SANNAZARO'S ELEGY ON THE RUINS OF CUMAE

Author(s): David Marsh

Source: Bibliothque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, T. 50, No. 3 (1988), pp. 681-689
Published by: Librairie Droz
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20677726
Accessed: 17-02-2017 13:01 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Librairie Droz is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Bibliothque
d'Humanisme et Renaissance

This content downloaded from 194.95.59.195 on Fri, 17 Feb 2017 13:01:54 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Bib/iotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance - Tome L - 1988 - n* 3, pp. 681-689.

SANNAZARO'S ELEGY ON THE RUINS OF CUMAE*

Hic ubi Cumaeae surgebant inclyta famae

Moenia, Tyrrheni gloria prima maris,
Longinquis quo saepe hospes properabat ab oris
Visurus tripodas, Delie magne, tuos,
s Et uagus antiquos intrabat nauita portus
Quaerens Daedaleae conscia signa fugae
(Credere quis quondam potuit dum fata manebant?)
Nunc sylua agrestes occulit alta feras.
Atque ubi fatidicae latuere arcana Sibyllae,
10 Nunc claudit saturas uespere pastor oues,
Quaeque prius sanctos cogebat curia patres,
Serpentum facta est, alituumque domus.
Plenaque tot passim generosis atria ceris
Ipsa sua tandem subruta mole iacent.
is Calcanturque olim sacris onerata trophaeis
Limina, diffractos et tegit herba deos.
Tot decora artificumque manus, tot nota sepulchra,
Totque pios cineres una ruina premit.
Et iam intra domos disiectaque passim
20 Culmina setigeros aduena figit apros.
Nec tamen hoc Graiis cecinit deus ipse carinis,
Praevia nec haec missa columba mari.
Et querimur, cito si nostrae data tempora uitae
Diffugiunt? Urbes mors uiolenta rapit.
25 Atque utinam mea me fallant oracula uatem,
Vanus et a longa posteritate ferar.
Nec tu semper eris, quae septem amplecteris arces,
Nec tu, quae mediis aemula surgis aquis,
Et te (quis putet hoc?), altrix mea, durus arator

* An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the Sixteenth-Century Studies

Conference held in Tempe, Arizona, in October, 1987.
i famae A] gentis
7 dum fata manebant A] fiorente senatu
15 onerata A] honerata
16 diffractos A, B] distractos edd.
sepulchra A] sepulcra
20 adue?a A] incola (adue?a in margine)
24 Diffugiunt?] cum edd. interpunxi
29 putet AJ neget (putet suprascriptum)

This content downloaded from 194.95.59.195 on Fri, 17 Feb 2017 13:01:54 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 682 NOTES ET DOCUMENTS

30 Vertet et, Urbs, dicet, haec quoque clara fuit.

Fata trahunt homines; fatis urgentibus, urbes
Et quodcunque uides auferet ipsa dies.
A = Vat. lat. 3361, ff. 47 v*- 48 r*
B = Vat. lat. 3361, ff. 109 v*-110 r*

Sannazaro's elegy on the ruins of Cumae (2.9) is a meditation o

transience which stands apart from the epistolary and occasional
his other elegies'. In the poem, the poet surveys the wilderness w
once the Greek colony of Cumae, and reflects that cities, li
inevitably pass away. Here, where the glorious walls of Cumae o
where men crossed the sea to learn Apollo's oracles and to visit t
built by Daedalus, now there is only a wood. Gone are the temp
assembly-halls, and the magnificent houses with their rich fur
What was once a city is now the home of serpents and bir
shepherds drive their flocks and hunters stalk the boar. Surely this
the future promised to the Greek colonists by Apollo's sending
Yet even cities meet with violent death. And, although he h
prophecy will prove false, the poet foretells the passing of Rom
and his native Naples, which will someday be turned under the
just as the fates bear men away, so time will undo men's cities a
see on earth.
One of Sannazaro's shortest elegies, the poem comprises sixteen
distichs and falls into two sections which progress from past to present to
future2. In the first section (1-20), the poet exploits the balanced structure
of elegiac verse in distichs which contrast Cumae's past glory to its present
desolation. In the second half of the poem (21-32), the poet concludes that
cities, like men, inevitably pass away, and he foretells the future dis

1 For some of the autograph variants, see Antonio Altamura, La tradizione

manoscritta dei ?Carmina? del Sannazaro, Studi e testi umanistici 5 (Naples, Viti, 1957),
p. 55. The poem was first printed as Elegy 2-9 in Acti Synceri Sannazari Opera omnia latine
scripta, 2 vol. in 1 (Venetiis, Paulus Manutius, 1535), 2: 22-23. In this century, it has been
printed in Jacopo Sannazaro, Ecloghe, Elegie, Odi, Epigrammi, ed. and trans. Giorgio
Castello (Milan, Signoreili, 1928), pp. 122-124; Poeti latini del Quattrocento, ed. Francesco
Arnaldi, Lucia Gualdo Rosa, and Liliana Monti Sabia (Milan-Naples, Ricciardi, 1964),
pp. 1138-1140; and Renaissance Latin Verse: An Anthology, ed. Alessandro Perosa and John
Sparrow (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1979), pp. 149-150. ? The
fullest discussions of the poem are those of Augusto Sainati in his Jacopo Sannazaro e
Joachim Du Bellay (Pisa, Spoerri, 1915) and La lirica latina del Rinascimento (Pisa, Spoerri,
1919): both are reprinted and updated in Augusto Sainati, Studi di letteratura latina
medievale e umanistica (Padua, Antenore, 1972), from which I quote. A sensitive reading is
offered by William J. Kennedy, Jacopo Sannazaro and the Uses of Pastoral (Hanover
London, University Press of New England, 1983), pp. 74-79. The poem is briefly discussed by
Attilio Momigliano, Studi di poesia, 3d ed. (Messina-Florence, D'Anna, 1960), p. 61 (an essay
of 1930); and by Antonio Altamura, Jacopo Sannazaro (Naples, Viti, 1951), pp. 97-98, and
Letteratura italiana: I minori (Milan, Marzorati, 1961), 1: 780.
2 Kennedy, Sannazaro, pp. 75-78, subdivides the first twenty lines of the poem, thus
distinguishing three sections.

This content downloaded from 194.95.59.195 on Fri, 17 Feb 2017 13:01:54 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 NOTES ET DOCUMENTS 683

appearance of Rome, Venice, and Naples. The second half of the

marked by Stoicizing reflections on human transience, and the fi
(< Fata trahunt hominesn) echoes the famed verse in Seneca
?Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.
Presumably, the elegy was inspired by an excursion to the acr
Cumae, which overlooks the Tyrrhenian sea and the Phlegraean F
title ?Ad ruinas Cumarum - not found in the manuscript -
the ruins of Cumae . Since the site was not excavated until the se
century, we may take as literal the poet's description of a
civilization3. But despite its legendary past, for Sannazaro this
elevation possesses none of the poetic empathy of Leopardi's erm
Rather, it is a sparse landscape in which myth and history hav
traces. The desolation of the scene is heightened by its aridity: t
life-giving river in this landscape, and the dense woods hide n
paradise'.
Central to the poem is the historical contrast between rude nature and
rich civilization. In the Roman elegists, this theme was most often treated
in a comparison between Rome past and present, between Evander's
humble settlement and Augustus' caput mundi. (It is hardly surprising that
the author of Arcadia should have been so familiar with the myth of the
Arcadian Evander, who introduced the cult of Pan into Italy, and whose
prophetic mother Carmentis foretold the greatness of Rome.) In imitating
his Roman models, Sannazaro reverses their perspective: for the rise of
Rome, he substitutes the decline of Cumae.
The opening of the poem, with its eight-line antithesis ?Hic, ubi...
Nunc , plays an elaborate variation on two verses in Ovid's Fasti which
begin with the hemistich ?Hic, ubi nunc Roma est 6. In the Fasti, both

3 For a thorough archeological account of Cumae, see E. Gabrici, Cuma, 3 vol.,

Accademia dei Lincei, Monumenti antichi 22 (Milan, Hoepli, 1931), esp. 1: 31-51 on the
excavations. On the history of Cumae (Kyme), see T.J. Dunbabin, The Western Greeks
(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1948), pp. 2-11 ; and Ernst Kirsten, S?ditalienkinde L : Campanien
(Heidelberg, Carl Winter, 1975), pp. 136-152.
4 Momigliano, Studi, p. 61, calls Sannazaro's elegies his most ?romantic? work, citing
the Cumae poem. Altamura, Sannazaro, p. 97, qualifies Momigliano's adjective (?come fu
romantico il Petrarca o lo sar? il Tasso?), and follows Sainati, Studi, p. 205, in comparing
Leopardi.
5 In Prosa 12 of his Arcadia, Sannazaro eulogizes the great rivers of the world,
including his own dear Sebeto; even the ruined city of Pompeii is characterized as ?irrigata da
le onde del freddissimo Sarno?: Iacopo Sannazaro, Opere, ed. Enrico Carrara (Turin, UTET,
1952), p. 199. For the symbology of rivers and the decline of Naples in Sannazaro, see David
Quint, Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature: Versions of the Source (New Haven
London, Yale University Press, 1983), ?Sannazaro: From Orpheus to Proteus?, pp. 43-80.
6 Cf. P. Ovidius Naso, Die Fasten, ed. trans, and comm. by Franz B?rner, 2 vol.
(Heidelberg, Carl Winter, 1958), 2: 103, on parallels to Fasti 2. 280 (?Hic, ubi nunc urbs
est?), including Propertius 4. 1, Tibullus 2. 5, and Virgil, Aeneid 8. In his Fasti, Ovid
repeatedly varies this phrase in evoking primitive Rome: cf. 2. 280 (?hic, ubi nunc urbs est,
tum locus urbis erat?: Evander introduces the Arcadian god Pan to Latium), and 2. 391 (?hic,
ubi nunc fora sunt, Untres errare uideres?: Romulus and Remus are set adrift in the Tiber).
Sannazaro's line 10 (?Nunc claudit saturas uespere pastor oves?) echoes Ovid's Fasti 3. 309

This content downloaded from 194.95.59.195 on Fri, 17 Feb 2017 13:01:54 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 684 NOTES ET DOCUMENTS

passages contrast primitive Rome to its later splendor. In the f

the god Janus describes his settlement on the eponymous Janicul
the age of Saturn (1. 243): (Hic, ubi nunc Roma est, incaed
uirebat. In the fifth book, the muse Calliope relates how A
Evander brought the cult of Mercury and Maia to Italy, and she
Evander's rustic village to Augustus' metropolis (5. 93-94): ?Hic,
Roma est, orbis caput, arbor et herbae / Et paucae pecudes, et c
fuit.
Ovid has suggested another theme of Sannazaro's elegy. In Book I of
the Fasti, the prophetic nymph Carmentis, mother of Evander, stresses the
incredibility of Rome's future greatness (1. 518): oquis tantum fati credat
habere locum? And in narrating Romulus' foundation of Rome, Ovid
asks who could have believed that the city would one day conquer the
world (4. 857-858): ?urbs oritur (quis tunc hoc ulli credere posset?) /
uictorem terris impositura pedem. Ovid's rhetorical questions are echoed
by Sannazaro's wonder at the demise of Cumae (7): ?credere quis
quondam potuit, dum fata manebant? 7
If Sannazaro's opening hexameter recalls Ovid, his final pentameter
borrows from Propertius". The hemistich ?Et quodcumque uides (32)
echoes the first elegy of Propertius' fourth book, a poetic history of Rome
that inaugurates the poet's series of Callimachean aetia. Addressing an
imaginary vistor, Propertius contrasts Augustan Rome (emphasizing the
cult of the princeps for Apollo) to Evander's pastures (4.1. 1-4): ?Hoc
quodcumque uides, hospes, qua maxima Roma est, / ante Phrygem
Aenean collis et herba fuit; / atque ubi Nauali stant sacra Palatia Phoebo,
/ Euandri profugae procubuere boves. Similarly, Sannazaro's final
hemistich (32: ?auferet ipsa dies ) echoes the Stoic maxim of Propertius 2.
28. 32 ( et deus et durus uertitur ipse dies ), a passage also faintly echoed
by Sannazaro's verb ?uertet in line 30'.
The third of the Roman elegists, Tibullus, describes primitive Rome in
a poem (2. 5) which celebrates the election of Messalinus to the Apolline
priesthood of the Sibylline books". Apollo is invoked to inspire the poet
just as he once inspired the Cumaean Sibyl's prophecy to Aeneas, and the
theme of Rome's future greatness occasions an idyllic vignette of its

(?Inde quater pastor saturos ubi clauserit haedos?). ? In Prose 3 of the Arcadia, Sannazaro
borrows from Ovid's account of the Palilia in Fasti 4.
7 Cf. the parenthetical ?quis putet hoc?? in line 29, which Sainati, Studi, p. 204,
interprets as an expression of ?Stupor doloroso?.
8 Discussing the opening lines of the Cumae elegy, Sainati, Studi, p. 201, n. 2,
compares Propertius 4. 1. 1-8. For Propertius, I have consulted Propertius, Elegies I-IV, ed.
and comm. Lawrence Richardson, Jr. (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1977).
9 Discussing Sannazaro's ?sentimento delle rovine?, Sainati, Studi, p. 201, cites
Epigram 2. 35 on the ruins of a Campanian theater. The final distich of the epigram echoes
the Cumae elegy: ? Scilicet, heu fati leges, rapit omnia tempus / Et, quae sustulerat, deprimit
ipsa dies.?
10 On Tibullus 2. 5, see David F. Bright, Haec mihi fingebam: Tibullus in his World
(Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1978), ?Messalinum celebrem?, pp. 66-98, with a thorough review of the
bibliography.

This content downloaded from 194.95.59.195 on Fri, 17 Feb 2017 13:01:54 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 NOTES ET DOCUMENTS 685

humble origins (23-28). Like the other elegists, Tibullus men

grassy pastures of primitive Rome (2. 5. 25: ?herbosa Palatia
like Ovid, Tibullus emphasizes how difficult it was for Aeneas
the prophecy of Rome's greatness (2. 5. 20: ?nec fore credebat R
For their accounts of Evander in Italy, the Roman elegis
indebted to the eighth book of Virgil's Aeneid; and, not surpri
Sannazaro's elegy likewise borrows from the episode of Aeneas' e
with Evander 1". There are several parallels between Rome and Cu
origins of both are connected with pre-Trojan heroes: Rome was
Hercules, Cumae by Daedalus. At both Rome and Cumae
prophetess whose prophecies are associated with Apollo, Virgil's
Carmentis (8. 340: ?uates fatidica ), and Sannazaro's Cumaea
(9: ?fatidica Sibylla ).
More important, Sannazaro's account of Cumae reworks the h
perspective of Virgil's description of early Rome. In Aeneid 8, V
Evander leads Aeneas to the Capitoline hill, which is ?golden
formerly thick with woody brambles (8. 347-348): ?Capitoli
nunc, olim siluestribus horrida dumis. "1 The same nunc-olim a
informs the first half of Sannazaro's poem ( nunc in lines
?olim in line 15)."'. Sannazaro views history from a perspective
to Virgil's. Instead of civilization, the passage of time brings d
death. Virgil's ?olim siluestribus dumis implies a wilderness des
settlement, whereas Sannazaro's ?nunc silua alta (8) desc
overgrowth that buries man's past ". Yet while describing a
historical process, Sannazaro recapitulates Virgil's temporal sequ
eighth book of the Aeneid proceeds from past to present to futu
hears of Rome's past in the age of Saturn, witnesses its present st
Evander, and beholds its future depicted in the shield he receives
mother Venus 16. Likewise, Sannazaro's elegy moves from the my

11 For the key-word herba, cf. Ovid, Fasti 5. 93 (?arbor et herbae?), Propert
?Collis et herba fuit?), and Sannazaro (16: ?et tegit nerba deos?).
12 I have used P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Libri VII-VII, comm. C.J. For
John D. Christie, with an introduction by P.G. Walsh (Glasgow-Oxford, Oxford
Press, 1977). On Ovid's debt to Virgil, see B?rner, Fasten, 1: 24; for Prop
Richardson, p. 415; for Tibullus, see Bright, pp. 67-70.
13 Commenting on this passage (8. 348), Fordyce notes the parallel in Proper
?fictilibus creuere deis haec aurea templa.?
14 Cf. Sannazaro, Epigram, 2. 35. 5-7 (cited in Sainati, Studi, p. 201): ?H
sueta est cun?is Campana iuventus / amphitheatrales laeta videre iocos? / N
plaususque hominum uocesque canorae...??
15 I cannot agree with the interpretation of Kennedy, pp. 77-79, who views the
Sibyl's cave as a sheep-pen (9-10) as a pastoral ?rehabilitation? or ?takeover? of
scene.
16 See Brooks Otis, Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1963), pp. 330-331. His analysis is aptly summarized in P.G. Walsh's Introduction to
Fordyce's commentary, p. xxv: ?... a further subtlety of structure should be noted. The
events at Pallanteum and in the vale of Caere extend over three days. On the first, the events
of the past are presented (102-369); on the second, the events of the present (454-607); and on
the third, the events of the future, especially as depicted on the shield of Aeneas (608-731).?

This content downloaded from 194.95.59.195 on Fri, 17 Feb 2017 13:01:54 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 686 NOTES ET DOCUMENTS

of Cumae to its present ruin, and concludes by foretelling the future

of three Italian cities.
The modern triad of doomed cities in Sannazaro's elegy is ma
an ancient triad of destroyed cities. Besides the explicit subject o
Carthage and Troy are implied by the Virgilian subtext. In the
distich, the expression <surgebant moenia echoes Aene
exclamation on beholding the burgeoning new city of Carthage
437: ?o fortunati, quorum iam moenia surgunt! ). And in descri
beauties of ancient Cumae, Sannazaro refers to the ?work of arti
?artificumque manus ), a citation from Virgil's description of C
(Aen. 1. 455). Of course, no reader mindful of Roman history c
the cruel irony of Carthage portrayed as a boom town: the flour
Carthage during Aeneas' visit is darkened by the future threat of
wars. When Sannazaro observes how incredibile it is that gr
should pass away (7: ?credere quis quondam potuit, d
manebant? ), his question echoes the famed lament of Dido (Aen
Dulces exuuias, dum fata deusque sinebant ), in which the walls
city represent the prosperity of Carthage (655: ?mea moen
Indeed, the disappearance of Carthage later inspired San
reflections in Book 2 of De partu virginis, as Sainati notes"
passage, I have added italics to indicate echoes of the elegy o
...qua deuictae Carthaginis arces
procubuere iacentque infausto in litore turres
eversae. Quantum illa metus, quantum illa laborum
urbs dedit insultans Latio, et Lurentibus aruis:
nunc passim uix reliquias, uix nomina servans,
obruitur propriis non agnoscenda ruinis;
et querimur genus infelix humana labare
membra aeuo, cum regna palam moriantur et urbes?
(2. 214-221)"

If the death of Dido in Book 4 implies the destruction of Car

Book 1 of the Aeneid evokes the destruction of Troy. Viewing th
treasures of Dido's city, the Trojan visitors soon gaze on reli
depict the destruction of their own city. Of Senecan rather than
inspiration, the Stoic conclusion of Sannazaro's poem im
destruction of Troy in its subtext. The violent death which threa
(24: ?mors uiolenta ) recalls that which Hecuba implores in the f
of Seneca's Trojan Women (1170-1171: (mors, uotum m
infantibus, uiolenta, uirginibus uenis, / ubique properas, saeua;
times. )

17 Cf. Tibullus, 2. 25. 23-24, on the walls of Rome: ? Romulus aeternae nondum
formauerat urbis / moenia.?
18 Sainati, Studi, p. 204.
19 Iacopo Sannazaro, Departu virginis, ed. Antonio Altamura (Naples, Casella, 1948),
p. 37.1 read lines 220-221 as a rhetorical question, as I do lines 23-24 of the Cumae elegy: ?Et
querimur, cito si nostrae data tempora vitae / Diffugiunt??

This content downloaded from 194.95.59.195 on Fri, 17 Feb 2017 13:01:54 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 NOTES ET DOCUMENTS 687

In replacing Virgil's growth by decay, Sannazaro reflects the h

predicament of the Renaissance author. In the dialogue De
fortunae by Poggio Bracciolini, Antonio Loschi and the author re
steps of Evander and Aeneas. When they reach the top of the Ca
Losch remarks with a sigh:
O Poggio, how different is this Capitoline from that which our poet Vir
as ?golden now, once thick with woody brambles ! So different that t
could justly be changed to ?golden before, now filthy with thorn-thick
filled with briers>20.

It is unclear whether Sannazaro knew Poggio's dialogue, which

printed until the eithteenth century. But, like Poggio, he felt h
distance separated him from the flourishing Rome of Augustan
The topic of the poem - sic transit - is common in Renaissan
whose visits to Rome suggested the transience of human civilizati
fifteenth century, besides Poggio's dialogue, reflections on Rom
occasioned short poems by Enea Silvio Piccolomini and Cris
Landino2. Piccolomini's ?De Roma is a brief epigram in thre
distichs in which the poet laments the destruction of extant monume
building materials, but asserts that even a few scattered remna
Rome's ancient glory. Landino's (<De Roma fere diruta , also in
mourns the disappearance of Augustan grandeur, naming monu
statues that have vanished. Its opening lines were surely k
Sannazaro:
Et cunctis rebus instant sua fata creatis,
et, quod Roma doces, omnia tempus edit.
Roma doces olim tectis miranda superbis,
at nunc sub tanta diruta mole iaces.

Besides the theme of fate and the nunc-olim antithesis, the phrase
?sub...diruta mole iaces seems to have inspired Sannazaro's hemistich in
line 14: ?subruta mole iacent. 22 In the next century, meditations like

20 Hist?ri?? de varietale fortume in Poggio Bracciolini, Opera omnia, ed. Riccardo

Fubini, 4 vol. (Turin, Bottega d'Erasmo, 1964-1969) 1: 507-508: ?Hic Antonius, cum
aliquantum hue illue oculos circumtulisset, suspirans stupentique similis, O quantum, inquit,
Poggi, haec capitolia ab illis distant, quae noster Maro cecinit,
Aurea nunc, olim silvestribus h?rrida dumis.
Ut quidem is versus merito possit converti: Aurea quondam, nunc squallida spinetis
vepribusque referta.? ? Sainati, Studi, p. 251-253, quotes at length from Poggio's dialogue
and the Commentarli of Pius II; cf. also Altamura, Sannazaro, p. 98, n. 2.
21 Enea Si vio Piccolomini, ?De Roma?, is printed in Poeti latini del Quattrocento,
pp. 138-139 (with Italian translation), and Renaissance Latin Verse, pp. 32-33. Cristoforo
Landino, ?De Roma fere diruta?, Xandra 2. 30, is printed in Christophori Landini Carmini
omnia, ed. A. Perosa (Florence, Olschki, 1939), pp. 81-82; Poeti latini del quattrocento,
pp. 192-193 (with Italian translation); and Renaissance Latin Verse, pp. 38-39. Both poems
appear, with German translation, in Roma aeterna. Lateinische und griechische Romdichtung
von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart, ed. and tr. Bernhard Kytzler, Bibliothek der Alten Welt
100 (Zurich-Munich, Artemis, 1972), pp. 464-467.
22 Landino repeats the antithesis in ?olim? (12) and ?nunc? (14). The model for both
poets' ?moles subruta? is Horace's ?Vis consili expers mole ruit sua? (C. 3. 4. 65).

This content downloaded from 194.95.59.195 on Fri, 17 Feb 2017 13:01:54 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
688 NOTES ET DOCUMENTS

Landino's and Sannazaro's on the lessons of Roman ruins ins

Bellay's elegiac poem <Romae Descriptio and his celebrate
sequence Les Antiquitez de Rome23.
In Sannazaro, the lessons of the past lead to prophecies of the
and the oracular themes of the poem are emphasized by its use
composition". The opening lines of the elegy (1-6) recall the three
ancient Cumae - its walled citadel, the oracle of Apollo, and the
built by Daedalus. The survey of Cumaean buildings which
features three distichs describing architectural details (11-16: ?
atria... limina ), and culminating in a triple anaphora (17-1
decora... tot nota sepulcra / Totque pios cineres una ruina pr
alliterative triad of verbal forms (16-24: ?diffractur...
diffugiunt ) links the ruin of ancient Cumae to the plight of con
cities (26-31: ?urbes... urbs... urbes ). Sannazaro now succee
and the Sibyl as the elegy's third prophet, and foretells the pa
Rome, Venice, and his native Naples in a triple apostrophe (2
tu... Nec tu... Et te...).
If the main theme of the poem is the mortality of cities, its s
theme is the validity of prophecies. The key figure here is Apol
inspiration of the Sibyl's prophecy guaranteed the destiny of R
made him protector of Augustus and the Augustan poets. Accor
Virgil's sixth book of the Aeneid, the epic account of the
prophecy, has left its mark on Sannazaro's elegy of ancient
Both Virgil (6. 12) and Sannazaro (4) refer to Apollo as ?De
Virgil's ?secreta Sibyllae (6. 10) and <<arcanaque fata (6. 72) a
by Sannazaro's ?arcana Sibyllae (9). Sannazaro's ?Daedalea
signa fugae (6) refers to Virgil's myth of Daedalus, who alighte
citadel of Cumae and there dedicated his wings to Apollo (6. 14-
When Virgil and the Roman elegists sing the destiny of Rom
invoke Apollo's veridical inspiration of the Sibyl. For Sanna
contrast, Apollo's promise has proved false. For although Ap

23 Cf. Du Bellay, ?Romae Descriptio?, 113-116, in Roma aeterna, ed. Kytz

Hic ubi praeruptis nutantia culmina saxis
descendunt coelo, maxima Roma fuit.
Nunc iuvat exesas passim spectare columnas
et passim veterum templa sepulta deum...
Du Bellay's poem echoes Ovid (?Hic ubi...?), Propertius (?maxima Roma?), an
(?culmina... passim... sepulta?). ? For Du Bellay's Antiquitez de Rome, see Sain
pp. 254-256, and Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and D
Renaissance Poetry (New Haven-London, Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 2
earlier draft of Greene's article, and articles on Du Bellay's Antiquitez by Ka
K. Lloyd-Jones, and G.W. Pigman III, are found in Rome in the Renaissance: Th
the Myth, ed. P.A. Ramsey, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 18 (Bin
State University of New York, 1982).
24 Cf. Ovid, Fasti 1. 506: during Evander's arrival in Italy, his mother C
stomps three times before prophesying the greatness of Rome, thus evokin
tripudium of Roman priesthoods.
25 On Book 6, see the classic study of Eduard Norden, P. Vergilius Maro, A
VI, 3d ed. (Leipzig, Teubner, 1927).

This content downloaded from 194.95.59.195 on Fri, 17 Feb 2017 13:01:54 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 NOTES ET DOCUMENTS 689

dove as an auspicious omen to the Chalcidian colonists - the

recounted by Velleius Paterculus (1. 4) and mentioned by Statiu
3. 5. 78-80) - the city of Cumae has perished26. (The connec
Statius reminds us that Sannazaro's poetical perspective is N
rather than Roman.) To be sure, even the Roman poets quest
guarantee offered by Apollo's oracles and omens. Virgil himself
Aeneas' vision of Rome's future by returning him to the up
through the deceptive gates of ivory. And the celebration of Roman
in the first half of Propertius 4. 1 is challenged in the second ha
astrologer Horus. But Sannazaro's elegy reverses the Roman per
For the Augustan poets, divine prophecy determines historical pr
Sannazaro, divinity is subject to the forces of history. Apollo ha
along with his prophetess and his city. Sannazaro's prophecy re
divine inspiration; fate and the inexorable march of time will b
fulfillment. The poet wishes that his oracle were mistaken, and h
he will prove wrong for many generations to come (25-26: ?Atqu
mea me fallant oracula uatem, / Vanus et a longa posteritate fe
inevitably, he implies, his prediction will come true. Since Rome
and Naples still survive, we may fortunately include ourselves in
Sannazaro's long posterity, whose civilization lives on.

New Brunswick, New Jersey. David MAR

26 Cf. Proteus' song in Sannazaro, Eclogue 4. 43 (?His ueteres addidit Cu

cognita Phoebo?) and 59-62 (?Tum canit antiquas sedes... Chalcidicosque deos,
per aequor / Auspiciis uectas haec ipsa ad litora classes?). ? Kennedy, Sanna
mistakenly identifies the god as Jupiter.

This content downloaded from 194.95.59.195 on Fri, 17 Feb 2017 13:01:54 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms