Collected Poetical Works of Francesco Petrarch

by Francesco Petrarch

  Petrarch’s words, “tuorum adolescentium temeritas in te refunditur” (Vol. III, ), are directly quoted from the pseudo-Plutarch’s “adolescentium suorum temeritas in Quintilianum refunditur.” Cf. also Petrarch, De rem., I, 81.

  72. Fracassetti omits to translate this thought, though it seems to result clearly from Petrarch’s words (Vol. III, ): “Apud superos . . . ubi primum mihi coeptus es nosci, eoque ipso tempore.” In the Latin edition Fracassetti notes that in one of the codices in the Laurentian Library, Lapo di Castiglionchio entered the following comment on these words: “You speak truly, for it was I who presented you with that work while you were on your way to Rome — a work which, as you said, you had never seen before.” The omission mentioned above seems, however, to have been a mere slip. For elsewhere, in speaking of the same occurrence, Fracassetti says (Vol. 2, ): “a lui [Petrarca] Lapo fece la prima volta conoscere, e donó le Istituzioni di Quintiliano, per lo acquisto delle quali egli nel giorno stesso scrisse una lettera a Quintiliano medesimo.”

  VI. TO TITUS LIVY

  (Fam., XXIV, 8)

  I should wish (if it were permitted from on high) either that I had been born in thine age or thou in ours; in the latter case our age itself, and in the former I personally should have been the better for it. I should surely have been one of those pilgrims who visited thee. For the sake of seeing thee I should have gone not merely to Rome, but indeed, from either Gaul or Spain I should have found my way to thee as far as India.73 As it is, I must fain be content with seeing thee as reflected in thy works — not thy whole self, alas, but that portion of thee which has not yet perished, notwithstanding the sloth of our age. We know that thou didst write one hundred and forty-two books on Roman affairs. With what fervor, with what unflagging zeal must thou have labored; and of that entire number there are now extant scarcely thirty.74

  Oh, what a wretched custom is this of wilfully deceiving ourselves! I have said “thirty,” because it is common for all to say so. I find, however, that even from these few there is one lacking. They are twenty-nine in all, constituting three decades, the first, the third, and the fourth, the last of which has not the full number of books.75 It is over these small remains that I toil whenever I wish to forget these regions, these times, and these customs. Often I am filled with bitter indignation against the morals of today, when men value nothing except gold and silver, and desire nothing except sensual, physical pleasures. If these are to be considered the goal of mankind, then not only the dumb beasts of the field, but even insensible and inert matter has a richer, a higher goal than that proposed to itself by thinking man. But of this elsewhere.

  It is now fitter that I should render thee thanks, for many reasons indeed, but for this in especial: that thou didst so frequently cause me to forget the present evils, and transfer me to happier times. As I read, I seem to be living in the midst of the Cornellii Scipiones Africani, of Laelius, Fabius Maximus, Metellus, Brutus and Decius, of Cato, Regulus, Cursor, Torquatus, Valerius Corvinus, Salinator, of Claudius, Marcellus, Nero, Aemilius, of Fulvius, Flaminius, Attilius, Quintius, Curius, Fabricius, and Camillus. It is with these men that I live at such times and not with the thievish company of today among whom I was born under an evil star. And Oh, if it were my happy lot to possess thee entire, from what other great names would I not seek solace for my wretched existence, and forgetfulness of this wicked age! Since I cannot find all these in what I now possess of thy work, I read of them here and there in other authors, and especially in that book where thou art to be found in thy entirety, but so briefly epitomized that, although nothing is lacking as far as the number of books is concerned, everything is lacking as regards the value of the contents themselves.76

  Pray greet in my behalf thy predecessors Polybius and Quintus Claudius and Valerius Antias, and all those whose glory thine own greater light has dimmed; and of the later historians, give greeting to Pliny the Younger, of Verona, a neighbor of thine, and also to thy former rival Crispus Sallustius. Tell them that their ceaseless nightly vigils have been of no more avail, have had no happier lot, than thine.

  Farewell forever, thou matchless historian!

  Written in the land of the living, in that part of Italy and in that city in which I am now living and where thou wert once born and buried, in the vestibule of the Temple of Justina Virgo, and in view of thy very tombstone;77 on the twenty-second of February, in the thirteen hundred and fiftieth year78 from the birth of Him whom thou wouldst have seen, or of whose birth thou couldst have heard, hadst thou lived a little longer.

  Notes on Fam., XXIV, 8, to T. Livy

  73. Petrarch briefly relates the same story in Rer. mem., II, 2, “De Ingenio.” He says, :

  In what rank, indeed, will Titus Livy be placed, whose great reputation for eloquence drew illustrious and admiring men from the remotest corners of the globe all the way to Rome? This is related by Pliny, and in later years it was repeated by St. Jerome in the beginning of his preface to the book of Genesis, placed thus at the beginning that no one might be excused for being ignorant of it. How great must have been the excellence of that work, when, over immense distances of land and sea, men rushed to the mistress of the world, to that city which held sway over conquered nations, not to accomplish any urgent business transaction, not because of a desire to see the city itself (and that, too, such as it must have been under Caesar Augustus), but that they might see and hear that single one of its inhabitants.

  Pliny tells the story in Ep., ii, 3, 8; but Pliny the Younger was an author unknown to Petrarch (P. de Nolhac, I, , n. 1, and , n. 3; Sabbadini, Scoperte, ). The reference to St. Jerome is Ep., 53, written to Paulinus ca. 394 A. D., which appears as the first of the Praefationes in the 1903 edition of the Vulgate, p. xviii (by Valentinus Loch). Petrarch therefore must have had the letter of St. Jerome in mind, or before him. In his own letter to Livy, Petrarch mentions both Gaul and Spain. In Pliny there is mention of Cadiz only. Both Gaul and Spain, however, are mentioned by St. Jerome. Furthermore, the references to Livy’s being the one great man in Rome at that time, and to the splendor of the city under Augustus, are both traceable to St. Jerome, who, therefore, must have been the source for both the passage in the Rer. mem., and for that in this letter to Livy. The passage in St. Jerome reads as follows, Vol. XXII, col. 541 (ed. Migne):

  Ad T. Livium lacteo eloquentiae fonte manantem, de ultimis Hispaniae Galliarumque finibus quosdam venisse nobiles legimus; et quos ad contemplationem sui Roma non traxerat, unius hominis fama perduxit. Habuit illa aetas inauditum omnibus saeculis celebrandumque miraculum, ut urbem tantam ingressi, aliud extra urbem quaererent.

  Finally, that this passage from St. Jerome was the source used by Petrarch is proved also by Sen., XVI (XV), 7 (Op., ):

  St. Jerome records having read that certain prominent men undertook the long journey from the furthermost limits of Spain and the two Gauls to Rome merely to see Livy. Do you for a moment suppose that there was insufficient cause, not merely for these few men, but indeed for the whole world to rush thither, that they might see the man with their own eyes and hear him with their own ears? I shall here omit styling him a pure fountain of eloquence, as St. Jerome did (Ep., 53), or an overflowing fountain of eloquence — an epithet which Valerius used in speaking of his Pompeius [Val. Max., ii, 6, 8. The Pompeius referred to is No. 20 in Smith’s Dict. Fracassetti goes entirely astray in the translation of this passage, Sen., 2, ]. Still, how commendable a desire was it to see that man who, even if he had done nothing else in his life, or if he could have added not a single thought to his work, had already earned everlasting renown for completing unaided and in 142 books, that stupendous work containing the entire history of Rome from its very origins! Moreover, C. Caligula to the contrary notwithstanding (Suet., Cal., 34), this work was written throughout in a divine style and with extreme care. It was a work approaching the miraculous. The life of a single man would scarcely suffice even to transcribe this work, much less to produce a similar one. How worthy a desir
e was it, then, to behold the head which had conceived so much, and the hand which had penned such noble words of such noble deeds! If T. Livy were alive today, I believe that not merely a few, but very many would set out on their pilgrimage to him. As for myself, if my health were sounder (as it was but recently), if it were as strong as my desires, and if the road were safe, I should not consider it irksome to seek him, not merely at Rome, but as far as India, setting out from this very city of Padua which gave him birth and where I have now been staying for many years.

  The letter from which the above is quoted bears the date Padua, May 12, 1373.

  74. The extent of Petrarch’s acquaintance with Livy results even more clearly from a passage in another of his works. It is short enough to be quoted in full. In Rer. mem., I, 2, “De studio et doctrina,” Petrarch, after giving examples of native-born Romans, says, :

  And now, in going beyond the walls of the city, we need not at once leave the confines of Italy. With what ardor must T. Livy of Padua have toiled, who, within the compass of 142 books, wrote a complete history of Rome from the founding of the city to the reign of Caesar Augustus, under whom he flourished? This was a work remarkable for its mere bulk; and it was a stupendous work particularly for this reason — that in composing it he did not write hurriedly, nor (as the saying goes) did he employ a confused and disordered style, as certain others do, who slap down in writing every word that happens to be on the tip of their tongue. On the contrary, the history of Livy is couched in sentences of such great majesty and in words of such dignity and propriety that it is practically a textbook for choice and elegant diction.

  But alas! Oh, lasting shame of our age! Scarcely a small portion of this great and splendid work survives. Of the 14 decades into which it was subdivided — either by the author himself, or (as I think more likely) by the indolent readers of later generations — there are extant but three! These are the first, the third, and the fourth. At the urgent request of King Robert of Sicily (of sacred memory), I myself have searched most diligently for the second decade, but up to this moment I have searched in vain. I pray I may be proved to be a false prophet. But unless customs change, I fear lest within a short time that very fate overtake Livy which formerly it was the intention of Gaius Caligula, most hateful of tyrants, to bring upon him. For we read in Suetonius Tranquillus that Caligula had been on the point of removing from all libraries the history of T. Livy and the works and busts of the poet Vergil. I fear then, that, although an emperor’s cruelty proved insufficient, our own regardless inactivity may gradually succeed in casting the veil of oblivion over the resplendent genius of this man.

  The reference to Suetonius is Cal., 34, which Petrarch quotes almost verbatim, his words being: “quod T. Livii historiam, et Virgilii poetae libros et imagines, parum abfuit, quin ab omnibus bibliothecis amoveret.”

  75. We are indebted to the excellent study of P. de Nolhac so often cited (Pétrarque et l’humanisme) for exact information on this point. The book missing from the manuscript of Livy which Petrarch possessed was book xxxiii. On fol. 317, in commenting on the words “Cynoscephalas, ubi debellatum erat cum Philippo” (Livy, xxxvi, 8), Petrarch wrote in the margin, “Sed quando hoc fuerat deficit sine dubio, et ut puto unus liber.” Even book xl was not complete, although Petrarch may not have been aware of the fact, since he does not complain thereof. His manuscript ended with the words, “conciliabulaque edixerunt” (cha) which seemed to close the book in a manner making complete sense (P. de Nolhac, II, ). Bacumker (Quibus antiquis auctoribus Petrarca in conscribendis rerum memorabilium libris usus sit, ), went so far as to say (in 1882) that Petrarch did not have books xxxi-xxxv. It is now certain that Petrarch possessed the first and the third decades entire, and books xxxi, xxxii, and xxxiv to xl, the last of which ended with cha — in all nearly twenty-nine books.

  76. Petrarch here refers to the epitome of Florus. The Codex in Petrarch’s possession contained the works of several historians — Dictys, Florus, Livy, etc. (see P. de Nolhac, II, ), and had been bought by Petrarch at Avignon in 1351, after the death of Soranzio (or Soranzo) Raimondo, to whom it had probably belonged (ibid., ). The date of the purchase almost compels us to adopt 1351 as the date of this letter (see n. 78).

  77. Between the years 1335 and 1344 there was found in the monastery of Santa Giustina of Padua a sepulchral inscription bearing the name of T. Livius. Without troubling themselves with further investigations, the Benedictine monks who had made the discovery jumped to the conclusion that the stone was that which had been erected over the dead Roman historian. They consequently placed it in the vestibule of their church, and over it placed a likeness of the historian. Petrarch was stopping at the cloister opposite the church of Santa Giustina; thus the phrase employed at the close of the letter is clear.

  In 1413 a leaden casket came to light in the same place. Inasmuch as the monks had learned from those of the previous generation that Livy had been buried there, they concluded (again without warrant) that the casket must contain the remains of Livy, although (as Polentonus says) there were not lacking, even at that time, those who denied the fact. For a description of the great ado caused by this supposed discovery, read the letter by Sicco Polentonus, quoted in the introductory note to Corpus inscriptionum latinarum, V, 2865. The inscription itself was believed to be that of Livy until the middle of the seventeenth century (P. de Nolhac, II, , n. 3).

  78. P. de Nolhac (II, , n. 3) says that the Paris manuscript bears the date 1351 (cf. n. 76 above).

  VII. TO ASINIUS POLLIO

  (Fam., XXIV, 9)

  Long ago the thought entered my mind of addressing letters of familiar intercourse to certain far-off masters of eloquence, embracing in the number those who had been the rare ornaments of the Latin tongue. I should not wish, therefore, to pass thy name over in silence, the more so that, according to the testimony of great writers, thy fame was second to none. Since, however, thy reputation has come down to us stripped almost bare of facts, it must be substantiated by the writings of others rather than of thyself, a fact which I deservedly number among the shameful losses of our age. I shall have, therefore, but little to say to thee.

  I congratulate thee in that thou didst enjoy the honors of a consulship as well as those of a triumph;79 I congratulate thee for the praises bestowed upon thy lofty intellect and polished eloquence, and for thy many other endowments of body and mind and fortune.80 I give thee special congratulations, however, for having lived under the best of princes, who cherished most dearly both letters and virtues, and who was a competent judge of thy deeds. O happy thou, who didst fill the just measure of thy life while Augustus was still reigning, bringing an illustrious life to a peaceful close at thy Tusculan villa and in the eightieth year of thine age.81 Thou didst escape the bloody hands of Tiberius, into which the orator Asinius Gallus fell, thy ill-fated offspring who, as we read, was killed by him with dreadful suffering.82 Fortunate indeed was it that a timely death overtook thee, seeing toward what great misery thy destiny was already beginning to urge thee. Death saved thine eyes from witnessing such a sad spectacle at least. Only a few years more and, to thy great sorrow, thou wouldst have shared the fate of thy son, or wouldst have been compelled to look on.83 His death must have diminished thy happiness in no slight degree — if it be true (as some thinkers claim) that the dead are affected by the lot of the living.

  The laws of true friendship forbid me to conceal or pass over a certain thing in silence — for friendship binds me to the names and ashes of the illustrious dead of every age no less effectually than if they were alive. The thing, therefore, which greatly distressed me in thee was, that thou didst resolve to be such a very bitter and severe critic (not to say censurer) of Marcus Tullius.84 In all justice thou shouldst have been the first to praise and exalt his name in thy writings. If thy defense is that thou hadst a right to freedom of thought, I shall answer that I do not deny thee such freedom, even though I do not agree with thy conclusions. I maintain, however, that thou sho
uldst have made more sparing use of thy freedom. Such counsel comes too late now, I know. Yet thou canst easily obtain indulgence from others85 since thou didst so often exercise the same freedom against him who was then ruling the universe.86

  It is rather difficult, I grant thee, for fortune’s favorite to curb the mind and the tongue. The seriousness of purpose consonant with thy great age and learning compels me to exact from thee careful consideration in all matters. Furthermore, it obliges me to censure thee for thy actions more severely than I should either thy son, who held the same opinions as thou because he followed in thy footsteps,87 or Calvus and others of the same party.88

  I am not so forgetful of myself as to deny thee the exercise of the same privilege in the case of a contemporary (whom thou couldst both see and know) that I have enjoyed, after so many centuries, in the case of a man of such reputation and so far removed from me in time. No one is perfect. Who, then, shall forbid thee, a man of such eminence, to call attention to anything reprehensible in the ways of thy neighbor, when even I who am so far removed have found things to criticise in his writings? But the moment thou dost attack his reputation for eloquence, the moment thou dost endeavor to wrest from him his supremacy in the field of oratory — a supremacy bestowed upon him from heaven and granted to him without dispute and by the common consent of nearly the entire world — that moment see to it that thou be not inflicting too palpable an injury.