Collected Poetical Works of Francesco Petrarch

by Francesco Petrarch

  For the realms of poetry, however, there was at hand a second guide. The nature of the case demanded that there should be two leaders — one whom I might follow in the unencumbered ways of prose, and the other in the more restricted paths of poetry. It was necessary that there should be two men whom I should admire, respectively, for their eloquence and their song. This had needs be so. For — and I beg the kind indulgence of you both for speaking thus boldly — neither of you could serve both purposes; he could not rival thee in thy chosen field, whereas thou couldst not adapt thyself to his measured flow. I would not, indeed, have ventured to be the first to pass such criticism, even though I clearly perceived it to be true. It has already been passed before me — or, peradventure, it may have been quoted from another writer — by that great Annaeus Seneca of Cordova,15 who, as he himself complains, was prevented from becoming acquainted with thee, not by any lapse of years, but by the fury of civil warfare.16 He might have seen thee, but did not; withal, he was a constant admirer and worshiper both of thy works and of those of that other. Seneca, therefore, marks out the boundaries of your respective spheres, and enjoins upon each to yield to his coworker in the other field.

  But I am keeping thee in suspense too long. Dost thou ask who that other guide is? Thou wilt know the man at once, if thou art merely reminded of his name. It is Publius Vergilius Maro, a citizen of Mantua, of whom thou didst prophesy such great things. For we have read that when thou, then advanced in years, hadst admired some youthful effort of his, thou didst inquire its author’s name, and that, having seen the young man, thou didst express thy great delight. And then, drawing on thy unexhausted fount of eloquence, thou didst pronounce upon him a judgment which, though mingled with self-praise, was nevertheless both honorable and splendid for him: “Rome’s other hope and stay.”17 This sentence, which he thus heard fall from thy lips, pleased the youth to such a degree, and was so jealously treasured in his mind, that twenty years later, when thou hadst long since ended this earthly career, he inserted it word for word into his divine poem. And if it had been thy lot to see this work, thou wouldst have rejoiced that from the first blossom thou hadst made such accurate prediction of future success. Thou wouldst, moreover, have congratulated the Latin Muses, either for leaving but a doubtful superiority to the arrogant Greek Muses, or else for winning over them a decisive victory. There are defenders for both these opinions, I grant thee. And yet, if I have come to know thee from thy works — and I feel that I know thee as intimately as if I had always lived with thee — I should say that thou wouldst have been a stern defender of the latter view, and that, just as thou hadst already granted to Latium the palm in oratory,18 thou wouldst have done likewise in the case of poetry. I do not doubt, moreover, that thou wouldst have pronounced the Aeneid superior to the Iliad — an assertion which Propertius did not fear to make from the very beginning of Vergil’s labors. For when he had meditated upon the opening lines of the inspired poem, he freely gave utterance to the feelings and hopes aroused by it in these verses:

  Yield then, ye bards of Greece, ye Romans yield,

  A mightier yet than Homer takes the field.19

  Thus much concerning my second guide for Latin eloquence, thus much concerning Rome’s other hope and stay. I come back to thee now. Thou hast already heard from me my opinions on thy life and on thy genius. Art thou desirous now of learning what lot befell thy works, of knowing in what esteem they are held either by the world in general, or else by the more learned classes? There are extant, indeed, splendid volumes — volumes which I can scarcely enumerate, much less peruse with care. The fame of thy deeds and thy works is very great, and has spread far and wide. Thy name, too, has a familiar ring to all. Very few and rare, however, are those who study thee, and for various reasons: either because of the natural perversity of the times toward such studies, or because the minds of men have become dull and sluggish, or, as I think most likely, because greed has bent their minds in an entirely different direction. Wherefore, some of thy works have (unless I am mistaken) perished in this generation, and I know not whether they will ever be recovered. Oh, how great is my grief thereat; how great is the ignominy of this age; how great the loss to posterity! It was not, I suppose, sufficiently degrading to neglect our own powers, and to bequeath to future generations no fruit of our intellects; but, worse than all else, we had to destroy the fruit also of thy labor with our cruel, our unpardonable disregard. This lamentable loss has overtaken not merely thy works, but also those of many other illustrious authors. But at present I would speak of thy writings only; and the names of those whose loss is the more regrettable are the following: De republica, De re familiari, De re militari, De laude philosophiae,20 De consolatione, and the De gloria.21 Concerning the last, however, I entertain a more or less doubtful hope of its recovery, and consequently my despair is not unqualified. Unfortunately, however, even of those books that have come down to us, there are lacking large portions. It is as if we had overcome, after a great struggle, the oblivion threatened by the sloth and inactivity of ages; but, as the price of victory, we had to mourn over our leaders, not only those to be numbered among the dead, but also the maimed and the lost. We miss this loss in many of thy works, but more especially in the De oratore,22 the Academica, and the De legibus — all of which have reached us in such a fragmentary and mutilated condition that it would have been better, perhaps, had they perished altogether.

  There remains still another topic. Art thou desirous of learning the present condition of Rome and of the Roman state? of knowing the actual appearance of thy fatherland, the state of harmony among its citizens, to whom the shaping of its policies has fallen, and by whose wisdom and by whose hands the reins of government are held? Art thou wondering whether or not the Danube, and the Ganges, and the Ebro, and the Nile, and the Don are still the boundaries of our empire? and whether that man has arisen among us

  The limits of whose victories

  Are ocean, of his fame the skies,

  and who

  O’er Ind and Garamant extreme

  Shall stretch his reign,

  as thy Mantuan friend once sang?23 I feel sure that thou art most eager to hear such and similar tidings, owing to thy loyalty and the love thou didst bear the fatherland, a love remaining constant even unto death. But it is better to pass over such subjects in silence. Believe me, Cicero, if thou wert to learn of the fallen state of our country, thou wouldst weep bitter tears, be it a region of Heaven that thou inhabitest, or of Hades. Forever farewell.

  From the land of the living, on the left bank of the Rhone, in Transpadane Gaul, in the same year, on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of January (at Avignon, December 19, 1345).

  Notes on Fam., XXIV, 4, to Cicero

  12. Terence, Andria, i, 1, 41. Petrarch’s words, “ut ipse soles dicere, quod ait familiaris tuus in Andria” (Vol. III, ), are proof that he was not quoting Terence directly, but the De amicitia. In cha of the latter we read, “Quod in Andria familiaris meus dicit,” and then follows the verse in question. The speaker is of course Laelius, of whom Terence was in fact a friend. Petrarch, therefore, has either momentarily lost sight of the speaker, or, realizing full well that Laelius is Cicero’s mouth-piece, has consciously identified the two. This would, of course, make Terence a friend of Cicero; the “familiaris meus” of the De amicitia and the “familiaris tuus” of Petrarch both, therefore, become equivalent to “familiaris Ciceronis.”

  13. There is a passage in the De finibus in which Cicero especially contrasts the teachings of Epicurus with his life. It is ii, 80 and 81:

  That philosophy which you defend, and those tenets which you have learned, and approve of, destroy friendship to the very roots, even though Epicurus does extol friendship to the skies — as we must confess. “But Epicurus himself cultivated friendships,” you will say. And who, pray, is denying that he was a good and kindly man, full of sympathy for his fellow-beings? We are here discussing his intellect, not his life. We shall leave such f
ickleness and perversity to the Greeks, who attack with animosity all who may differ from them in their beliefs concerning truth. I must say, however, that, although he was affable in maintaining his friendships (if this be true, for I affirm nothing), yet he did not possess a keen mind. To which you will rejoin, “But he convinced many people.” . . . To me, indeed, the fact that Epicurus himself was a good man, and that there have been and are today many Epicureans, loyal in their friendships, consistent in their actions throughout life, serious of disposition and shaping their plans without regard to pleasure but rather through a sense of duty — to me these facts prove that the power of integrity is superior, and that of pleasure inferior. In truth, some persons live in such a way that their life confutes their words. And therefore, just as others are considered to speak better than they act, so these Epicureans (it seems) must be said to act better than they speak.

  Cicero mentions the inconsistency of Epicurus in ii, 96: “Listen now . . . to the dying words of Epicurus, and observe how widely his deeds and his words disagree;” and again in ii, 99: “But you will find nothing in this splendid letter of Epicurus in accord and consistent with his maxims. He refutes himself, while his theories are set at naught by his upright life.”

  As Petrarch says, Books I and II of the De finibus are crowded with favorable and adverse comments on Epicurus and his philosophy. Of the latter it will suffice to refer to i, 22, in which Cicero accuses Epicurus of being utterly wanting in logic; and to i, 26, where he denies that Epicurus can be admitted to the number of the learned.

  14. Perhaps a reminiscence of Pliny, N. H., vii, 30 extr.: “salve . . . facundiae Latiarumque litterarum parens.”

  15. Seneca, Contr., iii, praef. 8.

  16. Seneca, Contr., i, praef. 11.

  17. Aen., xii, 168. Donatus, Vita Verg., XI, 41 ( R, through pronuntiarentur only):

  The publication of the Bucolics was attended by such great success that they were frequently recited, even by actors on the stage. Cicero once heard some of the verses, and his keen judgment at once perceived that they were written in no common vein. So he ordered the eclogue to be recited from the beginning; and after listening attentively to the very end, he exclaimed, “Rome’s other hope and stay;” as if he himself had been the first hope of the Latin tongue, and Maro were to be the second. These words Maro afterward inserted in the Aeneid.

  This version does not mention Cicero’s inquiry as to the author of the verses he admired (“quaesivisses auctorem”), nor their meeting (“eumque . . . vidisses”) nor the fact that his exclamation was flattering both to himself and to Vergil (“cum propria quidem laude permixtum”). Servius’ version, however, does include these three elements, and hence he is to be considered Petrarch’s source. He writes (ad Ecl., vi, 11):

  It is said that Vergil’s reading of this eclogue (vi) was received with great favor; so much so, indeed, that when later Cytheris the courtesan (whom Vergil calls Lycoris in the last eclogue) sang it in the theater, Cicero in amazement inquired who the author of it was (“cuius esset requireret”). And when at last Cicero had seen him (“eum . . . vidisset”), he is said to have exclaimed, in praise of both himself and that other (“et ad suam et ad illius laudem”), “Rome’s other hope and stay” — a phrase which Vergil afterward applied to Ascanius, as the commentators relate.

  This version was one which would especially appeal to Petrarch; for, as P. de Nolhac justly observes (I, ), it represents Petrarch’s two literary idols as having been personally acquainted with each other.

  And, finally, in favor of the Servian origin is the fact that in Donatus the entire story appears in the interpolated version of the Vita, and it is doubtful whether Petrarch was acquainted with this longer version (Sabbadini, Rend. del R. Ist. Lomb., , ). The interpolated text of the Vita has, in fact, been traced only as far back as the beginning of the fifteenth century; the date temporarily assigned to it is 1400-20 (Sabbadini, “La ‘Vergilii Vita’ di Donato,” Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica, Vol. V, 1897, p-88).

  18. Cicero, however, is much more guarded in his statement than we would infer from the words of Petrarch; Tusc., i, 3, 5: “Then came the Lepidi, Carbo, and the Gracchi, and so many great orators after them down to our own times, that we were very little, if at all, inferior to the Greeks.”

  19. Translation, by Ch. R. Moore (), of Propertius, ii, 34b, 65, 66 (rec. Aem. Baehrens, Teubner, 1880) or ii, 34, 65, 66 (H. E. Butler, 1905).

  There is abundant proof that Petrarch was acquainted with Propertius (P. de Nolhac, I, p-72). Still, from the few indirect references to this author, one is inclined to believe that Petrarch here (as elsewhere) is drawing upon the Life by Donatus for biographical information on Vergil. And in fact the Propertian couplet seems to derive from Donatus, Vita Verg., XII, 45 (R), the “operis fundamenta” and “asseverare non timuit” of Petrarch (Vol. III, ), corresponding, respectively, to the “Aeneidos vixdum coeptae” and “non dubitaverit sic praedicare” of Donatus. In commenting upon this famous distich, H. Nettleship says (“Vergil,” in Classical Writers [New York, 1880], ): “Propertius and Ovid saw at once what was in Vergil. Of the Aeneid Propertius said ‘something greater than the Iliad is coming to the birth.’” (Cf. Ancient Lives of Vergil [Oxford, 1879], .) Comparetti, however, has chosen a different course in his Vergil in the Middle Ages (tr. by Benecke, 1895). On , after stating that the Romans confessed Vergil’s inferiority to Homer, he continues in a footnote:

  The exaggerations of a few enthusiasts must not be reckoned at more than their real value. How great a part of the “Nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade” of Propertius was due to his friendship with Vergil becomes clear when we compare with it the praises he lavishes on the Thebaid of another friend, Ponticus.

  20. In a large tome containing Cicero’s writings, and supposed to have belonged to Petrarch, there occurred the rubric “de laude ac defensione philosophiae, introducens Lucullum loquentem ad Hortensium, liber primus incipit.” Petrarch, misled by this heading, had been of the opinion that the work following was the Hortensius. As a matter of fact, it was book ii of the Academica Priora, which has the separate subtitle “Lucullus” (P. de Nolhac, I, p, 244 ff.). He labored under this delusion for some time, until in reading St. Augustine he met citations from the real Hortensius, which of course he could not verify in his supposed Hortensius. Finally he received from Marco Barbato da Sulmona, whom he had met in 1341 at Naples, a manuscript containing a work inscribed Academica. Investigation quickly showed him that this work and his supposed Hortensius were one and the same. But he was unwilling to relinquish the idol he had worshiped so long. Doubts still remained. On his visit to Naples in 1343, however, he identified once and for all the work in his own manuscript; and on his return he entered the following note abreast of the heading: “This title, though common, is nevertheless a false one. This is not the De laude philosophiae, but the last two of the four books of the Academica.” The present letter to Cicero was written in 1345, two years after the correction of his error; hence Petrarch rightly places the De laude philosophiae (sive Hortensius) in the catalogue of lost books.

  The closing statement of Petrarch’s postilla needs a few words of explanation. The fragment which he possessed constituted book ii of the Ac. priora. Petrarch supposed that he had not one, but two books. The deception was due to an arbitrary division in his manuscript at the words “Hortensius autem vehementer” (Ac. pr., ii, 63). Still another error existed. Petrarch thought that his fragment was part of the second edition of the Academica in four books — the Posteriora dedicated to Varro, of whose existence he had learned from the letters to Atticus (cf. xiii, 13) which he had discovered earlier in the same year.

  21. Every biography relates how Petrarch gave in loan to his teacher, Convennole (or Convenevole) da Prato, a manuscript containing the De gloria of Cicero; and how the schoolmaster, in an hour of extreme need, pawned the volume, which could never again be found in spite of Petrarch’s constant search for it. The story as we have i
t is told by Petrarch himself, in a letter written in 1374, the very last year of his life (Sen., xvi, 1).

  Modern scholarship has cast doubts upon the tale. P. de Nolhac discusses the question thoroughly in Vol. I, p-68. His explanation of the evolution of the idea which possessed Petrarch is the following.

  In his youth Petrarch must have read in the lost volume some beautiful passages on glory — passages which remained more or less firmly fixed in his mind. In later years, when his scholarship broadened, he learned of a separate work by Cicero on the subject of glory; and, questioning his memory, the remembrance of those passages became so clear and distinct that he began to imagine he had really possessed the De gloria in the volume unfortunately loaned to his schoolmaster. The hope arose that he might some day find the volume again. It was while in this stage that he wrote the present letter (1345), saying that he entertained a more or less doubtful hope of its recovery and that his despair was not unqualified. His regret increased with the years. By dreaming of his hoped-for recovery of the manuscript, by discussing it with his friends year after year, Petrarch finally, as so often results from the frequent repetition of a story, persuaded himself that he had at one time been the actual possessor of the De gloria. Hence it was that, writing thirty years later, in 1374, when his mind was losing its firm grip on facts, and when he was tottering on the brink of the grave, the unfulfilled hope for a thing long desired turned into a regret for a thing actually lost (op. cit., ).

  22. Petrarch was mistaken in placing the De oratore among the fragmentary works. In the large tome already referred to, there followed hard upon the heels of the De oratore what is now known as the Orator. The latter did not, however, bear a separate title, and consequently Petrarch considered it as a fourth book to the De oratore. Moreover, this pseudo-fourth book had a large lacuna, for it began only with the words “(aliquan) toque robustius” (sec. 91); and the lacuna being clearly indicated, Petrarch unavoidably thought the De oratore incomplete (P. de Nolhac, I, p-30, 242). To be correct he should have written Orator instead of De oratore. But even this would scarcely have mended matters; for, not being aware of the separate existence of these two works, Petrarch was wont to cite passages from one and the other, employing the indiscriminate title Orator (ibid., p, 254).