Note [79] page 41. Francesco Petrarca or Petrarch, (born 1304; died 1374), belonged to a family that was banished from Florence at the same time with Dante, whom he remembered seeing in his childhood. He was the first Italian of his time to appreciate the value of public libraries, to collect coins and inscriptions as sources of accurate historical information, and to urge the preservation of ancient monuments. Had he never written a line of verse, he would still be venerated as the apostle of scholarship, as the chief originator of humanistic impulses based upon what Symonds describes as “a new and vital perception of the dignity of man considered as a rational being apart from theological determinations, and ... the further perception that classic literature alone displayed human nature in the plenitude of intellectual and moral freedom.”

Note [80] page 41. In an age when grammatical and rhetorical treatises, in the modern sense of the word, hardly existed, it was natural that the study of classic models should take the form of imitation.

Note [81] page 42. It will be remembered that Giuliano de' Medici was a native Tuscan.

Note [82] page 43. This Tuscan triumvirate was called “the three Florentine crowns:” Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio.

Note [83] page 44. Evander was a mythical son of Hermes, supposed to have founded a colony on the Tiber before the Trojan War. Turnus was a legendary king of an Italian tribe, who was slain by Æneas.

Note [84] page 44. The Salian priests were attached to the worship of Mars Gradivus. On the occasion of their annual festival, they went in procession through Rome, carrying the sacred shields of which they were custodians and which they beat in accompaniment to dance and song. The words of their chaunts are said to have become unintelligible even to themselves, and appear to have set forth a kind of theogony in praise of all the celestial deities (excepting Venus), and especially of one Mamurius Veturius, who is by some regarded as identical with Mars.

Note [85] page 44. Marcus Antonius (143-87 B.C.) and Licinius Crassus (140-91 B.C.), the two most famous orators of early Rome, were regarded by Cicero as having been the first to rival their Greek predecessors. Quintus Hortensius Hortalus (114-50 B.C.), the great advocate of the aristocratic party at Rome, yielded the palm of oratory only to Cicero (106-43 B.C.). Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.), a Roman soldier, author and reforming statesman, sought to restore the ancient purity and simplicity of the earlier republic. Quintus Ennius (239-169 B.C.), a Roman epic poet and annalist, imparted to the language and literature of his nation much of the impulse that affected their growth for centuries. Virgil was born 70 B.C., and died 19 B.C.

Note [86] page 44. Horace was born 65 B.C., and died 8 B.C. Plautus died 184 B.C.

Note [87] page 44. Sergius Sulpicius Galba was Roman Consul 144 B.C.; Cicero praised his oratory, but found it more old-fashioned than that of Lælius (flor. 200 B.C.) and Scipio Africanus the Younger (died 129 B.C.).

Note [88] page 46. In his Prose, Bembo says that courtly Italian, especially during the pontificate of the Spaniard, Alexander VI (1492-1503), was full of Spanish expressions,—an assertion amply confirmed by contemporary letters, which are rich also in Gallicisms.