[4] The reference is of course to the Latin translations of Homer, the Odyssey of Livius Andronicus and the abridgment of the Iliad mentioned just below, p. [254], note 1.
[5] Leo Pilatus (or Leontius Pilatus, as Boccaccio writes the name), a Calabrian, who, at the instance of Petrarch and Boccaccio, was making at Florence at about this time a Latin prose version of the Iliad and the Odyssey. For a good brief account of what is known concerning Pilatus, with a few specimens of his translation, see Körting, op. cit., i., 474 sqq.
[6] The reference here is to the metrical abridgment of the Iliad by Silius Italicus. This contains 1070 lines, half of them condensed translation of passages from books I.-V., the remainder little more than the driest epitome. Poor as it is, it was widely accepted in the middle ages, in some confused sort of a way, as 'Homer.' But Petrarch was able to look below the surface and see just what it was.
[7] De Nolhac has shown (op. cit., pp. 342, 354) that Pilatus probably had made for Petrarch alone, more than a year before this epistle was written, a preliminary translation of the first five books of the Iliad.
[8] Voigt argues from these words that the letter to which this of Petrarch's is a reply came from Bologna. De Nolhac thinks it more probable that it was written from Florence, by Boccaccio and his friends.
With this, as throwing further light upon Petrarch's limitations, may be placed the letter to his brother, upon the nature of poetry, to which reference was made above in discussing the question of allegory:
On the Nature of Poetry.
To his Brother Gherardo.[1]
I judge, from what I know of your religious fervour, that you will feel a sort of repugnance toward the poem which I enclose in this letter, deeming it quite out of harmony with all your professions, and in direct opposition to your whole mode of thinking and living. But you must not be too hasty in your conclusions. What can be more foolish than to pronounce an opinion upon a subject that you have not investigated? The fact is, poetry is very far from being opposed to theology. Does that surprise you? One may almost say that theology actually is poetry, poetry concerning God. To call Christ now a lion, now a lamb, now a worm, what pray is that if not poetical? And you will find thousands of such things in the Scriptures, so very many that I cannot attempt to enumerate them. What indeed are the parables of our Saviour, in the Gospels, but words whose sound is foreign to their sense, or allegories, to use the technical term? But allegory is the very warp and woof of all poetry. Of course, though, the subject matter in the two cases is very different. That everyone will admit. In the one case it is God and things pertaining to him that are treated, in the other mere gods and mortal men.