[15] Probably some three years after the journey to the north.
[17] The castle of Cavaillon is close by the valley of the Sorgue.
[18] September 1, 1340, when Petrarch was thirty-six years old.
[19] The invitations to Rome and Paris to receive the laurel crown have a history, as the reader will easily infer. See below, p. [ 100] sqq.
[20] Robert (who died in 1343) was the grandson of that Charles of Anjou (the brother of St. Louis) who had been called in by the popes to succeed the house of Hohenstaufen in the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. He was Petrarch's sovereign (Fam., iv., 3), for Avignon belonged to him as Count of Provence, until sold to the popes by Robert's successor in 1348. Robert had resided at Avignon, 1318-1324. A letter from Petrarch to Robert, dated December 26, 1338, is preserved, as well as a second one (Pisa, April 21, 1341), describing his coronation at Rome: Fam., iv., 3, 7.
[21] The Latin—ut eam (scil. Africam) sibi inscribi magno pro munere posceret—may perhaps mean that the king asked that the book be dedicated to him as a great favour. If, however, Petrarch was rewarded for the attention, he was only one of the first to enjoy a source of revenue which was well known to later Humanists.
[22] Upon Easter Sunday, April 8, 1341.
[24] The great epic was never really finished (cf. Fam., xiii., 11), and Petrarch came in his old age to dislike even the mention of it. Corradini's edition is the best we have of the poem. An analysis of the Africa may be found in Körting, op. cit., 654 sqq.