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[ Consult Selden’s Titles of Honor, in his works, (vol. iii. p. 457—466.) A hundred years before Petrarch, St. Francis received the visit of a poet, qui ab imperatore fuerat coronatus et exinde rex versuum dictus.]
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[ From Augustus to Louis, the muse has too often been false and venal: but I much doubt whether any age or court can produce a similar establishment of a stipendiary poet, who in every reign, and at all events, is bound to furnish twice a year a measure of praise and verse, such as may be sung in the chapel, and, I believe, in the presence, of the sovereign. I speak the more freely, as the best time for abolishing this ridiculous custom is while the prince is a man of virtue and the poet a man of genius.]
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[ Isocrates (in Panegyrico, tom. i. p. 116, 117, edit. Battie, Cantab. 1729) claims for his native Athens the glory of first instituting and recommending the alwnaV—kai ta aqla megista—mh monon tacouV kai rwmhV, alla kai logwn kai gnwmhV. The example of the Panathenæa was imitated at Delphi; but the Olympic games were ignorant of a musical crown, till it was extorted by the vain tyranny of Nero, (Sueton. in Nerone, c. 23; Philostrat. apud Casaubon ad locum; Dion Cassius, or Xiphilin, l. lxiii. p. 1032, 1041. Potter’s Greek Antiquities, vol. i. p. 445, 450.)]
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[ The Capitoline games (certamen quinquenale, musicum, equestre, gymnicum) were instituted by Domitian (Sueton. c. 4) in the year of Christ 86, (Censorin. de Die Natali, c. 18, p. 100, edit. Havercamp.) and were not abolished in the ivth century, (Ausonius de Professoribus Burdegal. V.) If the crown were given to superior merit, the exclusion of Statius (Capitolia nostræ inficiata lyræ, Sylv. l. iii. v. 31) may do honor to the games of the Capitol; but the Latin poets who lived before Domitian were crowned only in the public opinion.]
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[ Petrarch and the senators of Rome were ignorant that the laurel was not the Capitoline, but the Delphic crown, (Plin. Hist. Natur p. 39. Hist. Critique de la République des Lettres, tom. i. p. 150—220.) The victors in the Capitol were crowned with a garland of oak eaves, (Martial, l. iv. epigram 54.)]