It is said that Vergil’s reading of this eclogue (vi) was received with great favor; so much so, indeed, that when later Cytheris the courtesan (whom Vergil calls Lycoris in the last eclogue) sang it in the theater, Cicero in amazement inquired who the author of it was (“cuius esset requireret”). And when at last Cicero had seen him (“eum . . . vidisset”), he is said to have exclaimed, in praise of both himself and that other (“et ad suam et ad illius laudem”), “Rome’s other hope and stay”—a phrase which Vergil afterward applied to Ascanius, as the commentators relate.
This version was one which would especially appeal to Petrarch; for, as P. de Nolhac justly observes (I, p. 125), it represents Petrarch’s two literary idols as having been personally acquainted with each other.
And, finally, in favor of the Servian origin is the fact that in Donatus the entire story appears in the interpolated version of the Vita, and it is doubtful whether Petrarch was acquainted with this longer version (Sabbadini, Rend. del R. Ist. Lomb., [1906], p. 198). The interpolated text of the Vita has, in fact, been traced only as far back as the beginning of the fifteenth century; the date temporarily assigned to it is 1400-20 (Sabbadini, “La ‘Vergilii Vita’ di Donato,” Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica, Vol. V, 1897, pp. 384-88).
[18]. Cicero, however, is much more guarded in his statement than we would infer from the words of Petrarch; Tusc., i, 3, 5: “Then came the Lepidi, Carbo, and the Gracchi, and so many great orators after them down to our own times, that we were very little, if at all, inferior to the Greeks.”
[19]. Translation, by Ch. R. Moore (p. 73), of Propertius, ii, 34b, 65, 66 (rec. Aem. Baehrens, Teubner, 1880) or ii, 34, 65, 66 (H. E. Butler, 1905).
There is abundant proof that Petrarch was acquainted with Propertius (P. de Nolhac, I, pp. 170-72). Still, from the few indirect references to this author, one is inclined to believe that Petrarch here (as elsewhere) is drawing upon the Life by Donatus for biographical information on Vergil. And in fact the Propertian couplet seems to derive from Donatus, Vita Verg., XII, 45 (p. 61R), the “operis fundamenta” and “asseverare non timuit” of Petrarch (Vol. III, p. 266), corresponding, respectively, to the “Aeneidos vixdum coeptae” and “non dubitaverit sic praedicare” of Donatus. In commenting upon this famous distich, H. Nettleship says (“Vergil,” in Classical Writers [New York, 1880], p. 86): “Propertius and Ovid saw at once what was in Vergil. Of the Aeneid Propertius said ‘something greater than the Iliad is coming to the birth.’” (Cf. Ancient Lives of Vergil [Oxford, 1879], p. 67.) Comparetti, however, has chosen a different course in his Vergil in the Middle Ages (tr. by Benecke, 1895). On p. 3, after stating that the Romans confessed Vergil’s inferiority to Homer, he continues in a footnote:
The exaggerations of a few enthusiasts must not be reckoned at more than their real value. How great a part of the “Nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade” of Propertius was due to his friendship with Vergil becomes clear when we compare with it the praises he lavishes on the Thebaid of another friend, Ponticus.
[20]. In a large tome containing Cicero’s writings, and supposed to have belonged to Petrarch, there occurred the rubric “de laude ac defensione philosophiae, introducens Lucullum loquentem ad Hortensium, liber primus incipit.” Petrarch, misled by this heading, had been of the opinion that the work following was the Hortensius. As a matter of fact, it was book ii of the Academica Priora, which has the separate subtitle “Lucullus” (P. de Nolhac, I, pp. 228, 244 ff.). He labored under this delusion for some time, until in reading St. Augustine he met citations from the real Hortensius, which of course he could not verify in his supposed Hortensius. Finally he received from Marco Barbato da Sulmona, whom he had met in 1341 at Naples, a manuscript containing a work inscribed Academica. Investigation quickly showed him that this work and his supposed Hortensius were one and the same. But he was unwilling to relinquish the idol he had worshiped so long. Doubts still remained. On his visit to Naples in 1343, however, he identified once and for all the work in his own manuscript; and on his return he entered the following note abreast of the heading: “This title, though common, is nevertheless a false one. This is not the De laude philosophiae, but the last two of the four books of the Academica.” The present letter to Cicero was written in 1345, two years after the correction of his error; hence Petrarch rightly places the De laude philosophiae (sive Hortensius) in the catalogue of lost books.
The closing statement of Petrarch’s postilla needs a few words of explanation. The fragment which he possessed constituted book ii of the Ac. priora. Petrarch supposed that he had not one, but two books. The deception was due to an arbitrary division in his manuscript at the words “Hortensius autem vehementer” (Ac. pr., ii, 63). Still another error existed. Petrarch thought that his fragment was part of the second edition of the Academica in four books—the Posteriora dedicated to Varro, of whose existence he had learned from the letters to Atticus (cf. xiii, 13) which he had discovered earlier in the same year.
[21]. Every biography relates how Petrarch gave in loan to his teacher, Convennole (or Convenevole) da Prato, a manuscript containing the De gloria of Cicero; and how the schoolmaster, in an hour of extreme need, pawned the volume, which could never again be found in spite of Petrarch’s constant search for it. The story as we have it is told by Petrarch himself, in a letter written in 1374, the very last year of his life (Sen., xvi, 1).