many hitherto unknown copies of previously edited authors have been unearthed, particularly the commentators Arnulf, William, Fulco, and the Vulgate commentator; and new accessus and commentaries, vastly expanding the range of known texts for the twelfth century, have also been added to the scholarly literature. In some instances, important commentaries have been attributed to a known author, as was the case with the Versus bursarii of William of Orléans, or commentaries have 22 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ottob. lat. 1294 and Pal. lat. 1663. 23 See his “Il commentario medioevale all’Ovidius maior consultato da Dante,” Rendiconti dell’Istituto Lombardo, Classe di Lettere e scienze morali e storiche 100 (1966), 267–75. 24 See, in particular, Kathryn McKinley, Reading the Ovidian Heroine. Metamorphoses commentaries 1100–1618 (Leiden, 2001), p. 128.



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been significantly redated.25 These discoveries would not have been possible without the impetus provided by the catalogues of Birger Munk Olsen and the volumes of the Catalogus. Appendix 1: A Catalogue of Commentaries and Accessus Contained in Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Fabricius 29 2° (Edited above, VII: Texts, 2.2) I. Fols. 1ra-5vb: William of Orléans, Glossulae Super Libros Ouidii Metamorphoseos: (fol. 1ra) inc. Ad maiorem auctoris euidentiam in maiori opere suo … (fol. 5vb) expl. uolat altior quam stella Veneris. Expliciunt glosule super Ouidium Metamorphoseos. The glosses on the Metamorphoses formed part of a larger commentary on the entire Ovidian corpus entitled the Versus bursarii Ovidianorum. See Ernst H. Alton and D.E.W. Wormell, “Ovid in the Mediaeval Schoolroom,” Hermathena 94 (1960), 21–38 and 95 (1961), 67–82; H.-V. Shooner, “Les Bursarii ovidianorum de Guillaume d’Orléans,” Mediaeval Studies 43 (1981), 405–24 and Wilken Engelbrecht, Kritische Ausgabe der Bursarii super Ovidios (Teil carmina amatoria) des Wilhelm von Orléans (ca. 1200) mit Kommentar (Olomouc/Amsterdam, 1997) and his Filologie in de Dertiende eeuw: De Bursarii super Ovidios van Magister Willem van Orléans ( fl. 1200 a.d.) 2 vols (Olomouc, 2003); Coulson-Roy, Incipitarium, no. 13. The accessus is edited in Frank T. Coulson, “Hitherto Unedited Medieval and Renaissance Lives of Ovid (I),” Mediaeval Studies 49 (1987), 152–207, esp. 172–77. The glosses on the Metamorphoses are now edited in Magistri Willelmi Aurelianensis (ca. 1200 a.d.) Bursarii super Ovidios, ed. Wilken Engelbrecht (Olomouc, 2003), pp. 121–68.

II. Fols. 5vb-6rb: Various Accessus to the Ovidian Corpus and to Statius: Heroides (fol. 5vb) inc. In primo opere operum suorum auctor Ouidius iocose uite iocosum prebuit argumentum … expl. intentio auctoris commendare legitimum amorem. Dicit ergo hanc tu etc. Edited in Ghisalberti, “Biographies,” 44–45 and Ralph Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling: Studies in Medieval School Commentaries on Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, Epistulae ex Ponto, and Epistulae Heroidum (Munich, 1986), p. 223. See

25 For example, the commentary attributed to a G.F. Picenardi, now redated to the twelfth century. See Frank T. Coulson, “Giovanni Francesco Picenardi and the Ovidian Commentary on the Metamorphoses in Modena (Bibl. Estense, Lat. 306),” Revue d’histoire des textes 26 (1996), 251–52.

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Frank T. Coulson and Bruno Roy, Incipitarium Ovidianum. A Finding Guide for Texts related to the Study of Ovid in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Turnhout, 2000), no. 161. Amores (fols. 5vb-6ra) inc. Quante iocunditatis exstiterit auctor iste … expl. introducens libros suos loquentes sic qui modo Nasonis etc. Edited in Ghisalberti, “Biographies,” 46 and Hexter, Schooling, pp. 223–25. See Coulson-Roy, Incipitarium, no. 394. Ars amatoria (fol. 6ra) inc. Flore iuuentutis vernans Ouidius … expl. narrat ubi dicit principia etc. et ita incipit dicens si quis etc. Edited in Ghisalberti, “Biographies,” 45, Hexter, Schooling, p. 304, and Y.-F. Riou, “Accessus à l’Ars amatoria et aux Remedia amoris d’Ovide,” Revue d’histoire des textes 1 (1971), 218. See Coulson-Roy, Incipitarium, no. 117. Remedia (fol. 6ra) inc. Quoniam auctor iste multos traxerat in errorem … expl. in quo etiam se excusat quod primum opus non presenti retexitur. Dicit ergo legerat huius amor etc. Edited in Ghisalberti, “Biographies,” 47. See Coulson-Roy, Incipitarium, no. 417. Fasti (fol. 6ra) inc. Sepius irritant animum demissa per aurem … expl. proponens materiam prelibat dicens canam etc. See Coulson-Roy, Incipitarium, no. 443. Tristia (fol. 6ra-b) inc. Ne forte questionis scrupulum nobis importetur nimie iocunditatis auctorem … expl. in auctoritate sua patet materia esse. Edited in Ghisalberti, “Biographies,” 50, Appendix H (without the beginning of the accessus) and Hexter, Schooling, 221–22. See Coulson-Roy, Incipitarium, no. 269. Epistulae ex Ponto (fol. 6rb) inc. In precedenti et hoc opere eadem est materia… expl. loquitur uero de moribus amicorum dicens Naso Thomitane etc. See Coulson-Roy, Incipitarium, no. 170. Statius’s Thebais (the so-called “In principio” accessus) (fol. 6rb) inc. In principio cuiuslibet auctoris historiographi ista sunt inquirenda … expl. ad litteram exponendam accedamus. Edited in Harald Jens Anderson, Medieval Accessus to Statius, Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1998, pp. 63–79; mentioned in David Anderson, Boccaccio’s Glosses on Statius (Florence, 1994), p. 69. Ibis (fol. 6rb) inc. Auctor iste Ouidius cum propter culpam suam ab Augusto Cesare … expl. tertio narrat ibi in loca ab Elisiis. See Coulson-Roy, Incipitarium, no. 35.



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III. Fols. 6va-11ra: Accessus and Glosses to the Tristia: Accessus (fol. 6va) inc. Materia actoris in hoc opere eadem est que et in libro de Ponto, scilicet exilium et miserie … expl. dicit itaque parue etc. See Coulson-Roy, Incipitarium, no. 237. Glosses (fols. 6va-11ra) inc. Paruum dicit ad comparationem libri Metamorphoseos … expl. candide benigne. The glosses remain to date unedited.

IV. Fols. 11ra- 19rb: Accessus and Glosses to the Heroides: Accessus (fol. 11ra) inc. In principio huius actoris quattuor debent inquiri … expl. dicit ergo o Vlixe. See Coulson-Roy, Incipitarium, no. 179. Glosses (fols. 11ra-19rb) inc. Hic Vlixes, sis, Vlixus, xi, Vlixes, ei vnde Itacensis Vlixei … expl. velit esse paucos (Her. 21.12) quasi diceret vt cito moriar. The glosses remain to date unedited.

V. Fols. 19rb- 24va: Accessus and Glosses to Statius, Achilleis: Accessus (fol. 19rb) inc. In principio huius auctoris quattuor sunt inquirenda: intentio scribentis, materia, vtilitas, titulus. De hiis prepositis videamus … expl. narrat ubi dicit soluerat etc. The accessus is discussed and edited in Harald Jens Anderson, Medieval Accessus to Statius, Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1998, pp. 41–47. Glosses (fols. 19rb-24va) inc. A propositione ergo inchoat dicens o diuina … expl. quomodo mersit me in fluuio infernali. Expliciunt glose Stacii Achilleidos. The glosses remain to date unedtied.

VI. Fols. 24va-28va: Accessus and Glosses to Claudian, De Raptu Proserpinae: Accessus (fol. 24va) inc. Titulus talis est huius libri Claudii Claudiani de Raptu Proserpinae liber primus incipit. Sunt enim tres. In ipso titulo potest denotari materia… expl. predonis erga raptam rapte erga predonem. Glosses (fol. 24va) inc. Actor iste more aliorum poetarum non incipit prologum… (fol. 28va) expl. id est tam turpis quam turpe te sompniando uidelicet Claudii Claudiani de Raptu Proserpinae expliciunt.

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The accessus and glosses remain to date unedited. The accessus and glosses are also found in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Lat. qu. 539, fols. 1r-6v and in Antwerp, Musaeum Plantin-Moretus M. 85, fols. 19r-37r (accessus on fol. 37r), and the accessus only is found in Augsburg, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek, 4o 21, fol. 25r-v. The commentary and accessus are not mentioned in the Catalogus article on Claudian. See Amy K. Clarke, “Claudius Claudianus,” in Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, ed. F. Edward Cranz, (Washington, 1976), vol. 3, pp. 141–71.

VII. Fols. 28vb- 31rb: Accessus and Glosses to Avianus, Fabulae: Accessus (fol. 28vb) inc. Rustica deflenti Que materia, que intentio, que vtilitas auctoris sic inquirendum est. Materia huius auctoris sunt fabule ab Esopo tractate uel translate … expl. postquam narret, sed statim narrat dicens rustica etc. Glosses (fol. 28vb-31rb) inc. In hoc apologo introducit auctor rusticam et natam suam … expl. expedit id est me expedit impersonale pro me necesse insignem pelagi. Expliciunt glosule Aviani. The accessus and glosses remain to date unedited. Accessus and glosses are also found in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 1663, fols. 13r-25r.

VIII. Fols. 31va-44v: Arnulf of Orléans, Accessus and Glosses to the Fasti with an Index on fol. 45ra-b. Accessus (fol. 31va) inc. Vt euidencius appareant ea que in serie huius libri … expl. modo licteram exponamus. Edited in Ghisalberti, “Arnolfo,” 161–66. See Coulson-Roy, Incipitarium, no. 480. Glosses (fol. 31va-44v) inc. Tempora id est menses … expl. morte nichil certius esse potest. Edited in Jean Holzworth, An Unpublished Commentary on Ovid’s Fasti by Arnulfus of Orléans, Ph.D. Dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1940, and Jörg Rudolf Rieker, Arnulfi Aurelianensis Glosule Ovidii Fastorum (Florence, 2005). Selections from the glosses are transcribed in Ghisalberti, “Arnolfo,” 162–66.

IX. Fols. 46ra- 55va: Anonymous, Accessus and Glosses to the Epistulae ex Ponto: Accessus: inc. Titulus huius Ouidiani qui est incipit Ouidianus de Ponto duplex sumptus est … expl. vt ipse testatur dicens nec uitam nec opes … pena relegari maxima uisa fuit. See Coulson-Roy, Incipitarium, no. 467. Bruno Roy has tentatively suggested that this accessus may be the work of Fulco of Orléans. For an edition of Fulco’s accessus to Ovid’s Ars amatoria see J.W. Baldwin, “L’ars amatoria au XIIe siècle en France: Ovide, Abélard, André le Chapelain et Pierre de Chantre,” in Histoire et



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Société. Mélanges offerts à Georges Duby, 4 vols (Aix-en-Provence, 1992), vol. 1, Le couple, l’ami et le prochain, pp. 19–29. Glosses (fols. 46ra-55va) inc. Naso Thomitane Hanc primam epistulam scribit ad Brutum quendam amicum suum … expl. liuor emphasis est cum nocet ipsum liuorem. Darent id est darentur. The glosses remain to date unedited.

X. Fols. 55va- 59vb: Accessus and Glosses to the Amores: Accessus (fol. 55va) inc. Ad maiorem operis subsequentis euidenciam notandum est quod secundum quosdam factus hic liber post editionem Ouidii de Arte amandi … expl. et sic intitulatur Ouidius Sine titulo. See Coulson-Roy, Incipitarium, no. 15. Glosses (fols. 55va-59vb) inc. Hac epistula utitur pro prologo in cuius initio ostendit quam habuerit et quam habuit … expl. corniger tragedias uolo componere in quibus agitur de baco. The glosses remain to date unedited. History: The manuscript comes from the Dominican convent at Soest. It once belonged to the collector Bernhard Rottendorf of Münster (died ca.1685), for whom see P. Lehmann, “Aus dem Leben, dem Briefwechsel und der Büchersammlung eines Helfers der Philologen,” in Erforschung des Mittelalters (Stuttgart, 1961), vol. 4, pp. 107–27, no. 54 and the bibliophile Johann Albert Fabricius. The inside flyleaf has the ownership mark: “liber iste est fratris Reyneri de Capella. Orate pro eo.” Cf. P.O. Kristeller, Iter italicum (London/Leiden, 1983) vol. 3, p. 187; Catalogus bibliothecae beati Herm. Sam. Reimari prof. Hamburg. pt. II Existens libros philologicos, geographicos et historicos (Hamburg, 1770), p. 216, no. 147; Bibliotheca J.A. Fabricii IV (Hamburg, 1741), p. 196, no. 145; P. Lehmann, “Skandinavische Reisefrüchte,” Nordisk Tidskrift för Bok - och Biblioteksväsen 22 (1935), 116–17 (description of manuscript), and his “Aus dem Leben, dem Briefwechsel und der Büchersammlung eines Helfers der Philologen,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 28 (1938), 176–77; Judson Boyce Allen, “Eleven Unpublished Commentaries on Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Two Other Texts of Mythographic Interest: Some Comments on a Bibliography,” in The Mythographic Art: Classical Fable and the Rise of the Vernacular in Early France and England, ed. Jane Chance (Gainesville, 1990), pp. 281–315, esp. p. 285; Harald Jens Anderson, The Manuscripts of Statius, 3 vols (Virginia, 2009), vol. 1, Introduction and Catalogs of Materials, pp. 152–53.

CICERO REDIVIVUS APUD SCURRAS: SOME EARLY MEDIEVAL TREATMENTS OF THE GREAT ORATOR Michael W. Herren “Cicero lives on in the writings of the buffoons.” I have chosen the word scurra for my title because of its extensive range of meanings. According to the Oxford Latin Dictionary, a scurra can be “a fashionable city idler, man about town,” “an offensive wit,” and, from Augustan times, “a professional buffoon.”1 The older A Latin Dictionary, edited by Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, adds the later meaning “clown in a pantomine.”2 The German derivative skurril, “droll, comical” (cf. Skurrilität, “drollery”) favors the gentle aspect of the word’s range, while English “scurrilous” (“jeering, offensive”) underscores the harsh end of the spectrum. What I have to offer on the life and doings of Cicero in the next few pages is mostly skurril, but one example does verge upon the scurrilous. Writers of the early Middle Ages knew next to nothing about the life of Cicero, even though the authors dearest to that period—Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Isidore—quoted him copiously. A good example of this ignorance comes from John Scottus Eriugena, who, as the most outstanding intellect of Europe between Boethius and Abelard, cannot be characterized as a scurra in any sense. Yet hear what John has to tell us about Cicero’s floruit: Eundemque Martianum, dico, utriusque lingue, Grece videlicet et Latine, sui operis textura peritissimum fuisse manifestissime proclamat. Marci quoque Tullii Ciceronis discipulum fuisse, sive vivente illo sive obeunte floruerit, quisquis eius scripta prospexerit non negabit. Ipsius quippe solius in libro quem scripsit De rethorica exemplis utitur et argumentis. (“And the texture of his composition, I say, most clearly proclaims the same Martianus, to have been highly skilled in both languages, that is, Greek and Latin. Whoever examines his writings will not deny that he was a disciple of Marcus a. k. a. Tullius Cicero, whether he flourished when the latter was still living, or after his death. Indeed, in the book he wrote On Rhetoric Martianus uses the examples and summaries of Cicero exclusively.”)3 1 Ed. P.G. Glare, fasc. VII (Oxford, 1980), p. 1713. 2 First edition, impression of 1958 (Oxford), p. 1650. 3 Iohannis Scotti Annotationes in Marcianum, ed. Cora E. Lutz (Cambridge, MA, 1939), p. 3. My translation.

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One can only admire John’s caution in not asserting unequivocally that Martianus studied with Cicero during Cicero’s lifetime. Yet modern readers equipped not only with Pauly-Wissowa and The Oxford Classical Dictionary, but also with Google and Wikipedia, would surely gasp when noting that a ninth-century intellectual giant could not decisively  distinguish the chronology of a man who lived in the first century  b.c. from one who lived in the fifth century a.d. Early medieval writers and even later ones read many of the authors of Latin antiquity without having an inkling of their lifetime or careers. And so it is that they invented much, some of which strikes us as “scurrilous” in various ways. Uncertainty about Cicero’s name was responsible for one bit of silliness in the Cosmography of Aethicus Ister (whose author should now be designated as Ps. Jerome).4 Perhaps this is not so surprising if even John Scottus could write Marci quoque Tullii Ciceronis. John had the benefit of the Carolingian Renaissance, while the author of the Cosmography wrote in the darkest of times, the early eighth century. Here is how Ps. Jerome refers to Cicero: Tullium et Ciceronem, Platonem et Hebionem duris et acrioribus disputationibus, contumiliis conpositionum, gentilium argumentis, fidelium obstaculum fore multorum, sicut et nobis patent documenta praecognita. (“I say that Tully and Cicero, Plato and Hebion will be the ruin of many and a stumbling block to the faithful because of their harsh and bitter disputes, the quarrelsome nature of their writings, and their heathen fables, just as their well-known teachings reveal to us.”)5

Had Ps. Jerome written after John Scottus we might well imagine that “the twins” Cicero and Tully were somehow generated from Marci quoque Tullii Ciceronis. But, of course, the opposite is the case. Where, then, did Ps. Jerome derive the notion that Cicero and Tully were different individuals, or is this just the bad joke that it appears to be? While I have found much that is scurrilous in the Cosmography, I think that in this case a

4 For the argument that the Cosmography is a double forgery (by a fictitious editor who pretends to epitomize and “edit” a fictitious source) see Michael W. Herren, “Wozu diente die Fälschung der Kosmographie des Aethicus?,” in Lateinische Kultur im 8. Jahrhundert. Traube Gedenkschrift, A. Lehner, W. Berschin, eds. (St. Ottilien, 1989), pp. 145–60. 5 Die Kosmographie des Aethicus, ed. Otto Prinz, MGH (Munich, 1993), p. 170. This can now be cited as §66b in my edition/translation in Publications of The Journal of Medieval Latin 8, (Turnhout, 2010). The translation is mine.



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bêtise is to be explained by a misreading of a source. There are indications that Ps. Jerome used the opening sections of the first book of Macrobius’ Commentarii in Somnium Scripionis.6 Macrobius begins his work: “Inter Platonis et Ciceronis libros, quos de re publica uterque constituit,” then proceeds for several pages to refer to Cicero at some points by Cicero, at others, by Tullius. Ps. Jerome in the Cosmographia criticizes Cicero and Tully as well as Plato and Hebion (?)7 for employing fables in their works of instruction. The use of fables in philosophical works is precisely the topic that Macrobius introduces at the start of chapter 2 of book 1: “Ac priusquam somnii verba consulimus, enodandum nobis est a quo genere hominum Tullius memoret vel irrisam Platonis fabulam vel ne sibi idem eveniat non vereri.”8 In the translation of William Stahl: “Before considering the words of Scipio’s Dream, we must ascertain what sort of men Cicero [Tullius] says either ridiculed Plato’s story or at least had no fear that the same thing might happen to them.”9 Macrobius concludes that Plato and Cicero were in agreement in accepting certain types of fables into their philosophical works. Thus, it is probable that the author of the Cosmography believed that Tully and Cicero were separate individuals who happened to agree with Plato. Ps. Jerome comes off as a scurra indeed, but the humor was probably not intended. Some will find the next example not only scurrilous but also shocking. It comes from a collection of Priscian glosses found in a Freising manuscript of the ninth century. On fol. 29r of Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 6408 we read: Helena. Uxor Menelai quam postea rapuit Marcus Cicero. (“Helen [was] the wife of Menelaus, whom later Marcus Cicero abducted.”)

What, if any, could have connected the owner of the face that sank a thousand ships to the greatest of Roman orators? The chronological gap between them amounts to more than a millennium. (John Scottus may be excused for thinking that Cicero and Martianus Capella could have been

6 See for example Cosmographia, §44 (ed. Herren, with changes from Prinz, p. 143): “… Oriens et meridies … tot scriptores habet quot res publica et philosophus (= -os) et somniatores.” 7 Hebionem may be the Stoic philosopher. The early heretic Hebion hardly fits the context. 8 Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis 1.2, ed. J. Willis (Leipzig, 1963), vol. 2, p. 3. 9 William Harris Stahl, Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio: Translated with an Introduction and Notes (New York, 1952), p. 83.

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contemporaries; after all, those two figures lived a mere 500 years apart.) As for an explanation of this scurrilitas, my only suggestion would be that the Marcus Cicero mentioned in the gloss is the father of the orator, and that Helena is a mistake for Heluia, attested as the wife of Cicero père. The error is not implausible if one allows for the misreading of u as n: Heluia>Helnia>Helena. The more difficult question to answer is where did the Freising glossator (or more likely his source) acquire the information that Heluia had been abducted by a certain Marcus Cicero? All we know of Heluia can be summed up in a single sentence from chapter 1 of Plutarch’s Life of Cicero: “She was well born and lived an honorable life.” The story of the raptus was probably manufactured out of whole cloth. Marcus Cicero was married to Helena (Heluia). Helena had been abducted before and seemed to enjoy it; she may have been happy to be abducted again. This bit of buffoonery resembles the last in one respect. In the previous story one Cicero became two; in this one two became one. Both are examples of comic ignorance occasioned by the misreading of a source, or the inadequacy thereof. My last example involves a more refined treatment of Cicero by an author who may be regarded as exemplifying the older notion of a scurra, namely, “a fashionable city idler.” The humor of this type of scurra will be waggish, not abusive or offensive—more skurril than scurrilous. I refer to Virgil the Grammarian, a refined Irish gentleman of the 7th century who would have felt at home in the better establishments of James Joyce’s Dublin.10 Virgil left us two works on grammar written in a Latin that could pass for elegant in his day. His writings combine the serious treatment of grammar with parody, verbal wit, and much that is perplexing. A wellknown feature of his writings is the invention of both authors and quotations. The Indice degli “autori” citati to Giovanni Polara’s fine edition with Italian translation11 reveals two dozen “citations” of Cicero, of which not one can be traced to the genuine works of the orator. Let us look at some examples:

10 The notion that Virgil was a kind of early medieval precursor of James Joyce was advanced by E.K. Rand, “The Irish Flavor of the Hisperica Famina,” Studien zur lateinischen Dichtung des Mittelalters: Ehrengabe für Karl Strecker, W. Stach, H. Walther, eds. (Dresden, 1931), p. 141. For the argument that Virgil was Irish or at least wrote for an Irish circle see Michael W. Herren, “Some New Light on the Life of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 79, V, no. 2 (Dublin, 1979), pp. 27–71; reprinted in Herren, Latin Letters in Early Christian Ireland (Aldershot, UK, 1996), no. VII. 11 Virgilio Marone grammatico Epitomi ed Epistole (Naples, 1979).



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1. Epit. 5.10.3–4 (Polara, p. 56): De accussativo cassu quaerunt quid sit. Plerique nostrorum hoc verbum frequenter triverunt, id est accussandi; Cicero etenim sic dicit: accusate quod rectum est, hoc est agite. Terrentius quoque: quare non accussatis paenitudinem? Hoc est agitis. (“Regarding the accusative case one asks what it is. Very many of our [authors] frequently over-employed this verb, i.e. [the verb] of accusing. Indeed, Cicero says the following: ‘Do (accusate) what is right.’ Terence also [says]: ‘Why do you not do (accusatis) penance?’”)

The implied etymology here runs counter to that formulated by several grammarians who state that the accusative case is the case used to accuse someone.12 It appears that Virgil is trying to tickle our wits with a dry little joke. The verb accusare can be replaced by agere not because accusare can mean “do,” but because agere can mean “to bring charges against,” “indict,” thus by extension, “accuse.” Note the example from the real Cicero in OLD, s.v. 44: Pro Quinctio 41, “si iudex non esses … te potissimum hoc persequi, te petere, te agere oporteret.” “If you were not a judge, … it would be most fitting to prosecute you, to pursue you, to indict you.” Virgil thus expects his unsuspecting readers to believe that if you can replace accusare with agere, it is equally permissible to replace agere with accusare! 2. Epit. 7.3.4 (Polara, p. 82): Virgil presents a debate among the grammarians Cato, Propertius, Aeneas, and Cicero on which of the verbal modes (indicative or imperative) is the more important or prestigious. It runs like this: Hunc (imperativum modum) Cato indicativo modo praeferri debere iudicabat, Propertius dumtaxat in plurali, sed hoc Aeneas et Cicero obiurgant dicentes indicativum modum ab omnibus certis auctoribus principaliter ussurpatum, imperativum autem secondarie semper habitum, praesertim cum imperativus modus primam personam non habeat, quae persona primaria esse ab omnibus definitur … (“Cato judged that the imperative mode should be preferred to the indicative, and Propertius thought this too, but only in the plural. However, Aeneas and Cicero condemned this saying that the indicative mode was employed as the principal mode by all authoritative writers, while the imperative was always held to be in second place, especially since the imperative mode does not have a first person, which is affirmed by everyone as the primary person.”) 12 For a selection of etymologies of accusativus see Robert Maltby, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (Leeds, 1991), p. 4.

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This strange debate, on which “Aeneas” and “Cicero” weighed in with their grammatical authority, reflects other heated discussions reported by Virgil regarding the primary position of grammatical elements. Here we learn that the indicative tops the list of modes and that the first person heads the list of personae. Elsewhere we learn that the verb is the most prestigious of all the part of speech: Epit. 7.1.1: “… quod verbum principalem partem orationis cuncti astruunt” (“because all judge that the verb is the most important part of speech”). 3. Epit. 10.1.5–6 (Polara, p. 130): Scinderatio autem litterarum superflua est, sed tamen a glifosis sensuque subtilibus recipitur; unde et fona brevia scindi magis commodum est quam longa, ut Cicero dicit: RRR SS PP MM N T EE OO A V I, quod sic solvendum est: spes Romanorum perit. (“Moreover, the scrambling of letters is useless, but it is accepted by the litterati13 and persons of subtle sensibility; whence it is that short words are more easily scrambled than long ones, as Cicero says, “RRR SS PP MM N T EE OO A V I, which is solved thus: ‘the hope of the Romans dies’.”)

Book 10 of Virgil’s Epitomae is devoted to cryptograms, or what Virgil is pleased to call scinderatio fonorum, the splitting or scrambling of letters and syllables. Although Virgil himself labels this activity as superflua (“useless”), he is compelled to admit a description of it into his grammar on the authority of such luminaries as Cicero, Virgilius Assianus (Virgil the Asian), Emilius Rhetor, and the greatest schoolmaster of his day, Galbungus. However, Virgil hasn’t finished with Cicero just yet. Not only is the orator-grammarian an authority on splitting words into letter groups and recomposing them, but also an expert on substituting the ending of a verb for the entire verb: Epit. 10.2.1 (Polara, p. 130): Virgilius Troeanus … unam possuit litteram pro toto activo verbo quod in o terminatur, id est opto. Et Cicero de sole magnum inquit luminare quod totum circuit polum sol ur, hoc posuit pro nominatur. (“Virgil the Trojan … wrote a single letter in place of an entire active verb that ends in –o, i.e. opto (“I wish”). And Cicero speaking about the sun, ‘the

13 Translating Virgil’s glifosis, “full of writings,” based on Greek γλύφω, “to engrave,” hence “to write.”



cicero redivivus apud scurras45 great star which circles the whole universe is called the sun,’ wrote ur instead of nominatur (‘is named’)”.

What are we to make of such scurrilitas? The examples given here can only be described as silly, yet further on Virgil adds bits of serious grammar to the mix, as when he notes correctly (10.3.1) that the forms rogassem and rogasse can be substituted for rogavissem and rogavisse.14 I suppose that one of Virgil’s aims is to keep his readers constantly off balance, incapable of determining whether a given discussion is meant seriously or as a joke until it has already passed by. Dragooning great authorities such as Cicero, Terrentius, and several Aeneases adds to the confusion and the fun, as when Virgil again exploits Cicero to turn a preposition into a verb. Through the alchemy of Virgilian scinderatio Cicero transmutes the dross of the preposition quatinus (quatenus) into the gold of the verb quasiunt (10.4.2). Cicero and his Doppelgänger Tully did indeed have an afterlife apud scurras, but their lives were like those of the Homeric shades—they were almost unrecognizable as their former selves, unable to speak without an infusion of sacrificial blood, and even then, not with their own voices. Names were detached from writings and writings from authors, but the names did live on. The life and career of Cicero, as brilliantly adumbrated in Plutarch’s Lives, was a cipher to the western Middle Ages—not even heard of, much less read. The Carolingian Renaissance and its aftermath recovered Cicero’s rhetorical and philosophical works, even some of his speeches,15 but the recovery of his life had to await the Italian Renaissance.

14 Vivien Law, “Serious Aspects of the Wordplay of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus,” in L’héritage des grammairiens latins de l’Antiquité aux Lumières, ed. I. Rosier (Paris/Louvain, 1988), pp. 121–31. Louis Holtz, Donat et la tradition de l’enseignement grammatical (Paris, 1981), pp. 315–18. 15 See generally the article “Cicero,” in Texts and Transmission, ed. L.D. Reynolds et al. (Oxford, 1983), pp. 54–142.

CICERO THROUGH QUINTILIAN’S EYES IN THE MIDDLE AGES Nancy van Deusen Quintilian, in his work that is often translated into English as “The Art of Rhetoric,” the Institutio oratoria quotes Cicero 689 times, not counting innumerable allusions and references to Cicero that lace his prose. As for the transmission of Quintilian through the Middle Ages, there are ten major extant editions of Quintilian produced from the late ninth to the end of the eleventh centuries, that constitute the basis for our modern twentieth, twenty-first century editions, especially the famous Turin manuscript produced in Sankt Gallen during the course of the early eleventh century. Furthermore, there are at least 20 incunabula produced during the early years of printing. Within the holdings of the library of the University of Basel, Switzerland, a center of printing from early incunabula to the present, there can be found and accessed editions of Quintilian, many with commentaries, from 1470, 1480, 1493 (two editions, also with commentary), 1494, 1512, 1514, 1515, 1516, 1521, 1527 (two editions), 1529, 1531 (two editions), 1538, 1541 (two editions), 1542 (two editions), 1543 (two editions), 1548, 1549, 1554 (two editions, also with commentary), 1555, 1557, 1561, 1563, 1568, 1579, 1581, 1591, 1641, 1665, 1692, 1693, 1720, 1725, 1738, 1741, 1760, 1773, 1784, 1792, 1798–1834, 1809, 1816–1821, 1821–1825, 1826 (two editions), 1830–1834, 1831, 1851, 1854, 1855, 1861 (two editions), 1863, 1868–1869, 1873, 1874, 1882, 1884, 1885, 1886/87, 1888, 1907–1935, 1924, 1947, 1948, 1954, 1958, 1959, 1961–1980, 1963, 1966, 1967, 1970, 1972–1995, 2000, 2006; and, at this writing, no doubt someone, somewhere, is working on still another edition of the Institutio oratoria of Quintilian. These editions are all to be found in Basel, University Library, but many editions, such as the 1543 Robert Winter edition, were also printed in Basel.1 In short, Quintilian’s work not only is without a doubt enormously indebted to Cicero, to be followed further in more detail, but Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria infused the medieval Latin reading population not only with what must have seemed to them the legendary figure of Cicero, an 1 I have included only Latin editions of Quintilian. Translations of this author constitute a study for itself. See appendix for a partial listing of translations into German, French, English, and Italian.

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orator and intellectual of nearly divine capacity, but also with very solid subjects, expressions, questions, and structures of arguments, not to mention a whole quarry of pithy sayings and epigrams suitable for every possible situation. A mainstream of what the Latin Middle Ages knew of Cicero—quite a lot as it turns out—was intermediated through Quintilian. Quintilian also communicated an immediacy and credibility to the figure of Cicero in that he writes of Cicero’s autographs, opinions, usages, and thoughts, and transmits a liveliness and sense of humor that was the basis not only of a vital and valid medieval acquaintance with Cicero, but also of the tremendous influence of Quintilian’s work itself.2 How Cicero, through Quintilian, influenced the Latin Middle Ages from ca. 900 to 1600 is the topic of this contribution to a volume on the legacy and influence of Cicero. 2 What of Quintilian was known in the Middle Ages? This is also a question of what of Quintilian’s complete work was generally available to a Latin-reading public in the Middle Ages. I am in this contribution renewing the discussion of the influence of Quintilian throughout the Middle Ages to the famous early fifteenth-century discovery made by Poggio Bracciolini of the complete Quintilian at the monastery of Sankt Gallen (with the basic account reported by Remigio Sabbadini, Storia e Critica di Testi Latini [Catania, 1914] relying upon Poggio’s Latin text announcing his discovery and giving himself much credit, since, as he states, the manuscript was not in the library, but rather in “obscuro carcere, fundo scilicet unius turris, quo ne capitalis quidem rei damnati retruderenter” in Poggii epistolae, ed. T. de Tonellis, 3 vols [Turin, 1963], I, Epistola V [pp. 25–29]). The question has by no means been conclusively settled. James J. Murphy in his seminal Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. A History of Rhetorical Theory from St. Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley/ Los Angeles, CA, 1974), especially in his sections on “The Four Ancient Traditions,” pp. 8–26 as well as “The Survival of the Classical Traditions,” pp. 106–31, with emphasis from his final “Epilogue: Rediscovery and Implications,” pp. 357–63, points to the incompleteness of the available Institutio throughout the Middle Ages; but bases his opinion almost completely on the Institutionis oratoriae I, ed. F.H. Colson (Cambridge, MA, 1924), who, in turn, based his opinion solely on the text available to John of Salisbury, the so-called textus mutilatus. This designation should tell us something about the manuscript, namely, that it was incomplete. Apparently, John of Salisbury’s manuscript of Quintilian had a lacuna from I.i.6-V.xiv.12, with a portion of VIII missing as well. Taking John of Salibury’s available manuscript as evidence, Murphy writes: “This rhetorical portion of the Institutio apparently did not survive intact through the Middle Ages (p. 22, n. 44).” Bringing together the example of a single medieval writer with the self-congratulatory enthusiasm of Poggio Bracciolini and Leonardo Aretino who were of the opinion that Rome had been rediscovered, is by no means sufficient evidence upon which to build a case that Quintilian had little or no influence in the Middle Ages. Authors who praise Quintilian include, for example, Wibald of Corvey (d. 1158), Alexander Neckham (d. 1217), Ulrich of Bamberg (d. 1127) who used portions of VIII, IX, Nigel Wirecker, Alain de Lille, Guibert de Nogent, Richard de Fournival and many others. (See also Priscila S. Boskoff, “Quintilian in the Late Middle Ages,” Speculum 27 [1952], 71–78.) In any case, references within the entire Institutio to the writings and character of Cicero are ubiquitous so that whatever portions of Quintilian were available, a medieval Latin reading public would have come in contact with the figura of the great statesman and orator as presented by Quintilian.



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We have established that Quintilian, based on the succession of editions from the tenth to the twenty-first century, has maintained a remarkable influence, and that the sheer number of quotations of, and allusions to, Cicero in Quintilian’s work constituted an infusion—a deluge—an inundation of Cicero as persona and as lore into the Latin Middle Ages; as well as constituting a bridge from Late Antiquity to, and through, what has become known as the “early modern period.” Judging by the number of times Butler’s edition/translation has been reprinted, this influence of Cicero through Quintilian has been maintained well into the twentieth century.3 What then could one learn from Quintilian and what constituted priorities for a medieval readership? A history of ideas could indeed be written based upon what, in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth centuries and so on, was selected for comment from Quintilian; what priorities were taken up by the Latin-reading public of the seventeenth century; and, further, a study could also be made of the translations into other languages. With an enthusiasm for Figurenlehre in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an interest in Quintilian not only continues, but becomes even more urgent, and we have evidence that Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria influenced J.S. Bach, in concrete and dispositive ways.4 We will now explore the topic of Quintilian’s quotation of Cicero and what, then, as a result, could have been infused into successive Latin literate mentalities of the Middle Ages. Quintilian’s work is important because it not only takes up such a variety of important topics, such as education, 3 The Institutio oratoria of Quintilian with an English Translation by H.E. Butler, 4 vols (The Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA, 1920, repr. 1933, 1953, 1958). Translators apparently unavoidably bring into their texts what they themselves know and consider important. A comparison of the Latin with Butler’s 1920 English translation within the Loeb Classical Library makes clear that the substitution of English-language priorities of the 1920s, such as “theory,” “style,” especially “form,” and “taste” for the terms that not only united Quintilian’s work with his own educational background, but, as well, to subsequent centuries of Latin-reading culture, does violence to an important continuity of Latin learning in the Middle Ages. Latin expressions such as doctrina, figura, differentia, habitus, pars, partes, even sententiae, and modus that are used specifically, relating all of the disciplines to one another, and accruing significance as they reappear in Quintilian’s text, have been excised by the translator, who substitutes what he considered to be more familiar, equivalent, English terms. The Loeb Classical Library English translation cuts Quintilian off from his own past as well as future influence. 4 For Quintilian’s influence on J.S. Bach, see Ursula Kirkendale, “The Source for Bach’s ‘Musical Offering:’ The ‘Institutio oratoria’ of Quintilian,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 33/1 (Spring, 1980), 88–141. See also Warren Kirkendale, “Ciceronians versus Aristotelians on the Ricercar as Exordium, from Bembo to Bach,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 32/1 (Spring, 1979), 1–44.

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training, success, art and the artist, the benefit of work, and work that can be accomplished with effectiveness and zest in retirement; what to read and how to incorporate one’s reading into various contexts. But Quintilian could also be directly applied to life in terms of will, discipline, and motivation. Based on these topics, Quintilian, with his view of Cicero is of much importance today, so that Cicero indeed has “refused to die.” Quintilian repeatedly refers in one way or the other to Cicero in what is a massive structure of information, advice, illustrative examples, and precepts concerning communication, and even more importantly, making one’s way in the world—in viam—an important medieval topos. Let us summarize some significant features of Quintilian’s discussion of gathering material, speaking in public, influencing an audience, as well as the connection the communicational discipline of rhetoric has to life. First of all, Quintilian treats education, capacity, language, the value of history, composition, necessary studies, and gesture, the choice of a teacher; and then takes up the question of what oratory actually consists. He compares nature and artifice, or material that is already there—pre-existent substance—and what can be done with it, art, and the divisions of art, the distinction between things and words, cases and modes of defense, proofs and evidence, signs, indications, arguments, judgment, and sagacity. Arrangements and organization, definition, qualities, the letter of the law compared to the spirit of the law, contradictory laws, ambiguity, propriety and ornament, amplification and diminution, tropes and figures of thought and speech, are Quintilian’s next subjects, tackled with verve, obvious enthusiasm, and many examples. Here, the close reader who is also trained, and interested, in music, will notice an entire arsenal of terms appropriated by, and useful for, the study of music and the articulation of musical realities. Quintilian provided for many centuries a vocabulary of terms and concepts for the verbal discussion and composition as well as the interpretation in performance of music. Finally, Quintilian discusses the value of reading for filling one’s mind and memory full of material for composition, which authors should be read and why, the concept of commonplaces, the necessity of accurately assessing, and speaking appropriately to, the circumstances in which one is speaking, memory, delivery and gesture, character and how to strengthen it, precedents, firmness and presence of mind, the cultivation of natural characteristics, and the necessity of careful application in order to improve bit by bit, step by step. As one topic after another, one by one, are brought across Quintilian’s stage, one notices that Quintilian has covered a career path from the beginning to the end of one’s professional life; and



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that this was the same organization of Cicero’s writings, who Quintilian quotes more often by far than any other author.5 What then could a Latin-reading medieval audience learn from Quintilian about Cicero, and what, in fact, was made of Cicero in the Latin Middle Ages? The question comes to mind: why did not these Latinreaders, century by century, simply read Cicero for themselves, as he obviously wrote in Latin. The answer is, of course, they did. But Quintilian makes the job of culling out what Cicero had to say on specific topics that much easier, and we can count on them—those medieval readers—to be clever enough to have noticed this. Nevertheless, what we have here is Cicero through Quintilian’s eyes, mind, and interests, and organized according to the program Quintilian has in mind. Cicero’s influence on Quintilian is far too vast to include every instance; but passages have been selected that were taken up with particular concentration in the Middle Ages, and which were also applied to, and exemplified by the analogical discipline of music. For example, Quintilian states, “He should know that Cicero preferred to write aiio and Maiiam with a double i; in that case one of them is made consonant.” Quintilian goes on to write, “A boy therefore must learn both the peculiarities and the common characteristics of letters and must know how they are related to one another” (I.iv.11);6 at this juncture, a list of names is included showing how Cicero in so many cases made a point of individual letters, and, especially, the particular figura with which words in Latin ended. Cicero it would seem was very interested in details, and especially in the individual figurae of letters.7 5 See Quintilian, edition cited, vol. IV, pp. 519–23 for a partial listing of Quintilian’s quotation of Cicero. The chronology of Cicero’s writings, so far as we know, is the following: De inventione (Topics for Speeches), before 81 b.c.; De oratore (The Ideal Orator), 55; De re publica (On the State), begun 54, published 51; De legibus (On Law), 52–43; Hortensius, Academica (Academic Treatises), De finibus bonorum et malorum (On Supreme Good and Evil), Tusculanae disputationes (Conversations at Tusculum), De natura deorum (The Nature of the Gods), 45; De divinatione (Foretelling the Future), De fato (Destiny), De officiis (Duties), 44. Cicero was assassinated in 43 b.c. See Anthony Everitt, Cicero. The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician (London/New York, 2001), pp. xiii-xv. 6 Quintilian, ed. I.iv.11–12: Sciat etiam Ciceroni placuisse aiio Maiiamque geminata I scribere; quod si est, etiam iungetur ut consonans. Quare discat puer, quid in litteris proprium, quid commune, quae cum quibus cognatio …” Quintilian invokes Cicero in several instances throughout this extended passage to contrast figura with sonos, the letter with the sound substance indicated by that letter (littera, with figura, are common translations of the Greek schema, and the two are used interchangeably). 7 Cf. edition, I.iv.13–15: Neque has modo noverit mutationes, quas adferunt declinatio aut praepositio, ut secat secuit, cadit excidit, caedit excidit, calcat exculcat … sed quae rectis quoque casibus aetate transierunt. Nam ut Valesii Fusii in Valerios Furiosque venerunt; ita arbos, labos, vapos etiam et clamos ac lases fuerunt. Atque haec ipsa S littera ab his nominibus exclusa in quibusdam ipsa alteri successit, nam mertare atque pultare dicebant, quin

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From particular letters to words to syntax, Cicero, it would seem, is most interested in the demands of usage and elegance, in language, as well as in the derivation of words. In fact, Quintilian states, in many cases Cicero could be considered quite nearly divine in terms of his delivery and his interpretation of cases and problems (sicut in plurimis, quae M. Tullius in Oratore divine ut omnia exequitur, I.vi.18–19). And this ultimate mastery, again, is evidenced in his attention to the figurae or letters that make up the differences (differentiae) between subtle qualities and characteristics of Cicero’s words. Cicero sets forth an ideal of appropriateness, of carefully considering and matching up outward gestures, even of orthography, of patient consideration of minute differences without pedantry. Cicero is to be praised for this, namely, for his sensitivity to, and observation of, differentiae between figurae without becoming overwhelmed by minutiae, not at all an inconsiderable feat, and one that is difficult to teach. Cicero brings out as well the topics of sight versus sound, the figurae of word within syntax and the sound of the voice (voces). “Judge for yourselves how words sound and the importance of this invisible material” (I.vii.30–34). We are dealing here with the relationship between figurae or litterae, the sound material these figurae delineate, and the ways available of shaping this sound materia-substantia. Figurae therefore within the practice of writing stand in a direct relationship to the substantia itself and to voces, ultimately to expression that can be assessed with respect to its appropriateness or value. This is an essential emphasis, one which Augustine also takes up in both De ordine and De musica, namely, the relationship between sight and sound, between figurae and the invisible, but nevertheless very real, material of sound. Quintilian quotes Cicero over and over on this topic, drawing from a goodly selection of Cicero’s writings, his letters, his reports of depositions, as well as his major treatises, particularly, of course, De oratore. It was this relationship between inner fordeum faedosque pro aspiratione F velut simili littera utentes; nam contra Graeci aspirare F ut solent, ut pro Fundanio Cicero testem, qui primam eius litteram dicere non possit, irridet. Sed B quoque in locum aliarum dedimus aliquando, unde Burrus et Bruges et Belena. Nec non eadem fecit ex duello bellum, unde Duelios quidam dicere Belios ausi. Quid locum litesque? Quid T litterae cum D quaedam cognatio? See also I.v.13; I.vii.20–33, in which Quintilian in dealing with particular, individual letters, also explores the topic of difference between letter and sound: (I.vii.28) Quid? quae scribuntur aliter quam enuntiantur? Augustine also thought this distinction important; see van Deusen, “Music, Rhythm,” in Augustine through the Ages. An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald, O.S.A. (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK, 1999). This essential difference, that is, between the substance of sound itself (sonos) and its linear indication (figura) constitutes the conceptual basis for music notation.



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substance and outer analogy or characteristic format in all of its various and diverse exemplifications that profoundly influenced medieval Latin mental culture. It would seem that Cicero gave Quintilian a structure for his work, a sort of clothes-line upon which to hang his topics and examples, and, in turn, Quintilian, on his own terms and emphasizing his own priorities, gave Cicero to the Latin Middle Ages. In today’s modern, still rather trendy, way of speaking, Quintilian “reinvented” Cicero; but at the same time infused into Latin reading culture carefully organized and directed Ciceronian lore, based, responsibly, on Cicero’s own writings. In constructing this figura of Cicero, Quintilian frequently praises Cicero for his diligence and exactitude without engaging in small destructive quibbles, a figura that studies but never becomes stuck in pedantry.8 Furthermore, Cicero communicated the fruits of his own reading—a background of writers that would otherwise have been lost not only to the Middle Ages but to his own intellectual milieu as well.9 Examples from a diversity of authors, some of them quite ridiculous, gave relief from the tension and tedium of courtroom proceedings. In analyzing the ideal orator, Quintilian states that Cicero’s combination of traits and talents does not in his opinion correspond to any living or dead orator, but rather to an imaginary construct, a chimera, so to speak that must be thought about and brought, part by part, to one’s 8 Quintilian writes (I.vii.33–34): Redit autem illa cogitatio, quosdam fore, qui haec quae diximus parva nimium et impedimenta quoque maius aliquid agentibus putent. Nec ipse ad extremam usque anxietatem et ineptas cavillationes descendendum atque iis ingenia concidi et comminui credo. Sed nihil ex grammatice nocuerit, nisi quod supervacuum est. An ideo minor est M. Tullius orator, quod idem artis huius diligentissimus fuit et in filio (ut epistolis apparet) recte loquendi asper quoque exactor? Quintilian is concerned that his readers will regard what he has discussed as mind-numbing details, of hindrance to those who desire to go on to greater things. “But, I ask you, is Cicero a less great orator for having given to the orator’s discipline his most demanding attention, or for having, as his letters show, demanded rigorous exactitude of speaking of his son?” 9 I.viii.10-ll: Denique credamus summis oratoribus, qui veterum poemata vel ad fidem causarum vel ad ornamentum eloquentiae adsumunt. Nam praecipue quidem apud Ciceronem, frequenter tamen apud Asinium etiam et ceteros qui sunt proximi, videmus Enni Acci, Pacuvi, Lucili, Terenti, Caecili, et aliorum inseri versus summa non eruditionis modo gratia sed etiam iucunditatis, cum poeticis voluptatibus aures a forensi asperitate respirant. For we find more especially within Cicero’s writing, but frequently in Asinius and other writers of that time, quotations from Ennius, Accius, Pacuvius, Lucilius, Terence, Caecilius and others, that have been inserted not just to show the speaker’s erudition, but to provide some humor by attracting and engaging the ears of listeners, thus providing relief from the rigors of a legal case. (The same was said by Augustine with regard to music; that by its “voluptuousness” music provided exemplification to difficult concepts, that is, made them plain.)

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own mind.10 This leads then to a discussion of parts and wholes; that communication is composed of many small, even trivial, and sometimes ambiguous, but still important, parts. Some of these parts may even contradict one another. “With an inner eye we see then many, and amongst themselves contradictory, parts that must be effectively put together; that out of diverse parts what is perceived as unified composition may properly and cogently result.”11 It would seem that each one of these compositions is quite different, and for quite different purposes so that which is hidden from view silently, tacitly, supplying its own secret force, may become manifest and purposeful. Quintilian’s own comment to all of this is: “Nature does not furnish the appearance of the perfect orator, and it is disgraceful to despair of what is possible,” an epigram that shows in its simplicity and usefulness why Quintilian was so important for such a long time.12 Now, on to teaching students, this notion of parts within totality is indeed useful. Parts of teaching include: clarity, brevity, credibility of narrative, plan and hidden artistic construction (which was dealt with only shortly before), wisdom in dividing up material to be taught, delineation within density of material, identifying the force that inspires, finding humor that is delicious to the audience, sharpness of invective, and finally, to sum up, urbanity. Cicero needless to say was master of all.13 10 I.x.4–5: Quibus ego primum hoc respondeo, quod M. Cicero scripto ad Brutum libro frequentius testatur, non eum a nobis institui oratorem, qui sit aut fuerit, sed imaginem, quandam concepisse nos animo perfecti illius et nulla parte cessantis. (Quintilian shortly before this passage has discussed the value of material and measurement disciplines such as geometry and music as preparation for the orator: Nam quid, inquiunt, ad agendam causam dicendamve sententiam pertinet, scire, quemadmodum data linea constitui triangula aequis lateribus possint? Aut quo melius vel defendet reum vel reget consilia, qui citharae sonos nominibus et spatiis distinxerit?) Quintilian is again setting forth the distinction as well as connection between the delineatory, linear, indication of content/material substance such as a triangle, or the indications, i.e. names, of music intervals and the substance of sound itself. Substance, space (interval), and indication are brought together in close proximity in this discussion. 11 I.x.6–7: Quintilian begins here with geometry and music. Similiter oratorem, qui debet esse sapiens, non geometres faciet aut musicus quaeque his alia subiungam, sed hae quoque artes, ut sit consummatus, iuvabunt. Nisi forte antidotes quidem atque alia, quae oculis aut vulneribus medentur, ex multis atque interim contrariies quoque inter se effectibus componi videmus, quorum ex diversis fit una illa mixtura, quae nulli earum similis est, ex quibus constat, sed proprias vires ex omnibus sumit. … 12 I.x.8: Natura enim perfectum oratorem esse non prohibet, turpiterque desperatur quidquid fieri potest. 13 Cf II.v. 20: Cicero, ut mihi quidem videtur, et iucundus incipientibus quoque et apertus est satis, nec prodesse tantum sed etiam amari potest, tum (quemadmodum Livius praecipit) ut quisque erit Ciceroni simillimus (the ideal, according to Livy is that which comes closest to Cicero).



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We have pointed out some priorities of Cicero through Quintilian’s eyes within the first three books of Quintilian’s treatise. Education, as preparation also for life, composition, and the uses of reading and study in order to gain material for discourse, as well as effectiveness of communication, have been presented in Quintilian’s earnest yet homey manner. Quintilian devotes the next nine books to an intensification of the topic of inner substance and its relationship to outer delineation and articulation, all the while using Cicero to give structure, authority, authenticity, and exemplification to his points of view. The expression of outer characteristics appropriately indicates inner propensity. These outer “types” or figurae/ personae give credence to discerning characteristics such as “miserliness,” “corruption,” “lack of credibility,” “meanness of spirit.” The topic of outer versus inner is a topic that runs through Quintilian’s writing, with Cicero continually at his side. Here is another example from Pro Cluentio, a work of Cicero quoted many times by Quintilian: “Consider the following as example. I shall say that the defendant who is my client is the kind of man of whom a charge of homicide is unbelievable. I shall say on this basis that he had not killed the man of whom he is charged.” Here, within a reasonable narrative construction,14 Cicero brings up an extremely important issue, one that particularly influenced medieval intellectual life. We have here the question of habitus. Given the necessity of narrative, and the relationship of the established narrative continuity to credible causality, a person with a given set of internal qualities, resulting in a way of life, observable to any interested onlookers and wellestablished to friends, acquaintances, and family, given a particular place, set of circumstances and resulting contingencies, could or could not have committed the crime under investigation. The probabilities proceed necessarily and directly from the notion of habitus, that is, inner capacities or properties, proprietates, resulting in outer gestures and characteristics, figurae, differentiae, cultivated and expressed to become a way of life, or modi. This particular notion of habitus has many implications, played out, 14 Narrative continuity provides the starting point as well as rationale for a discussion of logical, deliberative, proof, based on believable, observably manifest inner qualities. Related to this consideration: whatever is undertaken must arise from the resources and inner substantial properties of (for example) a state or a people: (III.viii.xiv) Graecorum quidem plurimi omne hoc officium contionale esse iudicaverunt et in sola reipublicae administratione posuerunt. Quin et Cicero in hac maxime parte versatur. Ideoque suasuris de pace, bello, copiis, operibus, vectigalibus haec duo esse praecipue nota voluit, vires civitatis et mores, ut ex natura cum ipsarum rerum tum audientium ratio suadendi duceretur.

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as Cicero proceeds to point out, in terms of internal proclivities that differentiate peoples and nations, and include such qualities as judgment, or inner counsel, gender, age, education and discipline. All of them add up, eventually to a way or manner of moving through life.15 All of the various and diverse personae observable in the world around us are examples of multiple relationships between a set of internal characteristics and qualities and recognizable within describable situations. Quintilian’s prose, relying upon Cicero at every juncture, brings up this topic, using in some instances the specific term habitus, as Quintilian seeks to explore its efficacy for examining, most of all, crucial differences, that is, differentiae. “Cicero can help me here,” writes Quintilian again and again. It is the habitus of a persona then that makes a difference, whether a person’s illustrious past, his noble family, age, a fortune that raises expectations—all of this must be taken into consideration and we must take care that what is said is not out of keeping with the man who says it. And this is why prosopopoeia is most difficult, that is, it demonstrates the difficulty of projecting a persona, whether Caesar, Cato, or someone else. Having quoted Cicero, Quintilian goes on to mention that the continuity of a speech is credible only if it has a direct relationship to the internal qualities of the person speaking.16 A speech which is out of keeping with the speaker is just as bad as one which is out of keeping with the subject to which it ought to have been adapted. This consideration of habitus, of the internal properties, sources of motivation, propensities, and capacities acquired by dint of effort by persistent practice so as to become, with time, defining characteristics of a persona occupies Quintilian throughout his work, whether the term, habitus, is used, implied, or the concept itself described. Quintilian writes of the internal natural force (V.x.52: vi ac natura quaeritur …), of “manner

15 Cf. V.x.23–28. All of the qualities and contingencies mentioned flow into and from “way of life” or modi. 16 On the topic of bringing the presented character of a persona in line with his fortune, dignity, and actions: An eodem modo cogitavit aut eandem personam induit Cicero, cum scriberet Cn[aeus] Pompeio et cum T[itus] Ampio ceterisve; ac non uniuscuiusque eorum fortunam, dignitatem, res gestas intuitus omnium, quibus vocem dabat, etiam imaginem expressit? ut melius quidem sed tamen ipsi dicere viderentur (III.viii.50–51). In this context, Quintilian then goes on to cite Cicero again on the topic of ornament, namely, that “Speech should be simple and dignified, and should derive its ornament rather from substance than verbiage.” Dicit [Cicero] tamen idem de suasoria hoc modo: Tota autem oratio simplex et gravis et sententiis debet ornatior esse quam verbis (III.viii.65–66, also cf. I.viii.10: Denique credamus summis oratoribus, qui veterum poemata vel ad fidem causarum vel ad ornamentum eloquentiae adsumunt, and especially a lengthy discussion VIII.iii).



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of speaking, way of life, visage, gait, habitus” (V.xiii.39: Alia respondendi pationis ratio, et aliquando tamen eorum non oratio modo, sed vita etiam, vultus denique, incessus, habitus recte incusari solet …), of habitus to the extent of chosen clothing revealing mental state (VI.ii.8 natura, proprietas, habitus: Sed ipsam rei naturam spectanti mihi non tam mores significari videntur quam morum quaedam proprietas; nam ipsis quidem omnis habitus mentis continetur), of habitus as customary demeanor (consuetudine), such as criminal acts (Vii.ii.44), or the inner content of habitus (such as mocking, Viii, vi.56–57). In this passage, Cicero invokes an ironical stance vis-à-vis Clodius by citing just the opposite way of life to the habitus by which Clodius could be recognized: “Believe me, your wellknown integrity has cleared you of all blame, your modesty has saved you, your past life has been your salvation.” What then constitutes habitus for Cicero and Quintilian? Crucial differences, differentiae: (Xi.i.39 Verum etiam in iis causis, quibus advocamur, eadem differentia diligenter est custodienda.) The relationship of inner force to hand gestures is explored, although Quintilian mentions that Cicero believes bodily gestures to be more important than movements of the hand (Xi.iii.85–88, Xi.iii.122–123). The final outcome of this issue of differentiae/habitus is that of wisdom/eloquence. All of the characteristics and properties, natural and acquired, latent and manifest, as springs within the intimate, unseen, realm of the spirit come to the fore in a consideration of eloquence, which, as Quintilian states, is most difficult to describe and adjudicate. One can feign philosophy but not eloquence. Quintilian points out that Cicero himself devoted much of his writing to this topic (Xii.ii.6–7: Hinc etiam illud est, quod Cicero pluribus libris et epistolis testatur dicendi facultatem ex intimis sapientiae fontibus fluere, ideoque aliquamdiu praeceptores eosdem fuisse morum atque dicendi). “And it is for the same reason that Cicero in several of his books and letters proclaims that eloquence has its fountain-head in the most intimate springs of wisdom, and that, consequently, for a considerable time the instructors of morals and eloquence were one and the same.” Quintilian was effective in his own time and continued to be influential, not only through the Middle Ages, but much thereafter, because he uses examples that catch the imagination and remain in one’s memory. A large number of these examples are taken from Cicero, and the figure of Cicero comes up over and over again. Quintilian’s work is peppered with mention of, and examples from, Cicero, at the same time as he is constructing an heroic figure of the great orator. There are far more references

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to Cicero than are indicated even by the extensive indices made for the modern editions of Quintilian’s Institutio.17 What then came into what we could name a medieval Latin mentality with respect to the person, priorities, and influence of Cicero through Quintilian? What did a Latin-reading public receive from Quintilian, and how did Cicero through Quintilian shape what we could call a Latin medie­val mentality, that is, an intellectual milieu that was founded upon and interacted with Latin words used as significant terms? First, as we have seen, a concern for details, with the specific meanings of words themselves and the letters that make up words, litterae as voces. This is a concern for language and the derivation of words to which, I might add, we, today, in our educational systems, particularly in North America, might be well-advised to return. Here, as well, in this context, a concern for Cicero’s notion of frugalitas: with elegant and concise thinking, questioning, and expression, that again, might be extremely useful if regarded as a priority today. Cicero comes up again and again as concerned with elegance and conciseness, together with humor, orthography without pettiness. (These qualities, by the way, are opposites—contraries that must be reconciled into harmony within good oratory.) In addition, Cicero, through Quintilian, provided a procession of varied and diverse figures that made up a living, vital, background of witnesses and predecessors—a monumental historical panorama of great writers and 17 In his final book (XIii), Quintilian comes to a question he regards as most important, yet most difficult to adequately discuss, that is, good rhetoric depends upon the moral goodness of the rhetorician. This is a topic that has underlined his entire work, namely, the relationship between internal, invisible, substance (of the issue to be argued, of cause, and of the orator himself), and the outward figura/persona/vox of the orator. Hence the importance of the term figura throughout his work. As Quintilian states: Ventum est ad partem operis desinati longe gravissimam. Cuius equidem onus si tantum opinione prima concipere potuissem, quanto me premi ferens sentio, maturius consuluissem vires meas … Neque enim tantum id dico, eum, qui sit orator, virum bonum esse oportere, sed ne futurum quidem oratorem nisi virum bonum. I now come to what is by far the most arduous portion of the task which I have set before myself. Indeed, had I fully realized the difficulties when I first conceived of this work, I should have considered whether my strength was sufficient to support the load that now weighs upon me so heavily … For I do not merely assert that the ideal orator should be a good man, but I affirm that no man can be an orator unless he is a good man (Xii.Introduction.1.3–4). The problem then, as Quintilian sees it, is whether Cicero can be regarded as a good man. Some regard him so, some, on the other hand, regard Cicero as reprehensible. Nevertheless, Quintilian states: But for my own part, conforming to the language of every day, I have said time and time again, and shall continue to say that Cicero was a perfect orator … in view of the fact that although he had by no means a low opinion of himself, he never claimed to be the perfect sage, and had he been granted longer life and less troubled conditions for the composition of his works, would doubtless have spoken better still (Xii.1.20–21).



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thinkers as well as what they thought and said. We have Cicero’s comments on Homer, Virgil, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, and many more far less well-known figures such as Ennius, Accius, Paecis, Lucitas, Gerence, Luceitus—some considered to be so inconsequential that they did not even make their way into the Loeb Classical Library edition indices. These, in their diversity and variety, also show us what it means to be a figura— an outline or format that has been carefully constructed, fashioned, and conceived mentally for a specific purpose, and which is recognizable for its consistent characteristics. Thirdly, we have the expression of the important relationship between sight and sound, that is, sound as substance that grammar and music use in common. (Augustine later makes a point of this distinction in both his treatises on the Order that Exists amongst the Disciplines, and On Music.18) This concern brings up the matter of invisible, yet palpable, substance that could also be delineated by outward figurae, an extremely important concept and discussion in the Middle Ages. Fourthly, Cicero is, in Quintilian’s eyes, and also through the quotations he brings to the fore, concerned with the question of judgment, particularly with respect to what is not immediately apparent, as well as judgment related to, but distinct from, wisdom. This priority brings up concepts/terms such as consuetudines, grammaticus, usus, iudicum, as well as sonus, since litterae serve as the custodian of voces. Contingent upon this preoccupation is that of methodology, or methods whereby a search for genuine erudition and effectiveness can be accomplished, avoiding what Cicero—and Quintilian—call “quibblings.” This aspect, in particular, shows Quintilian’s extensive and thorough reading and assimilation of Cicero’s speeches and letters, his emphasis upon much more than the outer gestures of academic, professional, and juridical, life and practice; but also a deep inner commitment to rectitude based upon an inner, always developing, intellectual life. Quintilian here presents a figura of Cicero who not only studied, but also in no way got stuck in pedantry.19 18 In both De ordine and De musica, Augustine stressed the fact that both speech and music use a common substance, namely sound. He writes of “enlivened material” (voce animantis), “the material body of the voice” (corporea vocum materia), and points out that one of the chief distinctions between the sound substance used in speech and that of music is the number or variety of tones, enhancing memory. See “Music, Rhythm” in Augustine through the Ages. An Encyclopedia. 19 One observes a deep unity of thought and priority between these two great orators. Cicero and Quintilian had a good deal in common, including, as Quintilian repeatedly

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Further, Quintilian, with the help of Cicero, which he is nearly always careful to indicate, provided a panorama of preoccupations that could continue to be priorities throughout the Middle Ages, including questions such as the relation between parts and a convincing, appropriately connected or modulated, totality, structure and ornamentation, outer gestures, mannerisms, and movements or figurae as reliable indications of inner substance containing properties. Although obviously all of these subjects are important, even today, the last one seems to have had the most currency in the Latin Middle Ages, with its convincing exemplification in the material and measurement discipline of music, and it is to this preoccupation that we will return. It is the discussion of habitus that provided such an important area of Cicero’s direct medieval influence. The figura of Cicero himself constructed by Quintilian through copious quotations, musings, parallels, and allusions, appears with ubiquitous frequency to exemplify these priorities. Cicero’s persona gives structure and cohesiveness to Quintilian’s work. Writes Quintilian, “Cicero can help me here,” and forthwith comes an aphorism or witty saying such as: “The fear of evil has more power than the desire for good”—pungent, pithy expressions giving advice in capsules, that also reinforce, at the end of the day, Cicero as an all-knowing, benevolent, urbane, yet sensitive and compassionate, figura that on the other hand takes and brooks no mediocrity or foolishness. In Quintilian’s sixth book, however, as he is discussing manners or modi of drawing oneself through material in terms of the dispositions of figures constituting arguments, Cicero especially comes to the fore, not so much in terms of the number of quotations and allusions, but in their substance, length, and importance for the points Quintilian is making. For example, Quintilian quotes Cicero as absolutely key to his discussion, in Book VI, chapter three, 1, 2, 4, 5, 47–49, 51, 55, 67–69, 75–77, 88, 98; this is where the discussion is going. As one moves through material, in terms of both thinking and speaking, there is a muddle or congestion of substance unless one carefully constructs, as Cicero states, dispositions that can be clearly identified. One has, in other words, a random accumulation or aggregation unless disposition is at work, linking up distinct parts, and points out, common persuasions; but they also survived tragedies in the loss of children— Cicero’s daughter, Tullia, and Quintilian’s sons. Cicero, after Tullia’s death, immersed himself in study and writing projects; Quintilian mentions more than once that reading, writing, and study were a panacea for life’s setbacks. See also Anthony Everitt, Cicero, The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician, pp. 242, 251–59.



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binding them together. All of this, of course, is carried out essentially with unseen material, subjects, sound, and thought, making it that much more difficult either to achieve a result or know for certain when one has had some success. One’s movement, or modus, along the way, in viam, is made clear by differences, differentiae—the differences that are linked to inner properties, either crass and obvious, again, as Cicero states, or of great subtlety. It is everyone’s business, it would seem, on one level or another, to determine whether these outer characteristics are authentically related to inner substance, whether on the basis of gender, wealth, daily habits, family background, clothing, voice, intellectual capacity, emotional fervor, education, favorite foods, profession, height, weight, age, political preference, attractions, disinclinations, musical tastes, or nationality. A given composite figura, with a given set of proprietates, in a manner of living, modus, could have committed a given crime—or could reasonably be trusted as a husband, or could be admitted into one’s corporation as a business partner, or serve as president of the United States, to bring the question of habitus to the level and exemplification of everyday life situations. Cicero, as Quintilian states, is outstanding in this respect, as in all others. Here he is at his best depicting a scene for us illustrative of figura, differentiae, modus in viam all adding up to habitus: “There stood the Roman praetor, in his slippers, with a purple cloak, and a tunic down to his heels, leaning on one of his women on the bench. Could anyone be so unimaginative as not to feel that he is seeing the person, the place, the dress, and to add some unspoken details into the bargain? I certainly imagine that I can see the face, the eyes, the disgusting endearments of the pair and the silent loathing and unabashed fear of the beholders.” This passage is important for the illustration of the topic at hand, or how outer gestures and mode of life correspond to inner reality, the topic of habitus. But it also indicates why it was that Cicero was so influential for such a long time, and how Quintilian helped to make him so. This was so throughout the Middle Ages, as Philip the Chancellor, the first chancellor-liaison between the emerging Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris and the episcopal see of the cathedral of Notre Dame, takes up Cicero through the eyes of Quintilian within his Summa de bono of the early thirteenth century. Philip the Chancellor quotes from Cicero’s Academica, from De finibus bonorum et malorum, copiously from De inventione, also many times from De officiis, from the Paradoxa Stoicorum, from the Tusculum disputationes, and there are several quotations from Cicero, identified as such by Philip that belonged, perhaps, to sources he had at

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his disposal, but which are no longer identified as Cicero’s works today.20 It is clear that not only is Cicero a living, vital, source for Philip, but that some of his most important arguments depend upon Cicero’s input. One of these is Philip’s discussion of fortitudo as a medial force within habitus by which oppositional or contrary parts in motion can be resolved.21 Cicero’s concepts of dispositiones, as separate yet related partes within the totality of habitus are combined with “The Philosopher,” Aristotle’s concept of contrary motion intermediated by a “part” that accommodates and reconciles two opposing dispositions—a line of reasoning prominently set forth in the Physics, as well as the Nichomachean Ethics. Fortitudo est medietas inter timores et audacias: Fortitude is the mediating part/disposition between fear and audacity.22 To sum up: it is Cicero, first and foremost, continually, that informs not only what Quintilian sent into successive centuries—for at least 1,500 years so that he was known as “Europe’s Teacher”—but also in the most recent literature on the subjects of communication and argumentation. This was true for the Middle Ages as well, and one of the ways, I believe, that Cicero, through Quintilian, most influenced medieval mental patterns of thought was through the concept of dispositiones and habitus exemplified and made sensorially palpable through the analogical discipline of music. Dispositio/habitus was exemplified in the medieval concept of modus, in which external manners of placing tones together or the differences between figurae, heard in terms of differences, differentiae, in 20 Philip the Chancellor, Summa de bono: Philippi Cancellarii Parisiensis Summa de bono ad fidem codicum primum edita studio et cura Nicolai Wicki, Pars prior, Pars posterior (Opera philosophica mediae aetatis selecta, II [Bern, 1985]). 21 Philip the Chancellor, edition cited: II, p. 818: Quod vere concedendum est secundum oppositiones mediates. Quod autem dicit Philosophus quod fortitudo est medietas inter timores et audacias, dicendum est quod predicte oppositiones intelliguntur et comprehenduntur secundum dispositiones fortitudinis, secundum quas habetur respectus ad ea que opponuntur ex parte diminutionis et ex parte superhabundantie. Sicut autem dispositiones fortitudinis cum ipsa reducuntur ad unam medietatem, ita oppositiones fortitudinis reducuntur ad unum extremum ex parte diminutionis, et sic ad timorem reducuntur pusillanimitas et diffidentia et huiusmodi; eodem modo oppositiones fortitudinis ex parte superhabundantie reducuntur ad unum extremum, scilicet ad audacias. Fortitudinis generalis secundum quod accipitur a Tullio dispositiones sunt sex: magnanimitas, magnificentia, fiducia, securitas, patientia, perseverantia. Sed hec sunt fortitudinis specialis secundum quod accipitur ab Aristotele; pari ratione erunt fortitudinis secundum quod accipitur a theologo. Oportet enim sic fortem habere illa sex et super hec addit aliquid fortitudo specialis. Non ergo species eius; quod enim addit super aliud non potest dici pars eius, quia pars non addit supra totum, sed totum supra partem. 22 Aristotle, Eth. Nic. II 7 (1107 a 34), III 9 (1115 a 6–7) cf. Eth. Nic. III 9 (1115 a 33), but see also N. van Deusen, “On the Usefulness of Music: Motion, Music, and the Thirteenthcentury Reception of Aristotle’s Physics,” Viator 29 (1998), 167–87.



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voices, voces, indicated and clarified internal invisible sound, as well as emotional, substance. The discussion brought the whole question of outer gesture, inner material reality to the fore, and attempted to make it comprehensible in treatises from around 875 a.d. to the end of the thirteenth century—and, of course beyond. We have a succession of treatises discussing just this aspect of modes, figures, differences, and what they all mean from the Carolingian period to the early university, especially at Paris. It was a powerful and important topic that could be addressed in simple, concrete terms, a preoccupation of Cicero through Quintilian that could be accessed by anyone who could read Latin. As Cicero states, “I wrote all this down, not in order to fill in holes in our knowledge, but to try things out; I would rather be criticized for my lack of understanding than for lack of good will.” With music, one could try things out. Music exemplifies what both Cicero and Quintilian considered to be of much importance, and that comes repeatedly into discussion, that learning depended upon both principle/precept (doctrina), and experience, in equal measure. In order to understand what it meant to be an orator one had to actually be one. The same was true of music; in order to truly understand its principles, one had to experience it, as some medieval writers describe it, feel tones in one’s mouth.23 In addition, Cicero, Quintilian, as well as Augustine, not only place music and speech as equal partners because of the sound substance used by both, but all three also set forth music as example for the most important concepts under discussion.24 This provides an intellectual basis for music as the exemplary

23 See N. van Deusen, “The Problem of Matter, The Nature of Mode and the Example of Melody in Medieval Music Writing,” in The Harp and the Soul. Essays in Medieval Music (Lewiston, NY, l989), pp. 1–44. 24 Quintilian bases this also on music’s antiquity, as well as its equivalence with the spoken word (I.x.9–12): Atque ego vel iudicio veterum poteram esse contentus. Nam quis ignorat musicen (ut de hac primum loquar) tantum iam illis antiquis temporibus non studii modo verum etiam venerationis habuisse, ut iidem musici et vates et sapientes iudicarentur (mittam alios) Orpheus et Linus; quorum utrumque dis genitum, alterum vero, quia rudes quoque atque agrestes animos admiratione mulceret, non feras modo sed saxa etiam silvasque duxisse posteritatis memoriae traditum est. Itaque et Timagenes auctor est, omnium in litteris studiorum antiquissimam musicen extitisse, et testimonio sunt clarissimi poetae, apud quos inter regalia convivia laudes heroum ac deorum ad citharam canebantur. Iopas vero ille Vergilii nonne canit errantem Iunam solisque labores et cetera? Quibus certe palam confirmat auctor eminentissimus, musicen cum divinarum etiam rerum cognitione esse coniunctam. Quod si datur, erit etiam oratori necessaria, siquidem (ut diximus) haec quoque pars, quae ab oratoribus relicta a philosophis est occupata, nostri operis fuit, ac sine omnium talium scientia non potest esse perfecta eloquentia. Atque claros nomine sapientiae viros, nemo dubitaverit, studiosos musices fuisse. … This is one

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discipline positioned between material and measurement and unseen substance throughout the Middle Ages.25 But Cicero, through Quintilian, also made a distinction between argumentation within philosophical inquiry, and within the practice of speaking before an audience, cogently, succinctly, and with eloquence that satisfies and possibly even pleasantly “strokes” the ear (mulceret). In this investigation, music was the perfect partner, for music not only instructs and exemplifies, but delights while teaching basic principles. Eloquence, as music, delights our senses, and in just this manner, the most profound realities of the world and the ways of its peoples can be understood. Appendix: Recent Translations of Quintilian (in University Library, Basel) 2008 2003 2001 1997–2001 1979 1974 1954 1943 1921–1933 1881 1829–1835 1829 1825 1800 1783 1774 1770 1756

German, English translation of the Lesser Acclamations French English Italian Italian German French Italian English German French German German French German English French English

of many references to the importance of music in its capacity to illustrate and instruct basic principles. 25 Music’s disciplinary challenge and functionality is the comprehensive topic of discussion for both N. van Deusen, Music and Theology at the Early University. The Case of Robert Grosseteste and Anonymous IV (Leiden, 1995), and The Cultural Context of Medieval Music (Santa Barbara, CA, 2011).

DREAMING THE DREAM OF SCIPIO Leonard Michael Koff Although murdered in 43 b.c., Marcus Tullius Cicero “refused to die.” Throughout his life, he consciously wrote himself into history in ways that would, he hoped, bring him lasting praise. And cultural history has confirmed his wish to live on as a source of civic and moral authority, as a model of philosophical grasp and comfort, and as a master of literary style.1 Indeed, a great many people refused to let Cicero die—wherever he is, he must be happy, although in living on through those parts of his literary body that haven’t been lost, Cicero has been folded, spindled, and mutilated. He’s probably happy about that, too: being “manhandled” means he mattered. Cicero’s cultural transformation is not, of course, simply a medieval phenomenon, though that is the topic of this essay: Chaucer’s use in the fourteenth century of Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, a work that was the 1 See, for example, Discussions at Tusculum in Cicero: On the Good Life, trans. Michael Grant (New York, 1971), pp. 95–96, on Cicero’s sense of himself as moral philosopher whose arguments for self-sufficiency are meant to comfort and sustain: “This is the sort of person a truly wise man has to be. He will never do anything he might regret—or anything he does not want to do. Every action he performs will always be dignified, consistent, serious, upright. He will not succumb to the belief that this or that future event is predestined to happen; and no event, therefore, will cause him surprise, or strike him as unexpected or strange. Whatever comes up, he will continue to apply his own standards; and when he has made a decision, he will abide by it. A happier condition than that I am unable to conceive.” For the Latin text, see Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1945), 5, 28, 81. On the use of oratory, see On Duties in Grant, Cicero: On the Good Life, p. 157. For Cicero, oratory should be put in the service of civic or noble purpose: “For eloquence is specifically adapted to winning the admiration of one’s hearers; it awakens new hope in the destitute, and earns profound gratitude from the men whose causes [one has] pleaded. This is why our forefathers ranked oratory as the highest among all civilian professions.” For the Latin text, see Cicero, De officiis, Loeb Classical Library, 2, 19, 66. On Cicero, “the name,” as Quintilian puts it, “not of a man, but of eloquence itself,” see Elizabeth Rawson, Cicero: A Portrait (Ithaca, 1975), pp. 299–308. I am not altogether sure how Cicero himself would have responded to praise of his style alone. Its modulations must have seemed to him the aesthetic correlative of the self-mastery that was the subject of his civic and philosophic discourses. See On Duties in Grant, Cicero, p. 139: “It is only when men become capable of displaying high-minded detachment and disregarding such outward circumstances, whether good or bad—when they get totally absorbed and immersed in some noble, honourable purpose—that we cannot help admiring their splendid and imposing qualities.” For the Latin text, see De officiis 2.10.37.

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concluding section of part VI of Cicero’s De re publica, itself lost to the Middle Ages except for the Somnium which survived in—literally in— Macrobius’ early medieval commentary on it.2 In a cultural sense, we probably should talk about Cicero-Macrobius hyphenated, as if Cicero and Macrobius were one author, even though Macrobius’ Commentary on the Somnium Scipionis so transforms Cicero’s Somnium that it becomes virtually something else. That virtually is, of course, Cicero’s happy continuous presence. His vision in the Somnium of the rewards in heaven for those engaged in the “common profit” of the Roman state becomes in Macrobius the ground and the springboard—the authorizing and confirming text—for a Neoplatonism that has no practical political end. The rewards in heaven for Macrobius are the rewards of those who are morally virtuous here below because they are metaphysically wise. In rewriting Cicero—the Cicero he knew through Macrobius’ commentary—Chaucer transforms both authors. Transformation in the sense I mean implies citation, often extended citation in contexts that amplify and redirect original intention. The past is accessible to Chaucer, as well as Macrobius, in texts that are seen as implicitly pointing “to the future,” that is, to being used as part of a continuing revelation of meaning. My allusion here to historical unfolding is meant quite intentionally because I want to suggest that for Chaucer, as well as for Macrobius, the past is not, as it is, for example, for Petrarch, in whom we see the beginning of modern ideas of periodization, an alien place. Rather the past continues to speak openly to the present because it is transparently connected to it.3 2 On the history of the survival and transmission of the Somnium into the Middle Ages, see Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, trans. William Harris Stahl, Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies 48 (New York, 1952). For a Latin text of the Somnium Scipionis, see Cicero: Laelius on Friendship & The Dream of Scipio, trans. J.G.F. Powell (Warminster, UK, 1990). Citations of Cicero in my text are from Grant, Cicero: On the Good Life. For a Latin text of Macrobius, see Macrobio, Commento al Somnium Scipionis, Introduzione, testo, traduzione e commento a cura di Mario Regali, Biblioteca di Studi Antichi 38 and 58 (Pisa, 1983 and 1990). Citations of Macrobius in my text are from Stahl. Citations of Chaucer are from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, (3rd ed., Boston, 1987). 3 On Petrarch as tourist in Rome, see his letter (VI, 2) to Giovanni Colonna de San Vito in Francesco Petrarch, Rerum familiarium libri I-VIII, trans. Aldo S. Bernardo (Albany, 1975), pp. 290–95. As Thomas M. Greene explains, Petrarch’s hermeneutic, which he calls “archeological,” would dig up the past in order to resurrect it. That hermeneutic presupposes not the confident bridging of time, but a disturbing chasm between present and past, the symptom of which is the past’s mysterious withholding of an all-divulging key. For Petrarch, an “interplay of historical entities … resists total description.” See Greene, “Petrarch and the Humanist Hermeneutic,” in The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven, 1982), pp. 94–95.



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For Chaucer and Macrobius there exists a cultural continuity with the past that makes the present thick with meaning. Neither author has a sense of historical divide, so their use of Cicero is not an act of radical cultural recovery. Neither postulates an historical chasm for which commentary on, and use of, Cicero returns either Chaucer or Macrobius, or their readers, to the past in itself. Neither anticipates the Renaissance where our idea of time periods, and the problems of having time periods, emerges. As James Simpson puts it, although he has not put the case completely, “Whereas a ‘Renaissance’ account of history is characteristically produced by an ineluctable sense of rupture, and is locked into the pathos of intense historical solitude,” a medieval account, as implicit in Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls, for example, where Chaucer dreams his own dream of Scipio, has “the discursive resources to retrieve a sense of historical contour and change.”4 Moreover, medieval accounts of the past, unlike Renaissance accounts of historical divides—the past on one side; the present on another—do not assume the need for transhistorical connection, of “leaps back” and then “forward,” through which historical divides are bridged. Chaucer displays none of these historico-metaphysical gymnastics. The historical memory of the Parliament is, in Simpson’s phrase, “long and shaded,” going back as it does via Dante (d. 1321) and Alan of Lille (d. 1202) to Macrobius (fl. late fourth, early fifth century), to Cicero (d. 43 b.c.), to the pre-Virgilian hero Scipio (late third century b.c.). For Simpson, “Chaucer himself is aware of these historical perspectives, but his awareness … does not posit any rupture, or middle age. Instead, his understanding of torn old books fully registers its own historicity, by virtue of its own reception through a continuing tradition of change, opposition, and renewal.”5 Chaucer’s reading Macrobius’ Commentary on the Somnium Scipionis is thus the initiating fiction for Chaucer’s own “Tullyus of the Drem of Scipioun” (Parliament of Fowls, 31). And indeed Macrobius, who is imagined as welcoming the process of textual opposition and renewal, promises Chaucer that he will “somdel of thy labour … quyte” (112). Macrobius, Chaucer says, will reward him for his labor in reading Macrobius, a reward that proves correct just because (though this is not our sense of “reward”) reading Macrobius continues to raise questions for Chaucer about the civic application of Cicero. For Chaucer, “the present 4 James Simpson, Reform and Cultural Revolution, The Oxford English Literary History, Vol. 2: 1350–1547 (Oxford, 2002), p. 170. 5 Simpson, Reform and Cultural Revolution, p. 170.

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does not wholly appropriate old books”; the present does not need to make old books completely present. The past is not, for Chaucer, completely other nor the present the redeemer of the past’s otherness. Rather Chaucer interacts with old books “in a dialectical relationship.”6 Medieval transformations of Cicero—Macrobius’ use of him, and Chaucer’s use of them (Macrobius and Cicero)—speak to the medieval sense of historical connection with Cicero that confirms the legitimacy, the rightness, as we might put it, of their disregard of his meaning. Because Cicero matters and because he is accessible, even piecemeal or misshapen, Chaucer can use him. Redirecting Cicero is tribute to his value to the future; indeed for Chaucer, Cicero refuses to die. He is the continuing adumbration of his very real presence, an inexhaustible nourishing ghost. Having said all this, let me ask a cultural question that we, on this side of the Renaissance, usually ask: what is the context of the Somnium Scipionis as part VI of Cicero’s De re publica? And let me suggest what it might be by citing what is, I would argue, the telling sentence in the Somnium, a sentence that puts Scipio’s dream “of fathers” in the context of Cicero’s view of the place of great men in Roman civic life, a view of civic continuity achieved through the actions of great men. And so I dreamt that Africanus [Scipio the Elder] was with me [Scipio the Younger]; his appearance recalled his portrait busts rather than his actual living self [ea forma quae mihi ex imagine eius quam ex ipso erat notior]. (p. 342 [Somnium Scipionis I, 2])

The guide Scipio the Younger meets in his dream is Scipio Africanus (Scipio the Elder) as historical figure, as the sculptured object of Roman praise, as effigy. Scipio the Elder, “Roman citizen” as embodied duty, as numinous presence, is privileged to appear to his adopted grandson in a dream about the future because, as a consequence of his civic behavior, he (the Elder) is worthy of speaking about it. Scipio the Younger’s dream is vouchsafed to him because it is the transcendent vehicle for the transfer of civic duty. Aemilius Paulus, the Scipio the Younger’s biological father, also appears to Scipio, not displaced by Scipio the Elder, but enfolded within a family that civic virtue has created. For Cicero, civic virtue rather than biology creates lineage and familial expectations. In counseling his son against suicide, connecting life (the soul “in custody of the body”) with civic duty,

6 Ibid.



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Paulus points to himself, as well as to Scipio the Elder, as the model of such duty: Therefore it is destined that you, Publius, and all other righteous men, shall suffer your souls to stay in the custody of the body [animus … in custodia corporis]. You must not abandon human life except at the command of him who gave it to you. For otherwise you would have failed in the duty which you, like the rest of humanity, have to fulfill. Instead, then, Scipio, do upon earth as your grandfather has done. Do as I have done, who begot you. Cherish justice and devotion. These qualities in abundance are owed to parents and kinsmen [parentibus et propinquis]; and most of all they are owed to one’s country (pp. 345–56 [III, 7–8]).

According to the logic of the Somnium, those known for their service to the state return to the living as civic mentors to inform them that the rewards of duty in heaven are the consequence of the sanctified direction of life itself. Scipio the Younger is thus privileged to have a Roman dream, a civic visitation, as it were. Indeed, he is already worthy of it. In the Roman world, the virtuous living and the virtuous dead, dream “Roman dreams.” Here is metaphysics—one wants to say religion—put in the continuing service of civic life. Here is civic prophecy that recalls book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid. Scipio in the Somnium—this is the work’s fiction—is on the verge of glory. He will be renowned in his own right, and two ancestors in virtue come from “the other world” to keep the civic spirit of an adopted grandchild and a biological child on course. In the Somnium, civic heredity, rather than biology, counts for everything. And indeed one would not necessarily know from his civic lectures that Paulus is Scipio’s biological father. A famous, or soon-to-be famous, son should have famous “fathers,” one of whom may be a biological father. What is passed from generation to generation is the expectation of civic nobility. That expectation is one’s defining and sustaining inheritance and the fulfillment of expectation achieves an appropriate end. As Scipio the Elder explains, Every man who has preserved or helped his country, or has made its greatness even greater, is reserved a special place in heaven [certum esse in caelo definitum locum], where he may enjoy an eternal life of happiness. For all things that are done on earth nothing is more acceptable to the Supreme God [illi principi deo], who rules the whole universe [omnem mundum], than those gatherings and assemblages of men who are bound together by law, the communities which are known as states. Indeed, it is from here in heaven that the rulers and preservers of those states once came; and it is to here that they eventually return [harum rectores et conservatores hinc profecti huc revertuntur] (p. 344 [III, 5]).

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For Cicero, heaven is not “another place,” an unfallen place in a Christian sense, separate from the earth. Although in caelo is translated here as “in heaven,” and omnem mundum is translated as “the whole universe,” templum in the Roman geography of the Somnium is Cicero’s telling word for “heaven,” by which he means “the universe.” Templum for Cicero includes both heaven in our sense and the earth as well. Indeed, the earth in the Somnium is at the center of this temple (“illum globum quem in hoc templo medium vides” [III, 7]), which is, as a temple for its deity, marked out for religious purposes that include demonstrations of civic devotion. Cicero’s universe is the Roman world writ large—the cosmos—for there is nothing outside the Roman imagination. Rome’s hegemony, as well as Rome’s imagined hegemony, is boundless. The Sun, as Scipio the Elder says, is “the prince, lord and ruler of all the other worlds, the mind and guiding principle of the entire universe” (p. 347). Mercury and Venus attend the Sun, an analogue of the informing Mind (with a capital M) in the world below the Moon, where we are. Here, if we listen to the civic music of the spheres, Mind will indeed guide us, moving matter according to matter’s “true course,” its higher course, the dedicated course it should follow. For Cicero, spirit organizes matter— matter is its custodian, not its prison-house—and if there is disconnection in the “harmonious ascent of matter,” by which I mean its higher civic purpose, we are to blame, for we have disrupted the harmonious descent of spirit. There is, for Cicero, no incapacity of will occasioned by the presence of the spirit in the body, no incapacity of understanding. We must be careful not to talk about the spirit’s “imprisonment” in matter if we mean by that phrase, freighted as it is with Christian weight, that spirit has fallen into matter, a fall that cripples the will permanently. The body always has a mind of its own. When … a man has … abandoned himself instead to bodily indulgence and become its slave, letting the passions which serve pleasure impel him to flout the laws both of gods and of men, his soul after departing from his body, hovers about close to the earth. Nor does it return to this place [where Scipio the Elder is] until many ages of torment have been undergone [nec hunc in locum nisi multis exagitati saeclis revertuntur] (pp. 354–55 [VIII, 21]).

Bodily indulgences oppose civic duty. They are temptations that make it difficult to keep to civic purpose, to listen to the harmonious dictates of mind (that hears Mind). The virtuous can, of course, oppose the turning away from civic mindedness, a “downward” pull, as it were, which is the beginning of the end of virtue. Notice the way Cicero, for the Christian Middle Ages, adumbrates Christianity’s notions of entrapment,



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incapacity, and the need of redemption for those who would change the direction of their lives. As Cicero points out, the music of the spheres, which each soul hears and is capable of “moving to,” is, for him, alignment that makes of the universe one civic community. For Cicero there is, or should be, a harmony of realms, a harmony that has a parallel dimension in mind (with a small “m”) and body. This is civic religion, civic order that reflects a cosmological one. The open question in Cicero is, of course, why we are given the chance to “distune” the world, for we can refuse our civic music; we can refuse our larger citizenship. Why is it possible for Mind to be misheard? Is disregard of metaphysical harmony a counter force in the universe? The descent of Mind into being, the descent of light into the world, is itself a force but apparently not an unopposable one. The problem of the use of will is, for Cicero, a cosmological and a political problem he must answer, and Scipio in the Somnium is given an answer. For Cicero, refusal of virtue is an illogical gesture, since we are refusing our own nature. But the ignoble can do it. Like Plato, Cicero avoids questions of cause, arguing from effects. For if one aligns oneself with the harmony of the spheres, then one is perforce noble. One cannot be noble and, at the same time, refuse nobility. And for that clarity of being—noble is as noble does—the Somnium Scipionis offers a reward for the willful harmonious alignment of the will. Clever men, by imitating these musical effects with their stringed instruments and voices, have given themselves the possibility of eventually returning to this place [heaven from which they descended]; and the same chance exists for others too, who during their earthly lives have devoted their outstanding talents to heavenly activities [sicut alii qui praestantibus ingeniis in vita humana divina studia coluerunt] (p. 348 [V, 10]).

In this context divina studia means “civic life.” Indeed, Mind knows whether or not we align ourselves with civic duty, though Mind cannot compel alignment with itself. It can only know it and like it. Those on earth may not understand the harmony to which the virtuous are in tune. But Mind does. And it is a fascinating feature of Cicero’s metaphysicalpolitical theory that Mind, which is such an impersonal construct, is given some of the aspects of a remembering, indeed caring deity. Cicero’s idea of duty is thus part of the consciousness of Mind which— one wants to say “who”—is aware of it. Civic duty can be acknowledged eternally, for it brings individual fame that the virtuous know and that Mind knows, too. In Cicero, virtue is a kind of link, a thread of awareness that connects the individual with Mind itself. There is no mediation

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necessary here, no savior. Indeed, only the virtuous citizen and Mind may recognize it, which makes of virtue a kind of insider’s secret, that is, a universal one. In this metaphysico-political drama, which has its progressions and reversals, virtue can, of course, be betrayed, but it cannot be defeated. Virtue is not, for Cicero, its own reward, nor is it an act that everyone will see. Some, indeed, will refuse to see it. Virtue for Cicero is the reward of the self—and Mind. The great middle—everyone else— may be virtue’s enemy: ignorant of it, resistant, indeed hostile to it. And all this gives to the virtuous a sense of rightness that is bracing and dignifying, perhaps even the stuff of martyrdom because the virtuous are open to virtue’s words. Mind has apparently sent Scipio’s ancestors to tell him the secrets of Mind because Scipio the Younger is worthy of knowing such secrets. For Cicero, there are indeed insiders and outsiders: insiders are already inside and their dreams of virtue confirm this; those who know, once they are told, know because they should know, and those who don’t know would never be given a dream through which they might come to know. All very tricky. For Cicero, then, the world is fickle and thus not to be trusted. The world does not necessarily recognize the kind of eternal harmony Scipio’s work in the world sustains. Or if the world sees it, it may turn its back on it. The world can decide not to see it, an example of the refusal of will. And for this reason, Scipio the Elder counsels the Younger not to trust the judgment of men. Heaven, as we would say, sees what Scipio will do—Mind will see it and judge whether or not Scipio’s virtue is virtuous for eternity. We should point out that Macrobius reads Ciceronian “refusal of the world”—those living in it are cut off from one another, perhaps indifferent to one another, not able to recognize the virtue that is universal in nature—as Neoplatonic “contempt for the world.” That concept in turn supports Christian moral, rather than civic, renunciation of the world also read back into the Somnium.7 We should add, too, that Cicero’s argument 7 See Somnium Scipionis in Grant, Cicero, p. 349: “‘I see,’ he [Africanus] said, ‘that your gaze is still fastened, even now, upon the places where mortals dwell upon the earth. But can you not understand that the earth is totally insignificant? Contemplate these heavenly regions instead! Scorn what is mortal! For the lips of mankind can give you no fame or glory worth the seeking. Note how few and minute are the inhibited portions of the earth, and look upon the vast deserts that divide each one of these patches from the next. See, the inhabitants of the world are so cut off from one another that their different centres cannot even communicate with each other. The place where you yourself dwell, for example, is far removed from certain of the other populated areas, both in latitude and longitude; and some people live in regions that are at the very opposite end of the world from yours. Surely you cannot expect them to honour your name’” (italics Grant’s) [VI.12].



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for civic reward is elitist. It sustains an aristocracy of virtue that in theory is not hereditary—this idea, of course, surfaces again in the Renaissance. For Cicero, there is continuity, indeed eternal community, between the noble who are alive on the earth, like Scipio the Younger, and those in heaven who have died—the virtuous dead—who can return to earth in dreams, for example. Together the virtuous living and the virtuous dead constitute a transhistorical coterie of the noble, a nobility of civic merit, a timeless leadership. There may be death, but it finally means nothing. The worthy can come to earth again, and do. This perhaps sounds a bit like an incarnation, and I suppose it foreshadows the idea of the directing and clarifying Word of God come to earth. As in Virgil’s Aeneid, Cicero’s “underworld,” which includes what we call “hell” and “heaven,” puts on a vertical axis, with us in the middle, “places” where eternal and available noble Romans exist, places that constitute one eternal Roman place, one city of the noble. I am already seeing Egyptian Gold in Cicero and, like Macrobius, making him adumbrate his continuing existence into the Middle Ages. As Scipio the Elder explains to a noble Scipio the Younger, As for yourself, do not abandon hope of coming back here one day. For this is the place which offers great and eminent men their authentic reward— and, after all, such fame as you are able to win among mere human beings can evidently be disregarded, seeing that it is scarcely capable of enduring even for a small part of one single year. Look upwards, then! Contemplate this place which is a habitation for all eternity! Then you will not need any longer to be at the mercy of what the multitude says about you [neque te

Cf. Macrobius’ Commentary in Stahl, p. 223: “Thus, after the dreaming Scipio had been firmly convinced by both father and grandfather of the wisdom of hoping and waiting, the elder Scipio then bent himself to the task of inflaming his grandson’s mind, not permitting him to get a glimpse of the earth until he had learned about the nature, movement, and regulation of the sky and stars, and understood that all these were to be the rewards of virtue. Then, when his mind had been filled with rapture at the assurance of what was to come, he was bidden to despise glory, a thing which to the uninstructed is the crowning reward of virtue, but which, as he was shown, is restricted by an earth narrow in its confines and exposed to calamities. At this point Scipio had almost put behind him his mortal nature and purged his mind; and now, finally prepared to assume his true nature, he is clearly told to realize that he is a god.” Notice that Macrobius has replaced the civic point that Cicero draws from his geographical and ethnographical analysis—there are places where Roman virtue is either not known or refused—with a mystical one about Scipio’s putting behind him his mortal nature and purging his mind. For Macrobius, the world is not finally a moral structure that geography cannot defeat, as it is for Cicero, but rather a numerical and hence musical one, and the numbers and music, which we can know, are conceptual mirrors of the harmonious physical universe the World-Soul has made manifest. Virtue and glory, for Macrobius, are only of this earth.

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*** In reading the Somnium Scipionis in Macrobius’ commentary on it, Chaucer would have noted the connection Macrobius makes between issues of civic duty (Cicero’s point transformed in Macrobius to moral virtue). Moreover, he would have taken as Macrobius’ sense of the religious a sense that includes Neoplatonic adumbrations of Christianity— Neoplatonism per se is a Christian heresy, though Chaucer elides doctrinal distinctions here. Furthermore, he would have known Macrobius’ classification of Scipio’s dream, a work, according to Macrobius, that is oracular, prophetic, and that speaks truth darkly.8 In making his dream commentary on the Somnium an imitation of the Somnium—in putting himself in the same position as Scipio the Younger—dreaming his own “Drem of Scipioun,” Chaucer in fact claims that his dream has the same visionary status as the Somnium: oracular, prophetic, even though speaking truth in Chaucer becomes the occasion not to reveal for insiders what his text conceals, but to pose questions about the very text he dreams. This makes Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls a work that self-consciously resists closure. Chaucer’s “Drem of Scipioun” includes, for example, visiting Venus’ temple, as well as being present at a parliament of birds, both part of Nature’s realm (the enclosed park into which Africanus [Scipio the Elder] pushes him), even though Venus’ palace seems decidedly unnatural and 8 That is, enigmatic. On Macrobius’ classification, see Macrobius, Commentary, pp. 90–91 (3, 12–13): “The dream which Scipio reports that he saw embraces the three reliable types, and all five varieties of the enigmatic dream. Scipio’s dream is oracular [oraculum] since the two men who appeared before him and revealed his future, Aemilius Paulus and Scipio the Elder, were both his father [one his father by nature, the other his grandfather by adoption]. Both were pious and revered man, and both were affiliated with the priesthood. It is a prophetic vision [visio] since Scipio saw the regions of his abode after death and his future condition. It is an enigmatic dream [somnium] because the truths revealed to him were couched in words that hid their profound meaning and could not be comprehended without skillful interpretation. It also embraces the five varieties of the last type [somnium]. It is personal since Scipio himself was conducted to the regions above and learned of his future. It is alien since he observed the estates to which the souls of others were destined. It is social since he learned that for men with merits similar to his the same places were being prepared as for himself. It is public since he foresaw the victory of Rome and the destruction of Carthage, his triumph on the Capitoline, and the coming civil strife. And it is universal since by gazing up and down he was initiated into the wonders of the heavens, the great celestial circles, and the harmony of the revolving spheres, things strange and unknown to mortals before this; in addition he witnessed the movement of the stars and planets and was able to survey the whole earth.” (Italics mine.)



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the parliament of birds results in the delay of Nature’s natural erotic promptings. There is in Chaucer’s use of the Somnium a sense that the Somnium’s promise, the promise of its argument for civic virtue, where civic virtue is the divinely justified behavior of social animals (completely in harmony with Roman imperialist ideals), is not realized. In this, Chaucer’s dream as commentary on the Somnium is highly original: decidedly less reverential than other medieval commentaries, though no less serious and no less connected to both Cicero and Macrobius.9 Chaucer’s imitation of the Somnium in his own “Drem of Scipioun” would in fact make the civic reach of the Somnium more at issue than it is in Macrobius and more at issue than it is in Chaucer’s own decidedly Christianized summary of the Somnium. That Scipio Africanus visits both Chaucer and Scipio the Younger represents a bold act of Chaucerian self-placement in the history of political revelation. He has opened himself to another authority, the goddess Nature, in whose realm the civic purpose of love is addressed. Indeed Africanus pushes Chaucer into Nature’s realm, though he does not himself enter there. Moreover, Chaucer’s summary of Scipio’s dream before he falls asleep reveals that, in Chaucer’s hands, Cicero’s original sense of public good, of devotion to the good of the Roman imperium, has been narrowed. Devotion to public good is specifically confined in Chaucer’s summary of the Somnium to the expressions of sexual behavior in harmony with Christianity’s dictates. These changes suggest that Chaucer was attentive to the implications of the text of the Somnium and to what that text in a medieval context (post Macrobius) allowed him to do with it. In his summary of the “Drem of Scipioun,” Chaucer translated Cicero’s idea of civic duty with the phrase “commune profyt” (68); the full phrase is “commune profyt, wel ithewed [endowed with virtues]” (47). Read though Macrobius, this phrase explicitly connects moral, though not specifically civic, virtues with the reward in Heaven for moral sexual behavior that, in Christian social discourse, stands for moral social behavior. This connection, and the use of sexual behavior as a stand-in for social behavior, is, I would argue, an unexceptional connection in Christian discourse. But when Chaucer dreams his own “Drem of Scipioun,” he explicitly amplifies, and implicitly critiques, the meaning of his own Christianized 9 For medieval commentaries on Macrobius’ Commentary on the Somnium Scipionis, and thus on Cicero’s Somnium, see, for example, Irene Caiazzo, Lectures medievales de Macrobe: Les Glosae Colonienses super Macrobium, Etudes de Philosophie Medievale 83 (Paris, 2002).

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summary of the Somnium. Chaucer takes his “Drem of Scipioun” in a direction that anticipates the humanist recovery of Ciceronian civic ideals, moving it toward an ideal of marriage and mating as civic duty and away from the direction Macrobius seems to have been taking it. Chaucer thus makes two moves in the Parliament of Fowls, the first toward a fully orthodox reading of the Somnium that Macrobius’ Neoplatonic commentary seems to be foreshadowing, the second toward a reading that sees marriage and procreation as “natural” royal responsibilities. As commentary on the Somnium, the Parliament may be a ceremonial poem, celebrating the familial purpose of marriage—this historical specifics of that question are still open.10 But the governing fiction of the Parliament and its social if not its ceremonial point is that Chaucer’s dream will clarify what he doesn’t understand in “Tullyus of the Drem of Scipioun” and that that dream will reveal the explicit connections between social and amatory harmony through its depictions of Nature’s amatory and social realm. What the phrase, “commune profyt, wel ithewed,” comes to imply in Chaucer’s dream is the establishment of social order and the sustaining of social continuity based specifically on sexual behavior in the interest of dynastic continuity. In this Chaucer looks forward, in a monarchical context, to the recovery, by the Florentine civic humanists from the late fourteenth century on, of Cicero’s commitment to civic action. In Chaucer’s reading of the Somnium, then, Africanus, Virgil-like, initially tells Scipio the Younger, where the morally virtuous go after death to 10 Larry D. Benson, “The Occasion of The Parliament of Fowls,” in The Wisdom of Poetry, Larry D. Benson, Siegfried Wenzel, eds. (Kalamazoo, 1982), pp. 123–44, argues that the House of Fame should be dated about 10 December 1379, when England received word that negotiations for the hand of Caterina Visconti were off and that the Parliament of Fowls should be dated about 1 May 1381, when a marriage settlement with Anne was ratified. Cf. A. J. Minnis, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Shorter Poems (Oxford, 1995), p. 257: “The argument that the poem was written as part of the celebrations of the royal marriage, or for the first Valentine’s Day to follow it, has generally been refuted on the assumption that a poem which revealed Anne as being unable to make up her mind would have seemed somewhat insulting after the event. If Anne is represented, according to Larry D. Benson’s speculation, by the formel eagle and her three suitors (Richard, Charles of France, and Friedrich of Meissen) by the three tercels.” Glending Olson, “Chaucer,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge, UK, 1999), pp. 570–71, puts the issue well: “The Parliament of Fowls may well allude at some level to Richard II’s marriage negotiations, but it is hard to image the monarch himself being much amused by the comprehensive ironies surrounding the wooing of a formel eagle by three tercel eagles, whose amorous hyperbole elicits diverse reactions from birds of lower classes and culminates only in the formel’s request to be allowed some time to make her choice … The rhetoricizing of such questions in Chaucer is indicative of his tendency to stand somewhat to the side of court-making intended principally as social exchange.”



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establish a heaven of the virtuous. He reveals to Scipio the galaxy with its music of the spheres and points out the “litel erthe” on which Scipio the Younger lives. He counsels Scipio not to delight in earthly things and from above the earth reveals the way to “hevene blysse.” Thanne telleth it that, from a sterry place, How Affrycan hath hym [Scipio] Cartage shewed, And warnede hym beforn of al his grace, And seyde hym what man, lered other lewed, That lovede commune profyt, wel ithewed, He shulde into a blysful place wende There as joye is that last withouten ende. … Than bad he [Africanus] hym [Scipio], syn erthe was so lyte, And dissevable and of harde grace, That he ne shulde hym in the world delyte. Thanne tolde he hym, in certeyn yeres space That every sterre shulde come into his place Ther it was first, and al shulde out of mynde That in this world is don of al mankynde. Thanne preyede hym Scipion to telle hym al The wey to come into the hevene blysse. And he seyde, “Know thyself first immortal, And loke ay besyly thow werche and wysse To commune profit, and thow shalt not mysse To comen swiftly to that place deere That ful of blysse is and of soules cleere. But brekers of the lawe, soth to seyne, And likerous [licentious] folk, after that they ben dede, Shul whirle aboute th’erthe alwey in peyne, Tyl many a world be passed, out of drede, And than, foryeven al her wikked dede, Than shul they come into the blysful place To which to comen God the sende his grace.” (43–49, 64–84)

“Commune profyt, wel ithewed” (47) means something like behaving desirously in ways that reflect a true understanding of the nature of this world: that it is transitory. It will later come to mean, in Chaucer’s own dream of a parliament of birds, behaving desirously in the interests of the continuity of species: the birds have assembled to pick a mate—and to mate. In his summary of the Somnium, Chaucer reads Cicero as a philosopher of explicitly Christian renunciation: to be in the world, but not of the world, to live and behave in this world, to love in this world, as if one knew

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its sinful nature. Macrobius’ renunciation, as we saw, only anticipates such a Christian reading of the Somnium. One is punished for the misdirection of desire, as Chaucer has Africanus say, for being a “breker of the lawe.” This is usually taken as an allusion to the punishment of Paulo and Francesco in Dante, Inferno 5: the “likerous folk … / Shul whirle about th’erthe alwey in peyne” (79–80). Chaucer has linked Cicero of the Somnium as moral philosopher to a Dantean vision of punishment for behavior “turned away from God.” The Ciceronian connection between civic virtue and the reward of virtue has thus been transformed so that it reflects the idea of appropriate sexual behavior. Later that connection will be transformed in ways that recover Cicero’s idea of civic action to mean appropriate civic sexual behavior: choosing a mate and having offspring, the responsible thing for royal birds—and royals—to do. In his summary of Scipio’s dream, Chaucer has connected the punishment for sin with the misuse of love. The punishment for being “likerous”—licentious—rests, as Chaucer has Africanus say, on the Augustinian distinction between cupidity and charity; misuse of love means that love is not procreative, not directed to human continuity and the continuity of social order. In this way, Chaucer has initially located Cicero in a Christian tradition of desire put into the service of “commune profyt,” defined as moral sexual behavior, a definition that can admit, as it will, of explicitly social and worldly implications. In stanza 85–91 of the Parliament, Chaucer, who had been reading Cicero, explicitly aligns himself with the Aeneid and The Divine Comedy. The stanza begins with an evocation of Virgilian lines (for example, Aeneid 3.147 and 8.26), where, as in the Virgilian source, “the hero prepares to undergo a divinely sanctioned journey inspired by vision”11 that doesn’t, as it turns out, reveal anything. This makes revelation, the revelation of value, something that looks like a Ciceronian moment, problematic. The day gan faylen, and the derke nyght, That reveth bestes from here besynesse, Berafte me my bok for lak of lyght, And to my bed I gan me for to dresse, Fulfyld of thought and busy hevynesse; For bothe I hadde thyng which that I nolde, And ek I ne hadde that thyng that I wolde. (85–91)

11 Simpson, p. 168.



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Having read the Somnium Scipionis in Macrobius’ commentary on it, and having reread it in an overtly Christian context, an anxious Chaucer goes to bed hoping that sleep will reveal to him what he found unsatisfactory in the Somnium; that is, what his summary of the Somnium (in the direction that Macrobius seems to be taking it) has not yet explained. Chaucer is looking for a connection between the erotic and the political as a result of his encounter with Ciceronian notions of civic duty. Love is, of course, acknowledged as the presiding god of the Parliament of Fowls, and “this being so, Chaucer is not accommodated by the entire poetico-philosophic tradition within which” his reading of the Somnium “has so far moved.” Chaucer reads Cicero “with desire,” but for Chaucer the Somnium Scipionis, read through the Christian adumbrations of Macrobius, “has nothing more penetrating to say about erotic desire than that those who follow it shall ‘whirle about th’erthe alwey in peyne’” (80).12 The Somnium, as Chaucer summarizes it, only offers him an idea of love as luxuria, as love misdirected: “whereas Dante’s lines [Inferno 3.1–9] promise an eternal and hopeless hell, shaped by ‘il primo amore’, for those who enter the gate, Chaucer’s gate,” the gate through which Chaucer the Dreamer is thrust into Love’s garden, “promises both the paradise and hell of human love for those who pass into Nature’s realm.”13 That realm “rewrites the political narrative of Scipio’s dream by transfiguring it.” Love in the temple of Venus—the temple is set within a “park” of “blosmy bowes” (122, 183), in which Cupid appears—is love “of sykes [sighs] hoote as fyr” (246), love not orchestrated with respect to social harmony and civic continuity. The love that governs the Valentine’s Day parliament of birds is love that encourages socially appropriate mating. But the procedures of that parliament reveal that the “‘real’ politics of ‘commune profyt’ are … served by the generative exercise of erotic love, as exemplified by the lower birds,” not by the royal birds who would delay choosing a mate.14 Nature’s garden “contains victims stranded by erotic passion, cut off from time and society … [The walls of the temple] are adorned with a series of images of mainly Ovidian lover-victims,”15 and although the birds have gathered in parliament to “take hire dom [to take Nature’s judgment] and yere hire audyence” (308), the delay the royal birds demand puts on hold, though it does not prevent (perhaps on the next Valentine’s Day), 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., p. 169. 15 Ibid.

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the fruitful, familial, indeed dynastic outcome of erotic love. Chaucer’s dream “never resolves this double possibility of a sexuality either regenerative or imprisoning, as it cannot, since both possibilities are ‘natural’.” But it recognizes “the centrality of sexual love in any account of the political.”16 As James Simpson astutely notes, “Chaucer’s Nature makes a critical qualification when it comes to determining which eagle the female eagle should take: ‘If I were Resoun, thanne wolde I / Conseyle yow the royal tercel take’” (632–3).17 With this single subjunctive, Chaucer makes clear that Nature counsels against aristocratic, courtly delays. As we know, the parliament of birds does not conclude with the royal birds taking mates so that the Parliament of Fowls does not celebrate, except ironically, the kind of appropriate mating that would result in a next generation.18 Perhaps, of course, postponement is courtly wit, Chaucer celebrating, if indeed the Parliament is a ceremonial poem, a marriage ceremony and a wedding night that will postpone nothing. And this, if the Parliament is a marriage poem, strikes me as appropriate reference to sexual joys and culminations. It might have been unseemly for Chaucer to follow Richard and Anne into the bedroom, even allegorically. He may not have been able to have his royal birds mate as the conclusion of a parliament of birds. In an important sense, Chaucer’s “Drem of Scipioun,” much transformed to be sure, is not a vision in a strict Macrobian sense at all. The “regions” Chaucer the Dreamer sees are not regions he will enter after death; they are rather regions that offer explanations. Moreover, Chaucer’s dream is “oracular” in multiple senses. There are a great many guides, real and allegorical, so that Chaucer’s dream illuminates the complex nature of authority and truth—Africanus appears in the dream but is barred from Nature’s garden; Venus is subordinated to Nature.19 Furthermore, Chaucer’s dream speaks both allegorically and 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid (italics his). 18 David Aers, Chaucer, New Readings Series (Brighton, UK, 1986), p. 16, finds in the reactions of the lower-order birds a challenge to upper-class power and privilege. But see Minnis, Oxford Guides, p. 269: “In fact, the Parliament is full of the chatter of the common herd, the varieties of birds representing the varieties of human being, and it is amusing to note that the only creature who appeals directly to the principle of common profit is the cuckoo (500–508), whose motives are utterly un-Cicerconian.” 19 See Minnis, p. 287: “Chaucer is keeping the sensual Venus he derived from Boccaccio under firm control, carefully subordinating her to Dame Nature, and ensuring that the latter lady appears as the more powerful figure.” On Nature’s call for peace, see p. 272: “… when Nature calls’ for ‘pes’ in line 617, the entire assembly shuts up and listens, in contrast to the ineffectual calls for peace made by some of the birds (cf. 547, 563), and Nature’s subsequent decision brooks no dissent.”



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through the frame of the animal fable of the complicated nature of love: luxuriating love vs. passionate love in the interests of the continuity of the species, self-seeking love vs. love that sustains social order. And in Chaucer’s dream, regenerative love—civic love—seems not to have triumphed, at least not this year. Chaucer’s discretion and wit, his retreat from the triumph of civic desire, may in fact be Chaucer’s courteous way of encouraging immediate generative love between royals. No mates are chosen, even for the lower class birds, because the royal birds’ postponement postpones generative love at all social levels. Perhaps Chaucer’s argument is this: that royals should not behave like noble birds, but rather stand on their private sovereignty, their magnate rights, against social decorum. The bird kingdom has had, at the end of this parliament, a kind of brush with amatory and social disorder occasioned by the privileges of the “game of love.”20 If this is the point of Chaucer’s dream, a dream that does not point to the accomplishments of desire in the interests of continuity, Chaucer’s dream at least argues for the civic use of desire, that is, desire put at some point, perhaps next year, to “commune profyt”—to public good. And this may be a position that redeems the erotic frustrations the royal birds have caused among those who can’t wait. Indeed, Chaucer hears sung at the end of the Parliament the Fowls a song of promised social harmony. The song the birds sing is more confident of the possibility of regenerative love than the debate about who will marry whom, and when, so that the song’s joy sets in motion larger ironies left, of course, unsaid. The parliament of birds illustrates the dilemmas of courtly love, its play, its exclusiveness, as well the possibility that regenerative love can be enfolded within the considered expression of aristocratic order without destroying it.

20 See Minnis, pp. 300–01: “Laughter would certainly have arisen from the ‘gentil’ audience of Chaucer’s poem (no human equivalents of the water-fowl being present, of course). They would have been made aware of the practical problems caused by the ... courtship rituals which they had elaborated, the sheer length of time it took to get anywhere near satisfaction of their desire. Chaucer’s fictions heighten and idealize actual frustrations; for example, the long wait which is all the tercel offers in the end reflects those marriage negotiations which in the highest echelons of society could drag on for a long time … But the vulgarity of the churls might then be held up to ridicule, for no eagle would want to be a water-fowl!” The aristocrats are “thus flattered” by having “their sense of their own superiority affirmed,” while having their social position, which “necessitates many elaborate, and sometimes tiresome, responsibilities, including emotional ones ... the result of their ancestry, a condition of their status, and a mark of their class,” acknowledged. The trajectory of the Parliament would thus be “momentarily” problematized, but ultimately confirmed.

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leonard michael koff Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe, That hast thes wintres wedres overshake, And driven away the longe nyghtes blake! Saynt Valentyn, that art ful hye on-lofte, Thus syngen smale foules for thy sake: Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe, That hast thes wintres wedres overshake. Well han they cause for to gladden ofte, Sith ech of hem recovered hath hys make [mate], For blissful mowe the synge when they wake: Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe, That hast thes wintres wedres overshake, And driven away the longe nyghtes blake! (680–92)

The birds’ Valentine’s Day song celebrates awakening seasons, new life engendered by appropriate love matches. The one ironic line—“Sith ech of hem recovered hath hys make”—is not, of course, strictly true, though it is the hope of all, and next year’s parliament may see it fulfilled. After the birds fly away, Chaucer awakens and, as he says, continues reading in order that he may dream something better, perhaps a more positive dream, perhaps a surer vision: a second Valentine’s Day parliament of birds? Chaucer’s tentative position at the end of the Parliament of Fowls—he has not seen the future, but only the hope for a future—may, moreover, as I’ve suggested, be appropriate courtly demurring.21 And with the shoutyng, whan the song was do That foules maden at here flyght awey, I wok, and othere bokes tok me to, To reede upon, and yit I rede alwey.

21 And in this I differ with James Simpson’s reading of the Parliament of Fowls. Simpson does not connect the dislocations he rightly sees in the intellectual traditions that inform the poem with the exigencies of court, or courtly, performance. If the royal birds in the Parliament of Fowls do not marry in order to get themselves an heir, the royals about to marry, that is, Richard II and his queen (if indeed the Parliament of Fowls is a poem celebrating marriage’s prudential ends), should get the idea. They need to fulfill the hopes of their court and their nation. One must read the Parliament of Fowls, I think, in the context of wit and courtly encouragement rather than in the context of skepticism and the ironies of academic dissection. Even Minnis’ reading of the Parliament seems too distant from its courtly use as I see it: “Chaucer’s poem … raises two distinct but related questions: what is love? And what are the kinds of love? It seeks to initiate, and offer much material for, a debate on the nature and species of love … The Parliament … presents a negotiation of discourses … The resultant hybrid belongs … in a gathering of nobles, intellectuals, and ‘new men’, who could then engage in a pleasurable and self-displaying discussion of the genus and species of love” (pp. 315, 318).



dreaming the dream of scipio83 In hope, ywis, to rede so som day That I shal mete sum thyng for to fare The bet, and thus to rede I nyl nat spare. (693–99)

The bookish Chaucer still wants to read something definitive about marriage, perhaps royal heirs and, by implication, social order. As a dream vision, the medieval genre into which the Parliament of Fowls is usually put, the Parliament is interlaced with ironies. Its dissection of the range of “natural” desire results in the triumph of delay and the triumph of promise. The real world transformed by regenerative love, the song of mating, a song that celebrates the harmonies of sexuality and social continuity, is offered as a solution postponed. The Valentine’s Day song at the end of the Parliament of Fowls is thus a real-world utopian call, a beckoning back to a second parliament, a continuation of possibilities. In this context, the idea of the erotic in service to dynastic continuity, which grounds the Parliament of Fowls, makes it a marriage poem in a generic sense, a poem about marriage and mating delayed—mating that should not be postponed—and a political poem that imagines the possibility of a monarchical continuity that counsels adjudication between personal prerogatives and the social duties of love. And these are surely Ciceronian themes, for indeed Cicero, too, wished to put desire into the service of the state, and he had his own Paulos and Francescas to contend with.

“FOR I HADDE RED OF AFFRYCAN BYFORN:” CICERO’S SOMNIUM SCIPIONIS AND CHAUCER’S EARLY DREAM VISIONS Timothy A. Shonk When Marcus Tullius Cicero began his contemplative work on the perfect state, De re publica, he confronted two questions, one public and one personal, that must have consumed his psychic energies: how to remain influential in the growth of the Roman state after his year of exile in Greece, and how to ensure that his words and concomitant reputation for rhetorical power endured. To answer the first question, Cicero, removed from the office of Consul and the hall of the Senate, had little choice in continuing to work to meld the classes into an ideal functioning government but to “do so from his study.”1 To this end, he developed an imagined conversation, closely modeled on Plato’s Republic, featuring personages who loomed large in Rome’s recent history: among them, Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus the Younger, Manius Manillus, Publius Rutilus Rufus, and Quintus Mucius Scaevola. The primary speaker, Scipio the Younger, following an opening discussion of the possible explanations of the recent phenomenon of two suns in one day, begins the theme that dominates the work: the three types of government—dictatorship, aristocratic rule, and pure democracy of rule by the people—outlining the merits and demerits of each system before settling on the view that Rome comes closest to perfection in balancing the three types as best as can be imagined. The second question consuming Cicero had to be his future and his name. Out of the power of government and away from the eyes of the crowds, his rhetorical skills were of limited benefit. Whereas his powerful speeches had in earlier days made his name, those opportunities in the larger arena of public debate in the largest city must have seemed forever gone. Ironically, given Scipio the Elder’s admonition to the Younger in Book 6 of De re publica—“Do you suppose that your fame or that of any of us could ever go beyond those settled and explored regions?”2—Cicero 1 Anthony Everitt, Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician (New York, 2001), p. 178. 2 Marcus Tullius Cicero, De re publica, trans. Clinton Walker Keyes (Cambridge, UK, 1943). All subsequent citations from Cicero are from this source, and page numbers will be

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needed the public acclaim that brought power to his ideas, and, like any serious author, feared the thought of his words and actions being lost from the public forum forever. True, his public performances had been remarkable, but the vibrations of sound in the air are as ephemeral as the moment that prompts them, and the memories of those hearing the speeches inevitably fail and die. As Levitt describes it, “a speech was a one-time, live event like an actor’s performance and that, in the public eye, he would be only as good as his latest appearance.”3 The remaining hope of some permanence, then, was that the words would be recorded, available to the reading public for some time after the moment, the live event, had ended. There were no scribes, of course, sitting at his feet recording his speeches, and “publication” in his time resembled nothing like that which came with the advent of printing, though one could argue that blogs and personal websites return us to the self-publishing stage. Thus, Cicero accepted the responsibility that others in the pre-publication centuries did: he wrote out his thoughts and speeches, committing them to the written word and ensuring that his words survived beyond the “one-time event.” I do not mean to argue that Cicero was as shallow, as self-occupied as this brief summary suggests. There is every indication in his work and in the views of his peers that his concerns about and models for the social and political welfare always remained central to his work. Indeed, in his defense of the rhetorician (De oratore), he envisioned rhetoric as means by which the morally good life could be presented and advocated.4 His superb speaking performances, then, were linked in his mind to his hope that the Republic would indeed develop into a harmonious, moral society, and it was the power and persuasion of rhetoric that could effect this end. But Cicero was human and, one would think, as is the case for nearly every person in a position of prominence, at least a little vain, wanting his name remembered, as those names in the conversation of De re publica were remembered, and his words preserved. And preserved they were, of course. Although the manuscripts of De re publica have survived in a fragmented state, they have survived. For a

cited parenthetically within the text. William Harris Stahl, Macrobius: Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (New York, 1952), pp. 69–77 provides a translation of the Somnium based upon the interpretation of Macrobius that varies slightly but not substantially. 3 Everitt, p. 179. 4 Ibid.



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time, although one of his most ambitious works, De re publica, seemed lost in almost its entirety—the Vatican manuscripts discovered in 18205— part of the work had long before attracted the attention of writers in intervening centuries, from Macrobius to Chaucer. The irony is profound that the last part of De re publica that remained before the literary world for these centuries is a work that, among its many themes, cautioned against the desire for fame: Somnium Scipionis. Largely known in the Middle Ages through Macrobius’ commentary on this dream (indeed, Chaucer appears to have confused, or at least conflated, the two authors in Book of the Duchess), Somnium Scipionis conveys many of the elements and motifs found in the medieval dream vision. Cicero’s work, alongside that of Dante and the French love poets, had a profound impact upon Chaucer’s work, especially in the series of dream visions that mark his preCanterbury Tales career. In Somnium Scipionis, and Macrobius’s accompanying commentary, many of the critical structural and thematic threads that inhabit Chaucer’s dream visions appear: the definitions of dreams and the analyses of their relative causes, the authoritative guide, the cosmic vision, the distrust of fame, the need to look inward for sufficiency,  the music of the spheres, the immortal soul and the temporal body, the literal and symbolic flights. Of course, one would be as dim-witted as Chaucer’s narrator frequently appears to be to suppose that all of these parallels come only from Cicero’s work or even largely from it. The dream theory concepts derive from Macrobius, for example, not from Cicero, and Chaucer’s visions and flights undoubtedly owe much to Chaucer’s discovery of Dante and Boccaccio, his imagery and plot situations indebted to his early French models by Machaut, de Lorris, de Meun, and de Lille. However, Cicero’s influence upon Chaucer’s dream visions seems to have suffered a fate similar to that of De re publica through the Middle Ages. In the scholars’ judgments, Somnium Scipionis is worthy most often of the obligatory footnote denoting the source or explaining the name. Rarely do we see a full analysis of the impact of Scipio’s vision upon Chaucer’s dream visions. And at first glance, such an oversight seems justifiable. Although Cicero’s name appears in all the dream visions, sometimes more than once, the readers see less direct borrowing of language or scene as they see taken from the French poets or the work of Dante and Boccaccio. Still, Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis had a much greater impact on 5 Keyes, De re publica, p. 9.

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Chaucer’s work, especially the House of Fame, than the perfunctory footnotes or introductory commentary suggest. That Cicero is named in all three major dream visions—Book of the Duchess, Parliament of Fowls, and House of Fame—assures us that his dream was on Chaucer’s mind for some ten years, indicating its place in his subconscious mind, where images and symbols form, as well as his conscious mind. And Cicero’s themes—immortality, fame, temporality and eternity, the common good—take center place in Chaucer’s dream visions. While other sources share the spotlight, Cicero remains in the wings, prompting and suggesting, after the other more visible and applauded actors have retired. Somnium Scipionis The famous dream of Scipio occupies the last segment of the sixth book of the extant pieces of De re publica, a most fitting ending point in its vast scope and in its exhortation to work for the benefit of the state, the primary subject of what precedes it. The structure of the dream itself seems to rise above the temporal nature of the state and the earth, beginning in the present and then rapidly fusing past and present at the outset of the dream. Scipio the Younger having had an earlier conversation with King Masinissa about his grandfather and their respective states, falls asleep. In the ensuing dream, Scipio sees his grandfather, Scipio the Elder, Africanus, the great figure from the past intruding into his present dream. With Africanus filling the role as guide, the dream quickly expands into the future and ultimately into the timeless. Scipio, the dreamer, is of course terrified by the ghostly guide, envisioning him curiously as the figure from a bust rather than the real human he had seen before. The suggestion is that Africanus has become immortal, has become a name, and his image asserts the authority that lends veritas and substance to the dream. Africanus and Scipio, standing in a brilliant spot of light, gaze upon Carthage, a city soon to be subdued at the hands of Scipio himself, who thus expands the empire and returns in glory to the capitol. The capitol itself, it is revealed, is dangerous, largely because of the machinations, it is alleged, of Tiberius Gracchus. Africanus tells Scipio that the senate, the people, the allies, and the Latins all look to him to restore order, if he can escape the plotting of the murderous kinsmen of Gracchus. Thus Scipio should devote himself to the defense of the commonwealth, for “those who have preserved, aided, or enlarged their



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fatherland have a special place prepared for them in the heavens, where they may enjoy an eternal life of happiness” (265). Scipio admits being “thoroughly terrified,” not so much by the thought of death but by the thought of the plot, and asks if both his father Paulus and Africanus are really “alive” (267). Assured that they are, he is told they “have escaped” from “the bondage of body” (267). When Scipio asks if he should leave his body and hurry to them, he is instructed that unless God frees him from “the prison of the body” he cannot enter the eternal life. This brief segment of their conversation establishes one of the dominant images of Scipio’s dream, alongside that of the contrasts of darkness and light: escape and movement. Paulus explains to Scipio that his soul, formed from the “eternal fires” (267) of stars and planets is immortal. Further, Paulus advises him, a life devoted to the love of “justice and duty” (269) to parents and kinsmen, but most of all to the fatherland, will lead the bearer of that life to the gathering of all others who have led virtuous lives in the Milky Circle, “the circle of light which blazed most brightly among the other fires” (269). When Scipio looks beneath him to the relative insignificance of the earth, a vision later echoed in Chaucer’s House of Fame and in Troilus and Criseyde, Scipio sees that the earth is so small that “I was scornful of our empire, which covers only a single point … upon its surface” (269). As if to further press the point, Africanus directs his attention to the greater planets and movements that make up the universe, including the sun that is midway between heaven and earth and is the “mind and guiding principle of the universe,” as well as the moon and the earth below it at the farthest range from heaven, where there is “nothing except what is mortal and doomed to decay, save only the souls” (271). The earth itself, Africanus explains, is “immovable” and toward it “all ponderable bodies are drawn by their own natural tendency downward” (271). Scipio’s attention is then drawn to a “loud and agreeable sound” (271), which he is told is that of the harmony of the spheres, a sound that cannot be perceived by human ears. Of most interest at this point is the revelation of another avenue to that Milky Circle of eternal life and happiness: those who have learned to imitate this harmony on “stringed instruments and in song, have gained for themselves a return to this region as others have obtained the same reward by devoting their brilliant intellects to divine pursuits during their earthly lives” (273). Thus the dream establishes at least two avenues to immortality: the virtuous life in pursuit of duty, especially to the commonwealth, and the life of the musicians and poets, in pursuit of the beauty of the heavenly harmonies.

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When Africanus notes that Scipio’s gaze remains fixed upon the earth, he inquires what glory or fame is worth pursuing in such a place where only small portions are inhabited, where “vast deserts lie between” these inhabited spaces, and where inhabitants of widely separated lands or of “the extreme North and South” will never hear his name (275). Furthermore, fame earned cannot last a full heavenly year, which will end with the return of the planets and stars to their original starting positions, rather than an earthly solar year, the total of those solar years not yet equaling one-twentieth of a heavenly year. Africanus then stresses the critical point. Since fame does not span even the earth and since it cannot last a heavenly year, Scipio should devote his life to virtue, which leads to true glory, and allow “what others say of you be their own concern; whatever it is, they will say it in any case” (279). Scipio vows that he will redouble his efforts to lead the virtuous life in light of such noble aims and glorious reward. Africanus approves, assuring him that his soul is immortal and that the spirit is the true self. He prompts Scipio to “know then that you are a god, if a god is that which lives, feels, remembers, and foresees, and which rules, governs, and moves the body over which it is set” (279–81) just as God rules and moves the universe. A spirit, Scipio is told, is “the only force that moves itself, it surely has no beginning and is immortal” (283). Those who set the soul toward virtue and duty will have a swift flight indeed to the eternal home: And this flight will be still more rapid, if, while still confined in the body, it looks abroad, and, by contemplating what lies outside itself, detaches itself as much as may be from the body. For the spirits of those who are given over to sensual pleasures and have become their slaves, as it were, and who violate the laws of gods and men at the instigation of those desires which are subservient to pleasure—their spirits, after leaving their bodies fly about close to the earth, and do not return to this place except after many ages of torture. (283)

With this ringing certainty of the immortal soul and the rewards of the virtuous life, Africanus disappears, and Scipio awakens. This brief summary of Somnium Scipionis highlights those themes and images that will recur and redound through Chaucer’s dream visions, broadening their scope and revealing what must have occupied Chaucer’s thoughts. While attention to the dream of Scipio rewards those who read Book of the Duchess and Parliament of Fowls, in the latter of which Afri­ canus guides the dreamer to his vision of the Valentine’s Day gathering of



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the birds and in which the “comun profit” looms large, the attention to Cicero is rewarded most fully in a reading of the House of Fame. In this largest and most perplexing of Chaucer’s dream visions, the narrator, as terrified as Scipio before Africanus, soars through the universe in the claws of an ironic version of Dante’s eagle. During the great flight through the heavens, as Chaucer escapes the prison of his life spent at the counting house and at his books, he is able to “look abroad” as well as to learn to rely upon himself rather than the uncertain words of others. In House of Fame “Geffrey” rededicates himself to his own inner voice, a rededication that bears fruit in his two masterpieces, Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde. The Book of the Duchess Chaucer’s first major poem, the Book of the Duchess (1368–72), remains the one dream vision for which the date and occasion are most certain. It is also the dream vision in which the influence of Cicero’s writing is perhaps the least overt. The poem must have been written soon after the death of Blanche, the wife of John of Gaunt, in 1368.6 Chaucer was a young man, in his mid twenties at this time, a beginning poet in relative terms; and the piece shows his need to cite authorities for his work and his reliance upon the current trends in literature, the French love vision. In Book of the Duchess, Chaucer is much more indebted to de Lorris, de Meun, and Machaut than to classical sources, although the tale of Seys and Alcyone from Ovid’s Metamorphoses is recounted in part.7 In all, John Fisher determines that of the 1,334 lines of Book of the Duchess, 914 come from the French sources.8 Chaucer’s references to Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, on the other hand are more veiled and seemingly confused. For example, the dreamer, as he begins to recount his dream, asserts that no person has the wit to interpret his dream, not Joseph and

6 Donald Howard provides a useful summary of the arguments about the occasion of the poem in Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World (New York, 1987), pp. 147–51. 7 Kathryn Lynch, Dream Visions and Other Poems (New York, 2007) notes, however, the tale is also recounted in Machaut’s Fountain of Love, p. 7, n. 8. 8 John H. Fisher, The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer (2nd ed. New York, 1989), p. 543.

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timothy a. shonk Ne nat skarsly Macrobeus, (He that wrote al th’avysyoun That he mette, kying Scipioun, The noble man, the Affrican).9

Two points are immediately apparent here: Chaucer either mistakes Macrobius for Cicero or conflates the two for some purpose, and he has mistaken Scipio for a king. One must wonder how familiar Chaucer was at this point with the work of Macrobius. Perhaps here he relies upon the memory of having read the text years ago, or perhaps he has encountered the Somnium at this point only through other sources. Indeed, it is not until much later, in the Parliament of Fowles that Chaucer distinguishes the commentary of Macrobius from daun Scipio’s dream. In the House of Fame, Scipio is a king, lending another point to the argument of the placement of the two poems in the Chaucer canon. Chaucer undoubtedly had read Cicero in his school years, though, as we have seen, De re publica in general was lost to the Middle Ages except for the Somnium, which concludes Book VI.10 Some of Cicero’s influence also arrived in a second-hand fashion, as in his using Jean de Meun’s version of Boethius for his Boece. Much of what Chaucer gleaned from Ciceronian rhetoric, especially the importance of the opening, was probably taken in such a way.11 Whether Chaucer had actually read all of Macrobius is also a matter of debate. William Stahl provides an excellent overview of the question but must ultimately conclude that while it is probable that Chaucer had read all or most of Macrobius, “to prove it would be extremely difficult, if it is at all possible.12 In any event, at the early point of his career when he wrote Book of the Duchess, his mind was on the French fashion of the love vision and his understanding of Cicero’s authorship of Scipio’s dream was less than clear. It was customary, of course, to cite sources and authorities as one wrote, adding credibility and affirmation to what was being written. But such a dedication to authority for affirmation does not describe Chaucer. Throughout his poetry, there is always a questioning of authority, a sense  9 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Book of the Duchess, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (New York, 1987), lines 284–87. All subsequent citations from Chaucer’s poetry are from this source, and line numbers will be inserted parenthetically within the text. 10 For succinct and useful citations of the place of Cicero in Chaucer’s education, see A.J. Minnis, Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity (Cambridge, UK, 1982), p. 23; and John H. Fisher, The Importance of Chaucer (Carbondale, 1992), pp. 120–29.  11 Fisher, Importance, p. 129. 12 Stahl, p. 55.



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that authority provides but one view and that truth is not always imbedded in an authority. His mixing of Virgil and Ovid, for example, in House of Fame, comprises two very different views of the relationship of Dido and Aeneas, and the questioning of authority becomes a primary theme of the work. As Diekstra describes it, Chaucer’s attitude toward tradition is “frivolous” and his “respect for authority is given with one hand and taken back with the other.”13 In some respects, however, I think Diekstra mislabels Chaucer’s views. What may be frivolous to some, is innovation for others. To be sure, Chaucer often questions traditions and refuses to trust authority. And he can indeed be mischievous. But his genius in the early works, the Book of the Duchess in particular, lies in innovations within the tradition, especially the traditional dream vision and the courtly love tradition. I would agree that Chaucer does use conventions “for purposes different from those conventions”14 but such is always the work of genius. Why else would he juxtapose the seeming contradictory conventions of the love vision and the elegy? Chaucer also confronts a tradition of the way in which Cicero had been preserved in the Middle Ages. In a general sense, Somnium Scipionis had been itself adapted to a Christian perspective. As Cook and Herzman note, the virtue that Scipio is urged to pursue is largely political virtue, but to the medieval Christian writers, this concept was easily converted to the pursuit of moral virtue as the road to heavenly bliss.15 Moreover, Cicero’s stoic philosophy was also adapted in the period: “This philosophy provided support for a Christian concept of natural law and for Christian ideas about the family of humanity.”16 Such were the concepts that were commonplace in Chaucer’s years, so adapted and so pervasive that drawing direct links to sources often follows a maze of sources drawn from sources. Nonetheless, Chaucer inherited directly from Scipio’s dream the concepts of the virtuous life leading to heaven, the immortality of the soul, the harmony of the spheres, and the law of nature, most of which find their way into Chaucer’s first major poem. Charles Muscatine has provided the long accepted outline of the medieval dream vision that became the model for much of Chaucer’s earliest

13 F.N.M. Diekstra, “Chaucer’s Way with his Sources: Accident into Substance and Substance into Accident,” English Studies 62 (1981), 218. 14 Diekstra, 222. 15 William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman, The Medieval World View (New York, 2004), p. 30. 16 Cook and Herzman, p. 29.

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writings.17 The elements are regular and conventional: the May morning, the courtly atmosphere, the sense of falling asleep and awakening, the guide that instructs the dreamer or leads him to a vision, and so on. That the dream vision was popular in the Middle Ages is beyond question. One needs only to recall such works as the French sources cited above, Pearl, and Piers Plowman. And dreams, their meanings, and literary opportunities attracted Chaucer throughout his career. We find them in Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, and another dream vision outside the scope of this essay, The Legend of Good Women. In sum, dreams figure prominently into all his major works. Naturally, for such an interest, Somnium Scipionis would have great appeal. Chaucer’s interest in dreams and the traditions of the medieval dream vision find a natural place in Book of the Duchess. The poem, a consolatory piece written seemingly for John of Gaunt after the death of his wife, is testament to Chaucer’s innovations with forms and traditions, as well as his more serious adaptation of the philosophy of the inherited classical sources. In the poem, the narrator, troubled in mind and spirit for some eight years—the reason is never stated but has launched a thousand studies—is sleepless, feeling at the point of death. It is an unnatural state, he says, that he should live so long without sleep. In the midst of this despair, he takes up the story of Seys and Alcyone from Ovid to read himself, he hopes, to sleep. The first direct source here, aside from the opening lines echoing Machaut, is not mere retelling, though. Indeed, the story of the death of the husband and the grief-stricken wife loses its most consolatory segment, the ending in which the lovers are resurrected as sea birds. The most persuasive argument for this emendation is that Chaucer hoped to avoid any facile consolation. The point for Gaunt seems to come in the death of Alcyone soon after Morpheus appears to her in the form of her husband, telling her that he is dead and praying that “God youre sorwe lysse” (210). She continues to grieve, however, and dies within three days. Grief can kill; life must resume. After himself promising Morpheus a feather bed and accoutrements for luxurious sleep if he will only bring rest to him, the dreamer falls asleep and dreams such a wonderful dream that no one, not even Joseph or “Macrobeus” (284) who wrote of “kyng Scipioun” (286) might interpret it. In the fanciful dream, he awakens to find himself on a beautiful May morning, listening to the birds’ harmony and gazing on the story of Troy in 17 A.C. Spearing, Medieval Dream-Poetry (Cambridge, UK, 1976).



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the glazed windows and on the text of Romaunce of the Rose on his walls. Soon he hears a horn blow for the hunt. He mounts his horse, oddly enough in his bedroom, and rides to the hunt for the “hart,” being led by Emperor Octavian. The hart has escaped, and the hunt has ended when a “whelp” approaches the dreamer and leads him to a knight dressed in black sitting beneath an oak, singing a song of his dead love. The rest of the poem focuses upon the conversation between the seemingly dimwitted dreamer and the sorrowing knight as the knight tries to explain his grief in abstract and figurative courtly terms while the dreamer, naturally dense or shrewdly appearing so and quite literal in his understanding, seems unable to understand the nature of the knight’s loss. The dialogue recounts the love affair, the virtues of “White” (Blanche), the marriage, and the unpleasant ending. When the dreamer asks again what has become of her, the Black Knight can say only “She ys ded” (1309), as simply and as bluntly as possible. The dreamer can respond only with “Be God, hyt is routhe” (1310). The “hart hunting” is over; the clock strikes twelve; the “kynge” rides home to his long castle, and the narrator awakens. Remarkable here are Chaucer’s innovations within the traditional dream vision: the blend of comedy and sorrow, the fusion of love vision and elegy, the reversal of roles between the dreamer and the traditional guide figure, the truncation of the story of Seyes and Alcyone, and the incredibly realistic portrayal of the bizarre but unquestioned events of the dream. Perhaps most unusual, though, is the apparent absence of any words of comfort to the sorrowing Gaunt, other than the final “By God that’s a pity.” Many scholars have suggested that the absence of Christian consolation or clichés of comfort can be explained only by Chaucer’s realism, his sense that death is final and must be accepted. To grieve at length is to stop life, to defy the natural laws, and this grief must be put aside for the purpose of living. Derek Brewer, for example, calls the poem “completely secular. There is not the slightest glimpse of religious hope.”18 The only consolation, Brewer argues, comes from the remembrance of the beloved in the dialogue between dreamer and knight, and that consolation is indeed subtle. The subtlety often escapes the modern reader, however, and the poem can appear to be as cruelly blunt as Brewer describes it. And yet Brewer and others who share his view overlook a good bit of the very subtle consolation that appears in the poem, consolation that derives from Chaucer’s 18 Derek Brewer, An Introduction to Chaucer (New York, 1984), p. 58.

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acquaintance with Somnium Scipionis. The consolation, of course, is twofold here. On the one hand, the dreamer himself, having suffered for eight years, presumably from love sickness, is in need of consolation as well as is the Black Knight. The dreamer finds consolation in cathartic sleep— insomnia his major complaint—and in the animated scenes of the dream itself, almost like the rejuvenation day in ancient Greek fertility rituals. The dreamer finds further consolation in the knight’s tale. If the dreamer indeed suffers from love sickness, the point is that all is not lost, that even those suffering initial unrequited love have hope if they remain honorable, true and steadfast, as did the Black Knight. At poem’s end, he seems more animated. Having endured this “queynt” dream, he promises action: “to put this sweven in ryme / As I kan best, and that anoon” (1332–34). The adverb anoon here suggests a more immediate action prompted by the dream that starkly contrasts with the lethargy and apathy the narrator suffers at the outset. Of course, given the historical occasion of the poem, the primary focus of the consolation is on the Black Knight, the figure for John of Gaunt. And here again, the subtle consolation comes from images of rejuvenation at the dream’s opening. The May morning, as Pearsall notes, is the first consolation: “The natural joyfulness of the season is the irresistible assertion of life against death.”19 One of the most compelling images is the harmony of the birds on this May morning, celebrating the return of the warming sun after the darkness of winter. The harmony of the birds invites immediate comparisons to the harmony of the spheres in Somnium Scipionis. For example, the birds’ song is The moste solempne servise By noote that ever man, y trowe, Had herd, for som of hem song lowe, Som high, and al of oon accord. (302–306)

In Scipio’s dream, he hears the harmonies of the spheres and is told they are “exactly arranged in a fixed proportion, by an agreeable blending of high and low tones various harmonies are produced … and Nature has provided that one extreme shall produce low tones while the other gives forth high” (271). The Riverside Chaucer notes the similarities between this passage and the Romaunce of the Rose.20 And there are close similarities.

 19 Derek Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (Cambridge, UK, 1992), p. 88. 20 Benson, Riverside, p. 968.



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But the mere description of harmonies taken from another work reduces the moment to mere adornment. While the language and verse may mimic the Romaunce, the intimations of immortality are lost if the passage is seen only as borrowing a love vision convention. In Scipio’s dream, the music of the spheres is encapsulated by references to immortality. In the passage preceding the description of the harmony of the stars, Africanus explains to Scipio the arrangement and hierarchy of the spheres, noting that “below the Moon there is nothing except what is mortal and doomed to decay, save only the souls given to the human race by the bounty of God” (271). In Africanus’ passage following the explanation of the harmonies, he notes that “Learned men, by imitating this harmony on stringed instruments and in song, have gained for themselves a return to [the eternal heavens], as others have obtained the same reward by devoting their brilliant intellects to divine pursuits during their earthly lives” (273). As if to highlight this thought, Chaucer places his references to “kyng Scipioun” and Macrobius in the lines immediately preceding the May morning description. The Riverside Chaucer notes that Chaucer acknowledges his debt to the Romaunce in line 334, but this “citation” is some 30 lines removed and is used to denote the legend on the painted walls.21 Still, it seems quite possible that Chaucer has conflated the sources here, the moral and immortal sense from Cicero merged with the traditional descriptions of the May morning. When we recall the passage following the description of the harmony of the spheres in Somnium Scipionis, the possible allusions expand the Black Knight’s recounting of “White” and their courtship. “White” is indeed described in stellar terms. When the Black Knight first sees her, he sees That as the someres sonne bryght Ys fairer, clerer, and hath more lyght Than any other planete in heven, The moone or the sterres seven, For al the world so hadde she Surmounted hem alle of beaute. (821–26)

White, moreover, possesses that quality essential to love and to virtue: And trewely for to speke of trouthe, But she had had, hyt hadde be routhe … That Trouthe hymself over al and al 21 Benson, Riverside, p. 968.

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timothy a. shonk Had chose hys maner principal In hir that was his restyng place. (999–1005)

Her virtue itself was unassailable: Therewith she loved so wel ryght She wrong do wolde to no wyght. No wyght myghte do hir noo shame, She loved so wel hir owne name. (1015–18)

If virtue is divine, then truly “White” has returned to that heavenly place of the music of the spheres. While much of this catalogue of beauty and virtue is conventional, Chaucer clearly has in mind the spiritual overtones. As the Black Knight finishes his recitation of her beauty and character, he vows never to forget her. The Dreamer suggests that he has about as much chance of doing that as to achieve “shryfte wythoute repentaunce” (1114). Later, when he recounts “White’s” acceptance of him after a lengthy delay, the imagery is that of resurrection and reinvigoration: “As helpe me God, I was as blyve / Reysed as fro deth to lyve” (1277–78). Undoubtedly, there is some hint of the Christian in this step toward consolation, and the hints grow more meaningful within the context of the Somnium, which was apparently in Chaucer’s mind as he composed the poem and which was converted for Christian moral doctrine in his time. Finally, the Ciceronian version of stoicism must be examined here, however briefly. Cicero’s view of stoicism required that mankind should “conform to natural laws.”22 In Book of the Duchess, both the dreamer and the Black Knight are depicted in a manner that shows their suffering defies nature. As the dreamer describes his inability to sleep, he confesses that Wel ye woot, agaynes kynde Hyt were to lyven in thys wyse, For nature wolde nat suffyse To noon erthly creature Nat longe tyme to endure Withoute slep and be in sorwe. (16–21)

When the dreamer first comes upon the Black Knight singing his song of the death of his love, the narrator projects his unnatural state upon the sorrowing lover: “Hit was gret wonder that Nature / Myght suffre any creature / To have such sorwe and be not ded” (467–70). The point is that 22 Cook and Herzman, p. 29.



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prolonged grieving is unnatural and that such intense and unrelenting grief leads but to death, as was made clear in the story of Seyes and Alcyone the dreamer was reading when he fell asleep. Nature awakens from the gloom of night, from the dark of winter, and from droughts and plagues. To suffer and to grieve the darkness of death unrelentingly defy the natural cycles and ends life. The message is stark but clear: the time for grieving has past, and life will and must continue. In Book of the Duchess, Cicero, through the Somnium, expands the poem, giving the piece its subtle, yet substantial, consolatory theme and opening the way to acceptance. Scipio is named directly, though wrongly, and yet much of what Chaucer has gleaned from his knowledge of Cicero remains in the backdrop, like the experiences and observations that underlie the works of most writers. Without our recollection of the spheres, without our recollection of the immortal soul, and without our recollection from Cicero that the virtuous life leads to the heavenly reward, the moral and spiritual force of the consolation is lost. To be sure, these notions were commonplace in medieval thought. Without the direct citation of Scipio and the suggestions following that citation, one might argue that this essay reads too much of Cicero into the poem. But the citation is there for us as we read and for Chaucer as he wrote. The Parliament of Fowls For Chaucer’s superb Parliament of Fowls (c.1380–82), the occasion of the poem and its date are less certain than for those of Book of the Duchess, but the citations of Cicero and the Somnium Scipionis are much more direct. The poem itself is generally structured as a typical Chaucerian dream vision. The narrator, perplexed by the nature of love in all its contrarieties, reads a book, Somnium Scipionis, the main ideas of which he summarizes at the outset. Following the reading of the book, which takes him all day, he sleeps and dreams. Africanus appears to him in his dream, taking him to the gates to an earthly garden of natural delights. Bewildered by the contradictory message on the gates—one a pleasant message of fecundity and healing, the other a caution about the dangers and sterility within—the dreamer hesitates, only to be shoved within by Africanus him­ self, who tells the dreamer all this has nothing to do with him, one inexperienced in love. In the garden sits a brass temple, within and without it the mythological and allegorical characters of the love visions—Venus, Priapus, Daunger, and others. The steamy atmosphere of the temple, the

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erotic image of Venus, and the stories painted on the wall of characters who have died for love, overwhelm the narrator. He emerges into the garden again, refreshed by the green, and spots a gathering of the birds to be assigned their mates on Valentine’s Day, presided over by Nature. The focus of the assignment of mates is upon the female formel, who is wooed by three male eagles, all of whom plead their cases in stylized and courtly language. The other birds, growing impatient, begin to offer their opinions until Nature attempts to restore order to the gathering by asking that each group of birds—the birds of rapine, the waterfowl, the seed fowl, and the worm fowl—appoint a spokesbird for its group. Chaucer sets forth the opinions in language well suited for the respective groups and indicative of the jealousies and rivalries. After this parliament, the female eagle, given the choice of the three males, postpones her decision for a year. The other birds are quickly paired, and they fly away with a bright and cheerful song to summer having returned after the winter. The narrator awakes and “othere bokes tok me to” (695). The book that spurred the dream was, of course, written by Cicero. Cicero is mentioned by name in line 31, where the narrator refers to the title of the book he reads before his dream: “Tullyus of the Drem of Scipioun.” The matter of the text is of such importance to his poem that Chaucer includes a 52-line summary of Scipio’s dream at the outset. More dramatically, “Affrycan” appears from the Somnium to serve as the narrator’s guide in the dream, sometimes with comic effect, as with his shoving the indecisive narrator through the gates to the garden of love. Africanus further explains that the reason for the dream is recompense for the narrator’s eager study of the Somnium: “Thou hast the so wel born In lokynge of myn olde bok totorn, Of which Macrobye roughte nat a lyte, That sumdel of thy labour wolde I quyte.” (109–12)

The narrator’s summary, we must assume, serves to highlight critical themes that deepen and broaden the sense of the poem. Three elements of the Somnium Scipionis appear most prominently. The injunction to serve the greater public good appears at the outset of the summary: he “[who] lovede commune profyt, wel ithewed, / He shulde into a blissful place wende / There as joye is that last without ende” (47–49). The theme is stressed again four stanzas later, when Africanus tells Scipio to “‘Know thyself first immortal, / And loke ay besyly thou werche and wysse / To commune profit’” (73–75). The urgency of the injunction would have



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resonated with Chaucer. Just as political and social tensions dominated Cicero’s thoughts during his writing of De re publica, so, too, Chaucer’s mind had to be occupied with the tensions of his own time: the unrest among the public because of the French wars, tensions between the royal offices and the parliament over fiscal problems, the burgeoning discontent among the lower classes that will explode in the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381, the impending marriage of Richard and the political ramifications of it, among others. The exhortation to act for the common profit also conveys within it the familiar theme of the reward of heavenly bliss and the immortal soul, a theme of profound meaning in a Christian culture, though clearly not the central concern of the Parliament. However, the theme of immortality finds its place among the great cycles of the movements of the planets in the Somnium, the third element reminiscent of Cicero’s work, and the cycles of nature that appear in the Parliament. Yet in this poem that turns on dichotomies and contradictions, the place of human nature and sexuality becomes problematic in light of the Somnium, which cautions Scipio to reject the earthly pleasures and seek the spiritual and immortal, a sobering theme not unfamiliar to Chaucer’s audience. The unsettling contradictions in the poem and the ironic, energetic tone that marks the meeting of the birds in the poem’s second half themselves seem to counteract the sobering messages of the Somnium and the dull narrator that opens the poem. How can one reconcile these contradictions that pervade the poem? That is, how does one find harmony among these disparate elements? Harmony in Scipio’s recounting his vision of the heavenly spheres provides one of the most dominant and memorable images of the Somnium, and Chaucer finds it worthy of recounting in his summary: “the melodye herde he / That cometh of thilke speres thryes thre, / That welle is of musik and melodye / In this world here, and cause of armonye” (60–64). The themes of Parliament coalesce around this image: contradictions and conflicts, private pleasure and common profit, social unrest and harmony. As Larry Benson observes, “Chaucer resolves the disputes of the birds [and their allegorical significances] into the harmony of their song, the earthly counterpart of the music of the spheres that Scipio heard in his dream.”23 The images of harmony thus provide bookends for the dream within.

23 Benson, Riverside, p. 384.

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In light of all the images of discordance and harmony, however, finding the impulse that brought Chaucer to writing this piece and ascertaining the meaning of it prove elusive. In Derek Pearsall’s judgment, “It is the first poem where we can be sure Chaucer knows what he is doing, even though we may not be sure what it is that he is doing.”24 In the eyes of many scholars, the poem was written in anticipation of the resolution of the marriage negotiations for Anne of Bohemia to become young Richard’s queen. To be sure, this approach prompts great scholarly debate, long after Benson’s deft and meticulous historical analysis of the three suitors for Anne, Richard being but one, and the application of the scenario to the three royal eagles competing for the hand of the formel in Chaucer’s Parliament. While Benson, Fisher, Pearsall, and Howard subscribe to this view, and thus date the poem around 1380 as a result, others find it intriguing, though less than established fact.25 The merits of the allusion to the marriage negotiations aside, we glean from the poem that whatever the narrator hopes to learn in his studies and in his dream remains out of reach. After the opening stanzas of the piece, which make the focus upon conflicts clear in its listing of the contrarieties of love—the “dredful joye” and Love’s “myrakles” and “his crewel yre” (1–11)—the bookish narrator turns to old texts to find answers, and takes up “a bok … write with lettres olde” (19), the Somnium Scipionis. His intent, he proclaims, is “a certeyn thing to lerne” (20), though what this “thing” may be is never identified. He feels confident an old book may provide the answer, for as new corn comes from old fields, “out of olde bokes, in good feyth, / Cometh al this newe science that men lere” (24–25). The narrator then turns to the “purpos as of this matere,” reading the whole day the text of the Somnium Scipionis (26–31). After the summary of the Somnium, however, the narrator’s quest to learn this “certeyn thing” remains only partially fulfilled. He has found “I hadde thyng which that I nolde, / And ek I ne hadde that thyng that I wolde” (90–91). In other words, he has what he wanted and not what he wanted. The reader remains frustrated. What is this “certeyn thing” he seeks? Is it as simple as the announcement of a successful marriage negotiation? That seems unlikely, of course, for why would he consult Scipio for such news? Moreover, such an answer is too facile for such a rich and complex piece. Even at poem’s end, after his fantastic vision of the Garden 24 Pearsall, p.122. 25 See, for example, Nick Havely, “The Parliament of Fowls,” in Chaucer’s Dream Poetry, Helen Phillips, Nick Havely, eds. (London, 1997), p. 272.



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of Love and the sometimes raucous parliament of the birds, he awakes and returns to “othere bokes” in the hopes that “som day / That [he] shal mete som thyng for to fare / The bet, and thus to rede I nyl nat spare” (695–99). Whatever thing he seeks remains unfound. To know what Chaucer had in mind exactly is impossible. We can derive some idea, though, from the extended employment of the Somnium, with its emphasis on celestial harmonies and the eternal, and the dream’s focus upon the earthly delights and pleasures amid all the contrarieties the poem presents. It seems that at this point in his career, Chaucer is growing away from the traditional love visions and becoming more of a philosophical poet. At the time of the poem, he appears to have read thoroughly, or perhaps reread, the Somnium with the same eagerness as his dreamer. He no longer confuses or purposefully conflates Macrobius and Cicero, and he no longer refers to Scipio as a king. In contrast, he presents a carefully selected summary of the Somnium. Undoubtedly, this segment is presented as a lens through which to read the poem. It is simply too long for this short poem to explain the manner in which he fell asleep. James Winny asserts that the recounting of the Somnium amounts to “something of a red herring” with no real parallel to the events of the dream that follows.26 Winny does allow that the Somnium embodies “an ideal in which the dreamer recognizes the form of purposes which he cannot achieve in his own life.”27 But there is more to it. Winny acknowledges the differences in tone of the jovial African who appears as guide and the pleasures to which the dreamer is guided in the garden as being distinctly foreign to the character and injunctions of the Somnium.28 Moreover, he observes a critical change in the Somnium that Chaucer makes in the summary, altering the commentary on the heavenly year, at which point all the stars return to their original positions, as a caution that human achievements at a single point in the cosmic history are trivial, to a more stark suggestion that at this point human achievement will be erased. Chaucer seems attracted to, yet not completely satisfied by, these grand visions in the Somnium, and, I think, comes to some natural questions about which Winny is silent. What, then, is the purpose of life, aside from seeking the common profit? How do the beauty and gaiety of life blend with the cosmic and spiritual? How does love, perhaps the primary

26 James Winny, Chaucer’s Dream Poems (New York, 1973), p. 117. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid, pp. 117–20.

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emotional drive of humans, fit into the larger scheme? How do earthly harmonies mesh with heavenly ones? How does one recognize the common profit? How does one bring the values of life and the pursuit of the heavenly into harmony? The questions arise quite naturally for the young poet, having practiced the love visions but also having read Boethius and having read, or reread, Cicero. The conflicts within earthly values and between the earthly and heavenly systems are immediate and perplexing. For the narrator, “Fulfyld of thought and busy hevynesse” (89), conflicts reign in his vision. The poem opens with the contradictory nature of love; the gates to the garden provide contradictory messages; the injunctions of the Somnium contradict the pleasures to be found in the garden; Venus and Nature provide contradictory aspects of love; the steamy atmosphere of the brass temple conflicts with the lush, temperate greenery and vitality of the garden; stylized, courtly love differs from the natural instincts to mate; the birds’ perspectives in the parliament clash, sometimes vigorously; and the harmony of the mortal birds echoes but remains distinct from the harmony of the eternal heavens. How can it coexist? What philosopher’s stone can resolve the conflicts and tensions? Wherein lies the true harmony that unites all? Harmony, indeed, seems to be the object of the quest. As we have seen, the images of harmony bookend the dream in the summary of the Somnium preceding and the birds’ song ending the dream. Chaucer devotes one of the seven stanzas of summary to the depiction of the harmonies of the spheres. And the struggle for the common profit seems to be one that will encourage harmony among all the citizens. As the day dies, and we slip into the dream, in a very Ciceronian touch, the narrator concludes that what he has been reading has fashioned his dream, just as Scipio asserted that it must have been his conversation with Masinissa that prompted his. Africanus appears and directs him to the garden with the perplexing, contradictory gates, within which lies the edenic garden. The dreamer is astonished by the beauty of the place, noting in detail the trees and the colorful flowers. But three stanzas in, the dreamer shifts to auditory images: On every bow the bryddes herde I synge With voys of aungel in here armonye … Of instruments of strenges in acord Herde I so pleye a ravyshyng swetnesse That God, that maker is of al and lord, Ne herde nevere beter, as I gesse (190–94, 197–200).



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The auditory images of harmony and the link to heavenly harmonies is unmistakable. What I find more compelling, though, is what most scholars seem to have looked past. Most ascribe the segment to a borrowing from Boccaccio’s Il Teseide.29 Indeed, the lines strongly resemble the description in the garden from Boccaccio’s piece—with one significant difference. In Il Teseide the garden is described as filled with birds singing in the branches and the sounds of instruments: She heard birds of almost every kind singing through the branches. She watched them with delight, too, as they made their nests … She seemed to hear, besides, delightful singing and every musical instrument.30

One notes that while it is implied, there is no mention of harmony directly in this passage. Moreover, the reference to instruments is a rather generic one; Chaucer’s is more specific and appears to derive from the Somnium rather than Teseide. Chaucer’s narrator distinctly notes stringed instruments, which we recall Africanus identifies to Scipio as the means by which “learned men, by imitating this harmony on stringed [emphasis mine] instruments and in song have gained for themselves a return to this region [of the eternal]” (273). This seemingly minor oversight by students of the poem provides insight into Chaucer’s mind at this stage of the poem. Nearly a third of the way through, after the opening stanzas on the contrarieties of love, the poem still recalls the images of harmony and its intimations of the immortal. Within the temple of brass, though, the images shift to the temporal, the discordant, and the mortal. Outside lie the contradictory allegorical figures of Lust and Curtesye, Foolhardiness and Patience, Desire and Peace, among others. Venus reclines in the temple “til that the hote sonne gan to weste” (266), a distinct symbol of the temporal that clashes with the eternal May of the garden. On the walls the dreamer finds “peynted overal” (284) the stories of Hercules, Dido, Thisbe, Isoude, Paris, Cleopatra, and many others along with “al here love and in what plyt they dyde” (294). The dark images deeply affect the previously delighted narrator, who leaves the temple and “Forth welk I tho myselven to solace” (297). The experience though is more perplexing than it may appear. The heated, deathly atmosphere of the temple is more than a mere contrast to the lush vital garden without; it exists within the garden. Moreover, the images 29 See, for example, Lynch, p. 102, n. 3, and Benson, Riverside, p. 997. 30 Quoted in Lynch, p. 301.

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seem to recall the opening lines of the contradictions of love and the dual messages on the gates. Contradiction exists not just between two systems of love or between the heavenly and earthly. The edenic garden encompasses both Nature and Venus, instinctual and courtly. The experience of life, it seems, is but a series of contradictions. As the dreamer walks further into the garden, he finds the gathering of all the birds on Valentine’s Day. Presiding over the gathering is the grand figure of Nature, whose virtues are many and who is “the vicaire of the almyghty Lord, / That hot, cold hevy, lyght, moyst, and dreye, / Hath knyt by evene noumbres of acorde” (379–81). In this respect, Nature assumes, as a deputy of sorts, the duty of assuring harmony. But harmony is not so easy in the earthly domain. The upper classes, represented by the eagles, assume certain rights that must not be overlooked, and the social ladder must be observed, problems that also preoccupied Cicero. As the fowls prepare to be paired, Nature notes that she will begin with the royal eagle “And after hym, by ordre shul ye chese” (400). After the eagles make their cases quite elegantly, but slowly and formally, the lower fowl shriek in dismay: “Have don and lat us wende!” (492). Impatience reigns, and the colloquial language of the lesser fowl clashes distinctly against the stylized language of the royal eagle: “Come of! … allas, ye wol us shende!” (494). The three eagles’ speeches to their ears is but “cursede pletynge” (495) that seems endless. Finally, the outburst descends into even lower forms of expression: “‘Kek, kek! kokkow! quek, quek!’” (499). Disharmony rules the moment, and the delay caused by the eagles’ “cursede pletynge” does not seem to serve the common profit well at all. To reestablish order, Nature calls a parliament: “‘I juge, of every folk men shul oon calle / To seyn the verdit for yow foules alle’” (524–25). The verdicts are less than compatible, some calling for the eagles who are not mated with the formel to simply find another, others calling for abstinence or truth in love. When the discussion ends, Nature offers the formel her choice, but she chooses none of the three at this time, asking for a year to consider, which Nature grants. Immediately the other fowl are paired, and they go off with “blisse and joye” (669), singing a roundel with the repeated lines of “Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe, That hast thes wintres wedres overshake And driven away the longe nyghtes blake.” (680–82)

The images of the eternal cycles predominate. Light returns after darkness, warmth after cold, green after grey. Aside from the lingering eagles,



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all is restored, and the natural world resumes. Of course, it is not a perfect harmony and not a pure eternal; it denotes the cycle of an earthly year, not a heavenly one. The individual birds will die, and winter will return. But the cycles are recurrent, like Scipio’s spheres in their circular movements in the world of nature/Nature, where God has knitted together the contrarieties. The narrator, like the eagles, remains unsatisfied, awaking only to read more books in the hope of finding that “certeyn thing” that will satisfy him. The poem’s lack of a definite ending has spawned any number of readings of the piece. Nearly all the critical views agree that the poem reflects a maturing and questioning Chaucer. As Donald Howard puts it in the context of his reading of the occasion of the poem announcing the betrothal of young Richard, something with more “philosophy” was called for, and Chaucer found himself with a suitable text, the Somnium, at hand to begin that philosophical discussion of the common profit.31 David Aers, in one of the finest discussions of Scipio and Chaucer, sees the poet as challenging his text. Aers argues that the common profit Chaucer finds in the Somnium is a “fundamental dogma” unsuitable for “reflection, let alone for critical investigation.”32 The political and patriotic underpinnings are converted by Chaucer into an English common profit, in which competing versions of the common profit can be presented.33 The competing versions of love and common profit fuel the discussions of the poem, but other scholars focus upon the questioning of authority and text in the poem, questions that will recur in Chaucer’s work for the remainder of his life. Lynch, for example, sees the inconclusive ending of the poem as indicative of Chaucers’ “search for certainty in the authority of texts” rather than in experience, a certainty that the Somnium did not provide.34 Marion Turner analyzes the “carnivalesque” mocking of authority in the Parliament, what would seem a rather odd tone if the poem were indeed written for the occasion of the young king’s marriage.35 Brewer develops the competing value systems in the poem, the contemptus mundi theme represented by the Somnium and the richness and good of nature

31 Howard, pp. 308–09. 32 David Aers, “The Parliament of Fowls: Authority, The Knower, and the Known,” Chaucer Review 16, 1 (1981), 4. 33 Ibid. 34 Lynch, p. 96. 35 Marion Turner, “The Carnivalesque,” in Chaucer: An Oxford Guide, ed. Steve Ellis (Oxford, 2005), pp. 384–99.

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and life on this earth, among the other dualisms of the poem.36 Pearsall, focusing upon the views of love and sexuality in the poem, notes that “it is not [Chaucer’s] vocation to argue a case; the problem may not be resolved, but its nature is more fully apprehended.”37 The unresolved arguments have annoyed students of Chaucer for generations. His view is not stated; contrasting and competing views are merely juxtaposed, allowing a broader and more engaging experience with his text. This pattern of juxtaposition without commentary marks much of the work of the mature Chaucer. And it is in the Parliament that we see its full emergence. Textual authority is juxtaposed to experience. Such social conventions as courtly love are countered by views of sexual love and procreative instinct. Concern for the spirit and contempt for the world are counter pointed by the beauty and vitality of life in all its manifestations. Michael Kelley gives perhaps the most complete summation of the contrasting elements in the poem, from the linguistic level to the structural level, while noting parallels in medieval literature and art in which structure and consistency to that structure surpasses the materials.38 Kelley concludes with an intriguing thought: the poem becomes a “microcosmic mirror of the medieval cosmos, drawn by a principle of consistent structural organization into a harmoniously tuned design of interrelated echoic elements.”39 And yet I think Kelley faces a remaining question that is not answered: If the structural consistency suffices to harmonize a work, why does the author/narrator remain unsatisfied? It seems to go beyond his mere unwillingness to give up reliance on authority. The problem for the narrator, it seems, is finding that philosophy, that text, that authority that synthesizes all the disparate goods. In short, he seeks that text or that perspective that provides the harmony of elements that so attracted him and yet disappointed him in Scipio’s vision. Scipio’s vision seemed insufficient for him; its completely cosmic view of harmony omits life and experience. The Christian view that only God comprehends the great diversity of life and alone understands its principles seems too facile, as did apparently the traditional Christian consolation for Book of the Duchess. Harmony is present in life and in Chaucer’s work. 36 Brewer, pp. 171–73. 37 Pearsall, p. 127. 38 Michael R. Kelley, “Antithesis as the Principle of Design in the Parliament of Fowls,” Chaucer Review 14, 1 (1979), 61–73. 39 Kelley, 72.



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But what brings it about, what allows the countless disparate elements to fuse into a unified whole escapes him. The pursuit of this harmonizing philosophy will occupy him in the years ahead. To find it, Chaucer must imagine it, find the language for it; for “to imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.”40 The House of Fame In the House of Fame, Chaucer makes great strides toward finding this language and finding the forms of life that will dominate his poetry hereafter. Indeed, one major theme of the poem seems to be the substance and language of literature. As Piero Boitani argues, the tidings Chaucer seeks in the poem are the stuff of literature, and the fantastic vision of the words flying from the whirling House of Rumor to take their corporeal form in the House of Fame is the very act of creating characters and literature.41 In House of Fame, Chaucer gives us not only critical views of fame and texts, but also this wonderful figure of literature and, perhaps most interestingly, insight into his own self-doubts and concerns about his career as a writer. House of Fame appears to have been in progress for many years, perhaps before and after Parliament of Fowls was completed. The poem suggests, in its striking imagery, an interior journey into the mind of a poet. Not surprisingly, as the poet makes his interior journey, the Somnium appears at critical points in the evolution of Chaucer’s shifting attitudes toward authority, the world of experience, and the status of his art. In the poem, the dreamer, in a long introduction regarding dream theory, described by Brewer as employing all the terms and classifications of dreams (most likely originating with Macrobius) “all recorded here in English for the first time,”42 dismisses the importance of these classifications and asks only that “God turne us every drem to goode!” (1). After falling asleep, he awakens in the glass temple of Venus, on the walls of which is a “table” on which is engraved the opening lines of the Aeneid. The story continues in the engravings and runs through the tragic story of Dido and Aeneas, in what is a curious mixture of Virgil and Ovid, suggesting that texts lack true authority and that neither author can be said to speak the 40 Aers, 11. 41 Piero Boitani, “Chaucer’s Labyrinth: Fourteenth-century Literature and Language,” in Critical Studies in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and His Major Early Poems, ed. C. David Benson (Toronto, 1991), p. 221. 42 Brewer, p. 73.

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absolute truth. Following the lengthy recapitulation of the story, the dreamer leaves the temple and finds himself in a desert, soon to be rescued by a pedantic, redundant eagle (a version of the eagle appearing in Dante) and carried off into the heavens. In the flights through the heavens, Geffrey, the dreamer, is lectured on sound theory, the nature of “kindly stead,” and offered a complete introduction to the stars of the universe, which he declines because, he says, he is too old. As they continue their flight, the dreamer hears a rumbling of sound coming from the House of Fame itself, where every bit of gossip, speech, and “tiding” is assigned its “fame” after it takes its human form: Whan any speche ycomen is Up to the paleys, anon-ryght Hyt wexeth lyk the same wight Which that the word in erthe spake. (1074–77)

This “paleys” of fame stands on a rock of ice, a feeble foundation indeed. In the ice are carved the names of those who have prospered, though only those on the northern, shady side are preserved, those on the south having melted into oblivion. The dreamer is amazed by the intricate architecture of the palace itself and notes at some length the minstrels, musicians and entertainers in the niches of the structure and about the palace, including one “Colle tregetour,” who plays the shell game with a windmill under a walnut shell (1277). Inside the palace, Fame herself appears, a monstrous figure that waxes and wanes from two feet or so to gigantic proportions. She is multi-eyed, multi-eared, and possesses winged feet. To her come groups of petitioners, which the dreamer witnesses, asking for various types of fame. Their requests are granted or dismissed in a purely capricious manner—so much for the importance of fame—and the pronouncement of that fame blown to the world on trumpets. When asked by a person standing behind him if he has come here for his fame, the dreamer responds negatively; he knows best how he stands. But he complains that he has not yet found the tidings he has been promised; all that he has seen thus far, fantastic though it may be, he has known. The friend guides him to where he might find the tidings he seeks, and he beholds in a valley below Fame’s palace a fantastic, rapidly swirling House of Rumor, made of twigs. Emanating from it are all the “tidings” one could ask for, all the talk of people on earth. The eagle reappears again to place the dreamer in this spinning, noisy house, where he observes rumors being passed from ear to ear, growing and changing with each repetition, truth and lies flying from the portals, sometimes intermingled, and every



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“tiding” headed straight for Fame’s palace. The dreamer notes the house is “ful of shipmen and pilgrymes” and “pardoners” (2121–27), all renowned for story telling and gossip. Finally in the corner, he sees a group of people rushing and leaping toward “A man of gret auctoritee” (2158). There all extant copies of the text end. In House of Fame, Chaucer begins to veer even further from his models of conventional love poetry than he did in the Parliament. In Book I, the focus seems once again on love in the recounting of the story of Dido and Aeneas. In Book II, the eagle, who carries him into the universe on a wild flight reminiscent in its basic form of Dante, tells him that he has been sent because the dreamer “hast served so ententyfly / His blynde nevew Cupido / and faire Venus also” (616–17), as a reward for his work in putting his efforts toward making books and songs “As thou best canst, in reverence / Of Love and of hys servantes eke” (624–25). Some readers of the piece, such as Howard, find this completely understandable, since they see the poem as, like the Parliament, written for the occasion of an announcement of the young king’s betrothal after lengthy negotiations.43 But by Book III, the theme of love has nearly completely disappeared, submerged, for example, in a list of some forty topics being tossed about in the House of Rumor (1961–76). Major changes also appear in the form of the dream vision itself. For example, a book does not spawn the dream, as it had in Book of the Duchess and Parliament, but appears after the dream has begun. The traditional May setting has been replaced by a vexing exact date set in winter— December 10. The first landscape we meet after the dreamer’s visit to the temple of brass in Book I is not a lush green teeming with life but a vacant, sterile desert. And although we see the character of the timid, bookish, bumbling narrator, we also see what appear to be some extraordinary efforts by Chaucer to link the figure of the narrator to himself, perhaps adding even more verisimilitude to the dream than the exact dating of the experience provides. For the only time in Chaucer’s works, he is identified as “Geffrey” (729). As Lynch notes, “the naming of the visionary is a gesture that marks a significant transition in other poems,”44 a suggestion that “Geffrey’s” journey is more than a fantastic flight in a dream, and perhaps a stage of transition for him personally. His occupation as Controller of the Wool 43 Howard, p. 232. 44 Lynch, p. 61, n. 8.

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Custom seems to be alluded to when the eagle transporting him criticizes his lack of involvement in the world around him: “For whan thy labour doon al ys, And hast mad alle thy rekenynges, In stede of reste and newe thynges, Thou gost hoom to thy hous anoon; And, also domb as any stoon, Thou sittest at another book Tyl fully daswed ys thy look; And lyvest thus as an heremyte.” (652–59)

To be sure, some of this is self-deprecating humor. As his job implies, he would have been in constant contact with people, and during this period had been active in the negotiations for the royal wedding. And yet there seems an element of self-recognition here that his life and his craft have been largely dependent on books. The sense of isolation and dissatisfaction noted in the eagle’s chastisement parallels the narrator’s despair in the desert, when he leaves the glass temple of Venus: Than sawgh I but a large feld, As fer as that I myghte see, Withouten toun, or hous, or tree, Or bush, or gras, or eryd lond; For al the feld nas but of sonde As smal as man may se yet lye In the desert of Lybye. (482–88)

The images of being lost, of inhabiting a sterile place, of being alone, and seeing nothing but blankness on the horizon signify depression and anxiety. The helplessness of the narrator seems further highlighted as he soars frightened and anxious in the eagle’s grasp a few lines later. The implication in this desert scene is that Chaucer himself feels directionless and anxious about his own life. While most scholars point to Dante as the source for the desert scene, and indeed Chaucer owes heavy debts to Dante in this poem,45 I think the imagery of the Somnium has once again been overlooked as a potential source. Although Scipio is not alone in his dream as is the narrator of Chaucer’s poem in the desert, he does look out upon the city of Carthage, in Libya.

45 For full treatments of the uses of Dante, see Benson’s Riverside notes; J.A.W. Bennett, Chaucer’s Book of Fame (London, 1968); and B.G. Koonce, Chaucer and the Tradition of Fame: Symbolism in the House of Fame (Princeton, 1966).



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Dante’s version of the desert scene does not include such a specific reference. Moreover, the context of the Somnium at the point of the Carthage reference is most fitting for a dreamer who worries about the future, for Africanus is showing Scipio his future success at Carthage and at Rome if he can avoid the threatening Gracchi. Notable too is the sense of escape in this moment, an escape much different from the dreamer’s leaving the brass temple of Venus in Parliament and being refreshed and rejuvenated in the lush gardens outside. His escape in House of Fame leads him only to increased despair, to barrenness, and to the anxiety of the lost. Perhaps we are to see in the narrator’s depression upon finding the absence of unadulterated truth and reliable authority in texts that Chaucer’s bookish narrator feels without direction. Outside the glass temple, though, the dreamer is fascinated by the architectural genius of the temple: “A, Lord,” thoughte I, “that madest us, Yet sawgh I never such noblesse Of ymages, ne such richesse, As I saugh graven in this chirche; But not wot I whoo did hem wirche, Ne wher I am, ne in what contree.” (470–75)

Of interest here is Geffrey’s fascination with the construct of the temple itself, a figure created in his own mind, not one taken from his sources. Of equal interest is the suggestion that the memory of the artist at work may not survive, that the work itself is paramount. This notion that the artist’s identity is inseparable from his works seems evident in Chaucer’s lists of his works, especially in his famous Retraction at the end of the Canterbury Tales. For one whose chief interest in the poem seems to be fame, this notion, albeit not fully grasped at this point by the dreamer, remains a dramatic intellectual development. Many readers have noted the focus on the creations of the brain and the imagination in the poem. For example, Jacqueline Miller observes, the dreamer’s quest for tidings suggest an effort to locate the source of his material, “the origin—of his art.”46 Winny argues that Chaucer has rejected the idea that the dream has been imposed on him from without and instead sees his dream as something “produced by the purposeful working of his own mental forces.”47 In his analysis of the Dante-inspired 46 Jacqueline Miller, “The Writing on the Wall: Authority and Authorship in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” Chaucer Review 17 (1982), 101. 47 Winny, pp. 33–34.

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eagle that descends from the sky to rescue the dreamer from the wasteland, Steadman describes the serial journey that ensues as “essentially a flight of thought.”48 Much attention has fallen on the nature of this eagle, but the point seems clear: the eagle is a traditional symbol of “divinely inspired contemplation and imagination.”49 The point is made all the clearer when the dreamer, high in the ether in the talons of the eagle recalls Boethius in Book II: “A thought may flee so hye / Wyth fetheres of Philosophye” (973–74). The invocation to Book II sustains the emphasis upon the imagination and the mind that ended Book I. After Geffrey assures us that not even the likes of Scipio and Isaiah had such an excellent dream as his, the invocation turns to his own mind after his plea for help from Venus: O Thought, that wrot al that I mette, And in the tresorye hyt shette Of my brayn, now shal men se If any vertu in the be To tellen al my drem aryght. (523–27)

The invocation of Venus seems to sustain the notion that the love theme will be further pursued, but the concluding segment quoted above assures the reader that it was his own brain that wrote all that he dreamed. The process of taking the things of the imagination and transforming them into a text, to fashion thoughts and images into words, is clearly delineated in the passage. And the process relies not on following stale patterns or old texts, but on tapping his own creative imagination. In the flight with the eagle that comprises Book II, Chaucer remains a captive, frightened and helpless, but hopeful in the thought that he will be rewarded with tidings. The flight, as the eagle promised, is for “thy lore and for thy prow” (579). Throughout the experience, allusions to Scipio and the Somnium recur. For example, during the flight Geffrey has a panoramic view of the world, seeing “feldes and playnes,” “hilles,” “mountaynes,” “valeyes,” “ryveres,” “citees,” “trees” (897–902). The eagle asks, “seest thou any toun?” Africanus had asked Scipio, “Do you see yonder city?” (263). The question seems to J.A.W. Bennettt a clear reference to Scipio’s view of the city of Carthage.50 The suggestion becomes even more persuasive when the context of the question is made clear, the relative 48 John M. Steadman, “Chaucer’s Eagle: A Contemplative Symbol,” PMLA 75 (1960), 159. 49 Pearsall, p. 115. 50 Bennett, p. 83.



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insignificance of the world to the heavenly expanses: “That al the world, as to myn ye / Ne more semed than a prikke” (906–07). In my view within a mere four lines of the eagle’s question, the source seems to be made clear. Chaucer notes that he sees no city because no one, not even “Alixandre Macedo; / Ne the kyng, Daun Scipio” (915–16), has flown so high. Other references are suggestive of the Somnium but not quite as “documented” as the question about the city. Within thirty lines of the reference to “Daun Scipio,” for instance, comes the eagle’s directing Geffrey’s eyes to the “Milky Wey” (937), the same Milky Circle to which Scipio was directed. Other themes of the eagle’s lecture, such as natural inclination of elements to certain positions, though commonplace in Chaucer’s day and less certainly attributable to the Somnium, are also present. The segue to Book III, which includes the visits to the Houses of Fame and Rumor, is clearly reminiscent of the movement in the Somnium from visual to auditory images. After declining to learn more about the stars and planets, the eagle asks if Geffrey hears “The grete soun … that rumbleth up and doun” (1025–26)—the tidings and talk emanating from the House of Fame. After Scipio learns of the planets and their alignment, he asks, “What is this loud and agreeable sound that fills my ears?” (271) At that point the harmony of the spheres is explained to him. There are differences between Geffrey’s and Scipio’s experiences, of course. The sound from Fame “rumbles,” but the sound from the spheres is “agreeable.” While both dreamers are attracted to the realm of the earth, Scipio, chastised, vows to avert his attention from the earth; Geffrey seems unable and unwilling to look away. Geffrey’s journey in Book III takes him to the center of the spinning House of Rumor, a figure for the world itself. The attraction for Geffrey is all those tidings welling up from the two houses. The tidings are words, the very substance of literature. The tidings, moreover, are spoken by real people in a real world, and he will find the very source of these sounds at the House of Rumor, no longer reliant on tidings coming second-hand from texts and authorities. While Scipio breaks his gaze from the world to contemplate the heavenly, Geffrey descends into the very essence of the world. Through it all, he remains an “earthly astronomer.”51 While Bevington argues that Geffrey goes unwillingly to experience,52 by Book III, he follows the friend to his vision of tidings and reality quite willingly. 51 Brewer, p. 76. 52 David M. Bevington, “The Obtuse Narrator in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” Speculum 36 (1961), 288. .

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The connection between experience and literature, all ordered and fashioned by the poet’s brain, becomes clear in Book III, in which echoes and hints of the Somnium continue. As Chaucer alights before the palace of Fame, he is once again fascinated by the architecture and workmanship of the palace, as he was by the glass temple in Book I. He observes also that the palace sits upon “a roche of yse” (1130), hardly the most stable foundation for fame. He observes further the names of famous people engraved in the ice, but the names on the south side are “molte away” (1145) while those “that northward ley” remain ‘fressh as men had writen hem here” (1156). It is a curious observation in its suggestion that those names exposed to the light, perhaps the public or critical view, fade away, while those names that lie out of the light, obscured by the shade, remain, perhaps the names of those of distant history as opposed to contemporary notables. The observation also recalls Africanus’ caution to Scipio about the insignificance of fame: “Besides you will notice that the earth is surrounded and encircled by certain zones. Of which the two that are most widely separated … are held in icy bonds … or … scorched by the heat of the sun.” (275)

The link to fame comes a few sentences later: “What inhabitants of those distant lands of the rising or setting sun, or the extreme North or South, will ever hear your name?” (277) In both instances, fame is set in the context of extremes, heat and cold, north and south. And in both instances fame is portrayed as fleeting. Outside Fame’s palace, in various niches and before the structure, Geffrey finds minstrels, singers, magicians, sorcerers, and the like. Geffrey notes by name the famous singers in these niches, such as Orpheus and Orion. But he also notes the “smale harpers” sitting beneath them, gazing upward and making efforts to “countrefete hem as an ape, / Or as craft countrefeteth kynde” (1209–13). Two striking points arise here that would be of particular interest to the anxious young poet. First, the image of the counterfeiting small harpers must have resonated with Geffrey as an image of himself following the models of the French love poets as he has been. Second, the notion that craft/art counterfeits kynde/nature places art itself as a lesser value for one seeking tidings, material for his poetry. As we have seen earlier, much of the striking imagery of this poem derives from the poet’s own brain, his own imagination. In the invocation to this third book, Chaucer appeals to Apollo, “God of science and of lyght” to inspire him to “do no diligence / To shewe craft, but o sentence” and to help him to display “that in myn hed ymarked ys” (1091–1103).



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Such words as head and thought abound in Book III. These repetitions starkly contrast with the repetitions of Book I: “Ther saugh I” (e.g., 208, 212, 219, 253) to refer to the textual readings outside himself. His attention has turned inward. Geffrey takes particular note of a peculiar character outside the palace of fame, one “Colle tregetour” who plays an unusual trick on a table of sycamore: “Y saugh him carien a wind-melle / Under a walshnote shell” (1280–81). In what appears to be an old version of the shell game, the image is a fascinating one, one that Howard interprets as a figure showing that “the author encompasses the world within the mind.”53 Chaucer’s visit to the palace of Fame and the workings of Fame herself are not particularly original in the larger view, however fantastic the images and experience. Fame is grotesque and arbitrary. Her assignments of renown and fame to the various groups of petitioners make this clear. Geffrey does seem taken by the images of the great poets fixed atop pillars of varying metals in the palace hall, poets who sustain the fame of their cultures, but as for the vision of fame itself, he notes to the “friend” who appears behind him: “these be of no suche tydynges” (1894) of the sort the eagle had promised. In perhaps the most famous passage from the poem, this friend asks if he has come to seek his fame. Geffrey replies, “Nay, for sothe, frend,” quod I. “I cam noght hyder, graunt mercy, Fo no such cause, by my hede! Sufficeth me, as I were ded, That no wight have my name in honde. I wot myself best how y stonde.” (1873–78)

In this private declaration of independence, Geffrey has arrived at the same view as Scipio: a rejection of the caprices and whims of fame. When the friend notes his disappointment, he takes him to the House of Rumor, a fantastic, noisy place in a valley below the palace of Fame, “made of twigges” and spinning perpetually “as swyfte as thought” (1936, 1924). Here he finds the origin of all tidings, human speech before it rises to the House of Fame, and lists some forty topics of discussion, of which love has taken a subordinate place among many. The eagle, perched nearby, will fly him into this house that spins so swiftly that Geffrey cannot enter alone. The eagle promises him he will learn the most tidings possible here, in the human world, and such tidings and experiences will

53 Howard, p. 245.

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serve “To passe with thyn hevynesse” (2011), that is, to improve his mood and dispel his apparently obvious heaviness of spirit. Upon entering the House of Rumor, Geffrey observes rumors passed from ear to ear, truth and falseness flying together to an exit, only to be commingled as each refuses to yield to the other. This house is filled with noise, not just the squeaking and groaning of its structure, but also by all the speeches of human beings. The noise signifies more than just babble, however. As Shook puts it, “the workshop of poetry is not in the temple of love but in Fame’s House [or perhaps more accurately in Rumor’s House]: poems are made not out of love but out of sound.”54 Boitani argues that here Chaucer has put aside all transcendental and metaphysical subjects and “abandoned literature for reality yet what he contemplates here is not reality as such … but as it is told.”55 One cannot see the House of Rumor, comprised of natural material interwoven like a nest and filled with humans, as anything but a metaphor for the world. It is in this world that Chaucer finds his tidings, his material for poetry. As others have noted, he observes that the house was “ful of shipmen and pilgrimes” and “pardoneres” (2122, 2127), the very figures that will populate the Tales. But I see here not so much the flash of lightning that inspires Chaucer’s masterpiece as the notion that the matter of literature lies within the human condition, told and retold by those who live it. There is no absolute truth, he has discovered, in texts or in tidings. The subjects for poetry are the speakers of those tidings and the nature of the tidings themselves. While Scipio promises to turn away from the world, Chaucer dives in headfirst. As the poem concludes, the rush to see the man of authority in a corner of the House of Rumor concludes the piece, a poem seemingly broken off without conclusion. Some see the poem as merely unfinished or missing its final lines. Koonce, for example, in his Christian reading of the poem, argues that the “authority” is Christ, “who brings tidings of eternal life.”56 While Koonce’s analysis of the poem in a biblical context is full and rewarding, such a figure of Christ announcing eternal life seems hardly fitting for the narrator who has rejected authority earlier, albeit earthly authority, and has found his literary home firmly in this world. Fyler, reading the poem as an attempt “to explore the limits of human understanding, as the mind confronts its sources of knowledge and its natural 54 Laurence K. Shook, “The House of Fame,” in Companion to Chaucer Studies, ed. Beryl Rowland (New York, 1979), p. 420. 55 Boitani, p. 220. 56 Koonce, p. 266.



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surroundings” sees Book III as a “jumble,” and a recapitulation of “what has gone before, though it ends in anticlimax, not resolution or synthesis,”57 a most appropriate judgment, one might say, for the Parliament as well. Howard, of course, sees the incomplete ending as the planned finish, a humorous reference to the failed negotiations for the royal marriage.58 I find the poem ends appropriately incomplete. While it would be interesting to hear what a Christ, a Boethius, or a nuncio might have to say, the poem appears to me as a movement away from reliance upon texts and, consequently authority. Such a view is not without its irony, of course, given the mining of Boethius, Dante, Petrarch, and Cicero, among others, in the poem. But Chaucer has made clear that textual authority can be as unreliable as Fame herself. Dido’s reputation in Book I rests with whichever author you read (in the case of Book I the rather different views of Virgil and Ovid). Thus, to conclude a poem that traces the poet’s shifting interests, his dissatisfaction with writing poetry based upon other texts, and his distrust of authority with a pronouncement by a man of authority would be incongruous. To leave the ending open, however, serves as a metaphor for his view of authority: it is largely a matter of what one reads and what one finds in that reading. If, as is the case for many of the love visions, the poem ends with a point of debate for the audience, how much more appropriate could an ending be but a question of which authority prevails and what might it say. The place of the Somnium in the House of Fame is thus a curious one. Chaucer adopts many of its scenes and images for his own purposes, almost countering its admonition for a rejection of the world with his own view, built upon similar foundations, of an embrace of the world. This type of juxtaposition of opposing views built upon similar events and observations seen earlier in the Parliament, will blossom in the Canterbury Tales. In House of Fame, Chaucer seems to anticipate the character of the Wife of Bath who employs the words and authority of her enemies to undermine their arguments. The difference is that the Somnium is employed with none of the delicious irony that we see in the Wife’s methods. Rather, the Somnium is a text whose imagery and creation, a product of the mind, has captured Chaucer’s own thought, creating opportunities to employ the text for his own purposes and his own explorations of his thoughts and themes. 57 John M. Fyler, Chaucer and Ovid (New Haven, 1979), p. 25. 58 Howard, pp. 258–59.

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The discussion of House of Fame after Parliament of Fowls and its suggestion that House of Fame was written after the Parliament is a controversial one. The conventional placement of Parliament in the Chaucer canon is after the House of Fame. The primary argument for the traditional placement is based largely upon style. As Pearsall puts it, “there is little likelihood that he would have gone on working in the octosyllabic couplet [of the House of Fame], with all its limitations, after he had ‘invented’ the pentameter, in The Parliament of Fowls.”59 As Lynch notes, however, some of Chaucer’s earliest shorter pieces are composed in pentameters, “complicating any simple division of Chaucer’s poetry solely on the basis of metrics.”60 My placement of the House of Fame after the Parliament derives from its more firm rejection of the textual models of the French love poets and the unreliability of texts, the focus upon the poet’s own imagination for creation of material, and upon what I see as the biographical elements of the poem that suggest some personal introspection and dissatisfaction with his earlier efforts. At the end of House of Fame, there is no suggestion that he needs to return to books to find answers to his questions, personal or otherwise, as we saw in Parliament of Fowls. But I am not convinced that there is necessarily an either-or choice to be made here. House of Fame may indeed have been in progress before the writing of the Parliament, perhaps Book I. However, I am persuaded by the evidence within the poem, especially in Book III, that the poem was not completed until after the Parliament had been finished. A discussion of the order of the poems would be incomplete without a final engagement of the Somnium. As we have seen, Parliament of Fowls is the only poem in which Scipio is not referred to as a king, and it is also the poem that contains the lengthy summary of the Somnium. However, one must consider the old argument by Martha Shackleford that the references to a “King Scipio” probably derive from the translation of “roi Cipion” in the opening of the Roman de la Rose.61 Since the Roman was a key source for Chaucer in his early dream visions, her argument regarding the erroneous title given to Scipio seems plausible. Chaucer’s use of Cicero’s Somnium varies greatly in his three dream visions. In Book of the Duchess, although Scipio is cited, the themes and images from Scipio’s dream are used in a more abstract and general fashion. Perhaps at this stage, Chaucer was recalling a much earlier reading of 59 Pearsall, p. 110. 60 Lynch, p. 42. 61 Cited in Stahl, p. 53.



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the piece or a summary of it from other sources. By the time of the Parliament, however, it is clear that he has read, or reread, the Somnium eagerly and closely. With the House of Fame, the Somnium’s place lies not so much in specific allusions and summaries, but in what appears to be a more confident and deft use of the source. Chaucer appears more interested in the creative aspects of Cicero’s work, the creation that, while influenced clearly by other sources, took place in Cicero’s imagination. In many ways, the Somnium provides a model for Chaucer’s journey inward in the House of Fame. Throughout the early ten years of his career, before the masterpieces of the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis never left Chaucer’s mind. For a text to remain with a writer for a decade and for it to be so important a text that it merits mentioning in all the major works composed in a decade, that text must have been critical to the formation of the writer’s ideas and his art. Indeed, Cicero had informed Chaucer’s work, from the works on rhetoric he must have read as a schoolboy to the text he read and perhaps reread so eagerly as a developing master. Chaucer’s genius in one respect is his ability to employ sources for his own purposes, to shape them and to put them into contexts different from what their originals convey. Such is the case of his work with Cicero. From the touching and insightful Book of the Duchess, to the questioning and exasperating Parliament of Fowls, to the brilliant and autobiographical House of Fame, in which Chaucer’s own theory of art seems to take form, Cicero was always there.

COLLOQUIA FAMILIARIA: AN ASPECT OF CICERONIANISM RECONSIDERED* Terence Tunberg The controversy over the imitation of Cicero that seems to have arisen in fifteenth-century Italy is well known to historians of humanism, chiefly because it has been the subject of several authoritative books and articles, beginning perhaps with the pioneering, but still useful overview published by Remigio Sabbadini in the 1880s.1 Ciceronianism was fundamentally and primarily an issue pertaining to Neo-Latin, since it directly addressed the question of what was the best and most appropriate sort of Latin prose—in an age when Latin was still a nearly universal vehicle for communication in all sorts of arts, sciences, disciplines, and ecclesiastical administration in the Roman church, but had been no one’s native language for many centuries. Therefore, Latin was what a linguist might classify as a “dead” language. Of course it does not follow that a dead language cannot be used or be useful; however, the question may arise as to what are standards of usage for such a language. And in this last respect a “dead” language clearly differs slightly from a “living” one—although the humanists typically did not make this distinction in the same way as linguists of more recent times. Indeed the controversy over Ciceronianism had ramifications in the developing literatures in the vernacular languages too, since it revolved around the question of imitation of classic or authoritative models—an issue that in fact arose, for example, among the writers of Italian literature in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As far as Latin was concerned, if we may generalize, there was a significant division between a group of humanists who argued that Cicero alone constituted the appropriate model for Neo-Latin prose and their opponents who asserted that Neo-Latin writers should draw elements of expression from a variety of authors. The most influential proponents of * This paper is an overview of an issue that is discussed in much greater detail and with far more extensive documentation in a monograph, which was published just while this article was being prepared for press. See now T. Tunberg, De rationibus quibus homines docti artem Latine colloquendi et ex tempore dicendi saeculis XVI et XVII coluerunt. Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia, 31 (Leuven, 2012). See especially pages 47 to 68 in this book for an analysis of the Ciceronian approach to extempore Latin. 1 R. Sabbadini, Storia del ciceronianismo e di altre questioni letterarie nell’età della rinascenza (Turin, 1885).

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eclecticism, however, such as Valla and Poliziano, still preferred the pagan texts of the late Roman republic and early empire to the Christian works of later antiquity as authoritative models. Even Erasmus, who did not hesitate to place Jerome on the same level as Cicero, can be set for the most part in the same camp.2 The Ciceronian debate spread outside Italy and into northern Europe by the early sixteenth century. And a division of sorts appeared among the Ciceronians themselves: there were a few extremists, such as the Belgian Christophorus Longolius, who did his best to use no word that was not also found in the works of Cicero, and there were many more moderates, such as Marcus Antonius Muretus, who flourished in the mid and later sixteenth century. Muretus argued for Cicero as the primary but not exclusive model, and sanctioned the use of vocabulary drawn from other sources, especially when it was necessary to discuss subjects never touched on by Cicero.3 Why Cicero? Was Ciceronianism the result of a new sense of history among the humanists, who saw the high-point of Latin as past, and wanted to turn back to the best “native-speaker” as the best model? Such a view might accord with a modern perspective on the humanists, but probably not with the reality of humanist culture itself. We should not forget that the humanists had a wide variety of theories about the nature of Latin and the vernacular in antiquity—and a general realization that a sort of Latin had once been the vernacular in antiquity was very slow in developing.4 Moreover, even if we suppose that Ciceronianism reflects a new sense of history on the part of the humanists, we would still need to explain why one should chose Cicero as the model, and not Pliny or Tacitus, or Lactantius, or any other ancient writer of Latin. We will probably come close to the minds of the humanists, if we reflect on the fact that the estimation of Cicero as the greatest Latin orator and the opinion that Latin eloquence had reached its high point in Cicero’s time and declined under the emperors was already a topos in ancient Roman texts. The idea appears in both Senecas, Quintilian, Tacitus, the satirist Persius, 2 On Erasmus, see J. Chomarat, Grammaire et rhétorique chez Erasme, vol. 1 (Paris, 1981), pp. 399–406. 3 On Longolius and other Ciceronians, see my study, “Ciceronian Latin: Longolius and Others,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 46 (1997), 13–61, and the many works on Ciceronianism and Renaissance stylistic controversies cited in this article. 4 See especially A. Mazzocco, Linguistic Theories in Dante and the Humanists. Studies of Language and Intellectual History in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy, Studies in Intellectual History 38 (Leiden, 1993); M. Tavoni, Latino, grammatica, volgare. Storia di una questione umanistica (Padua, 1984); C. Dionisotti, Gli umanisti e il volgare (Florence, 1968).



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and others.5 For the Italian humanists of the fifteenth century, who studied Roman literature with much closer attention to detail than had been the norm in earlier centuries, the view of Cicero as the supreme author of Latin prose would have been reinforced by the words of the Roman authors themselves. Moreover, even during the Middle Ages the name of Tullius or Cicero remained almost synonymous with pagan Latin eloquence. Not only was Cicero the author of De inventione, and the supposed author of Ad Herennium, the two most widely diffused rhetorical textbooks of the Middle Ages, but also certain professors of Ars dictaminis and rhetoric seem to have characterized one type of prose style (the type that did not follow any Christian models) as “Tullian.”6 If these factors had any weight, we should not find it very surprising that Ciceronianism arose in the Renaissance.7 Whatever the causes for the fixation on Cicero may have been, it is clear that Renaissance Ciceronianism was a fundamental development in early modern stylistic theory. In the present discussion, we focus on an aspect of Ciceronianism that has been noticed before, but has remained imperfectly understood. This is the question of Ciceronianism and the extempore spoken use of Latin. In fact, the Renaissance history of this question turns out to be quite important for our understanding of the history of Neo-Latin and indeed the role of Latin in western education.

5 Modern accounts of the later Roman perspective on the decline of Latin eloquence since the late republic are numerous. See, for example, G. Williams, Change and Decline: Roman Literature in the Early Empire, Sather Classical Lectures, 45 (Berkeley, 1978); J.W. Duff, A Literary History of Rome in the Silver Age, ed. A.M. Duff, (3rd ed., London/New York, 1964); A.D. Leeman, Orationis ratio. The Stylistic Theories and Practice of the Roman Orators, Historians and Philosophers, 2 vols (Amsterdam, 1963). The theme of the decline of eloquence since Cicero’s time is the subject of Tacitus’ Dialogus de oratoribus. For Roman views on the supremacy of Cicero, see Quintilian, Inst. X, 1, 105–12 and Seneca, Contr. I, praef., 6–7. On the decline of eloquence, see Seneca, Contr. I, praef., 1–7; Seneca, Epist. 114; Persius, Sat. I. 6 On the “Tullian” and other styles in medieval Latin and medieval theory, see J. Martin, “Classicism and Style in Latin Literature,” in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, R.J. Benson, G. Constable, with C.D. Lanham, eds. (Oxford/Cambridge, MA, 1982, repr. 1991), pp. 537–68. 7 Indeed one of the most frequently printed Renaissance texts that propagated Ciceronianism was De sermone et modis Latine loquendi by Hadrianus Cardinalis (Adriano Castellesi), which describes the history of ancient Latin letters in terms of another topos in ancient literature—the idea of the four ages, each representing a successive decline. Perhaps (and this is just a conjecture) De sermone et modis Latine loquendi is one of the sources for the absurd terminology that remains in use among Latin philologists today, who still call the age of Cicero “Golden” Latin, and the period of Seneca and Tacitus “Silver” Latin!

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In the humanist age Latin was still used—among the Latinate and lettered population at least—not only for written, but also sometimes for spoken communication. This was a concomitant effect of the fact that up to the seventeenth century, and even into the first half of that century, Latin was still the working language of academia, the sciences, and the Catholic church. Several modern scholars, and noteworthy among them Peter Burke, have collected evidence for a considerable amount of casual use of Latin even outside strictly academic and ecclesiastic spheres, especially between people of different linguistic background who did not know each other’s languages.8 The use of Latin for international communication is referred to quite often in texts of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.9 As late as the mid-seventeenth century the great English poet, John Milton, could still say that the utility of the Latin language for people of his time was two-fold. Latin gave them access to the works of the great authors, but it was also useful as a means of communication—especially with foreigners. Milton adds that the English, in order to take more advantage of this utility, should modify their pronunciation of Latin to a form closer to that used by the Italians—for by Milton’s time the English pronunciation of Latin differed very markedly from all others. Indeed, the reader of humanist literature encounters some vivid complaints about problems that could sometimes arise from widely differing pronunciations.10

 8 P. Burke, The Art of Conversation (Ithaca, 1993), pp. 34–65.  9 The following references could be paralleled in many other texts of this period. In the passages cited here, which are representative, the topos is employed by Romulus Amaseus, professor of eloquence at Bologna in the early sixteenth century, by the humanist Franciscus Floridus Sabinus, and in an editor’s preface to a later, amplified edition of Nizzoli’s famous early sixteenth-century Cicero lexicon: Romuli Amasei orationum volumen (Bononiae, apud Ioannem Rubrium, 1564), p. 133; Francisci Floridi Sabini apologia in Marci Actii Plauti aliorumque poetarum et linguae Latinae calumniatores (Lugduni, apud S. Gryphium, 1537), pp. 56–57; Epistula nuncupatoria in Nizolius sive Thesaurus ciceronianus, post Mar. Nizolii, Bazilii Zanchi et Caelii Secundi Curionis … operas, per Marcellum Squarcialupum Plumbinensem, cum insigni accessione … digestus et illustratus (Basileae, 1576), fol. A4r. 10 For Milton’s remarks and their context, see M. Minkova and T. Tunberg, “De rationibus variis quibus homines verba Latina aetate litterarum renatarum enuntiabant,” Melissa 122 (2004), 2–7; T. Tunberg, “Observations on the Pronunciation of Latin during the Renaissance,” The Classical Outlook 82.2 (2005), 68–71. On variety of pronunciation and the acceptance of the Italian pronunciation see Thomas Coryat, Coryats Crudities, vol. 2 (Glasgow/New York, 1905), pp. 59–60. But sometimes it was not hard for people of different linguistic origins to understand each other’s pronunciation of Latin: see I. Caius, De pronuntiatione Graecae et Latinae linguae cum scriptione nova libellus, (Londini 1574), reimpr. et ed. I.B. Gabel (Ledesiae, 1968), pp. 11–12.



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In education, especially, it seems, in Europe outside Italy, pupils in Latin schools began at a very young age to speak the language. In France, in the Low Countries, in Germany, and in Scandanavia we find similar conditions. After a period of indoctrination, typically after the second year, it was the rule in many Latin schools, often sanctioned by severe penalties, that the pupils (and of course the teacher) speak only Latin in the premises of the school (sometimes with recess times excepted). This practice was typical also of the academies of the Jesuit Order—as is clear from many passages in the famous ratio studiorum.11 A whole genre of textbooks containing model dialogues for the Latin discourse of young students, known as colloquia, flourished especially in the sixteenth century, when many famous humanists produced such texts. The colloquia familiaria of Erasmus had their origin as a contribution to this genre, though Erasmus later polished and elaborated them to such a degree that in the later editions, Erasmus’ colloquia have developed into satiric, subtle plays that seem (to us at least) to be far removed from the obvious pedagogical purpose of the earliest versions, which consisted of little more than formulas for convenient phrases relating to every-day life.12 Such an acclimatization to the spoken use of Latin was, of course, also a preparation for university life. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—as in the preceding medieval period—all over Europe the language of university activities was Latin. Lectures, disputations, examinations, publications, and ceremonies were conducted in Latin. 11 R. Hoven, “Programmes d’écoles latines dans les Pays-Bas et la Principauté de Liège au XVIe siècle,” in Acta conventus neo-latini Amstelodamensis. Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, Amsterdam 19–24 August 1973, P. Tuynman, G.C. Kuiper, E. Kessler, eds. (Munich, 1979), pp. 546–59; G. Huppert, Public Schools in Renaissance France (Urbana/Chicago, 1984), pp. 72–74. H. Aili, “Sweden,” in A History of Nordic Neo-Latin Literature, ed. M.S. Jensen (Odense, 1995), p. 140. On speaking Latin in Jesuit schools: L. Lukács, S.I., Ratio atque institutio studiorum societatis Iesu (1586, 1591, 1599), Monumenta historica Societatis Iesu 129, vol. 5 (Rome, 1986), pp. 131–32, p. 199, p. 242, pp. 245–46, p. 260, p. 418. 12 On colloquia scholastica, see especially L. Massebieau, Les Colloques Scolaires du Seizième Siècle et leurs Auteurs (1480–1570) (Paris, 1878, repr. Geneva, 1968) and A. Bömer, Die lateinischen Schülergespräche der Humanisten (Berlin, 1897–99). Martinus Dorpius, professor at Louvain and enemy of Erasmus, considers the teaching of familiar discourse in Latin to be one of the duties of a grammarian, as he tells us in an academic oration on the value of the liberal arts: “Porro huc accedunt domesticae confabulationes, quas cultissimas docere, quas suaves ac nulla ineptiarum labe infectas facere grammatici sunt partes.” See Martini Dorpii Naldiceni orationes IV cum apologia et litteris adnexis, ed. Iosephus IJsewijn, Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana (Leipzig, 1986), p. 29.

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Hence, anyone who entered a university would be very ill prepared indeed if they did not already have some experience in the spoken use and auditory comprehension of Latin.13 Yet, not a few of the Ciceronian humanists, especially in Italy, and especially the Ciceronians of a more extreme persuasion, who advocated a more scrupulous imitation of their favorite model, seem to have shied away from excessive use of Latin as a casual spoken language, for fear that their style would be corrupted if they were forced too frequently to use non-Ciceronian words or expressions. In fast-moving conversation one could not always to make sure the phrase that first occurred to the mind was also found in the works of Cicero. Perhaps the best caricature of this aversion to the extempore use of Latin is the figure of Nosoponus in Erasmus’ satiric dialogue Ciceronianus. Nosoponus, who has created detailed lexica of Ciceronian vocabulary, phrases and clausulae, sometimes needs an entire night to write a single sentence, and, if the moon and stars are not in the right conjunctions, he might write nothing at all. Nosoponus religiously avoids all extempore conversation in Latin as far as he can. If he is ever forced to speak in Latin, he finishes as quickly as possible, and immediately purges the stain on his latinity by long and repeated readings of Cicero.14 An early piece of evidence for this aversion to casual oral discourse in Latin on the part of the Ciceronians comes from the mid-fifteenth century, somewhat before the age of what we might view as fully-developed Renaissance Ciceronianism. The occasion was a dispute over correct Latin usage between Lorenzo Valla and Bartolomeo Fazio at the Neapolitan court of King Alfonso of Aragon. Fazio and his associate Panormita adopted a position on word-choice and usage very close to that of the Ciceronians, while Valla’s views on grammar and vocabulary were much more eclectic. For Valla, word choice depended on the subject matter one discussed, and not on a single authoritative author. And as far as grammar was concerned, Valla considered the entire period of Latin letters from Cicero to Quintilian to be exemplary. Valla carried on his side of the debate 13 On spoken Latin in universities: S. Rizzo, “Il latino nell’Umanesimo,” in Letteratura italiana. V. Le questioni, ed. A. Asor Rosa (Turin, 1986), pp. 398–99; M-H. Jullien de Pommerol, “Le vocabulaire des collèges dans le midi de la France”, in Vocabulaire des collèges univeristaires (XIIIe—XVIe siècles). Actes du colloque Leuven 9–11 avril 1992, ed. O. Weijers (Turnhout, 1993), pp. 39–40; P. Grendler, “Universities,” in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, vol. 6 (New York, 1999), p. 191. See also P.F. Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore/London, 2002), pp. 151–57. 14 See ed. A. Gambaro, Il ciceroniano o dello stile migliore (Brescia, 1965), pp. 46–50.



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in Latin, while Fazio and Panormita used the vernacular—and Valla tells us what he thinks is the reason for this: Utrum igitur magis vitiosum, grammatice et Latine, licet inornate, loqui, an, ut vos facitis, idiotarum verbis (quibus apud eosdem iudices cum exprobrarem imperitiam dicendi, ne lacessitis quidem fiducia fuit litterate loquendi), ne videlicet in errorem incidatis?15

And Fazio’s response to Valla more or less bears out Valla’s rebuke: Verum non ex sermone iudicatur hominis facundia et doctrina, sed ex scriptis et operibus, quibus maior vis ingenii maior ve cogitatio et cura adhibetur.16

As early as the 1440s, therefore, some humanists were taking a position on spoken Latin very similar to the somewhat better known views of the extreme Ciceronians of the early sixteenth century. Valla, on the other hand, himself an eclectic, much like the later eclectic opponents of the extreme Ciceronians, such as Erasmus, favors ex-tempore fluency in spoken Latin, and admires it in other people.17 The view that a Ciceronian stylist should avoid causal discourse in Latin seems to have been especially characteristic of a group of humanists active in Italy in the early sixteenth century and associated with Pietro Bembo. Among them was Christophorus Longolius, a Belgian by birth, 15 Laurentii Valle antidotum in Facium II, 7, 6, ed. M. Regoliosi, Thesaurus mundi 20 (Padua, 1981), p. 177. 16 Laurentii Valle antidotum in Facium II, 7, 2, ed. M. Regoliosi, Thesaurus mundi 20 (Padua, 1981), p. 176. Cf. Bartolomeo Facio, Invective in Laurentium Vallam, ed. E.I. Rao (Naples, 1978), p. 122. 17 For example, Valla has this to say about a Spanish ambassador named Ioannes Iscerus: “Neminem, ne ex iis quidem qui omnem operam atque omne tempus in studiis ponunt, videre mihi contigit in quotidiano sermone abundantiorem.” See Gesta Ferdinandi Regis Aragonum, III 8, 3, ed. O. Besomi, Thesaurus mundi 10 (Padua, 1973), p. 211. Valla is not here referring to fluency in any vernacular, but rather in the conversational use of Latin. We should note that that the phrase sermo cotidianus in the works of humanists, both Italians and northern Europeans, frequently denotes extempore conversation in Latin, such as that exemplified in the colloquia familiaria, while phrases such as facultas ex tempore dicendi may refer to something related, but distinctly more difficult, namely the ability to deliver extempore and without preparation an extended discourse in Latin according to the rules of rhetoric with all the exornationes and loci communes expertly positioned. It is especially this faculty, rather than mere conversation, that interests Nicolaus Beraldus, a French humanist, professor and contemporary of Erasmus, in his dialogue, entitled Nicolai Beraldi Dialogus quo rationes quaedam explicantur, quibus dicendi ex tempore facultas parari potest (Lugduni apud Sebastianum Gryphium, 1534), about which we will say more above. Beraldus asserts that formal forensic oratory in Latin is not his concern. We may grant this, but it is clear that his goal is an extempore ability in an extended and rhetorically skilful discourse. A similar faculty had interested the Roman rhetoricians as well, such as Quintilian—to whom Beraldus shows his debt in more than one passage.

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who was perhaps the actual prototype for Erasmus’ character Nosoponus.18 The Frenchman Stephanus Doletus, another scholar originating from north of the Alps but trained in Italy, in his dialogue Ciceronianus, which he wrote in the 1530s as a refutation of Erasmus, defends the doctrines of these Italian Ciceronians, and argues that those who really want to be eloquent, “non ita libenter, neque necessario lingua Latina utuntur.” Doletus declares he has known few that really have “promptam vero et expeditam loquendi facultatem,” which he admires as much as anyone, and by which he obviously means the ability to speak well according to his standard— namely the Ciceronian one. In other words, as Doletus would have it, few have the faculty to give an extempore discourse that would please a Ciceronian.19 Nicolaus Beraldus, professor at Orléans, and well known to Erasmus, wrote an interesting little dialogue with the long title Dialogus quo rationes quaedam explicantur, quibus dicendi ex tempore facultas parari potest, a work which deals with elevated extempore discourse rather than mere casual conversation in Latin.20 But even at this level, as Beraldus sees it, Ciceronianism is antithetical to extempore expression. Iam mihi propemodum videor intellegere [says the student figure in the dialogue] Ciceronianos ideo in nectendis sane quam paucis verbis atque ex tempore enuntiandis haerere quam saepissime, intersistere, offensare, quod humilis illa verborum cura et stylum tardat et sermonis ingeniique libertatem impedit. Langueat eorum sermo necesse est [agrees Leonicus, the professor], qui ad singula haerent, et dum Ciceroniana modo sequuntur, optima nonnunquam et significantissima reformidant …21

In a passage of his variae lectiones that has already been noticed by several scholars in the modern literature on Ciceronianism, Marcus Antonius Muretus, the French humanist who, because of his beautiful and pellucid Latin, found employment as a professor of eloquence at Rome, contrasts the ease and fluency in spoken Latin exhibited by so many of the transalpini with the halting discourse of so many Italians (though recognizing quite a few exceptions). According to Muretus, the reason for this 18 See Gambaro’s introduction to his edition of Erasmus’ Ciceronianus (above, note 14). 19 See L’Erasmianus sive Ciceronianus d’Etienne Dolet (1535), ed. E.V. Telle, Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 138 (Geneva, 1974), pp. 93–96. 20 See above, note 17. 21 Nicolai Beraldi Dialogus, (see note 17), fols. A5r-A5v. The discerning observer will note that Beraldus’ written style, by comparison with that of many of his contemporaries, is distinctly Ciceronian.



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relatively mediocre performance in extempore discourse among the Italian Latinists was precisely the favor that Ciceronianism enjoyed among the Italians.22 Muretus’ criticism of Ciceronianism is much the same as that given by Beraldus—the anxious care of the Ciceronians to make sure that every word is found in Cicero necessarily retards the flow of discourse, and indeed prevents the Ciceronian from speaking freely and easily about a wide range of subjects. Muretus adds another element: he ridicules some Ciceronians who make use of Marius Nizzolius’ lexicon of Ciceronian words (a work composed in the early sixteenth century). Erasmus gives his own satiric Ciceronian character Nosoponus the same habit of relying on lexica.23 Erasmus and Muretus deplore the very notion of resorting to a lexicon in composition: such a practice, as they saw it, would be utterly antithetical to spontaneous and extempore expression. Erasmus, Muretus, and other teachers who thought similarly, believed that a good extempore user of Latin needs a large copia verborum from a wide variety of sources and authors, and must have these words committed to memory and made familiar by usage—not in word lists or lexica. So Muretus, though himself a very careful Latin author, whose polished writings won admiration for their classicism even in the nineteenth century (a period in which Neo-Latin did not enjoy high esteem), was nevertheless anxious to preserve the full utility of the international language. The fact that Muretus’ approach to Latin, and not that of Bembo, seems to have carried weight with the founders of Jesuit pedagogy would have considerable impact on the later history of Ciceronianism and Neo-Latin.24 It was a commonplace by the early sixteenth century that the Italians were less fluent and less adept in the spoken use of Latin than the Northern humanists. This commonplace does seem to have some basis in actual conditions. Humanist writings preserve a number of anecdotes about certain famous Italian humanists, usually, but not always, of a Ciceronian persuasion, who were quite reluctant to use Latin in ordinary conversation. Doletus, in his anti-Erasmian dialogue, which we have cited

22 See M. Antonii Mureti opera omnia, ed. C.H. Frotscher, vol. 3 (Leipzig, 1841), pp. 327–32. 23 See note 14. 24 On Muretus’ influence on the teachers of the Jesuit Order, see Tunberg, “Ciceronian Latin,” (cf. note 3), 49–50; J. IJsewijn, “Latin Literature in seventeenth-Century Rome,” Eranos 93 (1995), 78–99; M. Fumaroli, L’Age de l’eloquence. Rhétorique et ‘res literaria’ de la Renaissance au seuil de l’époque classique, Haute études médiévales et modernes 43 (Geneva, 1980), pp. 176–90.

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above, disapproves of the habits of the German humanists (and by the word “German” we must also understand the Dutch, i.e. the countrymen of Erasmus, because the adjective Germanus is used even by Erasmus himself in a very loose way to include most peoples of Germanic descent, and even Northern Europeans in general),25 who babble everything in Latin, among whom, according to Doletus is “nimia Latine loquendi cupiditas,” who speak Latin better than they write. Some of the Italian humanists behaved in quite an opposite manner, according to the Tolosan humanist Boysonné, who spent a great deal of time in Italy in the first half of the sixteenth century. In one of his letters Boysonné observes with a certain amount of amazement that the greatest Ciceronian orators among the Italians, including Lazarus Bonamicus, Sadoletus and Romulus Amaseus avoid speaking Latin “in quotidianis et familiaribus sermonibus” and even “religiose abstinere.”26 We have already noticed the remarks of Muretus in his Variae lectiones, where he contrasts the extempore fluency of the Italian Latinists unfavorably with that of the Transalpini, and he openly attributes this difference to the influence of Ciceronianism in Italy. Ioannes Sturm, founder of schools and one of the great architects of humanist pedagogy in northern Europe during the sixteenth century makes much the same distinction between the Latinists of Italy and Germany. The northerners, says Sturm, are known for their great skill in sermone cottidiano, while the Italians focus on written eloquence.27 It would be possible to quote even more passages from the works of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century humanists to reinforce this impression of a relative lack of skill and/or practice in spoken Latin on the part of the Italian humanists, especially the Ciceronians, by comparison 25 For Erasmus considered as Germanus, see for example Des. Erasmi Roterodami opus epistularum, ed. P.S. Allen, 12 vols (Oxford, 1906–1965), ep. 359, vol. 2, p. 149. 26 These words of Boysonné were transcribed by E. Telle from a manuscript (Bibliothèque de la Ville de Toulouse, MS 834), L’Erasmianus sive Ciceronianus d’Etienne Dolet (see note 19), pp. 349–50. 27 Ioannes Sturmius, De amissa dicendi ratione et quomodo ea recuperata sit libri duo (Argentorati, 1543), fols. A3r-v. Perhaps Spain may be grouped with Italy on the question of the spoken use of Latin. Of course, spoken Latin was required in Spanish Universities for classes and disputations, as elsewhere in Europe, and Latin was supposed to be the language of college life, but the Spanish teachers generally seem not to have emphasized skill in spoken Latin in the same way that the humanists in Germany (for example) did, and oral Latin apparently did not greatly flourish in Spain. Indeed Brocensis, a Spanish grammarian of considerable authority, endorsed the views of Bembo on extempore eloquence. See J.M. Maestre Maestre, “De Latine loquendi controversiis in Hispania (saec. XVI),” in Acta selecta X conventus Academiae Latinitati Fovendae (Matriti, 2–7 Septembris 2002), A. Capellan Garcia, Ma. D. Alonso Saiz, eds. (Rome/Madrid, 2006), pp. 81–110.



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with their northern counterparts.28 But our purposes here will be better served if we move immediately to another set of testimonies that suggest this distinction between the Ciceronians and non-Ciceronians was actually less clear-cut and more complicated than we have indicated so far. The same Romulus Amaseus, whom the French humanist Boysonné groups with the Italian Ciceronians who “religiose” avoid speaking Latin “in quotidianis et familiaribus sermonibus,” gives us a slightly different impression in one of his own writings. Amaseus, a professor of eloquence at the University of Bologna, is well known to students of Italian literature for his oration in defense of the use of Latin against the inroads of the Italian vernacular entitled De Latinae linguae usu retinendo. In the context of this work Amaseus asks: … quae potest esse magis necessaria lingua quam ea per quam cum exteris nationibus … nobis est honesta ac prompta sermonis communicatio? Qua sublata, quanam linguae Itali homines de privatis publicisque rebus agant cum Gallis, Germanis, Hispanis, Sarmatis …? Aut eos per intepretem appellent necesse fuerit, aut illorum linguas condiscant.29

And elsewhere in the same text, Amaseus makes the following statement: Ego vero, quantuncunque mea in hoc genere sententia autoritatis habere debeat, neminem esse posse existimo cuiusquam linguae peritum, qui se non plurimum in ea dicendo ac scribendo exercuerit.30

In the case of the first passage, Amaseus is apparently thinking of spoken rather than written discourse, and in the second passage he seems to allow a place for the spoken use of Latin along with writing. Much more explicit, however, in directly denying the claims that Ciceronianism is detrimental to extempore skill is Hortensius Landus, a vehement defender of Cicero as the king of eloquence, and as the sole standard to be set for writers of modern Latin prose. 28 Even in the seventeenth century the Italians had the reputation of being less inclined to use Latin as a conversational language that Northern Europeans. For example, in 1644 the young Nicolas Heinsius, who later became famous as a philologist, lying ill at Liège wrote to his father about his situation, and added this postscript to his letter: “Heri mihi colloquium fuit cum presbytero—an monacho?—Italo tui aestimatore summo. Loquebatur is, quod in homine Transalpino mireris, eleganter Latine, idque sine haesitatione ulla. Credo a contionibus esse alicui ex Legatis Monasteriensibus …” Note that here the adjective Transalpinus refers to an Italian, since it is written from the perspective of a Northern European. The letter, edited from one manuscript (Leiden UL, Ms. Br. F. 4, No. 36), was published by F.F. Blok in Seventy-Seven Neo-Latin Letters, trans. J.C. Grayson (Groningen, 1985), p. 76. 29 Romuli Amasei orationum volumen, (see note 9), p. 133. 30 Romuli Amasei orationum volumen, (see note 9), p. 129.

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terence tunberg Non iis contenti nostri KIKEROMASTIGES dicunt Ciceronianos non posse ex tempore loqui. Perfricuerunt isti, ut credo, frontem: nihil illos pudet tam splendide mentiri … Quis nescit multos ubique Ciceronianos esse, qui tam prompte, tam celeriter loquantur, ut ad extemporalem hanc eloquentiam nati videantur?31

Hortensius here enumerates many “Ciceronian” orators whose extempore skill in Latin is very high. In short, polemic on both sides makes it a little difficult to decide where the truth lies, even in a general way. This much, however, is reasonably clear. Although in Italy Latin remained the language of teaching and disputations at universities, much as in other regions,32 several of the Italian professors of eloquence, who adopted a Ciceronian approach, seem to have held extempore discourse in rather low esteem, and indeed despised the custom of colloquia familiaria. Such Latinists were apparently unwilling to sully the Latin language by employing it in quotidian contexts. These orators were indeed beginning to regard Latin primarily as a language of display. Only a focus on careful written composition, as they saw it, could help the orator develop a truly Ciceronian style. The approach to Latin characteristic of this group of Ciceronians has convinced some recent scholars of humanism, such as Jacques Chomarat and Emile Telle, that Ciceronianism was a major factor in the decline of Latin as the lingua franca of the learned classes after the first decades of the seventeenth century. Both scholars opine that Ciceronianism restricted Latin’s range of expression and made it less practical as a scientific language: the disdain for extempore discourse manifested by some Ciceronians is, in their view, clear evidence of this effect of Ciceronianism.33 31 Hortensius Landus, Cicero relegatus et Cicero revocatus (Venetiis per M. Sessam, 1534), fols. 23r-v. Most of the orators mentioned here are Italians, but we are a little surprised to see numbered with them Nicolaus Beraldus, who argues so coherently that excessive devotion to Ciceronianism can impede skill in ex tempore discourse. But perhaps we should not marvel excessively, since, as we have noted, Beraldus’s written style is quite Ciceronian. 32 Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (see note 13), pp. 151–57 cites documents that indicate even professors of such subjects as medicine or physical science had to speak Latin reasonably well—otherwise they could find themselves addressing empty classrooms. In pre-university schooling, however, the situation in Italy might have been rather different from that which prevailed in Northern Europe. For, with the important exception of the Jesuit institutions, the use of spoken Latin does not seem to have been very conspicuous in Italian grammar schools. See Paul Grendler, Schooling in Renaisssance Italy. Literacy and Learning 1300–1600 (Baltimore/London, 1989), pp. 377–80. Perhaps, therefore, a significant portion of Italian students were less well prepared for attending a university than their northern counterparts. 33 See Telle’s notes on the passage cited in note 26, and Chomarat (note 2), vol. 2, p. 820.



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Terence Cave offers a similar perspective and argues that in the Ciceronians’ wish to restrict Latin eloquence to a privileged model of writing we find the origins of the approach to Latin learning that would one day become the norm of classical scholarship.34 Other scholars, however, such as John Monfasani, G.W. Pigman, and Emilio Gambaro regard the Ciceronians as progressive on the grounds that Ciceronianism encouraged the perception of Latin as a dead language and helped to favor the ever-wider use of the vernaculars. The aversion to speaking Latin that seems to have been a phenomenon of the “heroic age” of Ciceronianism is viewed by these scholars as one more indication of this trend.35 We suggest here that the issue of extempore Latin actually points the way to a better understanding of the effects of Ciceronianism on the last age of Latin as an important literary language. The reasons for the gradual erosion of Latin as the lingua franca of the learned in the west have been well documented and described. The most salient of these points are made by Jozef IJsewijn in his Companion to Neo-Latin Studies: the rise of popular literacy bringing with it not only the wish, but also a more widespread ability to use one’s native tongue in writing; the rapid development of nationalism; the gradual nationalization of universities leading to an increasing acceptance of the national languages for teaching and publication; the admission of the study of vernacular literatures in universities by  the eighteenth century; the gradual rise of France to cultural dominance; the overthrow of the ancien regime, especially in France and the glorification of popular culture; the rise of Romanticism.36 It seems to the present writer also reasonable to suggest that, although Melanchthon and the first church reformers propagated the role of Latin and humanistic 34 T. Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford, 1979), pp. 125–56. 35 See Gambaro’s introduction to his edition of the Ciceronianus (above, note 14), p. lxxxiv; G.W. Pigman III, “Imitation and the Renaissance Sense of the Past: The Reception of Erasmus’ Ciceronianus,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9 (1979), 155– 77; J. Monfasani, “The Ciceronian Controversy,” The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 3, The Renaissance (Cambridge, UK, 1999), pp. 395–401, and J. Monfasani, “Renaissance Ciceronianism and Christianity,” in Humanisme et Église en Italie et en France Méridionale (XVe Siècle—milieu du XVIe Siècle), ed. P. Gilli, Collection de l’école Française de Rome 330 (École Française de Rome, 2004), pp. 361–79. 36 See especially J. IJsewijn, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies. Part I. History and Diffusion of Neo-Latin Literature (2nd rewritten ed. Leuven, 1990), esp. pp. 39–53. This question is also addressed by F. Waquet, in Le latin ou l’empire d’un signe (Paris, 1998), who elucidates effects rather than causes, and most of those in post-Renaissance times. See my review of this book in Neulateinisches Jahrbuch: Journal of Neo-Latin Language and Literature 5 (2003), 319–25.

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education, the Reformation itself played a part in the eventual deuniversalization of Latin. Yet, despite all of these factors, the role of Latin as a working vehicle of expression tenaciously remained for a very long time in the learned world, in councils and teaching in the Catholic church until well into the twentieth century. The Latin used even in this later period owed a fundamental debt to the Latin of the humanists, all of whom, whether they were Ciceronians or eclectics, based their language primarily on the ancient pagan sources of latinity.37 The result of this classicization of Latin (compared with medieval Latin) was a kind of uniformity and homogeneity in the great mass of Neo-Latin prose, especially of an academic nature, that has been rightly pointed out by J. Binns, by Benner and Tengstrom’s study of Latin dissertations in Scandinavia, by Leo Olschki’s study of early modern learned literature, and by others.38 For this reason, the late professor Jozef IJsewijn claimed that the humanist stabilization of Latin greatly extended its life as a working language.39 IJsewijn is surely right, and we argue here that moderate Ciceronianism played a great role in this effort. Extreme Ciceronianism seems to have lost its popularity by the mid sixteenth century. Ciceronian texts and treatises produced after this time typically advocate a moderate Ciceronianism: their authors recognize the need to use non-Ciceronian vocabulary on occasion. The dissemination of this approach was greatly enhanced because it was advocated by some of the most influential teachers and orators of the immediately postErasmian period, including Ioannes Sturm and Muretus.40 Moderate Ciceronianism proved to be a very viable model for Neo-Latin prose in the later humanistic era, especially when it became the stylistic norm adopted in the academies of the Jesuit Order. It would have been relatively easy to learn and was quite practical since it limited grammar and sentence construction to the use of one distinctive model, yet it admitted the use of non-Ciceronian or even new words when necessary.41

37 On the immense success of the humanist effort to remodel Latin, see Ann Moss, Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn (Oxford, 2003). 38 L. Olschki, Geschichte der neusprachlichen wissenschaftlichen Literatur, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1922); M. Benner and E. Tengström, On the Interpretation of Learned Neo-Latin, Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia 39 (Gothenburg, 1977), pp. 80–85; J. Binns, Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England; the Latin Writings of the Age (Leeds, 1990), p. 300. 39 See IJsewijn, (cf. note 36), ibid. 40 See Tunberg, “Ciceronian Latin,” (cf. note 3), 44–60. 41 Tunberg, ibid.



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Last, but not least, the moderate Ciceronians went against the extremists of the first phase of Ciceronianism by adopting spoken Latin. The incompatibility of extreme Ciceronianism with extempore spoken discourse is one of the main reasons why Muretus rejects it in favor of a moderate approach that gives Cicero a privileged but not exclusive position and allows flexibility in vocabulary.42 I suggest the remarks of Hortensius Landus43 reflect a trend that began quite early in the sixteenth century among the Ciceronians themselves away from the extremism of Longolius or Bembo—in particular with regard to spoken Latin. Ciceronianism may indeed, as some scholars argue, have helped pave the way for a linguistic ideology that eventually supported the vernaculars as the main vehicle for all kinds of expression, but few Ciceronians of the sixteenth century would have foreseen or wanted such an outcome. Romulus Amaseus, for example, published an eloquent defense of the utility of Latin against the use of the vernacular. Others regarded the spoken usage of Latin as a part of its utility. Sturm and Melanchthon, two of the greatest pedagogues of Northern Humanism, both advocated moderate Ciceronianism, and both propagated a pedagogy in which skill in spoken Latin was an integral part, and in which colloquia familiaria were standard school texts. The Jesuits wholeheartedly adopted moderate Ciceronianism, and in their pedagogy Cicero was always given pride of place as the primary and nearly exclusive model for Latin prose style (though Jesuit students of course read other texts, and could use vocabulary drawn from other sources when needed). Yet we note that in the Jesuit model of Latin culture, this moderate Ciceronianism was always to be combined with extempore skill. The spoken use of Latin was vigorously endorsed in the famous Jesuit Ratio studiorum of 1599.44 We also note that from the mid-sixteenth century to the early seventeenth century a number of Ciceronian humanists were the authors of colloquia familiaria, which provided models for conversational use with a distinctly Ciceronian flavor. Distinctive among Ciceronian authors of colloquia are Ioannes Sturm and the Jesuit Iacobus Pontanus (1542–1626).45 Pontanus, whose colloquia entitled Progymnasmata must 42 See above, notes 22 and 24. 43 See above, note 31. 44 See the relevant passages from the Ratio studiorum cited above in note 11. 45 See Iacobi Pontani de societate Iesu Progymnasmatum Latinitatis, sive dialogorum volumen primum (Ingolstadii excudebat Adam Sartorius, anno 1599). On Pontanus’ Ciceronian views, see especially Progymn., pp. 399–445. In contrast with his own practice (and Jesuit practice), Pontanus notes the extremism of a few earlier Ciceronians (and also Budaeus, a non-Ciceronian), who preferred, where possible, to abstain from casual

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have had considerable influence, since they were reprinted many times in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, was a perceptive instructor. He evaluates the use of spoken Latin from a Ciceronian perspective. Spoken Latin, he admits, is often unpolished and falls short of Ciceronian standards; the remedy, however, is not to stop speaking Latin, but to aim at Ciceronian usage, even in casual spoken discourse. Indeed, Cicero is the greatest orator and always the supreme model for the language of Neo-Latinists: but the Ciceronian should also be free to borrow appropriate words and expressions from other good authors when Cicero cannot supply the equivalent.46 In fact, Pontanus takes a position diametrically opposite to that of the extreme Ciceronians of the early sixteenth century, when he argues that skill in spoken Latin contributes to one’s skill in written expression, and vice versa: Quemadmodum enim ad prelium capessendum paratiores sumus et arma tractamus longe scientius, si in umbratilibus pugnis nos prius exercuerimus; sic prorsus a consuetudine et exercitatione praeclarae locutionis ad scripturae concinnitatem et lautitiam instructiores accedimus. Fuerunt item et sunt etiamnum, qui cum in utroque excellant possintque cum optime loqui, tum bellissime scribere, ex illo ad hoc, et vicissim ex hoc ad illud se profecisse testificantur.47

Even Nizzoli’s Cicero lexicon, derided by Muretus (and perhaps also indirectly by Erasmus) as an impediment to extempore fluency came to be employed with the opposite effect—as a tool to help spoken Latin discourse. Nizzoli’s work was amplified and revised several times during the sixteenth century by several humanists, and in the prefaces to at least two augmented editions, one published by Caelius Secundus Curio in the mid-sixteenth century, and the other by Iacobus Cellarius in the first years of the seventeenth century the lexicon is recommended as an aid to spoken as well as written Latin discourse—they speak of transacting business discourse in Latin (see Progymn., p. 351). Some other examples of colloquia by Ciceronians are I. Sturmius, Neanisci (Argentorati apud Iosiam Rihel, 1570) and Antonius van Torre, Dialogi familiares litterarum tironibus in pietatis scholae ludorum exercitationibus utiles (Antverpiae apud haeredes Ioannis Cnobbari, 1659). 46 See the preface to Iacobi Pontani de societate Iesu Progymnasmatum (cf. note 45), pp. 8–12, p. 19, p. 23. When Pontanus takes this position, his words on one passage so closely resemble those of Muretus that we feel confident in identifying Muretus as his inspiration: “Conformanda est ad Ciceronis exemplar quantum fieri potest nostra oratio, tamen cum iudicio et delectu, non ex Caesare tantum et antiquis illis, quin etiam ex recentioribus, Plinio, Tacito, Suetonio, Quintiliano, Seneca bellissimum quodque, et quo quisque maxime videbitur excelluisse, depromendum est.” (praef., p. 24). 47 Progymnasmatum, (cf. note 45), p. 352; see also p. 354.



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between people of different nationalities without interpreters, discourse in the schools, etc.48 Speaking very approximately, the spoken use seems to have continued more or less in the same regions and just as long as the practical written usage, and this was especially true of the Catholic church. Whether or not extempore spoken Latin often actually matched up to Ciceronian standards and ideals is a much less important issue than the fact that later Ciceronianism was quite compatible with the practice of extempore discourse in Latin. The reconciliation of Ciceronianism and extempore discourse underlines the fact that Ciceronianism, at least of the moderate brand, was meant to be, and in fact was a practical approach to the working use of a language no longer anyone’s native vernacular. Vestiges of Ciceronianism remain to this day, as anyone familiar with the standard introductory manuals on Latin prose composition knows. But this is only a partial inheritance of late Renaissance Ciceronianism, since, as we have just said, Renaissance Ciceronianism was a doctrine designed for those intending to employ Latin as a practical means of expression. The use of Latin as a communicative language waned steadily from the second half of the seventeenth century, and Latin composition evolved by the nineteenth century into an exercise whose primary and eventually sole utility (with the exception of its use within the institutions of the Catholic church) was to train students to read and interpret ancient texts more effectively. Under such conditions, the model adumbrated long before by extreme Ciceronianism returned—but was taken much further under new circumstances. Imitation of Cicero became more precise and rigorous, bolstered by the tools and lexica of modern scholarship—vocabulary could at last be strictly limited to that of Cicero (or some other author, if the exercise so required—as in the case of advanced students). And why not? The idea was not to engage in real communication, but to display one’s knowledge Latin style. And the spoken use of Latin, of course, retreated drastically from the foreground—at least in the classical curriculum that has become conventional in the last two centuries.

48 See the Epistula nuncupatoria in Nizolius sive Thesaurus ciceronianus, post Mar. Nizolii, Bazilii Zanchi et Caelii Secundi Curionis… operas, per Marcellum Squarcialupum Plumbinensem, cum insigni accessione … digestus et illustratus (Basileae, 1576), fol. A4r, (see also note 9), and Marius Nizolius sive Thesaurus Ciceronianus post nunquam satis laudatas operas Basilii Zanchi, Caelii Secundi Curionis, et Marcelli Squarcialupi Plumbinensis … denuo per Iacobum Cellarium Augustanum … repurgatus (Francofurti, apud Godefridum Tampachium, 1613), p. 2r.

CICERONIAN ECHOES IN MARCILIO FICINO Valery Rees Throughout the long medieval period Cicero enjoyed a vigorous continuance of life beyond the grave as a valued authority on principles of clear thinking, effective argument, and moral conduct. In the classical revival of Renaissance Italy he became once again, as he had been in his own day, the ultimate model of eloquence and style. By the time Marsilio Ficino was born, in 1433, most of Cicero’s works had been reclaimed. One might therefore be forgiven for thinking there is little more to add, especially as Cicero himself warns against those who “push their definitions to a superfluous accuracy.”1 Furthermore, the visible traces of Cicero in Ficino’s published work look slender at first sight, but this paper will argue that Cicero was an important influence on the Florentine philosopher. It is true that Marsilio Ficino is better known for his interest in Plato than in Cicero. His translations of the complete body of Plato’s work and accompanying commentaries informed not only his contemporaries, but nearly all modern editions until the middle of the nineteenth century.2 He is also renowned for his interpretations of Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster the Chaldaean, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Synesius, Dionysius, Proclus and a number of Byzantine scholars, and for his own creative and

1 “Qui haec subtilius disserunt, fortasse vere, sed ad communem utlitatem parum.” Cicero, Laelius 5.18, trans. E.S. Shuckburgh (London, 1900). 2 The first printed edition of Ficino’s Plato translations with commentaries appeared in Florence, 1484. Although not published until 1484, they were in essence completed by 1476, and some key passages appear in Ficino’s letters during the 1470s and early 1480s, as he continued to revise them. Another followed in 1491, and a further edition of the commentaries in 1496. Numerous editions by leading publishers followed during the sixteenth century, although other versions also won widespread acceptance, for example, the handsome three-volume edition of Henri Etienne and Jean de Serre (Paris, 1578). Ficino’s Latin formed the basis of the Bipontine bilingual edition of Plato’s works, 1781–88, with Etienne’s Greek. Immanuel Bekker’s influential editions of Plato’s works drew on Ficino’s Latin (Berlin, 1816–18; 1826; 1846), as did Georg Friedrich Creuzer’s edition of Plotinus (Oxford, 1835 and Paris, 1855). For a sample assessment of the influence of Ficinian Platonism in sixteenth century England, see the appendix to my recent article “Ficinian Ideas in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser,” Spenser Studies 24 (2009), 73–134, (Appendix, 98–125).

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original contributions both to Christian Platonism and to early scientific thought.3 Direct citations of Cicero in Ficino’s work are few. Yet Cicero can be identified as an obvious source on some occasions, as I shall show. There are also manuscripts preserving notes Ficino made during his reading of Cicero as a young man, indicating familiarity with De finibus, Topica, Pro Marcello and Pro Ligario.4 These reading notes date to his formative years as a young student, between 1455 and 1457. From 1467, printed works of Cicero became readily accessible, with his Epistolae ad familiares among the first books issuing from the early press of Sweynheym and Pannartz in Rome in 1467, reprinted frequently thereafter by other publishing houses, and followed by many other of his works. Cicero can be regarded as Ficino’s guide in four important respects. First, he provided Ficino with an early introduction to Plato and other ancient schools of philosophy. That he did so with an enquiring mind, an eloquent pen and a personal example of moral commitment is especially 3 Ficino’s published translations began with Hermes Trismegistus in 1463 and the commentary on Plato’s Symposium in 1469. After the Plato edition of 1484, a series of translations of Neoplatonic works appeared during 1486–88, and his commentaries and translation of Plotinus were published in 1492. Byzantine scholars studied by Ficino include Michael Psellus, Nicholas of Methone, Cardinal Bessarion and George Gemisthos. His own major original writings include On the Christian Religion (see the edition of Guido Bartolucci, forthcoming 2011); the Platonic Theology, trans. Michael J.B. Allen and ed. James Hankins, 6 vols, I Tatti Renaissance Library (Cambridge, MA, 2001–2006); Three Books on Life, Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark, trans. and eds. (Binghamton, 1989) referred to hereafter as De vita; and twelve books of letters, The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, trans. Members of the Language Department, School of Economic Science, 8 vols to date (London, 1975–2009), referred to hereafter as Letters. Among the Plato commentaries, see especially De amore, his commentary on the Symposium, trans. Sears R. Jayne, Marsilio Ficino. Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love, (2nd ed. Woodstock, CT, 1985) and Phaedrus, trans. Michael J.B. Allen, I Tatti Renaissance Library (Cambridge, MA, 2008). For a full list of Ficino’s works, see Paul Oskar Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum, 2 vols (Florence, 1937, repr. 1973), 1, pp. lxxvii-clxvii, updated in his Marsilio Ficino and His Work after Five Hundred Years (Rome, 1987), pp. 122–44. For an introductory overview of Ficino’s work see, Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (New York, 1943). From the very large literature on Ficino, studies of particular importance are included in Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone: Studi e Document, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence, 1986); Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, Michael J.B. Allen, Valery Rees, with Martin Davies, eds. (Leiden, 2002); James Hankins, Humanism and Platonism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols (Rome, 2003–4), vol. 2; Cesare Vasoli, Quasi sit Deus. Studi su Marsilio Ficino (Lecce, 1999). For further bibliography, see Kristeller, Supplementum, 1, pp. v-lxxv; idem, Marsilio Ficino after 500 Years, pp. 36–66 (1987); T. Katinis, in Accademia 2 (2000), 101–36; 4 (2002), 7–18; and 5 (2003), 9–16; T. Gibhard and S. Toussaint in Accademia 8 (2006), 7–21; 11 (2009), 9–26; 12 (2010) 7–12. 4 MSS Riccardiana 709, Ambrosiana S.14 sup.; Paris Nouv. Ac. Lat. 650.



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significant. Secondly, Cicero offered a range of tools which could be adapted for the analysis and study of philosophical texts. Such tools include attention to compositional style and rhetorical technique, which he both describes and demonstrates. Thirdly, Cicero paved the way in the task of translating Greek philosophical texts, providing the necessary Latin vocabulary that was previously lacking. He displayed a freedom to explore, to experiment, to expound alternatives and to add his own examples.5 Fourthly, Cicero’s Epistolae ad familiares served as a forerunner to Ficino in the use of elegant personal letters, collected into published volumes, as an appropriate medium for supporting philosophical work. Ficino collected his own letters in twelve books for publication, the first of which circulated in manuscript from the 1470s. He published a first printed edition in Florence in 1495; a second printing followed soon after (Nuremberg, 1497).6 Although Ficino’s letters certainly differ from those of Cicero in content and tone, they do undoubtedly owe something to them in concept and form. It would be wrong to think that Ficino was indebted exclusively to Cicero in this respect. Letter writing was certainly flourishing in Renaissance Italy, following the example of Petrarch and Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II) both inspired by the newly-found works of Cicero.7 But Plato, Seneca and Basil the Great were also models for Ficino, as well as contemporaries such as Archbishop Antoninus Pierozzi and

5 The significance of writing philosophical work in Latin rather than Greek as a deliberate policy is discussed in T. Murphy, “Cicero’s First Readers: Epistolary Evidence for the Dissemination of His Works,” The Classical Quarterly, n.s., 48 (1998), 492–505. 6 Subsequent editions after Ficino’s lifetime were in his Opera omnia published in Basel, 1561, 1576 and Paris, 1641. The 1576 edition (repr. Turin, 1959, 1962, 1979, 1983; Paris, 2000) is the most accessible, though it contains numerous errors. It is referred to hereafter as Opera. A few selected letters appeared separately between 1499 and 1519, see, for example, at note 18. below. For a critical edition of the first book, see Lettere Epistolarum familiarum, 2 vols to date, ed. Sebastiano Gentile (Florence, 1990, 2010). For translation with textual emendations, see Letters cited in note 3 above. Since volume numbers do not exactly correspond to the original numbering of Ficino’s books, Arabic numerals will be used to refer to the volumes of translation, and Epistolae with a Roman numeral for those books which have not yet been translated. 7 Petrarch collected Epistolae familiares (1351–59) and Seniles (1361–73). The letters of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini were printed three times in Rome in the 1470s, with many subsequent editions. On the general importance of Cicero in Renaissance education see Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600 (Baltimore, 1989), pp. 121–41, pp. 203–34, and Ronald G. Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients: the Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Boston, 2003), pp. 440–507. For the availability of various classical works, see James Hankins and Ada Palmer, The Recovery of Ancient Philosophy in the Renaissance, A Brief Guide (Florence, 2008).

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Jacopo Ammannati.8 Letter-writing continued to flourish among Ficino’s friends, most notable among them being Poliziano, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Ermolao Barbaro.9 But their missives often have a more personal and immediate flavor than the philosophic counterparts of Ficino. In this paper I shall concentrate mainly on the first two aspects of Cicero’s influence: introducing him to Plato and providing relevant literary tools. Ficino’s Earliest Introduction to Plato By the time that Ficino was completing his education, there had already been several steps taken towards providing new translations of Platonic works, for example by Leonardo Bruni and Filelfo in Florence, by Manuel Chrysoloras and Uberto Decembrio in Milan, and by George of Trebizond in Rome.10 These supplemented and improved what was available through passages preserved in earlier writers such as Cicero, Macrobius, Boethius, Apuleius, Saint Augustine and Calcidius.11 Ficino drew on all of these for his first major piece of writing, the Institutiones ad Platonicam disciplinam of 1456, unfortunately lost. In the same year, and precisely because of his enthusiasm for Plato in translation, Cosimo de’ Medici directed him to learn Greek. Cristoforo Landino, who taught at the university, was also present at the meeting between Ficino and Cosimo, and urged him to publish nothing until he had done so.12 Cosimo subsequently provided 8 The letters of Plato (which had already circulated in Latin in Leonardi Bruni’s translations) became an object of study for Ficino as part of his major work on Plato’s oeuvre. The letters of Basil were familiar to scholars and theologians, and were printed in 1471. Several of Seneca’s works, including his Dialogues and Moral Letters had survived during the Middle Ages and were continuously in print from 1475 onwards. Ficino’s reading notes on Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius and Dialogues I, II VI and X are in MSS Ricc. 135 and 709. 9 Pico’s letters were published by his nephew Gianfrancesco in 1496; see Brian Copenhaver, “Studied as an Oration: Readers of Pico’s Letters, Ancient and Modern,” in Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and his Influence, Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw, Valery Rees, eds. (Leiden, 2011), pp. 151–98. For Barbaro’s correspondence, see the edition of Vittore Branca, Epistolae, orationes et carmina, 2 vols, (Florence, 1943). For Poliziano's letters see Shane Butler's edition for the I Tatti Renaissance Library (Harvard University Press, 2006 and further volumes forthcoming). 10 For a study of early translations, see James Hankins, Platonism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols, (2nd ed. Leiden, 1991). The manuscripts owned or annotated by Ficino are listed in Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino after 500 Years, pp. 145–48.  11 These authors are listed as Ficino’s early reading by Giovanni Corsi, “The Life of Marsilio Ficino,” trans. in Letters 3, pp. 133–48, at p. 137. Some of his reading can be tracked in manuscripts already mentioned (see notes 4 and 8) and others described in Marsilio Ficino e il Ritorno di Platone: mostra di manoscritti stampe e documenti: Catalogo, S. Gentile, S. Niccoli, P. Viti, eds. (Florence, 1984), pp. 3–17. 12 Reported later by Ficino in a letter to Filippo Valori (Epistolae XI.12, Opera, p. 929).



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him with complete and authentic texts of Plato’s Greek that had not been available before.13 But his first biographer, Giovanni Corsi, insists that it was through Cicero that he was “won over” to Plato.14 Cicero sets all the ancient philosophical schools before the reader, often with great wit and panache.15 His summaries cannot have failed to impress the mind of a young man, and occasionally he gives glimpses of his own preference for Platonic teachings.16 Nevertheless, in all Ficino’s 12 books of letters, Cicero is mentioned only 15 times by name. Six of these occasions are in the first book, in letters composed over a 17-year period from 1457 to 1474. In the third book, dating from late 1474 to 1477, Cicero is mentioned once in relation to style,17 and again at the beginning of Ficino’s own short but widely circulated De officiis.18 From the same period, in his Life of Plato, Ficino cites Cicero three times in one page: from Brutus, saying that Plato was “the greatest authority and master both in understanding and teaching;” from Brutus again, that “if Jupiter had wished to speak with a human tongue he would have spoken with none other than the tongue of Plato;” and from Tusculan Disputations, “I prefer to err with Plato than to feel I am right with everyone else.”19 A fourth quotation, from Panaetius, calling Plato the God of philosophers, is in fact also taken straight from the pages of Cicero’s

13 In 1462, besides a villa in Carregi, Cosimo gave Ficino the codex Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS 85.9 which had been presented to him at the Council of FerraraFlorence. It contains the entire Platonic corpus as well as some additional pieces by other Greek authors. See Marsilio Ficino e Il Ritorno di Platone: Catalogo, pp. 28–30. He also received a second smaller codex from Amerigo Benci the following year. 14 Corsi, “Life of Marsilio Ficino,” p. 137. 15 See, for example, Velleius’s opening speech in De natura deorum 1.8.18–41. 16 For example at Tusculan disputations 1.10.22 and 1.17.39; De senectute 21.78. 17 Ficino, Letters 2.3, entitled “Prose should be adorned with the rhythms and numbers of poetry.” He quotes from Cicero, Brutus 31.121. See also note 14 below, and cf. Cicero, Orator 19.67. 18 Letters 2.53, pp. 64–67, at p. 65. Ficino wrote to the young notary Cherubino Quarquagli a letter which he entitled De officiis though, conscious of the comparison with Cicero, he describes his own as clumsy (pingui Minerva). His sixteenth-century publishers clearly thought otherwise: the typographical layout of this letter in the 1576 Basel edition suggests that the publisher expected this letter to be much read and commented upon. There are large breaks between sentences, making it very easy to identify individual passages, quite unlike any other page in the volume. Opera, pp. 744–45. This letter was also published separately in an edition of Seneca, De moribus (Leipzig, 1499); in Czech translation (Prague, 1500), and with five other letters (Basel, 1519). Several manuscript copies were also made of this letter, such as the one in British Library Additional MS 16566 (copied in Milan in 1477, the year after the letter was written). 19 Ficino, “Life of Plato,” Letters 3.19, p. 39; Cicero Brutus, 31.121 and Tusculan Disputations 1.17.79.

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De natura deorum,20 for the writings of Panaetius only survived through fragments preserved in Cicero. A few pages later, Ficino cites Cicero’s De senectute, “There is also the calm and gentle old age of a quiet and pure life lived with good judgement; such we are told was that of Plato who died while writing at eighty-one years of age.”21 Indeed, Giovanni Corsi affirms that Cicero was one of Ficino’s main sources on Plato. Writing in 1506, Corsi says, Marsilio, who in his youth had been widely instructed in the humanities and was so kindled with a love of Plato, having been won over to him through Cicero, that, laying all else aside, he pondered this one thing: how, in entering within the portals of the Academy, he might be able to see Plato at closer quarters and speak face to face with him and all his family; that very Plato whom almost all call divine, or even the god of philosophers. Thus, ever watchful and alert, Ficino gathered extracts from a wide selection of Latin authors; in short, he left nothing undone which he believed would be bene­ ficial to the work undertaken.22

Corsi also describes a period of doubt and re-direction in Ficino’s life in his late thirties, likening it to that of Jerome who turned from Cicero to Christ under the influence of divine admonition in a dream.23 Therefore we might expect to find Ciceronian influence less visible as time goes by, and indeed the direct mentions do thin out. In the fifth book of Letters, from the late 1470s, Cicero is named as an example of the inevitable friction between philosophers and princes.24 In the sixth book, covering the years 1479 and 1480, Ficino describes as “Platonic rather than Ciceronian” three short treatises that he has written “to deter my friends from vice, and as far as I could to exhort them to virtue.”25 In other words, they are to perform the function of deliberative oratory, with subject matter drawn from Plato.

20 Cicero, De natura deorum 2.12.32.  21 Ficino, “Life of Plato,” p. 46 (Opera, p. 770); Cicero De senectute, 5.13. 22 Corsi, “Life of Marsilio Ficino,” Letters 3, p. 137. 23 “ex pagano miles Christi,” Corsi, “Life,” p. 140; cf. Jerome, Epistles 22.30. Corsi was not personally close to Ficino, being almost 40 years his junior, but was writing just six years after Ficino’s death for Ficino’s close friends. His judgement has been examined by Christopher Celenza, “Late Antiquity and Florentine Platonism: The ‘Post-Plotinian’ Ficino,” in Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, Allen and Rees, eds., pp. 71–97. 24 Letters 4.22, p. 31. Ficino recalls Cicero’s proscription and execution by Anthony in 43 b.c., which Octavian was obliged for political reasons to permit. 25 Letters 5.8. From the brief description he gives, it is not clear precisely to which three writings he is referring.



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The latest mention of Cicero in Ficino’s letters is briefer still, being simply that he wishes his own De vita to be taken as a book about real treatment for melancholy rather than simply an ideal, like Cicero’s orator, or Plato’s republic.26 In other works of Ficino, Cicero is not mentioned by name at all. This supports Corsi’s judgement, and is unsurprising, since by the time he wrote them Ficino had progressed from knowing Greek authors through Cicero to reading them for himself. He learned his Greek as early as 1456, and there is no reason to suggest that thereafter he discarded the works of Cicero from his reference shelf.27 On the contrary, it is quite easy to locate a handful of unacknowledged citations in De amore (1469), over 30 in the Platonic Theology (written 1469–74, published 1482), and even a glancing reference in the De vita of 1489.28 When Ficino writes to Martin Prenninger of Constance in June 1489 telling him which Latin works to read for an understanding of Plato, he does not mention Cicero.29 By this time, his own translations and commentaries might reasonably be considered to have filled the gap. The list of recommendations includes all the standard medieval sources,30 plus the works of Dionysius and Proclus he himself was translating,31 Hermias

26 Letters 5.47, to Bernardo Rucellai (who was also one of the dedicatees of Corsi’s biography). 27 The only books of Cicero that Ficino is known to have owned are the extracts from De finibus (Ricc. 709), Topica (Ambr. S 14 sup.), Pro Marcello and Pro Ligario (Paris, Nouv. Acq. Lat. 650) mentioned in note 4 above. See Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino after 500 Years, p.146. However he undoubtedly had access to further Ciceronian works through the collections of others. More importantly, during his own early education Ficino would have learned many passages of Cicero by heart, or transcribed them into his own notebooks, which have not survived. For Cicero in education, see notes 7 above and 36 below. 28 I have found four references to Cicero in De amore, none of them marked as such by the author; 31 citations of Cicero are indicated in the Platonic Theology (using both the edition of Allen and Hankins and Raymond Marcel, Théologie Platonicienne (Paris, 1970). De vita has only a well-known Ciceronian proverb, quoted at 3.23. 29 Letters 8.12. Opera, p. 899. 30 As already mentioned from Corsi, Letters 3, p. 137. 31 Parts of Dionysius had already been translated, most recently by Ambrogio Traversari; Ficino’s Mystical Theology and Divine Names were published in 1496. Only part of his work on Proclus was published, the commentary on Alcibiades and On Sacrifice and Magic, both completed around 1488 and published with his Iamblichus, De mysteriis and other works in 1497. Proclus’s Elements of Theology, Platonic Theology and On Providence and Fate were important to him, although he may have been using William of Moerbeke’s translation of Elements of Theology. Any translation of his own is lost (see Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino after 500 years, p. 141).

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and Iamblichus whom he had already translated,32 the Arabic writers Avicenna, Avicebron and Alfarabi, all available in Latin, and a couple of scholastics, Duns Scotus and Henry of Ghent. Among recent authors he names Cardinal Bessarion and Nicholas of Cusa.33 Cicero is not in the list. But when we consider to whom this list is sent, the omission loses its significance, for Prenninger, the leading lawyer of Germany, had taught letter-writing based on Cicero in the “modernist” faculty at Ingolstadt, had pursued his studies in Padua and Florence, and was now Chancellor of the Bishopric of Constance.34 However, just in case Corsi is right that it is in the earliest period of his life that Cicero is most influential, it is worth looking at those six mentions in Ficino’s first book of letters a little more closely. The first is in one of the few letters purporting to be from someone else to Ficino (though very likely re-worked by him to some extent). Lorenzo de’ Medici, aged 24, writing from Pisa, jokingly threatens to prosecute Marsilio for taking so long to write him a letter: “Even if you engaged Demosthenes and our own Cicero as your counsel for the defence, I am certain you would be condemned.”35 He calls him “our own Cicero” not just because Cicero is a Latin rather than a Greek, but because they made Cicero their own through study, either as part of the curriculum of basic elementary schooling, or, more likely, as part of the program of study Medici had undertaken with Ficino as his tutor.36 Guarino’s selection of 50 of Cicero’s letters had become part 32 For Hermias, see Michael J.B. Allen and Roger A. White, “Ficino’s Hermias Translation and a New Apologue,” Scriptorium 35 (Ghent, 1981), pp. 39–47, reprinted in Allen, Plato’s Third Eye: Studies in Marsilio Ficino’s Metaphysics and its Sources (Aldershot, 1995). For Iamblichus, the letter refers only to On the Pythagorean Way of Life. For De mysteriis, see note 31. 33 Ficino exchanged letters and works with Cardinal Bessarion in 1469. Bessarion sent him his Adversus Platonis calumniatorem of that year. In his reply Ficino speaks of Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus as having illuminated the understanding of Plato. Letters 1.12 and 13 (1.11 and 12 in Gentile, Lettere). 34 See Biographical Note in Letters 8 and Wolfgang Zeller, Der Jurist und Humanist Martin Prenninger gen. Uranius 1450–1501 (Tübingen, 1973). 35 Letters 1.23, p. 62. 36 For the rediscovery of Ciceronian texts and their use in education, see Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy; Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients; Hans Baron, “Cicero and the Roman Civic Spirit in the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance,” Journal of the John Rylands Library 22 (1938), 72–97 and idem, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (rev. ed., Princeton, 1966), pp. 121–29; Edmund Fryde, “The Beginnings of Italian Humanist Historiography: ‘The New Cicero’ of Leonardo Bruni,” English Historical Review 95 (1980), 533–52; Craig Kallendorf, Humanist Educational Treatises (Cambridge, MA, 2002). In 1481, Lorenzo de’ Medici acquired an extremely valuable ninth-century manuscript of Cicero’s



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of elementary education,37 the orations and rhetorical works formed the basis for higher-level schooling, while the philosophical works served as an introduction to Greek philosophy in accessible form.38 Thus, in the second example, Ficino, tutor to the Medici children, is writing to Lorenzo’s younger brother, Giuliano, to press on with his study of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, which was clearly being used as major study text. He says, “Cultivate the Tusculan gardens lovingly, as you have already begun. For if you practice licking the Tullian flowers for a year, you will one day strike the divine honey.”39 The divine honey is wisdom, or philosophical truth. This short letter ends with a commendation of Ficino’s friend, Andrea Cambini. This might be considered a mere formality or coincidence but for the fact that Cambini around this time translated into Tuscan for his pupils, Giuliano’s cousins, Cicero’s De amicitia and De senectute as well as Bruni’s Life of Cicero and Nepos’s Life of Atticus.40 The next mention of Cicero in the first book of the Letters is another commendation, this time of Bernardo Nuzzi, one of the interlocutors in Ficino’s De amore and a much loved teacher of poetry and rhetoric. The letter is about proper modes of imitation, and is addressed to Braccio letters and an early copy of De inventione. See E.B. Fryde, “The Library of Lorenzo de’ Medici,” in Humanism and Renaissance Historiography (London, 1983), p. 219. 37 Guarino Guarini was teaching Cicero’s epistles and orations very early in his career at Venice, even before he founded his school in Verona. At Verona, he chose to teach “a certain easy and very clear way of speaking which, enticing the reader, may be useful and delightful by its very agreeable order of words and gentle weight of the sentences” namely the “pure and very elegant speech” of Cicero’s letters. Quoted in Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy, p. 123. This practice was continued by his son, Baptista, by Vittorino da Feltre at Mantua and by other leading educators in various parts of Italy. 38 John F. D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome (Baltimore, 1983), pp. 123–43; Paul F. Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore, 2002), pp. 204–07, also cf. p. 406. Ficino himself appears to have benefited from the studia humanitatis, though little is known of his early education. His first schooling is thought to have been at the Franciscan elementary school in Figline. His family had moved into Florence by 1454, and he spent some time at the University there, both as a student and a teacher. Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino after 500 Years, pp.157–58; Jonathan Davies, Florence and its University During the Early Renaissance (Leiden, 1998), p. 22, pp. 191–92. 39 Letters 1.60, undated. Giuliano was born in 1454 and died in 1478. Lorenzo was five years his senior. If the letters were in strictly chronological order, this would be from 1473 or 1474. But they are not always so arranged, particularly in the first book; and it may well date from earlier. 40 Either Cambini or Ficino also translated the first volume of Ficino’s letters for these two boys, the sons of Bernardo de’ Medici. Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino after 500 Years, p. 126 (where he says Cambini translated Plutarch’s life of Cicero rather than that of Bruni. However, Gentile corrects this and discusses the identity of the translator of the Epistolae in Lettere 1, pp. cclxx–cclxxii).

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Martelli who, like Ficino, was a young, but trusted, member of the Medici entourage. Again the letter is undated, but has been attributed by Gentile to late 1473.41 Ficino says, “Our Nuzzi it seems, has for a long time been drinking in and digesting Cicero. For in his Oration a marvellous transformation is evident; Nuzzi has become Cicero and Cicero appears as Nuzzi.”42 Martelli should continue his studies under Nuzzi, who is commended for his sincerity, but the letter also gives us some insight into Ficino’s views on how one writer absorbs the influence of another. He says a similar transformation took place between Homer and Vergil, and between Aristotle and Theophrastus. Later, contemporaries would speak of a similar transformation between Plato and Ficino,43 but the “drinking in and digesting” of Cicero was perhaps also part of that process. In the very short letter which follows (even though it can be confidently ascribed to 1468, but has presumably been placed where it is for thematic reasons), Ficino applauds the Disputationes Camaldulenses of Cristoforo Landino, whose very title is a bow to Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. In this work, where the characters Ficino, Landino, Lorenzo de’ Medici and Alberti discuss questions of philosophy and poetry,44 Ficino says that Landino “enters the shrines of Virgil, imitates to perfection the dialogues of Cicero, and most happily portrays a happy man.”45 His exact phrase is “imitatur ad unguem,” literally “to the fingernail,” not the slavish imitation that Poliziano was to inveigh against so vociferously in the 1480s and

41 Gentile, Lettere 1, p. cclxvi. Nuzzi was elected priore of the city in 1473. The oration referred to (MS Magl. 27.115, fols. 24r-35r) was an expression of gratitude to Lorenzo de’ Medici for his influence in securing that post. He acknowledges that both Ficino and Martelli were instrumental in obtaining that influence. Martelli himself became priore the following year, though much younger than Nuzzi. Kristeller, Supplementum, 2, pp. 266–67, p. 348. 42 Letters 1.118, p. 183. 43 Naldo Naldi calls Ficino “alter Plato” in his preface to Ficino’s 1484 edition of Plato. The poet Janus Pannonius wrote “Nuper in Elisiis animam dum quero Platonis // Marsilio hanc Samius dixit inesse senex” (“While I was recently looking for the soul of Plato in Elysium, the old man of Samos [Pythagoras] told me it had entered Marsilio”), Pannonius, Carmina (Vienna, 1569), p. 53r. 44 The conversations recorded (or imagined) took place in 1468 at Camaldoli, and cover the active and contemplative life, the highest good, and Platonic allegory in Virgil and Dante. The piece is a showcase of philosophical and literary discussion very much in the model of Cicero. Landino pays Ficino the compliment of introducing him as “inter Platonicos facile principem.” Jill Kraye, Cristoforo Landino. Camaldulensian Disputations (I Tatti Renaissance Library) is forthcoming. 45 Letters 1.119, p. 183. The Latin is just over four lines long—almost but not quite his shortest letter (1.120 is less than two lines). The letter is aptly entitled “Saepe magna est laus quae brevis est.”



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90s,46 but an eloquence and clarity that make him the equal of the master. The last in the group of direct mentions of Cicero, is particularly interesting, for it contains elements of stylistic imitation, direct quotation, and engagement in a kind of ongoing dialogue with his predecessor. It also allows us to test how far Ficino’s own style may be considered Ciceronian. A Ciceronian Period? Cast in the form of a letter to his friend Bernardo Bembo, the Venetian ambassador, the Praise of Philosophy is one of several orations included in  his Letters, and probably dates to 1475.47 It starts with a modest introduction: Quaeris quam ob causam cum res multas passim artesque lauderim Philosophiam tamen cuius studio semper incumbo, nusquam sim laudibus prosecutus. (“You ask why it is that, although I have praised the arts and many other things, yet I have never praised Philosophy, which I have always studied with such devotion.”)

This is a clear beginning, set in the form of a question raised by Bembo, with a well-defined structure of nested clauses, with the markers cum and tamen to guide the reader through the logic, and a felicitous variation of lauderim with laudibus prosecutus sim. Next, he widens his audience by mentioning that Cavalcanti had already asked the same question, and he gives a simple three-part summary of his reply: the first introduces eloquence and balances two applications of the word inventum (invention by man or invention of God); the second adds the idea of Philosophy as inventress of all the arts; the third elaborates the link between these two: Ego autem respondeo, primum inventa hominum ab hominibus posse quandoque per dignitatem laudari, Philosphiam verum inventum Dei longe admodum humanam eloquentiam superare; deinde in singulis rebus et artibus celebrandis me Philosophiam rerum omnium inventricem artiumque magistram celebravisse. Siquidem non nisi eius viribus rationibusque singular digne laudamus, et quantum quaeque facultas philosophice virtutis et dignitatis est particeps, tantum laude dignam esse censemus. 46 For debates on imitation and Ciceronianism in the late quattrocento, see Peter Godman, From Poliziano to Macchiavelli: Florentine Humanism in the High Renaissance (Princeton, 1998), esp. pp. 46–47. 47 Letters 1.123, pp. 186–91; Gentile, Lettere 1, p. cclxvi, pp. 223–28.

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An imaginative flourish then serves as transition: since Philosophy is our mother and nurse she is entitled to her share of our praise: Hinc iam, si placet, exordiamur. (“So, if you are willing, let the praise begin.”) What follows is light-hearted and serious in equal measure. The first section is oratorical praise—for which he dips straight into a copy of Tusculan Disputations,49 quoting Cicero’s praise of philosophy as a discipline that allowed him to find refuge from all the vicissitudes of life: O Philosophy, guide of life, seeker of virtue, scourge of vice! What would we be, what would the life of men be without you? You have begotten cities, called scattered men into the fellowship of life, brought them together first within dwellings, then in marriage, then in communion of tongue and letters. You were the inventress of laws, mistress of men’s conduct and of discipline.50

But Ficino suddenly reins this in and starts afresh on a different tack, with a second kind of praise called Philosophical. Why does he break off his Tullian cantilena? Cicero had gone on to the very highest ovation for Philosophy: “to thee I fly for refuge, from thee I look for aid, to thee I entrust myself … wholly and entirely.” But for Ficino some modification is required. His refuge is in God, rather than philosophy. His second section therefore proposes that “lawful Philosophy is no different from true religion, and lawful religion exactly the same as true Philosophy.” This now leaves him free to elaborate the same points that Cicero had made, but from a different foundation:

48 Letters 1.123, p. 186, Opera, p. 668. 49 Although he appears not to have had his own copy (Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino after 500 Years, p. 146), he may have been quoting from his capacious memory, or using a commonplace book compiled from earlier reading now lost, or sitting with a borrowed copy before him on the desk. MS Ricc. 709 in Ficino’s own hand contains passages on the virtues from Cicero’s De finibus and from Seneca, and dates from 1457. See Marsilio Ficino e il Ritorno di Platone: Catalogo, Gentile, Niccoli, Viti, eds., p. 16; Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino after 500 Years, pp. 85–86; Gentile, “In Margine all’Epistola De Divino Furore di Marsilio Ficino,” Rinascimento 23 (1983), 33–77, at 76. 50 Letters 1.123, pp. 186–87; Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.2.5.



ciceronian echoes in marcilio ficino153 Philosophy endowed states with souls when she made human laws on earth reflect the divine laws of heaven. She brought forth the body of the state and made it grow by providing agriculture, architecture, medicine, military skill and every other art which gives nourishment, elegance or protection to a state.51

She removes misery from mortals, by teaching them how to discriminate good from evil, how to bear evil with fortitude and how to make the most of our gifts. And this, he says, is where he originally intended to end the letter. However, the most important and interesting section is still to come. To appreciate the significance of this, it is useful to compare how the two writers develop the theme. For I am inclined to think that this letter might be read as a gloss on the passage quoted from Tusculan Disputations. Cicero, after committing himself wholly to philosophy, adds, Est autem unus dies bene et ex praeceptis tuis actus peccanti immortalitati anteponendus. (“One day well spent and in accordance with thy lessons is to be preferred to an eternity of error.”)52

For a reader in Christian Europe 1,500 years later, this idea was redolent with associations: For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.53

While Cicero defines philosophy as the contemplation and discovery of nature, with particular emphasis on the heavens,54 Ficino has a higher goal, beyond the heavens. In the fourth and longest section of his letter he brings dialectic and theology together. Dialectic, by which he means the Socratic style of dialogue, aims to uncover truth, virtue and goodness. This requires both contemplation and application, namely practice. He therefore proposes a hierarchy of activities in which each level serves the one above: It is quite right that external, mortal and bodily things should serve the body, the body should serve the soul, the senses should serve reason, active 51 Letters 1.123, p. 187. 52 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.2.5, trans. J.E. King, (2nd ed. Cambridge, MA, 1945), p. 429. 53 Psalm 84:10. 54 “contemplationem rerum cognitionemque,” Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.3.9. From the argument it is clear that the term rerum denotes the natural world.

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But contemplation is also God’s own activity. Thus through the sincere practice of contemplation the human being may be transformed into the perfect image of God. Thus he speaks of God as the “light and eye” of human contemplation, and contemplation as the “light and eye” of action: “lux et oculus,” that which sees and that by which it sees.56 Finally, the letter ends with a paean of praise to the divine light.57 This seems to me a far more dynamic view of the relationship between man and the divine than I can recall anywhere in Cicero, and it highlights a fundamental and obvious difference of outlook between the skepticism of the New Academy and the deep religious commitment of the Florentine Academy. Yet perhaps Ficino’s deliberate inclusion of Cicero in this Praise of Philosophy is a conscious tribute to one who first showed him the way. Furthermore, despite the obvious gulf which separates them, Ficino’s letters abound with rationality and persuasive power that owes as much in its expression to Cicero as it undoubtedly does to Plato in its direction and development. It is not necessarily a cool rationality, since Ficino is clearly ablaze with love of the divine, as also with the warmest affection for his friends, and for humanity. But then, was Cicero really any cooler? For although he presents a patient investigation of all options of belief, the torrents of scorn he pours upon anything that does not stand the test of rationality betray a fiery soul too. This is the Cicero of whom Petrarch complained, “O reckless and disaster-prone old man, what interest did you have in so many quarrels and rivalries which were of no profit?”58 Indirect Quotation From this brief review of Ficino’s direct mentions of Cicero, we pass now to those which are indirect. Carol Kaske and John Clark alerted us to these in 1989 in their introduction to Ficino’s De vita: “For citations of Greek authors, … Cicero’s work often seems to be the unacknowledged yet proximate source … an irritating medieval and Renaissance practice not

55 Letters 1.123, p. 188. 56 Ibid., pp. 188–89. 57 Ibid., pp. 190–91. 58 Petrarch’s first letter to Cicero. Petrarch, Letters, trans. James Harvey Robinson and Henry Winchester Rolf (New York, 1909), p. 213.



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unknown in the present day.”59 For example, a reference to Democritus in De vita 1.5 is mediated by Cicero’s De divinatione 1.7.80 or De oratore 2.46.194.60 Similarly, in Ficino’s De amore, we find Dichaearchus from Tusculan Disputations 4.34.71,61 and a string of philosophers from De natura deorum 1.2.62 There are also citations of Socrates and Zopyrus which appear to come from Tusculan Disputations 4 and 5.63 Similarly in the Platonic Theology and the Letters: every reference to Panaetius, Dichaearchus, Aristo, Pyrrhus and Herillus, Zopyrus, Simonides, Aris­ toxenus and again Democritus is in fact a reference to Cicero, and would have been known as such to contemporary readers. Likewise, in any conversation about friendship, a subject to which Ficino returns many times, one senses in the background the unacknowledged presence of Laelius, and of De senectute in remarks on old age. Taking just one of these silent references as an example, if we follow up the mention of Simonides in an early letter on memory, it leads to the discovery that the entire paragraph is not only a non-specific citation of Aristotle, but also an unsignalled summary of Cicero’s De oratore 2.345 and 357–59.64 The phenomenon that we are confronting is described exactly by Ficino: real scholars are like bees. They gather here and there from many authors, as from flowers, and store what they have gathered in the capacious hives of their memory. They then let it ripen by reflection, to bring forth the mellifluous liquid of learning and eloquence.65

Echoes Sometimes we find echoes of real substance despite a complete change of wording. For example, in Cicero, Carneades argues against the atheists and deniers of providence “in such a manner as to arouse in persons of 59 De vita, Introduction, p. 16. 60 De vita, p. 75. 61 Sears Jayne, Marsilio Ficino: Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love, (2nd ed. Woodstock, CT, 1985, repr. 1999), hereafter referred to as De amore, 1.4, p. 41. 62  Diagoras and others, towards the end of De amore 4.5. This passage repeats ideas from a much earlier tract on God and the Soul dating from 1457. See Kristeller, Supplementum, 2, pp. 128–58, at pp. 129–30. 63 De amore 7.2; Tusc. Disp. 5.37.108 and 4.37.80. 64 Letters 1.105, pp. 156–58, at 157. 65 Letters 4.15, p. 22. This passage, in a letter entitled “They who abuse the Muses bring back from their fountain not honey but gall,” is itself an adaptation of Seneca, Epistle 84, drawing in turn upon Virgil, Georgics 4.163–4. See also Plutarch, Moralia, 32 and St Basil, Homilia ad Adolescentes, 7–8.

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active mind a keen desire to discover the truth.” He describes these persons as “homines non socordes.”66 When Ficino is accused of denying divine Providence, he speaks not of “homines non socordes,” but of “acuta ingenia,” keen minds, which can never be led to discover the truth of religion by any bait other than philosophy.67 The words have changed, but the sentiment is identical. In other areas, too, we need to look beyond the obvious differences if we wish to catch the echoes. For example, on religion, we might expect a world of difference. Ficino became a priest at the age of forty and was utterly committed to his calling; Cicero became an augur at fifty-three, but without real conviction in the value of his office. An oration on selfknowledge begins in Ficino thus: Know Thyself, offspring of God in mortal clothing. I pray you, uncover yourself. Separate the soul from the body, reason from sensual desires; separate them as much as you can; and your ability depends on your endeavor. When the earthly grime has been removed you will at once see pure gold, and when the clouds have been dispersed, you will see the clear sky. Then believe me, you will revere yourself as an eternal ray of the divine sun … Nothing of yours lies hidden from the mind, the ever-living image of God who lives everywhere.68

What do we find in Cicero of similar vein? For the most part, Cicero seems reluctant to endorse any kind of religious philosophy. In De natura deorum he sets the views of all three schools before the Roman public, expounding the philosophies of the Epicureans, the Stoics and the Academy clearly so that the intelligent reader with questions of his own might make up his own mind. At the very end, the Epicurean view does seem defeated,69 but neutrality appears to be the aim. In the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero again sets out the views of the various philosophers as faithfully as he can, on the nature of the soul. But context is crucial, and on this occasion we seem to catch a more personal view: For my part, when I study the nature of the soul, the conception of it in the body, as it were in a home that is not its own, presents itself as one much more difficult, much more doubtful than the conception of the nature of the soul when it has quitted the body and come into the free heaven, as it 66 Cicero, De natura deorum 1.2.4: “Contra quos Carneades ita multa disseruit ut excitaret ad veri investigandi cupiditatem.” 67 Letters 7.19 (pp. 21–24), and see Michael J.B. Allen, Synoptic Art (Florence, 1998), pp. 1–49 for discussion of ingenia aurea. 68 Letters 1.110. 69 De natura deorum 3.40.95.



ciceronian echoes in marcilio ficino157 were to its home. For unless it is impossible for us to understand what we cannot see, we can embrace in our thinking both God and the divine soul set free from the body.70

Both authors ascribe great importance to the maxim “Know Thyself” as meaning “Know thy Soul.” For even though at times Cicero seems to favor knowledge based firmly on the evidence of the senses, he is willing to accept that “The body is as it were a vessel or a sort of shelter for the soul: every act of your soul is an act of yours,” and knowing the soul is a god-like activity.71 Cicero through Macrobius From the Dream of Scipio, in Cicero’s De re publica, it is abundantly clear that Cicero gave serious credence to Platonic views of the soul. Ficino owned a copy of the Dream as recorded in Macrobius’ commentary on it from very early in his studies.72 Indeed, Macrobius’ commentary was a rich source of material for him on dreams, on number, on the heavens, and it also served as a first introduction to the ideas of Porphyry and Plotinus, on whom Ficino was to expend much time and effort later in his life.73 The Dream itself, which Ficino could read in Macrobius long before he learned Greek, was an important text for him, in its affirmation of the principle of immortality for the soul, in its strong injunction not to yield

70 “Mihi quidem naturam animi intuenti multo difficilior occurrit cogitatio multoque obscurior, qualis animus in corpore sit tamquam alienae domui, quam qualis, cum exierit et in liberum caelum quasi domum suam venerit. Nisi enim, quod numquam vidimus, id quale sit intelligere non possumus, certe et deum ipsum et divinum animum corpore liberatum cogitatione complecti possumus.” Tusc. Disp. 1.22.51. Translation adapted from J.E. King. 71 Tusc. Disp. 1.22.52. 72 MS Ricc. 581 was one of the earliest manuscripts Ficino possessed, from 1457 or earlier. See Marsilio Ficino e il Ritorne di Platone: Catalogo, pp. 3–4. The rest of Cicero’s De republica was not rediscovered until 1822, but the Dream of Scipio, preserved in Macrobius’s commentary on it (c.410 a.d.), was well known and even in print from 1472. Since it was not a text used in elementary schooling, we can probably assume that Ficino met it when his studies began to deepen as a student at the university. 73 If it is hard to measure how much Ficino drew from Cicero, any attempt to measure how much Ficino drew from Macrobius is beset with a double impediment, for so much of Macrobius’s material was present in so many other authors. He names him only three times in the Letters, twice when using material from the Saturnalia, and only once pointing directly to the Dream of Scipio commentary, in the letter to Prenninger cited above (note 29). But, as with Cicero, Ficino quotes silently from Macrobius on numerous occasions.

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to despair,74 and in its fascination with the heavenly spheres and the harmonies that can no longer be heard by human ears, but are the key to the universe, and yet scarcely mentioned in Plato. “Gifted men,” the Dream tells us, “imitating this harmony on stringed instruments and in singing, have gained for themselves a return to this region, as have those who have devoted their exceptional abilities to a search for divine truths.”75 Such lines might have served as a fitting epitaph for Ficino, player of the lyre, devotee of Apollonian song and great teacher of philosophy. I would certainly suggest they served as an inspiration to him at the outset of his career. Later on, the Dream echoes strongly in an encounter described between the spirit of the late Alfonso, King of Naples, addressing his still living son, Ferrante.76 Finally, the insistence in the Dream on a highly evolved sense of self seems to underlie much of what Ficino writes. Cicero says, Regard not yourself but only this body as mortal; the outward form does not reveal the man but rather the mind of each individual is his true self, not the figure that one designates by pointing a finger.77

Ficino expounds this fully in Platonic Theology 1 and 2, and in numerous letters. Again, Cicero says, Know therefore that ye are a god if, indeed, a god is that which quickens, feels, remembers, foresees, and in the same manner rules, restrains and impels the body of which it has charge as the supreme God rules the universe; and as the eternal God moves a universe that is mortal in part, so an everlasting mind moves your frail body.78

This recurs through Ficino’s writings like an insistent refrain with endless variations. In Letters, 1.110, and 6.44, which uses mainly biblical texts, ending with “Ye also are gods, and all of you are children of the most High,” 74 Ficino struggled with melancholy for much of his life. When Scipio asks “why do I linger on earth, why do I not hasten to you?” his father Africanus replies, “You and all other dutiful men must keep your souls in the custody of your bodies and must not leave this life of men except at the command of that One who gave it to you, that you may not appear to have deserted the office assigned you.” Dream of Scipio 3.3–5, trans. William Harris Stahl (New York, 1952, repr. 1990), p. 72. 75 Dream of Scipio 5.2, p. 74. Cf. Letters 1.7; 5.21 and especially De vita 3.21. See also D.P. Walker, “Ficino’s spiritus and Music,” Annales Musicologiques 1 (1953) 131–50, reprinted in Walker, Music Spirit and Language in the Renaissance (London, 1985). 76 Letters 5.13, pp. 23–30. 77 Dream of Scipio 8. 2. Cf. Platonic Theology 1.1–2. For a later elaboration, based on Plato and Plotinus, see Letters 5.48, p. 77. 78 Dream of Scipio 8. 2. Cf. Ficino, Platonic Theology 1.1.



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(Psalm 82:6) Ficino moves freely between his sources, reading similar meanings in the different traditions. Ficino, like Cicero, explores ideas about motion and self-motion, which, according to Macrobius, is the essential Platonic definition of the soul.79 For Ficino, self-motion is the mark of the soul’s eternity, and of its capacity for reunion with the supreme but unmoving One.80 Cicero Sets a Style Finally we must consider what Ficino drew from Cicero in terms of form rather than ideas. Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516), the Abbot of Spond­ heim and Ficino’s near contemporary spoke of him as “philosophus et rhetor celeberrimus” who penned numerous works of great distinction.81 The term rhetor implies a certain fluency in Ciceronian rhetoric. Philosophus et rhetor is therefore one who can put his philosophy across to the reader or listener in a highly effective and persuasive manner. Yet the Platonic Theology, a work of detailed argument, is somewhat scholastic in nature, while one of Ficino’s last works, a commentary on the Epistles of Paul, is a phrase-by-phrase commentary in medieval glossa style. So it must be the remainder of his writings that Trithemius means by “multa praeclara opuscula” when he describes them as “ornato sermone,” and especially the Letters. Certainly they combine the conversational style suggested by “sermo” with the distinction implied by “ornatus.”82 In Cicero’s De oratore, “ornatus” is one of the four primary qualities of style, 79 Macrobius, Commentary 1.14.19. Cf. also Epistolae II.4 (Opera, pp. 688–90), “Forma corporea dividitur et movetur ab alio. Anima rationalis non dividitur se ex seipsa movetur. Angleus neque dividitur, neque movetur, sed aliunde impletur. Deus est plenitudo una simplex immensa.” 80 Cf. Epistolae II.4. In Letters 1.11, God is “unchanging unity; a single stillness” (cf. Plato, Republic 7.524E). 81 “Marsilius Ficinus natione Italus, patria Florentinus, vir in secularibus literis eruditissimus et divinarum scipturarum non ignarus, philosophus et rhetor celeberrimus, utraque lingua peritissimus, Platonicae theologiae unicum decus ornamentum et corona, scripsit ornato sermone multa praeclara opuscula, quibus excellentis ingenii sui venam posteris ostendit.” Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516), Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, quoted in Kristeller, Supplementum, 2, p. 308. Trithemius was recommending a reading list to young scholars within his Order. He was not in direct contact with Ficino, though they shared a mutual friend in Reuchlin. 82 “Sermo est oratio remissa et finitima cotidianae locutioni,” ps.-Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium 3.23. Ornatus is discussed extensively in De oratore 3. To some extent Ficino’s De amore and De vita share the tone of the Letters, but I have confined my remarks in this section to the Letters with which I am more intimately familiar.

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the other three being correct use of language, clarity, and appropriateness.83 Let us apply these four measures to Ficino: his usage of Latin words and constructions conforms well to classical standards; his clarity is generally unimpeachable; he chooses his words with care, connects them properly, attends to matters of juxtaposition, weighing the sounds and cadences, and he employs a variety of figures both of thought and of speech. Hence the shape of the sentence and the choice of the words are always appropriate to the thought being expressed.84 Ficino himself, writing on style in 1489 to Andrea Cambini, says, The qualities I look for above all others in speeches are meanings that are clear and not hidden, fullness without excess, brevity without defect, but whole and measured, and lastly, appropriateness and fine choice of words, and if possible, the amazing skill of the painter, which presents to the eyes the subject itself.85

These canons of style have obvious Ciceronian ancestry. Clarity and fullness, for example, are commended at De oratore 3.53: Whom do they consider, if I may use the expression, a god among men? Certainly those whose speech is well shaped, is unfolded with clarity and abundance, and is brilliant both in its content and in its words, and who, where the actual form of the speech is concerned, produce something resembling rhythm and verse—that is, those who practice what I call speaking with distinction.86

Furthermore, Ficino’s afterthought of “laying things almost before people’s eyes, as if they are actually taking place” is at the head of Cicero’s list of figures of thought.87 Both Ficino and Cicero share admiration for Plato’s use of poetic prose, as mentioned earlier.88 In 1484 Ficino calls Plato a divine oracle, often thundering from on high, often dripping with the sweetness of nectar, but always comprehending heavenly secrets … and

83 De oratore 3.37. 84 A tendency to puns and jests may be considered less “stylish,” but perhaps this too simply reflects his delight in the power of language. 85 Letters 8.11, Opera, p. 899. On Cambini, see also above. 86 “Quem deum, ut ita dicam, inter homines putant? Qui distincte, qui explicate, qui abundanter, qui inluminate et rebus et verbis dicunt et in ipsa oratione quasi quendam numerum versumque conficiunt, id est, quod dico, ornate.” Cicero, De oratore 3.53, trans. James M. May and Jakob Wisse, Cicero, On the Ideal Orator (Oxford, 2001), pp. 238–39. 87 De oratore 3.202. 88 See note 17 above.



ciceronian echoes in marcilio ficino161 having the triple gifts of philosophic usefulness, oratorical beauty of arrangement and expression, and the ornament of poetical flowers.89

When called for, Ficino imitates this style too. Another part of the power of Ficino’s writing comes from his willingness to allow a place for mystery. Cicero adopts a stance that is at once more skeptical and more ruthless—skeptical towards the divine, ruthless in terms of swaying juries—while for Ficino, since not everything can be rationally known, poetic “veils” may express what the mind can hardly grasp.90 While Cicero warns against leaning too far towards poetry in prose,91 Ficino does not hesitate to mix them when the subject matter is appropriate, citing biblical and Hermetic precedent as well as Cicero, for “every note has its corresponding string.” Prose, he says, is “free of restrictions” and “reaches its point more swiftly.” Poetry, on the other hand “should delight, soothe and enrapture through the blending of harmonies and imageries.”92 Ficino therefore uses aspects of both to attain the varietas that Cicero extols, pitching his style to suit his recipient, choosing freely between simple exposition, playful banter, serious discussion, extended imagery, imagined conversations, personified Platonic dialogues and outright fictions, adapting his choice of words and forms to each. Conventional letters, short and long, are interspersed with orations, discourses and even fables. Over two hundred individuals are addressed in the course of the twelve books, ranging from students and merchants to bishops and kings. I have not, however, found it easy to make any general comparison between the letters of the one writer and the letters of the other—except to note that Ficino’s focus is always centered upon what the addressee needs to hear for his own benefit or growth, while Cicero’s letters are often focused rather on himself. But such a comparison is perhaps odious, since the aims and intentions of the two reflect such different worlds.

89 From the proem to Lorenzo de’ Medici accompanying his 1484 translations of Plato. Opera, p. 1129; trans. Michael J.B. Allen, in Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer (Berkeley, 1981), p. 12. 90 By converse, Cicero is willing to employ techniques such as disparagement from which Ficino resolutely abstains. 91 De oratore 3.175–7. 92 Letters 2.3, p. 10.

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To sum up, I have tried to examine the evidence for Ficino’s reliance on Cicero, and to indicate some of the areas in which Ciceronian ideas echo most strongly in the later writer. Appreciation of Cicero lay at the heart of the Renaissance approach to literature. A hundred years before Ficino, Petrarch had spoken of the extraordinary impression Cicero’s writing had made on him from the very beginning, referring to “the sweetness and tunefulness of his words” though ever conscious of the huge gulf of time and circumstance that separated them.93 Ficino too seems to respond to those tunes in his own particular way. In his famous letter on Divine Frenzy, written in 1457, Ficino speaks of the soul receiving echoes: “by these echoes [it] is reminded and aroused to the divine music which may be heard by the more subtle and penetrating sense of mind.”94 It was perhaps the echoes of that divine music sounding in Cicero that first led Ficino into his life-long quest for a more subtle and penetrating study of Platonic wisdom. This, when fused with Christian understanding, led to a new emphasis on the immortal soul, and a new philosophy of love and reason. But is Cicero then to be relegated to the role of sacrificial opener of the gate?95 Not at all. For there are two kinds of immortality. One is the personal continuance of the individual soul in some region of the heavens. This would be the spirit of Cicero to whom Petrarch addresses his complaint.96 Alternatively, one can be “bound up in the bundle of life.”97 I would suggest that this describes the kind of immortality Cicero enjoyed in Ficino’s writings, no longer observable, after the early years, as an individual influence, but ever present in Ficino’s powerful prose.

93 Petrarch, Letters of Old Age, trans. Aldo Bernardo, et al, 2 vols (Baltimore, 1992), 2, p. 600, quoted in Ronald Witt, “Petrarch and Pre-Petrarchan Humanism,” in Humanity and Divinity in Renaissance and Reformation: Essays in Honor of Charles Trinkaus, Charles Edward Trinkaus, John W. O’Malley, Thomas M. Izbicki, Gerald Christianson, eds. (Leiden, 1993), p. 91. 94 Letters 1.7, p. 45. 95 As in the descent to the underworld in Vergil, Aeneid 6.109, where Aeneas, too, is led to knowledge and understanding. 96 Petrarch, Letters, trans. James Harvey Robinson and Henry Winchester Rolf (New York, 1909), p. 213. 97 I Sam. 25:29, and used in Jewish funeral liturgies. See also Simcha Paull Raphael, Jewish Views of the Afterlife (Lanham MD, 1994), p. 392.

CICERONIAN RHETORIC AND ORATORY FROM ST. AUGUSTINE TO GUARINO DA VERONA John O. Ward There are many Ciceros. There is the Cicero of the epistulae—so celebrated in the Renaissance period;1 there is the Cicero of civic involvement—brought to us by Hans Baron;2 there is the Cicero of the orations, of the mature rhetorical treatises, of the philosophical works,3 and, behind all these, there is the real Cicero,4 one of the most remarkable men of a most remarkable period, and one whose varied and pioneering life was crowned with tragedy. All these Ciceros had different histories in the medieval and Renaissance periods, but the most influential Cicero was the Cicero of the art of speaking. As Geoffrey of Vinsauf put it around the year 1200 a.d., a person could be praised as a Cicero “ore” (“in regard to the mouth,” i. e., as a speaker), to be contrasted with “Cato mente, … Paris facie, Pirrusque vigore” (“Cato in intelligence, Paris in looks, Pyrrhus in strength”), or else, in a fuller version, a person could be described thus: Sapit ut Cato, dicit / ut Cicero, viget ut Pirrus, nitet ut Paris, audet / ut Campaneus, amat ut Theseus, modulatur ut Orpheus.

1 Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning 1300–1600 (Baltimore, 1989), p. 123, pp. 223–29, and index, p. 466—henceforth “Cicero / epistolae”; ed. Charles Merivale, An Account of the Life and Letters of Cicero: translated from the German of Bernard Rudolf Abeken (London, 1854); Jerome Carcopino, Cicero: The Secrets of His Correspondence, 2 vols (London, 1951). 2 Hans Baron, “Cicero and the Roman Civic Spirit in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 22 (1938), 72–97, repr. ed. F. Cheyette, Lordship and Community in Medieval Europe: Selected Readings (New York, 1968), pp. 291–314. 3 H.A.K. Hunt, The Humanism of Cicero (Melbourne, 1954). 4 F.R. Cowell, Cicero and the Roman Republic (Harmondsworth, UK, 1940, 1956); Beryl Rawson, The Politics of Friendship: Pompey and Cicero (Sydney, 1978, 1981)–other relevant works of Rawson will be found listed in Brill’s Companion to Cicero, see below, p. 576; Thomas N. Mitchell, Cicero: The Senior Statesman (New Haven, 1991); Anthony Everett, Cicero: A Turbulent Life (London, 2001); C.E.W. Steel, Cicero, Rhetoric and Empire (Oxford, 2001); Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric, ed. James M. May (Leiden, 2002), chap. 1; Shane Butler, The Hand of Cicero (New York, 2002).

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john o. ward (“Such a one is intelligent like Cato, speaks like Cicero, is strong like Pyrrhus, energetic like Paris, daring like Campaneus,5 loves like Theseus and plays music like Orpheus.”)6

There is something of a paradox here. Despite the modern reputation of Cicero’s mature rhetorical works and of his orations, his medieval reputation was earned mainly from two works, known as the Ciceronian “juvenilia.”7 These works are today relegated to the classroom of the occasional academic (in the case of the De inventione) and to the dustbin of anonymity (in the case of the Rhetorica ad Herennium). The favor accorded the Ciceronian orations even in medieval and certainly in modern times renders the popularity of these “juvenilia” puzzling, but medieval commentators at least, saw the De inventione as, in part, an example of oratory,8 and the practical utility of the juvenilia in contemporary circumstances rather than the surviving orations or the mature rhetorical works accounted for Cicero’s reputation for eloquence as well as for the “mass” manuscript survival of the juvenilia, vis-à-vis the orations and the mature rhetorical works. This circumstance prevailed into the Renaissance though by that time, Cicero’s reputation as a civic figure, somewhat neglected in the Middle Ages,9 and his late rhetorical works10 had come to buttress his reputation for eloquence against emerging rivals—Hermogenes and Quintilian for example, not to omit humanists of the day such as Guarino da Verona’s contemporary and critic, George of Trebizond.11 The paradox of a reputation built upon the juvenilia is further deepened by the fact that all our manuscripts of the orations, and of

5 Aeneid X, 145. 6 Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria Nova, ed. E. Faral, Les arts poétiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle: Recherches et documents sur la technique littéraire du moyen age, Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études 238 (Paris, 1924, repr. Geneva/Paris, 1982), lines 1775–77, 1807–09, pp. 251–52; Engl. trans. Margaret F. Nims, “Poetria Nova” of Geoffrey of Vinsauf (Toronto, 1967), p. 79, p. 81. 7 See the forthcoming The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, Virginia Cox, John O. Ward, eds. (Leiden, 2006)—henceforth “Cox and Ward,” and A Companion to Roman Rhetoric, William J. Dominik, Jon Hall, eds. (Oxford, 2006); also: Brill’s Companion to Cicero, pp. 31–46, pp. 354–61. 8 See Appendix below, folio 197ra. 9 Hans Baron, “Cicero and the Roman Civic Spirit.” 10 See J.O. Ward, “Reading and Interpretation: An Emerging Discourse of Poetics: Cicero and Quintilian,” in ed. Glyn P. Norton, Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: The Renaissance (Cambridge, UK, 1999) chap. 6, pp. 77–87. 11 John Monfasani, George of Trebizond: A Biography and a Study of his Rhetoric and Logic (Leiden, 1976), and idem., ed., Collectanea Trapezuntiana: Texts, Documents, and Bibliographies of George of Trebizond, MRTS 25, vol. 8 (Binghamton, NY, 1984).



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the early imperial speech-commentator Asconius Pedianus,12 come from the Middle Ages. Nothing here comes from Antiquity, or only from the Renaissance. The same may be said for the mature rhetorical works, the epistulae and Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory.13 Worse still, perhaps, the Renaissance threw away one of the best witnesses to the original text of the juvenilia, the codex laudensis, “discovered” in 1421–28, and written, perhaps, in a difficult cursive or insular book script dating from the period c.400–700 a.d. Treasured for its version of the mature rhetorical works of Cicero, but ignored as a source for the defective texts of the juvenilia, the manuscript was soon dispensed with and lost.14 The Middle Ages then, have preserved for us the original materials upon which all our study of Cicero and his later reputation must be based. The juvenilia, however, survive in the most comprehensive fashion, as a brief survey of some recently available statistics will suggest.15 12 See text below between notes 46 and 47. 13 See ed. L.D. Reynolds, Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 1983)–henceforth “Reynolds, T & T.” 14 P.S. Piacentini, “La Tradizione Laudense di Cicerone ed un inesplorato manoscritto della Biblioteca Vaticana (Vat. Lat. 3237),” Revue d’histoire des textes 11 (1981), 123–46; P.R. Taylor, “Post-Classical Scholarship as Evidence of Textual Authority: The Expleti-Recension of the Ad Herennium Re-Examined,” Revue d’histoire des textes 25 (1995), 159–88, esp. 184– 88. See text below at note 58. 15 I refer to a survey entitled “Cicero Rhetor: A Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts Containing Texts of, and / or Glosses, Commentaries, Notes on, or accessus (Introductions) etc. to, Cicero’s ‘De inventione’ and the ‘Rhetorica ad Herennium’,” together with certain related texts which I have recently completed in summary outline. The project involved not only full, partial and fragmentary texts of/from the juvenilia, but commentaries, glosses and collections of notes on them, abridgements and paraphrases of them, collections of definitions taken from them, epilogues and accessus (introductions) to them, examples meant to illustrate sections from within them, such as the late 11thcentury De ornmamentis verborum of Marbod of Rennes, ed. Rosario Leotta, Marbodo di Rennes, “De ornamentis verborum;” “Liber decem capitulorum:” Retorica, mitologia emoralita di un vescovo poeta (secc. XI-XII), Per Verba: Testimediolatini con traduzione 10 (Florence, 1998); text also found in PL 171.1687–92, (designed to illustrate book 4 of the Ad Herennium), and the Exempla exordiorum of the early Italian Renaissance humanist Gasparino Barzizza, (designed to illustrate the Ad Herennium 1.4–6), designed to inaugurate a course of lectures on them, tables of their chapters or tables of the parts of rhetoric designed to accompany reading and study of them. The search involved some 249 libraries and 1,228 manuscripts. Figures given in the text above may vary a little as some final details are confirmed or supplied, and publication in some form (jointly with Ruth TaylorBriggs) is envisaged. The figures supplied should be compared with those given in Reynolds, T & T. Previous scholarship on the juvenilia in the Middle Ages includes D.E. Grosser, Studies in the Influence of the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Cicero’s De inventione, unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, 1952; Mary Dickey, The Study of Rhetoric in the First Half of the Twelfth Century with Special Reference to the Cathedral Schools of Northern France, unpublished B.Litt. Thesis, St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, 1953; Mary Dickey, “Some Commentaries on the De inventione and Ad Herennium of the Eleventh

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Some 332 manuscripts containing all or most of the text of the De inventione to the end of the fifteenth century survive, with a further 73 manuscripts containing excerpts from that text (405 manuscripts in all). Some 610 manuscripts with a complete or nearly complete text of the Ad Herennium to the end of the fifteenth century have survived, with a further 128 manuscripts containing excerpts from this text, making a total survival down to the fifteenth century of around 738 manuscripts.16 If we add these figures together and combine them with the surviving manuscripts of vernacular translations/paraphrases of the same juvenilia, we arrive at a grand total of 1,240 surviving medieval manuscripts containing all or parts of the De inventione and Ad Herennium.17 It is difficult to evaluate such a figure without comparative figures for other major classical works. The poems of Virgil, for example, survive in some 1,017 manuscripts,18 the Institutiones grammaticae of Priscian in some 318 manuscripts and the Ars minor and Ars maior of Donatus in around 700 manuscripts.19 Robert Black, in his analysis of patterns in “the Latin literary canon in Italian schools from the twelfth to the fifteenth century” consulted some 1,305 manuscripts.20 Whatever the case, we are certainly in a position now to revise Charles Homer Haskin’s view that “Cicero was more admired than read:”

and Early Twelfth Centuries,” Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 6 (1968), 1–41; Fredborg (many papers—see bibliography in Cox and Ward); and Ward (many papers—see bibliography in Cox and Ward). I am preparing articles on the juvenilia for the Union Académique Internationale project, P.O. Kristeller (†), F.E. Cranz (†), Virginia Brown, eds., entitled Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, Annotated Lists and Guides, of which some eight volumes have been published to date. 16 A very few manuscripts of the juvenilia have survived from the sixteenth and later centuries, when the bulk of surviving texts and annotations took the form of printed books. I have not paid exhaustive attention to these, nor have I chosen at this stage to provide details of the printed survival of the juvenilia and annotations from the incunable period onwards, but some details in regard to the latter will be found in Ward’s paper in ed. J.J. Murphy, Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1983). 17 This figure exceeds the number of manuscripts investigated because some manuscripts contain more than one of the texts in question. 18 Giancarlo Alessio, “Tradizione Manoscritta,” Enciclopedia Virgiliana 3 (Rome, 1987), pp. 432–43. 19 Elod Nemerkényi, Latin Classics in Medieval Hungary: Eleventh Century, Ph.D. Dissertation, Central European University, Budapest, 2004, p. 13. 20 Robert Black, Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Tradition and Innovation in Latin Schools from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, UK, 2001), p. 3, p. 5.



ciceronian rhetoric and oratory167 The new rhetoric of the twelfth century had scant respect for any Roman models … The whole basis of forensic oratory disappeared with the Roman political and judicial system … Nor did rhetoric possess a simple and convenient manual like Priscian or Donatus to carry it through the rough wear of the Dark Ages … Cicero and Quintilian … were read as models of rhetorical style rather than as textbooks. How little Cicero and Quintilian were actually used appears from the number of surviving copies, respectable for a classic, but insignificant for a standard text.21

The figures I am advancing confirm McKeon’s view: “Ciceronian rhetoric permeated the intellectual culture of the Middle Ages, just as it did that of the Renaissance,”22 and support Tinkler’s assertion that the judicial rhetoric of Antiquity, far from dying out in the medieval and Renaissance periods, enjoyed continued use and respect.23 Indeed, as many studies subsequent to Haskins’ work suggest, Ciceronian classical rhetorical theory had a wide influence on the literature, historiography and political theory of the medieval and Renaissance periods.24 Further exploration of the survival statistics in question and their influence must, however, be left for another occasion.25 This influence would not have been possible without adjustment, addition and amplification of the classical core material for changed later conditions.26 Explanation of the first 360 words of the Ad Herennium, for example, required 480 words in the lean and intelligent commentary by the twelfth-century intellectual Thierry of Chartres,27 but by the early fourteenth-century commentary on Bartolinus,28 this supplementary information had grown to 14,850 words. The Renaissance—in the form of the gloss by Guarino da Verona (in its incunable version)—had pruned 21 The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (New York, 1958), p. 112, pp. 138–39. 22 Martin Camargo, “Defining Medieval Rhetoric,” in Constant J. Mews, Cary J. Nederman, Rodney M. Thomson, eds. Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 1100–1540: Essays in Honor of John O. Ward, Disputatio 2 (Turnhout, 2003), pp. 21–34, at p. 29. 23 John Tinkler, “Renaissance Humanism and the genera eloquentiae,” Rhetorica 5:3 (1987), 279–309. 24 See Ward in “Cox and Ward;” J.O. Ward, “Some Principles of Rhetorical Historiography in the Twelfth Century,” in ed. E. Breisach, Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography, Studies in Medieval Culture XIX (Kalamazoo, 1985 ), pp. 103–66; Ruth Morse, Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation and Reality (Cambridge, UK, 1991). 25 Cf. above, note 15. 26 See Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: “grammatica” and Literary Theory, 350–1100 (Cambridge, UK, 1994) for grammar. 27 See The Latin Rhetorical Commentaries by Thierry of Chartres, ed. K.M. Fredborg, PIMS Studies and Texts 84 (Toronto, 1988). 28 S.K. Wertis, “The Commentary of Bartolinus de Benincasa de Canulo on the Rhetorica ad Herennium,” Viator 10 (1979), 283–310.

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this back to a still impressive 4,072 words.29 Some idea of the general way in which the literal word of the classical text (in this case the early portions of Cicero’s De inventione) was taken and expanded in the central Middle Ages can be gained from the text supplied as an appendix below. Despite the addition of other classical and contemporary rhetorical texts during the Renaissance, commentaries on and texts of the Ciceronian juvenilia remained popular in the early printed epoch and amply survived the allegations by certain contemporaries that the Ad Herennium was not, in fact, a work of Cicero’s—because Quintilian does not cite it as such.30 These indications of the currency and popularity of the Ciceronian rhetorical juvenilia in the medieval and Renaissance periods remain paradoxical because Cicero himself wrote disparagingly of “rhetoric” as contrasted with “oratory.” In his De oratore, written very late in life,31 he has his characters contrast “oratores” with “eos qui rhetores nominarentur, et qui dicendi praecepta traderent,” and who understand nothing of philosophy, which was an essential aspect of the “facultas dicendi;”32 elsewhere he has “illi rhetorici doctores” dealing only with trifles, silly rules regarding proems and perorations, avoiding all the major topics of life,33 or else he speaks of the “quotidiana loquacitas” of the “Graeculi otoisi et loquaces” with the “quaestiunculae” of their schools.34 More specifically, at De oratore 1.2.5 he dismisses his early writings on rhetoric (possibly the De inventione) as quae pueris aut adolescentulis nobis ex commentariolis nostris inchoata ac rudia exciderunt, vix hac aetate digna, et hoc usu, quem ex causis, quas diximus, tot tantisque consecuti sumus (“those unfinished and crude essays which slipped out of the notebooks of my boyhood, or rather of my youth, are hardly worthy of my present time of life and of my experience gained from the numerous and grave causes in which I have been engaged …”)35 29 See J.O. Ward, “The Lectures of Guarino da Verona on the Rhetorica ad Herennium: A Preliminary Discussion,” in W. Horner, M. Leff, eds., Rhetoric and Pedagogy. Its History, Philosophy and Practice. Essays in Honor of James J. Murphy (Mahwah, 1995), p. 122. 30 See J.J. Murphy, M. Winterbottom, eds., “Raffaele Regio’s 1492 Quaestio Doubting Cicero’s Authorship of the Rhetorica ad Herenium; Introduction and Text,” Rhetorica 17:1 (1999), 77–87; J.O. Ward, “Quintilian and the Rhetorical Revolution of the Middle Ages,” Rhetorica 13 (1995), 231–84; Ward in ed. Murphy, Renaissance Eloquence (cf. above, note 16). 31 Finished by early winter of 55 b.c. See Brill’s Companion to Cicero, chap. 12. 32 De oratore 1.18.84. 33 De oratore 1.19.86. 34 De oratore 1.22.102. 35 Cicero in 28 Volumes, vol. 3, De oratore, 2 vols, Engl. trans. E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA, 1975), vol. 1, books 1, 2, pp. 5–7.



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Further, in Cicero’s youth the Roman senatorial class had expressed its discontent with what it called “Greek rhetoric.” Around 161 b.c. the Roman senate decreed that (Greek) philosophers and “rhetors” be not permitted to live in Rome, and in 92 b.c. the censors issued an edict directed against those who had introduced a “novum genus disciplinae” which had turned young Romans (“eos”) into “latinos rhetoras;” the censors expressed their view that such “ludi” (schools) were undesirable.36 The very word “rhetoric,” it seems,37 had polemical overtones: If Plato was the first person to popularize the word “rhetorike,” he probably did so to depict the teaching of his rival Isocrates, stressing that “rhetoric” was an art or skill that privileged political success at the expense of the love of wisdom and fidelity to truth.

A further paradox is that the Ad Herennium, the work which in the Middle Ages seems most responsible for Cicero’s reputation as a master speaker, is a lacunose text, of dubious origin (written at the time of the De inventione, closely related to that work but not apparently written by Cicero and deeply embedded in the politics of the first two decades of the last century b.c.) and even more dubious early career (it seems to have been unknown until the fourth century a.d., when—according to some— Augustine himself found it on his patron’s shelf and introduced it into rhetorical currency as a work of Cicero).38 From that time onwards, its popularity spread, with its numerous manuscripts falling into three main classes: the M(utili), dating from the ninth century in France, written initially by a dull scribe, lacunose, omitting the first five chapters of book 1, and with what were originally glosses from the first “textbook” period (the late fourth century) included in the medieval text; the I(ntegri), dating from the tenth and eleventh century in southern Germany and Italy and originally written by a moderately intelligent scribe, with basically the same text as the “M” text, but with the first five chapters of book 1 added in; the E(xpleti), dating from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, from all over Europe and originally written by an intelligent scribe. An odd text indeed, to account for much of Cicero’s fame as a speaker.39 36 We learn these things from Suetonius, De rhetoribus: Suetonius, 2 vols, Engl. trans. J.C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1924), vol. 2, p. 434–35. 37 Edward Schiappa, The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece (New Haven, 1999), pp. 26–28. 38 See below, note 53. 39 For our purposes here we may say that the De inventione has a not dissimilar manuscript pattern.

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It is important to stress the difference between rhetoric as a written, theoretical teaching “art of speaking” and oratory as an oral, face-to-face practice, and to suggest that Cicero’s medieval fame was owed principally to the early texts that embodied the written art, but we should not at the same time over-emphasize the distinction between the ancient oral tradition and the medieval written tradition.40 Thomas Haye has recently stressed the oral aspect of medieval “oratory”41 and Shane Butler’s The Hand of Cicero has shown us how important were the scripta in ancient oratory vis-à-vis the dicta. At the same time, Martin Stone’s study of the context for the revised version of the Pro Milone (scriptum only), issued early in 51 b.c. and the only version of the speech to have survived, makes clear that it was part of Cicero’s need at the time of the trial of Plancus to distance himself a little from Pompey and to praise Milo: The revised Pro Milone may be taken as a celebration of the victory over Plancus and Pompey … It was a pity Milo could not be there to enjoy it all, but at least he could be sent a copy of the revised speech.42

We are told by Plutarch that the original, oral, speech for Milo was a flop— Cicero was in a state of nervous terror when he delivered it.43 Cicero himself says in De oratore 1.33.150 that The pen is the best and most eminent author and teacher of eloquence [dicendi], and rightly so. For if an extempore and casual speech is easily beaten by one prepared and thought-out, this latter in turn will assuredly be surpassed by what has been written with care and diligence.44

Indeed, Cicero spent much of his time arranging and “publishing” written versions of his speeches, perhaps because of his “nouveau” status and certainly because of his talent in this direction: he was a prolific writer and “publisher” of his writings in his own time and his significance is 40 George Kennedy’s “primary” and “secondary rhetoric;” see chapter 1 of his Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (Chapel Hill, 1980), reviewed by Tom Conley, John Ward, Lloyd Bitzer, Cecil Wooten in Quarterly Journal of Speech 67 (1981), 206–16; 2nd ed. (1999) reviewed by J.O. Ward, Journal of Religious History 25:1 (2001), 90–91. 41 Oratio: Mittelalterliche Redekunst in lateinischer Sprache, ed. Thomas Haye, (Leiden, 1999), with annotations and German translation; see as well C.H. Rawski, “Petrarch’s Oration in Novara: A Critical Transcription of Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS Pal. 4498, fols. 98r-104v,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 9 (1999), 148–93. 42 A.M. Stone, “Pro Milone: Cicero’s Second Thoughts,” Antichthon 14 (1980), 88–111, at 109. 43 Plutarch’s Lives, Dryden Edition Revised, 3 vols (London, 1938), vol. 3, Cicero, p. 212. 44 Loeb edition, p. 103, (cf. above, note 35).



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illustrated by the debate about the date of publication of his letters— whether in the time of Augustus (who certainly wanted to suppress them) or in the time of Nero.45 Cicero owed his survival indeed to the written tradition of oratory/rhetoric, and even though Plutarch had access to many more collections of late republican speeches than Cicero’s, Cicero’s seem to have been the only ones to have survived beyond that point into the Middle Ages. Perhaps because of his writing skills (as distinct from his wit, his successful record at the bar and his political involvements), Cicero had a unique reputation in his own lifetime. This is clear from the laudatory attitudes of Sallust, and Nepos (who wrote his life together with that of Atticus), the triumviral period publication of his correspondence, and Tiro’s four-book biography.46 Cicero was also treated by the Augustan declaimers with great respect and deference, as an exemplar of eloquence and as an outstanding statesman. In the first century a.d., his reputation was cemented—by Asconius Pedianus, Plutarch and Quintilian. Asconius—who survives in a ninth-century St. Gall manuscript—commented on a large number of Cicero’s speeches c.54–57 a.d. He wrote for his sons, late teenagers then in the rhetorical schools and studying speeches as models of oratorical style, and, perhaps, as a window into the republican world of the past. Author of some grammatical writings, Asconius apparently also commented on some Ciceronian speeches that have not survived (around two-thirds did). Plutarch’s account of Cicero is, by contrast, strangely lacking in comment upon rhetorical theory or oratorical practice and is mostly concerned with Cicero’s fragile place in the state, his ability to use oratory for political advantage, his thirst for fame, and his wit. Nevertheless, Plutarch does write the life of Cicero on a par with that of Demosthenes, as Rome’s greatest orator. In the end, however, the assessment of Cicero is rather unfavorable: Whereas Cicero’s love of mockery often ran him into scurrility; and in his love of laughing away serious arguments in judicial cases by jests and facetious remarks, with a view to the advantage of his clients, he paid too little regard to what was decent … Cicero was, by natural temper very much disposed to mirth and pleasantry … [his] immeasurable boasting of himself in his orations argues him guilty of an uncontrollable appetite for distinction, 45 Andrew Ian Wright, Cicero Reflected: The Image of the Statesman in the Century After His Death and its Ideological Significance, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Sydney, 1997, pp. 31ff. 46 Wright, Cicero Reflected.

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john o. ward his cry being evermore that arms should give way to the gown, and the soldier’s laurel to the tongue. And at last we find him extolling not only his deeds and actions, but his orations also, as well those that were only spoken, as those that were published; as if he were engaged in a boyish trial of skill, who should speak best, with the rhetoricians, Isocrates and Anaximenes, not as one who would claim the task to guide and instruct the Roman nation … [for] … it is an ignoble thing for any man to admire and relish the glory of his own eloquence … and yet he … gave the most abundant proofs alike of his contempt of riches and of his humanity and good-nature.

Much of Cicero’s reputation in later times, indeed, must have been due to the place he occupies in the writings of the turn-of-the-first-century-a.d. orator, advocate and teacher, Quintilian. There are seven closely packed columns of references to Cicero and his works in the Loeb edition and translation of Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory;47 indeed, Kennedy claims that It was a major feature of Quintilian’s program to install Cicero and Cicero’s writings as the prime model for study and imitation by students, an objective in which he seems to have had some success in the next generation and considerable influence in later centuries.48

In Institutes of Oratory 12.1.20 Quintilian calls Cicero a perfectus orator and says that “stetisse ipsum in fastigio eloquentiae.” Elsewhere he writes: “Nunc caelum undique et undique pontus.49 Unum modo in illa immense vastiate cernere videmur M. Tullium … Even Quintilian, however, speaks of Cicero’s detractors, and some whiff of their ad hominem carping can be located in the so-called “Invective of Sallust against Marcus T. Cicero,” which some find genuine  and others a product of the (later) rhetorical schools.50 There is, indeed,  some evidence that most rhetorical students preferred to read contemporary legal speeches or fictitious suasorie rather than the real speeches of Cicero. It was the interest in Cicero’s speeches by teachers of rhetoric and by literati generally that kept them alive. The speeches remain quotable in the later Roman rhetorical schools, but are, oddly, overtaken in popularity by Virgil’s poetry. In the De inventione commentary by the mid-fourth-century Victorinus, for example, the first such 47 The “Institutio Ortatoria” of Quintilian, 4 vols, Engl. trans. H.E. Butler, (Cambridge, MA, 1961), vol. 4, pp. 519–23. 48 Brill’s Companion to Cicero, p. 486. 49 Aeneid 3.193; Quintilian, Institutes 1 intr.4. 50 Sallust, Engl. trans. J.C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1995), pp. xviii-xx, pp. 492–521.



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work to survive in toto, there are some 25 references to the speeches of Cicero (the Verrines are the most popular), and 20 references to the poetry of Virgil (with four citations from Sallust, four from Terence, and one reference each to Pacuvius and Ennius’ Annales).51 By the time of the early fifth-century De inventione commentator Grillius, there are 68 references to the poetry of Virgil, slightly less than half, that is, of all citations from ancient writings in the fragments that survive of this commentary. There are 54 references to 17 speeches of Cicero which have survived until today, either in whole or in fragmentary form.52 The most popular speeches were the In Q. Caecilium (the first of the Verrine speeches, in which Cicero descants upon his own suitability for the duty of advocate of the Sicilian people against Q. Caecilius Niger), and the Pro Milone. If, however, we add the five references to the remainder of the Verrines and the references to the In Q. Caecilium, the Verrines win the race (15 references to 10). By the end of Antiquity, therefore, the curriculum Ciceronian rhetorical text was the De inventione and the major chosen illustrative texts were the poems of Virgil, to which some of the speeches of Cicero came in a good second. There was no third place. In Grillius’ commentary, Cicero’s philosophical works rate five mentions, Sallust six, Lucan five, Horace two. Oddly, the Ciceronian mature rhetorical works rate only one reference. It is not, however, Grillius and Victorinus who set the pattern of Ciceronian fame for the early Middle Ages. Augustine himself, perhaps the teacher who first brought the Ad Herennium to light,53 laid the foundation for Cicero’s position in the early Middle Ages, and that position was a negative one. Having taught the preceptive tradition of classical rhetorical theory in his earlier life,54 Augustine learned to spurn it in his later life: his preferred Cicero was the Cicero of the Orator, a work on the best genus eloquentiae, the summus orator. In this work Cicero confesses 51 These figures are based on the source-citations in the edition of Victorinus’ commentary on the De inventione in ed. C. Halm, Rhetores latini minores (Leipzig, 1863; repr. Dubuque, s.a.). 52 These figures are based on the source-citations in the edition of Grillius’ commentary on the De inventione in ed. Josef Martin, Grillius. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Rhetorik, Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums 14, 2/3 (Paderborn, 1927). 53 “The most famous alumnus of Romanianus (the patron and friend of Augustine), however is St. Augustine (354–430), who surely deserves the right to be considered as the person responsible for the creation of the M-tradition (of the Ad Herennium);” P.R. Taylor, “‘Pre-history’ in the Ninth-Century Manuscripts of the Ad Herennium,” CM 44 (1993), 181– 254, at 244–45. See also Brill’s Companion to Cicero, pp. 487–88. 54 Augustine, Confessions V.12–13, VI.7–12, VIII.2, 11–12, IX.1–6, in Basic Writings of Saint Augustine, vol. 1, Engl. trans. J.G. Pilkington, ed. Whitney J. Oates, (New York, 1948), pp. 1–256.

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that he himself stood out as an orator not because of his attention to the workshops of the rhetors, but because of his attention to the promenades of the Academy: “me oratorem, si modo sim aut etiam quicumque sim, non ex rhetorum officinis, sed ex Academiae spatiis exstitisse” (3.12). Later, at 4.17, he insists on the union of intellegendi disciplina and verborum doctrina or dicendi disciplina, contrary to those qui dicendi numerabantur magistri, who taught only ornamenta innumerabilia, referring here to the post-Platonic schools of the rhetors. The “split” between a training in philosophy and a training in “verbal discipline” is, he argues, the main reason why no one attains to what he calls “vera illa et absoluta eloquentia.”55 The Orator is Cicero’s last oratorical/rhetorical work, is mostly taken up with elocutio, and stands as a defense of Cicero’s own oratorical style, against the Atticists of his day. Augustine’s preferred Ciceronian rhetorical/oratorical text, therefore, argued clearly, in the manner of all Cicero’s mature rhetorical/oratorical texts, against the value of “mere rhetoric.” Cicero’s mature rhetorical/oratorical texts, indeed, were little known or used in the medieval period. The Orator is found in 37 mutili manuscripts going back to a ninth-century monastic text, whilst the Brutus derives from a single ninth-century fragment in a neat Caroline minuscule hand. The De oratore survives a little better than this, and begins its extant life with the excellent, almost complete, apographon56 copy made by the French, Carolingian Renaissance abbot, Lupus of Ferrières, in the early ninth century. Lupus does not tell us precisely what use he had in mind for this copy and subsequent usage of the De oratore remained sparse. Indeed, a major twelfth-century Ad Herennium gloss author claims that it was lacking in his day.57 All these mature rhetorical/oratorical works of Cicero were found written out in full, with the De inventione and the Ad Herennium, in the North Italian cathedral of Lodi, in a manuscript “discovered” in 1421 by the Italian humanist bishop Gerardo Landriani58 and 55 “… that true and perfect eloquence,” Cicero in 28 Volumes, vol. 5, p. 317; “Brutus,” Engl. trans. G.L. Hendrickson, “Orator,” Engl. trans. H.M. Hubbell (Cambridge, MA, 1986). 56 I.e. an exact copy of the original (which in this case does not survive). See ed. A.H. Beeson, Lupus of Ferrières as Scribe and Textual Critic (Cambridge, MA, 1930). 57 Magister Alanus, in MS London British Library, Harley 6324, fol. 2rb; J.O. Ward, “From Antiquity to the Renaissance: Glosses and Commentaries on Cicero’s Rhetorica,” in ed. J.J. Murphy, Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1978), pp. 25–67, at p. 54, n. 74. 58 Ed. Albert Rabil, Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms and Legacy, vol. 3, Humanism and the Disciplines (Philadelphia, 1988), pp. 39–40, p. 178; Brill’s Companion to Cicero, pp. 491–92. See in general R.R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries (Cambridge, UK, 1958), chaps. 6 and 7.



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lost again by 1428. This text of the De inventione and the Ad Herennium, as we have already noted, was never used, even though the Lodi manuscript itself may have dated back to the later fourth century (or at least before c.800 a.d., being written in a book cursive or insular hand that the humanists of the Italian Renaissance found very difficult to read). Lodi, of course, is very close to Milan, where the rhetor Augustine taught. Why were the mature rhetorical/oratorical works of Cicero of so little interest to the Middle Ages? Probably because they are too diffuse, too concerned with mature aspects of style and oratory, and insufficiently preceptive, or basically instructional. It is, indeed, because of the basic, preceptive, instructional nature of the rhetoric in the later Roman Empire that Augustine, in the fourth book of his De doctrina christiana, rejected it: primo itaque exspectationem legentium, qui forte me putant rhetorica daturum esse praecepta, quae in scholiis saecularibus et didici et docui. ista praelocutione prohibeo atque, ut a me non expectentur, admoneo non quod nihil habeant utilitatis, sed si quid habent, seorsum discendum est, si cui fortassis bono viro etiam haec vacat discere, non autem a me vel in hoc opere vel in aliquo alio requirendum. (“At the outset I must curb the expectations of any readers who think that I am going to present the rhetorical rules which I learnt and taught in pagan schools, and warn them in this preamble not to expect that sort of thing from me. This is not because the rules have no practical use, but because such practical uses as they do have must be learnt separately—assuming that a person of good character has the time to learn them on top of everything else—and not sought from me either in this work or in any other work.”)59

Augustine subsequently elaborates: The observations and rules which, together with a skilful manner of speaking using an abundance of words and verbal ornament, constitute what we call eloquence, should be learned quickly, at an early age, or not at all. Eloquence is picked up more readily by those who read and listen to the words of the eloquent, rather than by those who follow the rules of eloquence. Christian literature can produce eloquence if it is combined with the practice of writing or dictating and eventually speaking what is felt to be in conformity with the rule of holiness and faith.60

Indeed, Augustine concludes, speaking well and considering the rules of speaking well are two quite different, even contradictory, things.

59 Augustine, On Christian Doctrine IV.1.2, ed. J. Martin, CCSL 32 (1962), pp. 116–117; Engl. trans. R.P.H. Green, Saint Augustine On Christian Teaching (Oxford, 1997), p. 101. 60 My italics. Paraphrased from Green, Saint Augustine On Christian Teaching, p. 102.

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Speaking well requires observation of the mores and habits of a person worthy of imitation, and here Scripture comes into its own as a collection of models of eloquence for imitation.61 In the early Middle Ages, then, the preceptive tradition of the De inventione and the Ad Herennium went into a kind of recess, as did the speeches of Cicero and his mature rhetorical writings. Indeed, a number of manuscripts from the fifth through to the eighth century present Cicero’s speeches as the undertext, over which were palimpsested medieval or religious texts.62 The full manuscript history of the speeches does not begin until the ninth century with the scriptorial activity of the monastery of Tours.63 We have already noted the early ninth-century copy of almost the full text of the De oratore and the Carolingian period is further notable for a major survival of rhetorical interest in the grammatical context of a celebrated South Italian (Beneventan) manuscript now in Paris: BN lat. 7530, a Monte Cassino collection c.779–796 a.d. of some 58 mainly grammatical items, but with significant pieces on epideictic rhetoric and a key text of the late Roman Rhetor Fortunatianus.64 These were later joined by an innovative work of the palace scholar Alcuin, using the De inventione and the late Roman rhetorical work of Julius Victor,65 and other major rhetorical works such as Victorinus’ commentary on the De inventione, the De doctrina christiana of Augustine and the Ad Herennium. Later in the ninth century commentaries appeared on Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae, which contained an important chapter on rhetoric.66 Pronuntiatio—the third major division of rhetoric according to the Ad Herennium, 3.11.19–3.15.27–figures largely in Terentian manuscripts 61 Augustine, On Christian Doctrine IV, chaps. 3–6. 62 Milan Ambros. R.57 sup (now S.P.11.66, fifth century); Vatican Pal. lat. 24 (seventheighth century) and Reg. Lat, 2077 (fifth century); Turin D.IV.22 (seventh century) and A.II.2* (sixth-seventh centuries); Berlin (E) Aegypt. Mus. P. 13229 A and B (fifth century); on all these see Reyolds, T & T and note that some numbers and locations may be outdated by political changes. 63 London BL Add. 47678 C and Geneva lat. 169; Paris BN lat. 7794 and 7774A. Reynolds, T & T, pp. 54ff. 64 Ed. L. Calboli Montefusco, Consulti Fortunatiani Ars Rhetorica, introduzione, edizione critica, traduzione Italiana e commento (Bologna, 1979); Louis Holtz, “Le Parisinus Latinus 7530, synthese cassinienne des arts liberaux,” Studi Medievali, ser. 3, 16 (1975), 97–152. 65 See Wilbur Samuel Howell, trans. and ed., The Rhetoric of Alcuin and Charlemagne, (Princeton, 1941). 66 Ed. Cora Lutz, Remigii Autissiodorensis Commentum in Martianum Capellam libri I-II (Leiden, 1962) and Remigii Autissiodorensis Commentum in Martianum Capellam libri III-IX (Leiden, 1965); W.H. Stahl, R. Johnson, E.L. Burge, eds. and trans., Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, vol. 2, The Marriage of Philology and Mercury (New York, 1977), book 5, pp. 155–214.



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from the same period,67 and the rhetorical precocity of the continent is emphasized by the very real probability that in early medieval England rhetoric reached scholars and practitioners only by way of grammatical studies.68 In England, indeed, the Venerable Bede wrote a “rhetoric” based on showing how the colores verborum could be illustrated from the Bible itself (rather than from pagan authors).69 Even on the continent, the pupil of Alcuin, Rabanus Maurus, compiles in the ninth century a kind of “rhe­ toric,”70 making ample use of Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine, but little use of the Graeco-Roman preceptive rhetorical tradition. This emphasis upon Augustine vis-à-vis Cicero lasts on into the early twelfth century, especially in the Victorine school of Canons Regular in Paris, but is in general overwhelmed by a resurgence of the Ciceronian preceptive approach to rhetoric. Contemporary opportunities, indeed, for the—often oral—deployment of Graeco-Roman, and particularly Ciceronian, rhetorical theory reached an apogee in the twelfth century. Copying of the late antique commentaries of Grillius and Victorinus almost ceases, whilst copying of the originalia (De inventione and Ad Herennium) increases: four times as many copies of the Ad Herennium and twice as many copies of the De inventione survive from the twelfth as from all previous centuries. The twelfth century was responsible for 81 percent of all surviving texts of the Ad Herennium to have been written before the thirteenth century.71 Taken together, texts of all or portions of the De inventione and Ad Herennium 67 MS Vat. lat. 3868; C.R. Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Gestures and the Roman Stage (Cambridge, UK, 2000), p. 4 and chap. 2. 68 See G.H. Brown’s review of Gabrielle Knappe’s work in The Journal of Medieval Latin 9 (1999), 197–99. 69 Joseph M. Miller, Michael H. Prosser, Thomas W. Benson, eds., Readings in Medieval Rhetoric (Bloomington, 1973), pp. 96–122. 70 The third book of his De institutione clericorum; see J.J. Murphy, “Saint Augustine and Rabanus Maurus: The Genesis of Medieval Rhetoric,” Western Speech 31 (1967), 88–96 and the same author’s Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from St. Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley, 1974), pp. 82–87. 71 Birger Munk Olsen, La Réception de la litterature classique au Moyen Age (IXe-XIIe siècle): choix d’articles publié par des collègues à l’occasion de son soixantiéme anniversaire (Copenhagen, 1995), pp. 21–34. For the period down to and including the ninth century (and early tenth), we have seven MSS of the De inv. complete or nearly complete (“cnc”), with a further two containing extracts from the text (“E”). The figure for the Ad Her. is five “cnc” and one “E.” There are nine commentaries on the De inv.—or portions of them— surviving from this period, all either Victorinus, Grillius or the odd fragment of a late antique commentary known as “De attributis” (Halm, Rhetores latini minores, pp. 305–10). There are in the same period two miscellaneous works on the Ad Her., one on the De inv., one major/minor gloss on the Ad Her, five sets of slight glosses on the De inv. and two on the Ad Her. (figures from the survey mentioned above in note 15).

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from the period down to the twelfth century are found in some 98 manuscripts, whilst 308 manuscripts from the twelfth century contain such items. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries see some 214 manuscripts in this category, and the figure again swells, with the Italian Renaissance, to 523 for the fifteenth century. Vernacular (mostly Italian) translations or paraphrases of these texts add seven manuscripts from the thirteenth century, 24 from the fourteenth and 66 from the fifteenth. Commentaries on the two texts (in full or portions only) are found in nine manuscripts of the ninth century, 122 of the tenth, 45 of the eleventh, the same number for the twelfth, 14 for the thirteenth, 26 for the fourteenth and 161 for the fifteenth. Major/minor glosses are found in one, two, 23, 27, nine, 25 and 69 manuscripts, for the same centuries. The figures for slight glosses are seven, eight, 25, 149, 62, 93, 224, with miscellaneous works on the same two texts, including glossings of commentaries on them, are found in the following manuscript numbers, for the same centuries: three, four, 23, 57, 26, 21, 134. This makes a cumulative succession of total works found in surviving manuscripts for each century thus: 35, 38, 187, 586, 196, 325 and 1,177. These figures reinforce the focal periods of the two renaissances (twelfth century and Italian), with a relative decline of interest between them. The De inventione is the dominating text down to the twelfth century, when, for the first time the number of texts of the Ad Herennium and of slight glosses upon it, exceeds the figures for the De inventione, though commentaries on the latter still greatly exceed those on the former, as they do for the thirteenth century. From the fourteenth century onwards, the Ad Herennium is clearly the dominant text, in gloss, commentary and original text production, with over three times the number of copies made of it in the fifteenth century as of the De inventione, and with more than twice the number of sets of glosses surviving for the anonymous as for the Ciceronian work. It is interesting that of the ninth- and tenth-century commentaries on the “Ciceronian” rhetorical juvenilia, all are copies of antique works. In the eleventh century, 31 out of 45, or 69 per cent are copies of late antique works, but in the twelfth century, only six out of 45 or 13 per cent of surviving commentaries are, in fact, late antique. For the thirteenth century the figure is five out of 14 (36 per cent), for the fourteenth six out of 26 (23 per cent) and 58 out of 161 (36 per cent) for the fifteenth, reflecting a much greater interest in the “antique” Victorinus commentary. There are 75 surviving manuscripts of commentaries on the De inventione from the fifteenth century, versus 79 on the Ad Herennium, but 58 of the former are Victorinus texts! In terms of the originality of commentation on the early “Ciceronian” rhetorical works, then, the twelfth century was



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nearly three times as “original” as the Italian Renaissance period! The illustrative “exempla” for the beginnings of speeches as recommended in the Ad Herennium, book 1, compiled by the early fifteenth century Italian humanist Gasparino Barzizza, and using mainly ancient exempla, survive in 31 manuscripts.72 Between the early eleventh and the end of the twelfth centuries, some 24 separate “catena” commentaries have survived on the De inventione and Ad Herennium, in a little over 100 manuscripts.73 The key features of these glosses may be set out thus: 1.    they are very aware of the problem of the relationship between the De inventione and Ad Herennium;74 2. they are very interested in “stasis” or “constitutio” or “issue” theory, especially in issues of quality (iuridicialis and negotialis); 3.  they are very interested in the topics of argumentation and in the “indirect” openings to speeches (insinuatio); 4. they are very interested in matters of elocutio, with the obvious links to grammar and dictamen (composition or letter-writing). The detailed and meticulous way in which early twelfth century teachers of the Ciceronian rhetorical juvenilia approached their subject will be 72 On Gasparino see R.G.G. Mercer, The Teaching of Gasparino Barzizza with Special Reference to His Place in Paduan Humanism (London, 1979). 73 From the early eleventh century onwards, in continental Europe, the habit began of circulating additional explanatory material to the Ciceronian juvenilia, with the additional explanatory remarks “keyed” to the first words of the sentence or paragraph in the original, to which the additional remarks related. The result was what is known today as a catena commentary, because the key words from the beginning of all the sentences or paragraphs to which the explanatory comments were keyed, form a kind of “chain” (catena in Latin). The catena system replaced the much more time-consuming—and, as far as the art of rhetoric is concerned, the older—habit of attaching glosses to the primary ancient text: to reproduce a classical text with glosses was a much more difficult process than to copy out a string of remarks organized by key words pointing the reader/user to the appropriate place in the original text (a copy of which, it was presumed, would always be at hand, and indeed, the eleventh and twelfth centuries were a prime period for the production of copies of the two Ciceronian rhetorical juvenilia. See J.O. Ward, “From Marginal Gloss to catena Commentary: The Eleventh-century Origins of a Rhetorical Teaching Tradition in the Medieval West,” Parergon 13:2 (1996), 109–20, and the same author’s “The Catena Commentaries on the Rhetoric of Cicero and Their Implications for Development of a Teaching Tradition in Rhetoric,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 6:2 (1998), 79–95. There are, of course, no such commentaries on other rhetorical or oratorical works of Cicero from this period, and nothing survives of a comparable nature on the philosophical works either. 74 See J.O. Ward, Ciceronian Rhetoric in Treatise, Scholion, and Commentary (Turnhout, 1995), pp. 147–49.

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clear from the gloss/set of lectures/lecture notes on the early pages of the De inventione attached as an appendix to the present paper. The closest comprehension of the terms and concepts presented in Cicero’s introductory consideration of the parts of rhetoric was an obvious sine qua non of the schools of the day. The parts of classical rhetoric known as “gesture/voice” and “memory” seem to have enjoyed a somewhat subterranean existence in the period. Those portions of the ancient texts were duly glossed, but “gesture” seems to have survived mainly as an informal adjunct to stage acting, and memory relied upon a separate, monastic, meditative tradition, though separate treatises on memory do begin to survive from the thirteenth century and they do often make some use of the prescriptions set down in the Ad Herennium.75 By the end of the twelfth century, the didactic formulas of the De inventione and Ad Herennium had given way, in the schools north of the Alps, to specialized instruction in and examples for the artes poetriae (manuals designed to teach poetic composition in Latin, and used progressively for prose composition as well); the artes dictaminis (manuals specifically aimed at general prose composition or the composition of letters, with elaborate rules for the greeting formulas); the artes predicandi (manuals designed to instruct religious preachers in their art. Most of these new manuals preserved a varying amount of classical rhetorical theory,76 and, indeed, the very idea of assembling such theory in manual form owed much to the antique exemplars. Much of the stimulus to rewrite communication theory textbooks in the twelfth century derived from the “confused and elliptical” manner of, say, Horace’s ars poetriae, or the “jumbled abundance of examples” found in the Ad Herennium.77 In other words, the medieval reception of the classical rhetorical works was very different from our own. Whereas we treasure those works as “classics” of the past (with little direct or formal use today), the medieval copyists treasured 75 Jody Enders, Rhetoric and the Origins of Medieval Drama (Ithaca, 1992); eadem, The Medieval Theater of Cruelty: Rhetoric, Memory, Violence (Ithaca, 1999); eadem, Death by Drama and Other Medieval Urban Legends (Chicago, 2002); M. Carruthers, The Book of Memory (Cambridge, UK, 1990); eadem, “Boncompagno at the Cutting-Edge of Rhetoric: Rhetorical Memoria and the Craft of Memory,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 6 (1998), 44–64; eadem, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric and the Making of Images, 400– 1200 (Cambridge, UK, 1998); and eadem, J.M. Ziolkowski, eds., The Medieval Craft of Memory (Philadelphia, 2002); Frank Willaert et al., Medieval Memory: Image and Text (Turnhout, 2004). 76 See “Cox and Ward.” 77 Marjorie Woods, transcript of lecture intended for delivery at the University of Champaign-Urbana, 23 February 2005, p. 13.



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them as very practical works, to be supplemented, abridged,78 or replaced as circumstances warranted. By the thirteenth century, north of the Alps, classical/Ciceronian rhetorical theory was still known about and studied in general form, but was sometimes actually squeezed out of the teaching curriculum by dialectic or modistic grammar.79 Sometimes, however, it seems to have occupied a more central place in the northern University curricula and the last word has probably not been said here.80 The oral aspects of this medieval interest in (Ciceronian) rhetorical theory should not be ignored. Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria nova, though not in itself a directly Ciceronian work, has a whole section on “delivery,” suggesting that there was considerable place for oral discourse and recitation, a circumstance which may explain why the “delivery” section of the Ad Herennium was continually glossed in the Middle Ages. Marjorie Curry Woods also argues that many of the passages in Matthew of Vendôme’s Art of Versification were meant for oral declamation.81 In the Italy of Dante and his teacher Brunetto Latini, we find a renewed interest in the rhetorical theory of the “Ciceronian” juvenilia, due to the emerging republican civic context, in which persuasive speaking occupied a new centrality.82 78 Ward, “Quintilian and the Rhetorical Revolution of the Middle Ages,” (cf. above, note 30). 79 Jeffrey F. Huntsman, “Grammar,” in ed. David L. Wagner, The Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages (Bloomington, 1986), chap. 3, pp. 58–95; rhetoric survived in the University curricula of the day, it seems, largely by way of the discussion of rhetorical and dialectical topics in Boethius’ De topicis differentiis (see Boethius’s De differentiis topicis, translated with notes and essays on the text by E. Stump (Ithaca, 1978). 80 Cicero’s Topica, of course, and Boethius’ commentary upon it remained in use: Boethius’ In Ciceronis topica, translated with notes and an introduction by E. Stump (Ithaca, 1988). See J.O. Ward, “Rhetoric in the Faculty of Arts at the Universities of Paris and Oxford in the Middle Ages: A Summary of the Evidence,” Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Union Académique Internationale: Bulletin du Cange) 54 (1996), 159–232, at 188. Bruges MS Bibl. de la Ville 553, second item in the compilation, offers an interesting, but unstudied, sample of Paris University rhetorical work in the fourteenth century. 81 Marjorie Curry Woods, “A Medieval Rhetoric Goes to School—and to University,” Rhetorica 9 (1991), 55–65; eadem, “Some Techniques of Teaching Rhetorical Poetics in the Schools of Medieval Europe,” in ed. Theresa Enos, Learning from the Histories of Rhetoric: Essays in Honor of Winifred Bryan Horner (Carbondale, 1993), pp. 91–113; eadem, “Medieval Rhetorical Exercises in the Post-Modern Classroom,” paper delivered at the 14th Biennial Conference of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, Madrid/Calahorra, 14–19 July 2003. For Matthew himself see Matthew of Vendôme, Ars versificatoria, in Mathei Vindocinensis Opera, ed. F. Munari, vol. 3 (Rome, 1988); Engl. trans. Aubrey E. Galyon, The Art of Versification (Ames, IA, 1980). 82 See Virginia Cox, “Ciceronian Rhetoric in Italy, 1260–1350,” Rhetorica 17 (1999), 239– 88; J.O. Ward, “Rhetorical Theory and the Rise and Decline of Dictamen in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance,” Rhetorica 19 (2001), 175–223.

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Vernacular paraphrases of the Ad Herennium and De inventione come into their own, and direct lecturing in Latin at the Bologna tertiary studium (“university”) undergoes an important revival, readily evident in the surviving manuscripts.83 Recent debate, summarized well by Cary Nederman,84 has stressed that the Renaissance revived the true figure of Cicero as an orator, blending philosophy and eloquence, and civic politician. Nevertheless, according to Nederman, this Ciceronian “oratorical” ideal was deeply embedded in intellectual thinking in Europe from at least the twelfth century onwards, with that period’s great emphasis upon the preface to the De inventione and on the precepts of rhetoric as the key path to the oratorical ideal.85 The Italy of Dante and Marsiglio of Padua brought this tradition to a rich fruition. The Ciceronian notion, however, of literary activity as properly to be associated with “otium” rather than “negotium,” is a Renaissance development.86 The Renaissance of the fifteenth century revived and improved the lecturing on the Ad Herennium and expanded its teaching to the mature rhetorical works of Cicero and to Quintilian’s Institutes, which had a patchy appearance in early centuries.87 A new interest in Cicero’s life and speeches developed.88 Guarino da Verona, who taught the Ad Herennium at Ferrara from 1430 to 1460, published little, like many of the humanists.89 His lectures on the Ad Herennium have highlighted a modern controversy. Whereas Eugenio Garin, the doyen of modern scholars of Italian humanism saw humanist pedagogy as aimed at the whole man, the man close to government and keen to elaborate a moral code from classical writings, 83 See Ward, “From Antiquity to the Renaissance,” (cf. above, note 57). 84 C. Nederman, “The Union of Wisdom and Eloquence Before the Renaissance: The Ciceronian Orator in Medieval Thought,” Journal of Medieval History 18 (1992), 75–95. 85 See J.O. Ward, Artificiosa Eloquentia in the Middle Ages: The Study of Cicero’s De inventione, the Ad Herennium and Quintilian’s De institutione oratoria from the Early Middle Ages to the Thirteenth Century, with Special Reference to the Schools of Northern France, 2 vols, unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 1972, vol. 1, chap. 4. 86 See Brian Vickers, “Leisure and Idleness in the Renaissance: The Ambivalence of otium,” Renaissance Studies 4:1 (1990), 1–154. 87 See above, notes 10, 78. 88 See Rabil, vol. 1, pp. 237ff, (cf. above, note 58) and Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins, David Thompson, eds., The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni: Selected Texts (Binghamton, 1987), pp. 177–78, pp. 184–90. 89 Ward, “The Lectures of Guarino da Verona,” cf. above, note 29. Guarino’s surviving “works” include a little treatise on grammatical rules (in Latin), some 900 letters (in Latin, one in Greek, written 1405–1460 but never collected as such by himself), various Latin orationes and prolusiones, sets of lecture notes on various classical works, small works on metrics, diphthongs, synonyms and a number of translations of classical works.



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Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton have chosen to view humanism as a culture of conformity, conformism, service, obedience and courtly servility.90 Even Peter Godman has described the high points of Italian humanism as declining into courtly subservience.91 Guarino’s lecturing on the Ad Herennium has been seen to illustrate Jardine and Grafton’s view: it epitomized all that was otiose, antiquarian and divorced from reality, about Renaissance culture. This was not, however, the view of Ludovico Carbone, a pupil of Guarino’s, who on the latter’s death urged all boys and unwed girls to come with hands full of lilies, because “doctrinae probitatisque parentem perdidistis.” Another described Guarino as “latinae linguae restitutor” who taught all the best minds of the age, the glory of the Muses. Other colleagues and pupils, such as the Hungarian Janus Pannonius or Angelo Decembrio have left eulogies or descriptions of Guarino that lead us to imagine him as an immensely learned man, surrounded by a household full of children and students and a long-serving wife, and one who carried his learning along with him for any and every occasion, burning the midnight candles in (unpublished) annotations of classical texts, writing notes in Latin to servants, taking his whole ménage into the country to avoid the plague, and caring strangely little about proper “publication” of his scholarship. He never took the time to make his own Latin fashionably Ciceronian, but he was one of the first to introduce the letters of Cicero as a curriculum rhetorical text.92 He has been called by a modern writer “first among the lettered persons in Italy of the fifteenth century,” and deserves a close comparative study with that doyen of Tuscan humanism, Leonardo Bruni.93 90 Eugenio Garin, Italian Humanism: Philosophy and Civic Life in the Renaissance, trans. P. Munz (New York, 1965), esp. chap. 6, “Logic, Rhetoric and Poetics,” pp. 151–69; L. Jardine and A. Grafton, “Humanism and the School of Guarino: A Problem of Evaluation,” Past and Present 96 (1982), 51–80; idem, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-century Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1986). 91 Peter Godman, From Poliziano to Machiavelli: Florentine Humanism in the High Renaissance (Princeton, 1998). 92 The letters of Cicero played a decisive role, nevertheless, in the humanist innovations of Petrarch: see D.J. McRuvie, Changes in the Intelligibility of Writing in Late Medieval, Early Renaissance Italy: An Aspect of the Origins of Italian Humanism, unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Sydney, 1981 and J.O. Ward, “Rhetoric: disciplina or Epistemology? Nancy Struever and Writing the History of Medieval and Renaissance Rhetoric,” in Joseph Marino, Melinda W. Schlitt, eds., Perspectives on Early Modern and Modern Intellectual History: Essays in Honor of Nancy S. Struever (Rochester, 2001), pp. 347–74. For the place of the letters see Robert Black, “Cicero in the Curriculum of the Italian Renaissance Grammar Schools,” Ciceroniana, n.s., 9 (1996), 105–202, at 113. 93 Ward, “The Lectures of Guarino da Verona,” 100–04. There is a need to bring up to date the outstanding pioneer work done on Guarino and his rhetoric carried out by the

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Born in Verona of undistinguished parentage in 1374, he gained a notarial/grammatical education at Verona, Padua and Venice, where he met Manual Chrysoloras, with whom he went to Constantinople 1403–08 to learn Greek. Between 1408 and 1414 he spent time in Bologna, Verona, Florence and the papal court and between 1414 and 1419 took private aristocratic students in Venice. In May of 1420 the Commune of Verona hired him “to lecture on rhetoric, the letters and speeches of Cicero and to teach other facultates which pertain to eloquence and whatever else was found pleasing and useful to hearers, and to embrace appropriate doctrine for all willing adolescents and elders of the city and district of Verona.” By the late 1420’s Guarino was at Ferrara and, from 1431 on, was private tutor to Leonello d’Este, son and designated successor of Marchese Niccolo III of Ferrara. Leonello was at that time 24 years old. Guarino gave private lessons in Greek, became public orator, diplomat, and “lettore ufficiale” in the refounded studio at Ferrara, where he died, aged 86, in 1460. In a solemn prolusio of 18 October 1447 for the inauguration of the second quinquiennium of the studio of Ferrara, Guarino deals with seven subjects in eulogy: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, philosophy, medicine and jurisprudence. Most space, however, is devoted to rhetoric, and 19 manuscripts and seven incunable editions between 1481 and 1493 have come down to us testifying to his lectures on the Ad Herennium. In these lectures Guarino has abandoned much of the medieval commentary apparatus, especially the apparatus of the so-called “accessus,” or introductory material.94 For him The text of Cicero should not be taken in such a way as to reflect a comprehensive and ordered system of universal knowledge and disciplined reality. For Guarino, the classical text ought to speak for itself, as a privileged channel to a world worthy of imitation, a world that existed in time, a world that we can illustrate with other, similar texts. Guarino’s use of Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Cicero himself, Quintilian and Plutarch almost returns us to the classroom of Grillius.95

outstanding Italian student of Latin literature, Remigio Sabbadini (1850–1934), who was born near Vicenza and taught at the University of Catania 1886–1900, and then in the “Accademia Scientifico-Letteraria,” later the University of Milan, 1900–26; I have often discussed with Gary Ianziti the project of a joint, comparative “biography” of Guarino and Leonardo Bruni. Perhaps it will come to pass one day. 94 Cf. e.g. Alanus’ commentary preface in MS Harley 6324, or that of Bartolinus, ed. Wertis, or Nicholas M. Häring, “Thierry of Chartres and Dominicus Gundissalinus,” Mediaeval Studies 26 (1964), 271–86. 95 Cf. Ward, “The Lectures of Guarino da Verona,” p. 126.



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Nevertheless, Guarino was a man of his day, training his students to play key roles in politics and life. He was at heart a rhetor, forever in the company of fellow scholars, patrician sympathizers, his students, his domestics, his numerous children, the laborers constantly seeking to expand the size of his house, his country estate companions—flocks of live-in friends and family members who thronged his walks like starlings or locusts. His rhetorical lectures seem to have been off-the-cuff affairs, based on his ever-accumulating close textual labors and his ability to speak eloquently in Latin; repeated frequently, however, they seem to have fallen into a routine in the course of which he selected from a stock of suitable illustrations and remarks that occur from version to version in different combinations. To some, such as George of Trebizond, who introduced the study of the second-century a.d. rhetor Hermogenes of Tarsus into rhetoric, Guarino was old-fashioned and insufficiently Ciceronian in his personal style, and the text he lectured upon—the Ad Herennium—was, by the end of the century, under attack as a genuine work of Cicero, although it went on being printed and taught as such long after the smoke of the first fiery polemics in the 1490’s had faded away.96 As already mentioned, much broader interests in Cicero were replacing the mechanistic and technographic interest in his early rhetorical lectures and their contemporary sources. Even the Ad Herennium commentaries of the High Renaissance contained more on the life of Cicero than was common in the Middle Ages and the sixteenth-century commentaries on Cicero’s De oratore, Orator and De partitione oratoria by Jacques-Louis D’Estrebay (1481–c.1550) mark new heights of rhetorical humanism unparalleled in the Middle Ages, as do the lectures on Hermogenes of the same approximate period by Pedro Nunes.97 Leonardo Bruni’s early fifteenth century rewriting of Plutarch’s life of Cicero has already been mentioned. Bruni’s assessment of Cicero makes some amends for the shortcomings evident in his original: It was he [Cicero] who uncovered and bequeathed the principles and art of oratory before any other Latins, and more learnedly than any of the Greeks. 96 Above, note 30; I hope to deal with the numerous incunable and early printed editions of the Ciceronian juvenilia, and commentaries on them, in my articles for the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum Medii Aevi, (cf. above, note 15). See also Ward in Murphy, Renaissance Eloquence (cf. above, note 16). 97 John R.C. Martyn, “Lectures on Rhetoric Given by Pedro Nunes at the University of Lisbon: A Tribute to Hermogenes,” Euphrosyne 27 (1999), 147–54; idem, ed. and trans., The Art of Public Speaking: Lectures on Greek Rhetoric by Pedro Nunes (1502–1578) (New York, 2004).

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john o. ward It was he who joined eloquence, which is the mistress of men’s minds, to the power of Roman dominion. Accordingly he should not be called just Father of his country, but the father of our speech and letters … when he was active in the republic that was mistress of the world, he wrote more than the philosophers living at leisure and engaged in study; on the other hand, when he was mostly occupied in study and in the writing of books, he got more business done than those who are involved in no literary endeavor. The reason for this I think was, first, his greatness of character, which could be described as almost godlike; second, his habitual vigilance and skill; and third, that he brought to public affairs a familiarity with every branch of knowledge and school of learning. And so he was able to draw on this same store of philosophy both for the practical measures to be taken in governing the republic and for the propositions to be used in writing and in teaching others. Liberally educated from his youth, and particularly trained in public speaking, he was able to put his thoughts into writing effortlessly. On the strength of such character, such natural gifts, and such knowledge and education, he was able to write a large number of works between boyhood and the end of his life, and had planned many more when an untimely death snatched him away.98

Thus does Cicero, at long last, become the avatar of the humanist ideal, of that combination of eloquence, education, philosophy and practical involvement that figures such Leonardo Bruni himself set up as their model. Like Cicero in the De oratore, Bruni expounds the theory of the ideal orator: It is the orators who will teach us how to praise the good deed and hate the bad; it is they who will teach us how to soothe, encourage, stimulate, or deter. All these things the philosophers do, it is true, but in some special way anger, mercy, and the arousal and pacification of the mind are completely within the power of the orator. Then, too, those figures of speech and thought, which like stars or torches illuminate our diction and give it distinction, are the proper tools of the orator which we will borrow from them when we speak or write, and turn to our use as the occasion demands. In sum, all the richness, power, and polish in our expression, its lifeblood, as it were, we will derive from the orators.99

98 Griffiths, Hankins and Thompson, pp. 187–88. Compare the passage cited from Trollope, Brill’s Companion to Cicero, p. 498. 99 L. Bruni, De Studiis et Litteris Liber, 19, trans. and ed. C.W. Kallendorf, in Humanist Educational Treatises (Cambridge, MA, 2002), pp. 108–11. The translation is Kallendorf’s: “Ab his et laudare bene facta et detestari facinora addiscemus; ab his consolari, cohortari, impellere, absterrere. Quae licet omnia a philosophis fiant, tamen nescio quomodo et ira misericordia et omnis animi suscitatio ac repressio in potestate est oratoris. Iam vero illa verborum sententiarumque ornamenta, quae tamquam stellae quaedam et faces orationem illuminant et admirabilem reddunt, instrumenta oratorum propria sunt, quae



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Bruni, of course, was a man of affairs and not a rhetor, monk, or cathedralschool scholar, so that in his thinking Cicero had indeed come of age as an orator and statesman. There is much evidence that Bruni’s thinking in this and related regards went hand in hand with the maturing literary and political ideas and practices of the Florentine ruling elite of the day, and this alone must account for many of the differences that mark his career and writings out from those of, say, Guarino in the Veneto area.100 As the fifteenth century developed, growing attention to the mature works of Ciceronian rhetoric, to the Ciceronian speeches, to Quintilian who eulogized Cicero, to the cultivation of a Ciceronian personal style,101 and sophisticated study of the classical language world by such scholars as Lorenzo Valla and Polizian elevated Cicero’s status and broadened his cultural impact. Nevertheless, the Ad Herennium remained (with the letters) the basic didactic rhetorical school text in the fifteenth century and commentaries on it are far more frequently met with in manuscript and early printed book form than on any other of the works of Cicero. Copies of Victorinus’s commentary on the De inventione also multiplied, as we have already indicated. Our study ends, therefore with the same paradox as that with which it began: a text Cicero himself spurned, and another that he did not even write, accounted for so much of his fame and widespread acceptance as an unsurpassed master of speech in the medieval and Renaissance periods. Thus, to conclude, Cicero remained very much a key authority and a model for civic involvement and persuasive speech in the fifteen hundred or so years after his death, not only in the area of philosophy-for-thelayman (the Alain de Boton of his day!102), but also in his own arena of excellence, oratory and, especially, rhetoric. Different aspects of his career and writings appealed to different elements in this period and for different reasons, but for all he remained a model and a stimulus, the one figure of the distant past whom “one can know most intimately … from the mutuabimur ab illis scribentes loquentesque et in usum nostrum, cum res poscet, vertemus. Denique omnem opulentiam verborum, omnem dicendi vim et quasi ornatum, omnem orationis (ut ita dixerim) vivacitatem et sanguinem ab istis sumemus.” I owe this reference to a shortly-to-be-published paper by Daniel Tangri, Classics Department, School of Language Studies, Australian National University, Canberra entitled “Demosthenes in the Renaissance.” 100 Gary Ianziti will be publishing his ideas here shortly. 101  See Terence Tunberg’s contribution to the present volume, and his paper “The Latinity of Erasmus and Medieval Latin: Continuities and Discontinuities,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 14 (2004), 147–70. 102 Alain de Boton, The Consolations of Philosophy (Ringwood, AU, 2000).

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extent of his surviving writings, including fifty-eight orations and over nine-hundred letters … a companion, mentor and friend” to so many subsequent readers.103 As we contemplate this practical fascination from afar, we are inclined to ask for how long our own day can afford to neglect what Cicero’s career and writings can tell us about the plight of the humanist and practical philosopher in an age when the studies that produced the Cicero man count for so much less than technology, computers, consumerism, materialism, advertising and military aggression. The medieval and Renaissance fascination with Cicero only lately became the philological obsession that today obstructs our view of the man and his age. It is high time to take a leaf out of the medieval and early Renaissance book and to put into practice the lessons Cicero’s life teaches. Appendix: “G. Materia Tullii:” The Durham Dean and Chapter (Cathedral) Library C.IV.29 Glossator This apparent set of lectures or notes on the De inventione has been discussed principally by Mary Dickey 1953 (pp. 13–14) and 1968 (pp. 4–5, though in both descriptions the MS numbers are confused; see Ward, Ciceronian Rhetoric, pp. 30–31, and the index of MSS, p. 368); Ward 1972, vol. 1, pp. 145–53, idem., Ciceronian Rhetoric, p. 48 (presenting some excerpts from the text covering much of the “translation” below, but needing here and there emendation); and Karin M. Fredborg, “The Commentaries on Cicero’s De inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium by William of Champeaux,” Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen Âge Grec et Latin (Copenhagen) 17 (1976), 1–39. The grammatical texts have been noticed by R.W. Hunt (“Studies on Priscian in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, Medieval and Renaissance Studies 1, pp. 196–97) and dated to “the very early twelfth century” (Fredborg, p. 6). Fredborg’s discussion suggests that “Materia Tullii” is “heavily dependent” upon the rhetorical teaching of a Magister Willelmus whom she identifies with William of Champeaux, Abelard’s celebrated teacher (of rhetoric), whose glosses are extant in MS York Minster XVI.M.7 and elsewhere.104 The author of Materia Tullii is therefore to be considered a disciple of William of Champeaux on rhetoric, and the brief extracts below, “translated” in such way as to be a little more meaningful to a modern reader than the contorted, lacunose and elliptical original, are intended to indicate the preoccupations of the commentator on the Ciceronian text at this point in time.

103 So Kennedy in Brill’s Companion to Cicero, p. 497. 104 An edition of these is in progress (for Brepols) by J. Ruys and J.O. Ward.



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Extracts from this gloss are presented in English, with, where deemed important, the Latin, and summary material, in italics within square brackets. The lemmata from the De inventione are underlined. G [= Magister Guillelmus?]: the subject-matter [materia] of Tullius in this work is rhetoric, that is, artificious [artificiosa] eloquence, not yet [to be] accepted in its essence, for in this mode it must be accepted as not of human invention but [rather] as a subject-matter of God, a certain quality founded in the soul; [no], the subject-matter of Tullius is [rather to be accepted as referring to] the mode in which it is exercised, that is, in the doing [in agente], that is on the speech [oratione]. [There follows a discussion of the “modus tractandi,” the “instrumentum” (= “oratio,” divided into six parts—“exordium,” “narratio,” “partitio,” “confirmatio,” “reprehensio,” and, probably since there is a lacuna in the MS here, “conclusio”/”peroratio”), the “intentio (auctoris)”, the “utilitas” of the work and its “genus:”] it is placed under logic since in one of its parts, that is, invention,105 it contains the science of inventing and the science of judging. In this place, then, invention is [to be] considered in its larger sense because within it are contained both the science of finding, [on the one hand] the place [locum] and drawing thence the argument which pertains to the science of invention [ad scientiam inveniendi], and [on the other] the science of embellishing [expoliendi106], that is, uttering [proferendi] clearly [aperte] and ornately [ornate] that same discovered [inventum] argument, and this pertains to the science of judgement [scientiam iudicandi107]. But it can be asked how these two parts, contained within inventio, (for Tullius says “omnis diligens ratio disserendi duas habeat principales partes,

105 I.e. the “finding” of arguments, or the places (“topics”) from which arguments may be drawn—for these see De inventione 1.24.34 and following. 106 The De inventione gloss known as In primis, attributed to William of Champeaux also uses this term: Karin M. Fredborg, “Abelard on Rhetoric,” in Mews, Nederman and Thomson (2003), pp. 55–80, at p. 59, n. 16. 107 Cf. Cicero, Topica 1.2.6: “omnis ratio diligens disserendi duas habeat partis, unam inveniendi, alteram iudicandi.” Abelard, in his commentary on the rhetorical topics, makes iudicatio a fifth “constitutio” after the four of the De inventione. See Fredborg, “Abelard on Rhetoric,” p. 58. In the Ciceronian tradition, iudicatio is “the point for the judge’s decision,” “quae ex infirmatione et confirmatione rationis nascitur controversia” (De inv. 1.13.18). Abelard (ed. Fredborg, 2003, p. 74, p. 78) assigns this the place of “fifth” quaestio (cf. De inv. 1.13.18: “quaestio est ea quae ex conflictione causarum gignitur controversia”), matching the four constitutiones of the De inventione and discusses whether it should be assigned to the constitutio generalis, but dismisses such an approach on the ground that the constitutio generalis considers qualitas whereas the iudicatio considers the “rationem suppositam,” the ratio in this instance being “the reason or excuse … which holds the case together” (De inv. 1.13.18; Engl. trans. H.M. Hubbell, Cicero, De inventione, De optimo genere oratorum, Topica, Loeb Classical Library [Cambridge, MA, 1960], p. 37). Interestingly, Abelard draws a parallel between this fifth quaestio and the “quaestio” Boethius (De topicis differentiis, PL 64 1177D, Engl. trans. Stump, p. 35) uses to illustrate the “hypothesis” which differentiates the (specific) rhetorical question from the dialectical “thesis.” On the equivalence between “constitutio” and “quaestio” see the present gloss f.198vb: “Et has equivocationes actore

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unam [196rb] inveniendi, alteram iudicandi”), are meant to relate to the other four parts, that is dispositio, pronuntiatio, memoria and elocutio.108

Though the difference between the rhetor and the orator may lie in many areas, it appears [here] to be based clearly on this, that what the orator intends to do, the rhetor intends to teach. Now the orator intends to speak appropriately for persuasion. The rhetor indeed [intends] to teach [how] to do that, that is to speak appropriately for persuasion [cum in multis pateat differentia inter rethorem et oratorem in hoc etiam evidenter apparet quod illud quod orator intendit facere, rethor intendit docere. Orator etiam intendit loqui apposite ad persuasionem. Rethor vero docere illud facere, i.e. loqui apposite ad persuasionem]. [The author defines “orator” and “rhetor,” not using Victorinus (ed. Halm, p. 156), and argues that in the prologue to the “De inventione” Cicero is adopting the “persona oratoris,” but in the rest of the work he adopts the “persona rethoris.” In regard to the opening “propositio” ( for the term see Victorinus, ed. Halm, p. 155) of the “De inventione” prologue, “an plus boni an plus mali,” Cicero adopts no particular position “quia inexemplicabile et inscrutabile est an plus boni an plus mali attulerit.” Nevertheless he is anxious to show that he has thought hard about the question, or else (196va) he wants to indicate what can be inquired into, and explained—if rhe­ toric produces more good than evil, it should be studied, if more evil than good, then it should be avoided. Since Cicero sees the answer to each question as inexplicable, he converts himself to the position he wants to adopt, namely, that rhetoric should be studied. The glossator trawls through the text of Cicero’s prologue, “Ac si volumus” at 196va line 30, “Atque optimis rationibus” at line 36, “Nam ipsis109 rebus cognitis etc.” at line 38–with the end of the column at line 41–until he comes to the “genus artis, optimis rationibus,” De inv. 1.4.5, f.196va:]

Tullio et Victorino habemus scilicet quod causa, questio, constitutio in eadem significatione aliquando accipiuntur. Dicit enim Tullius Tullius [sic] ubi ostendit quid appellet questionem. Eam igitur questionem ex qua causa nascitur constitucionem appellamus. Ecce patet Tullium in hoc loco questionem appellare constitucionem. Rursus Victorinus in expositione huius predicti versus dicit causam et questionem in eadem significatione a Cicerone accipi et ita patet hec tria in eadem significatione accipi etc.” Note that Abelard does not necessarily align himself with those who would assign rhetoric to logic (Fredborg, “Abelard on Rhetoric,” p. 59: “nisi forte secundum eos qui grammaticamque rethoricam[que] logicae supponunt,” though cf. p. 60: “et quemadmodum per scientiam inveniendi et judicandi hoc toto totam logicam comprehendimus”). 108 The same points are raised in the De inventione gloss known as In primis, attributed to William of Champeaux, cf. Fredborg, “Abelard on Rhetoric,” p. 59, n. 16. 109 Thierry in his Heptateuchon and modern editions read “his” here (S5b.29). The reader will notice how summary the present record of whatever the original lectures may have been is.



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For if these are understood etc. By “outline of the subject”110 [“ipsam rationem” “M.Tulli Ciceronis Scripta quae manserunt omnia, fasc. 2, rhetorici libri duo qui vocantur De inventione,” E. Stroebel, ed., (Stuttgart, 1965–henceforth “S”), p. 6b.1–2] of the art, he understands the essence of the subject, which essence we understand once we know the genus of the subject itself [accipit essentiam artis, quam essentiam cognoscimus cogni[196vb]to genere ipsius artis], which is civil science and with the parts of it [also understood], that is invention, arrangement, delivery, memory and style. For the genus is the essence of the species itself [genus enim essentia est sue speciei]. So too the integral parts are the essence of the whole [similiter et partes integrales essentia sunt sui totius].111 By “method of the art”112 [per viam artis, S6b.2], he means the movement, which the subject has when it is put into action, that is to say, it is the subject-matter, that is, the civil case or matter in question, in which the orator acts in the performance of his function, so that he can at length arrive at his goal, that is, to this end, that he should persuade by speech [accipit progressum artis quem habet ipsa ars in agente, ut est materia i.e. civilis questio vel causa, in qua agit orator faciendo officium suum i.e., loquendo apposite ad persuadendum, ut ad suum tandem finem perveniat, i.e. ad hoc i.e. ut dictione persuadeat]. Lo! this is the method of the subject which in a certain manner the orator advances into when he is in action [Ecce hec est via artis quam in agente quodam modo graditur]. The instrument, that is, the speech in which the method is practised, also pertains to this method, that is, the speech wherein the art is put into practice. So the art itself has in itself certain of the above, as genus and parts, and certain things outside itself, that is, outside its essence, for example, subject-matter, function, end, instrument, all of which have to do with the action in which the orator is engaged [ad hanc etiam viam pertinet instrumentum i.e. oratio qua exercetur; habet itaque quedam ex predictis ars ista in se ipsa, ut genus et partes, quedam autem extra se ipsam i.e. extra suam essentiam ut sunt materia, officium, finis, instrumentum, que omnia in agente habet]. For in itself the art can make no actual progress.113 And it should be noted that it seems to us that the word rhetor is equivocal. For rhetoric can signify the science which is in the orator, that is, artificious eloquence itself, and that which is in the rhetor, that is, in the giver of precepts, according to which [science] he knows how to give the precepts relevant to rhetoric, that is, to instruct the orator to speak appropriately for persuasion [per se enim non movetur. Et notandum rethor[em] ut nobis videtur esse equivocum. Potest enim rethorica et scientiam que est in oratore significare, i.e ipsam artificiosam eloquentiam, et illam que est in rethore, i.e. in preceptore secundum quam scit precepta eloquentie dare, i.e. oratorem instruere loqui apposite ad 110 Adopting Hubbell’s translation at Loeb, p.13. 111 Thierry (ed. Fredborg, 1988, pp. 53–54) calls these parts “integral” because if one is lacking the art fails. 112 Adopting Hubbell’s translation at Loeb, p. 13. 113 I.e. unless it is embodied in someone speaking.

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persuasionem]. For many are able to instruct others to speak appropriately for persuasion, who yet do not know how to nor are able to speak appropriately for persuasion [themselves]. And for that reason it seems to us that the science which is in the rhetor is different from that which is in the orator, just as [197ra] we speak of the science which is in someone who says that something should be put into verse, yet does not know how to do so, and the science which is in the person who is taught versification [sicut et in aliquo dicente aliquem versificari nec valente tamen versificari et in ipso qui docetur versificari].114 And it should also be noted that the rhetor teaches that rhetoric which is in the orator, [that is, he teaches]115 this subject-matter. The orator, however, [deals with] the thing itself [which is] placed in the civil question, or if you prefer to say the [orator deals with the] civil question [itself] or the civil case which has as its goal one of those three ends [i.e. judicial, deliberative, epideictic] etc. The prologue ends here [notandum etiam quod rethor ipsam rethoricam que est in oratore h(anc) materiam (docet?) Orator autem [tractat?] ipsam rem positam in civili questione vel si mavis dicere civilem questionem seu civilem causam tendentem ad aliquem illorum trium finium etc. EXPLICIT PROLOGUS]. There is a [particular] scientific system of politics etc. [De inv. 1.5.6 civilis quedam ratio est etc. ]: thus far Cicero was an orator in this [art, but] now he begins to be a rhetor. Whatever others may feel, “civil science” seems to us to be the proper genus of rhetoric. For civil science is what pertains to the management of the affairs of citizens, as is architect[ure], that is the science of building, or the science of conducting warfare [militandi], or the science of the construction-worker [sculptor?—fabrilis], or that of the cobbler [sutoria] and innumerable other sciences. Amongst these there is also the science of pleading [scientia placitandi], that is, of managing legal cases [agendi causas], which is [called] rhetoric, that is, artificious eloquence [artificiosa eloquentia], and so forth. This is how the letter [of Cicero’s text] should be read: there is a scientific system, that is a science, a particular one, that is, discrete from other sciences, and in what it may be discrete he puts forward when he says of politics, that is, which pertains to the management of the affairs of citizens, which includes many important departments, that is, which pertains to the management of things which are many in number and important in quantity. And this may be applied to the commendation of rhetoric. One of these, that is, civil science, is the particular part [known as] artificious eloquence [est pars quedam artificiosa eloquentia], that is [f.197rb] rhetoric, and [you should] understand [it as] a special part, large as far as quantity is concerned and the immensity of the affairs to which it pertains, and important for the number of those same affairs requiring its management, and so 114 Cf. the De inventione gloss In primis, ascribed by Margareta Fredborg (1976) to William of Champeaux, MS York XVI.M.7 fol. 1va: “et sciendum est quia aliud est rethorice agere, aliud agere de rethorica, sicut est aliud versifice agere, aliud agere de versibus.” 115 A lacuna here of a word or so.



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forth [magna pro quantitate et inmensitate negotiorum ad que pertinet, et ampla pro numero eorundem negotiorum sue procurationi subtorum etc.]. ¶For I do not agree with those who think: indeed, rhetoric is a part of civil science since it is not absolutely different from it, as some feel, nor is it the genus of it, as others wish, since it [cannot] be something else [from itself].116 So let us proceed thus: truly rhetoric is a part of civil science since though it has to be something, it is [yet] nothing other than a part of civil science, and this is outside [of it], and truly it is nothing other [than civil science] since it is not something which should be seen as rather [something else than civil science], that is, either a thing different from civil science, or the genus of civil science, that is, superior to it, according to the view of those to whom it was so seeming, against whom assuredly in this place he argues, and this is what he says: For I do not agree with those who think. and so forth [Nam neque cum his sentimus. Vere rethorica est pars civilis scientie quia neque est prorsus ab ea diversa [‘not absolutely different from’] ut quidam sentiunt, neque eius genus ut alii volunt cum aliud non sit. Et possemus ita fortasse procedere: Vere rethorica est pars civilis scientie quia cum sit aliquid, nichil aliud est quam pars civilis scientie, et hoc extra et vere nichil aliud est, quia non est illud de quo magis videretur, i.e. vel res diversa a scientia civili, vel genus scientie civilis a maiori secundum visum (“view”?) illorum quibus ita videbatur, contra quos scilicet in hoc loco agit et hoc est quod dicit: Nam neque cum his sentimus etc.] ¶The function [officium] of eloquence seems to be to speak in a manner suited to persuade an audience [autem eius facultatis esse videtur dicere apposite ad persuasionem], the end is to persuade by speech [finis persuadere dictione]. The “end” itself, as Victorinus says, is partly in the orator and partly outside the orator, as [it is] in the hearer.117 [f.198ra, S6b.21, De inv. 1.5.7 Materiam artis eam dicimus…:] By the material of the art I mean etc. Since we are speaking of the material of the orator, [it must be pointed out that] it consists of three things or kind of cases [in the opinion of both] Aristotle and of Tullius; these cases are referred to in several ways, sometimes as questions, sometimes as issues [pro constitutionibus], sometimes as both. It must be seen [here] how all these are referred to [accipiantur], that is, the material of the orator, which consists of epideictic [demonstratione] deliberative [oratory] and judicial [oratory]; then [we must deal with] case, question [and] issue for some [scholars] make of these many equivocations and according to M[aster) W[illiam] whoever does not attend diligently to all these, labors vainly in rhetoric and it is credible that this is true according to his reading since he is different in his acceptance and reading of these voces (or things) not only from all

116 As it would have to be if the genus was something other than the species. 117 This is only a summary of what Victorinus says, ed. Halm, p. 173. See also “Aurelius Augustinus,” ed. Halm, Rhetores latini minores, p. 138.3 et seqq.

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other masters, but also as much from Boethius in the fourth book, as it seems, of his Topics, as from […]118 in the exposition of the rhetorics etc. He says accordingly that Boethius in the fourth book of the Topics is different in his consideration of the material of the orator from Tullius in this book. For Boethius [PL 64 1207C] accepts there that the material119 of the orator is whatever is appropriate [habilis] to what the orator is supposed to act in connection with [ad hoc ut de ea orator agere possit], though this may not yet be fully formed to the point that it may appear as the material of the orator, for example, Verres’ acts of theft. Moreoever, Tullius never calls it the material of the orator until it is informed by an epideictic subject, or by a deliberative subject, or by a judicial subject. Yet I do not call this a matter of something being informed by what is done [informata agendo], [f198rb] but it is a question of [something] proposed and in the intellect of the orator. For then, at length, he [Cicero] says the theft of Verres is the material of the orator since the orator himself proposes in his mind that he will act concerning him [Verres, that is], with a view to praising or blaming a particular person, which is the demonstrative kind [of case] and the goal is uprightness, etc.; or else with a view towards action from which the upright and the disgraceful, the useful and the useless [might arise], which is the deliberative kind [of case], of which the end/goal [finis] is, according to Aristotle “usefulness” [utilitas], according to Tullius, “usefulness” and uprightness [honestas]; or [else] with a view towards action from which a judgement must arise, which is the judicial kind [of case], of which the end/goal is equity. This is a particular part of uprightness, etc. When the orator will have formed a thing done or said in his mind according to any of these three modes, we can at last talk of the material of it, [the art, rhetoric] as Tullius does. According to Boethius, however, before it is formed according to these modes, the material of the orator is simply the business at hand [est ipsum, simplex negotium]. In this, then, they seem yet to differ, [in] that Boethius would say that the material of the carpenter is the intact trees needed to build a house, whereas Tullius would deny the applicability of the term until the carpenter has done something towards [making the trees suitable for their purpose] by preparing them. And it should be noted that when Tullius proposes in his mind to act concerning Verres’ [acts of] theft, with a view to blaming the same Verres, the theft of Verres is now said to be informed by the demonstrative goal. Just as a wall accepts [suscipit] vision from [198va] my eye seeing it, so also the theft of Verres accepts the demonstrat[ive goal] from my mind, intellect and intention to act in connection with it in a demonstrative manner [ex animo et intellectu et proposito meo disponente agere de illo demonstrative] and it is called the demonstrative kind of case. So too Orestes,120 who is now dead, or his mother or his deed which is a 118 Victorinus? 119 Reading, with Fredborg, “materiam” for “materia.” 120 De inv. 1.13.18.



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thing of the past, is able to be formed [only] as far as our understanding of it [is concerned—quantum ad intellectum potest informari]—we cannot examine the circumstance in its original vivid detail, but only by acting as if it were still existing, and thus it can be shaped only as a thing of this kind can be shaped, that is, by mental consideration and in [our] intellect, and so you must understand for the rest of the topic [similiter etiam Orestes qui iam mortuus est vel mater eius vel factum eius quod iam non est quantum ad intellectum potest informari nullam tamen per hoc per hoc rerum positionem faciendo sed de eis ut de rebus existentibus agendo, et ita informatur ut huiusmodi res informari potest, scilicet sola consideratione animi et intellectu et sic in ceteris]. It should also be noted that the person him [or her]self, for example Verres, or the business itself, that is the deed or words of the person—the theft of Verres—can be termed the material itself. Thus we may grasp the material of the orator, but Tullius [calls it] these three, the demonstrative, the deliberative and the judicial [kinds of case]. Now we must inquire into the case, the question and the issue [de causa, questione, constitutione] etc. The question and the issue, it should be said [itaque], are related to each other as in dialectic: the question seeks an answer and an answer is provided [ita se habent sicut in dialectica, querens questio et quesita]. For the question here is properly whether Verres committed theft, or did not. The issue [is the product of two statements:] Verres committed theft; Verres did not commit theft, that is affirmation with its denial. There is much equivocation about whether the [term] “question” can stand for the [term] “issue” or the [term] “issue” for the [term] “question” and so or not and often, on the contrary, in this book they are found to be referred to as if they were the same [equivocatur autem sepissime et questio pro constitutione et constitutio pro questione et ita sepe vicissim in hoc libro accepta inveniuntur]. The case [causa] is sometimes [198vb] referred to as if it meant the same thing as the question, sometimes as if it meant the same thing as the issue, sometimes as if it meant the pleading as a whole [aliquando pro tota placitatione]. These three, that is, case, question and issue, are again referred to sometimes as if they meant the above three kinds of speech,121 but also as if they meant the things signified by them [= the above three kinds of speech], that is, the things themselves or everything in that situation in which we have to do with signification by words themselves. [So they will be taken as meaning] either the person him [or her]self only, as for Verres, or his [or her] deed, that is the theft, and so forth [non solum pro superioribus orationibus sed etiam pro significatis earum, i.e. pro rebus ipsis vel pro omnibus in eo habitu quo sig(nifi)cantur ab ipsis vocibus, vel pro ipsa persona tantum ut pro Verre vel pro facto eius, ut pro furto, etc.].

121 Demonstrative, deliberative and judicial.

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And we have these equivocations from the authors Tullius and Victorinus [themselves], that is, because sometimes case, question and issue are referred to with the same meaning [in eadem significatione aliquando accipiuntur]. For Tullius says this, where he is explaining what he terms the question:122 “eam igitur questionem ex qua causa nascitur constitutionem appellamus.”123 Lo! It is clear here that Tullius calls the issue the question. Likewise Victorinus in expounding this aforesaid passage says that case and question are taken by Cicero in the same sense [in eadem significatione] and so it is clear that these three [terms] are to be taken as referring to the same thing, etc.124

122 We have smoothed out the clumsy original: “dicit enim Tullius Tullius ubi ostendit quid appellet questionem.” 123 = S16b.21–22, De inv. 1.13.18: “ex ea igitur nascitur controversia, quam questionem dicimus.” 124 Victorinus does not say what the author here alleges, in his gloss on De inv. 1.13.18, cf. Victorinus, ed. Halm, 193.26–194.3.

CICERO’S PORTRAIT AND THE ROMAN VILLA George L. Gorse In 1632, the Neapolitan-born, Roman baroque sculptor, architect, painter, and courtier Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) sat in the audience chamber of his first major patron, Cardinal Chancellor Scipione Borghese (1576–1633), nephew to Pope Paul V (who reigned 1605–21), sketching the affable but ruthlessly powerful Governor of the Church in action.1 Bernini’s contemporary biographer, Filippo Baldinucci, highlighted the cardinal’s portrait as a pivotal example of Bernini’s dynamic optical (not static) experience of Nature (Mimesis in process) in what later became known (by nineteenth-century Romantic-Hegelian founders of modern art history, such as Heinrich Wölfflin) as “der Barock Stil.”2 From chalk drawing to life-size Carrara marble bust, Bernini captured “the character” and engaged (activated) the viewer’s space in a psychological dialogue, a theatrical medium or continuum, that revolutionized “the portrait” (and “Art”) as a vital representation (a “self-fashioning” or “identity construction” in Stephen Greenblatt’s “postmodern” terms), within the fourth dimension of time (a “shape of time” to borrow George Kubler’s eloquent phrase from Quantum Physics and Einstein’s Relativity Theory).3 However, this humanist discourse of lifelike artistic reform (and individual “genius”) masks (ironically, considering the “classical revival” of the

1 Rudolf Wittkower, Gian Lorenzo Bernini: The Sculptor of the Roman Baroque (Ithaca, 1981), cat. no. 31, pp. 199–200; Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600 to 1750 (Baltimore, 1969), p. 98; Howard Hibbard, Bernini (London, 1990), pp. 89–96, figs. 45–46. Bernini’s red and black chalk drawing for the animated “speaking” bust portrait of Cardinal Borghese (in the Galleria Borghese, Rome) is in the Pierpont Morgan Library Drawing Collection, New York. For the patron, see Volker Reinhardt, Kardinal Scipione Borghese (1605–1633): Vermögen, Finanzen und sozialer Aufstieg eines Papstnepoten (Tübingen, 1984); and Martin Faber, Scipione Borghese als Kardinalprotektor: Studien zur Römischen Mikropolitik in der Frühen Neuzeit (Mainz, 2005). 2 Filippo Baldinucci, The Life of Bernini, trans. C. Enggass (University Park, PA, 1966), pp. 11–12, pp. 77–78; Heinrich Wölfflin, Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art, trans. M.D. Hottinger (New York, 1950), pp. 56–58. 3 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare (Chicago, 1980), pp. 1–9; and George Kubler, The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things (New Haven, 1962).

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Renaissance and Baroque) the underlying antique origin of this “speaking portrait” of the Roman Senator and patrician party leader, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 b.c.), with turned head, open mouth and knit brow, a thoughtful Scopaic gaze and familial-civic embodiment of the Roman orator, of moral gravitas engaging the audience in visual ars rhetorica, the art of persuasion, weighty exemplum with toga virilis and official sign of senatorial rank, “King of the Senate,” enshrined by Renaissance antiquarians in Rome’s Capitoline Museum (see List of Figs.: 1, 2).4 Just as Cicero sublimely torments, challenges, and inspires third-year Latin students, this portrait and the Man it represents—a classic tragic hero caught between Republic and Empire—cast a mighty long shadow across the historical stage of the Ancient World, the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque, the Enlightenment and Modern Periods, which we might heed today as example, well beyond his current (strangely) undervalued (limbo) status as a dramatis persona—for which an interdisciplinary approach to his philosophical, legal, oratorical, political and epistolary writings and artistic representations, is called for more than ever, in the context of Roman society during the first century b.c., a dramatic turning point.5 Cicero’s portraits and his eight (known) villas in the Roman Campania engaged a political, social, economic, and intellectual (ethos or ethical) rhetoric by a patron of eques origin aspiring to (and famously achieving) patrician leadership rank, which led to Cicero’s exile, rehabilitation, eventual downfall and assassination—his severed hands and head displayed (like trophy warnings) on Rome’s republican forum rostrum, from which he spoke and which he loved—a tragic stage finale “inbetween” republic and empire (Julius Caesar and the patrician party). All of this contributed to poor Cicero’s limbo, but highly influential (even formative) “afterlife,” in a Christian and even in a modern world.6 4 Gisela M.A. Richter, Roman Portraits (New York, 1948); and Richard Brilliant, Roman Art from the Republic to Constantine (London, 1974), pp. 166–87. For the Greek hellenistic Scopaic gaze, a psychological tradition, which influenced the Roman portrait and Cicero’s speaking portrait, see J.J. Pollitt, Art and Experience in Ancient Greece (New York, 1972), pp. 136–94. 5 David L. Stockton, Cicero: A Political Biography (London, 1971); Frank R. Cowell, Cicero and the Roman Republic (Baltimore, 1973); Elizabeth Rawson, Cicero: A Portrait (London, 1975); Anthony Everitt, Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician (New York, 2003); and John C. Rolfe, Cicero and His Influence (New York, 1963). 6 Plutarch, “Cicero (106–43 b.c.),” The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, The Dryden Translation, in “The Great Books” (Chicago, 1952), pp. 704–23. For Cicero’s villas as a “portrait” of the patrician patron: Otto E. Schmidt, Ciceros Villen (Leipzig, 1899); and John H. D’Arms, Romans on the Bay of Naples: A Social and Cultural Study of the Villas and Their Owners from 150 b.c. to a.d. 400 (Cambridge, MA, 1970).



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Portraits forged powerful rival personalities in this arena, a cauldron of Roman military politics, Mediterranean empire in formation, torn asunder, during the mid-first century: economic, civic, royal, familial, class identities and ideologies in battle.7 Taking center stage, Julius Caesar (see List of Figs.: 3), savior or traitor to the Republic, leader of the “popular” party, who Cicero cast as “that creature who covets the entire universe,” advanced in “Attic” (severe style) bust portrait, fitting the sparse prose of his Gallic Commentarii, embodiment of rhetorical theory, in debate and contest.8 Stage left, Cicero’s republican orator portrait captured what Cicero called in De oratore (book 3) “the action that makes the body talk”—a mute discourse that reinforces and dramatizes the orator’s wellchosen, composed and delivered words. Here is a representation in the intermediate “Rhodian” style of dignity and refinement, following Pericles’ counsel of Athenian equipose of Ionian cultural refinement and Attic reserve in the famous First Funeral Oration of the Peloponnesian Wars, that is appropriate to the dignified “ornate” style of Cicero’s De oratore and his other philosophical, legal, oratorical, and epistolary works, as Roman “speaker” for the aristocratic senatorial class, eques ascender (novus homo) who was not always comfortably accepted by noble optimates.9 Stage right, Pompey enters (see List of Figs.: 4), the “new Alexander” (to whom Cicero tragically allied himself in this epic struggle between titans of Republic and Empire, aristocratic and popular parties) with Herculean leonine hair and Apollonian “sun” face, an Hellenic translation into Roman politics (that parallels Cicero’s stated philosophical goals, to “transcribe” and comment upon, to adapt Greek philosophy to Roman history and society, to “Latinize” Greek thought), in the context of Pompey’s “dictatorship of the seas” against Anatolian King Mithridates VI of Pontus (67–62 b.c.) through the First Triumvirate (of Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus) and Civil War of the 60s through 40s b.c.10 Caesar’s assassination in front of Pompey’s statue in the Senate tells us a great deal about the  7 Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. A. Shapiro (Ann Arbor, 1990).  8 Plutarch, “Caesar (100–44 b.c.),” pp. 577–604; Suetonius, “Julius Caesar (afterwards deified),” The Twelve Caesars, trans. R. Graves (New York, 1979), pp. 13–53; Zanker, The Power of Images, pp. 8–11. On Caesar, see Cicero, Letters to Atticus, 4 vols, trans. E.O. Winstedt, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1922), vol. 1 (68–50 b.c.), book 8, p. 13; and the three modes of rhetoric (Attic, Rhodian, Asiatic) in Cicero, De oratore, 2 vols, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1958), vol. 2, book 3.  9 Thucidydes, The Peloponnesian Wars, trans. B. Jowett (New York, 1963), book 2, 34–45; Plutarch, “Pericles,” pp. 121–41; Cicero, De oratore 3, p. 179. 10 Plutarch, “Pompey (106–48 b.c.),” pp. 499–538; Zanker, The Power of Images, pp. 8–11.

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framing role of portraiture and architecture in this “battle of images,” augurial presences, rival patronage and power. Plutarch’s account in his “Life of Julius Caesar” of the assassins invoking Pompey’s statue as they “did the deed” speaks to this earthshaking “Shakespearean moment.”11 The “third mode” of rhetorical representation, with “Attic” (severe) and “Rhodian” (intermediate), learned from Cicero’s early education in philosophy and rhetoric in Athens and Rhodes (79–77 b.c.), comprised the “Asiatic” style of Marc Antony as Dionysus in the East, against the republican forces, followed by alliance with Cleopatra and rich cultic Egypt against Octavian and his “Augustan” consolidation of Roman Mediter­ ranean dominion.12 Styles of power and person constructed each other with claimed rival histories and identities. Cicero’s senatorial portrait (see List of Figs.: 1) reformed and refocused the “Demosthenes” full-length civic portrait of the famous Greek orator politician (see List of Figs.: 5), emulated by Cicero, and known for his “forceful” rhetorical style, in heroic (nude, bare-chested) contrapposto beneath a toga with “this worldly” (downward) gaze and philosopher’s bearded face together with learned scroll box.13 Such an embodiment of the “active life” of the Greek city-state was “Romanized” in the bust portrait for civic buildings and fora or private family house atriums and garden colonnades of the Empire, again a translation (in Cicero’s words) of “Greek philosophy” to “real” models of “Roman history and social morality:” a civic ethos of Plato’s “shadowy [ideal] commonwealth” made concrete in Rome’s late Republic (in crisis and in need of such exempla).14 In turn, Cicero’s portraits dramatically reform the Roman senatorial portrait (see List of Figs.: 1, 6), termed by Richard Brilliant the “veristic” portrait, with its celebration of old age, wisdom, and life’s experience. Time is etched deeply into their patrician faces, which Cicero animates in space and time with the turn of the head and (just) speaking mouth, a balance of Greek “idealism” and Roman “realism”—again exemplary of Cicero’s intellectual role, as conveyer and commentator on Greek culture for Roman society—philosophy to politics (otium to negotium).15

11 Plutarch, “Julius Caesar,” p. 602. 12 Plutarch, “Antony (83?-30 b.c.),” pp. 748–79; Zanker, The Power of Images, pp. 33–77. 13 Plutarch, “Demosthenes (385?-322 b.c.),” pp. 691–704; Plutarch, “Demosthenes and Cicero Compared,” pp. 724–25; Cicero, De oratore 3, p. 23; Pollitt, Art and Experience, pp. 183–87. 14 Brilliant, Roman Art, pp. 166–87. 15 Brilliant, Roman Art, pp. 7–8, pp. 166–87.



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One perceives shades of Cicero’s De senectute—of “old men who study philosophy” at the “helms of state” (not “young men of passion” who make war while pursuing the things of this world).16 Whether Roman senatorial (patrician) portraits (see List of Figs.: 6) of the period of Sulla’s dictatorship in the 80s b.c., or (as more recently proposed by Paul Zanker) Augustan mythic “revivals” of “ancient” Roman virtus (“manliness” as “virtue”) after the 20s b.c. (Suetonius later termed this the “restoration” of the Republic by the Emperor), is exemplified by the Greek historian Polybius’ classic account (in The Histories, book 7, 53–54) of a Roman funeral (reserved by law to rank and ritual site, according to Cicero’s De legibus). Authorized public speeches given by “resembling” family descendants (see List of Figs.: 7), bound the allied communities of Roman patrician families (including their household atriums where clients waited) within the walls to those buried outside and beyond the “forums” (forecourts) of prominent roadside tombs on the way into the Campania. The commemoration of “ancient” Roman family lineage through ancestral worship (polis to necropolis) was not only preserved and observed, but state sponsored, reenacted and recreated, a spiritual and temporal community—a kind of societal theatre on Plato’s theory of the immortality of the soul and reincarnation of ideal forms from the Phaedrus (but taking on new family civic bodies).17 Cicero’s bust portrait made this mobile (town and country) “speaking portrait” tradition immanent to the portrait itself—an active civic and ancestral re-embodiment. I believe that the familial dimension has not been emphasized enough and will therefore turn now to Cicero’s villas as “architectural portraits” on the landscape, status makers—a monumental form of representation and personal investment, as well as a context for agricultural and literary production.18 From the imaginary and/or real settings of Cicero’s philosophical-political theory and his letters to friends, we know of eight suburban and country villas (see List of Figs.: 8) owned by Cicero (these “jewels of Italy,” he called them) that connected Rome 16 Cicero, De senectute, trans. W. Falmer, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1971), pp. 15–23. Stoic virtue and rural country life—the portrait and the Roman farm to Greek luxury villa—forever remained ideals of Roman civic patrician life in Cicero and other contemporaries of the late Republic and Empire, embodied by Cato the Elder, see Plutarch, “Marcus Cato (234–149 b.c.),” pp. 276–90. 17 Zanker, The Power of Images, pp. 162–66; Cicero, De Legibus, trans. C.W. Keyes (London, 1928), book 2, pp. 401–05, pp. 439–47; and Polybius on funerals, quoted in Brilliant, Roman Art, p. 7. 18 See above, note 6: Schmidt, Ciceros Villen.

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along the Via Appia to the Campania and Bay of Naples, “Crater of Luxury” (Crater Delicatus) in Magna Graecia, scenic natural theatre of Greek culture on the peninsula.19 While Livy might emphasize Rome’s capture and triumphal return with sumptuous spolia (works of art, statues, paintings, cameos, gems, gold and silver) from Greek Syracuse in 212 b.c. as the beginning of the dazzling “seduction” of rustic Roman farmers’ eyes by the luxuria of things Greek, Rome’s conquest and settlement of Central Italy to the north and Magna Graecia and Neapolis to the south during the third and second centuries b.c., institutionalized the imperial social dynamic of Roman “rustic virtue,” Etruscan “occult mystery,” and Greek “philosophical luxury” cultures, that spread into the Mediterranean world. This was soon to be Rome’s mare nostrum, during the catalytic Punic Wars of “East” versus “West.”20 John D’Arms’ classic study of Roman villas on the Bay of Naples, sets out the Senatorial “land reforms” and Roman aristocratic consolidation of immense landed estates, slave-labor latifundiae of the Campania, the focus of revolt by Spartacus in 73. This milieu was allegorized by Virgil in his Georgics and Eclogues as a bee-buzzing, honey-dipping Augustan “Golden Age” myth, dependent Rome’s immediate “bread basket” with southern Italy, Sicily, Spain and Egypt, spreading across the Mediterranean and serving as the social-economic base of Rome’s patrician state interests and political use of Greek culture.21 Neapolis became the peninsular center of Stoic, Epicurean, and Peripatetic (Old and New Academy Schools) of thought and education during a period characterized by the institutionalizing and systematizing of opposing schools of Greek philosophia. These featured in Cicero’s many dialogues with Roman interlocutors—his brother Quintus and friends Atticus and Cato (personification of Stoic virtue), Varro and Lucullus, the rich Epicurean “Xerxes togatus” and ancient Roman exempla of virtue, such as Scipio Africanus in his rustic fortress sea villa garden at Liternum (Cumae) on the strategic Campanian coast of the early second century, one of the first Roman villas in the region. Here “Scipio (in exile at the end of his military-political career) was never less idle than when at leisure (in otium) and never in 19 D’Arms, Romans on the Bay of Naples, preface and chap. 1. 20 Livy, The War with Hannibal, trans. A. De Sélincourt, (Harmondsworth, 1965), book 25, 29, p. 335. 21 D’Arms, Romans on the Bay of Naples, chap. 2; Zanker, The Power of Images, pp. 179– 92, pp. 297–333; and Geoffrey Rickman, “The Creation of Mare Nostrum: 300 bc–500 ad,” in The Mediterranean in History, ed. D. Abulafia, exhib. cat., The J. Paul Getty Museum (London, 2003), pp. 127–53.



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more company than when alone (in solitudo)”).22 And the Roman Campa­ nian villa “framed” this Greek culture (see List of Figs.: 9, 10), presenting land and sea ownership, politics, dialogue, scholarly social gatherings, education in “the grove,” “the Academy” outside Athens, i.e. a gymnasium model that is also exemplified by the modern American “campus.”23 D’Arms states that the Roman suburban and country villa, as ancestral landed estate, healthful seasonal pleasure retreat, garden grove, working farm, maritime villa, seaside resort, viewing platform, locus amoenus (“amenable place”), and belvedere became the hallmark (a connecting center) of claimed Greek culture and Mediterranean empire.24 Cicero’s suburban and country agricultural and pleasure villae (see List of Figs.: 8)—two inland in the cool summer, autumn breeze hills of his native Arpinum and his beloved suburban Tusculum, just ten miles outside Rome, in the Alban Hills, a quick weekend or feastday exit from the Senate floor and Forum; and six along the coastline (another villa “necklace”) from Antium and Astura to Formiae, and Cumae, Puteoli, and Pompeii on the scenic Bay of Naples, where “Roman toga was shed for Greek chlamys” (Roman propriety for Greek sensuality)—served as Roman cultural extensions and transfigurations in the Campania landscape to reconstruct and monumentalize (in its own image) Greek hellenistic urban and country life. This constituted a contrast between the world of negotium and otium, business and politics in the city and pleasure, contemplative ease, philosophical-literary pursuits in Nature, in the sacred secluded grove, garden colonnade, the framed landscape vista views—seignorial, authorial panoramas over land and sea.25 22 Plutarch, “Lucullus (110?-56 b.c.),” pp. 400–20; Plutarch, “Cato the Younger (95–46 b.c.),” pp. 620–48; Cicero, De re publica, trans. C.W. Keyes (London, 1928), pp. 2–12; Cicero, De officiis, trans. W. Miller, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1968), book 3, pp. 271–73. 23 Paul Venable Turner, Campus: An American Planning Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1984), pp. 3–15, pp. 76–87; and James S. Ackerman, The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses, The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1985, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Bollingen Series, XXXV, 34 (Princeton, 1990). 24 D’Arms, Romans on the Bay of Naples, chap. 3; A.R. Littlewood, “Ancient Literary Evidence for the Pleasure Gardens of Roman Country Villas,” in Ancient Roman Villa Gardens, ed. E.B. MacDougall, Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture X (Washington, DC, 1987), pp. 7–30; Ackerman, The Villa, pp. 35–61; and Rickman, “The Creation of Mare Nostrum,” pp. 133–36. 25 Vitruvius, De Architectura libri decem (of c.20 b.c.), Ten Books on Architecture, trans. I.D. Rowland with commentary and illustrations by T.N. Howe (New York, 1999), book 7, pp. 81–82; cf. Richard Bentmann and Michael Müller, The Villa as Hegemonic Architecture, foreword by Otto Karl Werckmeister, trans. T. Spence and D. Craven (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1992).

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At Cicero’s Arpinum, a complex of family houses, altars, tombs, and rituals mattered. Here, Cicero could claim an “ancient” family prominence in the district, the Sabine Hills, even though he was a well-connected equites, novus homo.26 De legibus, Cicero’s dialogue on the laws of the republic, written after De re publica, early in his career, after exile in 57 b.c. (concerning what had taken place in 52 b.c.), is set in Arpinum grove beneath an ancient oak, named “Marius,” a kind of ancestral presence, pillar of Nature and family, in a sacred landscape. Here we have a rustic “origin” of urban temple columns (anticipating Roman wall paintings of Virgilian sacral-idyllic landscapes), place and fountainhead source of Virtue, in Cicero’s view, whole-heartedly adopting, while criticizing as too severe and uncompromising, many Stoic views of “Nature as font of all Wisdom and Virtue, Mother of us all.”27 “To live in harmony with Nature,” Cicero presented as an ideal in De finibus, which would become a familiar Renaissance humanist to Romantic call.28 When one reads the dialogues, not just Cicero’s familiar letters, as an art historian, one’s view of the villa as locus amoenus (“amenable place”) is deepened and transformed; this is not just a place of pleasure and quiet contemplation, but an ontological “ground” of Roman virtus (“manliness”) in and from Natura (always a “feminine” source), set upon Cicero’s Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic foundations.29 In a famous passage that opens De legibus, Cicero sets an extraordinary (ancestral) stage for the discussion of “natural law.” Quintus responds to Atticus’ invocation to dialogue in “the family grove:” “That oak lives indeed, my dear Atticus, and will live forever; for it was planted by the imagination. No tree nourished by a farmer’s care can be so long-lived as one planted by a poet’s verses.”30 The pastoral poet triumphs even over the farmer, anticipating Horatian-Virgilian “odes of ancient tradition.”31 26 Ed. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Patronage in Ancient Society (London, 1989); and Wilhelmina F. Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii: Herculaneum and the Villas Destroyed by Vesuvius (New Rochelle, 1993). 27 Cicero, De legibus 1; and Zanker, The Power of Images, pp. 285–91. 28 Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1951), books 1–3; Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600 (Baltimore, 1989); Anthony Grafton, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1986); Brian Vickers, In Defense of Rhetoric (Oxford, 1988); and Robert Proctor, Education’s Great Amnesia: Reconsidering the Humanities from Petrarch to Freud with Curriculum for Today’s Students, (Bloomington, 1988). 29 David R. Coffin, The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome (Princeton, 1979), pp. 9–22. 30 Cicero, De legibus 1, p. 299. 31 Zanker, The Power of Images, pp. 167–92. For shades of Ciceronian to Rousseauean, rustic, pristine tradition of the natural “Tree of Liberty” (“l’arbre de la République”) in the



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Like all Roman villas, Cicero’s Arpinum took advantage of its natural setting, with terraced hillside wooded garden above, and flat formal garden spreading out below on the plain, facing south, the sun and prevailing winds, a place of health and ancestral refoundation in the Patria, where, as Cicero says, “we walked in the colonnaded garden (ambulatio) and sat down to talk” (often beneath exempla bust portraits).32 Tusculum, Cicero’s favored “villa suburbana,” had a more elaborate program, built again on a hillside for the views of Rome and Latium, seat of power, cooling breezes, varied topography and horticulture, with a “Lyceum” (library) in the garden above, leading down to an “Academy” covered garden colonnade for dialogue gatherings. This was the site of the famous Tusculan Disputations, a later work of about 45 b.c., during the most fruitful period of Cicero’s literary production of 46–44, while in exile. Like ancient Scipio, with whom he identified, Cicero was living (and hiding) in his villas (and library), pining for the Republic and Senate, while fearing the ascent of Caesar as dictator. Cicero finally sided with the republican assassins after the fact and went down with Pompey’s party.33 Cicero’s patronage and language of description, his ekphrasis of Tusculum, recreates nostalgically a “memory theatre” of early education, a history, where “we went down to the Academy” outside Athens, a topographical transplantation to Roman Latium, where (in De finibus 5), “I am reminded of Plato, the first philosopher, so we are told, who made a practice of holding discussions in this place; and indeed the garden close at hand not only recalls his memory but seems to bring the actual man before my eyes.”34 In this “memorial” grove, poignantly, considering Socrates’ (“that man of the universe who founded philosophy”) fateful ending, Cicero laments his Tusculum as place of “last service” to the Republic, writing and educating youth in a school of philosophy and oratory, the greatest of virtues, for Roman civic

American and French Revolutions, and beyond, see: Richard V. Pierard and Robert D. Linder, Civil Religion & the Presidency, (Grand Rapids, 1988), pp. 32–48; and Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1988), “From the Maypole to the Tree,” pp. 250–61. 32 Cicero, De legibus 1, p. 311. 33 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, ed. E. Capps et al., Loeb Classical Library (London, 1927), book 2, pp. 154–55. 34 Cicero, De finibus 5, p. 391; cf. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 3 vols, trans. H. Butler, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1920–22), books 1–8; Stanley Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome: From the Elder Cato to the Younger Pliny (Berkeley, 1977); Frances E. Yates, The Art of Memory (London, 1992); and Jonathan D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (London, 1985).

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life. This is the “active life” in a dying Republic.35 The villa could be a place of melancholic exile, of last resort and refuge, perhaps analogous to the modern campus. Exempla abounded. Cicero’s letters to Atticus and other familiares, give praise for “the statues you have obtained for me [that] have landed at Gaieta [from Greece] … many thanks for the trouble you’ve taken in getting them, [and] so cheaply too.” “Buy anything else you think suitable for my Tusculan villa, if it is no trouble to you. It is the only place I find restful after a hard day’s work,” where many Greek statues adorn “my Academy.”36 A thrifty “panhellenic” environs, Academica springs to life at Tusculum and Astura, placing Cicero again in the Platonic and Aristotelian “Academy” of the suburban garden and gymnasium as a place of dialectic, surrounded by Greek colonnades, works of art, and Roman copies, a veritable industry, leading once more to “our grove” in the American campus, a distinct planning and curricular tradition.37 From the hills of Arpinum and Tusculum to the shores of Cumae, Puteoli, and Pompeii, Cicero’s villae maritimae embraced the Mediter­ ranean kingdom in framed pictorial window views of enclosing volcanic mountains above and expansive seashores below. As Paul Zanker said of the Roman amphitheatre, Fikret Yegül of the Roman Bath, and Pierre Du Prey concerning the Roman villa, these were “scenic” social institutions, fora, public and private, in which “to be seen and to see,” thus “to be” in the city and upon the plain, mountain and sea, monumental architectural “identities” in an era of republican crisis and imperial fashioning (profound changes in patronage systems).38 As John D’Arms has stated, “[Elite patrons] were drawn to Campania by matters of real consequence, not simply by desire for recreation.”39 At the entrance to the Bay of Naples, which Strabo and Statius called “a single city” of villas, Misenum was the base of the Roman fleet in the western Mediterranean. Nearby Puteoli was 35 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1. Poignantly, and bitterly, Cicero laments: “Roman patricians are more concerned with their fish ponds than with the state of Rome.” The villa became a site, a portrait, of political critique: Cicero, De oratore 2.3, pp. 291–303; Cicero, De officiis 2, pp. 195–97; Cicero, De legibus 2, pp. 365–71. 36 Cicero, Letters to Atticus 1, pp. 13–17; and Cicero, The Letters to His Friends, 2 vols, trans. W.G. Williams (London, 1927–28), passim. 37 Cicero, Academica, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1951), books 1–2, pp. 409–651; and Turner, Campus (cf. above, note 23). 38 Zanker, The Power of Images, pp. 147–56; Fikret Yegül, Bathing in the Roman World (Cambridge, UK/New York, 2010); and Pierre de la Ruffinère du Prey, The Villas of Pliny from Antiquity to Posterity (Chicago, 1994). 39 D’Arms, Romans on the Bay of Naples, p. 115.



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the port of entry for the vital grain trade (annona) to feed fragile Rome from Alexandria and Egypt.40 With the climate and volcanic hot springs and baths, always alluring, elite patrons needed the Bay of Naples and southern Italy as political and military support. Julius Caesar had a maritime villa at Baiae, known for its luxury villas and spas. Pompey bought and built villae maritimae at Cumae, Formiae, and Pompeii, close to Cicero (or he to him). Likewise, Lucullus had villas at Tusculum and the Bay of Naples, where Cicero often borrowed “books” from his Epicurean friend and those of Varro, cultured author of Rerum rusticarum on Roman agricultural life (with Columella and Palladius later).41 With peregrinatio (seasonal pilgrimage from Rome to the Bay of Luxury, Rome’s playground and “first resort”), amoenitas blended with salutatio, friendship (amicitia) with political affiliation.42 “More perhaps for Cicero than for other Roman grandees, a major portion of social life in Campania consisted of strengthening contacts with homines municipales.”43 In times of civil war and party polarization and faction, close ties were not a luxury; they were a necessity of life and death. Modern German architectural historian Karl Swoboda traced the Greek hellenistic Portikusvilla (portico villa) as a royal tradition of Mediterranean scenic Herrschaftarchitektur (seignorial architecture) from the allied and conquered Aegean princely kingdoms to Roman shores, during the second and first centuries b.c.44 Raised on a platform with open oculus (eye, exedra) and large flanking windows, a public façade (face), the Villa of the Mysteries above Pompeii (see List of Figs.: 9) scanned the landscape, hillside vineyard and sea views, with entrance atrium and peristyle courtyard to frame the garden within.45 The hellenistic Roman villa opened outward to the landscape, rather than closing inward behind urban “atrium house” walls. From this standpoint, according to Cicero’s

40 Rickman, “The Creation of Mare Nostrum,” pp. 135–49. 41 Marcus Terentius Varro, Rerum rusticarum, trans. W. Hooper, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1934); Lucius Junius Meratus Columella, Rei rusticae (On Agriculture), Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1948). 42 Cicero, De amicitia, trans. W.A. Falconer, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1971); William W. Fowler, Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero (New York, 1909); and portraiture influenced by Cicero’s “Amicitia” (i.e., absence and presence), see Elizabeth Cropper, Nicolas Poussin: Friendship and the Love of Painting (Princeton, 1996). 43 D’Arms, Romans on the Bay of Naples, pp. 48–52. 44 Karl Swoboda, Römische und Romanische Paläste: Eine architekturgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Vienna, 1924). See above, notes 23, 25, 29. 45 Amedeo Maiuri, La Villa dei Misteri (Rome, 1931); and Elaine K. Gazda, The Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii: Ancient Ritual, Modern Muse (Ann Arbor, 2000).

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beautiful De natura deorum, the Gods created Man upright “so that he can survey the heavens and earth, all that is around him;” “Man has a divine intellect to understand the laws of the world and submit to them;” Nature is created as a “spectacle for Man,” the most perfect creation of Nature; and “the Gods take the form of Man, not Man the form of the Gods.”46 Thus, Natura (always feminine) was to be controlled and viewed (that is theorized) like a painting, an object of Art, by Man. As Creator, (like God “the Architect”), Man was privileged “maker and spectator of Nature” (gazing upon Her Body), using His divine reason and scientia, in relation to (her) sensual experience, source of knowledge. With (his) framed rational field of vision and imperial culture of fructus et otium, he contemplated (her craft) manual slave labor-freedman agricultural production and (his intellectual) leisure class meditation, at ease like the Gods themselves (for otium is “godlike” after all, His). Cicero’s letters and dialogues helped to shape t/his Römische Herrschaftsarchitektur (a Roman “theatre” upon the Mediterranean world, mare nostrum, her land and sea, see List of Figs.: 10). This is a new “architectural” building-type and forum, literary genre of ekphrasis (Greek “word pictures” with moral expressive, cathartic meanings), reinventing this “stage of proscenium knowledge,” outside and in, that profoundly influenced other Roman writers and villa builders. In particular, we find this in Pliny the Younger and his famous Laurentinum (sea villa near Ostia), his Tuscan (inland hillside) villa, and his Lake Como villas (“Tragedy” on the hilltop and “Comedy” on the shore), the literary scenes and inspirations of the early second century a.d., as well as further ahead for the Renaissance and Baroque humanists, perhaps even to the “Grand Tour” and beyond.47 Cicero’s portraits, dialogues, and villas articulated, shaped, constructed, mediated and linked his many identities on the Forum, in the landscape of Rome and the Mediterranean world during a time of epic crisis and change, between republic and empire; a liminal story of tragic inspiration and human sacrifice, then as now, gazes into the future. Cicero refused to die—he lives forever. 46 Cicero, De natura deorum, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1951), book 1, pp. 75–101; book 2, pp. 257–259. 47 Rolfe, Cicero and His Influence; Rawson, Cicero, chap. 17. “The One Sure Immortality,” pp. 299–308; Ackerman, The Villa; Janet Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art (Princeton, 1984), pp. 61–154; John Stoye, English Travellers Abroad 1604–1667 (New Haven, 1989); Jeremy Black, Italy and the Grand Tour (New Haven, 2003); and Tracy L. Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity in Early Modern Rome: Villa Culture at Frascati in the Borghese Era (Cambridge, UK/New York, 2002).

LIST OF FIGURE LOCATIONS 1. Cicero, Bust Portrait, Capitoline Museum, Rome, c.50 b.c. 2. Gianlorenzo Bernini, Scipione Borghese Bust Portrait, Villa Borghese, Rome, 1634. 3. Julius Caesar Bust Portrait, Vatican Antiquities Museum, c.50 b.c. 4. Pompey Bust Portrait, Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, Copenhagen, c.55 b.c. 5. Demosthenes Statue, Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, Copenhagen, c.280 b.c. 6. Roman Senator Portrait, Palazzo Torlonia, Rome, c.80 b.c. 7. Barberini Togatus Statue Group, Conservators Palace, Rome, c.50 b.c. 8. Cicero Villa Map: John D’Arms, Romans on the Bay of Naples, p. 252. 9. Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii, 1st century b.c. 10.  Villa Marittima wall painting, Castellamare, National Museum, Naples, c.70 a.d.

INDEX* Abelard, Peter 18, 39, 189 Accius 53, 59 Aeneas 43, 44 Aethicus Ister (Ps. Jerome) 40–42 Alan of Lille 67, 87 Albertino Mussato da Padua 18, 19 Alcuin 176, 177 Alfarabi 148 Alfonso, King of Naples 158 Amaseus, Romulus 133, 137 Ambrose 12, 17 Anne of Bohemia 102 Apuleius 17, 144 Aretino, Leonardo 48 Aristo 155 Aristotle 59, 62, 150, 155, 194, 204, 206 Aristoxenus 155 Arnulf of Orléans 22, 29–31, 32, 36–37 ars (artes) dictaminis 125, 180 ars poetriae 180 ars (artes) predicandi 180 “artificious eloquence” 182, 191–192 Asconius Pedianus 171 Atticus 2, 171, 204, 206 Augustine 11–12, 17, 52, 59, 63, 144, 169, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 193 Aulus Gellius 6 Ausonius 12 Avianus 22, 37 Avicebron 148 Avicenna 148 Barbaro, Ermolao 144 Bartolinus de Benincasa de Canulo 167 Bartolommeo Oliari of Padua 16 Basil the Great 143 Bembo, Bernardo 151 Bembo, Pietro 14, 20, 129, 131, 137 Beraldus, Nicolaus 130–131 Bernard of Chartres 22–24 Bernard of Clairvaux (?) 18 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 197

Boccaccio 18, 34, 87 Boethius 39, 114, 119, 144, 181, 194 Borgese, Scipione 197 Bracciolini, Poggio 5, 19, 20, 48 Brunetto Latini 181 Bruni, Leonardo 5, 20, 144, 149, 183, 184, 185, 186 Caecilius 53 Caesar Augustus 23, 25 Calcidius 144 Cassiodorus 17, 18 Cato 43, 56, 163 Chaucer 65–68, 74–83, 87–88, 91–121 Christ (figure of) 118, 119 “Ciceronians,” Ciceronianism 3, 13, 123, 124, 125, 128, 130–131, 135–139, 151 Citolini, Alessandro 6 Claudius Claudianus 22, 35–36 codex laudensis 165 consuetudines 57, 59 contemplation 154 Corsi, Giovanni 145, 146 Crassus 199 Damianus da Paolo 30 Democritus 155 Demosthenes 171, 200 Dante Alighieri 67, 78, 79, 87, 91, 111, 112, 113–114, 119, 181, 182 dialectic 153–154 Dichaearchus 155 differentia, (ae) 49, 52, 55, 56, 57, 61, 62, 63 dispositiones 62 doctrina 49, 63 Doletus, Stephanus 130, 132 Donatus 166 Duns Scotus 148 eagle 91, 114, 117 education 55, 56, 144 eloquence 57, 64, 65

* Names have been listed by most customary, hence recognizable, designation, whether by first or family name, as Aulus Gellius, but Bracciolini, Poggio. In cases of a single, most common, name, this designation is given.

212

index

Emilius Rhetor 44 Ennius 53, 59, 173 Ennodius 17 Epicureans 156 Erasmus 13, 124, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 138 Eriugena, John Scottus 39, 40, 41 Everitt, Anthony 1, 163 Fabricius, Johann Albert 21–22, 37 Fazio, Bartolomeo 128–129 Fazio degli Uterti 14 figura (character) 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 105, 109, 158, 160, 165, 186 Figurenlehre 49 fortitudo 62 frugalitas 58 Fulco of Orléans 29–31, 32, 34, 36, 38 Fulvius, Marcus 11 Galbungus 44 Geoffrey of Vinsauf 163, 164, 181 geometry 54 George of Trebizond 164, 185 Gerardo Landriani 174 Gerence 59 Geri d’Arezzo 18 Germanicus Caesar 23–24 Giovanni Conversino da Ravenna 6–16 grammatica 15 grammaticus 59 Gregory (the Great, Pope) 12, 14, 15 Grillius 173, 177, 184 Guarino da Verona 10, 167, 182–185

Isidore of Seville 39 iudicum 59 Ivo of Chartres 18 Jerome 11–12, 17, 24, 146 Jesuit Order 127, 136, 137 John of Gaunt 91, 94, 95 John of Salisbury 14, 18, 23, 24, 48 Joyce, James 42 Julius Caesar 14, 27, 199, 207 Julius Victor 176 Lactantius 124 Landus, Hortensius 133–134, 137 littera 51, 52, 59 Livy 4, 17, 54, 202 Longolius, Christophorus 124, 129, 137 Lorenzo de’Medici 148–149, 150, 161 de Lorris 87, 91 Loschi, Antonio 7 Lucan 14 Lucietus 59 Lucilius 53 Lucitas 59 Lucullus 202, 203 Ludovico Carbone 183 Lupus of Ferrières 174

habitus 49, 55, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62 harmony (reconciliation of contradictions, cosmic) 73, 74, 81, 83, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 158, 161 Haskins, Charles Homer 166–167 Henry of Ghent 148 Herillus 155 Hermes Trismegistus 141 Hermetic 161 Hermogenes of Tarsus 185 Homer 59, 150 honey (bees) 149, 155, 202 Horace 180, 184 Humanism, Florentine 5

Machaut 87, 91, 94 Macrobius 15, 17, 39, 41, 66–68, 72, 73, 74–83, 86, 87, 92, 97, 103, 109, 144, 157–158, 159 Marbod of Rennes 165 Mark Antony 200 Marsiglio of Padua 182 Martianus Capella 17, 39, 41, 176 materia/substantia 52, 63 Matthew of Vendôme 181 Melanchthon, Philipp 137 de Meun 87, 91, 92, 95–96 Milton, John 126 mimesis 197 Mind 70–72 modus 49, 55, 61, 63 Monad 8, 16 Muretus, Marcus Antonus 124, 130–131, 132, 136, 138 music 54, 63, 64, 73, 87, 101, 104, 105, 110, 158 music instruments 104–105, 110, 116, 158

Iamblichus 141 intentio auctoris 25 inventum 151 in viam 50, 61

natura (nature) 57, 80, 83, 98–100, 104, 106, 107, 208 natural law 98 Neckham, Alexander 48

index213 Nepos 171 Nicholas of Cusa 148 Nicolas I (Pope) 15 Nizzolius, Marius (lexicon of) 131, 138 North/South 116, 131, 133, 180, 181 Orléans (School of) 30–32 Orpheus 63, 163 Ovid 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 79, 91, 93, 109, 184 Pacuvius 53, 173 Paecis 59 Panaetius 145–146, 155 Pannonius, Janus 183 pars, partes 49 Pauline Epistles 159 Pericles 199 Persius 124–125 persona 55, 60 Peter of Blois 18 Petrarch 2, 5, 18, 19, 66, 119, 143,162, 183 Philip the Chancellor 61–62 philosophy 151–153, 154, 156, 159 Piccolomini, Aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II) 143 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 144 Pierozzi, Antoninus (Archbishop) 143 Pietro da Moglio 6 Plato 40, 41, 59, 71, 85, 141, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147, 150, 161, 162, 200, 204, 205, 206 Pliny (the Younger) 12, 17, 124 Plotinus 141, 157 Plutarch 42, 45, 149, 170, 171, 184, 185, 198, 199, 200, 203 Poliziano, Angelo 6, 13, 20, 124, 144, 150, 187 Polybius 201 Pompey 11, 56, 170, 199, 205, 207 Pontanus, Jacobus 137–138 Porphyry 141, 157 Priscian 41, 166 Proclus 141, 147 Propertius 43 proprietas, proprietates 55, 57, 61 prosopopeia 56 Ps.-Dionysius 141, 147 Pyrrhus 155, 163 Quintilian 2, 4, 47–64, 167, 171, 172, 182, 184 Quintus Symmachus 12 Rabanus Maurus 177 Raphaelis Regius 32

Rhetorica ad Herennium 125, 164, 165–166, 167, 168–169, 175–176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 187 Richard de Fournival 48 Richard II 76 Rome, Roman world 70 Sabbadini, Remigio 48, 123 Sallust 27, 171, 172 Scaevola, Quintus Mucius 85 schema 51 Scipio Africanus (Scipio the Elder) 68–69, 70, 72, 73, 74–83, 85, 88–91, 158, 202, 205 Scipio the Younger 68, 72, 73, 74–83, 85, 88–91 Seneca(s) 1, 17, 59, 124, 125, 143, 152, 155 sermone cottidiano 132 Shakespeare 200 Sidonius 12, 17 Simonides 155 Socrates 155, 205 sonos 51, 59 Statius 22, 27, 35, 36 Stoics 156, 204 Strabo 206 Sturm, Joannes 132, 136, 137 Suetonius 17, 201 Symmachus 17 Synesius 141 Tacitus 17, 124, 125 Terence 53, 173, 176, 184 Themistocles 11 Theophrastus 150 Theseus 164 Thierry of Chartres 167, 190, 191 Thucidydes 199 Trithemius, Johannes (Abbot of Spondheim) 159 “Tullian” 125 Ulrich of Bamberg 48 usus 59 Valerius Maximus 17 Valla, Lorenzo 20, 124, 128–129, 187 varietas 161 Varro 6, 202, 207 Verres 194–195 Victorinus 172, 173, 177, 178, 187, 190, 193, 194, 196 Virgil (Vergil) 2, 7, 42–45, 59, 69, 73, 76, 78, 93, 109, 111, 119, 150, 155, 166, 172, 173, 184, 202, 204

214 Virgilius Assianus 44 Vitruvius 203 Vittorino da Feltre 10 vox, voces 59 Wibald of Corvey 48 William of Champeaux 188, 189, 190, 192

index William of Moerbeke 147 William of Orléans 22, 29–31, 32, 33, 34 Wölfflin, Heinrich 197 Zomino of Pistoia 30 Zopyrus 155 Zoroaster the Chaldaean 141