If Petrarch questioned the credibility of the shorter and simpler version of Valerius, what would he have said of this fuller legend, elaborated as it was with so many undignified frills?
[124]. Val. Max., ix, 12, ext. 5:
When Sophocles was already in extreme old age, he submitted one of his tragedies in competition at the games. For a long time he was very anxious concerning (as he thought) the doubtful decision of the judges. But his great joy when he was at last unanimously declared victor, brought about his death.
Cf. Pliny, N. H., VII, 53, 180.
[125]. Fully to realize Petrarch’s state of mind, it is necessary to quote substantial portions of his two sources for these statements. The first statement is again founded on Val. Max., ix, 12, ext. 6:
The strain of excessive laughter took off Philemon. Some figs had been prepared for him, but had been left in open view. Seeing a young ass eating them, Philemon summoned a boy to drive him away. The boy, however, answered the summons leisurely, arriving when all the figs had already been devoured. Whereupon Philemon said, “Since you have been so slow in coming, now give the ass some wine.” And forthwith he began to roar at his own witty remark, panting hard until the irregular breathing in his aged throat choked him.
The second version, which Petrarch considers “more serious and more credible,” is that of Apuleius, Florida, xvi:
For these praiseworthy qualities he (Philemon) was for a long time well known as a writer of comedies. It happened one day that he was giving a public reading of part of a play which he had recently written. When he had reached the third act . . . a sudden rainstorm arose . . . which compelled the gathering and the reading to be postponed. Upon being urgently pressed by several, Philemon promised that he would finish the reading on the very next day. And so on the following day a large throng of very eager men gathered in the theater. . . . But when they had sat waiting longer than seemed reasonable, and when Philemon did not put in an appearance, several of the more eager were sent to summon him, and found him dead in his bed. . . . Returning thence they reported to the expectant audience that the poet Philemon, whom they were so eagerly attending, to hear him complete the reading of his latest play, had already, and at his own home, brought a real drama to a close.
In his manuscript of the Florida, Petrarch wrote the following marginal note to this passage: “This version of the death of Philemon is somewhat nobler than the one related by Valerius and, indeed, by myself; for in a certain letter of mine I followed both him and the current opinion.” P. de Nolhac says that he has not been able to find the letter referred to by Petrarch (II, p. 102, and n. 4). The present epistle to Homer was written in 1360; and it may well be that the letter referred to was destroyed in the general holocaust of 1359, when Petrarch sorted his correspondence into the two collections (cf. above, [n. [120]). Moreover, it was just like the careful Petrarch to destroy a wrong version when he had once learned the true one.