The Swerve: How the World Became Modern Part 9

76 it is difficult to understand: Ibid., 1.21.4889.

76 He "vomited twice a day": The charge was made by "Timocrates, the brother of Metrodorus, who was his [Epicurus'] disciple and then left the school," in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R. D. Hicks, 2 vols., Loeb Cla.s.sical Library, 185 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), 2:535.

77 the pa.s.serby who entered: Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, trans. Richard Gummere, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917), 1:146.

77 "When we say, then": Letter to Menoeceus, in Laertius, Lives, 2:657.

77 "Men suffer the worst evils": Philodemus, On Choices and Avoidances, trans. Giovanni Indelli and Voula Tsouna-McKirahan, La Scuola di Epicuro, 15 (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1995), pp. 1046.

77 "I'll have all my beds": Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, ed. Alvin B. Kernan, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), II.ii.4142; 7287. Jonson is partic.i.p.ating in a tradition of representing Epicurus as the patron saint of the inn and the brothel, a tradition that includes Chaucer's well-fed Franklin, who is described in the Canterbury Tales as "Epicurus owene sone."

79 "Some men have sought": Maxim #7, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R. D. Hicks, 2 vols. Loeb Cla.s.sical Library, 185 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925; rev. ed. 1931), 1:665.

80 "Against other things": Vatican sayings 31, in A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The h.e.l.lenistic Philosophers, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1:150.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE TEETH OF TIME.

81 The indefatigable scholar Didymus of Alexandria: Cf. Moritz W. Schmidt, De Didymo Chalcentero (Oels: A. Ludwig, 1851) and Didymi Chalcenteri fragmenta (Leipzig: Teubner, 1854).

82 an ambitious literary editor: Cf. David Diringer, The Book Before Printing (New York: Dover Books, 1982), pp. 241ff.

82 extraordinarily prolific: Diogenes Laertius: "Epicurus was a most prolific author and eclipsed all before him in the number of his writings: for they amount to about three hundred rolls, and contain not a single citation from other authors; it is Epicurus himself who speaks throughout"-Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 2:555. Diogenes Laertius lists the t.i.tles of thirty-seven books by Epicurus, all of which have been lost.

82 On that wall: Cf. Andrew M. T. Moore, "Diogenes's Inscription at Oenoanda," in Dane R. Gordon and David B. Suits, eds., Epicurus: His Continuing Influence and Contemporary Relevance (Rochester, NY: Rochester Inst.i.tute of Technology Cary Graphic Arts Press, 2003), pp. 20914. See The Epicurean Inscription [of Diogenes of Oinoanda], ed. and trans. Martin Ferguson Smith (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1992).

83 "Others are found": Aristotle, Historia animalium, trans. A. L. Peck, Loeb Cla.s.sical Library, 438 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 196591), 5:32.

83 "a small white silver-shining": Quoted in William Blades, The Enemies of Books (London: Elliot Stock, 1896), pp. 6667.

84 "constant gnawing": Ovid, Ex ponto, trans. A. L. Wheeler, rev. G. P. Goold, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924), 1.1.73.

84 "food for vandal moths": Horace, Satires. Epistles. The Art of Poetry, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, Loeb Cla.s.sical Library, 194 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926), Epistle 1.20.12.

84 "Page-eater": In Greek Anthology, trans. W. R. Paton, Loeb Cla.s.sical Library, 84 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917), 9:251. (Evenus of Ascalon, fl. between 50 BCE and 50 ce).

84 many, perhaps most, Greek scribes: Kim Haines-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 4.

85 "I have received the book": Quoted in Lionel Ca.s.son, Libraries in the Ancient World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 77.

85 Publishers had to contend: Leila Avrin, Scribes, Script and Books: The Book Arts from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Chicago: American Library a.s.sociation, 1991), p. 171. See also pp. 14953.

85 female as well as male copyists: On women copyists, see Haines-Eitzen.

86 The invention of movable type: It is estimated that the number of books that had been produced c.u.mulatively in the history of the world before 1450 was equaled by the number produced between 1450 and 1500; that this number was produced again between 1500 and 1510; and that twice this number was produced in the next decade.

86 a roomful of well-trained scribes: On scribes, see L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, 2nd edn. (London: Oxford University Press, 1974); Avrin, Scribes, Script and Books; Rosamond McKitterick, Books, Scribes and Learning in the Frankish Kingdoms, 6th9th Centuries (Aldershot, UK: Variorum, 1994); M. B. Parkes, Scribes, Scripts, and Readers (London: Hambledon Press, 1991). On the symbolic significance of the scribe, cf. Giorgio Agamben, Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, ed. Daniel h.e.l.ler-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 246ff. Avicenna's figure of "perfect potentiality," for example, is the scribe in the moment in which he does not write.

87 in Alexandria: Huge granaries south of Alexandria received endless bargeloads of grain, harvested from the rich flood plains along the river. These had been scrutinized by lynx-eyed officials, appointed to ensure that the grain was "unadulterated, with no admixture of earth or barley, untrodden and sifted"-Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 42. The sacks in their thousands were then transported by ca.n.a.l to the harbor, where the grain fleet awaited them. From there the heavily laden ships fanned out to cities whose burgeoning populations had long outstripped the capacity of the surrounding countryside to support them. Alexandria was one of the key control points in the ancient world for bread and hence stability and hence power. Grain was not the sole commodity that Alexandria controlled; the city's merchants were famous for the trade in wine, linens, tapestries, gla.s.s, and-most interesting for our purposes-papyrus. The huge marshes near the city were particularly suitable for the cultivation of the reeds from which the best paper was made. All through the ancient world, from the time of the Caesars to the rule of the Frankish kings, "Alexandrian papyrus" was the preferred medium on which bureaucrats, philosophers, poets, priests, merchants, emperors, and scholars gave orders, recorded debts, and wrote down their thoughts.

87 a determination to a.s.semble: Ptolomey III (246221 bce) is said to have sent messages to all the rulers of the known world, asking for books to copy. Officials were under order to confiscate from pa.s.sing ships all the books that they had on board. Copies of these books were made and returned, but the originals went into the great library (where in the catalogue they were marked "from the ships"). Royal agents fanned out through the Mediterranean to buy or borrow more and more books. Lenders grew increasingly wary-borrowed books had a way of not coming back-and demanded large deposits. When, after intense cajoling, Athens agreed to lend Alexandria its precious authoritative texts of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides-texts that were zealously guarded in the city's records office-the city insisted on the enormous bond of 15 talents of gold. Ptolomey posted the bond, received the books, sent copies back to Athens, and, forfeiting the bond, deposited the originals in the Museum.

88 was second in magnificence: Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus, History, Loeb Cla.s.sical Library, 315 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940), 2:303. Cf. Rufinus: "The whole edifice is built of arches with enormous windows above each arch. The hidden inner chambers are separate from one another and provide for the enactment of various ritual acts and secret observances. Sitting courts and small chapels with images of the G.o.ds occupy the edge of the highest level. Lofty houses rise up there in which the priests . . . are accustomed to live. Behind these buildings, a freestanding portico raised on columns and facing inward runs around the periphery. In the middle stands the temple, built on a large and magnificent scale with an exterior of marble and precious columns. Inside there was a statue of Serapis so vast that the right hand touched one wall and the left the other"-Cited in Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, p. 148.

89 The first blow came: Alexandria was, as we have seen, a strategically important city, and it could not escape the conflicts that constantly tore at the fabric of Roman society. In 48 bce, Julius Caesar pursued his rival Pompey to Alexandria. At the Egyptian king's command, Pompey was promptly murdered-his head was presented to Caesar who professed to be grief-stricken. But though he probably had no more than 4,000 troops, Caesar decided to remain and secure control of the city. At one point in the course of the nine-month struggle that followed, the gravely outnumbered Romans found themselves threatened by a royal fleet that had sailed into the harbor. Using resin-smeared pine torches with an undercoating of sulfur, Caesar's forces managed to set the ships on fire. The conflagration was intense, for the hulls were sealed with highly flammable pitch and the decks were caulked with wax. (Details of the firing of ancient fleets are from Lucan, Pharsalia, trans. Robert Graves [Baltimore: Penguin, 1957], p. 84, III:656700). The fire leaped from the ships to the sh.o.r.e and then spread through the wharves to the library, or at least to storehouses that held some of the collections. The books themselves were not the object of attack; they were merely convenient combustible material. But burned books do not take into consideration the arsonist's intentions. Caesar left the conquered city in the hands of the deposed king's glamorous and resourceful sister, Cleopatra. Some portion of the library's losses may have been quickly restored-a few years later the besotted Mark Antony is said to have given Cleopatra some 200,000 books that he had looted from Pergamum. (Columns from Pergamum's library are still visible among the impressive ruins of that once great city on Turkey's Mediterranean coast.) Books randomly stolen from one library and dumped into another do not, however, make up for the destruction of a collection that has been painstakingly and intelligently a.s.sembled. No doubt the library staff worked feverishly to repair the losses, and the inst.i.tution, with its scholars and its enormous resources, remained a celebrated one. But the point must have been painfully clear: Mars is an enemy of books.

89 It was only a matter of time: It was not until 407 that bishops in the empire were granted the legal authority to close or demolish temples-Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, p. 160.

90 "as though": Rufinus, cited in ibid., pp. 16162.

91 "Is it not true": Greek Anthology, p. 172.

92 "If you decree": The Letters of Synesius of Cyrene, trans. Augustine Fitzgerald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926), p. 253. Something in Hepatia's whole way of being evidently excited profound respect, not only from scholars but also from the great ma.s.s of her fellow citizens. A young man from Damascus who traveled to Alexandria to study philosophy some two generations later still heard stories of the admiration that Hypatia aroused: "The entire city naturally loved her and held her in exceptional esteem, while the powers-that-be paid their respects first to her"-Damascius, The Philosophical History, trans. Polhymnia Athana.s.siadi (Athens: Apamea Cultural a.s.sociation, 1999), p. 131. Cf. the poet Palladas' praise of Hypatia: Searching the zodiac, gazing on Virgo, Knowing your province is really the heavens, Finding your brilliance everywhere I look, I render you homage, revered Hypatia, Teaching's bright star, unblemished, undimmed . . .

Poems, trans. Tony Harrison (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1975), no. 67.

92 "Such was her self-possession": Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History (London: Samuel Bagster & Sons, 1844), p. 482.

92 Rumors began to circulate: See The Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu [c. ce 690], trans. R. H. Charles (London: Text and Translation Society, 1916): "she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through (her) Satanic wiles. And the governor of the city honoured her exceedingly; for she had beguiled him through her magic" (84:8788), p. 100.

93 the death knell: More than two hundred years later, when the Arabs conquered Alexandria, they evidently found books on the shelves, but these were for the most part works of Christian theology, not pagan philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy. When Caliph Omar was asked what to do with this remnant, he is said to have sent a chilling reply: "If the content of the books is in accordance with the book of Allah, we may do without them, for in that case, the book of Allah more than suffices. If, on the other hand, they contain matter not in accordance with the book of Allah there can be no need to preserve them. Proceed, then, and destroy them." Quoted in Roy MacLeod, ed., The Library of Alexandria: Centre of Learning in the Ancient World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), p. 10. If the story is to be believed, the papyrus rolls, parchments, and codices were distributed to the public baths and burned in the stoves that heated the water. This fuel supply, legend has it, lasted for some six months. See also Luciano Canfora, The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World, trans. Martin Ryle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), and Ca.s.son, Libraries in the Ancient World. On Hypatia, see Maria Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

93 "In place of the philosopher": Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus, History, trans. Rolfe, I: 47 (xiv.6.18).

94 "I would fast": Jerome, Select Letters of St. Jerome, Loeb Cla.s.sical Library, 2362 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933), Letter XXII (to Eustochium), p. 125.

95 "From the judicious precepts": "When I was a young man, though I was protected by the rampart of the lonely desert, I could not endure against the promptings of sin and the ardent heat of my nature. I tried to crush them by frequent fasting, but my mind was always in a turmoil of imagination. To subdue it I put myself in the hands of one of the brethren who had been a Hebrew before his conversion, and asked him to teach me his language. Thus, after having studied the pointed style of Quintilian, the fluency of Cicero, the weightiness of Fronto, and the gentleness of Pliny, I now began to learn the alphabet again and practice harsh and guttural words [stridentia anhelantiaque verba]"-Jerome, Select Letters, p. 419. In the same letter, Jerome advises a monk, "Twist lines too for catching fish, and copy out ma.n.u.scripts, so that your hand may earn you food and your soul be satisfied with reading," p. 419. The copying of ma.n.u.scripts in monastic communities, as we have already seen, turned out to be crucial to the survival of Lucretius and other pagan texts.

95 "You lie": Jerome, Select Letters, p. 127.

96 "O Lord, if ever": Ibid., p. 129.

96 What he found so alluring: "It is no small thing for a n.o.ble man, a man fluent of speech, a wealthy man, to avoid the accompaniment of the powerful in the streets, to mingle with the crowds, to cleave to the poor, to a.s.sociate with peasants." Ep. 66.6, in praise of Pammachius, cited in Robert A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 81.

96 "What has Horace": Jerome, Select Letters, Letter XXII (to Eustochium), p. 125.

97 "He was born in the district": Pope Gregory I, Dialogues, trans. Odo John Zimmerman (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1959), 2:5556.

98 Plato and Aristotle: Not everyone agreed that Plato and Aristotle could be accommodated. Cf. Tertullian, "Against the Heretics," ch. 7: For philosophy is the material of the world's wisdom, the rash interpreter of the nature and dispensation of G.o.d. Indeed heresies are themselves instigated by philosophy. . . . What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What has the Academy to do with the Church? What have heretics to do with Christians? Our instruction comes from the porch of Solomon, who had himself taught that the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart. Away with all attempts to produce a Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic Christianity! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after receiving the gospel! When we believe, we desire no further belief. For this is our first article of faith, that there is nothing which we ought to believe besides.

See Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, 10 vols. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951), 3:246. Conversely, as we will see, efforts were made in the fifteenth century and later to reconcile Christianity with a modified version of Epicureanism.

98 "figments of diseased imagination": Minucius Felix, Octavius, trans. T. R. Glover and Gerald H. Rendall, Loeb Cla.s.sical Library, 250 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), p. 345 (mockery of Christians), p. 385 (mockery of pagans). See, similarly, in the same volume, Tertullian, Apologeticus ("Apology"), "I turn to your literature, by which you are trained in wisdom and the liberal arts; and what absurdities I find! I read how the G.o.ds on account of Trojans and Achaeans fell to it and fought it out themselves like so many pairs of gladiators . . . ," p. 75.

99 "What will be the use": Tertullian, Concerning the Resurrection of the Flesh, trans. A. Souter (London: SPCK, 1922), pp. 15354.

100 "Yes!" Tertullian addressed: Ibid., p. 91.

101 Though early Christians: See James Campbell, "The Angry G.o.d: Epicureans, Lactantius, and Warfare," in Gordon and Suits, eds., Epicurus: His Continuing Influence and Contemporary Relevance. The shift in Christianity toward an angry G.o.d, Campbell observes, comes only in the fourth century, with the growth of power and prominence in the Roman world. Before then, Christianity was closer to the Epicururean att.i.tude and more sympathetic to its doctrines. "Indeed Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Athenagoras found so much to admire in Epicureanism that Richard Jungkuntz has warned that 'any generalizations about patristic antipathy to Epicureanism really need careful qualification to be valid.' The Epicurean practice of the social virtues, emphasis on forgiveness and mutual helpfulness, and suspicion of worldly values so closely paralleled similar Christian att.i.tudes that . . . DeWitt has observed that it 'would have been singularly easy for an Epicurean to become of Christian'-and, one might suppose, a Christian to become an Epicurean," p. 47.

101 "Let us not": Then he added: "though indeed the G.o.ds have already in their wisdom destroyed their works, so that most of their books are no longer available"-Floridi on s.e.xtus, p. 13. In addition to Epicureans, Julian wishes to exclude Pyrrhonians, that is, philosophical skeptics.

101 apikoros, an Epicurean: Strictly speaking, the term did not mean atheist. An apikoros, explained Maimonides, was a person who rejected revelation and insisted that G.o.d had no knowledge or interest in human affairs.

101 If you grant Epicurus: Tertullian, Apologeticus, 45:7 (Loeb, p. 197).

101 "Epicurus utterly destroys": See Lactantius, De ira ("A Treatise on the Anger of G.o.d"), in Ante-Nicene Christian Fathers, ed. Roberts and Donaldson, vol. 7, ch. 8.

102 "not because it brings": See Lactantius, Divine Inst.i.tutes, 31.

103 "He then noticed": Pope Gregory I, Dialogues, 2:60.

103 The infliction of pain: Flagellation had widespread use as a punishment in antiquity, and not only in Rome: "If the guilty man is sentenced to be flogged," Deuteronomy (25:2) declares, "the judge shall cause him to lie down and be beaten in his presence." For the history of flagellation, see Nicklaus Largier, In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal, trans. Graham Harman (New York: Zone Books, 2007).

104 Violence was part of the fabric: Public punishments did not, of course, end with paganism or die out in antiquity. Molinet reports that the citizens of Mons bought a bandit at a high price in order to enjoy the pleasure of seeing him quartered, "at which the people were happier than if a new sacred body had been revived"-(Molinet, in Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th18th Centuries, trans. Eric Nicholson (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990; orig. 1983), p. 107. The Swiss diarist Felix Platter remembered all his life something he had seen as a child: A criminal, having raped a seventy-year-old woman, was flayed alive with burning tongs. With mine own eyes I saw the thick smoke produced by his living flesh that had been subjected to the tongs. He was executed by Master Nicolas, executioner of Berne, who had come expressly for the event. The prisoner was a strong and vigorous man. On the bridge over the Rhine, just nearby, they tore out his breast; then he was led to the scaffold. By now, he was extremely feeble and blood was gushing from his hands. He could no longer remain standing, he fell down continually. Finally, he was decapitated. They drove a stake through his body, and then his corpse was thrown into a ditch. I myself was witness to his torture, my father holding me by the hand.

105 but, with a few exceptions: One of these exceptions was St. Anthony, who, according to his hagiographer, "possessed in a very high degree apatheia-perfect self-control, freedom from pa.s.sion. . . . Christ, who was free from every emotional weakness and fault, is his model"-Athanasius [attr.], Life of Anthony, section 67, quoted in Peter Brown, "Asceticism: Pagan and Christian," in Averil Cameron and Peter Garnsey, eds., Cambridge Ancient History: Late Empire, a.d. 337425 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 13: 616.

106 By the year 600: See Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, a.d. 2001000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 221; R. A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

106 The insistence that punishment: Nothing is ever-quite-an innovation. The active pursuit of pain in emulation or imitation of the sufferings of a deity has precedents in the cults of Isis, Attis, and others.

107 "The body has to be shaped": Cited, with much other evidence, in Largier, In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal, pp. 90, 188.

108 "At Advent": Ibid., p. 36. Largier also rehea.r.s.es the stories that follow.

CHAPTER FIVE: BIRTH AND REBIRTH.

111 He had been born: Ernst Walser, Poggius Florentinus: Leben und Werke (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1974).

112 "each folder thick": Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini, 13351410 (Boston: David G.o.dine; 1986, orig. 1957).

113 "It is much sweeter": Lauro Martines, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, 13901460 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 22.

113 greatly increased the market for slaves: "By the end of the fourteenth century there was hardly a well-to-do household in Tuscany without at least one slave: brides brought them as part of their dowry, doctors accepted them from their patients in lieu of fees-and it was not unusual to find them even in the service of a priest"-Origo, Merchant of Prato, pp. 9091.

114 "In the name of G.o.d": Ibid., p. 109.

114 a vibrant international cloth industry: Fine wool was purchased from Majorca, Catalonia, Provence, and the Cotswolds (the last being the most expensive and highest quality) and shipped across borders and through a tangle of rapacious tax authorities. The dyeing and finishing required further imports: alum from the Black Sea (to make mordant for fixing the dyes), oak gall-nuts (to make the highest quality purple-black ink), woad from Lombardy (for deep blue dyes and as a foundation for other colors); madder from the Low Countries (for bright red dyes or, combined with woad, for dark reds and purples). And these were only the routine imports. Rarer dyes, the kind displayed on the costly clothes proudly worn in aristocratic portraits from the period, included deep scarlet from murex sh.e.l.ls in the eastern Mediterranean, carmine red known as grana from tiny cochineal insects, orange-red vermilion from a crystalline substance found on the sh.o.r.es of the Red Sea, and the extravagantly expensive and therefore much prized kermis red from the powdered remains of an oriental louse.

115 "as though it had been designed": Martin Davis, "Humanism in Script and Print," in Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, ed. Jill Kraye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 48. The experience, Petrarch remarked, was more like looking at a painting than reading a book.

118 curiosity had long been rigorously condemned: Pious Christians were urged to suppress its impulses and to spurn its contaminated fruits. Though Dante's poetry confers a magnificent dignity on Ulysses' determination to sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the Inferno makes it clear that this determination is the expression of a fallen soul, condemned for eternity to reside near the innermost circle of h.e.l.l.

118 Petrarch was a devout Christian: See esp. Charles Trinkaus, "In Our Image and Likeness": Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).

119 "Gold, silver, jewels": "Aurum, argentum, gemmae, purpurea vestis, marmorea domus, cultus ager, pietae tabulae, phaleratus sonipes, caeteraque id genus mutam habent et superficiariam voluptatem: libri medullitus delectant, colloquuntur, consultunt, et viva quaddam n.o.bis atque arguta familiaritate junguntur." Quoted in John Addington Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy, 7 vols. (New York: Georg Olms, 1971; orig. 187586), 2:53 (translated by SG).

119 For his own present: "Among the many subjects, I was especially interested in antiquity, inasmuch as I have always disliked my own age, so that, had not love of dear ones restrained me, I would always have wanted to be born in any other age. In order to forget my own time, I have always tried to place myself in spirit in other times." Posteriati, ed. P.G. Ricci, in Petrarch, Prose, p. 7, quoted in Ronald G. Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Leiden: Brill, 2000), p. 276.

122 training that had the advantage: The Doctor utriusque juris (DUJ) (the degree in both canon and civil law) took ten years.

123 "I much prefer": Witt, In the Footsteps, p. 263.

124 "have become absorbed": Rerum fam. XXII.2 in Familiari, 4:106, quoted in Witt, In the Footsteps, p. 62. The letter probably dates to 1359.

124 "I have always believed": Quoted in Martines, Social World, p. 25.

124 To prove its worth: For Petrarch, there were values that transcended mere style: "What good will it do if you immerse yourself wholly in the Ciceronian springs and know well the writings either of the Greeks or of the Romans? You will indeed be able to speak ornately, charmingly, sweetly, and sublimely; you certainly will not be able to speak seriously, austerely, judiciously, and, most importantly, uniformly"-Rerum fam. I.9, in Witt, In the Footsteps, p. 242.

124 Salutati wanted: Salutati was more complex than this brief account allows: in the early 1380s, at the urging of a friend, he wrote a ma.s.sive defense of the monastic life, and he was ready, even in the midst of praising active engagement, to acknowledge the superiority, at least in principle, of contemplative withdrawal.

124 It was here for Salutati: See Salutati to Gaspare Squaro de' Broaspini in Verona, November 17, 1377: "In this n.o.ble city, the flower of Tuscany and the mirror of Italy, the match of that most glorious Rome from which it descends and whose ancient shadows it follows in the struggle for the salvation of Italy and the freedom of all, here in Florence I have undertaken a labor that is unstinting but for which I am exceptionally grateful." See Eugenio Garin, La Cultura Filosofica del Renascimento Italiano: Ricerche e Doc.u.menti (Florence: Sansuni, 1979), esp. pp. 327.

125 "Will you always stand": Witt, In the Footsteps, p. 308.

126 "At the coming of Chrysolaras": Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, pp. 8081.

127 Taxes were used in Florence: "Just imagine," Niccoli wrote to the fiscal officials near the end of his life, "what sort of tax my poor goods can bear, with all the debts and pressing expenses I have. Which is why, begging your humanity and clemency, I pray that it will please you to treat me in such a way that current taxes will not force me in my old age to die far from my birthplace, where I have spent all I had." Quoted in Martines, Social World, p. 116.

127 "Marriage gives an abundance": Alberti, The Family in Renaissance Florence (Libri della Famiglia), trans. Renee Neu Watkins (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1969), 2:98. It is sometimes claimed that this vision of companionate marriage was only introduced by Protestantism, but there is considerable evidence of its existence much earlier.

128 "If he is rich": Origo, Merchant of Prato, p. 179.

129 "He had a housekeeper": Vespasiano da Bisticci, The Vespasiano Memoirs: Lives of the Ill.u.s.trious Men of the XV Century, trans. William George and Emily Waters (London: Routledge, 1926), p. 402.

129 Poggio could not possibly hope: "One day, when Nicolao was leaving his house, he saw a boy who had around his neck a chalcedony engraved with a figure by the hand of Polycleitus, a beautiful work. He enquired of the boy his father's name, and having learnt this, sent to ask him if he would sell the stone; the father readily consented, like one who neither knew what it was nor valued it. Nicolao sent him five florins in exchange, and the good man to whom it had belonged deemed that he had paid him more than double its value"-Ibid., p. 399. In this case at least, the expenditure proved a very good investment: "There was in Florence in the time of Pope Eugenius a certain Maestro Luigi, the Patriarch, who took great interest in such things as these, and he sent word to Nicolao, asking if he might see the chalcedony. Nicolao sent it to him, and it pleased him so greatly that he kept it, and sent to Nicolao two hundred golden ducats, and he urged him so much that Nicolao, not being a rich man, let him have it. After the death of this Patriarch it pa.s.sed to Pope Paul, and then to Lorenzo de' Medici," ibid., p. 399. For a remarkable tracking of the movements through time of a single ancient cameo, see Luca Giuliani, Ein Geschenk fur den Kaiser: Das Geheimnis des grossen Kameo (Munich: Beck, 2010).

131 He specified that the books: In reality, Niccoli's vision exceeded his means: he died ma.s.sively in debt. But the debt was canceled by his friend Cosimo de' Medici, in exchange for the right to dispose of the collection. Half of the ma.n.u.scripts went to the new Library of S. Marco, where they were housed in Michelozzi's magnificent structure; the other half formed the core of the city's great Laurentian Library. Though he was responsible for its creation, the idea of the public library was not Niccoli's alone. It had been called for by Salutati. Cf. Berthold L. Ullman and Philip A. Stadter, The Public Library of Renaissance Florence: Niccol Niccoli, Cosimo de' Medici, and the Library of San Marco (Padua: Antenore, 1972), p. 6.

132 "In order to appear well read": Cino Rinuccini, Invettiva contro a cierti calunniatori di Dante e di messer Francesco Petrarcha and di messer Giovanni Boccacio, cited in Witt, In the Footsteps, p. 270. See Ronald Witt, "Cino Rinuccini's Risponsiva alla Invetirra di Messer Antonio Lusco," Renaissance Quarterly 23 (1970), pp. 13349.

132 "would not have recognized": Bruni, Dialogus 1, in Martines, Social World, p. 235.

133 "While the literary legacy": Ibid.

133 Poggio's "second self": Martines, Social World, p. 241.