BOOK: Leon Battista Alberti, "Momus"

Leon Battista Alberti: Momus. Translated by Sarah Knight. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 8. Harvard University Press, 2003. 0674007549. xxv + 407 pp.

I vaguely remembered hearing of Leon Battista Alberti as having been an architect, but it turns out that he also wrote quite a few books on a variety of subjects. The present work, Momus, is a novel (or, at any rate, a longish story in prose), but a very strange one. In a preface, Alberti explains that his aim is partly to philosophise, partly to entertain (¶5), and that he follows the example of ancient writers by using gods as personifications of different “mental qualities” (¶6).

I liked almost nothing about this novel. We are told it is satirical and darkly comical; but I found pretty much nothing in it funny (not that I expected to find it funny; I already know that comical works from the past generally don't strike me as funny — either my sense of humor is broken or, more likely, humor is just too culturally specific).

I also couldn't help thinking that for a story to be satire, there should be something more to it than merely showing a bunch of characters acting like fools and scumbags all the time. But then they are hardly characters at all; they aren't persons — they are “mental qualities”, as the author himself tells us. The eponymous protagonist, Momus, is the god of strife and criticism, a trickster, intriguer, shape-shifter, and all-round asshole. Jupiter, king of the gods, is a vaccilating, weak, and incompetent ruler, and all too often behaves in a capricious and tyrannous fashion. Most of the other gods behave like your typical spineless, scheming courtiers. The human species is represented by a broad assortment of fools and knaves, from philosophers like Socrates and Diogenes to various random fictional actors and rogues. There's almost no character in the book that you could call really decent, and none at all that would be decent *and* effective. Well, I guess that makes it a perfect reflection of the rough-and-tumble society of Renaissance Italy that the author actually lived in, so we shouldn't blame him for it.

But the thing that bothered me the most is the complete and deliberate absence of any coherent plot; it's just one damn random thing after another, with new and unrelated events and characters constantly showing up unexpectedly out of nowhere. The author isn't *really* trying to tell us a story, he's just touching himself under the table while writing. There are some subjects that clearly interested him so he keeps returning to them, e.g. architecture and especially its decline. Juno tries building a golden arch but it soon collapses ignominiously (2.100–1); and when Jupiter considers dismantling the world to build a new one, he is warned that the new one wouldn't be any better than the old one because the architects nowadays aren't as good as they used to be (3.69).

Another topic that Alberti is interested in is rulership; we mostly see this through the negative example of Jupiter, who does not seem to particularly like being a ruler, and certainly isn't good at it (2.104). But if the book gives us a vivid enough example of a bad ruler, it doesn't have much in the way of suggestions on how to devise better modes of government. Towards the end of the book we see some explicit advice on how to be a good prince (4.101–2), but it proves to be such bland moderationism that I doubt we're meant to take it seriously. In any case, Machiavelli this is not, though in Alberti's defense his book did predate The Prince by more than 50 years.

Another interesting recurring subject is that of disbelief in the gods, a view espoused by several characters here and there in the book, mostly as a philosophical position. I guess you could say that the gods appear as such unappealing characters in this book that this in itself constitutes an inducement towards disbelief. But, in Alberti's defense, perhaps he would say that this is just as intended since he really doesn't believe in the Olympian gods anyway, besides which his gods aren't really gods but mere personifications of mental qualities.

One thing that I did like about this book, however, is the style of the translation, which is a good deal more lively, and a good deal less stiffly formal, than we usually find in the ITRL seties. One concrete example: Jupiter is often referred to as “best and greatest” (a standard Latin phrase: Jupiter optimus maximus), but at one point, where Juno is ranting at him and uses this phrase sarcastically, it is translated very appropriately as “High and Mighty Jupiter” :)) (2.30)

Book I

We are introduced to Momus behaving in his typical way: when Jupiter calls upon the other gods to improve his creation by adding various useful things to it, Momus ‘contributes’ by releasing verminous insects into the world (1.6), while criticizing the gifts provided by other gods (1.7). The goddess Mischief (Fraus in Latin, the same word that is also the source of the English ‘fraud’) ensures that numerous complaints against Momus reach Jupiter, while pretending to be on his side (1.10).

Momus thinks Jupiter is doing a poor job as the king of the gods; he changes his mind too much, he has delegated too much power to Fate, he has not insured himself well enough against the efforts of humankind, etc. (1.19–22). Hearing of this, Jupiter banishes Momus to earth; in the process, Momus loses some aspect of his divinity (“the sacred flame that identifies all gods”, 1.26). To revenge himself on the gods, he poses as a philosopher, preaching atheism and fomenting discord amongst philosophical schools (1.27–31).

Jupiter sends the goddess Virtue to earth to intervene and calm the situation (1.36). Throngs of people come to do homage to Virtue and her children (Triumph, Trophy, Praise, and Posterity); 1.41, 48. Momus pretends to be contrite and submissive during his meeting with Virtue (1.47), but soon reverts to his old self and starts riling the humans up against gods again (1.49–50). Changing to human shape, he teaches girls the arts of cosmetics (1.58–62), seemingly for no other reason than that he likes deceit and (dis)simulation in all of their forms. He also has a plan to annoy the gods indirectly by inciting humans to pester them with prayers (1.65–6).

Next, Momus falls in love with Praise, the daughter of Virtue, turns himself into a vine of ivy so he can climb the wall to reach her (1.68–70). He successfully molests her, but a funny scene happens soon afterwards: he is still in the form of ivy when some human ruffians start climbing him (1.71–2). Praise soon gives birth to a baby named Rumor (Fama), who looks rather like a Lovecraftian monster: “thick with eyes, ears and darting tongues” (1.74). It begins flying around the world and spreading gossip, much to Momus's satisfaction (1.79).

The goddess Fortune, who regards Virtue as a hated rival, arranges for Hercules to be carried off by Rumor to heaven, where he will become a god (1.84); the gods welcome him as an ally against Rumor (1.92). Momus takes on the shape of Hercules and tries to incite other humans to try reaching heaven too, to cause more trouble there (1.88–90). Other humans are planning an attack on Virtue and her offspring, who all disappear in panic when Rumor alerts them to the danger (1.94–96).

Book II

Since Momus's invention of prayer, more and more prayers from the mortals are reaching the gods, who initially enjoy the attention and decide to recall Momus from his exile (2.2–3). They send the goddesses Pallas and Minerva to fetch him (surprisingly, to Alberti these are two different deities rather than two names of the same deity). Momus is delighted by this and plans to continue his policy of deceit and dissimulation against the gods who had slighted him (2.12–14). He acts suitably humble when brought before Jupiter, but he is also glad to see that the masses of prayers and votive offerings that are coming from the mortals are an increasingly serious nuisance to the gods on Olympus (2.18–19).

Momus gives an account of his experiences on earth, trying to paint the mortals in a bad light, and suggests that Rumor be sent to report on their doings (2.23–5). Juno appears and harangues Jupiter for forgiving Momus, whom she dislikes (2.26–30); Jupiter allows her to take, from the mortals' offerings, those items that are made of gold — all others are being discarded as a worthless nuisance (2.32–5).

Momus also describes the various occupations he had tried while amongst the mortals; he didn't much like being a soldier (2.39–41) or a king (2.42–6), but he has great praise for the life of a beggar (2.47–58): many social conventions do not apply to you, nobody cares how you behave or how you dress, you have nothing to lose, the job requires no skill, etc. But much of this speech in praise of beggardom is surely deeply sarcastic, e.g. when he says that it makes no difference whether one sleeps on the ground or on a bed (2.53). Owing to his entertaining stories, Momus becomes Jupiter's favourite, and some of the other deities try making up with him (2.65–9).

However, Momus resents being thought of as merely a buffoon who tells entertaining stories at banquets (2.70–1). Asked to tell the story about how mortals attacked him and tore his beard, he decides to focus on the more serious parts of the story: he had long debates with philosophers who denied the existence of gods (2.75–90), and they attacked him when he tried to provide counter-arguments (2.91–2). After Momus is done with his story, Hercules, who is also present, makes some remarks defending the philosophers, saying that they are not all like that (2.93–9).

Jupiter complains about his role as the ruler of the gods, especially because he has to mediate in their endless quarrels (2.103–4) and listen to prayers from ungrateful mortals (2.107–9); and the aforementioned votive offerings are piling up everywhere (2.105–6) and causing discord among the gods. Momus is delighted by all this and gives various half-serious suggestions on how Jupiter could punish the mortals (2.111–12; e.g. by sending them more women, who are sure to cause plenty of trouble :]). As for the offerings, they will be moved out of the way at Momus's suggestion (2.114–15). Mischief is so impressed by Momus's powers of deceit that she tries to regain his favour (2.116–19).

Book III

Jupiter decides he wants to build another world to replace the current one; opinions among the other gods vary, but Momus is of course delighted to have caused so much trouble (3.1–5). Jupiter is unsure how to go about his task; some of the gods suggest that he consult human philosophers (3.7–9). He talks to a few of them in disguise, and although they are all behaving more or less ridiculously, Jupiter is impressed and thinks highly of their intelligence (3.12–17).

Next he dispatches Mercury to go talk to philosophers and also to bring Virtue back to Olympus (3.18–19); Mercury meets Socrates and Diogenes, who behave as they usually do, and he returns to heaven without accomplishing anything (3.22–6). Next Jupiter sends Apollo on a similar mission (3.29–30), and meanwhile summons a big assembly of the gods, to be timed with Apollo's return (3.31). To Jupiter's embarrassment, Apollo is late, and there is much commotion among the gods about how to proceed with the project (3.34–9).

Momus, appointed by Jupiter to preside over the meeting, blames the tumult on the presence of female deities, which outrages them enough that they castrate him (3.40–1). By the time Apollo returns, the meeting is over; he describes his encounters with the philosophers, including Diogenes who was dissecting a crab and was puzzled at the absence of any visible brain (1.44–60).

Hunger, Fever and other such deities begin tormenting mankind since they figure that the world is going to be destroyed soon anyway; humans respond by building more temples and the like, hoping to regain the gods' favour (1.65–6). This finally persuades the gods — including Jupiter, who has been getting cold feet about the project anyway — not to proceed with the plan of destroying and remaking the world (1.67–70). To avoid appearing weak and indecisive, Jupiter tries to shift the blame for the original plan onto Momus, and condemns him to being chained to a rock (1.71–4).

Book IV

Humans have built a large amphitheatre and are about to hold games in honour of the gods; but the gods can't watch the event from heaven because Momus has persuaded certain nymphs to veil the sky with a cloud (4.4–7). Therefore they descend to earth; to watch the show discretely, they take the place and shape of statues of the gods that stand in the theatre, moving the original statues out of the way (4.10). The god Stupor moves his statue to a cave, where it later gives a good fright to a gang of robbers who has dragged their prisoner, an actor-philosopher named Oenops, there (4.12–15). Impressed by this, Oenops mends his previously atheistic ways and becomes a fervent worshipper of the gods (4.18–24).

Meanwhile, Charon arrives from the underworld, wishing to see the world before it gets destroyed; he is accompanied by a dead philosopher named Gelastus, and on the way they have a discussion about his pursuits as a philosopher: Charon points out that they mostly just say trivial things in complicated-sounding ways (4.26–39). Charon tells an alegorical tale of an artificer who created homunculi of different kinds, and encouraged them to climb to his house on a mountain, but only by the steep and straight road (4.43–45). Charon also doesn't quite see the point of theatrical performances (4.48–49). Gelastus gets into a fight with Oenops; the actors respond by throwing stones at Gelastus and Charon, who beat a hasty retreat (4.51–3).

They board Charon's boat again, and, after an uncomfortably close encounter with a group of pirates (4.61–71), they reach the spot where Momus is chained (4.72). Meanwhile great upheaval is taking place at the theatre: strong winds caused parts of it to collapse, injuring some of the gods; Jupiter decides they must put the statues back and leave immediately, though this does not happen without further complications (4.73–8).

Momus observes that he had been in Jupiter's favour for as long as he had behaved as a flatterer, but then got into trouble when he tried to start providing honest advice (4.81–4). By way of commiseration, Gelastus relates the story of his own and Charon's hardships (4.85–6). They observe that Jupiter is not a wise ruler. As they continue their journey, Charon tells an anecdote about a king and his herald; the later provided various more or less philosophical arguments as to why he is just as important as the king (4.92–8).

Jupiter, meanwhile, having returned to heaven, is disappointed with the failure of all his plans, and finally picks up the notebooks with advice on government that Momus had given him a while ago. The advice there seems to be mostly about moderation and seeking the middle course in everything (4.99–102).

*

Now I have not only finished reading all the volumes so far published in the ITRL series, but also written blog posts about them all; and I can't help noticing that the last few volumes were published last September, and no new ones have been even announced since then, let alone published. I don't think they've ever had such a long pause before, and I wonder if something went wrong. Were they afflicted by the epidemic? Did they run out of money? But Harvard University Press's other similar series, such as the Murty Classical Library of India, seem to be proceeding at their usual pace.

Could there be something more sinister at play? I remember that last July, James Hankins, the general editor of the ITRL ever since its inception, published an essay in Quillette where he stood up boldly to the woke cultists that have come to colonize Renaissance studies, as they have done to so many other academic fields before; and so I can't help but wonder now — could it be that he is getting cancelled over it, with the ITRL series suffering as a sort of collateral damage? I hope not; but nowadays you never know.

Or could it be some bean-counter's business decision without any influence from the culture wars? A year or two ago they thought it necessary to meddle with the I Tatti logo (old, new); the bee is now an unrecognizable shadow of its former self, and Bernard Berenson's initials are completely gone. You can see right away that some overconfident imbecile with no appreciation of tradition saw an opportunity to make his mark by meddling and ruining something, and so proceeded at once to do just that. Once an organization starts meddling with its own logo for no good reason, you can usually be sure that the people now in charge there are those whose only skill is in polishing turds, and that they will turn the organization itself into a turd before long as well.

In any case, it would be unfortunate if the ITRL series ended so abruptly, with a number of multi-volume works being only partly done. Let's hope we'll see the announcement of some new volumes soon.

[Update: some time after I published the above post, I had a look at Hankins' list of publications and he seems to publish a good deal of political commentary from a conservative point of view, so if the woke people ever do decide they want to cancel him, I'm sure they'll find plenty of excuses there to do so.

But I think that's not what's happening here. I also found an interesting review of a volume titled The Loeb Classical Library and its progeny: proceedings of the First James Loeb Biennial Conference, Munich and Murnau, 18–20 May 2017 (Harvard University Press, 2020). According to this review, the volume contains a paper by Hankins (“The I Tatti Renaissance Library: A Personal Retrospect and Prospect”, pp. 19–46):

“Hankins' account of the creation and development of the I Tatti Renaissance Library starts off positively, revealing that the initial sales were surprisingly good, but he ends on an ominous note: the continuance of the series is by no means assured, owing to expiring financial resources. The addition of an appendix with a list of published, commissioned, and planned titles makes the project strikingly finite.”

So I guess there were dark clouds gathering over the ITRL as early as 2017, and perhaps by now it has really run out of money for good. :( ]

BOOK: Kallendorf (ed.), "Humanist Educational Treatises"

Humanist Educational Treatises. Edited and translated by Craig W. Kallendorf. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 5. Harvard University Press, 2002. 067400759X. xvi + 358 pp.

This book contains four treatises by various fifteenth-century authors, along with an interesting introduction by the translator. He points out that medieval higher education was meant to be practical: you studied to become a lawyer or a physician or a theologian. The Renaissance humanists came up with the new idea that an education focused on learning the classical languages and studying the classical literature would turn the students into better people (p. vii), and since they would mostly be coming from the ruling class this could quite possibly lead to a better-run state and a better society.

I'm a bit skeptical as to how well this actually worked — for example, we've all heard the tales of how Ancient Greek was more useful than Sanskrit on the civil service examinations in British India, and the Indians nowadays don't seem to be particularly happy with how the British bureaucrats educated along those lines governed India back then —, but at least as an ideal it struck me as admirable. Some traces of this ideal were left in at least some parts of some countries' educational systems into the twentieth century, though by now they have no doubt all been thoroughly wiped out, first in the name of modernism and capitalist efficiency and later in the name of diversity and wokeist decolonization.

It is, of course, entirely possible that my view of humanist education is biased, being that of an outsider looking in and wondering what he is missing. I didn't have a classical education myself, which is probably just as well since my experience shows me that I'm no good at languages; if I could never get to the point where I could intuitively choose between dem and den correctly in German, what hope would I have with the infinitely more abstruse grammar of ancient Greek? Much of my reading, including of the I Tatti Renaissance Library series, is motivated by a vague notion of making up for this deficiency, though at some level I'm of course perfectly aware that the matter is hopeless, and no matter how much I read in these areas I'll never really get them, and will forever remain in a state of puzzled confusion and blank ignorance.

The four treatises presented here vary a bit in their scope — some include even such topics as physical training, some limit themselves to education of the mind or even a bit more narrowly to literature in particular — but they also have much in common, their recommendations sometimes overlap, and they all share a feature that struck me as peculiar for people propounding a new system of education: namely, they are absolutely peppered with allusions and references to the work of classical authors (all of which, as usual, have been duly hunted down by the translator and made explicit in the notes at the end of the book), as if the only way you could justify introducing a new idea is by pretending that you're just restoring something that the ancients had already said a long time before. It is charming in a way, but you also can't help seeing how it could become a problem if carried too far, and I guess it's no surprise that within a few centuries this sort of argumentation fell out of style.

Pier Paolo Vergerio: The Character and Studies Befitting a Free-born Youth

This treatise is addressed to young Ubertino da Carrara, son of Francesco, the ruler of Padua. Vergerio takes care to suck up to the princeling by suggesting that the advice given here is probably unnecessary since Ubertino is already following it anyway (¶4, 74); but the author's flattery and Ubertino's education were both in vain, for the latter died aged only 18.

Vergerio starts by observing that parents should provide their children with three things: give them an honourable name, settle in a renowned city, and instruct them in the liberal arts (¶1). I guess he would not be impressed by the modern mania for outlandish names, the more ridiculous and exotic the better. He emphasizes the concept of a “liberal temper”, motivated chiefly by “eagerness for praise” and “love of glory” (¶6), though he is happy to sweep all sorts of other more or less desirable characteristics under this heading as well. He later contrasts this with the “illiberal” intellect, which is motivated by “profit and pleasure” (¶23).

Thus, for him — annoyingly, but unsurprisingly — education is not chiefly about learning certain information, but about forming certain moral habits and dispositions: he objects to lying (¶13), lust (¶16), and drinking (¶18); he praises modesty and good behaviour (¶14–15), religion (¶19) and respect for the elders (¶20). Boring.

Apart from handwavy references to honour and glory, he never actually provides any clear arguments why liberal arts should be desirable at all; he seems to take this fact for granted and keenly urges that people should spend as much of their time studying as possible, especially while young (¶26). For someone like me, who am yet to find any piece of knowledge that would not strike me as being, in a deep and fundamental sense, quite worthless and useless, it is difficult to appreciate Vergerio's keen praise of learning.

Still, I couldn't help finding the following passage charming: “What way of life, then, can be more delightful, or indeed more beneficial, than to read and write all the time: for moderns to understand things ancient; for present generations to converse with their posterity; and thus to make every time our own, both past and future? [. . .] What a happy family books make! Absolutely honest and well-behaved! A family that does not fuss or shout,” etc. (¶37). There is something to this; and it might even be good advice for a man of limited means; but a prince could surely afford to spend his time drinking, partying and whoring rather than studying, and he'd have more fun in the process. I hope and suspect that that's just what most princes actually did, despite the admonitions of schoolmasters like Vergerio :)

He discusses the various liberal arts in a bit more detail next, recommending history, moral philosophy, and eloquence (¶40) in particular, while drawing and painting are better left to professionals (¶41); he also recommends music, arithmetic, law and medicine (¶42–6), but in moderate amounts. To his credit, he is aware that different people will have a stronger propensity for different fields of learning, and that that's OK (¶47). He recommends that study should be regular and methodical, emphasizes the importance of memory, but also recommends disputation as a useful learning tool (¶50–4).

Towards the end of the treatise, Vergerio also discusses physical and military exercise, which he also considers important; he cites examples from ancient history to justify why even a ruler or commander should also be a physically powerful warrior (§55). I guess that in the violent and turbulent society of Renaissance Italy, these were indeed fairly relevant skills for a ruler to have, though they would be mostly obsolete now. He even praises the ‘educational’ methods of ancient Sparta, whose insane cruelty towards boys supposedly ensured that they “in the end performed those military exploits that fill the memory of all antiquity” (¶60). I thought this was rather ironic, as I have read, not long ago, an excellent series of blog posts which pointed out that Spartan military reputation was largely a matter of marketing themselves well and picking wisely on weaker enemies, and that the way they trained their boys is best compared to the methods used by modern terrorist groups to indoctrinate their child soldiers...

He recommends learning how to swim — good advice, though he mostly justifies it by saying it will make you “bolder in naval battles and crossing rivers” (¶68) :) He concludes with a section on “leisure and relaxation”, but even here he mostly recommends things closely related to the foregoing ones (§69–72): singing, music-making and reading on the intellectual side, and hunting on the physical side. He objects to games of chance, however (§71).

Leonardo Bruni: The Study of Literature

This is a shorter treatise than the previous one, and, as the title suggests, it is focused on a narrower topic. It is addressed to a lady named Battista Malatesta; naturally her surname made me wonder how she is related to the infamous Sigismondo Malatesta, and if I counted things right in the wikipedia, her husband was Sigismondo's third cousin once removed.

Bruni very commendably encourages her interest in literary studies, and begins by giving a few examples of famous learned women from classical history (¶1). He recommends the study of grammar as a starting point (¶4), followed by focusing on the “best and most approved authors” (¶6); in particular, Augustine and Jerome if she's interested in religious literature (¶7), or Cicero and Virgil among secular authors (¶8; “she will be careful [. . .] to use no word she has not first met in one of these authors” — the terrible bane of those writing in a dead language :)). An interesting recommendation that we don't hear often nowadays is to read aloud occasionally, to better appreciate the rhythmical qualities of good writing (¶9) — but then, I doubt if today's authors bother writing in a way that would benefit from reading aloud. If poets can't even be bothered to make rhymes, how could anyone expect them to care about subtler sound-effects like these?

Some of his advice is Latin-specific, e.g. when he advises her to “memorize the quantity of every syllable” (¶10). But I suppose there's something along these lines in many languages, since many of them have an imperfect spelling system that doesn't record all the information you might want about the pronunciation.

I liked this bit of advice: “Disciplines there are, which it is not fitting to ignore completely, yet it is by no means glorious to completely master.” (¶13) We saw something similar in the previous treatise. Bruni mentions mathematics, astrology and rhetoric as an example of these. When it comes to rhetoric, for example, since a woman won't be involved in politics or practice law, many aspects of rhetoric will be of no use to her (¶14). You might say that this advice is out of date now, but then politicians and lawyers probably don't study rhetoric now anyway.

He particularly recommends the study of theology and moral philosophy (¶16–17), but also the work of historians and orators (¶18–19); and then he has a long and very fine passage in recommendation, and defense, of studying poetry (¶20–5). He points out that poetry provides useful advice and moral instruction (¶21); that poets write from a kind of divine inspiration that is often combined with prophetic insight (¶22); and that the “sounds and rhythms” of poetry can uplift and inspire the reader's or listener's soul (¶24). It is true that poets sometimes show characters who behave immorally, but then so does the bible (¶26–7).

In conclusion, he recommends that one should adopt a wide-ranging and well-rounded programme of reading: “Literary skill without knowledge is useless and sterile” (¶29), and you need both skill and knowledge to be eloquent.

*

There's another very remarkable thing about this treatise, or rather about the translation, which is by James Hankins. At one point, Bruni cites a few lines of Virgil (¶22), and they are translated here into a wonderfully Drydenesque English:

Thence man- and cattle-kind, thence soar th'aerial
beasts, and thence from 'neath the flashing waves doth Ocean's shudd'ring prodigies come forth. (Aeneid, book 6.)

And so on — the only thing that gave away the fact that it isn't from Dryden's translation of the Aeneid is the lack of rhymes. [Well, that and the fact that “doth” is used with a plural subject — an embarrassing oversight, which already appeared in the first publication of this translation in 1987).] I later looked up the corresponding passage in Dryden's version, and another difference seems to be that Dryden's translation is freer while Hankins's is closer:

Hence men and beasts the breath of life obtain,
And birds of air, and monsters of the main.

Anyway, I think Hankins deserves nothing short of a medal for this; nearly all the poetry in the ITRL series has been translated into prose, or into verse utterly bereft of all poetical qualities; but here, for once in the entire history of the series, we get real poetry, we get verse of the kind that Dryden himself wouldn't be embarrassed to have written — how very unfortunate that this example has not been imitated by other translators of poetry in this series.

(Another intriguing thing in the lines quoted above is “th'aerial”; since the translator felt the need to drop the e in the, he must have thought of aerial as having four syllables rather than three. I was sorry to learn, in the wiktionary, that the four-syllable pronunciation is apparently regarded as obsolete now. This is particularly unfortunate as it was closer to the original Latin pronunciation.)

I was also intrigued by the appearance of “plebian” on p. 121; at first I thought it must be a misprint, but it seems to be a legitimate although rare variant spelling: wiktionary, Google n-grams.

Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini: The Education of Boys

This is the longest treatise in this volume; the author would later become better known as pope Pius II, but at the time of writing this work he was just the bishop of Trieste (¶1). It is addressed to ten-year-old Ladislaus, king of Hungary, and was written at the request of his instructor (¶5).

Aeneas begins with some general remarks on the importance of learning, especially to monarchs, and cites various examples from ancient history (¶4); later he points out that learning is the one thing that you cannot lose due to ill fortune, unlike material possessions (¶25). Learning will also be useful to a king as a sort of check to the statements of the flatterers that surround him (¶27). To his credit, Aeneas says that teachers should “guide you by their advice, not by blows” (¶10).

Before proceeding to learning in the usual sense of the word, the treatise spends some time discussing the training of the body; he argues this is important because “a king must frequently engage in battle” (¶13) — I wonder to what extent that was still true in the 15th century, especially if by “king” you mean a real king of a real country and not one of the petty brigand chiefs that passed for princes in the dinky little statelets of renaissance Italy...

He recommends moderation in work and play (¶14), in food (¶15–18) and drink (¶19–20), in clothing (¶23) and speech (¶35), etc., neither too much nor too little of anything. This struck me as quite sensible if not particularly exciting. Another sensible piece of advice was to surround oneself with virtuous people rather than vicious ones (¶32). Interestingly, on the subject of wine, he would not have a boy avoid it altogether, but drink it in small amounts “so that through moderation he may become temperate and continent” (¶20). Earlier he grumbles about the gluttonous appetite of Austrians, Hungarians and Bohemians, i.e. Ladislaus's subjects (¶16); I wonder if there's some kernel of truth behind this, something about the contrast between the lighter Mediterranean diet that Aeneas presumably knew from Italy and the heavier Central European diet in the areas under Ladislaus's rule.

Next Aeneas briefly discusses the various branches of learning. Philosophy, he says, is important to a ruler, but to understand it you also need some literary study first (¶27), by which he means something broader than one might think nowadays: to him, “literature” includes the study of grammar and composition (¶41).

Unsurprisingly for a bishop, he also stresses the importance of religion, and enjoins Ladislaus to respect priests and refrain from criticizing them (¶29–31), since if they are doing anything wrong they will be judged by god anyway — how very convenient :))

He recommends the young king to learn the languages of his subjects — Hungarian, Bohemian, German (well, this latter seems to have been his native language) — as well as Latin (¶33). This strikes me as good advice, not only because it improves communication between the monarch and his subjects but also because, were it taken seriously, it would discourage the formation of multi-ethnic states. At some point the kings would start saying ‘no, I don't want to conquer another country, because I can't be bothered to learn another language’, and that would be a glorious thing :]

He stresses the importance of speaking well, both in terms of delivery and of content (¶36–8). He then goes into a good deal of detail about various points regarding the Latin language, which struck me as somewhat odd given that the treatise is written in Latin; I would imagine that Ladislaus either already knows those things or he won't understand the treatise anyway. Aeneas points out that some Latin words are loanwords (¶42), discusses various kinds of word-formation (¶43, 48), metaphorical use of words (¶44–6), cautions against coining new words (¶47; unless you are a sufficiently important author that you can get away with it!) and against “barbarisms” (¶49) and “solecisms” (¶50), by which he seems to mean more or less anything of which you can't find an example in the extant works of the best classical authors. I can sympathize with this; to write in a foreign language is a great nuissance as you keep wondering whether some usage is idomatic or not; and it must be even worse if the language in question is a dead one, and if you don't have Google to check whether some word or phrase is in use the way you intend to use it or not.

He has some sensible advice against using the words in their etymological meaning instead of the meaning they actually came to have (¶52), against going too far in the use of archaic words (¶55): “We must employ speech like money, using the common currency” (¶57). At the same time, this doesn't mean you should let yourself be guided completely by vulgar usage; if lots of people are wrong, that doesn't make them right, and what you should imitate is “the consensus of good men” (¶58). This strikes me as good and moderate advice, and felt like a breath of fresh air compared to the dogma that modern linguists keep ramming down our throats, according to which if some error becomes widespread enough, it is no longer an error, and according to which there is no such thing as degeneration in language, merely harmless and random change.

There's also a fine rant against the sort of ridiculous fake etymologies that people were so keen on pulling out of their asses, both in the ancient times and in the Renaissance (¶54). Here's one I really liked: some claimed “that Vienna was so called from bienna [two years], because for two years it withstood a siege by Julius Caesar; yet in Caesar's lifetime it had not yet been founded, and at first it was not called Vienna, but Flaviana [castra]” (¶54).

Aeneas also makes some recommendations about which authors to focus one's study on, from various genres (¶69–73), and has a nice defense of reading ancient poets, which apparently some theologians of his own day argued against (¶63–6; he does advise against having boys read some of the spicier Roman love-poets and satirists, however, ¶70). When it comes to history, he unsurprisingly regards it mostly as something that should be a source of moral instruction; therefore: “One should not put Suetonius in a boy's hands. [. . .] I would absolutely forbid the histories of the Bohemians or the Hungarians and similar accounts to be put into a boy's hands. For they are written by ignorant people, and contain much silliness, many lies, no maxims, and no elegance of style” (¶73).

Towards the end he goes into a fair amount of detail about Latin spelling (¶77–88), which wasn't of much use to me as someone unfamiliar with that language. For example, he tries to present some general principles on the spelling of common prefixes such as ad-, ex- and the like, though he seems to also keep noticing words whose customary spelling doesn't follow those principles. There's also a section on the doubling of consonants (¶79) and one on aspiration (i.e. the letter h; ¶86).

Regarding other disciplines such as rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music (¶89–95), he says they should be studied in moderation, as it would be a waste of time for a future king to try mastering any of them thoroughly. He concludes by a particularly strong recommendation in favour of studying moral philosophy (¶97–98). Clearly he seems to regard this as something that is likely to make you a better person, and it was interesting to see how different philosophy must have been in former times. Nowadays nobody would be so insane as to imagine that present-day moral philosophers could provide any guidance on that, because we know that they can invent half a dozen different and incompatible ethical systems before breakfast and then spend the rest of the day arguing for and against each of them. There is nothing so outrageous or so preposterous that you could not find some philosopher capable of writing an argument in favour of it. No, nowadays we know that philosophers are precisely the last people to whom it would make sense to look for moral guidance. But I wish it weren't like this, and it's nice to see that in Aeneas's time it actually wasn't like this.

Battista Guarino: A Program of Teaching and Learning

I rather liked this treatise, which is a bit shorter and a good deal more to the point than some of the others in this book, perhaps because Guarino was a practicing teacher himself and because he relays the advice of his father, who had even more experience in this line of work (¶2). That being said, Guarino does start with some advice that struck me as dubious. He advises his pupil “to acquire spontaneously a real desire to learn” (¶3), which might be good advice if it weren't utterly impracticable. How the heck is one supposed to ‘acquire’ that? It's easy to agree that learning is desirable; it's easy to desire to desire to learn; but how to get from there to actually desiring to learn is far from obvious — especially if, as is all too often the case, most of what one is going to be learning is neither interesting nor useful.

Guarino also advises the pupil to “show parental reverence” to his teacher (¶4), which is not something I can have any sympathy for. How could you not hate and despise someone who wastes your time with boring lectures on pointless topics, pesters you with homework, asks annoying questions, distracts you from more interesting things that you'd rather be doing, and so on? Fortunately nowadays, by all accounts, teachers are not respected, least of all by their pupils, and that's as it should be. The only way that study could be made halfway tolerable would be to regard it as a sort of hobby for bored dilettantes, who might from time to time be moved, on a whim, to read or learn something new for the sake of satisfying a transient bout of curiosity. That, at any rate, is what motivates my reading. You might argue that not much learning would actually get done under this system; but as, in my experience, learning makes one neither wise nor happy, that would be no great loss.

But let's return to Guarino's treatise. Very commendably, he is opposed to beating students, though he thinks it's occasionally useful to threaten them with a beating; but mostly he suggests motivating them by appealing to their shame and their desire for honour (¶5).

Then he proceeds to the actual program, which begins with learning Latin: pronunciation (¶7–8), grammar (¶9–13), quantity (i.e. the length of vowels) and prosody (¶14–15); he mentions the heavy influence of Greek on Latin, and thus the usefulness of eventually learning Greek as well (¶16–17), especially for its vocabulary (¶20). “Let students, then, acquire the Greek language, but not in the confused and disorderly way that the Greeks usually teach it.” (¶18) :)) I guess the Greeks in question were used to teaching ancient Greek in Greece to students whose native language was the Greek of their own time, and now had a hard time adapting their methods to students whose native language was Italian.

Next Guarino discusses the various classical authors that a student should read, partly for the sake of their language and partly for the sake of their content. He starts, of course, with Cicero and Virgil (¶21, 25, 28), but continues with a fairly broad list of historians, poets, comic playwrights, etc.

He even has some advice on how to study; for example, the student should imagine that he will have to teach this subject some day, which will motivate him to think about it more thoroughly (¶29); he also recommends writing notes, summaries etc. of the things one has read (¶30–1), which struck me as good advice; my blog here is trying to do something not entirely unlike this for my own reading. Another interesting idea is to read aloud, partly on the theory that you will pay more attention to the text that way, and partly because “[i]t even helps our digestion somewhat, or so authorities on the secrets of nature and medicine claim” (¶33). :)) I suspect that reading aloud could help you with the pronunciation of the text, but would actually distract you from focusing on its meaning (especially if it's in a foreign language, as it would always be for Guarino's students reading in Latin or Greek), and so would generally do more harm than good. In any case, he does advise the student to focus on the content of the text first, and on the language only second (¶34). He also recommends fixed and regular hours of study, and ideally one would think of it as an enjoyable enough activity to spend one's leisure time at it as well (¶36–7); but that's easier said than done, and I for one have never been able to get to such a state of mind.

BOOK: Boccaccio, "Famous Women"

Giovanni Boccaccio: Famous Women. Edited and translated by Virginia Brown. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 1. Harvard University Press, 2001. 0674003470. xxv + 530 pp.

This work consists of about 100 short biographies (on average two or three pages long) of (more or less) famous women. Most of them are from ancient history and classical mythology; as he explains in the preface (p. 13), he deliberately avoided writing about christian women since you can easily find hagiographies of saints elsewhere if you want them, and since they mostly led religious lives and hence weren't likely to do things that would bring them fame the way pagan women could have done.

The biographies in this book are arranged roughly in chronological order; I vaguely remember reading somewhere about efforts like that of Eusebius who tried to place events and characters from Greek mythology, biblical stories, and actual ancient history into a common chronological framework, assigning dates to them etc. Perhaps Boccaccio followed something of that sort when arranging his biographies.

Probably more than half the women in this book are mythological, from Olympian goddesses to legendary Roman matrons from the earlier books of Livy. Only a handful of biographies at the end of the book are about medieval women or Boccaccio's contemporaries; the last of these is the queen of Sicily, which he no doubt added because he was about to move to her capital, Naples, at the invitation of one of her courtiers (p. xii).

As he himself explains in his preface (p. 11), what he means by ‘famous’ is simply that they must be well-known, not necessarily for something good; but even a biography of someone wicked can be instructive, by showing you how not to act. That said, a few of the women in this biography are far from famous even in this shallower sense, being known for nothing beyond one passing anecdote in the work of some ancient encyclopedist (e.g. §53, 86, 91, etc.).

At times his tone is a little too annoyingly didactic, as he is clearly a little too keen to point out moral lessons that his female readership should draw from this or that passage in his biographies. Also, for a book in praise of famous women it has surprisingly many casual misogynistic remarks, though the translator's preface tells us that Boccaccio's attitudes are actually quite progressive relative to his time (p. xix). I liked this passing barb in the biography of Penelope: “Her virtue is the more renowned and praiseworthy in that it is only rarely found” :)) (40.14).

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The first two biographies are something of an exception by being based on biblical rather than Greco-Roman history. We learn that Eve, while in Paradise, “was cloaked in a radiance unknown to us” (1.5); but after being exiled from it, “[t]he gleaming light which clothed them disappeared” (1.7).

An implausible story from the chapter on Semiramis, queen of the Assyrians: after her husband died, leaving behind a son that was still a child, Semiramis herself dressed up as a boy and ruled instead of the son so that the empire would be in competent hands :)) (2.4–6)

*

Boccaccio then continues with biographies of several Greco-Roman goddesses. Since, as a christian, he doesn't believe in pagan mythology, he argues that those were really mortal women who got famous for their achievements and inventions and whom the foolish pagans later worshipped as goddesses. For instance, Minerva discovered woolworking and the art of making olive oil (6.3–4); Isis taught Egyptians, those “unskilled, lazy people”, about agriculture! (8.4).

We also see a few silly efforts to explain myths in a quasi-rational way, e.g. Europa was kidnapped in a “ship with a white bull as its standard” (9.2), hence the myth that she was kidnapped by (Zeus in the shape of) a bull — I remember seeing a lot along those lines in Boccaccio's book about ancient mythology, the Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, of which we've had two volumes in the ITRL so far (see my posts about them)

A pleasantly salacious custom from Cyprus: “They were long accustomed to send young girls to the beaches to lie with foreigners. In this way the girls seem to have rendered to Venus the first fruits of their future chastity and to have earned dowries for their marriages.” (7.10)

*

After goddesses, he moves on to mortal women from ancient mythology, and mostly deals with them by recounting the myths in which they appear, since there's little else that can be said about them. This includes a number of famous and touching ones, like those of Niobe (§15), Arachne (§18), and Pyramus and Thisbe (§13).

One thing that bothered me about Boccaccio's retellings of myths is his insistence on passing cheap moral judgement all the time, as if he were a schoolmaster insisting that each page of his book must be instructive. For instance, there's the grisly tale of king Danaus, who had fifty daughters while his brother had fifty sons. An oracle foretold that Danaus would be killed by one of his nephews. Later, when Danaus's brother wanted his sons to get married to Danaus's daughters, Danaus secretly told these daughters that each should kill her husband on the wedding night, and all but one actually did so. Boccaccio condemns Danaus at great length for instigating these 49 murders: “This vile man thought that the few cold years of his old age should take precedence over the flowering youth of his nephews.” (14.10). But this is insane! What does Boccaccio expect Danaus to do? Simply wait to get murdered and do nothing to defend himself? Just because he is older than his would-be murderer? How exactly would that work, as a general principle? May every younger person murder any older person with impunity, or is there some sort of formula? I can already imagine utilitarianists, economists and other such monsters drooling at the thought of what wonders this would do for the pension system, and touching themselves under the table while mumbling something about ‘quality-adjusted life years’...

I was impressed by the tale of Medea's many crimes. She eloped from home with Jason, and murdered her little brother on the way to slow down her pursuers; she bore Jason two sons, but then murdered them when he took an interest in another woman; despite all this, old king Aegeas (father of Theseus) was willing to marry her, and she promptly tried to murder Theseus but failed; and after all this, she was somehow reconciled to Jason afterwards (15.6, 9). What else can you say but that that woman must have had a magical pussy? If you saw this stuff in a soap opera you'd dismiss it for being too melodramatic and implausible, but clearly the ancient Greeks had no such scruples :)

A Sybil named Erythraea, who lived “some time before the Trojan war” (21.3), foretold not only the outcome of that war, but described the future history of the Roman Empire and the emergence of christianity! You can't help but admire the zeal of whatever early church author came up with that particular tall tale :)

There's an interesting story about how the Latin alphabet was invented by one Carmenta, a daughter of the king of Arcadia who later moved to Italy (27.6). Boccaccio cannot help entering into a long log-rolling session in praise not only of the Latin alphabet but of various other blessings and accomplishments of Roman civilization (27.16). You can't help feeling that the purpose of such passages was to let the author and his Italian contemporaries feel better about themselves at a time when Italy was politically divided and weak, and often enough had foreigners interfering in her affairs.

Supposedly Mantua was named after Manto, a daughter of the famous seer Teiresias, who is well-known from Sophocles' Theban plays. Manto later settled in northern Italy and her son founded a city there and named it after her (30.6).

*

There's quite a few biographies of women involved in the Trojan War and its aftermath, characters from the Illiad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, etc. The chapter on Helen (§37) is particularly interesting for its background on the Trojan War; and I was surprised that in his account of the fall of Troy, Boccaccio doesn't mention the Trojan horse at all. In his version (37.15), Helen actually betrayed the Trojans: after the Greeks feigned a retreat, the Trojans had a big celebration and when they were all drunk, Helen opened the city gates and let the Greeks in; her reward was that Menelaus took her back as his wife. Not very commendable; but then few characters from the Trojan war come across as commendable.

In the chapter on Circe, Boccaccio of course can't resist moralizing and pointing out that her changing men into pigs is a metaphor for enticing them into “wantonness” or “robbery and piracy” or even: “others she induced with her tricks to cast all honor aside and take up commerce and trading” (38.5) :))) I have to say that I love this olympian contempt for commerce and trading, and I wish there were more of this attitude in the world nowadays. There is indeed no honour in these activities; you cannot afford to have any principles, you have to lie to people and ingratiate yourself with them, and at any point they are free to refuse to deal with you. A warrior coming on a campaign of conquest does not labour under these constraints, and so can afford to have honour where the trader can't.

Boccaccio's story of Dido of Carthage is quite different than what I remember (vaguely) from the Aeneid. In his version she doesn't meet Aeneas at all; a neighbouring king threatens to attack her city if she doesn't marry him, and her people press her to do it; she promises she would go to her husband on a certain date — and she does, to her late husband, by comitting suicide on his grave (42.13–15). A very touching story, more so than Virgil's version, but Boccaccio immediately ruins it by two pages of extremely heavy-handed moralizing where he uses Dido's example to rant against widows who remarry. But I'm surprised that Dido's suicide would have solved the political problem she was facing; the neighbouring king could still attack Carthage in anger, even if she was dead. (I also wonder where Boccaccio got his version of the story from. The translator's note (p. 490) says that his version is different from Virgil's, but doesn't say where it's from; does that mean that Boccaccio boldly made the whole thing up himself, out of whole cloth?)

There's a chapter on the queen of Sheba, but Boccaccio says that she was originally named Nicaula, of Ethiopia (43.1, 3); according to the wikipedia, this originally comes from Josephus. I vaguely remembered reading somewhere that the queen of Sheba's name was Bilqis or something like that; this apparently comes from Muslim sources.

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Gradually Boccaccio moves on to women from early Roman history, where it's hard to say where exactly myth ends and actual history begins. There's a chapter on Rhea Ilia, the mother of Romulus and Remus; she was forced to become a vestal virgin against her will (well, evidently the virginity part didn't quite work out :]), and Boccaccio includes a fine rant against the practice of pressuring young women to become nuns, which apparently some parents did so they wouldn't have to provide dowries for them; as a result of this, he says, most nuns don't actually want to be there, have illicit sex etc. (45.5–8).

There's a chapter on Sappho, but it doesn't say anything about her lesbianism, only that she was unhappily in love with a young man (47.4).

At one point, the translation refers to Porsenna as “king of Chiusi” (52.2), rather than Clusium — such a conspicuously Italian form of the name in such a conspicuously ancient context struct me as very anachronistic.

There's a chapter about Veturia, the mother of Coriolanus. Now, a cultured person would say that he knows this story from Shakespeare, or perhaps from Livy, but I have to admit that I only knew it from Ralph Fiennes' film (which is based on Shakespeare's play but places it in a vaguely modern-day setting). Apparently Rome was in a very dire position after Coriolanus had joined their enemies, the Volscians, but his mother successfully persuaded him to send his armies away from Rome. In gratitude for her deed, the Roman senate improved the social status of women in various ways, such as by allowing them to wear jewellry and to inherit property; Boccaccio rants against this in an overwrought manner that you rarely encounter nowadays outside of the incel movement: “Thanks to feminine ornaments, masculine wealth has been depleted while women parade about in royal finery; [. . .] All this has brought many disadvantages to men and many advantages to women. [. . .] This is a woman's world, and men have become womanish.” (60.12, 14) So I guess that men have been complaining about those emasculating gold-diggers since time pretermemorial :)))

*

By now we've come to women about whose historicity there seems no reason to doubt, e.g. Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great (§61); Tertia, the wife of Scipio Africanus, who in his old age was apparently cheating on her with a slave-girl (74.2); and Sempronia, Scipio's granddaughter and the sister of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (76.1 — it seems that the Roman elite was smaller than I thought, and everyone was related to everyone else :)).

But even in this period some of the biographies seem to be pure myth, e.g. the bizarre tale of a woman named Flora who grew rich as a prostitute and left her wealth to the people of Rome; they set up annual games in her honour and invented the claim that she was a goddess... (64.8–12)

Much as in his Genalogy of the Pagan Gods, Boccaccio is at his best when he stops merely compiling factoids or preaching his cheap moral lessons and instead allows himself to be seduced into a storytelling mode. There's a touching scene when Theoxena, a Thessalian princess, prefers to commit suicide with her husband and children rather than fall into the hands of their enemies (71.10–12). Nowadays people seem to have a very low opinion of suicide, and are likely to disparage those who commit it as having taken the easy way out; but I disagree, and prefer the ancient view that held suicide in such circumstances to be honourable and praiseworthy, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Boccaccio praised Theoxena here as well; I thought that his commitments to christianity would lead him to object to suicide.

While praising a woman for her constancy, Boccaccio tempers this with the observation that “women are instinctively obstinate and unbending in their opinions about everything” anyway :)) (76.6).

*

It is only when we get to the period of the late Roman republic that the mythological entries really come to an end. We get biographies of Caesar's daughter Julia (§81); of Portia, the daughter of Cato the Younger (§82); and, continuing into the early empire, of Agrippina, the mother of Caligula (§90), and of another Agrippina who was the mother of Nero (§92); and of various less well-known women of the same period.

There's a long biography of Cleopatra, and I guess that we shouldn't be surprised that Boccaccio disapproves, noisily and at length, of her grasping for power as well as of her efforts to seduce various important Romans (“She became, so to speak, the whore of the Eastern kings: greedy for gold and jewels”, etc.; 88.9). He gives a second version of her death, in addition to the better-known one where she commits suicide; in this other version, Antony began to distrust her and eventually killed her, fearing that she could poison him (88.30).

There's a bizarre story of a woman named Paulina who lived in the time of Tiberius. She was zealously devoted to Anubis and at one point actually agreed to sleep with this god; but of course it was only a man wearing a costume. When his imposture came to light, he was exiled by Tiberius, and the priests who had aided him were executed (91.12).

I was interested to learn that Nero had a friend named Otho (95.5); I was wondering if his name has any relation to Otto, which we know from various medieval German emperors, but according to the wikipedia Otto is in fact a German name, so I guess it isn't related to the Roman Otho.

A 4th-century woman named Proba “put into verse the history of the Old and New Testaments” (97.5), but what is more, she did it entirely by reassembling fragments of verse taken from the works of Virgil! According to the translator's note (p. 500), this work is still extant.

There is a biography of Symiamira, the mother of Elagabalus, who was called Varius “because he looked as if he had been conceived in the course of his mother's incessant copulations with ‘various’ men” (99.2) :)) Elagabalus seems to have appreciated her help in gaining him the throne, and even went so far as to appoint her to the senate. Boccaccio, of course, fulminates in shock at the idea of a woman senator (99.9), but that's just silly — by then, the senate had been powerless for centuries, mostly doing nothing except rubberstamping the emperors' decisions; no further shame, no further dishonour could be visited upon the senate by appointing a woman, or for that matter a horse, to it, because the senate had already deprived itself of all honour centuries before when it allowed the emperors to seize power.

*

The book ends with a tiny handful of medieval biographies: pope Joan (§101), whom he describes as an Englishwoman, but she seems to have been from Germany, though she lived in England for a number of years (I was disappointed to learn, in the wikipedia, that Joan's very existence seems to be a fiction originating no earlier than the 13th century); Irene, an 8th-century Byzantine empress (§102); one or two other near-contemporaries of Boccaccio; and finally Joanna, the “queen of Jerusalem and Sicily” (§106), the former in title only, of course (alas!). Boccaccio was invited to move to Naples by an old friend who had risen to a prominent position at Joanna's court, and so probably included this biography at the end to make a more favourable impression upon arriving there (pp. xii, xiv–xv). But I was a bit disappointed that he didn't include some more women from his own time; surely with some effort he could have dug up a few that had e.g. painted something or written some books?

In any case, regardless of the minor downsides I've mentioned here and there, I found Boccaccio's biographies to be pleasant enough to read in moderate doses, especially since they are short and thus don't have the time to get boring. In this way they are similar to his Genealogies of the Pagan Gods, which I guess is not surprising as both of these books are basically about extracting infomation from classical sources and rearranging it in a more systematic and easily digestible format.