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Horace’s Ars poetica (Art of Poetry) became a foundational text for Renaissance poetics and prompted numerous responses. Petrarch addressed a letter to the ancient author in the form of an Ode and felt a strong attachment to the Roman poet’s simplicity of life and love of friendship. The inhabited initial P shows a Roman soldier seated between a tree and the base of a column, which has been attributed to the anonymous Venetian illuminator known as the Master of the Putti. The precise dating of this illuminator’s work allows for a fairly precise estimated date of production for the book as a whole. On the same page, in the lower margin, is the coat of arms of the Tirelta or Tiretta family of Treviso.

This miscellany contains the Historia romana, a reworking by Paul the Deacon (ca. 720–99) of the classic Breviarium ab urbe condita written by Eutropius (fl. ca. 360 AD), which itself drew heavily from classical Roman authors. The next section contains excerpts of speeches that purport to be by the Greek orators Aeschines, Demades, and Demosthenes, translated into Latin. In reality, these consist of fifteenth-century satirical forgeries, usually attributed to Pietro Marcello. Finally, two short exhortative epistles on the value of studying ancient texts, Leonardo Bruni’s letter of 1424 to the poetess Battista Malatesta (De studiis et litteris), and Basil of Caesarea’s De legendis libris gentilium, originally written in Greek in the fourth century, but newly translated into Latin by Bruni, are included. Bruni’s missive is noted for its insistence that women as well as men were suited to reading a classical cursus.

The vogue for vernacular translations of classical epics, whether in prose or in rhyme, intensified throughout the fifteenth century as bibliophiles became less comfortable reading the original Latin or Greek texts. Among the more successful French translators was Octavien de Saint-Gelais (1468–1502), whose ecclesiastical career as bishop of Angoulême (as of 1494) brought him into contact with Louise of Savoy, mother of the future king of France, Francis I (r. 1515–47). The present manuscript is a fine copy of Octavien’s verse translation of the Aeneid, written in decasyllabic couplets. Like many such manuscript copies, the volume was intended from the start to accommodate large introductory miniatures for each book, but these remain blank.

This leaf has been excised from a manuscript copy of Francis Petrarch’s epic Latin poem Africa. Petrarch’s text recounts the Carthaginian general Hannibal’s invasion of Italy during the Second Punic War. The Romans prevailed under the leadership of Scipio Africanus (236–183 BC) to eventually defeat the Carthaginians. The initial, showing Scipio in a triumphal chariot, begins Book IX of the poem, which describes the Roman general’s heroic triumph. Scipio is shown crowned with a laurel wreath and carrying a scepter crowned with an eagle.The full manuscript was at one point owned by the early humanist Adoardo da Thiene of Vicenza, as confirmed by the presence of the coat of arms of the Thiene family.

Though they were widely known throughout the Middle Ages, Gaius Sallustius Crispius’s two writings on Roman history, the Bellum Catilinae and Bellum Iugurthinum, were harnessed anew in the fifteenth century by humanists who sought both positive and negative examples from Republican Rome for contemporary civic politics. In both texts, Sallust strove to demonstrate how the moral depravity of leaders could result in catastrophic outcomes. From the Carolingian period onward, Sallust was included as part of the study of rhetoric, a basic component of medieval education. This mid-fifteenth-century copy of Sallust’s texts is dotted with early marginal annotations, which offer alternate readings and occasional insertions into the text. There is a partially obliterated coat of arms, combined with an effaced ownership inscription that bears the name of Mario Maffei (1463–1537). Mario was a churchman and bibliophile, becoming bishop of Aquino in 1516 and Cavaillon in 1527.