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Mythological Exempla in Bembo's Asolani: Didactic or Decorative?

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SOURCE: Terpening, Ronnie H. “Mythological Exempla in Bembo's Asolani: Didactic or Decorative?” Forum Italicum 8, no. 3 (September 1974): 331-43.

[In the essay below, Terpening examines Bembo's use of mythological stories in Gli Asolani as instructional devices.]

Since the publication of Burckhardt's seminal work on the Cultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860), much has been written and said about the relationship of the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.1 The role of mythology in this wide-ranging debate has been of fundamental importance. The Burckhardtian view in which medieval man looked to classical mythology for moral sustenance while the Renaissance individual focused on myths in their purity has been, at least, in part, modified.2 Quattrocento Platonists were thoroughly grounded in the allegorical method and as a result pagan mythology served as the vehicle for much of the philosophical thought of the time.3

Among the Humanists the search for allegorical significance in mythology was a search for the lost wisdom of antiquity. The moral truths hidden in myths and emblems were used for didactic purposes—to teach love of good and hate for evil. Bembo, sharing the Neoplatonic interests in the edification and subsequent elevation of the soul, writes so that man may know “quale amore buono sia e qual reo.”4

Bembo's knowledge of Platonic doctrine, however, was never that of a philosopher. Most critics, in fact, feel compelled to point out that he had neither the time nor the desire to meditate on the theories of Ficino.5 Nevertheless, Bembo's ability to assimilate the various tendencies of his time is notable. Humanistic and vernacular cultures both converge in the Asolani (1505). Within the three dialogues are reflected the influence of the humanistic disparagement of love, the Florentine vernacular love tradition and the Neoplatonic idealization of love.6 Other stylistic and thematic influences are equally varied.7

Yet, while much attention has been paid to Bembo's sources, both stylistic and thematic, as well as to his innovations, little has been said concerning his implementation of myth. I believe that the poet's ability to absorb and disseminate Platonic philosophy on a courtly level is not limited to the aspect of love but extends also to mythology. In this he again mirrors the vogue of the Florentine exegetes. Moreover, the poet's study of Boccaccio, especially the Boccaccio of the minor vernacular works and of the De genealogia, would have assured and encouraged him in his use of mythological exempla. Like emblems, myths had a dual nature: they were on one hand in some measure esoteric, a classical element thus raising the tone of a work of art, and, on the other, they were exoteric, a popular element serving a didactic purpose.8

How then, one might ask, is the Neoplatonic interest in fables expressed in Bembo's Asolani? To answer that question more fully I would like to examine first Bembo's concept of myth, then his use of images and of allegorical exegesis, followed by his specific mythological exempla and, finally, the poet's own “bella menzogna.”

One of the beautiful passages in the Asolani is Perottino's description of the poetic origins of mankind. When men still lived in trees and caves like beasts, poets, the “primi maestri della vita,” taught by nature, invented verses in order to gather together these rough uncultivated people who were entranced by the beauty of the music (335). Orpheus, who could tame beasts, cause trees to run, move rocks and induce rivers to flow backwards (a résumé of the typical adynata), was the sublime example of the power of the Logos to humanize.

Having gathered “quella sciocca gente,” it was necessary to teach them the nature of things so that they would follow good and avoid evil. Unable to instill the greatness of nature in their restricted souls or reason in their drowsy minds, the poets resorted to fables under the veil of which they hid truth, as under transparent glass. In this guise they delighted the people with the novelty of fictions while sometimes revealing the truth in order to guide them little by little to a better life. Through Perottino's description, then, Bembo illustrates the importance of delightful fictions which play a large part in the edifying nature of poetry.

Bembo theorizes at greater length on the material of art as finzione pittorica through Gismondo in Book II. Refuting Perottino's statements on love's unnatural effects (lovers live in fire like salamanders, freeze like ice, live insensate like rocks), Gismondo marvels that Perottino would have them take vain fables for truth. These images, he says, are special licenses used by both poets and lovers. They have no more truth in them than other novel fables like the teeth sown by Cadmus, the ants of Aeacus or the chariot ride of Phaethon. All lovers who write or have written employ images not because they have experienced these miracles, “ma fannolo per porgere diversi suggetti agl'inchiostri, acciò che con questi colori i loro fingimenti variando, l'amorosa pintura riesca agli occhi de' riguardanti più vaga” (394-395).9 Thus, for Bembo, myths not only provide variety but add color to a work of art. The vividness of fable is emphasized in the author's choice of the word “pintura” to describe these poetic effusions.

Bembo himself employs a variety of images throughout the Asolani to create a particularly visual impression and thus add color to his exposition. Perottino, for example, as an exponent of love's pain, speaks with inflamed eloquence. His description of Amore entails a magnificent series of metaphors (“questo universale danno degli uomini,” “questa generalissima vergogna delle genti,” “questa malvagia fiera”) ending with the reversal of Cupid's divine birth to a more damning parentage. Love is not a child of Venus, as writers claim in fables, disagreeing in the same lie as to his actual mother, nor is he a son of Mars, of Mercury or of Vulcan,

ma di soverchia lascivia e da pigro ozio degli uomini, oscurissimi e vilissimi genitori, nelle nostre menti procreato, nasce da prima quasi parto di malizia e di vizio, il quale esse menti raccolgono e, fasciandolo di leggierissime speranze, poscia il nodriscono di vani e stolti pensieri, latte che tanto più abonda, quanto più ne sugge l'ingordo e assetato bambino.

(328-329)

Love issues from this speech with a physical reality so intense as to make us almost forget, despite the constant reminder of moral metaphors, that we are speaking of an emotion.

As well as abounding in images of moral intent, Perottino is adept at allegorical exegesis. Love is called fuoco because it consumes, furore because it aggravates like the Furies (333). Cupid is represented as naked to show that lovers are without reason; he is pictured as a youth because he turns lovers into stupid children; he is described as winged to show that lovers fly on the wings of desire in the air of hope, so they think, to heaven; he is depicted with a torch because, just as the brightness of fire is pleasing but its heat painful, so the first appearance of love delights us only to torment us beyond measure later and so forth (346-347).

The pleasures of love are presented metaphorically by Perottino with equal vehemence. He apostrophizes them as bitter sweetness, poisoned medicine of unhealthy lovers, grievous happiness leaving no sweeter fruit than repentance, vaghezza which like thin smoke is no sooner seen than disappears leaving only tears in our eyes and as “ali che bene in alto ci levate perché, strutta dal sole la vostra cera, noi con gli omeri nudi rimanendo, quasi novelli Icari, cadiamo nel mare!” (360). Bembo's ability to create the tension of heightened emotion through imagery demonstrates, here in his prose, his poetic skill.

Turning specifically to Bembo's mythological exempla, I would like to point out the author's tendency to employ myth in referring to the dialogues themselves, to rhetoric. As one might imagine, the concept of weaving an argument brings to the page the myths of Penelope and Arachne. Gismondo, for example, at one point refuses to discuss a subject which he feels his opponent Perottino has already refuted himself. He compares such a task to Penelope's endless reweaving, emphasizing through the myth the futility of such an action (398). Berenice returns to the image when she desires Gismondo to untangle a statement of Perottino (399) which Gismondo in turn refers to as more like a web of Arachne than one of Penelope (405). Finally, criticism of each other's comments leads Gismondo at one point to refer sarcastically to Perottino's presentation of his canzoni as if they were the leaves of the Cumaean Sibyl or the voices of Phoebus' prophetic curtains. The mythological similes serve here as the vehicle for Gismondo's scoffing.

A more extensive and varied elaboration of myths occurs in the discussions of love. All three youths, Lavinello to a much lesser degree, interpret myths allegorically, each explicating them as best fits his individual position. Perottino, for example, evokes a host of calamitous myths to prove love is bad. The first general statement about love is expressed through the myth of Medea:

          Mentre ad Amor non si commise ancora,
vide Colco Medea lieta e secura;
poi ch'arse per Jason, acerba e dura
fu la sua vita, infin a l'ultim'ora.

(318)

Love, then, is basically unhappy. Perottino's purpose is to show how and why. His first recourse is to the authority of previous poets. No one, he claims, calls love pleasing, sweet or human. Pages have been filled with the attributes “crudele,” “acerbo,” and “fiero,” while in the thousands who have written of love little can be found but grief (333). An enumeration of love's evil effects follows after which Perottino adds that not only are both entertaining and exemplary fables stained by love's pain, but even the most serious histories and secret annals. With a skillful use of praeteritio, he passes over the unhappy loves of Pyramus and Thisbe, of Myrrha, of Biblis and of Medea, “i quali, posto che non fosser veri, sì furono essi almeno favoleggiati dagli antichi per insegnarci che tali possono esser quelli de' veri amori” and concludes with a reference to the true story of Paolo and Francesca both of whom fell by one sword (333-334).

Perottino adduces other historical and mythical examples of unhappy love claiming that if Gismondo wishes to prove that love is good, he must not only confute me, but a thousand ancient and modern writers (334). As he tells Lisa later, the whole world is an example of the power of the god love (345).

One of the follies of lovers, Perottino points out, is to ignore the universality of love in the belief that the pain they feel has never been surpassed. The youth summons up a small catalogue of women who followed their husbands in death. If one can trust ancient authors, he says, no one grieved more than did Argia on the body of her dead husband. Evadna, Laodomia, Pantea and Ero all sacrificed their lives. Their example demonstrates the universality of unhappiness, unvaried in time.

When Perottino moralizes on Cupid's pictorial traits, the god is compared to Medea. With strange potions he changes old, gray-haired men to babies (347). Like moths, lovers swarm to Cupid's torch, whence, “quasi Perilli nel proprio toro” they perish in their own fire (347-348). The juxtaposition of these diverse images—the moth and the instrument of torture—joined by their reference to a burning death emphasizes Perottino's oratorical excitement. From a strange but natural fact he passes immediately to the more gruesome Ovidian (Ars Amat. I, 635-636) and Dantesque (Inf. XXVII, 7-12) representation of Perillus who died in his own instrument of torture made for Phalaris, the Sicilian tyrant.

Despite the universal affliction of love, the poet Perottino grieves alone, his pain shared only by Echo. But at least he lives. Many lovers have died from grief, especially those who were unrestrained in their happiness. Perottino employs Artemisia, the celebrated classical example of marital fedelity, to illustrate his own theme of rejoicing with measure. Like Dido (“Elisa”), had she lived less subject to fortune's extremes she would not have died. In the same fashion Niobe's loss of her children was the greater because of her previous happiness.

To depict the lover's precarious state Perottino borrows an image from previous poets (who have sometimes told the truth “favoleggiando”) similar to the myth of the sword of Damocles or of Cicero's Tantalus (Tusculan Disput. IV, 16). The immense rock hanging from a thin thread over the head of one of the damned is representative, he says, of the state of lovers always fearful of possible harm (360). To forestall imagined harm, lovers have resorted to terrible crimes. Classical examples abound: Egisto killed Agamemnon upon his return from Troy fearing the husband's return would ruin his own pleasures (361); thus Orestes killed Neoptolemus for Hermione. The untold examples of love's similar deeds, says Perottino, would equal in number the drops of water left behind in the sea by a fast sailing ship! (362). Regarding a lover's torments, while cruel women allow them to consume themselves in desire like Tantalus (366), fickle girls leave them like froth tossed here and there on the waves of the sea. He who must compete with his own forces against love's ferocity would have less trouble were he forced to do battle with the Hydra of Hercules (367).

Finally, near the end of his argument, Perottino in a pitch of oratorical excitement first passes from similes to metaphors (the lover is Tityus whose liver feeds vultures; he is Ixion eternally tormented on his wheel) and then leaves all exempla behind:

Non posso, o donne, aguagliar con parole le pene, con le quali questo crudel maestro ci afflige, se io, nello stremo fondo degli inferni penetrando, gli esempi delle ultime miserie de' dannati dinanzi agli occhi non vi paro: e queste medesime sono, come voi vedete, per aventura men gravi.

(374-375)

Thus, Perottino concludes his argument, having begun with an introductory canzone based on an exemplary myth, having proceeded with the aid of the many mythological examples provided by the poets of antiquity and having ended with an impassioned descent to the depths of hell itself for similar examples. His opponent's argument will mirror, even in detail, this progression.

Gismondo, in preparing his defense, comments on Perottino's ability to create vivid representations. His skill in “dipignere ragionando,” thereby lending a semblance of truth to lies, has enabled him to sound convincing (399). If what Perottino professes were true, however, says Gismondo, man might as well live like the ancient Timon, Lucian's misanthropic creation, or like Narcissus. But, what about the example of Andromeda?

          Infin quel dì, che pria la punse Amore,
Andromeda ebbe sempre affanno e noia;
poi ch'a Perseo si diè, diletto e gioia
seguilla viva, e morta eterno onore.

(319)

Men and women, claims Gismondo, need each other, a fact that the ancient women of Lemnos and the Amazons realized to their dismay (404). Besides, he notes, with reference to Plato's myth of the Androgyne, in loving one another we in effect love our other half (401-402).

Gismondo asserts that love is thus a natural condition and not evil. When Lavinello protests that natural things such as trees feel no love, Gismondo replies that they love the earth they live in (407-408). Lavinello turns to the myth of Daphne in his attempt to refute his companion. Since she felt no love and first gave form to the laurel, these trees, her descendants, are also unloving, if what is written is true, he adds. Gismondo, as if accepting the myth's truth, postulates a distinction between the laurel and Daphne, who left her being in taking on the new form (408-409).

Gismondo also is adept at allegorical interpretation. In castigating Perottino's intemperance in loving things he cannot obtain, he compares his friend's foolish desire to a myth. The poets, he says, wished to signify such folly when they described the giants' vain attempt to take heaven from the gods (410). Gismondo, in fact, decides to correct Perottino's use of myth. His friend, he claims, missed the path of love and encountered instead those “Mezii,” “Tizii,” “Tantali” and “Isioni” among whom at the end he saw himself as if he had looked in clear water (413-414).

Before launching into his own definition of love and its effects, Gismondo emphasizes the truth of his statements despite their lofty tone (419). Postulating love as the origin of all good, he traces the development of mankind. It was love that first gathered beastly men and civilized them. As love grew so grew the arts. The family unit was formed and a golden age of friendship flowered (421). Thus Orestes and Pylades, before fierce Diana, each wanted to die to save his friend (422). Women then were different from those of our malign age. Gismondo evokes the famous classical examples of good women, ones who courageosly ascended the pyres of their husbands, ones like Alcestis never praised enough (422). Even when apart spouses remained true, living in perfect harmony. As proof, Gismondo recalls the example of Laodameia who availed herself of a wax image of Protesilaus in order to remember him (450).

Gismondo's comments on love's innate goodness apply as well to love's effects. After listing some of the pleasures of lovers, he adds that these are merely an indication of those not mentioned. The delights of love are exemplified by Leander's action in swimming so often across a wide and dangerous expanse just to see Hero briefly (431).

In one of Gismondo's final moments of poetic exaltation he illustrates love's power with the myth of Orpheus' descent to Hades. At his approach, Cerberus restrained his barking; the Furies neglected their raging; the vultures of Tityus, the rock of Sisyphus, the water and fruit of Tantalus, the wheel of Ixion and the other punishments of the damned all forgot their duty, enchanted by the poet's singing. Which myth, declares Gismondo in conclusion, signifies that the harsh cares of man cease to torment him while he is enraptured by the sound of his beloved's voice (433). Thus, by introducing Orpheus into Perottino's gloomy world, Gismondo with his own allegorical interpretation turns the table on his opponent's argument. He too has shown himself no less a master of poetic fable.

Relatively few myths adorn Book III. Those used by Lavinello and the Romito most often refer to man's lesser qualities. At one point, however, when Lavinello asks Gismondo to recant, he offers him the noble classical example of Stesichorus who, having vituperated Helen and been punished with blindness, amended his statements, praised Helen and regained his sight (469).

Later, after Lavinello has expounded on the four lower steps of the ladder of being with man endowed with reason at the top, the Romito exclaims that nature must have given us free will to compensate for the gift of reason, so that we ourselves might descend voluntarily to the level of the beasts. He compares nature to Apollo who, having repented of his gift of prophecy to Cassandra, added the stipulation that she should never be believed (487). Man, he concludes, is actually worse off than the beasts inasmuch as he is able to desire what is harmful for himself.

But nature also allows man to avoid this error. The sun, moon and stars, says the Romito, are sent by God to mankind as messengers (488). With eternal voice they ask why we are entranced by false forms of beauty, in the guise of Narcissus, and do not realize that these are merely shadows of the true. Enchanted by earthly love, as if we had drunk the potion of bewitching Circe, we change ourselves from men to beasts (489).

Noting that Gismondo's ideal of two lovers in one accord is difficult to attain when man is not even in accord with himself, the Romito counsels Lavinello to direct his love to an eternal object, steadfast and perfect. On earth everything is weak and unstable: extremes of weather, sickness and disease, which unfortunately ancient Pandora freed when she opened the box, assail us from all sides (497-498). One cannot experience the pleasures of loving God, the Romito concludes, unless he casts aside terrestrial love (502). In the timeless world of true reality exists perfection; fortune has no power. Nothing beyond the necessary is desired or conceded. To the body is given the little that is needed as if it were a sop to still Cerberus' barking (502). The absolute insignificance of the body acquires visual clarity with the repugnant comparison to the infernal beast. Through his sparing but effective use of myth, the Romito, then, like the three youths, lends color and intensity to his moral exposition.

That Bembo was fully aware of the didactic importance of mythological exempla with their hidden meanings is confirmed by the poet's own fictio, his creation of the Platonic myth concerning the Queen of the Fortunate Islands. Inspired perhaps in part, as Dionisotti notes (493-494), by Columbus' voyage to new lands, in part by classical myths such as that of Circe, by Hesiod's and Pindar's Islands of the Blessed, and by the legendary Atlantis, Bembo's myth expresses, through the Romito, the poet's concept of life.

According to the fable, the virgin Queen of the Fortunate Islands takes pleasure in being loved and cherished (494). While she rewards all who love her with a commensurate “guiderdone,” they must first be tested. Touching them with a wand she sends them forth from her place where they fall asleep until summoned before her a second time. When they present themselves, their dreams are engraved on their foreheads. Those who dreamed of hunting, fishing, riding and similar pleasures she sends to live with the beasts. Those who dreamed of commerce or of governing their families and communities she keeps in her city, since they thought of her occasionally, but burdens them with cares and worries. Finally those who dreamed of her she allows to live in her court in order to speak to her among music, singing and other amusements (495). The moral significance of the fiction is apparent. As the Romito observes at the close of the Asolani, “noi qui peregrinando viviamo” (503).

In conclusion, I think it is evident that Bembo's absorption of Neoplatonic concepts is not limited to love but extends also to mythology. Just as the Quattrocento Platonists read allegorical meanings into classical fable, employing mythology as a philosophical tool, so Bembo utilizes ancient stories for the significatio hidden beneath the surface of each. The poet's “grazioso ufficio” is to unveil the truth in fables. His use of mythological exempla is thus tied to his concept of the poet as philosopher. He himself, as an educator of men, follows in the pattern of the “primi maestri della vita” (335).

The ultimate authority of the Asolani's interlocutors is the classical world, the ancient poets and their creations. While the three youths often state that myths in themselves are false, as poets they not only recognize a moral relevance, a substructure, in all fable but also feel compelled to offer an individual interpretatio of that hidden mystery. The attraction of mythological exempla, however, lies above all in the dual nature of myths. They serve not only as vehicles of permanent philosophical truths but are also picturesque fictions lending “novità” and color to a work of art. The delight they offer in themselves, their decorative or aesthetic function, is essential to their edifying nature. In Bembo's dialogue moral didacticism and aestheticism are harmoniously fused. Myths, rather than remaining a decorative element, become vivid didactic illustrations, word pictures (“dipignere ragionando”) of an exemplary nature.

Notes

  1. See, for example, the introduction and studies in The Renaissance: A Reconsideration of the Theories and Interpretations of the Age, ed. by Tinsley Helton (Madison, 1961).

  2. Jean Seznec's La Survivance des dieux antiques: Essai sur le rôle de la tradition mythologique dans l'Humanisme et dans l'art de la Renaissance (Studies of The Warburg Institute, XI, London, 1940), for example, stresses the essential continuity of the two ages by pointing to the survival of medieval attitudes in the Renaissance.

  3. The Humanists, despite their direct contact with antiquity, never abandoned the search for hidden meanings in fable. Boccaccio is securely tied to Dante's concept of poetry as fictio, a “bella menzogna” with a “veritade ascosa,” as is evident in Book XIV of the De genealogia deorum gentilium and in the Trattatello in laude di Dante. In the latter work he writes of mythology as follows:

    La verità piana, perciò ch'è tosto compresa con piccole forze, diletta e passa nella memoria. Adunque, acciò che con fatica acquistata fosse più grata, e perciò meglio si conservasse, li poeti sotto cose molto ad essa contrarie apparenti la nascosero; e perciò favole fecero, più che altra coperta, perché la bellezza di quelle attraesse coloro li quali né le dimostrazioni filosofiche, né le persuasioni avevano potuto a sé tirare.

    (Opere minori in volgare, a cura di Mario Marti [Milano, 1969], IV, 361-362). The medieval allegorical method perpetuated in Salutati's De laboribus Herculis (1378-1383) is stressed by Cristoforo Landino, in harmony with his Platonic education, in the Disputationes camaldulenses (ca 1474) and practiced in his commentaries on both Virgil (1478) and Dante (1480). Ficino draws on Neoplatonic authorities when offering allegorical explanations of ancient myths. For his method see his treatment of the judgment of Paris in an appendix to his commentary on Plato's Philebus in Supplementum Ficinianum, ed. by P. O. Kristeller (Firenze, 1937), I, 80-82. Even Poliziano took his interpretations of Homer directly from Heraclitus, Phornutus and the pseudo-Plutarch. For a discussion of Poliziano's depiction of myths in the light of the medieval allegorical tradition see my study “Poliziano's Treatment of a Classical Topos: Ekphrasis, Portal to the Stanze” in Italian Quarterly, XVII, 65 (1973), 39-71.

  4. Asolani I, 1 in Prose e rime di Pietro Bembo, a cura di Carlo Dionisotti (Torino, 1960), p. 314. All future page numbers in the text refer to this edition.

  5. Mario Santoro writes, “Quel platonismo che è a base del trattato gli è tutto arrivato nella generica volgarizzazione che la teorica del Ficino aveva per l'Italia e soprattutto per le corti dove le propiziava le strade quella non mai spenta tradizione cavalleresca provenzale che passava per il Canzoniere del Petrarca e per l'Ameto e per il Filocolo del Boccaccio” (Pietro Bembo [Napoli, 1937], p. 72). Bembo's lack of profundity is especially felt by Carlo Dionisotti, for example, in Book III. He writes, “Il Bembo stesso cercava, nel terzo libro dei suoi Asolani, una soluzione filosofica e religiosa insieme al problema dell'amore. Ma la sua vocazione non era né filosofica né religiosa” (“Pietro Bembo,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani [Roma, 1966], VIII, 136).

  6. In discussing the cultural currents preceding Bembo, Dionisotti (Asolani, op. cit., pp. 17-18) notes that the Venetian probably knew Platina's Dialogus contra amores, Petrus Haedus' Anteroticorum (1492) as well as Battista Fregoso's vernacular work L'Anteros (1496). He found a justification of love, however, in Ficinian Neoplatonism which “aveva ridato all'amore una legittimità e una funzione nella vita spirituale dell'uomo, e alla letteratura amorosa, al dibattito sull'amore, una serietà e importanza.”

  7. Santoro sees the effects of Cicero's use of indirect dialogue as well as his theory of love expressed in part four of the Tusculan Disputations (op. cit., p. 74). Dantesque, Petrarchan and Boccaccian reminiscences abound throughout the dialogue while the mixed form owes much to the Ameto which in turn reflects Dante's use of verse and prose in both the Vita nuova and the Convivio. As a precedent for Bembo's use of the vernacular for realistic subjects as opposed to its accepted use for idealized topics such as we find in the Arcadia, Dionisotti mentions Alberti's Della famiglia (Asolani, op. cit., p. 21).

  8. The habit of using examples from history and myth to illustrate a moral lesson is, of course, a very old classical tradition. As early as Homer great heroes of the still-earlier past were used as models and quoted in speeches so that their successors could imitate their virtues and avoid their errors. Gilbert Highet points out that this practice “spread through nearly all classical literature to an almost incredible degree. For instance, Propertius, who writes love-poetry, feels that his own passion is inadequate as a subject for a poem, unless it is objectified and exemplified by mythological parallels. The satires of Juvenal swarm with examples” (The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature [Oxford, 1970], p. 68).

  9. For the myths referred to see Ovid, Met. III, 1-137; VII, 523-660; I, 747-749; II, 1-400 and Boccaccio, De genealogia II, 63; XII, 45; VII, 41. Almost all of Bembo's myths come by way of Ovid, Dante or Boccaccio (especially the De genealogia and the Amorosa visione).

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