The obvious exaggeration of an introductory public lecture does not lead him to quote Homer in Greek. The abundant examples are given in his Latin translation. Moreover this encomium of Homer relies not on specific considerations of Greek language and style, but on such conventional topics as could be derived equally well from a translation. The writing of Greek, in spite of occasional published efforts, is probably measured with his usual justice by Bembo. “We study Greek not to use it, except for exercise, but the better to explore Latin.”[5] Poliziano, in spite of his Greek and of his youthful achievement in Italian verse, wrote the bulk of his work in Latin prose. Rabelais from his monastery at Fontenay-le-Comte (1521) invoked the help of Budé toward procuring Greek books; he translated a Greek author who had already been translated; but how much Greek he achieved is hard to determine. Of Julius Caesar Scaliger, whose Greek was one of his warrants for vanity, Egger says: “though he knows much Greek, he seems to know it ill.”[6] The same critic records of Henri Étienne: “From the age of fifteen he knew and spoke Greek almost as his native language, and better than Latin.”[7] Ronsard’s imitation of Greek verse is based on knowledge of the Greek language. Montaigne, saturated in Plutarch, tells us that he knows no Greek. His Plutarch is the translation of Amyot; and from Amyot, not from the Greek text of Longus, is derived the vogue of Daphnis and Chloe. Both the extent and the character of Greek influence may more safely be estimated thus from individual literary forms and even from individual authors.
One general influence may be guessed from the stimulus given by Greek to the Renaissance vogue of mythology. Boccaccio had already, in his Genealogia deorum gentilium[8] ranged beyond Ovid; and in the sixteenth century such manuals as Natale Conti’s (Natalis Comes) Mythologiae (1580) were in active demand. Mythology equipped the poetry not only of printed books, but also of pageants and solemn entries. It was so widely pervasive as to seem almost obligatory. But how much of this vogue was due to Greek? Greek mythology had been in ancient times largely taken over into Latin. The distinctively Greek habit, that is the earlier mythological habit, is to feel and treat the myth not merely as a conventional allusion, but as a perennial story. For the literary use of mythology is twofold. Either it is decorative, one of the ornaments of style, or it is itself a form of poetry. The latter, the perennial recreation of Prometheus or Medea, was less conspicuous in Latin poetry than in Greek. How far the revival of Greek brought it back may here and there be divined. It never quite dies. The widespread medieval story of Mélusine is essentially identical with Medea, though it did not come through Greek. On the other hand, Ariosto’s Angelica bound to the rock directly suggests Andromeda, though the myth reappears also in the popular ballad of Kemp Owen. Such myth-making gives a clue to Boccaccio’s Ameto. There is something of it in Poliziano’s Orfeo. It is carefully imitated from Pindar by Ronsard. It somewhat vaguely animates Spenser. But it is not common in the Renaissance. For the Renaissance generally, regarding mythology in the more usual way as a mine of stylistic ornament, was merely more anxious to have it standardized, to be sure that gods and goddesses wore the correct classical costumes. Diana in the Venatio (1512) of Adrian, Cardinal Corneto, is such a figure; and her attendant nymphs are as much part of the decoration as the chased bowls. Indeed, the Middle Age, frankly adapting ancient cults to its own time, had been nearer to the Greek habit. Chaucer had made the temple in his Troilus and Criseyde a cathedral, and called the Palladion a relic. While Renaissance painting was handling mythology in this free way, Renaissance literature often used it merely as archaistic decoration.
Thus it appears in Francesco Colonna’s fantastic allegory Hypnerotomachia (1467), and in its abundant woodcuts. The main figures, though they have Greek names, are allegorical in the fashion of the Roman de la Rose. The guide Logistica, for instance, is Reason; the other guide, Thelemia,[9] Desire or Will. The nymphs met at every turn serve for erotic suggestion; the Greek inscriptions, for decoration. Colonna’s diction is studiously deformed by such Greek coinage as lithoglypho, hypaethrio, chariceumati. The precious style thus becomes a dilated pedantic jargon. In the whole preposterous book there is nothing Greek below the surface.
How far did Greek influence Renaissance thought? Aristotle had dominated the Middle Age in the Latin translations of Boethius and in Latin versions of the Arabs. The Renaissance retranslated him and published the Greek text. It restored him to challenge him. Were the Renaissance translations superior to those of Boethius, who was scholar and philosopher as well as poet? Did the Renaissance texts convey him more truly? Renaissance texts are often questionable; and Aristotle’s Poetic, at least, was understood very slowly. The Renaissance welcomed Plato. Was it Plato? Why is Renaissance Platonism peculiarly difficult to measure, or even to define? Such questions are relevant here only to the revival of the Greek language. How far did this revival guide philosophy? The question comes up incidentally in one of Sperone Speroni’s earlier dialogues, Dialogo delle lingue (about 1540); and the answer is so unusual as to be startling. Philosophy has not been advanced by our study of Latin and Greek; it has been deviated. This sharp turn, in a dialogue discussing the superiority of Latin and Greek to the vernaculars, comes as a reminiscence of the teaching of Peretto.
Peretto (p. 121) used to say that the time spent on learning Latin and Greek actually hinders learning and developing philosophy. No language (p. 123) has in itself any peculiar value. Aristotle, therefore, not only may be studied in Latin, but might be studied in Italian. In fact (p. 126), language studies may be illusory, as we see around us. “I grieve at the wretched condition of these modern times, in which study is spent not in being, but in seeming wise.... We think we know something well enough when, without comprehending its nature, we are able to give it the name given by Cicero, Pliny, Lucretius, Vergil, or Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Aeschines.”[10]
Hardly more than a parenthesis, this stands out as a challenge both of the superiority of Greek as a language and, more generally, of Renaissance confidence in language studies as a means of education.
Such challenges are rare. Bembo, in Speroni’s dialogue, will not admit any such heresy as the equality of languages; nor, we may well assume, would Sperone himself admit that language study was hindering philosophy. For the Renaissance generally agreed that education should normally proceed through the study of languages. Of this the “new learning” was no less persuaded than the old. The newness consisted in revising the traditional Latin and in adding other languages, especially Greek. Louvain established (1518) the College of the Three Languages (Latin, Greek, and Hebrew); and the same name was at first commonly applied to the Collège de France (1530). Though this royal foundation was effectually new in other aspects that now may seem more important, its idea and inception came in great part from the movement for Greek in education. Nor did the movement stop with the individual college. Nothing more vividly exemplifies Renaissance preoccupation with language studies than the addition of Greek to the university curriculum. Thwarted, in a time of bitter controversy, by the association of Greek with Protestantism, the cause was won before the end of the century. The prescription promulgated officially in 1600, and the educational theory behind it, held substantially for three hundred years. There, at least, is a permanent result of the Renaissance.
3. THE VERNACULARS
(a) Italian
The humanist assertion of the literary superiority of Latin did not pass unchallenged even in the fifteenth century. Alberti (1404-1472), scholar and philosopher, insisted that actual communication, the conveying of a message, should be in the vernacular, and set an example by writing many of his learned works in Italian. Though humanists might disparage even so great a succession as Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and in the languid period some promising ambitions might be deviated into Latin, by the sixteenth century the literary rights of the vernacular were both recovered in practice and acknowledged in theory. The shift of opinion is significantly recorded by Bembo. Elegant Latinist, accomplished poet in the vernacular, judicious critic, he posed in an Italian literary dialogue (Prose, Venice, 1525), Giuliano de’ Medici, Federigo Fregoso, and Hercole Strozza discussing the capacity of Italian style: