Caruso, Carlo Adonis The Myth of The Dying God in The Italian Renaissance

Adonis
Adonis
The Myth of the Dying God in

the Italian Renaissance
Carlo Caruso
Bloomsbury Academic
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© Carlo Caruso, 2013
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ISBN: 978-1-4725-3882-6
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Contents
List of illustrations vii

Acknowledgements viii
Abbreviations x
Preface xi
Introduction 1
1 An ancient myth revisited: Adonis as citrus tree 6

Pontano and the myth of Adonis 6
The solar myth in Pontano’s Urania 8
The Garden of the Hesperides 11
Competition with the ancients 12
The search for the Hesperides 14
Adonis as citrus tree 16
New myths out of ancient verse 18
2 Adonis and the Renaissance idyll 21

The legacy of Pontano 21
The pitfalls of inventiveness 24
Adonis and the vernacular idyll: the eclogue 28
Adonis and the vernacular idyll: the stanzaic poem 32
Ovid’s Adonis in translation 36
3 Adonis in sixteenth-century mythography 39

Early attempts at a new mythography 40
Lelio Gregorio Giraldi’s pagan gods 43
Natale Conti’s explanation of myths 45
The solar myth of Adonis in decorative cycles 47
4 Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (i): From pastoral to epic poem 49

Marino’s life and works 51
An outline of the Adone 55
Origin and growth of the ‘grand poem’ 58
Transgressive pastorals 60
Jean Chapelain’s defence of the Adone 62
vi Contents
The poem and the myth 65

From myth to contemporary chronicle 70
5 Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (ii): The king’s poem 73

The poem and the court 74
Binet’s Adonis and Le Breton’s Adonis 77
‘Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child’ 84
‘The king never dies’ 86
Adonis as the born-again king 88
The king’s heart 91
6 The seventeenth-century aftermath 95

The legacy of Marino’s Adone 95
Marino’s Adone and the Index of Forbidden Books 97
Adonis and the theological debate 100
Return to the Hesperides – Epilogue 102
Notes 111
Bibliography 169
Index of manuscripts 195
Index of principal passages cited 197
Index of names 205
List of illustrations
1 G. B. Marino, L’Adone (Paris: Olivier de Varennes, 1623). Title page

(Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal) 50
2 C. Binet, Merveilleuse rencontre… Adonis… Les Daufins (Paris: Fédéric Morel,
1575). Title page (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale) 78
3 G. Le Breton, Adonis. Tragedie françoyse (Rouen: Raphaël du Petit Val, 1611).
Title page (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale) 80
4 P. P. Rubens, ‘The Triumph of Time and Truth with Louis XIII and Maria de’
Medici’ (Paris, Louvre) 93
5 C. Bloemaert after Domenichino, ‘The Tale of Leonilla’, engraving, from G. B.
Ferrari, Hesperides (1646) 105
6 ‘Fingered or multifarious citron’ (Malum citreum digitatum seu multiforme),
etching and engraving, from G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646) 106
7 ‘Childing citron-lemon’ (Limon citratus alterum includens), etching and
engraving, from G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646) 106
8 ‘Differently-shaped, multi-childing citron-lemon’ (Aliae formae citrati limonis
alios includentis), etching and engraving, from G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646) 107
9 ‘Foetus-bearing orange’ (Aurantium foetiferum), etching and engraving, from
G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646) 108
10 ‘Hermaphrodite or horned orange’ (Aurantium hermaphroditum seu
corniculatum), etching and engraving, from G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646) 109
11 ‘Misshapen orange’ (Aurantium distortum), etching and engraving, from G. B.
Ferrari, Hesperides (1646) 109
Acknowledgements
‘To hurt no one and give everyone their due’ (Inst. 1.1.3) is a mandate that also applies
to scholarship. But just as in the realm of the law, it is no easy mandate to fulfil.
Anyone spending years over one’s work is likely to receive an incalculable number of
suggestions and stimuli, many of which become, virtually unnoticed, a constituent of
one’s thoughts; and yet, these stimuli are often no less effective than those which are
more readily acknowledged. My first and most general expression of thanks goes to
all those from whom I received valuable feedback without my necessarily recognizing
it as such.
The institutions I have worked in since I developed an interest in the early modern
revival of the Adonis myth include the Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, and
the Universities of Zurich, Reading, St Andrews, Warwick, Siena and Durham, all of
which have in various ways supported my enquiries. A grant from the former Arts
and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) and a Christopherson-Knott Fellowship of
the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University provided me with the necessary
leisure to conduct a substantial part of my research. The School of Modern Languages
and Cultures and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Durham University backed
the project both with research leave and financial help towards the editing of the
volume.
Libraries remain the centre of scholarly life for any committed student of the
Humanities. In grateful acknowledgement of the assistance I received at every visit, I
would like to single out the Bodleian Library, the Taylor Institution and the Sackler
Library, Oxford; the British Library and the library of the Warburg Institute, London;
the National Library of Scotland and the University Library, Edinburgh; the Biblioteca
Universitaria and the Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, Siena; the Bibliothèque
Nationale and the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris; the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II, Rome; the Biblioteca
Provinciale, Pescara; and Durham University Library. The great digital collections –
Internet Archive, Gallica, the digital section of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Jstor,
Persée, Digizeitschriften, Poeti d’Italia in lingua latina, Biblioteca Italiana, and the
programmes of digitalization variously converging towards Google Books – have
made life considerably easier for all scholars, especially (but not only) for those who
cannot always rely on the proximity of well-stocked libraries.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the help of colleagues, editors and publishers who
have allowed me to reproduce material for this book. I wish in particular to thank
Stefano Carrai for authorizing the reuse of my chapter ‘Dalla pastorale al poema:
l’Adone di Giovan Battista Marino’, originally published in La poesia pastorale nel
Rinascimento, ed. by Stefano Carrai (Padua: Antenore, 1998), pp. 349–77, parts of
which appear now in Chapter 4; likewise I thank Ingo Gildenhard and Andrew Zissos,
Acknowledgements ix
together with the Managing Director of Legenda, Graham Nelson, for permission to
reproduce the content of my chapter ‘Adonis as Citrus Tree: Humanist Transformations
of an Ancient Myth’, in Transformative Change in Western Thought: A History of
Metamorphosis from Homer to Hollywood, ed. by Ingo Gildenhard and Andrew Zissos
(Oxford: Legenda, 2013), pp. 252–72, in the Introduction and in Chapters 1 and 2.
I am grateful to all those who have liberally devoted a significant portion of their
time to discuss the subject of this book. These include Kathryn Banks, Federico Casari,
Paola Ceccarelli, Andrew Laird, Joseph North, James Russell, Lorenzo Sacchini and
Jonathan Usher. Among the many scholars and friends to whom my debt is acknowl-
edged in the notes I wish to single out here Ottavio Besomi, Clizia Carminati and
Emilio Russo. Special thanks go to Ingo Gildenhard for a number of considerable
improvements to the text. The staff at Bloomsbury, and in particular Kim Storry of
Fakenham Prepress Solutions, are to be thanked for their courtesy and forbearance.
Adriana Caruso and Fanny Lombardo have helped towards the compilation of the
Indices. I owe a singular debt of gratitude to Fiona and Peter Macardle for their
extensive expertise and kindness. To my wife and colleague Annalisa Cipollone, I
acknowledge the most useful and helpful observations I received in the course of
my research and to her I attribute some of the most incisive insights the reader may
encounter in these pages.
Abbreviations
Atallah, Adonis
Atallah, W., Adonis dans la littérature et l’art grecs. Paris: Klinksieck, 1966.
Detienne, Les jardins d’Adonis
Detienne, M., Les jardins d’Adonis. La mythologie des aromates en Grèce. Paris:
Gallimard, 2001 (1st edn 1972).
DBI
Dizionario biografico degli Italiani. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960-.
EI
Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti. Milan-Rome: Treves Tumminelli
Treccani-Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1929–39, 36 vols and Appendice I.
Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris
James G. Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris. Studies in the History of Oriental Religion. London:
Macmillan, 1919, 2 vols.
RE
Pauly (von), A. F. and Wissowa, G. (eds), Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1893–1980, 84 vols.
Ribichini, Adonis
Ribichini, S., Adonis: aspetti orientali di un mito greco. Rome: Consiglio nazionale delle
ricerche, 1981.
Roscher
Roscher, W. H. (ed.), Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie.
Leipzig: Teubner, 1884–1921, 10 vols.
Tuzet, Mort et résurrection d’Adonis
Tuzet, H., Mort et résurrection d’Adonis. Étude de l’évolution d’un mythe. Paris: Corti,
1987.
Preface
‘Why should one bother with Adonis?’ is the opening sentence of a book by Hélène
Tuzet, published in 1987. The author’s admission that the story may at first glance
look tenuous appears to concede the legitimacy of the doubt.1 The narrative core of
the Adonis myth does look rather thin, after all – a supremely handsome youth born
of incest, seduced by Venus, killed in his prime by a boar and finally turned into, and
reborn as, an anemone flower. The figure of Adonis is admittedly ancillary, inseparable
from that of his mistress, and does not rank highly in the hierarchy of ancient deities,
nor can its standing be forced upwards without patently forcing the issue. The vulgate
representation of him as a passive ‘toy boy’, unenthusiastically subservient to the
goddess of Love, is suggestive of a handsome but overall shallow character.
Yet Adonis has been a popular figure among the poets of all ages. Sappho,
Theocritus, Bion of Smyrna, ps.-Moschus and Ovid among the ancients, and in the
modern age Pontano, Ronsard, Spenser, Shakespeare, Marino, La Fontaine, Shelley,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Leconte de Lisle, d’Annunzio, Cavafy (at least by way of
allusion), Wilfred Owen and Ted Hughes have sung their fascination for young and
fragile male beauty overshadowed by untimely death.
Scholars, too, have felt drawn to Adonis’ bland but strangely attractive figure. Since
the Hellenistic Age, his simple story has evoked older and more arcane narrations of
ephebic lovers and primeval ‘Mother Goddesses’, of irrepressible sensual love tragi-
cally intertwined with death, of feats of demise and regeneration connected with the
life cycle and the cultivation of crops. Was Adonis the shadow of distant and more
largely looming deities, such as the Sumerian Dumuzi, the Babylonian Tammuz or
the Egyptian Osiris? Could his story provide an interpretative key to those otherwise
unfathomable figures, which the peculiar turn of the Western mind had allowed to
recede into some sort of prehistory of human thought once famously described as
‘before philosophy’?2 And what kind of relationship, if any, existed between the figure
of Adonis and the partly analogous figure of Christ (notably with regard to the death-
and-resurrection element)? The line of thought generated by such questions, which
have been persistently asked from Late Antiquity to the present day, culminated
in James G. Frazer’s felicitous characterization of Adonis as a ‘dying god’. Frazer’s
comprehensive view embraced a spectacularly diverse array of divine or semi-divine
characters, beliefs and rituals across the globe, and may be said to have crowned fifteen
hundred years of scholarly interest in the myth of Adonis.3
Confidence in replying affirmatively to the questions highlighted above has
diminished considerably over the past hundred years. A conviction has prevailed that
such common traits as are shared by the myth of Adonis with its cognate Eastern
forerunners are more likely to be the product of later conflation, generated by syncre-
tistic thought, than of direct filiations, and that such relationships are, at any rate,
xii Preface
much more complex and problematic than previously imagined.4 Scholars have thus
tended to strip the Adonis myth bare of the accretions accumulated over the centuries
and to review the evidence in a new light – Marcel Detienne’s rejection of the received
notion of the fertility myth for its exact opposite is a classic case in point.5 The ever-
contentious issue of Adonis’ revival or ‘resurrection’ has seen some vehement attacks
against such a prerogative, with modern theologians reigniting the disputes of the
early Church Fathers.6 But Frazer’s category of ‘dying and rising gods’, and more
generally the comparative approaches used, have also been vindicated as legitimate,
after a reconsideration of the main framing questions.7 The literary evidence has been
revisited with important results, and an Oxyrhynchus papyrus has permitted a fairly
recent release of a new elegiac fragment where Adonis is mentioned.8
In any case, this book is not concerned with what the myth of Adonis may have
been like in its pristine form. As the subtitle suggests, the emphasis is placed on its
revival in the Italian Renaissance (which is here understood to include the early
Baroque Age as well) over a period of one-and-a-half centuries. The ‘return’ of classical
myths in the Italian Renaissance was characterized by a combination of erudite
enquiries and literary appropriations, often leading to original reformulations and
reinterpretations of the myths themselves. Analogies, rather than differences, guided
the reappropriation of such myths. Many aspects that one regards today as mutually
exclusive, often for cogent chronological reasons, used to coexist happily in the early
modern age, and even influenced one another. On the other hand, only selected
aspects, notably those which presented a marked literary appeal, may be said to have
been genuinely ‘revived’. Therefore, this book aims not so much to peel back these
reworkings in the search for the Adoniac myth’s inner core, but to assess the layers of
meaning that early modern authors and mythographers deposited over the ‘original’
story, forging new narratives and new meanings for their readers.
The case of Adonis is, in many respects, exemplary. According to the myth,
he was the lover of Venus and the most attractive of young males. As such, he
remained a paragon of ephebic beauty and, because of his status as either a shepherd
or a hunter, featured in Renaissance pastoral and mythological idylls – all in all, a
decorative presence, which was occasionally used for instrumental purposes. Giovan
Battista della Porta (1535–1615), advising in his Magia naturalis (Natural Magic) on
‘How women could bring forth beautiful children’, suggested – in the footsteps of
the Elder Pliny – that ‘in the bed-chambers of great men ... the images of Cupid,
Adonis, and Ganymede’ should be displayed in full view, so ‘that the wives, while
lying with them, may turn their attention to and have their imagination strongly
captured by those pictures, and continue to reflect on them daily while pregnant, so
that the conceived child may eventually resemble them’.9
In other circumstances, however, when a gifted poet turned his attention to the
theme, ambitions rose to greater heights. Two of the boldest innovators of Italian
Renaissance poetry, Giovanni Pontano (1429–1503) and Giovan Battista Marino
(1569–1625), dealt with the Adoniac myth at different points in time and with
different aims. In their hands, the timid figure of the ephebe acquired the independent
status of a protagonist and became associated with a wide range of unexpected topics:
the cultivation of citrus trees, French dynastic propaganda, and Christian imagery.
Preface xiii
The myth’s reappearance in such uncommon guises fuelled debates on the uses of
ancient sources and their translation into new literary works and genres; on the
function and legitimacy of erotic imagery and allegory; and last but not least on the
boundaries defining the degree and nature of the miscegenation of pagan myths and
Christian doctrine in literary works.
In the following pages I shall assume knowledge of such common equivalences as

Zeus/Jupiter, Aphrodite/Venus, Hera/Juno, Persephone/Proserpine, etc. I have used
both forms, in relation primarily to context, rather than adhering systematically to
one or the other.
In a number of cases I have consciously departed from the current English practice.
In referring to ‘Caterina de’ Medici’ and ‘Maria de’ Medici’, for example, I have
preferred the Italian over the otherwise more common frenchified forms ‘Catherine
de Médicis’ and ‘Marie de Médicis’, as the two Queens of France are here mentioned
always in connection with their Italian provenance.
The early modern reception of a myth demands the student to attend to the actual
circulation of texts. Thus the date of a first printed edition is often of crucial impor-
tance – even though the circulation of manuscripts may have remained buoyant for
the entire period under consideration here. When the title of a work is followed in the
text by the indication of a date between brackets, this must be understood as the date
of the first edition for the work in question, unless otherwise stated.
I have adopted a mixed régime as regards quotations, since texts in different
languages have been quoted from early printed books and manuscripts as well as
more recent editions. In all such cases where I thought that slight (mostly minimal)
adaptations would not detract, I have aimed to simplify matters by adopting modern
orthographical conventions (such as, e.g. v for u, or et for &), and by providing
more helpful punctuation where needed. Changes of greater consequence have been
indicated in the notes.
When writing up this book, I quickly realized that classicists and early modernists
represent two cohorts of potential readers which do not necessarily overlap. I therefore
compromised as to the level of detail required when addressing the critical bibliog-
raphy on my subject. On several occasions, the unfolding of the argument suggested
further lines of enquiry which it seemed absurd not to mention, at least in passing: in
all such cases I have tried to give rough indications that might help point the reader
in the right direction. In other circumstances I have not mentioned standard works
on the topics I was discussing, simply because they were tangential to my argument.
This is of course no justification for any important omission on account of ignorance
or lack of discrimination, or both.
Introduction
Ancient mythology was perpetuated in the West by three different means: ‘through
its presence in ancient literature and in all literature formed on that model, through
the polemics of the Church Fathers, and through its assimilation in symbolic guise to
Neoplatonic philosophy’.1 The myth of Adonis is no exception to this rule.
According to the best-known version of the myth, Adonis was the offspring of King
Cinyras of Cyprus and his daughter Myrrha (alternatively, the offspring of King Theias
of Assyria and his daughter Smyrna, or even of King Phoenix and Alphesiboea), who
fell insanely in love with her father and lured him into sleeping with her, while taking
care to conceal her identity during their night-time assignations. When her father
discovered the plot, Myrrha barely escaped his wrath by requesting the intervention
of the gods, who responded by turning her into a myrrh tree. The baby born of the
incestuous relationship was extracted from the bark of the tree and raised by the forest
nymphs. As a youth of unsurpassed beauty, Adonis attracted the attention of Venus.
He surrendered rather passively to her seductive arts, and indulged with her in an idle
life of sensual pleasures until his decision to engage in boar hunting. The hunt resulted
in the beast killing the inexperienced Adonis. After having lamented his untimely
departure, Venus transformed him, or rather his blood, into an anemone flower.2
This, in essence, is the version that obtained universal and enduring success
thanks to Ovid’s popular adaptation of the story (Met. 10.298–739), which readers
have enjoyed uninterruptedly since its composition and publication.3 Ovid’s version
does not however take account of Adonis’ infancy, which is prominent in the earliest
reported testimonies of the story as given in Apollodorus’ Library (3.14.4). Rescued
from the myrrh tree by order of Aphrodite/Venus and subsequently handed over
to Persephone/Proserpine, Adonis became the object of a quarrel between the
two goddesses as to whom he should be ultimately entrusted. An agreement was
eventually reached that he should spend one third of the year with Proserpine and
the rest with Venus.4 Apart from fleeting references in poems and the writings of
mythographers and scholiasts, this aspect of the story does not seem to have inspired
any surviving narrative of note.5 It must have been very well known, however, for it
laid the foundation of the allegorical interpretation of the myth, according to which
Adonis’ periodical disappearance and reappearance would represent, or at least be
ideally linked to, the sun’s seasonal journey and the life-cycle of vegetation, and where
time spent with Proserpine would broadly correspond to winter and that spent with
Venus to spring and summer.
The other relevant texts for the diffusion of the Adonis story are by the Greek
Bucolic poets: Theocritus’ fifteenth Idyll, Bion’s Lament for Adonis, ps.-Moschus’
2 Adonis
Lament for Bion (which develops ‘Adoniac’ themes), and the short poem The Dead
Adonis included in the Corpus Theocriteum.6 These texts refer to the Adoniac cult,
the annual mourning ritual commemorating the youth’s premature death, in addition
to despondent commentaries on the human condition as compared and contrasted
with that of flowers and plants. Here, the element of mourning is dominant, even
though revival was expected every spring. In these works Ulrich von Wilamowitz-
Moellendorff perceived a poetic expression of universal grief for the loss of ‘youth and
beauty’, Aphrodite being given the role of desolate lover and Great Mother alike. The
ancient populations of the Eastern Mediterranean, Wilamowitz wrote, saw reflected
in Adonis’ death the sudden and violent climate changes generated by the seasonal
cycle in their geographical regions, whereby vegetation is periodically revived and
destroyed by an excess of its very source of life: heat.
In the lands of the south, nature dies in summer. The lush, burgeoning spring
vegetation succumbs to the very heat that had awakened it to brief and luxuriant
life. Even today this is felt – by anyone capable of feeling – to be violent and
premature, the very death of youth and beauty.7
The very notion of ‘heat’ recalls the myth’s relationship with the rising of the Dog Star
(Canicula), when both humans and animals, and especially beasts (like boars) are
prone to indulge their lewd impulses, driven insane by unhealthy passions.8
The threnodies on the death of Adonis were institutionalized in the Adonia, the
annual commemorations of the dead youth, which involved the ritual cultivation of
the so-called ‘Gardens of Adonis’ – shallow pots, or rather shards of pottery, where
fragile herbs were grown, only to wither rapidly under the unrelenting rays of sun in
summer, recalling the young hero’s premature fate. Whether confined to the private
sphere or expressed in sumptuous and crowded festivals, the cult of Adonis, which
essentially concerned women, was subordinate to that of his mistress.9 From Sappho
to Ammianus Marcellinus, references to the Adonia allude to female cults in Athens,
Cyprus, Byblos, Alexandria and Antioch.10
The female nature of the cult, as well as its erotic appeal, was further accentuated
by a number of pseudo-etymologies variously connected with the name of Adonis.
Apart from the traditional view that assumes a Semitic origin (from Hebr. ’ādōn ‘lord’,
frequently mentioned yet far from validated),11 a much more evocative role was played,
at different points in time, by derivations from hēdonē ‘pleasure’, or else hadus ‘sweet’
(incidentally the very first word – almost a keynote – of Theocritus’ idylls),12 often in
combination with perfume and music. Hence Fulgentius could claim that ‘adon was
Greek for sweetness [suavitas]’, while Remigius of Auxerre, in his commentary on
Martianus Capella’s De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (On the Marriage of Philology
and Mercury), was able to associate Adonis with Gr. adō ‘I sing’.13
Presumably because of the association with the world of women, the figure of
Adonis became the target of a number of derogatory comments. Derisive observa-
tions about Adonis were already common in antiquity. The ‘Gardens of Adonis’ were,
according to both Plato and Plutarch, a typical example of pointlessness; to Epictetus,
of immaturity.14 ‘Sillier than Praxilla’s Adonis’ appears to have been the ancient equiv-
alent of our ‘beauty without brains’.15 When in the Macedonian city of Dio, Hercules
Introduction 3
saw people flooding out from a temple and was told that they had been worshipping
Adonis; his dismissive comment was ‘Nothing sacred’.16 Moreover, since accounts of
the Adonia were often linked, no matter how reliably, to sacred prostitution practised
at shrines dedicated to Venus, Adonis’ already dubious reputation suffered greatly
from such stories, especially in a world increasingly permeated, and regulated, by
principles of Christian morality.17
The spread of the Christian faith engendered new occasions of cultural conflict.
Association with other Sun cults brought Adonis dangerously close to the figure of the
Hebrew God, and his cyclic disappearances and reappearances – allegorically interpreted
as death followed by resurrection – to that of Christ. This similarity drove the Church
Fathers anxiously to denounce any such juxtaposition as fallacious and misleading.
The reaction of the Church authorities was prompted in particular by a crucial passage
in Ezekiel, where one of the ‘major abominations’ of the morally decayed Jerusalem is
identified with a group of women lamenting the death of Tammuz (Adonidem in the
Vulgate). ‘Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord’s house which was
toward the North; and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz’ (Ez. 8.13–14).
This is followed by the sight of people ‘with their backs toward the temple of the Lord,
and their faces towards the East’, worshipping ‘the sun towards the East’ (Ez. 8.16).18
The extreme response of the Church Fathers is evidence for Adonis’ change of
status. Pagan authors such as Plutarch, Pausanias, Lucian, Athenaeus, Ammianus
Marcellinus, Macrobius and Martianus Capella, among others, stressed similarities
between the cult of Adonis and those of comparable Babylonian, Egyptian and
Anatolian gods or demi-gods like Tammuz, Osiris and Attis. Regeneration through
death and rebirth, connected with sacrificial rites of fertility and the cult of the Sun,
appeared to be a common characteristic of these and other figures, who were progres-
sively populating the new syncretistic pantheon.19 Plutarch proposed a substantial
correlation between Adonis and Dionysus, as both appeared to be expressions
of Nature’s regenerative power (Symp. 4.5.3, 671 B-C). The anonymous author of
the Orphic Hymn To Adonis, Proclus, Ausonius, Macrobius, Iohannes Lydus and
Martianus Capella insisted on the many interchangeable names and avatars as the
product of one sole essence, commonly identified with the Sun (Hēlios).20 The relevant
passage in Macrobius’ Saturnalia (1.21.1–6), arguably the most influential source for
the allegorical interpretation of the Adonis myth in the early modern age, falls within
the wider discussion of the Sun’s numerous manifestations (Sat. 1.17–23). Influential,
yet somewhat confusing; for if, as Macrobius maintains, ‘Adonis … is the sun’ and the
killer boar ‘represents winter’, then his interpretation must be considered at variance
with that of Adonis as a victim of the sun’s excessive heat.21
The tendency in Late Antiquity towards syncretistic monotheism is, in all likelihood,
at the root of the Macrobian allegory.22 The hymn to the Sun in Martianus Capella’s De
nuptiis is a further and most eloquent example of such a tendency.
Solem te Latium vocitat…
Te Serapin Nilus, Memphis veneratur Osirim,
dissona sacra Mithram Ditemque ferumque Typhonem;
Attis pulcher item, curvi et puer almus aratri,
4 Adonis
Hammon et arentis Libyes ac Byblius Adon.

Sic vario cunctus te nomine convocat orbis. (2.188, 191–2)
Latium calls you the Sun … the Nile adores you as Serapis, Memphis as Osiris; as
Mithras, and Dis, and fierce Typhon in differing ceremonies; similarly [you are]
handsome Attis, and the sacred child of the curved plough [i.e. Triptolemus], and
Ammon of burning Libya, and Adonis of Byblos. Thus the whole world invokes
you under different names.
The principle of analogy which drove this process of conflation operated like a
centripetal force. It was said of Hellenistic and late-antique authors and mythographers
that they, more easily than not, ‘surrendered to the obsession for conciliation and
syncretism’, and left authors of later ages ‘working on some sort of concordance which
results from the juxtaposition of fragments they themselves derived from previous
concordances …’.23 This may perhaps be said of other ages as well, including our own. It
is possible that this is simply the way in which the transmission of such materials works.
Subsequent to the decline of the period known as Late Antiquity, interest in Adonis
seems to have diminished. If one makes an exception for the exegesis of the relevant
passages in Martianus Capella and in Book Ten of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, nothing
particularly significant appears to have emerged for a period of over eight centuries –
although research in this field has admittedly been far from exhaustive.24 Adonis’ lack
of status during this long period is conveniently summarized in Jerome’s periphrastic
designation of him as a mere lover of Venus, Veneris amasius.25 On the other hand,
the allegorical tradition of commentaries is in itself of some relevance, and may have
produced new associations and new meanings, but whether by chance or by design
it would be difficult to tell. John of Garland’s thirteenth-century Integumenta Ovidii,
for instance, which was presumably written with the double intent of memorizing the
poem’s content as well as highlighting its allegorical significance, offers the following
abridged account of Ovid’s take on Myrrha (Met. 10.298–502), the apples of the
Hesperides with Atalanta and Hippomenes turned into lions (Met. 10.560–707), and
Adonis (Met. 10.503–59, 708–39).
Rem miram mirare novam Mirram per amorem [rubr. ‘De Mirra’]
In mirram verti quam dat amarus amor.
Ex auro poma tria sunt genitalia, fervens [rubr. ‘De Ypomene
Cum leo luxuries, fertur uterque leo. et Athalanta’]
Nobilitas, species, sapientia sunt tria poma
Aurea, que triplici pectora dote trahunt.
Flos breviter durans iuvenilis dicitur etas [rubr. ‘De Adoni’]
Que cito discedens ut levis umbra fugit.26 (413–20)
A wonderful thing, to watch the new Myrrha, turned because of love into myrrh,
the product of bitter love. The three golden apples are genitals; [they stand for]
burning lust when the [sun enters the sign of the] lion; both lions are said [to
signify the same]. Nobility, beauty and wisdom are three golden apples which win
the hearts with their triple dowry. The ephemeral flower means youth, which flees
like a light shadow that departs rapidly.27
Introduction 5
When reading vernacular literatures, one finds that there, too, the exegetical tradition
has more to offer than the lyric or narrative treatment of the subject. The Adonis
inset episode in the Roman de la Rose, included in the later section by Jean de Meun
(1268–78?), is nothing but a shortened version of the Ovidian story, focused on Venus’
anxious warnings about the dangers of chasing wild beasts (Roman de la Rose, 15687;
cf. Ovid, Met. 10.542–52) and on Adonis’ failure to listen to her, with the bathetic
conclusion that one ought to follow good advice.28 There is little more to be gleaned
from the Adonis story of the Ovide moralisé (10.1960–3953), where, however, the key
element is enhanced by the four explanations that follow the story. The second account
aims to extract the story’s anagogical sense and is particularly striking. Myrrha’s
passion for her father is interpreted there as the love of the Virgin Mary for God the
Father, Adonis as the Saviour, the boar as the Jews responsible for Christ’s death, and
Adonis’ metamorphosis into the flower as the Resurrection.29
A noticeable change occurred when ancient mythological lore was revived in
new works of antiquarian erudition, among which Giovanni Boccaccio’s Genealogie
deorum Gentilium (The Genealogies of the Ancient Gods, ca. 1355–70) stands out as a
most authoritative example. Arranged like a long gallery of portraits following genea-
logical patterns, Boccaccio’s encyclopaedic repertoire was to establish itself as the
standard work on classical mythology for almost two centuries.30 It was Boccaccio’s
minute attention to detail, complemented with a euhemeristic approach of both pagan
(mainly Ciceronian) and Christian inspiration, which secured unprecedented prestige
for his work, despite its patent faults and extravagant misunderstandings.31 But apart
from the content, it was the design of Boccaccio’s Genealogies that exercised a tangible
influence on the perception of the Adonis myth – in fact, of all ancient myths – and
inspired poets and writers of the early Italian Renaissance to new productions. By
assigning to each character a section, however small, of their own, Boccaccio ensured
they were all granted, at least potentially, equal or almost equal dignity. Minor
mythical personages were thus offered a degree of autonomy they had never enjoyed
in ancient literature. An immediate consequence was a flourishing production of ‘new’
myths in both Latin and vernacular poems, where characters from secondary episodes
of Ovid’s Metamorphoses or from such ‘minor’ works as Statius’ Silvae, the ps.-Ovidian
Nux, the poems of Ausonius (or surrogates thereof), were deliberately placed at the
centre of new narrations, usually of limited extent. In the second half of the fifteenth
century, reputed scholars like Domizio Calderini and Angelo Poliziano went so far as
to declare that such smaller formats became modern poets admirably, for they, unlike
the ancients, would not be capable of successfully sustaining their inspiration over the
span of longer and more ambitious poems.32
General persuasive arguments of this kind, with Boccaccio placing a renewed
emphasis on Macrobius’ interpretation of the Adonis myth as an allegory for the sun’s
seasonal cycle, provided the handsome youth with the essential requisites to attract the
attention of the literary world once again.33 From that moment onwards, the somewhat
colourless Veneris amasius went through an extraordinary transformation, which was
to culminate with James G. Frazer’s interpretation of Adonis as one of the archetypical
‘dying gods’.
1
An ancient myth revisited: Adonis as citrus tree
At the end of the fifteenth century the story of Adonis caught the eye of a truly gifted
poet in the person of Giovanni Pontano (1429–1503), who produced the first highly
personalized revisitation of the Adoniac myth in the modern age.
Like many other fifteenth-century humanists, Pontano pursued a political career
in the service of an Italian potentate. A native of Cerreto di Spoleto, a charming hilltop
village in the Umbrian valley of the river Nera, Pontano moved to Naples in 1454, where
he progressed through the ranks to the eminent position of secretary and minister of
the Aragonese kings (1486). His political career came to an end in the aftermath of the
French conquest (and subsequent loss) of Naples in 1494–5. Thus unburdened of the
heavy duties of a busy court, Pontano was free to channel all his energies into literary
activity. He would survive the demise of his office for only eight years; yet the quantity
and quality of the work he produced during this period outclassed his previous and by
no means insignificant production, and remained unequalled among the humanists of
his time.1 Long after Pontano’s death his sometime pupil and friend Iacopo Sannazaro
still remembered the old man bursting with daimonic energy while indignant at his
younger colleagues’ apathy. ‘When dear old Pontano wanted to challenge us while he was
producing verse after verse, he was wont to say: “You men of straw, what are you doing?”.’2
Pontano and the myth of Adonis

Pontano’s prodigious activity, as witnessed by his contemporaries, receives further
confirmation from the available manuscript evidence. Many works he had drafted
in the 1460s were brought to maturity and saw the light of day no earlier than the
following century, having undergone substantial changes and frequent restyling. The
chronology of such revisions is not always known or clear; it is therefore difficult to
ascertain the dating of any specific attention Pontano may have devoted to classical
myths in general and to the myth of Adonis in particular.3 The presence of Adonis can
be detected in the presumably ‘earlier’ sections of works like De amore coniugali (On
Marital Love, 1467–84, revised 1490s) and Eridanus (1482–4, revised 1490s). Such
appearances, however, look rather conventional: in them, Adonis tends to conform to
his usual background role as Venus’ lover, even though Pontano’s inventive approach
to ancient myths is already revealing itself.4 Conversely, some of the shorter poems
An ancient myth revisited: Adonis as citrus tree 7
collected under the titles of Tumuli (Tombs, viz. ‘Epitaphs’) and Iambici (Iambic poems),
datable with reasonable accuracy to the last decade of the fifteenth century, suggest that
by this time Pontano had come to explore a different aspect of the myth. The imagery
dominating the Tumuli is one of pathetic contrast between the graves as symbols of the
bleak coldness of death and the plants beside them as tokens of perpetually renewable
life.5 In the Iambici the ephemeral life of flowers and herbs is compared with the
longer and (only apparently) happier life of human beings, who are however denied
the privilege of a new birth.6 Such moving variations on the ancient theme of death
affecting the whole of the human race, yet sparing plants (no matter how humble) for
they are bound to revive every spring, show Pontano as a keen reader of Hellenistic
bucolic poetry, where such a theme is closely associated with the Adonis myth.
When observed in relation to these ancient sources, Pontano’s readings can perhaps
be ascribed a somewhat firmer chronology. Eighteen idylls by Theocritus, including
Idyll 15 on the Adoniazusae, were first published in Milan in 1480. Shortly afterwards
Pontano spent a period of two years in Ferrara (1482–4), where, in the circle of Battista
Guarino, Theocritean poetry had been fashionable for over twenty years.7 A further
crucial moment for the growing popularity of the Greek Bucolics came in 1495, when
the first printed edition of the Corpus Theocriteum appeared at the press of Aldo
Manuzio in Venice with a dedication to Guarino, Manuzio’s old teacher. It included
among others Theoc. 15, the Anacreontic poem The Dead Adonis on the guilty boar
put on trial by Venus (often, though not by Manuzio, ascribed to Theocritus), Bion’s
Lament for Adonis, and ps.-Moschus’ thematically related Lament for Bion (given as
anonymous in the Aldine print).8 The following passage from the Lament for Bion in
particular must have proved inspirational for Pontano:
Alas, when in the garden wither the mallows, the green celery, and the luxuriant
curled anise, they live again thereafter and spring up another year; but we men, we
that are tall and strong, we that are wise, when once we die, unhearing sleep in the
hollow earth, a long sleep without end or wakening. Lapped in silence therefore
wilt thou lie beneath the ground … (98–105, tr. A. S. F. Gow).9
Clearly reminiscent of this old lament is Pontano’s dirge for the death of his son Lucius
in 1498:
Foliis quid heu, amarace, heu quid floribus
Nudata squales maestula? Heu quid languida
Arentibus comis et horrido sinu,
lugubri amictu fles, misella amarace?
…
Deest enim, te qui rigabat …
His tu viresces et novam indues comam,
beata amarace, foliis novis, novo
amictu; at ego senex subarescam miser
umore vacuus …10 (Iambici, 5.18–21)
Alas, why, amaracus, why, alas, are you languishing, sad and barren of your leaves
and flowers? Why, alas, are you crying, your foliage withered, your bosom barren,
8 Adonis
in such mournful fashion, sad little amaracus? … He who watered you is now
gone … You will live again with a new crown, happy amaracus, with new leaves
and a new attire; but I, poor old man, emptied of my vital sap, I shall wither …
The fragile and now neglected marjoram plant (amaracus), dried up by the heat after
the death of the poet’s son had interrupted its watering, also bears a revealing likeness
to the short-lived herbs of the Gardens of Adonis. 11
The solar myth in Pontano’s Urania

At the turn of the new century it became clear that Pontano’s interest in the Adonis
myth had increased over the years, as Adonis features in two of the three poems
posthumously published by Aldo Manuzio in 1505, Urania and De hortis Hesperidum
libri duo (Two Books on the Garden of the Hesperides).12
Conceived shortly after 1469 and progressively expanded, Urania was declared
ready for the press more than thirty years later.13 The poem represents the culmination
of an illustrious tradition initiated by Poggio’s rediscovery of Manilius’ Astronomica in
1417 and continued by one of Pontano’s mentors, Lorenzo Bonincontri.14 Bonincontri’s
poem, Rerum naturalium et divinarum sive de rebus coelestibus libri tres (Three Books
on Natural and Divine, or Celestial Matters), provided a much-admired model for
the future author of Urania, and the editorial work done by Bonincontri for the 1484
Roman edition of Manilius proved of such quality as to win the praise of no less
demanding a reader than A. E. Housman.15 Pontano for his part considered Urania his
most challenging poetic enterprise, so much so that he came to be regularly associated
with that poem in the mind of his admirers.16 Manuzio, while soliciting the privilege
of being Pontano’s publisher, hailed the poem as ‘a divine piece’.17 Pontano’s long-time
friend and posthumous editor Pietro Summonte, writing to Manuzio about his own
editorial plans in Naples, promised to leave Urania for Manuzio to publish ‘as a work of
paramount importance’, and in dedicating his edition of Pontano’s lyrics to Sannazaro
openly declared that Urania stood at the pinnacle of his late friend’s production.18
Both Manilius’ Astronomica and Pontano’s Urania share an equal number of
books as well as broadly similar subject matter, even though the latter poem never
becomes quite as technical as the former.19 Urania deals with three main topics: the
planets (Book 1), the fixed stars (Books 2–4), and the stars as patrons of the various
regions and peoples of the Earth (Book 5). In Book 1 the author proceeds to describe
the celestial bodies according to the traditional Ptolemaic sequence: the Moon,
Mercury, Venus, the Sun. After a series of myths connected with the sun-god Apollo
two short digressions follow, designed to highlight the relations of both Mercury
and Venus with the Sun.20 The transition between the two episodes is secured by a
thematic link of a kind that readers of Ovid’s Metamorphoses will recognize at once.
Following Macrobius, and indeed Ovid, Pontano claims that Argos is the sky and his
hundred eyes the stars, which are destined to die out as soon as the rising sun-god
Apollo vanquishes them with his radiant light (Ur. 1.471–3 ‘Phoebo exoriente …
candenti lampade victa / emoriuntur’).21 The hint at an image of death evoked by the
catch-word emoriuntur (‘they die out’), combined with the subsequent echoing of a
line from Ovid (Ars am. 1.75 ‘Nec te praetereat Veneri ploratus Adonis’, ‘You mustn’t
omit to remember Adonis, bewailed by Venus’), offers the prompting for the mournful
story of the young hero.
Nec deploratum Veneri linquamus Adonim,
Venantem quem durus aper sub dente peredit.
Non illum fontes nec amici flumina Nili
Infletum voluere. (Ur. 1.474–7)
Let us not forget Adonis, bewailed by Venus, devoured while hunting by the cruel
boar’s tusk. Neither did the springs nor the waters of the friendly Nile wish to leave
him unlamented.
The lines that follow present a female figure that seems like an artful combination
of Venus, Nature and Mother Earth, shedding tears on the untimely death of her
paramour. For seven full days, the swollen river, urged by its irrepressible grief,
joins her in mourning by flooding the neighbouring countryside and laying waste
plants, animals and human beings alike. Trees and shrubs, too, lament Adonis’ lot;
and the myrtle – on account of its being sacred to Venus and, because of a probable
etymological wordplay with myrrh, also representative of Myrrha as well – strives
in vain to follow the funeral procession by repeatedly and piteously stretching its
branches.22
Ter myrtus conata sequi miserabile funus,
Ter radice retenta sua est, ter brachia flexit,
Ter frustra lentos conata est flectere ramos. (Ur. 1.485–7)
Thrice did the myrtle attempt to follow the sad cortège, thrice was it held back by
its roots; thrice did it stretch its arms, and thrice did it attempt to flex its pliant
branches in vain.
This image, too, stems from Ovid: it harks back to the plants drawn away from their
roots by Orpheus’ song in Met. 10.86–105.23 But the characteristic threefold iteration
recalls further Ovidian and Virgilian passages, and the resulting effect is one of sophis-
ticated mosaic-like design. The myrtle stretching its branches is an imitation of Medea
stretching her arms to the stars (Met. 7.188–9 ‘sidera sola micant: ad quae sua bracchia
tendens, / ter se convertit, ter …’). Also Ovidian is the construction ter conata followed
by the bisyllabic infinitive of a deponent verb, sequi in Pontano, loqui in Ovid (Met.
11.419 ‘ter conata loqui, ter fletibus ora rigavit’; Her. 4.7–8 ‘Ter tecum conata loqui ter
inutilis haesit / lingua …’). Virgilian, as well as Ovidian, are the three vain attempts
to move, made especially memorable by two famous lines which occur twice in the
Aeneid: ‘ter conatus ibi collo dare bracchia circum’ and ‘ter frustra comprensa manus
effugit imago’ (Aen. 2.792–3 and 6.700–1) – both moreover referring to the shades of
deceased persons, Creusa and Anchises, and therefore thematically appropriate in a
funeral context.
Yet the main novelty resulting from Pontano’s combinatory technique resides in
those stretched branches which, as is subsequently made clear, are but the shrub’s
10 Adonis
longer shadows cast by the receding autumn sunlight. The death of Adonis is presented
here as the progressive disappearance of the sun from the autumn and winter horizon,
and in this respect Pontano’s narrative is an elegant rephrasing in smooth hexameters
of the allegory expounded at length and at the characteristic slow pace in Macrobius’
Saturnalia. There Adonis stands allegorically for the sun, the boar that kills him for
winter, and Venus for the earth’s boreal hemisphere ‘going into mourning when the
sun, in the course of its yearly progress through the series of the twelve signs, proceeds
to enter the sector of the lower hemisphere’.24
As already mentioned in the Introduction, Macrobius had interpreted the Adonis
myth as an allegory for vegetal regeneration in harmony with the changing of the
seasons, while suggesting a comparison between Adonis and the Egyptian god Osiris
(as well as Attis), which is essentially what Pontano also does.25 Yet Macrobius was not a
source Pontano would have been comfortably ready to acknowledge. Macrobian prose
offended his finely tuned humanist ear; it combined a lack of linguistic and stylistic
refinement with inappropriate sententious tones when dealing with Virgilian matters.
How did that barbarian, born under distant skies and unable to express himself in
acceptable Latin, dare to pass judgement tanquam praetor, like a magistrate, on the
greatest of all Roman poets?26 Moreover, because of his frequent use of Greek, Macrobius
was likely to be implicitly relegated by Pontano – as he would be later by Erasmus – to the
unflattering category of graeculi.27 Pontano was willing to improve on his source, and
no one was better qualified than he to perform the job. The old Senecan ideal of allusive
as well as elusive imitation, according to which references to one’s sources were to be
made palatable yet not immediately recognizable even for a highly perceptive reader,
had already, and very effectively, been adopted and promoted by Petrarch. Now it was
being further refined by Pontano, who was genuinely believed by his contemporaries
to embody the humanist ideal of the ‘Poet as Proteus’, Poëta Proteus alter, graced by an
uncanny ability to adapt metamorphically, and even excel, his own models.28
The effectiveness of Pontano’s technique may be appreciated in his transformation
of Macrobius’ account of Venus recovering from the sad winter months.
Sed cum sol emersit ab inferioribus partibus terrae, vernalisque aequinoctii trans-
greditur fines augendo diem: tunc est Venus laeta et pulchra, virent arva segetibus,
prata herbis, arbores foliis. (Sat. 1.21.6)
But when the sun has come forth from the lower parts of the earth and has crossed
the boundary of the spring equinox, giving length to the day, then Venus is glad
and fair to see, the fields are green with growing crops, the meadows with grass
and the trees with leaves (tr. P. V. Davies).
Ac veluti virgo, absenti cum sola marito
Suspirat sterilem lecto traducere vitam
Illius expectans complexus anxia caros,
Ergo, ubi sol imo victor convertit ab Austro,
Tum gravidos aperitque sinus et caeca relaxat
Spiramenta, novas veniat qua succus in haerbas,
Et tandem complexa suum laetatur Adonim. (Ur. 1.500–6)
But as a maiden waiting anxiously for the affectionate embrace of her absent
spouse, all the while sighing and leading a lonely and sterile life on her bridal bed,
then, as soon as the victorious sun rises above the southern horizon, she reveals
her florid bosom, and unlocks her inner pores, and lets the sap of life flow into the
tender blades, rejoicing at last in the arms of her Adonis.
The stock of Macrobius’ dreary prose is revived by Pontano’s grafting onto it the
striking Virgilian image ‘et caeca relaxat / Spiramenta, novas veniat qua succus in
haerbas’ (‘[the Earth] unlocks her inner pores, whereby the sap flows into the tender
blades’), which is lifted verbatim from two lines of the Georgics (1.89–90), yet not
without a twist. In Virgil the picture is one of rustic vividness, referring as it does to
the soil releasing its stored-up moisture when stubble is burnt in the fields. In Urania
those very words are skilfully made to convey a description of the Great Mother in
Cytherean attire, her sensuous body being gradually resuscitated by the warmth of
spring to give birth to a glorious celebration of Nature’s regenerative powers.29
The Garden of the Hesperides

In one of his last great works written on the cusp of the new century, De hortis
Hesperidum sive de cultu citriorum libri duo (The Garden of the Hesperides, or The
Cultivation of Orange Trees, in Two Books), Pontano produced yet another reinterpre-
tation of the Adonis myth, which was in due course to become extremely influential.
The subtitle of the work is misleading, as the poem in fact deals with the culti-
vation of three different varieties of citrus trees: oranges (the ‘sour’ variety, bot. Citrus
aurantium), citrons (Citrus medica) and lemons (Citrus limonum).30 The title contains
an allusion to the mythical garden situated in the African Atlas, where golden apples
were grown under the surveillance of a dragon and three nymphs, the Hesperides.
The raiding of the Garden of the Hesperides had constituted the eleventh labour of
Hercules, who after killing the dragon had carried off the precious fruits to Greece.31
With characteristic boldness, Pontano repudiated the classical myth and turned it into
an aition intended to explain the presence of citrus trees on the Neapolitan shore.
He declared their extraordinary fruits to be the genuine issue of the mythical golden
apples of the Hesperides, and their noblest variety, the orange, to be the plant into
which Adonis had been transformed by Venus after succumbing to the fury of the
boar.
The selection of the subject matter found its justification in a combination of literary
and geo-political reasons. As for the latter: while first and foremost aimed at glorifying
the citrus groves of Naples, Pontano’s Horti Hesperidum also evoked another celebrated
citrus-studded Riviera, that of Lake Garda, by ways of a dedication to the ruler of
its shores, the Marquis of Mantua Francesco Gonzaga.32 A letter sent to Gonzaga
by Pontano on 13 September 1500 reveals that by that date the poem was virtually
complete, and only in need of revision. In the letter the poet asked, somewhat dryly,
for further patience: ‘I have several things dedicated to your name, but the works of
the intellect require frequent and lengthy labor limae. Let Your Excellency therefore be
12 Adonis
patient. If polished they will both honour you and their author; if uncouth, the opposite
would occur.’33 Gonzaga features in the poem as a war hero, with the introductory
lines eulogizing him as the leader of the Italian coalition forces that fought the French
at the battle of the Taro (1495), an indecisive event for which both sides had claimed
victory.34 In honouring Gonzaga Pontano was accepting an invitation issued to him in
1499 by Giovan Battista Spagnoli, called ‘il Mantovano’ (Mantuanus), to participate in
the celebration of the Mantuan warrior and ruler; Mantuanus himself had already sung
the praises of Gonzaga in the five books of his poem Triumphus.35 It must have been
an invitation difficult to resist. One cannot help wondering whether Pontano’s prompt
acceptance was somehow influenced by the need to clear his own name of the accusa-
tions that had followed his final actions as minister of the Aragonese kings in 1495.
Since that fateful year when the French had occupied Naples, rumours had circulated
of Pontano kow-towing to the conquerors with excessive zeal.36 Now however, in a
changed, if volatile, political situation, Pontano showed himself ready to dedicate his
Horti Hesperidum to the sometime enemy of the French, while explicitly lamenting
the ‘violent rule of the Brigands’ and ‘the profanation of the Penates’ in Naples,37 and
even wishing in the final peroration that Gonzaga might one day restore the Neapolitan
kingdom to its independence.38 The two motifs of the war hero and the presence of
citrus trees on Lake Garda were elegantly intertwined by suggesting that an interest
in gardens and orchards was not irreconcilable with martial virtues, as Hercules’
successful attempt to release the Garden of the Hesperides from the dragon seemed to
prove (Hort. Hesp. 1.46–55).
It is doubtful that Pontano’s effort to ingratiate himself with the ruler of Mantua
was successful. Such a courteous invitation was presumably wasted on a recipient like
Francesco Gonzaga – a professional soldier plagued by syphilis, made for and used to
a lifestyle quite different from the one portrayed in Pontano’s elegant verse.39 But, again
presumably, it was not wasted on Gonzaga’s wife, Isabella d’Este, that grande dame of
the Italian Renaissance, who was so influential in everything pertaining to the realm
of poetry and art in Mantua. In that very year of 1499, Isabella was soliciting Pontano’s
revered opinion about a statue of Virgil that was to be erected in Mantua; she asked
also for the text of an inscription to be carved on its basement.40 The Virgilian inspi-
ration of the Horti Hesperidum, openly declared at the beginning of the poem (Hort.
Hesp. 1.9), is a clear token of allegiance to Mantua, Virgil’s birthplace, no less than to
Naples, Pontano’s home and Virgil’s resting place. It would be no surprise should it one
day be discovered that Isabella had an active role in the choice of the poem’s subject.
Competition with the ancients

The Virgilian model features prominently in both the invention and execution of
Pontano’s Hesperides. Citrus trees were the new matter Pontano poured into the
ancient mould of a didactic poem on husbandry in emulation of Virgil’s Georgics.
Competition with the ancients was once again the main driving force behind his
new accomplishment.41 More specifically, two passages from Virgil’s Georgics must
have played a decisive role in motivating Pontano’s emulative approach. Virgil had
famously declared that he was leaving orchards for others to sing (G. 4.144–8). In
fulfilment of such auspices, Columella had already responded by producing Book Ten
of his De re rustica in hexameters – where, however, citrus trees are not mentioned;
nor are they recorded in the anonymous treatise De arboribus liber (On Trees), tradi-
tionally ascribed to Columella in the Renaissance and transmitted together with
the De re rustica by manuscripts and early printed editions.42 Furthermore, Virgil’s
invitation was presumably read by Pontano in the light of another passage from the
Georgics, where the citron or Median tree – the only variety of citrus recorded in the
ancient sources – is mentioned (G. 2.126–35). There, Virgil claims that the citron is
worth being compared with the bay tree, for which it could easily be mistaken were
it not for its scent.
This was an enticing but also problematic passage, as the ancient readers already
knew. Servius thought the tree to which Virgil was referring was not a citron tree (in G.
2.131). Virgil’s comparison is in fact inaccurate, as it is based on a misunderstanding
(presumably generated by a corrupt reading) of a passage from Theophrastus’ Historia
plantarum (4.4.2), the work on which the Roman poet relied for most of his botanical
information. Virgil may have never seen a citron tree after all – and Renaissance
readers were quick to realize that.43 Whether Pontano also identified Virgil’s blunder
remains a matter open to debate. He certainly was aware of what the Elder Pliny
had stated, that even citron trees had only been familiar to the Romans as pot plants
imported from Media (HN 12.7.14–16).44 Another source with which Pontano was
undoubtedly familiar, Macrobius, had reported from Oppius’ lost work De silvestribus
arboribus (On Woodland Trees) the distinction between a variety of citron tree (citrea
malus) that grew in Italy and another, called ‘Persian [tree]’ (Persica [malus]), which
grew in Media (Sat. 3.19.3–5) – unless the latter was merely a peach tree. At all events,
the ancient sources seemed to confirm the ancients’ ignorance of the most valuable
varieties of citrus trees, namely oranges and lemons, the existence of which appears
to have come to the attention of the Europeans only after the arrival of the Arabs,
who were almost certainly responsible for their introduction or reintroduction in the
West.45 But in addition, there was the intriguing suggestion, made by no less an author
than Virgil, that citrus trees could be compared with, and therefore be a match for, bay
trees. There was adequate scope for Pontano to add an original chapter to the Virgilian
topic of orchards, especially given the renewed preoccupation with the aesthetic
qualities of country life that characterized the second half of the Italian Quattrocento,
and inspired in its literature a vigorous revival of the georgic and bucolic genres.46
Like other poets such as Hesiod, Virgil, Columella, Walahfrid Strabo and Petrarch,
Pontano was himself a passionate gardener and an accomplished horticulturalist,
who enjoyed working in his orchard on the hill of Antignano overlooking the bay of
Naples. It is therefore legitimate to ask of him the same question that R. A. B. Mynors
once asked of Virgil: ‘How much about husbandry did he already know?’.47 The answer
is easily provided. The Horti Hesperidum delivers not just first-rate Latin poetry but
also detailed accounts of specific cultivation techniques, and even some little gems
such as what appears to be one of the earliest allusions to ‘sweet oranges’ or portogalli,
thus named after the Portuguese crew of Vasco da Gama that first came upon them
(Hort. Hesp. 1.343–63).48 The ‘sweet orange’ (Citrus sinensis) is the tree, then still
14 Adonis
unknown to the Western world, from which all the currently commercialized varieties
of orange derive.49 News of its discovery was passed on in private letters by Italian
members of Vasco da Gama’s crew on their return home in 1499.50 When one year
later Pontano announced to the future dedicatee that his poem was finished and only
in need of some polish, the passage on the sweet oranges may have already been there;
at any rate it must have been inserted before Pontano’s death, which occurred on 17
September 1503.51 The Horti Hesperidum is among the earliest texts, almost certainly
the first published text in verse, to report on the existence of the newly discovered
variety of oranges.52
Had Pontano any direct predecessor in this unusual reformulation of the Adonis
myth? A source might emerge one day showing him clearly indebted to a previous
author; no such source, however, has yet been identified. Given Pontano’s fondness for
literary ‘crossing’, one is tempted to surmise that he devised his topic independently
through his usual blend of ancient and modern sources.
One thing is certain: Pontano did take pride in the originality of his own approach
to the matter. In a passage of his dialogue Aegidius (last revised 1501 or later), the
then still unpublished Horti Hesperidum is introduced as an object of admiration on
the part of contemporary scholars, and in a fashion that casts considerable light on
the nature of the poem itself.53 One of the characters in the dialogue, Hieronymus
Carbo (Girolamo Carbone), is asking for the opinion of another interlocutor, Puccius
(Francesco Pucci), about the topic of didactic poetry. Puccius obliges by citing
Virgil, Columella and Lucretius, as well as expanding on the masterful Virgilian and
Lucretian ‘art of beginning’.54 At this point Hieronymus incidentally mentions that he
is looking forward to Pontano’s forthcoming poem ‘on the nature of oranges, on the
rarity of such trees and on their cultivation, which no-one has [yet] put on record’ (a
nemine tradito). The absolute novelty of the subject-matter is further confirmed by
another interlocutor, Thamyras (Piero Tamira), as well as Puccius.55 The interesting
element here is that both Thamyras and Puccius are purposedly called upon in their
role as pupils of two great humanistic schools, Pomponio Leto’s in Rome and Politian’s
in Florence respectively. Both of them attest to their teachers’ omission in dealing
with oranges while commenting on the crucial Virgilian passage of G. 2.126–35.56
The statement can be easily validated through direct scrutiny of the texts in question.
Neither Leto’s commentary on the Georgics, elaborated in the years 1469–71 and
published for the first time in an unauthorized edition at Brescia in 1490, nor Politian’s
unpublished lecture notes for the course on the Georgics, which the humanist had
delivered in the Florentine Studio in 1483–4, contain any reference to orange trees.57
The search for the Hesperides

Pontano’s self-reference in Aegidius betrays the highly erudite nature of his endeavour,
performed in competition not just with poets but also with scholars. The idea of
amalgamating citrus trees, the Hesperides and the Adonis myth into one single
narrative was undoubtedly a brilliant one; its originality and complexity, however,
suggests that it must have dawned on Pontano only gradually.
Even the association of citrus fruits with the fabulous golden apples of the
Garden of the Hesperides was far from straightforward. Varro (Rust. 2.1.6–7),
followed by many including Servius (in Aen. 4.84), had offered an allegorical
interpretation of the ‘golden apples’ (aurea mala) of the Hesperides as ‘sheep’
by proposing the etymological reading of Lat. mala < Gr. mēla (‘sheep’).58 In the
works of Lucretius, Virgil and Ovid, on the other hand, the aurea mala or aurea
poma of the Hesperides were (and are) commonly understood to be not citrons but
quinces.59 Pontano seems to have shared the same belief at first, for in De amore
coniugali 2.4.14, aurea mala stands not for citrus fruits but for small apples called
azariole.60 In the same poem Venus and Adonis are exposed as the cause of moral
corruption among mankind after all the other gods have abandoned an Earth
dominated by vice (2.4.63–70 – a transparent imitation of the Astraea episode in
Ov. Met. 1.149–50). This piece is thus likely to represent a phase prior to Pontano’s
interest in the Macrobian interpretation of Adonis, as well as the myth of the
Hesperides.61
Citrus trees and the Garden of the Hesperides could be correlated on the assumed
authority of several later Latin and Greek authors, like the Elder Pliny (HN 5.1.12;
13.29.91), Martial (13.37; 14.89), and Athenaeus (Deipn. 3.83 a-d)62 – an authority,
however, riddled with uncertainties, as it split over the correct name of citrus trees
and fruits and the actual geographical area from which they were supposed to have
originated. There existed terminological confusion between Lat. citrus (‘citron’ and/
or ‘[Atlas] cedar’) and cedrus (‘cedar’, ‘juniper’), and between Gr. kitrion/kitreon
(‘citron’), kedrion (‘juniper-berry’) and kedros (‘cedar tree’).63 Although denounced
by Athenaeus at Deipn. 3.84c-d, such confusion perpetuated itself throughout the
Middle Ages. The alternation of variant readings like cetrus/cedrus/citrus in medieval
manuscripts of ancient Latin works is revealing enough, and doubly confusing when
it occurs in works to which people confidently turned to obtain reliable factual
information, such as the Elder Pliny’s Natural History.64 Furthermore, ever since
the Middle Ages one single term (cedro) has been used in the Italian vernacular to
designate the citron tree and its fruit, as well as the cedar tree. As for the location of
the wonderful trees and fruits, in Athenaeus’ dialogue the character maintaining that
the Africans call ‘the apples of Hesperia … citrons’ is immediately silenced by his
opponent who points to Theophrastus (Hist. plant. 4.4.2) as proof that citrons origi-
nated in the East, namely in Media or in Persia, not in the West.65 A further reference
to the Western regions of Northern Africa may have reached Pontano via the Greek-
Latin glossaries and Hermeneumata, which in different versions circulated widely in
fifteenth-century classrooms and provided young pupils with the earliest rudiments
of Greek.66 Terms like citrium, citrum are there consistently translated as (h)esperis,
(h)esperion or suchlike (< Gr. hesperos, Lat. vesper ‘evening’, ‘West’).67 This would have
readily authorized etymological wordplay on Hesperides as well as on Hesperia, one
of Italy’s traditional names in antiquity, and of course on Hesperus as ‘the evening
star’, the planet Venus. In yet another source – Antonio Mancinelli’s commentary on
Virgil’s Bucolics, read in the Roman Studio in 1486–7 and first published in 1490 –
etymological wordplay seems to have been silently stretched to produce citereum, an
apparent conflation of citreum (‘of the citron’) and cythereum (‘Cytherean’).68
16 Adonis
Finally, and significantly, the assimilation of citrus fruits to the apples of the
Hesperides often occurred in, or in reference to, geographical areas where the culti-
vation of citrus trees was a lucrative activity. The aurea mala mentioned in two Latin
poems of 1480s by Francesco Patrizi, Bishop of Gaeta have been positively identified
as oranges.69 Ugolino Verino’s Panegyricon for the conquest of Granada in 1492,
addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, praises Spanish (orange) fruits as far
tastier than those of the Hesperides, of Alcinous, of Gaeta and of Paestum.70 Pontano’s
careful choice of dedicatee, as has been seen, is similarly suggestive of a twinning
between the bay of Naples and the southern coast of Lake Garda, both of which were
graced with the presence of the golden fruits. But perhaps the most significant text
that can be mentioned in this context is one from another ‘citrus region’ – Tuscany –
and one intriguingly similar to Pontano’s Horti Hesperidum, in that it deals with an
ancient tale of metamorphosis into a fruit tree and deliberately expands on it. Coluccio
Salutati’s aition on the origin of the almond tree, inspired by Serv. in Buc. 5.10 and
the ps.-Ovidian Nux (Walnut Tree) and entitled Conquestio Phillidis (The Lament of
Phyllis), topically lists plants evoking mythological reminiscences; and there the tree of
Myrrha with ‘Adonis in her bosom’ closely follows the citrus trees of Gaeta.
Medica caiete scopuloso in litore poma
crescant. Iudeus balsama rara colat.
Dactilus ex nudo procedat robore palme,
ac humilem curvent grandia poma citrum.
Mura, nefas, pulcrum sub pectore servat Adona
ac electra gemens det quasi parturiat.71 (147–52)
Let the apples from Media grow on the rocky shores of Gaeta. Let the Jew tend
rare balsams. Let the date proceed from the palm’s naked vigour [i.e. stripped
trunk], and big apple fruits bend the humble citron [under their weight]. Let
Myrrha, O horror! keep handsome Adonis in her bosom, and weepingly exude
gallipot as if in labour.
Adonis as citrus tree

These appear to be the only potentially inspirational passages for Pontano’s Horti
Hesperidum which can be found. For a humanist such scattered elements were in
themselves valuable pieces of rare and remote information. But a poet (as well as
humanist) such as Pontano is likely to have cast his eye beyond their informative value,
looking forward to their potential reuse in a literary context. Moving on from the
lexical to the thematic and narrative level, one realizes that another hint might have
come to him from a mere statement of fact – that a relationship between the Adonis
myth and that of the Hesperides, at least by contiguity, already existed in ancient liter-
ature. As a keen admirer of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pontano could not have failed to
notice that the Adonis episode includes as an inset digression the tale of Atalanta and
Hippomenes (Met. 10.560–707). There the deployment of the apples of the Hesperides
constitutes Hippomenes’ decisive stratagem for defeating Atalanta in the running race.
A further association between the Hesperides and Adonis also existed insofar as their
names had been mentioned together by Pliny in connection with the fabulous gardens
of old – ‘the gardens of the Hesperides and of the kings Alcinous and Adonis, and also
the hanging gardens, that is, of Semiramis’ (NH 19.19.49).72 The passage was key for
anyone fostering an interest in garden cultivation, and was as a matter of fact utilized
by Pomponio Leto to introduce his popular commentary on Columella’s Book Ten.73
Apart from Venus’ well-known but generic association with the fruits of the
Hesperides, one of which had been given to her as a victory token after the so-called
Judgement of the Goddesses,74 further details of a more subtle and tantalizing nature
may have spurred Pontano’s associative powers and appetite for literary competition.
It will be remembered that the final lines of the Ovidian episode allude to the Adonis
flower, the anemone, as one liable to be dissipated by the wind (Gr. anemos).
namque male haerentem et nimia levitate caducum
excutiunt idem, qui praestant nomina, venti.75 (Met. 10.738–9)
For the winds, which give the flower its name, shake it off as it clings precariously
and is prone to fall off easily.
Conversely in the Georgics the leaves and flowers of the citron tree had been
proclaimed by Virgil unshakable.
folia haud ullis labentia ventis,
flos ad prima tenax. (G. 2.133–4)
No wind can shake its foliage, and its flower clings as tenaciously.
Not only the poems of Virgil but also those liminary texts that traditionally comple-
mented them in both manuscripts and early printed editions, such as the poet’s ancient
biographies, may have been part and parcel of this allusive game. One need only recall
the dream Virgil’s mother was supposed to have had the night before she gave birth to
her prodigious son – how she picked a twig from a bay tree which, once planted in the
soil, miraculously produced a different, luxuriant plant laden with fruit and blossom.76
Might not Pontano’s citrus trees look like an embodiment of that fabulous plant, as
well as an appropriation of its symbology?
This last supposition may sound excessively bold. It would however chime with
a further decisive detail, which made Pontano’s association of the Adonis myth with
citrus trees not only persuasive but also compelling. The metamorphosis of Adonis
as a symbol of life’s perpetual renewal appeared to him to be uniquely enshrined in a
distinctive feature of such trees – that of being, in Pontano’s own words, ‘always graced
with new fruits, blossoms and leaves’ throughout the whole year (Hort. Hesp. 1.571).77
It was a feature that Theophrastus, Pliny, Solinus, Servius, Palladius, Macrobius and
Isidore of Seville had already noticed and recorded when illustrating citron trees.78 In
the medieval and early modern age similar observations were extended to oranges
and lemons as well, and occur – as one would expect – in the work of agricultur-
alists.79 But they also occur, for instance, in Boccaccio’s Decameron, where a garden is
described as ‘surrounded by most green and luxuriant orange (aranci) and citron trees
(cedri), which showed not only flowers but fruits both old and new’, and in several
18 Adonis
other texts.80 Even more remarkable is the imagery conveyed by a text chronologically
closer to the Horti Hesperidum, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499). There a cloister
is said to be adorned ‘with admirable citron, orange and lemon trees’, with oranges
in particular sporting their ‘candid flower’ and their ‘fruits both ripe and unripened’,
while in a further passage the same tree varieties fill a garden-grove sacred to Venus
containing the sepulchre of Adonis.81
The awestruck tone of these descriptions shows wonder for a natural occurrence
that seemed to make dreams of a fantasy world concrete. To the poets and scholars of
the Italian Renaissance, citrus trees must have looked like the real-world observable
equivalent of the extraordinary plants that populated Alcinous’ garden in Homer’s
celebrated description, the ‘garden of gardens’ of the ancient world.82
But without the courtyard … is a great orchard of four acres … Therein grow trees,
tall and luxuriant, pears and pomegranates and apple-trees with their bright fruit,
and sweet figs, and luxuriant olives. Of these the fruit perishes not nor fails in
winter or in summer, but lasts throughout the year; and ever does the west wind,
as it blows, quicken to life some fruits, and ripen others; pear upon pear waxes
ripe, apple upon apple, cluster upon cluster, and fig upon fig. There, too, is his
fruitful vineyard planted, one part of which, a warm spot on level ground, is being
dried in the sun, while other grapes men are gathering, and others, too, they are
treading; but in front are unripe grapes that are shedding the blossom, and others
that are turning purple … Such were the glorious gifts of the gods in the palace of
Alcinous. (Od. 7.113–32, tr. A. T. Murray).
New myths out of ancient verse

Just as in Urania, transformation of the ancient sources occurred in the Horti
Hesperidum through ‘crossing’ at several levels. This is already evident in the organi-
zation of the poem’s introductory lines. According to the hierarchy of styles, the
Horti Hesperidum was supposed to rank below Urania: hence the initial invocation of
lesser local deities such as the water-nymphs (Naiads) and the nymphs of the forests
(Napaeae), dwelling in the river Sebethus and on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius respec-
tively. But this apparently humbler approach is rapidly subverted by what follows. The
name of Virgil, whose tomb tradition located in nearby Posillipo, is evoked first (Hort.
Hesp. 1.9); then Urania is introduced as gracefully granting her benevolent patronage
to the modern poet (1.26). At this point a sudden change of tone is felt, and the poet’s
voice rises to a passionate prayer, distinctively Lucretian in style and energy, asking
his beloved Muse to assist his enterprise – the celebration of the orange as the noblest
among all citrus trees (citrigenum decus) and the glory of the Sebethian groves, just as
the Phoebian bay tree is the pride of the Thessalian vale of Tempe (1.30–45).83
This declaration is the prelude to an even greater surprise. Orange trees are
sacred to Venus, Pontano explains, for this is the plant into which dead Adonis was
converted by the will of the goddess, its ever-present blossoms and fruits bearing
‘a perpetual, sad memento of Venus’ grief ’.84 No explicit reference to any previous
mythological tradition is given, although the Ovidian subtext would have automati-
cally come to mind. At a single stroke Pontano obliterated Ovid’s version of the
myth and replaced it with a brand new aition – which he characteristically obtained
by borrowing from Ovid himself, for he saw no impediment in drawing on the
death of Adonis as narrated in Met. 10.708–39 and ‘improving’ upon his model.
If Ovid’s Venus had simply sprinkled nectar over Adonis’ blood, then Pontano’s
Venus would indulge in a much longer rite, pouring ambrosia over the youth’s hair,
washing his body, and murmuring unintelligible spells. And while Ovid had had
Adonis’ blood turned into an anemone, Pontano preferred to have the whole body
of Adonis turned into a tree, so that the story of the child born of a myrrh tree
could come full circle.
Ambrosio mox rore comam diffundit et unda
Idalia corpus lavit incompertaque verba
Murmurat ore super supremaque et oscula iungit.
Ambrosium sensit rorem coma, sensit et undam
Idaliam corpus divinaque verba loquentis;
Haeserunt terrae crines riguitque capillus
Protenta in radice et recto in stipite corpus,
Lanugo in teneras abiit mollissima frondes,
In florem candor, in ramos brachia et ille,
Ille decor tota diffusus in arbore risit;
Vulnificos spinae referunt in cortice dentes,
Crescit et in patulas aphrodisia citrius umbras. (Hort. Hesp. 1.77–88)
Then she showers his hair with ambrosia and washes his body with her Idalian
ointment while murmuring incomprehensible words, and gives him a final kiss.
The hair sensed the ambrosian shower, the body sensed the Idalian ointment and
the words uttered by the goddess; the hair clung to the soil, stretching rigidly into
a root, and his body into an upright trunk; his soft body-hair dissolved into tender
leaves, his white skin into blossoms, his arms into boughs, and that grace which
Adonis had when alive pervaded the whole tree like a radiant smile. The thorns
on the bark reproduce the wound-making teeth, and Venus’ orange tree grows,
casting its broad shadow around.
For the actual description of Adonis’ metamorphosis Pontano did not hesitate to bring
in Ovid’s most spectacular showpiece, the metamorphosis of Daphne (Met. 1.548–56),
conveniently rearranged by reversing the original descriptive sequence.85 Further
textual resemblances suggest that the Ovidian transformation of the Heliades (Met.
2.333–66) was also drawn upon, no doubt to offer the knowledgeable reader another
ably disguised but eventually recognizable source. As for the language, Pontano left
hardly a single Ovidian expression untouched, brilliantly and perilously bordering
on, yet never actually crossing over into, parody. He also drew on the vernacular
tradition – as most Neo-Latin poets of the Italian Quattrocento were wont to do.86 One
passage in particular may help show this further aspect of his passion for the deliberate
conflation of disparate sources. Once the metamorphosis of Adonis has reached its
20 Adonis
conclusion, the newly born tree gratefully shakes its top in response to Venus’ woeful
attentions, and lets its blossoms shower into the goddess’s lap:
Illa velut dominae luctum solata recentes
Excussit frondes, resupinaque vertice canos
Diffudit florum nimbos, quis pectora divae
Implevitque sinum et lacrimas sedavit euntes;
Exin hesperiis arbor nitet aurea silvis. (Hort. Hesp. 1.97–101)
As if to comfort its lady in mourning, [the tree] shook its new leaves, and bending
its top poured white showers of blossoms into the goddess’ bosom and lap, and
calmed her flowing tears. Thereafter the golden tree shines amidst the Hesperian
groves.
Readers of Petrarch will not fail to recognize in this passage an allusion to a celebrated
scene from his Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, where Laura is depicted under a shower
of blossoms:
Da’ be’ rami scendea
(dolce ne la memoria)
una pioggia di fior sovra ’l suo grembo … (Rer. vulg. frag. 126.40–2)
A rain of flowers descended (sweet in the memory) from the beautiful branches
into her lap …
At the sight of such ‘wonderful dexterity’ (prodigiosa maestria), an expert judge like
Vladimiro Zabughin felt encouraged to declare Pontano’s consummate art comparable
only to that of Dante’s.87
The examples that have been offered should help explain why, during his final
years and in those immediately subsequent to his death, Pontano was perceived to
be the only modern Latin poet who had genuinely challenged the otherwise undis-
puted supremacy of the ancients.88 Many of his contemporaries and followers saw in
his reinterpretation of the Adonis myth the token of a new age of radiance for Latin
poetry, and in the celebration of orange trees a powerful symbol that could stand up
to classical poetry and its noblest symbol, the Phoebian bay tree – as indeed Pontano
himself had wished (Hort. Hesp. 1.39–42). It is an episode of Renaissance literary
history that has strangely gone unnoticed, or perhaps been misinterpreted as merely
ornamental stock-verse and dismissed accordingly. The following chapter will show
how the legacy of Pontano and his poetics came to influence, for good or for bad, the
changing fortunes of the Adonis myth in the course of the sixteenth century.
2
Adonis and the Renaissance idyll
The keen new interest in ancient mythology that resulted from the revival of
classical antiquity is a well-known phenomenon. Its progressively changing nature,
however, may not yet have received adequate acknowledgment.1 In the heyday of
fifteenth-century Italian Humanism, fascination for pagan myths was not neces-
sarily or primarily engendered by mere antiquarian curiosity, nor by pride in the
strict imitation of the classics.2 In fact, one of its most striking features was a fresh,
uninhibited and emulation-driven approach to the ancient models, of which Pontano’s
achievement, as highlighted in Chapter 1, is an eloquent example. Sixteenth-century
authors, on the other hand, increasingly preoccupied with issues of decorum to the
point of fastidiousness, would be inclined to condemn such an approach as ‘unregu-
lated’ and therefore inappropriate.
This may help to explain why the model set by Pontano’s poetry, which continued
to receive enthusiastic accolades for two or three decades after his death, rapidly lost
its prestige when the new trend inspired by rigid classicizing principles became an
established norm. Pontano’s marginalization is the result of a series of circumstances
different in nature, yet all somehow working against the influence exercised by his
legacy. One such circumstance was the shifting balance from Latin to the vernacular,
which, in the early decades of the sixteenth century, came to affect ever wider and
more influential sectors of Renaissance readership; Pontano’s all-Latin output could
not but suffer from it. Another was the increasingly widespread perception of his
achievement as unique and even, in many respects, idiosyncratic. A third obstacle
was represented by the changing conception of imitation itself, which induced a much
more rigid codification of literary genres. This last factor in particular proved to be a
lethal blow to the prestige enjoyed by Pontano’s poetics.
The gradual distancing of Italian literary culture from Pontano’s achievement
deserves to be examined at closer range, because it indirectly came to bear upon the
perception of the Adonis myth in sixteenth-century literary culture.
The legacy of Pontano

The early decades of the sixteenth century saw authors such as Iacopo Sannazaro,
Pietro Bembo, Ludovico Ariosto, Niccolò Machiavelli and Baldassarre Castiglione
22 Adonis
choose the vernacular for some of their most influential works. Anyone enjoying the
benefit (or the mirage) of five hundred years’ hindsight might be tempted to consider
that, by then, the traditional ascendancy of Latin had ended. While persuasive from
afar, such a view reveals itself, on nearer scrutiny, as illusory and even misleading.
Carlo Dionisotti’s comments on this point still hold good – that in Italy the compe-
tition between Latin and the vernacular remained in the balance until at least as late
as the mid–1520s.3 Not until the appearance of Pietro Bembo’s authoritative Prose
della volgar lingua (1525) did the Italian vernacular gain a status comparable to that
enjoyed by the two classical languages. According to Bembo, this unprecedented
advance could only be made through the adoption of strict rules that would ensure
orthographic and morphologic regularity and absolute control in matters pertaining
to lexical selection and style. Rigorous imitative practices should be set up for the
purpose and calibrated on only two main models, both diversely representative of
the linguistic excellence of fourteenth-century Tuscan literature – for verse Petrarch’s
Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, and for prose Boccaccio’s Decameron (Prose della volgar
lingua, 1.14–19, 2.3). In other words, Bembo was proclaiming Petrarch and Boccaccio
the new vernacular classics, while excluding Dante, whom he considered unsuitable
for imitation. In so doing he was repeating the delicate operation he had conducted
a few years earlier, when he had uncompromisingly selected Virgil and Cicero as
absolute models for an equally strict doctrine of imitation to be applied to Neo-Latin.4
As is well known, this is a question (the so-called questione della lingua) that has
been debated at length over the past five centuries.5 Here I shall confine myself to
highlighting one or two tangential points in relation to Pontano’s Nachleben and the
associated perception of the Adonis myth.
As far as vernacular poetry is concerned, the success of Bembo’s approach appeared
to be sanctioned by 1530. In that year the lyric poems of the two most prominent
poets of the previous decades and fathers of modern Petrarchism, the very same
Bembo and Sannazaro, were edited in conformity with the new rules.6 Two years later
Ariosto amended his Orlando furioso for a third and definitive edition, bringing his
masterpiece into line with Bembo’s positions on language and style. In the realm of
vernacular prose, too, Italian writers dutifully followed suit by acknowledging, by and
large, the authority of the Boccaccian style.7 The battle for Latin prose, on the other
hand, could be said to have been won by Bembo as early as 1513, when Pope Leo X
had given Ciceronian style the greatest institutional endorsement by appointing the
two masters of Ciceronianism, Bembo himself and Iacopo Sadoleto, Secretaries of
Papal Briefs.
Latin poetry presented problems of a different kind. Up until the 1520s Latin
verse had had an advantage over the younger language, still in the process of catching
up. This explains why some of the foremost poets of Italy were intended to avail
themselves of the Latin language for works that ought to represent their durable
bequest to posterity. In light of the long gestation and ensuing belated publication
dates, such works as Sannazaro’s De partu Virginis (On the Virgin Birth, 1526),
Girolamo Fracastoro’s Syphilis (1530), Marco Girolamo Vida’s three books De arte
poetica (On Poetry, 1527) and Christias (The Christiad, 1535) show an enduring faith
and confidence in the power of the ancient language. Around the same time another
Adonis and the Renaissance idyll 23
prominent poet, Antonio Tebaldeo, went as far as to sorely regret ever having written
vernacular verse.8
The role played by Pontano’s poetry in this process was crucial. A considerable
number of testimonies confirm that such enduring faith and confidence in Latin as a
living literary language had been inspired in no small part by Pontano’s own example.
Modern poets felt encouraged by his success to continue using the same medium
the ancients had used, and as masters of their own trade accepted the challenge of
producing something as ambitious and long-lasting – all things being equal – as their
time-honoured models. The very symbol that Pontano had devised for his revisited
Adonis myth, the orange tree, became for many the proudly acknowledged blazon of
Neo-Latin poetry, in respectful but positive contrast with the bay tree of ancient verse.
The testimony of the Neapolitan Sannazaro deserves to be mentioned first. When
following King Frederick of Aragon into exile in 1501, Sannazaro was said to have
bidden goodbye to Naples and ‘its gardens and Hesperides’ in elegant Latin distichs
while the boat was leaving the harbour, and the moving scene had been recorded
in Pontano’s Aegidius.9 Sannazaro’s was no passing fantasy. As late as 1526, when he
eventually published his eagerly awaited De partu Virginis, readers were informed by
the final lines that the poet’s coveted prize for his most ambitious poetic enterprise was
nothing other than a wreath of Neapolitan – and at this point, one could say Pontanian
– orange leaves.10
Mergillina, novos fundunt ubi citria flores,
citria Medorum sacros referentia lucos:
et mihi non solita nectit de fronde coronam. (De part. Virg. 3.511–13)
Mergellina – where orange orchards put forth ever new blossoms, orange
orchards that evoke the sacred groves of the Medians – weaves me a crown from
uncommon leaves.11
Naples was not alone in honouring the old vates in such a manner. While describing
Agostino Chigi’s Roman residence (now Villa Farnesina) in 1512, Blosius Palladius
sang the praises of Pontano’s Hesperides the moment he came across an orange tree in
the villa’s garden.12 Another acknowledged master of verse, and one of the luminaries
of the Roman court, Francesco Maria Molza, devoted one of his elegies to Pontano’s
Hesperides and Adonis,13 while even for a contemporary French poet, the well-known
secretary of Erasmus, Gilbert Cousin of Nozeroy (Gilbertus Cognatus Nucillanus),
the orange had become quite simply ‘the tree of Adonis’.14 Pontano’s symbol appealed
not only to Latin, but also to vernacular poets. Writing the first georgic poem in
any European vernacular, Della coltivazione libri sei (Six Books on Farming, first
published in 1546 but written over a period of almost twenty years), the Florentine
Luigi Alamanni referred to the orange as the ‘plant … that originated from Heaven’,
and commiserated with the ‘uncouth ancient world’ for having been ‘deprived of so
noble a tree’.15 But more prominent than all others in his support of Pontano’s poetry
was the Veronese physician and poet Girolamo Fracastoro. In the introductory lines
of his masterpiece, the aetiological poem Syphilis sive de morbo Gallico (Syphilis, or the
French Disease, 1530), Fracastoro invoked the protection of Pontano’s Muse Urania
24 Adonis
(1.24–52), and went on to honour Pontano himself as one of the marvels of his age
(2.38–49), together with his ‘Cytherean tree’ (arbor cithereïa) cultivated by Venus in
remembrance of her Adonis (2.220–2).16 Sannazaro’s fantasy about a garland woven
from orange leaves had indeed become the ambition of many a fellow poet.
The pitfalls of inventiveness

How, one wonders, could a legacy of such scope be dissipated and eventually lost?
As anticipated at the outset of this chapter, Pontano’s own prowess may paradoxi-
cally have played a counterproductive role in the process. Pontano’s poetic gifts
were not easily matched; nor were his particular cast of mind and inventiveness,
so unflinchingly committed to courting transgression. The comparison with Dante
proposed by Zabughin, reported at the end of Chapter 1, reveals itself as fitting even
in its less advantageous implications. At a time when Bembo’s doctrine of literary
imitation was imposing itself with mounting authority, Pontano was increasingly
perceived as a near-inimitable model – just like Dante. In circumstances like this,
inimitability can prove an ambivalent quality.
The best appraisal of Pontano’s accomplishment in this new context was provided
by Lelio Gregorio Giraldi (1479–1552). His two dialogues De poetis nostrorum
temporum (On Modern Poets) include an overview of the Latin poetry produced in
Italy in the early decades of the sixteenth century. People and events mentioned in
the text show that the first dialogue is set in Rome about 1515–16, during the glorious
days of Leo X’s pontificate. The text itself was presumably begun shortly afterwards,
with composition and revision extending into the 1520s, possibly the early 1530s. It
was eventually published, after a final adjustment, in 1551, together with a second
dialogue set in Ferrara in 1548 and written in 1548–9.17
The poetry of Pontano is eulogized in the first dialogue as follows:
The works of Giovanni Pontano of Umbria – his Urania, Meteora, the Garden of
the Hesperides, his eclogues, epigrams, and elegies, and all his other poetry as well
as his many prose works – compel me to commemorate him in these portraits as
one of the leading poets. In fact I would place him as just about equal to all the
writers of antiquity, even if, as some think, he is not outstanding in everything
he does (for sometimes he can be too salacious and digressive) and he clearly
does not always abide by the conventions of the genres [‘nec plane ubique se
legibus astringit’]. This will seem unsurprising to those who are aware that he
was for a long time involved in the important affairs of kings and princes and
that he handled terms and treaties pertaining to both war and peace as well as
following Phoebus and the Muses. Yet who has written more than he? Who has
written more learnedly or more eloquently? In short, who has composed with
more perfection, succinctness or discrimination?18 (De poet. 1.37–8, tr. J. L. Grant,
slightly adapted)
This accolade is splendid and well-deserved, as well as being genuine, for Giraldi
did not omit those traits of Pontano’s poetic personality which might have seemed
less acceptable in the eyes of the new reading public. One comment, which admit-
tedly reports the judgement of others, may sound odd and perhaps unfair. It is the
remark about Pontano not deserving to be compared to the ancients because he had
failed to excel in everything he wrote. This was a questionable charge. The proverbial
‘sometimes even Homer nods’ (Hor. AP 359) should in all fairness have been extended
to Pontano, and as a reminder of human fallibility even in the case of most gifted
literary figures, rather than as a pretext for casting aspersions upon them. Yet the
remark must have hit home because it stressed unevenness – something that those
imbued with the new classicizing taste perceived as distinctively Pontanian. According
to Giraldi, unevenness in Pontano’s œuvre was caused by a variety of factors: an
occasional inclination to lasciviousness, a tendency to digress, and a somewhat
detached neglect of rules. As Grant conveniently puts it in his translation, Pontano did
not appear to abide by ‘the conventions of the genres’. A critique of this kind would
have been possible, though readily dismissable, in Pontano’s own time, but it could
amount to a serious charge in the 1510s or the 1520s, let alone the 1550s, when the
debate on the hierarchy and legitimacy of literary genres had entered a heated new
phase following the reappearance of Aristotle’s Poetics.19 Giraldi would not, however,
let such reservations dominate as some of his contemporaries might have wished
(‘And yet there are today some who do not give a fair assessment of his renown’). On
the contrary, he would wait and see if ‘they themselves [could produce] better work or
[adduce] superior work done by others’ (De poet. 1.39) – something he claimed had
not yet happened to date.20
One of those unnamed critics can be positively identified. He was none other than
Pietro Bembo – the dictator of the Italian literary scene of the 1520s. This leads to the
third reason for Pontano’s neglect. Bembo and Pontano had almost certainly met in
the spring of 1492, when the former visited Naples on his way to Sicily. This presumed
encounter is customarily invoked to explain the dedication to Bembo of Book Seven
of Pontano’s De rebus coelestibus (On Celestial Matters, posthumously published in
1512). In 1494, when Pontano is thought to have added that dedication to his still-
unpublished work, such a token of respect was unusual and remarkable in itself, as it
came from an aged, universally acclaimed politician and man of letters to a younger
man, however talented and of patrician stock, who had not yet given any public proof
of his gifts.21 But in the 1520s, when Pontano had been dead for over twenty years and
Bembo was deeply engaged in a violent debate that threatened his position as the most
influential man of letters in Italy, there was very little time left for pleasantries.
Just before the publication of his Prose della volgar lingua, Bembo once again
tried his hand at Latin poetry by producing Benacus (Lake Garda, 1524), a poem of
Virgilian inspiration.22 The piece met with lukewarm reactions – more was evidently
expected of a man of Bembo’s calibre. The assessment offered by Giraldi is once again
illuminating, and the particular flavour of his account, with its nuances and aftertastes,
can be fully relished against the fictional setting as well as the prolonged gestation of
his text, for there one can distinctively perceive the changing trends and moods that
characterized the Italian humanist world of the 1510s and 1520s.
After the passage quoted above where Pontano’s uniqueness is extolled, Giraldi-
the-character acts as if struck by an afterthought, and concedes that at least one
26 Adonis
other contemporary poet should be acknowledged as equally outstanding. He

therefore turns to one of his interlocutors, Giulio Sadoleto, suggesting that three
poems by his brother Iacopo may indeed deserve as much praise.23 To utter the
name of Iacopo Sadoleto in the Roman context of 1516 would automatically evoke
that of Pietro Bembo on account of their shared office at the papal court. A tribute
to Bembo, or rather to his astounding mimetic ability, dutifully follows; but not
without reservations.
He has wondrous skill in emulating the best of authors, both Latin and Italian. For
the most part one seems to hear or read, not Bembo himself as he speaks, but the
author whom he has chosen as his model.24 (De poet. 1.39)
No other comment illustrates with comparable elegance and efficacy the ambitions
and achievements of the three masters of Latin verse: the late Pontano, naturally and
unquestionably the greatest; Sadoleto, potentially his competitor, but only on a very
limited scale, as his excellent but sporadic attempts at Latin poetry showed; and finally
Bembo, of the three arguably the most motivated and eager to excel and undeniably
skilled, but skilled in speaking through the voice of his models rather than his own
voice. Giraldi may have fostered doubts about some of Pontano’s idiosyncracies, but
he knew where true talent lay.
What of Bembo’s own perception of the situation? One year after the disillusion
the half-hearted reception of his Benacus had caused him, he was entrusted with the
power of reviewing Latin poetry in the making. In the autumn of 1525 Girolamo
Fracastoro asked him to read a draft version of his Syphilis, the aetiological poem
of Virgilian (as well as Pontanian) inspiration mentioned above, for he intended to
make Bembo the poem’s dedicatee. Bembo obliged by offering copious suggestions
for improvement. He also declared his appreciation of the author’s dexterity and grace
in dealing with topics of natural philosophy in verse, and commended the perfectly
pitched Virgilian tone of the whole and the novelty of the aition of the ‘sacred wood’
from the Antilles, the guaiacum, whose extracts were believed to offer an effective
remedy for syphilis.25 From the list of suggestions, as well as from a second letter
which also allows the reader to guess the content of Fracastoro’s lost intermediate
missive, it emerges that Bembo had proposed the removal of a second ‘new’ aition
(that is, not imitated from any ancient authority): the one concerning quicksilver,
another supposedly successful therapy for those affected by the disease. In his lost
letter, however, Fracastoro had made it clear that he intended to retain the quicksilver
aition while expanding his work to the length of three books.26 Bembo hastened to
voice his disapproval. To invent two such tales, new in all their parts and showing no
dependence on the ancient models, was an exaggeration, he claimed, that would meet
with general censure. He warmly recommended self-restraint, and rebutted as illusory
Fracastoro’s persuasion that the insertions could be endorsed on the authority of such
ancient poets as Virgil or Pindar.
For if you say that Virgil inserted digressions in his poems, I shall reply that
you, too, have many of them in your two books, which is perfectly acceptable
– although a digression is one thing, and an utterly new tale [favola del tutto
nuova] quite another. Even Virgil, when he introduced the tale of Aristaeus [G.
4.315–558], did not devise it out of nothing but rather extracted and derived it
from the ancient ones. Pindar cannot provide a good model for he is a poet of
lyrics and dithyrambs …27
But the scathing comment was reserved for the only modern authority involved,
which in his lost letter Fracastoro had evidently mentioned on a par with the two
classical poets.
I won’t say a word about Pontano – for if I were to imitate anything [from his
works], I would rather imitate his virtues, not his faults. That habit of his of
inventing new tales [favole] is so despicable that one can hardly stomach the
reading of any of his poems.28
Pontano’s didactic poems had by that time become the blueprint for all modern
emulators of Virgil’s Georgics.29 Once again Giraldi’s words prove illuminating when
he writes that in his poem Fracastoro was ‘aiming to match the ancient poets’ but
‘especially trying to emulate Pontano, whom he reveres so highly’ (De poet. 1.175).30
The point had been made clearly enough in the Syphilis, where enthusiastic references
to Pontano and his new Adonis myth stand out as hardly less conspicuous than the
eulogy of the poem’s dedicatee.31
The sequel of the story reveals that Fracastoro would not listen, that the poem
would be published four years later in three books with the two aitia as planned, and
that Bembo would acquiesce by graciously accepting the dedication with a polite but
curt letter of thanks.32
The episode is suggestive of a changing approach to the authors, literary genres
and topics of the ancient world. Rigorous and decorum-inspired imitation was now
expected to be exercised, not merely linguistically and stylistically but narratively as
well. Bembo had come to feel increasingly uneasy about imitative practices which
elaborated on the ancient texts under the stimulus of unbridled mythographic inven-
tiveness, with the result of provoking an undesirable sense of stylistic distortion. He,
or someone close to his positions, even set himself the task of offering an eloquent
example of what the idea of a ‘new favola’ was. The Latin poem Sarca (River Sarca)
is today assumed to be Bembo’s, despite the fact that it was never included in his
collected works and remained unpublished until the nineteenth century.33 Whoever
wrote it, he must have written it after the double experience of Benacus (of which
Sarca appears to be, if not a recasting, at least in part a palinode) and Bembo’s
correspondence with Fracastoro discussed above.34 Justly considered a veritable little
masterpiece by Jacob Burckhardt, Sarca is a mythological fantasy on the origin of
Lake Garda.35 The River Sarca marries the nymph Garda after arranging the wedding
ceremony with her father, the River Benacus. Both rivers are portrayed as tributaries
of the lake into whose waters, according to Sarca’s proposal to Benacus, theirs are
jointly to flow.36 A poem in praise of Virgil and Virgilian poetry and places, Sarca also
expands into the singing of Lake Garda’s outflowing River Mincio on whose shores
stands Mantua, Virgil’s birthplace. Although relatively open to the acknowledgment of
other models – a dutiful tribute is paid to the other spirit of the place, Catullus, with
28 Adonis
the epithalamic celebrations of Garda and Sarca following the arrangement of Catull.
64 – Sarca remains exemplary for its stylistic unity and homogeneity.
That this is what Sarca was meant to be in the eyes of its readers can also be
gleaned from the glaring reticence that characterizes Pontano’s presence in the poem.
Citrus trees are mentioned as one of Lake Garda’s typical features, together with a
brief allusion to the peculiar cultivation techniques in use in that area.37 A double
topical reference to the Hesperides and the garden of Alcinous follows, extracted from
‘authorized’ ancient sources but without the slightest hint at Pontano (183–94). And
when the prophetess Manto takes the stage for her final inspired speech (405–619), an
eloquent tribute is indeed offered to Naples, not only as Virgil’s resting place, but also
as the birthplace of those few poets who managed to keep the Virgilian flame alive:
Statius, Pontano and Sannazaro (576–604). This indisputably powerful and moving
passage is, however, far from being (as the most recent editor of the text would wish
it to be) ‘Bembo’s final gift to Pontano and Sannazaro, who shared his life’s passion’.38
In fact, the praise is very selective. For while it was simple to characterize Pontano
as ‘divine’ (579), as Bembo’s good friend Aldo Manuzio had done over twenty years
before, that epithet is in fact restricted to the Meteororum liber (583–6) and Urania
(587–9). There is no mention of the Horti Hesperidum, which together with the other
two poems formed the celebrated Manutian edition of Pontano’s didactic verse (1505),
and which by then had become the most frequently and enthusiastically imitated piece
of the three. It is one of those instances where silence can be more eloquent than a
thousand words.39
The principal aim of this long digression has been to explain Bembo’s rejection of
Pontano’s Horti Hesperidum and the imitative practice the poem represented in the
general perception of early sixteenth-century readers. Bembo’s rejection incidentally
affected the perception of the Adonis myth in the literary culture of the later Italian
Renaissance. Pontano’s manner of revisiting the Adonis myth appeared unacceptable
to Bembo, because in his view the poetics underpinning it was unacceptable. But
by the late 1520s Bembo may have had a further reason for opposing the success of
Pontano’s mythographic invention so vehemently. By then he had turned his attention
to the vernacular and become the champion of ‘classical’ or ‘regulated’ Petrarchism, the
dominating trend of Italian lyric poetry that was about to spread to the rest of Europe
and ensure the primacy of Petrarch as the new classic of the modern age. Petrarch, it
will be remembered, had not merely revived but indeed reinvented the ancient symbol
of poetic excellence, the laurel, by thematizing its pursuit as the equivalent of a love
quest. It is hard to imagine Bembo accepting that Petrarch’s laurel wreath should ever
be superseded by Pontanian garlands of orange leaves.40
Adonis and the vernacular idyll: the eclogue

In the course of the sixteenth century the myth of Adonis was almost exclusively
confined to the idyllic genre in both its narrative and performative varieties. It would
certainly be an exaggeration to claim that this trend resulted solely from Bembo’s
censure of Pontano’s habits in matters of genre hybridization. It is a fact, however, that
nothing comparable to Pontano’s Horti Hesperidum is to be seen for over a hundred

years – not just in Italy but in the entire Romance world and beyond.
A tentative list of poems on Adonis produced in Italy and France in the course
of the sixteenth century will help clarify this point. Luigi Alamanni’s eclogue ‘Adone’
(in Opere toscane, 1532–3), Amomo’s ‘Epitaphio di Adone’ (in Rime toscane, 1535),41
Girolamo Muzio’s eclogue ‘Venere’ (written in 1531, published in Egloghe, 1550),
Ludovico Dolce’s Stanze nella favola d’Adone (1545), Giovanni Tarcagnota’s Adone
(1545), Mellin de Saint-Gelais’ ‘Elegie ou chanson lamentable de Venus sur la mort
du bel Adonis’ (1545, with Salmon Macrin’s Latin translation), Pernette Du Guillet’s
‘Conde claros de Adonis’ (1546), Giuseppe Leggiadro de’ Gallani’s lost Favola d’Adone,42
Jean-Antoine de Baïf ’s ‘Adon’ (written 1556?), Girolamo Parabosco’s Favola d’Adone
(in Lettere amorose, 1558), Pierre de Ronsard’s Adonis (1564), Sebastiano Minturno’s
‘De Adoni ab apro interempto’ (‘On Adonis Killed by the Boar’, in his Epigrammata et
elegiae, 1564),43 Jean Passerat’s Adonis, ou la chasse du sanglier (written before 1574?,
and published in the posthumous Recueil des œuvres poétiques, 1606), Claude Binet’s
Adonis (1575), and Honorat Laugier de Porchères’ ‘Venus affligée sur la mort d’Adonis’
(early seventeenth century?);44 all such texts are characterized by their belonging to
the pastoral or idyllic genre. The same may be said to apply to Adoniac inserts in
works on various subjects,45 or to Adonis-inspired pieces such as Muzio’s eclogue ‘La
Napea’ (written 1533, published in Egloghe, 1550) and Rémy Belleau’s Chant pastoral
sur la mort de Joachim du Bellay Angevin (1560). Even mildly humorous parodies
such as those by François Habert and Vauquelin de la Fresnaye persist in retaining a
traditional bucolic setting.46 An apparent trespassing of genre limitations like Gabriel
Le Breton’s French tragedy Adonis (performed before 1574, published 1579?) is to
be regarded as a deliberate exception proving the validity of the rule.47 The picture
is not substantially altered when one moves to England or Spain. Diego Hurtado de
Mendoza’s Fábula de Adonis (1553), Juan de la Cueva de Garoza’s ‘Llanto de Venus
en la muerte de Adonis’ (in Obras, 1582), William Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis
(1593), Edmund Spenser’s Astrophel (1595) for the death of Philip Sidney, and Lope
de Vega’s comedy Adonis y Venus (1597–1603) all seem to confirm the trend. Besides,
whereas the crossing of sources remains a common feature of these texts, in line with
the classically inspired ideal of literary imitation, no significant overstepping of the
boundaries of the selected genres is detectable. The only noteworthy ‘deviation’ is
represented by the reformulation of the Adonis story in Book 3 of Spenser’s Faerie
Queene (3.1, 3.6).48
In this relatively homogenous situation a range of different solutions may still be
noted. Adoniac pastoral idylls ordinarily present such traits as a bucolic situation
and narration in the form of a shepherd’s song (often a dirge), with the occasional
but deliberate adoption of a rustic mode. At the opposite end of the spectrum stand
epyllia, with their typical ‘forest scene’ (scena boschereccia) and less stationary plots
emphasizing in particular the two pivotal moments of the story, Adonis’ amorous
encounter with Venus and the fatal hunt.49 A further distinction can be made between
those poems displaying marked classical garb, such as blank verse in imitation of
classical hexameters, and others which adhere more closely to the vernacular tradition
in adopting narrative stanzas.
30 Adonis
These not always clear-cut but perceptible differences may have originated from
the late-antique mythological repertoires portraying Adonis as either a hunter or a
shepherd.50 As is well known, this ambiguity has appealed to modern anthropologists
of the ancient world. Some scholars have accordingly proposed an interpretation of
the figure of Adonis as one uncomfortably situated between the vagaries of primitive
hunting societies and the more settled activities of sheep-farming and cereal culti-
vation, unable to be convincingly pigeonholed in either occupation and therefore
bound to be an ‘unhappy hunter’ as well as a ‘failed farmer’, with fatal consequences
– not unlike those determining the lot of similarly failed heroes such as Actaeon,
Hippolytus, Perdicca and Melanion/Hippomenes.51 While there is no evidence to
suggest that the authors of Renaissance idylls ever approached this issue in a compa-
rable manner, they were nevertheless sensitive to the twofold nature of their character,
and ensured that the appropriate stylistic effect was achieved with regard to the
desired profile.52 When Ronsard portrays his Adonis, for instance, as ‘a shepherd and
a hunter alike’ (Adonis, 9 ‘Adonis et berger et chasseur tout ensemble’), he takes great
care to characterize each role by adopting separate and palpably different registers,
which rely in turn on distinct models and sources.53
The question concerning the ‘pastoral Adonis’ must be inscribed within the
modern revival of the ancient eclogue. In post-classical times the Latin pastoral
eclogue was revived by none other than Dante during his exile at Ravenna in 1319–20,
and enjoyed a remarkable success in the subsequent two centuries, including among
its practitioners some of the most prominent Latin and vernacular authors.54 In the
sixteenth century the genre was reconstituted with new premises, and it is at this
point that Adonis becomes, once again, a staple character of bucolic poetry. The
Virgilian canon comprising the Eclogues and the poems of the (later to be named)
Appendix Virgiliana had by then been complemented with the minor Roman bucolics
Calpurnius and Nemesianus and the Corpus Theocriteum.55 The vogue spread rapidly
from Italy to France and Spain and subsequently to England, influencing both
Neo-Latin and vernacular poetry. The actual presence in France and Spain of famous
writers of pastoral verse who were also diplomatic representatives of Italian potentates
may have contributed to the success of the genre at those two eminent courts. Count
Baldassarre Castiglione (1478–1529), one of the most accomplished gentlemen of
Europe and author of well-known eclogues such as Alcon (in Latin) and Tirsi (in the
vernacular), spent the last five years of his life in Spain as Pope Clement VII’s Apostolic
Nuncio.56 The Venetian nobleman Andrea Navagero (1483–1529), the author of Lusus
(mostly written in the first decade of the sixteenth century and published in 1530),
resided in Madrid and Valladolid as ambassador of the Venetian Republic from 1526
to 1528, and died at Blois during a mission to the French court.57 A member of the
Florentine ‘ottimati’, Luigi Alamanni (1495–1556) went into exile in May 1522 after
the failure of a conspiracy against Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici and spent the best part
of the following thirty-odd years in France as court poet of both François I and Henry
II.58 At a considerably less prominent, yet by no means insignificant level, Girolamo
Muzio (1496–1576), the author of the century’s most ambitious collection of pastoral
eclogues (published 1550), was in 1530–1 at the French court in the retinue of Count
Claudio Rangone from Modena and personally offered King François I his eclogue
‘Venere’, a political allegory based on a reworking of the Adoniac episode.59 A final

inclusion should be the ‘Epitaphio di Adone’ by the once-mysterious Amomo, now
plausibly identified as the Bishop of Troyes, Antonio Caracciolo, whose collection of
Rime toscane per Madama Charlotta d’Hisca was published in Paris in 1535 and again
in Venice in 1538, with a preface by the well-known Italian émigré Gabriele Simeoni.60
Alamanni was without doubt the most influential bucolic author of his age. It is
a curious coincidence that he, a Florentine like Dante, was, also like Dante, to spend
most of his active life in exile – Virgil’s tender lines ‘I relinquished my land and
pleasant fields, I left my home’ (Ecl. 1.3–4), must have resonated for them both with a
distinctive sweet-sour tone. With his sixteen eclogues in Italian blank verse, the tenth
of which is devoted to Adonis, Alamanni endorsed a programme of renovation of the
vernacular eclogue by purposely aiming to reproduce the classical hexameter through
unrhymed hendecasyllables.61 By avoiding ‘that certain affectation’, as he put it,
produced by rhymed verse, he intended to express the ideal of natural speech as fitted
to the simple talk of shepherds. He was expertly assisted in his attempt by Giangiorgio
Trissino, who likewise supported a classicizing reform of vernacular verse.62 ‘Adone’
is an excellent example of Alamanni’s aspirations. The main body of the text is a free
imitation of Bion’s Lament for Adonis rearranged as an amoebaean exchange between
two shepherds, Daphni and Dameta, in the manner of Theocritus’ sixth Idyll. The
frame within which Bion’s imitation is placed is provided by a brief prologue and an
equally brief epilogue. Eight lines rapidly sketch a pastoral scene in a Florentine setting
(‘Along the Arno…’), reminescent of Theoc. 6.1–5. In the epilogue Daphni, Alamanni’s
own bucolic mask, invokes Theocritus as guide ‘should the course of my song extend
beyond the banks of Arno’, which reads like a premonition of the poet’s own exile – a
recurring theme in his eclogues. Daphni addresses the Greek poet thus: ‘You are my
master, my guide and my leader’, which echoes Dante’s famous self-recommendation
to Virgil at Inf. 2.140.63
Owing to Alamanni’s prolonged residence in France, it is only natural that his
influence should be manifested mainly, although by no means exclusively, among
French poets. His ‘Adone’ and his eclogues in general stand at the fountainhead of
the diffusion of the Adonis myth and the bucolic genre in France during the reign
of François I and beyond. However, the French approach to the bucolic genre shows
features of considerable originality when compared to the parallel Italian tradition. The
first noticeable characteristic is the environment in which the French bucolic poets
operated and circulated their pieces – the royal court. From Mellin de Saint-Gelais to
his rival Ronsard, all such poets appear in one way or another attached to the circles
surrounding the sovereign or the members of his family.64 The elevation of the bucolic
to a higher rank, so that it could be considered to be a genre truly fit for a king, was
also promoted by other factors. The particular variety of the genre known as éclogue
forestière must have depended in part on the prestige enjoyed by hunting, which was by
then the traditional sport of French kings. Not even the potentially ominous ending of
such stories as those of Adonis or Actaeon could dissuade the Queen Mother Caterina
de’ Medici from preferring hunting over tournaments, one of which had claimed the
life of her husband King Henry II.65 Nor should one underestimate the classicizing
flair attached to hunting – especially boar hunting – as opposed to ‘medieval’ jousts.
32 Adonis
Caterina’s son Charles, elected King of France at the age of nine, was a passionate
hunter and fostered a special attachment to the figure of Adonis, with whom he appar-
ently enjoyed being identified. When he, too, died prematurely in 1574, Claude Binet
wrote a dirge in the manner of Bion, proclaiming that the great Charles, also known as
Adonis, was dead.66 In the ‘Sonnet sur la tragedie d’Adonis, 1574’ prefixed to Gabriel
Le Breton’s tragedy Adonis, the editor François d’Amboise invited the ‘hunting Oreads’
to announce that ‘Charles, your support, your Adonis, your favourite, is [now] dead’.67
In the dedicatory epistle to the Duchess of Beaupréau he referred to the work as ‘that
Adonis which used to be the favourite of the late King Charles of happy memory’.68 In
an elegy celebrating Charles IX as the author of a manual on hunting left unfinished at
his death and published only years later under the title La chasse royale (1625), Ronsard
lamented the king’s premature departure by comparing him to the ‘Adoniac Rose’:
Ainsi par la tempeste à terre on voit flestrie
La Rose Adonienne avant qu’estre fleurie.69 (39–40)
Thus one sees the Adoniac Rose struck by the tempest lying withered on the
ground before it could bloom.
Even Le Breton’s tragedy Adonis, previously singled out as an exception, can now be
fitted easily into the picture. Apart from being expressly written and performed for
the enjoyment of Charles IX, its title page exhibiting the genre label ‘tragedy’ in tall
block capitals – even taller than the title proper ‘Adonis’ – revealed an aspiration to
allow the dramatic idyll to ascend in the hierarchy of genres.70 The genre traditionally
qualified as ‘tenuous’ (tenuis), ‘humble’ (humilis) or ‘jejune’ (gracilis) was gaining in
prestige thanks to the pronouncement of authoritative scholars, among whom Julius
Caesar Scaliger stands out on account of the authority his Poetics acquired in France in
those very years.71 Once Scaliger had proclaimed amoebaean verse the ‘most ancient
… poetic genre’ (vetustissimum … poematis genus) and as such the ancestor of both
comedy and tragedy, the new status of pastoral poetry was assured.72
Adonis and the vernacular idyll: the stanzaic poem

In Italy the situation differed. There the eclogue remained a very successful genre and
continued to offer a uniquely wide range of inflections, without, however, attaining
the prestigious position its French counterpart had acquired.73 The short forest idyll,
or epyllion, appears in comparison to have enjoyed greater popularity – both in
general and more specifically in the case of narratives with Adonis as the protagonist.
The three authors who tried their hand at the subject of Adonis – Ludovico Dolce
(Stanze nella favola d’Adone, 1545), Giovanni Tarcagnota (Adone, 1545) and Girolamo
Parabosco (Favola d’Adone, 1558) – were not courtiers but rather men of letters who
used their pen to make a living in the thriving world of the Venetian publishing
houses. It is not by chance they are far better known today as editors, anthologists,
compilers and translators than as authors in their own right. All sufficiently skilled in
their trade to cultivate a lucid sense of literary standards, they did not, like Alamanni,
entertain reforming ambitions of any kind, but appeared rather to sit quite confortably
within the precincts of the genre they had chosen for themselves – the narrative short
and mid-sized poem in the well-tested stanzaic form of the ottava.74 The information
one can gather from the texts’ dedicatory epistles, as well as from the texts themselves,
conveys the picture of a world of private relationships occasionally covered by
anonymity. Dolce appended his Stanze nella favola d’Adone to the edition of his play
Il Capitano (1545) with a dedication to Paolo Crivello, an acquaintance of Aretino
and probably close to Pier Paolo Vergerio and his Venetian circle of adherents to the
Reformed Church.75 But in the first stanza an anonymous ‘beautiful and noble lady’ is
adressed, and a passing reference to the ‘fine sands’ of the River Mincio ‘not far from
Peschiera’ at stanza 12 may represent a covert allusion to her identity.76 The dedicatee
of Tarcagnota’s Adone, Gioseppe Abocchino, is virtually unknown.77 As for Parabosco’s
Favola d’Adone, it is dedicated to ‘My beautiful Lady L…’, who on reading the piece is
expected to become less disdainful of Love’s flames and arrows.78 The restricted extent
of these three poems and the semi-private nature of their dedications tell in each case
a story of limited ambitions.
This is a far cry from those ritualized French pastorals where literary and social
conventions appear to be united in mutual bond against the backdrop of a royal
courtly scene. In the Italian poems, on the other hand, a less marked stylization is
evident, which may account for greater freedom in speech, tone and imagery. Greater
audacity in the use of erotic imagery is certainly one factor that distinguishes them
from their French counterparts – an audacity possibly driven by seductive purposes
of a practical nature, as some of the texts and dedications seem to suggest.79 A darker
vein occasionally emerges from the manipulation of selected narrative features. In
Dolce’s Favola d’Adone, for instance, Adonis is the victim of an intrigue of the jealous
Juno, who demands and eventually obtains from Jupiter that the Parcae should
cut Adonis’ thread of life as a punishment for his mother Myrrha’s incest and his
scandalous relationship with Venus. At the centre of Dolce’s narration, therefore, are
the machinations of Juno as the guarantor of marital love, engaged in her customary
strife with Venus as the goddess of illicit passions.80 Yet because of Juno’s exceedingly
vengeful and overtly hypocritical conduct, and although the poem ends on a sombre
note, one does not feel the overall tone is one of moralizing. It is certainly not as
moralizing – and deflating – as the final lines of Ronsard’s Adonis, which produce an
interesting contrast when compared to the Italian idylls on the same subject. There the
authorial voice comments on Venus’ fickleness in forgetting Adonis ‘for the love of an
Anchises’, bathetically mixing melancholy and misogyny (‘Such is, and will [ever] be,
the affection of ladies’), while comparing a lady’s affection to ‘an April flower that lives
for just a day’.81 It may also be worth noting that no metamorphosis takes place at the
end of Ronsard’s Adonis.
In the three Italian texts the context and the story tend to vary, however slightly. The
season may be either spring (Dolce) or summer (Tarcagnota, Parabosco); the action
may either commence with the two lovers already together (Dolce, Tarcagnota) or
with a preamble dealing with their first encounter and mutual seduction (Parabosco);
the hunting of the wild boar may result from Adonis’ independent decision in spite
of Venus’ warnings (Tarcagnota, Parabosco) or – as we have seen – from an ambush
34 Adonis
designed by Juno to take revenge on Adonis’ mother Myrrha and on Venus (Dolce).82
One should also consider the possibility of a calculated variatio implemented by both
Tarcagnota and Parabosco against Dolce, and by Parabosco against the two other
poets, in order to offer a sense of originality in their own treatment of the myth.
Of the three texts, Dolce’s Favola retains, or rather includes, features of rustic
vividness, such as that of Venus pictured in the act of milking ‘with her celestial hands
the impure udders of she-goats and she-lambs’ (17.5–6), or said to be happily busy in
‘all such tasks as become shepherds and young shepherdesses’ (22.7–8).83 For Dolce,
as well as for Ronsard later on, the model for this rustic scene was Navagero’s eclogue
‘Damon’. There Venus is said to prefer ‘the love flames of her dear Adonis’, on which
account she is ready to relinquish ‘the heavens and the shiny stars’ for her lover’s rustic
abode and duties.
Fortunate puer! Tecum formosa Dione
Una tondet oves, una ad mulctralia ducit,
Atque immunda premit caelestibus ubera palmis.84 (Lusus, 20.75–7)
Lucky youth! Beside you beautiful Venus now shears the sheep, now leads them to
the milking pails, and her celestial hands press their impure udders.
Among the said texts mentioned above, Tarcagnota’s Adone is the most ambitious
in terms of narrative ingenuity and exploitation of the stylistic medium. It shows a
markedly mannerist development of the story by elaborating in particular on the
ps.-Theocritean The Dead Adonis. It will be remembered that the morbid boar of the
anonymous Hellenistic poet had already altogether lost its menacing outlook.85 In that
little poem tragedy had been reduced to the dimension of an unwanted accident, and
the culprit identified as a ‘humanized’ beast overcome by a fit of mad desire to kiss
Adonis’ thigh – a simple mistake had thus led to the fatal wounding in the groin. The
mildly absurd comicity of the episode is taken up and emphasized by Tarcagnota. In
his poem the boar is made to circle around Adonis in ecstatic admiration of the youth’s
beauty, and only when a gust of wind lifts Adonis’ vest does burning lust get the upper
hand (L’Adone, 15–26). Tarcagnota also attempted to introduce further small varia-
tions on minor details of the myth, displaying a moderate aetiologic inventiveness
and a propensity to variatio which seem to anticipate certain innovations of Late
Renaissance and Baroque poetry. According to his own declaration in the dedication,
he identified the flower of Adonis’ metamorphosis with the poppy (papavero), and he
added the transformation of Venus’ torn hair into the lacy plant and yellow flowers of
maidenhair (It. capelvenere, Lat. capillus Veneris).86
From these three rather ordinary texts a common feature seems to emerge: the
clear definition of the story’s narrative foci. Following an arrangement that ultimately
goes back to Ovid’s Metamorphoses and excluding the premise – only hinted at
through retrospective reference – of the Myrrha episode, the narration is dominated
in all three cases by the love affair between the goddess and the youth on one hand,
and the departure for the hunt and the death of the latter on the other.87 Irrespective
of how luxuriant the rhetorically decorative parts may be, this structure remains in
place for the vast majority of sixteenth-century poems on Adonis, both in Italy and
elsewhere. This is also the case with Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, whose treatment
of the Ovidian tale was long ago shown to be dependent on Italian mediation – though
Shakespeare’s poem, apart of course from its author’s mastery in the treatment of
the verse, has a special claim to originality for its more pronounced eroticism and
for Adonis’ remarkable obstinacy in refusing to be an ‘easy lay’.88 As will be seen in
Chapter 4, even Giovan Battista Marino’s grand poem Adone (1623), in spite of its
magnitude, retains identical characteristics as far as the arrangement and narrative
structure are concerned.
The prominence of the two narrative moments – the love encounter and the fatal
hunt – is confirmed by the sixteenth-century figurative tradition.89 Painters saw the
double opportunity to explore the potential of the Adonis myth in both its erotic
and tragic aspects. Virtually every great artist of the Renaissance engaged with the
subject either personally or through their school. Giorgione, Baldassarre Peruzzi,
Raphael, Giulio Romano, Sebastiano del Piombo, Correggio, Primaticcio, Rosso
Fiorentino, Tintoretto, Titian, Niccolò dell’Abate, Vasari, Veronese, Luca Cambiaso,
Taddeo Zuccari and Annibale Carracci, and in the following century Rubens, Cornelis
Cornelisz, Hendrik Goltzius, Domenichino, van Dyck, Francesco Albani, Poussin
and Guercino – to mention but the most prominent – tried their hand at the Adonis
myth.90 The amorous scenes, and notably the adieus before the departure for the
hunt, are among the subjects most frequently painted. The dead or mortally wounded
Adonis is another favourite, with Venus either approaching the scene in haste or
already next to him in tears, while winged cupids support Adonis’ failing body or are
busy catching the guilty boar in the background (as in ps.-Theoc. The Dead Adonis,
7–16). In some of these compositions occasional but intriguing overlappings with the
figurative tradition of the Deposition of Christ are clearly noticeable, as for instance
in van Dyck’s drawing (London, British Museum) reproduced on the dust jacket of
this volume.
Titian’s ‘Venus and Adonis’ (Madrid, Museo del Prado) is one of the artist’s most
famous paintings on mythological subjects. Titian is credited with having stressed,
or indeed invented, Adonis’ coy attitude towards Venus, and this was criticized by
Raffaello Borghini for it appeared to contradict the literary sources.91 But this critique
did not affect the already universal fame of the painting, which had received high-
sounding praises at its appearance. The pictorial representation of Adonis constituted
in itself an alluring challenge for the painter, requiring as it did a perfect combination
of masculine and feminine beauty. This is well illustrated in Lodovico Dolce’s famous
letter written in explanation of Titian’s painting, which the artist himself called a
‘poesia’.
This ‘poem’ on Adonis was painted recently and sent by the divine Titian to
the King of England. … One can see that this unique master tried to express in
Adonis’ face a graceful handsomeness, which while partaking of the feminine
does not however depart from the virile: whereby I mean that a woman might
have a certain something male about her, and a man something beautifully female
– a mixture difficult to achieve, agreeable, and one most highly valued by Apelles
(if Pliny [HN 35.36.79] is to be believed).92
36 Adonis
Further illustrations of the story may result from unusual pictorial solutions. A fairly
uncommon pattern is offered, for instance, by the diptych displaying the birth and
death of Adonis by Sebastiano del Piombo (La Spezia, Museo Civico). In other cases
a series of paintings may derive from the reappearance and circulation in highly
influential circles of relatively rare literary sources. Such is the case with Aphthonius’
Progymnasmata – not the most inspirational of texts at first sight, but one that
happened to be ‘rediscovered’ in the circle of Politian and Lorenzo de’ Medici. In
conjunction with the description of Adonis’ sepulchre in Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,
the passage from the Progymnasmata stimulated the exploration of two non-Ovidian
episodes connected with the idyllic tradition, the staining of the rose (Sebastiano
del Piombo, ‘The Death of Adonis’, Florence, Museo degli Uffizi), and Mars chasing
Adonis (Giulio Romano, Mantua, Palazzo del Te, ‘Sala di Psiche’).93
Ovid’s Adonis in translation

The confinement to short- and mid-length poems was a lot shared by Adonis with
other subsidiary mythological characters, who likewise struggled to release themselves
from their marginal position. As we have seen, the dominant presence and authority
of the Greek Bucolics and above all of Ovid’s Metamorphoses inhibited any substantial
alteration of the Adonis myth. The unbroken popularity of Ovid’s poem in particular
was strengthened and augmented by means of new and successful vernacular transla-
tions and adaptations.
As Bodo Guthmüller has shown, the old ‘medieval’ tradition of the ‘moralized’
and ‘allegorized’ Metamorphoses exercised its influence well into the earlier
sixteenth century.94 This is evident in the vernacular prose translations, from the
late fourteenth-century translation of Giovanni dei Buonsignori to the Ovidio
Metamorphoseos vulgare of 1498, but also in translations in verse, be they versions
or rather reworkings of single episodes like the Historia de Mirra nuovamente in
octava rima traducta (The Story of Myrrha Translated for the First Time in ‘ottava
rima’, before 1515? by an otherwise unknown Emilianus Carnarius), or complete
translations such as Nicolò degli Agostini’s Ovidio Metamorphoseos in verso vulgar
(1522). Both these works present a rather uncouth ‘cantare’ style, and Agostini’s
version comprises prose ‘allegories’ for each canto.95 The publication dates show
them to be contemporary with some of the most successful Italian chivalric
poems, and Agostini himself is more commonly remembered for having produced
a continuation to Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Inamoramento de Orlando several years
before Ariosto came up with his own sequel, Orlando furioso (1516).96 According
to Guthmüller, this new vogue for romanzi – as chivalric poems came to be known
in Italy – marked a turning point in the reception of Ovid among readers of
vernacular works. High demand soon affected the reception of the Metamorphoses
as well, as readers craved to read it ‘in the guise of a romance’.97 When Lodovico
Dolce’s complete version in ottava rima appeared in 1553, it instantly rendered
the older versions obsolete. Dolce’s blank-verse translation of Book 1 (1539) and
his Stanze nella favola d’Adone (1545) may be said to be trial samples of his major
enterprise, which he had the impudence to publish under his own name as Le
Trasformationi without a trace of the ancient author’s name on the title page.98 In
Dolce’s thirty-canto version, the entire twenty-first canto is assigned to the story of
Myrrha and Adonis – a minor but not irrelevant feature, potentially suggestive of
narrative independence for anyone intending to develop the episode on a grander
scale.99
The other noteworthy sixteenth-century version is that by Giovanni Andrea
dell’Anguillara (1561), which superseded Dolce’s in its turn. It has recently been
styled as ‘digressive, artificial, magniloquent’, and as such recognized as an important
forerunner of the development of Baroque literary style.100 Anguillara also worked for
some time in France in the Italian circles of Lyon, and his coup d’essai, the translation
of the first three books of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was published in Paris in 1554 with
a dedication to King Henry II; the complete text, published in Venice in 1561, was
dedicated to another King of France, Henry’s son Charles IX.101 This should be remem-
bered when considering that over 60 years later Giovan Battista Marino was again able
to offer an ‘Ovidian’ poem like his Adone (1623) to the King and the Queen Mother
of the same country.102
From their second editions onwards both Dolce’s and Anguillara’s versions were
equipped with a sizeable exegetical apparatus printed at the end of each canto. Dolce
provided his own (1561), whereas Giuseppe Orologi’s was appended to Anguillara’s
translation (1563).103 These observations bear the customary heading of ‘Allegories’
and are tendentially meant to allegorize Ovid’s text by applying to it an interpretative
‘coating’, as it were, the superimposed meaning of which is meant to overpower
the literal sense. This was an old device, broadly comparable to the techniques of
the medieval exegetes and adapted to the taste of the early modern reader. But the
invitation to abandon the literal sense for the allegorical may have had in this case
a further, undeclared intent. As stories involving pagan deities and moral standards
incompatible with Christian ethics were increasingly being put under scrutiny, the
preservation of textual integrity had become a burning issue. This was particularly
true of vernacular texts, on which the attention of censors was primarily focused.104
Now Dolce’s and Orologi’s ‘Allegories’ appeared in print after the first Index of
Forbidden Books promulgated by Pope Paul IV – the so-called Pauline Index (1559)
– had been in existence for some years, and just before the Tridentine Index was
introduced in 1564. How far ‘Allegories’ could be regarded as an effective solution for
authors afflicted by the presence (or merely the thought) of censors can be observed
in the case of Torquato Tasso’s revision work on his Gerusalemme liberata. Tasso’s
revision was conducted in the years 1575–6 by ways of written correspondence with
a group of ‘revisors’, which also included a Father Inquisitor. The discussions touched
on a number of points, from general narrative solutions and the nature and function
of episodes to questions concerning style, syntax and lexical choice, and were often
characterized by a marked ideological and confessional edge. It was in the final
phase of this self-imposed yet not always comfortable dialogue that Tasso came to
acknowledge the potential usefulness of an ‘Allegory’ for his poem. By allowing a
general transposition of meaning in relation to the poem’s main aims and ends, the
application of allegorical interpretation offered a positive solution for all those features
38 Adonis
which on the literal level appeared to conflict with the established narrative and moral
conventions.105
The principle of allegorical interpretation was not simply a way of preserving texts
from mutilations prior to and after their publication. It also allowed the treatment of
mythological matter, which ecclesiastical censorship would at this stage be inclined
to consider seriously problematic. The relevance of this point will emerge in relation
to scholarship on ancient mythography (Chapter 3) and to the debate on the greatest
poem ever devoted to the subject of Adonis, Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (Chapters
4 and 5).
3
Adonis in sixteenth-century mythography
As observed in the previous chapter, an adherence to the tradition of the pastoral-

idyllic genre characterized virtually every sixteenth-century European literary text
dealing with the myth of Adonis.
Pastoral and mythological idylls do not ordinarily aspire to address or include
learned topics, although the very affectation of simplicity could in many cases be
regarded as a subtle refinement of learning. In addition, limitations imposed by the
classicizing doctrine of literary genres discouraged any significant attempt to absorb
elements of a didactic or speculative nature within the idyllic genre. Consequently, the
texts examined in Chapter 2 display a high degree of conventionality in the treatment
of their subject, as well as exhibiting a dominant preoccupation with matters of
register and style. It could be said that literary production and antiquarian research
into ancient mythology – at least as far as the subject of Adonis is concerned – parted
ways in the course of the sixteenth century, only to be reunited again in the seven-
teenth. By then, an interest in the figure of Adonis had been revived by the publication
and circulation of novel or updated mythological treatises, by a renewed curiosity
concerning unconventional aspects of the ancient myth, and by a resurgent interest in
allegory as an interpretative tool.
Three works marked a turning point in the tradition of Renaissance mythography.
Two of them, Lelio Gregorio Giraldi’s De deis Gentium varia et multiplex historia (A
Various and Manifold History of the Pagan Gods, 1548) and Natale Conti’s Mythologiae,
sive Explicationum fabularum libri X (Ten Books on Mythology, or, The Myths Explained,
15681; 15812) are the most important manuals published in the course of the century;
they are often considered together because of their overall common subject and intent.
The third work, Vincenzo Cartari’s Le imagini de i dei degli antiqui (The Images of
the Ancient Gods, 1556), enjoyed great success among artists and their advisors for
providing extensive iconographic information in the vernacular, with the additional
support – from the second edition onwards – of a wide range of illustrations. Cartari’s
work is, however, heavily indebted to Giraldi’s treatise, and patently inferior in terms
of accuracy and thoroughness.1
40 Adonis
Early attempts at a new mythography

In the early decades of the sixteenth century, an urgent need for updated mythological
encyclopaedias and lexica was increasingly felt. Boccaccio’s Genealogy of the Ancient
Gods remained the standard reference work of the category; it had however been in
existence for almost one-and-a-half centuries. While it continued to command respect
for its all-embracing design and detailed content, by the early 1500s most of the infor-
mation it provided was seriously inadequate. To use the words of Juan Luis Vives,
Boccaccio had performed his task ‘more happily than could have been hoped for in his
century’. Likewise Giraldi, while praising the fruit of Boccaccio’s scholarly application
and talent, could not but add: ‘by the standards of his time’.2 The advances achieved by
Italian and European Humanism in all fields of antiquarian knowledge demanded at
the very least a thorough overhauling of Boccaccio’s work.
Replacing Boccaccio’s Genealogy did not prove easy. It is symptomatic that, before
resorting to such a decision, steps were taken to preserve and reinforce the authority
of his treatise. The Latin text, circulated widely in manuscript form, was printed no
fewer than fifteen times between 1472 and 1552. The Basel edition of 1532, by Jacobus
Micyllus, represents the most radical attempt to domesticate the text by neutralizing
the grossest inaccuracies and adding new, more correct information.3 Translations
into modern vernaculars served in part the same purpose. In France, a translation
had already been published twice, in 1498 and 1531, and another would be produced
by Claude Wittard in 1578.4 In Italy, Giuseppe Betussi published his successful
translation-adaptation in 1547, which was to be continuously reprinted right into the
seventeenth century.5
Thus, in one shape or another, Boccaccio’s Genealogy continued to sit on the desks
of scholars and literati. Renaissance mythographers may well have gradually shied
away from openly acknowledging Boccaccio as one of their sources while showing
an increasing tendency to quote from Hellenic authorities, but their information is all
too often recognizable as of Boccaccian derivation, with references to Greek authors
as but superficial name-dropping. Furthermore, certain sections of Boccaccio’s work
which had been exposed by scholars as fanciful were unexpectedly given a renaissance
in new literary texts, almost as though their obsolete status had turned them into
something rich and strange. An excellent example is provided by Boccaccio’s fantastic
Demogorgon. A character famously generated by a misreading of Gr. dēmiourgos,
which (as Giraldi was the first to clarify) Boccaccio had found in a corrupt version of
Lactantius Placidus’ in Stat. Theb. 4.516, Demogorgon was portrayed in the Genealogy
as the father of all gods (Gen. 1.Pref.3.8 – seemingly on the basis of a pseudo-
etymology).6 The ‘Demogorgone’ of Boiardo’s Inamoramento de Orlando (2.13.29),
of Folengo’s Baldus (18.312, 22.376 and 441, 23.338 and 400) and of Ariosto’s Cinque
canti (1.4), the Demogorgons of Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1.5.22, 4.2.47) and Milton’s
Paradise Lost (2.965) – not to mention Shelley’s Demorgogon in Prometheus Unbound
– are all descendants of Boccaccio’s, or rather his source’s, ‘slip of the pen’.7
The hesitation and reticence characterizing the new attitude towards Boccaccio
and other compilers from non-classical periods is clearly attested in Mario Equicola’s
Libro de natura de amore (A Book on the Nature of Love). Presumably begun in the
Adonis in sixteenth-century mythography 41
last decade of the fifteenth century, this work went through a draft version which
still survives in manuscript form, datable to 1505–8, and bears signs of a further
revision conducted in 1509–11. The work was eventually published in 1525.8 In
the manuscript version, considered here, the passage summarizing mythographic
knowledge concerning Adonis is included in Book 4 as part of Chapter 5 ‘On Venus’
(‘De Venere’) and of a wider discussion on the nature of sensual love.9
Poets said that [Venus] was in love with Adonis, who stands for the Sun according
to what the Assyrians believed, followed by the Phoenicians [Macrob. Sat. 1.21.1;
Bocc. Gen. 2.53.3]. The Earth is divided into two hemispheres. The superior
hemisphere, inhabited by us, is said to be Venus’; the inferior, [situated] at the
antipodes, is according to the ancients the home of Proserpine. Venus cries for
six months, that is, for the time the Sun visits the other hemisphere (the boar
which killed Adonis is understood to be winter) [Macrob. Sat. 1.21.4; Bocc. Gen.
2.53.2]. Others claim that Adonis was born of Myrrha, [and myrrh is a substance]
agreeable to Venus, favouring coitus and (as Petronius has it) exciting lust [Fulg.
Myth. 3.8.124; Myth. Vat. III 11.17; Bocc. Gen. 2.52.4]. Adonis is killed – he stands
for lust, which vanishes with old age and does not rise again. Adonis means
sweetness [Ibid.]. We read about his gardens in Plato and Pliny [Pl. Phaedr. 276b;
Plin. HN 21.60]. Pausanias the Grammarian claims that the gardens of Adonis
are those where fennel and lettuce were grown and were kept in vases outside the
window; that nothing but [short-lived] pleasure is in them. Hence the proverb
aimed at men of little value, who care about things of slight consequence bearing
little fruit [Paus. Gramm. Frag. α27 ed. Erbse]. Theocritus makes allusion to them
[Theoc. 15.113–4], and sings of the tears that Venus shed upon the dead Adonis
and were then changed into poppies, and of Adonis’ blood which stained the rose.
[Bion, Epitaph. Adon. 64–6]10
Plato, Pliny, Pausanias the Grammarian and Theocritus are the only authorities
explicitly named in the cited passage, but Equicola’s stock information is in reality
derived from Macrobius and Boccaccio, and presumably Fulgentius. The case of
Macrobius is revealing. His name had been introduced at the beginning of the sentence
where the division of the Earth into two hemispheres is referred to (‘According to
Macrobius, the Earth…’), but was removed during the process of revision, as an
erasure in the manuscript shows.11 The reference to the passage by Bion as Theocritean
is justified insofar as Bion’s Lament for Adonis had been published by Aldo Manuzio
as an anonymous item of the Corpus Theocriteum; only in 1530 would Bion’s name
be proposed for the poem’s authorship by Joachim Camerarius.12 Yet Plato, Pliny and
Pausanias occur together under the entry ‘Gardens of Adonis’ in the earlier version
of Erasmus’ Adagia, first published in 1500 and continuously reprinted even after the
appearance of the second expanded edition (1508). There is every possibility that
Equicola derived part of his basic information from Erasmus’ popular collection, as
the following Erasmian passage suggests.
Pausanias the Grammarian reports that the ‘Gardens of Adonis’, filled with
lettuce and fennel, were dedicated to Venus, and seeds were planted in them as
42 Adonis
one usually does in pots, and the feat became a proverb against futile and trifling
people. On Adonis read Pliny, Book 21, Chapter 10 [HN 21.60]. The same gardens
are also mentioned by Plato [Phaedr. 276b], whereby he means the collecting of
those little flowers that are bound to die shortly.13
As has been argued, the new tendency to remove non-classical sources from the
page was not particularly effective.14 No matter how many disparaging comments
or embarrassed silences they may have met with, Boccaccio’s Genealogy, as well as
other medieval or late-antique mythographic treatises, continued to be the port of call
for all those readers in search of their first encounter with ancient mythology. With
the addition of select ancient works, such treatises together formed a mythographic
‘vulgate’ that circulated widely. The mythological and astronomical works of Hyginus,
Palaephatus, Fulgentius, Aratus and Proclus were published in one volume in Basel
in 1535, and subsequent editions gradually came to include Annaeus Cornutus’
Theologiae Graecae compendium (at the time commonly known as Phornutus, or
Phurnutus), the De deorum imaginibus libellus of Albricus’ (‘the Philosopher’),
Apollodorus’ Library and Lelio Gregorio Giraldi’s De Musis Syntagma.15
Information about ancient myths could also be gleaned, in rather piecemeal fashion,
from general encyclopaedias and dictionaries. From the Etymologicum magnum,
readers familiarized themselves with the etymology of Adonis and cognate terms and
read about the curious association, also made by Hesychius (Ēoiēs), of Adonis and
Aōos in Cyprus (19.9–21; 117.33 ed. Gaisford; H652 ed. Latte). They also learned of
Aphaca in Lebanon as the place where Venus and Adonis had met for the first (and
last) time, and where Adonis’ body was believed to be buried (175.6–9).16 The Suda has
an entry on the ‘Gardens of Adonis’ (A517 ed. Adler), and so has Hesychius (A1231
ed. Latte).17 Hercules’ disparaging comment on the cult of Adonis (‘nothing sacred’)
was included and illustrated in Polydore Vergil’s and Erasmus’ proverb collections.18
Further information could also be gathered from thematically arranged literary
encyclopaedias, primarily devised to offer support to authors engaged in composing
literary works. Ravisius Textor’s Officina (Workshop), published for the first time in
Basel in 1503 and frequently reprinted into the seventeenth century, included refer-
ences to Adonis under such comprehensive headings as ‘Killed by boars’, ‘Handsome
men and beautiful women’, ‘Lovers of the gods and of men’, and ‘Hunters’.19 Such an
arrangement clearly owes a debt to the classification used in Hyginus’ Fabulae. Under
‘Learned women’, Textor reports the vulgate proverb ‘sillier than Praxilla’s Adonis’,
with further reference to the second, expanded version of Erasmus’ Adagia (2.9.11).20
Also by Textor is the extremely popular Epithetorum opus (A Collection of Epithets,
1518) – ‘most useful as well as most complete’, according to the title page of one of
its innumerable reprints – which inaugurated a tradition that continued until as late
as Roscher’s Supplement.21 Under the entry ‘Adonis’, Textor assembles the epithets
culled from ancient and modern Latin authors, and Pontano significantly heads the
list with three entries: ‘ploratus Veneri’ (Ov. Ars am. 1.75), ‘aptus sylvis’ (Ibid. 1.510),
‘formosus’ (Verg. Buc. 10.18), ‘Cynareius’ (Auson. 13.53.7), ‘[murice] pictus’ (Auson.
19.11), ‘pulcher’ (Nemes. 2.73), ‘tener’ (Pontano, Ur. 5.494), ‘dulcis’ (Pontano, Hort.
Hesp. 1.221), ‘mollis’ (Pontano, De am. coniug. 2.7.32), ‘miserandus’ (Urceo Codro,
‘De Ioanne Marsilio Oda’, 74), ‘Cithereius’ (Tito Vesp. Strozzi, Eroticon libri, 4.8.28),
‘purpureus’ (Giovanni Aurelio Augurelli, Carm. 1.11.14), ‘niveus’ (Prop. 2.13.53).22
Reach me some poet’s index that will show
Imagines deorum, Booke of Epithets,
Natalis Comes … (‘Satire II’, 26–8)
John Marston’s often-quoted verses show that a mixed régime of both obsolete and
new mythographic sources continued to obtain in his own time – that is, well into the
seventeenth century.23 Already on approaching the middle of the previous century,
however, it had become clear that the material of ancient mythology demanded to
be arranged in a more critical, as well as more rational, manner. A number of works
having failed to accomplish the mandate, the publication of Giraldi’s De deis Gentium
established new standards in mythographic scholarship.24
Lelio Gregorio Giraldi’s pagan gods

All Giraldi’s works are characterized by formidable erudition and amazing intellectual
breadth but, even by his own standards, the treatise De deis Gentium is an outstanding
achievement. It appeared in Basel in 1548 and for at least a century remained the main
reference tool of classical scholars in the domain of ancient mythology. Its writing is
closely knit and packed with references not always accompanied by quotations, sources
being often paraphrased or simply referred to. It frequently looks as if the material had
been poured directly in from the author’s own notes, which would not be surprising
given the dire conditions under which Giraldi brought his work to completion.25 The
result is one of extraordinary richness, offering evidence on every page of the great
advances made by humanist scholarship in the field of classical mythology.
The chapter devoted to Adonis is part of Syntagm 13, but Adonis is already
mentioned in Syntagm 8 with reference to the two syncretistic epigrams by Ausonius
proclaiming the equivalence of Dionysus with Adonis (Epigr. 32 and 33).26 The form
‘Adoneus’, noted as characteristic of those two epigrams and of Origenes’ Contra
Celsum, 6.32 (where ‘Adoneus’ is given as the equivalent of Jah, Sabaoth, and Eloaeus),
will be recognized in Syntagm 13 as Plautine (Men. 144).27
Syntagm 13 is dominated by the chapter on Venus, followed by those on Cupid,
Adonis, Vulcan and the Graces. The chapter on Adonis offers an assessment of the
origin of the myth, its rituals, cult, and allegorical meanings.
Giraldi was not in a position to free himself entirely of the continuing powerful
influence exercised by late-antique and medieval repertoires, as has been persua-
sively argued by Allen.28 Traditional elements are thus derived not just from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses but from Servius and Fulgentius as well. In general, however, a clear
and genuine preference for Greek sources is evident. Phurnutus’ (i.e. Cornutus’)
Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 54–5, and the Scholia Theocritea, 3.48, are now the
authorities for the allegory of Adonis as wheat, with a further comment at the end of
the chapter on Cornutus’ allegorical interpretation of the boar’s tusk as the plough’s
tooth (Theol. Gr. Comp. 28).29
44 Adonis
It is not easy, from Giraldi’s succinct notes, to extract or even to guess his personal
interpretation (if he ever cared to have one) of the myth in question. The selection
and arrangement of the sources suggest a syncretistic approach. When reporting on
the multiplicity of Adonis’ names, Giraldi seems to accept a substantial equivalence
between the Phoenicians’ Gingrēs (Athen. Deipn. 4.174f.), the Jews’ Thamuz/Thamus
(Hier. In Ezech. 8.14), the Persians’ Abobas (Hesych. A234) and the Cypriots’ Gabanta
(in fact Gauas, Lyc. Alex. 831) or Pugmaion (Hesych. Π4281).30 The problem of the
supposed existence of two ‘Adones’, one venerated in Cyprus and the other in Byblos,
is addressed by resorting to the authority of Stephanus of Byzantium (Ethn. A249
Amathous ed. Billerbeck), who had identified a common Egyptian origin for both in
the cult of ‘Adonosiris’ in the Cyprian city of Amathus.31
The customary references for the lamentations on the death of Adonis are adduced
(Hier. In Ezech. 8.14; Macrob. Sat. 1.21; Luc. Dea Syr. 28.30; Grat. Cyneg. 66–7; Hymn.
Orph. 56; Bion’s Lament for Adonis – cited as Theocritus, ‘Idyll 23’), as are those for
the Adonia (Ar. Lys. 393–6; Plut. Alcib. 18.5, Nic. 13.7; Strab. 16.1.27; Amm. Marc.
22.9.15). Praxilla’s and Hercules’ proverbial comments are dutifully mentioned too.
On the Gardens of Adonis, over and above references to Plato and Pausanias the
Grammarian, the name of Aristotle unexpectedly comes up – most likely a slip, or
misprint, for Aristophanes.32 Giraldi also cites Eusebius (Prep. evang. 3.11.12) and
Augustine (Civ. Dei 7.25) for their claim that the ancients understood Adonis to stand
allegorically for ‘ripe fruits as well as short-lived flowers’.33
Several other points are made, but one in particular deserves attention: the
discussion of the symbolic meaning of lettuce. As is well known, this once marginal
or utterly disregarded aspect of the Adonis myth was revived by Marcel Detienne
in his book on the Gardens of Adonis. According to that eminent French scholar,
Adonis’ association with lettuce stressed his frigid and fruitless nature. Lettuce, as
Detienne asserted, was indicative of ‘sexual impotence and lack of vital force’ in
every type of Greek writing, from botany to comedy, ‘suffering from the same unfor-
tunate reputation as does bromide among the soldiers of today’.34 Giraldi seems to
have been the first of the modern mythographers to acknowledge this aspect of the
myth, presumably (for in this case he does not mention his source) from reading the
following passage in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophists.
Nicander the Colophonian says that Adonis was running towards a plant of this
kind [i.e. of lettuce] when he was slain by the boar … And Callimachus says
that Venus hid Adonis under a lettuce, meaning allegorically that those who are
addicted to lettuce are very little apt to pleasures of love … And Cratinus says that
Venus when in love with Phaon hid him under the lettuce. (Athen. 2.80a, tr. C.
D. Yonge)
Giraldi even produced a pointed epigram, ascribed by him to an undisclosed ‘learned
man’ (‘docti viri carmen’) who turns out to be none other than Andrea Alciato, for the
poem had appeared in the latest edition (1546) of his Emblemata.35
Inguina dente fero suffossum Cypris Adonim
Lactucae foliis condidit exanimem.
Hinc genitali arvo tantum lactuca resistit,

Quantum eruca salax vix stimulare potest.
Pierced in the groin by the cruel tusk, the lifeless Adonis was hidden by Cypris
[i.e. Venus] among the leaves of the lettuce. Hence lettuce is so strongly opposed
to the female nature [cf. Verg. G. 3.136] that the arousing colewort can barely
stimulate it.
While the former distich on Venus hiding Adonis’ corpse under the lettuce is clear in
its meaning, the latter, on the herb’s ‘devitalizing’ properties and effects, may not be
immediately intelligible. It does not seem to refer to Adonis’ traditional lack of stamina
translating into short-lived pleasure; rather, the ‘chilling’ lettuce is understood here as
a remedy against the excess of amorous passion in women, an anti-aphrodisiac capable
of neutralizing the opposite, arousing effect of colewort.36 Alciato’s epigram may thus
be said to be an erudite variation, riddled with an obscene innuendo, on the Terentian
theme – by then a hackneyed proverb – ‘Without the aid of Ceres and Bacchus, Venus
freezes’ (Eun. 372).
In his handling of the question of lettuce, Giraldi was also the first to observe
the interchangeable role of Adonis and Phaon. The resemblance of the two figures,
suggested by Cratinus’ excerpt quoted by Athenaeus, was in recent times vigorously
stressed by C. M. Bowra and Detienne, who both concluded that Adonis and Phaon
were, ‘in fact, one and the same mythical figure’.37 The question seems to be destined
to remain unresolved for now;38 nonetheless, it is perhaps surprising to learn that it
could impel a reputable scholar such as J. D. Beazley, while at work on two Etruscan
vases showing respectively Adonis and Phaon as Aphrodite’s favourite, to volunteer
the following impatient comment:
Adonis has always seemed to me, though true to life, an uninteresting character,
unworthy of being coupled, as he has been from this time – the late fifth century
[bce] – down to our own, with the divine Helen:
Describe Adonis and the counterfet
Is poorely immitated after you;
On Hellens cheke all art of beautie set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new.
I prefer Phaon, who did at least rise from the ranks.39
Giraldi merely remarked the resemblance between the two characters and referred
the reader to his Historia poetarum, where he dealt with Sappho and Phaon with no
further allusion to Adonis.40
Natale Conti’s explanation of myths

Vincenzo Cartari’s Le imagini de i dei degli antiqui (1556) ought to be next in line in
this rapid overview of the Italian Renaissance’s most influential mythographers and
their contribution to a better knowledge of the Adonis myth. The derivative nature of
46 Adonis
his work, which has already been noted, and the fact that Adonis is considered as an
appendix to the treatment of the figure of Venus makes Cartari’s contribution of little
consequence for our purpose.41 An entirely different approach is required, on the other
hand, when considering Natale Conti’s Mythologia.
The life and personality of Natale Conti (1520–82), even more so than that of
Giraldi, is almost exclusively portrayed in his works and in a very few external
documents.42 When compared to Giraldi’s De deis Gentium, Conti’s Mythologia can be
regarded as a step forward (but not always and necessarily an improvement), as well
as a step sideways. For reasons that have not yet been clarified, Conti never mentions
Giraldi; it is however clear that he is both building upon and, where necessary,
amending the work of his predecessor. In Conti’s treatise the sources are more exten-
sively quoted than in that of Giraldi; but the question of what advance he may have
made on his rival, in terms of accurate knowledge of his subject, is more conten-
tious. Limiting the case to Adonis, Giraldi’s information was undoubtedly a match to
Conti’s: he had access to the rich mythographic material in John and Isaac Tzetzes’
scholia to Lycophron’s Alexandra, which appeared in print (1546) just in advance of
the publication of his De deis Gentium; and although Apollodorus’ Library was still
unpublished at the time, he was nonetheless able to list it among his sources.43 On the
other hand, Conti appears to have a firmer grasp of Hellenic texts; besides, as recent
research suggests, he never ceased to improve his work by gaining access to additional
sources and by obtaining the help of fellow erudites between the publication of the first
(1568) and second editions (1581).44 But such authoritative scholars as Joseph Justus
Scaliger, Pierre Daniel Huet, and even Felix Jacoby cast serious doubts on his integrity,
and Conti’s reputation became seriously tarnished.45
Rather than lingering on points of detail, it is perhaps more helpful to underline
the new context in which Conti set his treatment of the figure of Adonis. As has
been observed, Conti produced a more rational subdivision of the matter and a
much improved general design compared with Giraldi’s effort. A constant feature of
Conti’s work is his ambition to prove that ancient myths are condensed narratives
replete with philosophical significance. The same observation is made several times
in his book and, more pointedly than anywhere else, at the end of the chapter on
Adonis. There Conti, having quoted Hymn. Orph. 56, proclaims the ancient myths
as philosophically relevant as the theories of Platonists and Peripatetics, and only in
need of being unpacked to merit full appreciation. ‘For if ’, he claims, ‘one excises
all disputes from the works of Aristotle, which now occupy many volumes, only
very brief sentences will remain’.46 This may sound like a snipe at professional (i.e.
scholastic) philosophers, somewhat in the humanist tradition which began with
Ficino and Pico and continued through successive stages to Francis Bacon.47 But
one also notices in Conti’s treatise a clear allegorizing slant, whereby the ‘mysteri-
ously meant’ element of Renaissance mythography is constantly emphasized. This
allegorical tendency had its roots in medieval exegesis, and Conti appears to have
been one of its staunchest supporters. In his tenth and final book, entitled ‘That all
the dogmas of the philosophers were contained [and explained] in [the form of]
mythical narratives’, Conti rapidly revisited all the myths discussed in the previous
nine books and explicitly stressed their allegorical and moral meaning, often
resorting to ‘medieval’ distinctions and classifications as historice, physice, ethice,

and suchlike.48
The most remarkable change affecting the character of Adonis in Conti’s work is
the position assigned to him. In Giraldi’s De deis Gentium, as has been noted, Adonis
is treated, together with Cupid, Vulcan and the Graces, as a secondary character in
the shadow of Venus’ dominating figure. In Conti’s Mythologia, Adonis finds himself
in altogether different company. While Venus, Cupid and the Graces are dealt with
in Book 4 and Vulcan in Book 2, Adonis is inserted in Book 5, preceded by Bacchus,
Ceres and Priapus and followed by the Sun, Pales, Aristaeus, the Earth and Feronia.
This is clearly a group of ‘vitalistic’ deities, all somehow connected with the notion
of natural cycles of death and revival. Even more than Giraldi’s Adonis, Conti’s is an
independent character; he has been separated from Venus and allowed to stand on his
own two feet, as it were. Moreover, like Giraldi before him and in line with a tendency
that characterizes the sixteenth-century approach to the myth, Conti assigns minimal
importance to the figure of Adonis’ mother, Myrrha. Myrrha played a prominent role
in Ovid and in all the late-antique and medieval mythographers, including Boccaccio;
in all these texts her pathetic story overshadows that of her son. In Giraldi’s and Conti’s
treatises, as well as virtually all the other texts examined in Chapter 2, Myrrha’s story
is reduced to a line or two – no more than a brief narrative premise.
The solar myth of Adonis in decorative cycles

The Adonis myth enjoyed great popularity in sixteenth-century art. As has been
mentioned in Chapter 2, it was primarily the erotic and pathetic aspects of the story
that attracted the attention of art patrons and collectors and stimulated the fantasy of
painters. Conversely, not much can be said about the influence exercised by the myth’s
symbolic and allegorical interpretation. One famous painting that was traditionally
believed to represent a ‘Death of Adonis’ within a notoriously complex iconographic
context – a fresco by Rosso Fiorentino in the Galerie François I at Fontainebleau – is
now understood to be a ‘Death of Attis’ instead.49 A cycle of paintings devoted to
Adonis, destined for the frieze of one of the main rooms (now ‘Sala di Adone’) of the
Palazzo Orsini at Monterotondo near Rome, was executed between 1554 and 1560 by
Girolamo Siciolante of Sermoneta (1521–80). It includes scenes of Cinyras’ wrath, the
birth of Adonis, Adonis and Venus, and the death of Adonis, all of which can be traced
back to Ovid or his imitators.50
A series of small frescoes, painted in 1561–3 by Federico Zuccari on the vault
of the loggia of the so-called Casino of Pius IV in the Vatican, is the only truly
important pictorial cycle devoted to Adonis that was in part inspired by Renaissance
mythography.51 The story unfolds over ten scenes, focusing in particular on Adonis’
hunt, Venus’ lamentations, the boar’s trial and punishment, and Venus departing in
her chariot. In his book The Casino of Pius IV, Graham Smith justly declared it ‘an
unusually rich cycle illustrating the passion of Adonis’.52 While overall the ten scenes
appear inspired by Ovid and the ps.-Theocritean The Dead Adonis, their allegorical
significance is enhanced through association with other pagan myths and biblical
48 Adonis
stories that decorate the loggia and its adjacent spaces. The programme, devised by
Pirro Ligorio, finds an exact correspondence in Ligorio’s copious manuscript notes on
archaeological and mythological matters.53 The notes make it clear that the myth of
Adonis was inserted as symbolizing the sun according to Macrobius’ allegory; most
of the passages devoted to Adonis are, in fact, translations, with minimal adaptations,
of Macrobian excerpts from Sat. 1.21.54 Raffaello Borghini was the first to notice that
Zuccari had painted ‘in the loggia above the fish-pool little narrative scenes (histo-
riette) of Adonis and Venus, and the birth of Bacchus, and other myths in a gracious
manner’.55 The association with Bacchus is to be extended to further decorative
elements, including Cybele, Pan and other deities representing the generative powers
of nature. The emphasis on the solar myth is such that the Casino has been described
as an ideal Regia Solis, and the elements of the often ‘bewilderingly complex’
decoration (Smith) as ‘a veritable Hymn to the Sun’.56
The syncretistic approach underpinning the rich pictorial and stucco decoration
of the Casino is primarily aimed at the conciliation of pagan myths with Catholic
orthodoxy. ‘The moralized pagan tale in Counter-Reformation Rome’ is the manner in
which the outcome of Ligorio’s inventive eclecticism has recently been characterized.57
This was not merely a compromise dictated by the nature of the commission and the
place where the Casino was erected – for in spite of the fact that the building, as its
name implies, was primarily intended for leisure and had as its model Pope Pius III’s
‘secular’ Villa Giulia, it stood after all within the sacred precincts of the Leonine City.58
Ligorio’s spirited compromise intended to preserve the fascination of pagan tales by
ways of ‘re-semantization’ within a Catholic context. In this respect, the issue of his
decorative programme is not dissimilar from other contemporary issues, such as
the delicate relationship between the vernacular translations of Ovid’s text and their
exegetical framework discussed in Chapter 2, or the issue of Conti’s ‘moral’ mythology.
Ligorio’s solution is a prelude to the debate on the nature and purpose of art in a
Christian society which followed soon afterwards, embracing all questions concerning
the use of images in Counter-Reformation countries.59 The reception of the Adonis
myth was necessarily affected by this process. The intersection of sensitive elements of
the classical tradition with the new ideological stances of the Church of Rome could
no longer be considered, at that point, a question of minor importance.
4
Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (i): From

pastoral to epic poem
In 1704, the sixteen-year-old Alexander Pope commenced his Discourse on Pastoral

Poetry with the following words:
There are not, I believe, a greater number of any sort of verses than of those which
are called Pastorals, nor a smaller, than of those which are truly so.1
Untangling the tradition of such a highly disparate genre as pastoral poetry appeared
a laborious task to Pope. It was certainly a task above the intellectual strengths of
a teenager, however gifted and already well-trained in versification, for his first
encounter with the practice of literary criticism. But to reach a definition of ‘pure’
pastoral poetry – on the assumption that any such thing ever existed in modern
literatures – was likely to be a more difficult endeavour than even the young Pope ever
imagined.
Pope’s comment may serve as an admonition for anyone wishing to approach
a work such as Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone – the most splendid, if enormous,
fruit of Baroque poetry, published in Paris in 1623 at the end of the poet’s residence
in France [Fig. 1]. Initially conceived as a short idyll, Marino’s Adone finished up
by resembling a disproportionate, gigantic epyllion of over 40,000 verses which, in
flagrant self-contradiction, aspired to the rank of heroic poem while retaining evident
traces of its humble pastoral origins. Unsurprisingly – in fact, rather predictably –
the publication of the poem sparked violent controversy over the appropriate place
it should be assigned within the classification of literary genres.2 It was, mutatis
mutandis, another example of genre aptness being indicted against an unconventional
treatment of the myth.
According to Pope, the qualities required of a proper pastoral poem should be
‘simplicity, brevity, and delicacy’. Marino’s Adone lacks at least two, if not all, of these,
and possesses, in great abundance, diametrically opposing characteristics. It largely
transcends the boundaries of the pastoral genre, as well as those, if only regarding its
size, of the mythological idyll. Never had such an ambitious literary construction been
conceived on the basis of so limited a narrative potential. An unparalleled number of
inset episodes and erudite digressions fill every available interstice of the main story,
which is often reduced to a tenuous thread, apparently a mere pretext for Marino’s
capricious reinterpretations of the ancient lore.
50 Adonis
Figure 1 G. B. Marino, L’Adone (Paris: Olivier de Varennes, 1623). Title page

(Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal – BnF)
Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (i): From pastoral to epic poem 51
The poem’s ranking in the system of literary genres and the significance of the
figure of Adonis in the poem’s economy will be the two main points under discussion
in this chapter. It would perhaps seem inappropriate, or even futile, to expect that
such an anomalous poem should satisfy the basic requisites of pastoral poetry; yet
an enquiry into its links with the pastoral genre will help explain its genesis and
earlier evolution, while pointing simultaneously to certain undetected aspects of its
final elaboration. As for the role played by the Adonis myth in the poem, readers
may paradoxically find its relevance not particularly salient, for it is easily possible
to lose sight of the main narrative track amid the profusion of mythological matter
scattered in the text.3 This is probably why Marino’s reasons for selecting (or rather
keeping) Adonis as the protagonist of his ambitious project have, until now, remained
relatively unscrutinized. Looking at the poem from such unusual angles will be similar
to watching a theatre performance from a proscenium box – an off-centre position,
which may show action on stage as somewhat distorted and confused, but offers in
return the benefit of peeks behind the scenes.
Marino’s life and works

The growth of Marino’s Adone was characterized by bursts of feverish activity
alternating with long dormant pauses. This depended in part on the vicissitudes of
Marino’s adventurous life, which will be illustrated in some detail. His peregrinations
outline an extraordinary career against the background of early seventeenth-century
Italy and France.4
Giovan Battista Marino was born in Naples in 1569 where he spent his adolescence
and early maturity, gaining his first laurels as a lyric poet; but from the very beginning
his career seemed overcast by the shadow of dubious conduct. Two imprisonments
for sordid and not wholly clarified affairs forced him to move to Rome in the year of
the Great Jubilee (1600). In the autumn of 1601 he undertook a journey via Siena and
Florence to Venice, where he personally supervised the printing of his Rime. Divided
into two parts, the book appeared in the early months of 1602 and took Italy and the
whole of Europe by storm. It was the latest and most luxuriant fruit of mature, elegant,
ingeniously conceited Petrarchism, characterized by an amazing facility of versification
and a wonderful originality in the treatment of traditional motifs of lyric poetry.5
Marino’s fame was soon further amplified by a series of plagiarism charges.
Rumours of this type were to accompany him for the remainder of his life, and
were somewhat aggravated by his defiant stance and by what one might describe
as a genuinely predatory attitude to any source he considered instrumental to his
inspiration. He himself did not disdain to acknowledge his unorthodox methods. In
prefacing his comprehensive collection of lyric poems entitled La Lira (The Lyre, 1614)
under the pretended signature of the Turinese Onorato Claretti, Marino boasted that
‘he who steals and is unable to hide the theft deserves to be hanged – one should know
how to dye the cloth of the stolen booty with a different colour so that it cannot be
easily recognized’.6 Later on, in one of the introductory letters to La sampogna (The
Syringe, 1620), he expressed himself with even greater impudence.
52 Adonis
Let it be universally known that, from the very day I started reading the authors, I
learnt how to operate by always being equipped with a grapnel. Thus I could turn
to my advantage whatever good I happened to find in their works by transcribing
it in a notebook [zibaldone] of mine and by making good use of it in good time –
which is after all, in terms of profit, what reading books is about.7
He continued to challenge his enemies, whom he branded as ‘naughty little thieves’
themselves, to catch him red-handed.
Nevertheless, let those naughty little thieves [ladroncelli] be assured that in the
sea where I find my catch and conduct my trade they are not used to sail, nor will
they be able to discover my prey on me unless I decide to show it to them myself.8
His predatory habit was undoubtedly redeemed by his extraordinary skill in remod-
elling his sources and by the unmatched brilliancy of the final outcome. Like his
predecessor Pontano, Marino possessed a genius of the highest order for metamorphic
re-elaboration, and it is presumably not by chance that he, too, like Pontano, became
at some point associated with the figure of Proteus.9 But Marino’s was a much more
hazardous game for, unlike Pontano, he would not merely draw on authors of old, but
preferably on the poems of his contemporaries and, all too frequently, on those of his
rivals.10
On returning to Rome, Marino became a protégé of the Pope’s powerful nephew
Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini. This blissful state did not last for long. The death of
Pope Clement VIII in 1605 and the subsequent election of Paul V (once the four-week
interlude following the premature death of Leo XI had passed) utterly changed Rome’s
political landscape. In the following year (1606), Pietro Aldobrandini was ordered
to leave Rome to reside in his archbishopric at Ravenna. For an ambitious Roman
cardinal this was tantamount to a confinement, and so also was it for an affirmed poet
such as Marino. During the three years or so spent at Ravenna, Marino could only
take consolation in occasional forays to livelier towns, where he cautiously looked
around for a new position. The Bolognese Accademia dei Gelati opened its doors to
him, and Parma offered the splendour of the local Farnese court. In Turin and Mantua,
where he travelled in 1608, he took part in the preliminaries and the celebrations of
the sumptuous wedding between Marguerite of Savoy and Francesco Gonzaga, which
culminated in the first performance of Monteverdi’s Arianna. Both in these towns and
also in Genoa, where he travelled to forge new links with the powerful Doria family,
he enjoyed the opportunity of admiring the paintings of Rubens and other prominent
painters whom he was later to celebrate in his poems.
The next big career move found him in Turin at the court of the Duke Charles
Emmanuel I of Savoy. At first, it appeared to be his long-desired haven, but trouble
was looming once more. Marino’s scornful treatment of his rival, the poet Gasparo
Murtola (1570–1624), earned him a shot from an arquebus, which luckily ended in a
near miss. In an unclear connection with this incident, accusations of having offended
Duke Charles Emmanuel I fuelled the latter’s wrath; by his orders Marino was thrown
into prison and kept behind bars for over a year until the summer of 1612. Being
confined for this length of time by no means interrupted his seemingly inexhaustible
vein. While in prison he penned one of his best burlesque pieces, the letter to Ludovico
San Martino di Agliè.11 After his liberation, he published a collection of lyric poems
under the Pontanian title of La Lira (1614), which includes a new ‘Third Part’ (in
addition to the two sections of the 1602 Rime), and a long prefatory letter formally
signed by Onorato Claretti – in fact, as already observed, by the very same Marino
– where a strong claim is made for Marino’s primacy amongst Italian lyric poets on
account of both his recent accomplishments and a long list of works announced as
forthcoming.12 Finally, before leaving Turin he published three Dicerie sacre (Sacred
orations, 1614) characterized by a flamboyant, virtuoso-like prose style. The book
inspired widespread enthusiasm, as well as causing scandal among the members of the
clergy, who watched in astonishment while this layman of dubious reputation effort-
lessly outclassed the best authors in their own field.13
At this point Marino took the most daring decision of his life. He moved to Paris,
apparently attracted by the splendour of an Italian-dominated court under the vigilant
control of the Queen Mother Maria de’ Medici. He staged his arrival in the French
capital with the utmost care. Il tempio (1615), jotted down on the journey and printed
in Lyon before his arrival in Paris, praises Maria de’ Medici and bears a dedication to
Leonora Dori Galigai, the favourite lady-in-waiting of the Queen Mother and wife of
the powerful Marshal of France, Concino Concini.14 A collection of Epitalami, written
for the weddings of prominent families of Italy, France and Spain (diversely and
splendidly elaborate in style and including some of the best erotic poetry ever written
in world literature), was offered to Concini himself the following year (1616).15 In the
winter of 1616–7, Marino had been planning to dedicate to Concini his Adone, which,
over the years, had reached the dimensions of an epic poem, when on the night of
24 April 1617 the Queen’s favourite was assassinated by conspirators of the opposing
party, who aimed to remove the young, recently come-of-age King Louis XIII from
the influence of his mother and her Italianate court.16 As a result, Maria was confined
to Blois, her entourage was dispersed, and her discord with the king, her son, was
exacerbated to the point of later developing into open warfare. It also became clear
that physical safety was now a priority for anyone who had been part of Concini’s
circle. The Marshal’s body, which had been secretly and hastily buried in the Parisian
church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois the day after the assassination, was exhumed
soon after by the enraged populace and dragged along the streets of the city, where it
was vilified in all sorts of manners – smeared with escrements, emasculated, hanged,
burnt, dismembered and even cannibalized, in an appalling though not uncommon
escalation of unbridled violence.17
In such dire circumstances one would have expected Marino to suffer a dramatic
reversal of fortune. It was a serious blow, not for him alone.18 A personality close to
Concini, the Bishop of Luçon, Armand Duplessis – the future Cardinal Richelieu,
hardly a novice in political intrigue – was banned from Paris and remained in
confinement for three years, while an anonymous satirist took the liberty of describing
him as ‘a poor idiot’.19 Marino, on the other hand, managed, once again, to position
himself securely with astounding rapidity. Less than three months after Concini’s
death, he obtained permission to dedicate an anti-Huguenot pamphlet entitled La
sferza (The Scourge) to none other than the king himself – a clear sign of royal favour,
54 Adonis
or at least of benign acceptance.20 Marino’s proximity to the newest favourite, Charles

d’Albert, Duke of Luynes (1578–1621), is attested by his correspondence.21 At more or
less the same time, he must have enjoyed some success in the salon of the Marchioness
of Rambouillet, for the works of French poets who frequented or came into contact
with that circle are often in debt to the poems of their Italian colleague.22 No reliable
testimony, however, exists that can confirm Marino’s attendance at those famous
Parisian gatherings. On the contrary, one of his earliest biographers recounts the
tale of a man leading the retired life of the scholar, spending his nights in assiduous
study while disdaining – with only occasional exceptions – worldly entertainments.23
Whatever the truth, in terms of literary patronage, Paris must have been out of
bounds for some time, as Marino actively started looking elsewhere for support. Plans
to publish the Adone were once again set aside. He published La Galeria (Venice
1619–20), the most ambitious celebration of the figurative arts in modern European
poetry, with a double dedication to two Genoese noblemen and prominent art
collectors, Giovan Carlo Doria and Luigi Centurione.24 A few months later, Cardinal
Maurice of Savoy received the dedication of the Sampogna (The Syringe, Paris 1620),
a collection of idylls in various metres, extraordinary for poetic brilliance and versa-
tility, and, like the Galeria, bound to exercise a lasting influence over the literatures of
Europe. As for the Adone, while the printing was in abeyance awaiting less turbulent
times, the composition of some of its parts were presumably inspired by the very same
events that had prevented its publication – as will be seen in the following chapter.
Suffice it here to say that when the poem appeared in print in 1623, it heralded the
harmony attained between the two royal parties by exhibiting a title page with a
dedication to King Louis XIII, followed by a dedicatory epistle to the Queen Mother.
It also included a long preface in French by a promising young man who was to
become one of the literary dictators in seventeenth-century France, Jean Chapelain
(1595–1676). In a pacified Paris, Marino could once again take up his former role of
leading poet to the French court.
Having achieved the ambition of a lifetime, Marino felt the time had come to
arrange for himself a glorious return to Italy. He left Paris as a wealthy stipendiary of
the King of France and moved to Rome; Pope Gregory XV Ludovisi had given him
hopes for a radiant twilight in the Eternal City. In a last twist of fate, however, the pope
died suddenly shortly after Marino’s arrival. The new pope, Urban VIII Barberini, was
himself a skilled poet, and in earlier days a self-proclaimed (though not unreserved)
admirer of Marino.25 But both he and his circle were now devoted to the cultivation
of religiously inspired and classically clad (if somewhat stiff) literary ideals which had
very little in common with the exuberant poetics underpinning Marino’s Adone.26
Marino eventually moved to his home town of Naples and was hailed by the local
literary society as its most revered member. He died on 25 March 1625.
Marino’s career has often been portrayed as a rake’s progress characterized by an
unscrupulous exploitation of expediency. This is partly ascribed to the cleverness
of the man, which ambiguously reflected on his reputation as a poet; partly, also, to
the received view of the Baroque Age as a period of moral decadence and shrewd
opportunism. The rectification of such a simplistic picture is an accomplishment of
the best-informed literary and historical criticism of recent years. In Marino’s case, a
recent book by Clizia Carminati has revealed a crucially important aspect of his life
that had until now remained virtually unknown.27 The documents which Carminati
has unearthed and scrutinized show that, in point of fact, Marino had been, at least
since 1607, on the run from the Tribunal of the Inquisition. Carminati’s investigations
have thus cast considerable light on Marino’s biography and offered an entirely new
context for well-known details which did not seem to fit easily with the traditional
interpretative framework. This research has also added a touch of lay dignity, and even
grandeur, to the profile of the poet who for so long succeeded in keeping at bay the
inquisitive powers of the mighty Church of Rome.28
An outline of the Adone

Any new attempt to discuss Marino’s Adone necessarily implies a preliminary summary
of the poem, as its extraordinary length and meandering development constitute an
objective difficulty for any reader wishing to approach the text for the first time.29
The very organization of the volume is of some interest. The dedicatory epistle,
addressed to the Queen Mother Maria de’ Medici, is followed by a long preface in
French, a veritable critical essay by Jean Chapelain, addressing the question of the
poem’s genre. Each of the twenty long cantos bears a separate title and is preceded
first by Lorenzo Scoto’s short explanatory prose (‘Allegory’) aimed at illustrating
the allegorical significance of the narrated events, and subsequently by Fortuniano
Sanvitale’s quatrain (‘Argument’), which succinctly highlights the pivotal features of
the canto in question.
At the beginning of Canto the First (entitled ‘Fortune’), Cupid is planning revenge
on his mother Venus, who has punished him for his misbehaviour. Apollo advises
him to let her fall in love with Adonis, so that Cupid persuades Adonis to come to
Cyprus. There the shepherd Clizio welcomes Adonis by singing a eulogy of bucolic
life and leads him to ‘The Palace of Love’ (Canto 2), where he narrates the story of
the Judgement of Paris in contrast to that of Hercules at the crossroads – an allusion,
underlined by the canto’s prose ‘Allegory’, to Adonis’ proneness to the temptations of
a voluptuous life. After attempting in vain to chase a deer, Adonis falls asleep in the
woods. There, he is seen by Venus, who experiences ‘The Enamourment’ (Canto 3)
after being purposely struck by Cupid with one of his arrows. Venus and Mercury
now take charge of Adonis’ education and admit him into the Palace of Love, which
represents the first step of his journey of initiation. Adonis listens to ‘The Novella’
(Canto 4) of Cupid and Psyche as narrated by Cupid himself. He is then persuaded by
Mercury to watch a stage performance of ‘The Tragedy’ (Canto 5) of Actaeon. Mercury
emphasizes the didactic purpose of the piece by garnishing it with five further
admonitory stories, and Venus ominously alerts her lover to the dangers of hunting
wild boar. However, Adonis falls asleep halfway through the performance and misses
the crucial warning of the tragic ending. The three following cantos (6. ‘The Garden
of Pleasure’; 7. ‘The Delights’; 8. ‘The Love Games’) deal with Adonis’ initiation into
the power of the senses, which culminates in a celebration of the sense of touch with
his marriage with Venus, at which Mercury officiates, and a protracted description
56 Adonis
of one of their erotic assignations. Moving on from the pleasures of the senses to
those of the intellect, the tercet sails to the Isle of Poets, located at the centre of a lake
(which is understood to lie in the middle of the Palace of Love), and approaches ‘The
Fountain of Apollo’ (Canto 9), where Fileno the fisherman, Marino’s transparent mask,
reviews the noble patrons of Italy and France and the poets of Greece, Rome and Italy.
‘The Marvels’ (Canto 10) opens up the world of natural philosophy – the Ptolemaic
heavens (including a eulogy to Galileo), the cave of Nature on the Moon, and the Isle
of Dreams. The ascension to the Second Heaven, where Mercury plays the host, offers
in sequence the vision of a museum, a catalogue of inventors, a universal library, and
an animated world map prophesying the impending wars between the European
powers. ‘The Beauties’ (Canto 11), on the other hand, narrates the ascension to Venus’
own Third Heaven and lists a catalogue of illustrious women. Mercury offers another
caveat by drawing up a negative horoscope for Adonis, but this time it is Venus who
rejects the baleful verdict and insists they should return to Earth.
The initiation journey having come to an end without any visible gain on the part
of its beneficiary, a new narrative section with marked ‘picaresque’ features begins.
Mars, Venus’ ‘official’ lover, is now informed by Jealousy about his mistress and
Adonis. As Mars is approaching menacingly, Adonis performs ‘The Escape’ (Canto
12) and leaves the goddess – despite the fact that, according to what has been narrated
in Canto 8, he is now supposed to be Venus’ lawful husband. Protected by a magic
ring, Adonis finds subterranean shelter in the abode of the sorceress Falsirena, who
falls in love with him and has him imprisoned. In ‘The Prison’ (Canto 13) Adonis
loses the magic ring, but is mistakenly transformed by Falsirena into a parrot and can
thus fly away. Under this guise he escapes an ambush by Vulcan, Venus’ ‘former’ yet
never officially estranged husband, and voyeuristically watches an erotic rendez-vous
between Mars and Venus in the Garden of Touch.30 Mercury advises him to go back
to Falsirena’s cave to recover his appearance and the ring; against his advice, however,
Adonis then picks up Meleager’s weapons, which carry an intimation of death. ‘The
Wanderings’ (Canto 14) is so dense with adventures as to look like a post-modern
parody of a Renaissance romance. Adonis eludes surveillance by cross-dressing as a
woman, and attracts the interest of male suitors. He is then ambushed by a band of
brigands; he manages to slip away, but then becomes involved in the intricate story of
two lovers, Sidonio and Dorisbe, only to be eventually rescued by Mercury. He is now
ready for ‘The Return’ (Canto 15), after which he resumes his love games with Venus.
But sex brings boredom again, so Mercury suggests a game of chess. By winning
the match, Adonis gains the right to reign on Cyprus, which he forfeits but is then
compelled to reconsider. In order to obtain ‘The Crown’ (Canto 16), Adonis now has
to take part in a beauty contest, which he eventually wins amid all sorts of difficulties,
intrigues and mishaps. He is then persuaded by Venus to return to their leisurely life
until the goddess’ preparations for ‘The Departure’ (Canto 17) to Cythera, where she
is expected for the annual celebrations of her cult.
At this point catastrophe strikes. Adonis obtains permission from Venus to hunt
in Diana’s park – a decision foreshadowing ‘The Death’ (Canto 18) – as Mars and
Diana prepare an ambush intending to set a boar onto him. The boar is struck with
one of Cupid’s arrows, which makes him love-mad for Adonis. His attack is but a
clumsy attempt to show his affection, and as a consequence Adonis is gored to death
by mistake. Venus rushes to assist her lover in his last agony and laments his death.
Meanwhile the boar is put on trial only to be acquitted at the first hearing, as passion
is accepted as a valid excuse for the misdeed; but the self-conscious beast breaks
in repentance its own tusk against a rock. ‘The Burial’ (Canto 19) opens with four
friendly gods and goddesses trying to console Venus for her loss by recounting six
stories of young men who had been victims of precocious death. The funeral is then
celebrated, and before Adonis’ body is incinerated, Venus transforms his heart into
an anemone, after which she proclaims three days of games to honour the deceased.
The gods assemble for ‘The Spectacles’ (Canto 20), which reach their apex with a
tournament on the third day and the appearance of contemporary personalities of
Italian and European nobility. ‘Fiammadoro’ or France (Louis XIII) and ‘Austria’ or
Spain (Anne of Austria/Spain) fight each other incognito in the lists. When they
eventually unveil their identity, Fiammadoro surprises everyone by appearing to be
a reborn Adonis, and Austria by resembling his female twin. They fall in love with
each other and are united in matrimony by Venus. At the end of the celebrations
Apollo ‘reads’ in Fiammadoro’s shield the main events of France’s wars of religion,
while announcing their happy ending under the reign of Louis and Anne. Fileno the
fisherman, in the guise of a humble copyist, seals the narrative with his subscription
in the final stanza of the poem.
Even a cursory reading of this succinct précis tempts one to consider Marino’s
Adone a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But the
reader’s bafflement intensifies when the intricate maze of secondary events (here
omitted) that intersect, overlap and run through the main plot are examined more
closely. The poem resembles a disconcerting sequence of narrative ingredients scarcely
susceptible of effective amalgamation; teachings are blatantly imparted and soon after
recanted, and tragic or semi-tragic situations unexpectedly derail into farcical dénoue-
ments. Marino’s Adone is also the first poem of this scale to be puzzlingly named after
a protagonist who is a ‘non-protagonist’, a hero who is a ‘non-hero’, whose passiveness
and dependence on the initiative of others is apparent throughout the poem, and
whose inadequacy for the tasks successively set him is stressed at almost every turn.
And yet, this colossal poem of over forty thousand lines can be said to be flawless
in terms of the chosen language, style and imagery. There is not a single passage that
the reader could imagine as having been penned and revised without the greatest
attention and care or the assistance of a heightened sense for the musicality of verse.
What was once said of Swinburne might perhaps be said of Marino as well, that ‘the
strong side’ of his poetry is ‘not its matter but its manner’. And if Marino’s verse, like
Swinburne’s, is more likely to soothe ‘the external ear’ rather than ‘the inner chambers
of the sense of hearing’, yet it does so with such endearing ease and elegant copiousness
that the name of Mozart has been invoked more than once as a suitable comparison.31
A linear succession of episodes moving towards an identifiable narrative goal is
clearly not a priority in Marino’s Adone. In fact, the narration appears to be dominated
by surprising and unexpected turns of events, action for action’s sake, and above all
prolonged and mesmerizing descriptions conveying uncanny slow-motion effects.
Marino does not seem to have put a premium on ‘the story’ as such. It has been
58 Adonis
authoritatively suggested that ‘the poem expanded in the guise of an art collection,
progressively enriched with new and sudden acquisitions while being continuously
remodulated and carved out from the inside as well, in a virtually perpetual process of
adaptation’.32 Just as in the seventeenth century one used to talk about concetti predi-
cabili (‘conceits for the use of preachers’), so one might well describe Marino’s Adone
as a treasure trove of concetti poetabili (‘conceits for the use of poets’), with its author
pushing the boundaries of the poetabile beyond the goals attained by any previous
comparable writer.
The convoluted compositional process, with its progressive additions and adapta-
tions, inevitably affected the poem’s narrative cohesion. A further disorientating factor
must have been Marino’s unabashed hybridization of different registers and levels of
style. Finally, Marino’s combinatory genius needs to be held to account for the several
unconventional uses of the Adonis myth. These three main aspects will be explored
in the following pages.
Origin and growth of the ‘grand poem’

It is only by progressive steps that Marino’s Adone grew to the size of the longest poem
in Italian literature.33
The original concept dates back to the last decade of the sixteenth century. The
Adone is mentioned as a poem in progress in a letter of 1596 by Marino’s patron and
friend Camillo Pellegrino, who reports on the admiration amongst those who had
enjoyed the opportunity of reading or listening to parts of it.34 A further contemporary
reference occurs in the first version of one of Marino’s earliest pastoral poems, entitled
I sospiri di Ergasto (Ergasto’s Sighs). There the eponymous hero announces that ‘our
Carino’ (‘il nostro Carin’) has just begun to sing the story of Adonis.35 ‘Carino’ is the
conventional pastoral nickname adopted by the younger Marino during his Naples
years; a nickname he afterwards changed for that of ‘Fileno the fisherman’ (‘il pescator
Fileno’) to honour the Neapolitan tradition of the maritime eclogue.36
Unfortunately, since this Ur-Adone has not survived as an independent version
and its scattered limbs are presumably strewn across the text of the poem as we
read it today (but are no longer recognizable as such), one can only try and guess its
original make-up. It was almost certainly a pastoral poem. This is suggested by the
pastoral setting of the Sospiri d’Ergasto, in which the quotation occurs. The very device
whereby the tale of Adonis is mentioned, an ekphrasis celebrating scenes painted by
the ‘illustrious hand’ of an unnamed artist on a quiver, is a recognizable Theocritean
topos.37
These features indicate a poem of limited scope and ambition, not unlike those by
Dolce, Tarcagnota and Parabosco examined in Chapter 2, yet a few more details can
perhaps be added to the picture. It has been noted that in Marino’s Adone, Venus and
Adonis never indulge in any kind of pastorelleria. This alone would justify ruling out
Dolce’s Favola di Adone and Ronsard’s Adonis as influential models, for their descrip-
tions of the enamoured Venus are given such rustic traits that find no equivalent
in Marino.38 In the Adone, the goddess may occasionally show petty behaviour or
portray distressed or even dishevelled demeanour; yet she generally retains the sense
of decorum that characterizes Olympian gods even in their least dignified enterprises,
and she never displays a tendency to slip into a rustic mode. The basic register adopted
by Marino must, from the very beginning, have been that of the mythological or
boschereccio idyll, which within the hierarchy of genres is situated at least one degree
above the pastoral.39
As Giovanni Pozzi suggested almost forty years ago, it seems safe to assume
that the vastly heterogeneous matter of Marino’s Adone must have centred on the
two main events of the story: the erotic encounter with Venus and the fatal hunt
followed by Venus’ lamentations. As discussed in Chapter 2, emphasis on these two
crucial moments is typical of sixteenth-century literary and figurative tradition.
Additions and digressions introduced at several later stages did not alter the poem’s
original design. Pozzi captivatingly describes the amorous encounter and death of the
youth as the two foci of a narrative pattern, ideally configured like an ellipse, with
all the remaining episodes in some way condensing or revolving around these two
foci without offering any clear sense of narrative progression. This lack of ‘forward
movement’ prompted Pozzi to compare Marino’s Adone to a machine slipping out of
gear for most of the time, its primary function being not so much the development of a
structured plot as the production of complex digressions and enthralling descriptions
of the most disparate kind.40
Fascination for this strangely disjointed tale must have therefore lain elsewhere
than in the narrative per se. The prime reasons for the poem’s resounding success may
have been the sensuality of Marino’s luxuriant descriptions, the display of erudition
and intertextual allusions elegantly and effortlessly arranged in impeccable rhythms,
and – last but not least – the daring contaminations, verging on the sacrilegious, of
the sacred elements with those of the profane. There is abundant evidence of readers
approaching Marino’s poem not as a work to be read from cover to cover but rather as
a virtually endless sequence of enchanting passages and bravura pieces.41
The prevalence of a descriptive mode imposed itself at a later stage in the
composition, when the poem had begun to grow at great speed. Before then,
Marino’s text seems to have been confined to the modest dimensions of a mid-sized
poem. According to the poet’s own statements, Adone was still divided into three
books (libri) in 1605, and into four in 1614, when it consisted of ‘little less than
a thousand stanzas’.42 The change of pace must have occurred between the end
of 1614 and the beginning of the following year. In a letter dated 1615, Adone
is said to consist of twelve cantos: canti, no longer libri – a token of the poem’s
changing status and the author’s ambition to move into the domain of epic poetry,
an ambition confirmed in the very same letter, where a comparison is made with
Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata.43 But Tasso’s poem could not have remained an
adequate paragon for long, as one year later the cantos had doubled in number to
twenty-four and the poem was now being compared to Ariosto’s Orlando furioso.44
A further significant expansion must have occurred between 1617 and 1623. Even
though the number of cantos was eventually reduced to twenty, the mere length
of most of them validates the hypothesis that a vast incorporation and redistri-
bution of material (rather than a reduction of the general volume) must have taken
60 Adonis
place prior to the poem’s publication. As a matter of fact, the Adone had by then
outstripped even the Furioso.45
What could have induced such a radical change? As already pointed out by a
number of scholars, sections of the vast amount of unpublished verse mentioned in
the preface to the third section of Marino’s Lira (1614) had merged into the Adone
between 1614 and 1623. In that preface, the publication of two ambitious poems
– the Gierusalemme distrutta (Jerusalem Destroyed) and Le trasformazioni (The
Transformations), portraying Titus’ conquest of Jerusalem and Cupid’s triumphant
progress across the world respectively – had been announced as imminent.46 They
appear to have lingered in their author’s mind for quite some time because, as late
as 1620, he was still referring to them as ‘live’ projects.47 But their execution would
have demanded the undivided attention and considerable stamina even of such a
prolific author as Marino. They, too, had to be sacrificed on the altar of the Adone.
While it is not always easy to identify their recycled fragments within the poem, they
undoubtedly contributed to its sudden expansion.48
Marino was very well aware of the potential shortcomings of his enterprise. In a
letter of 1616 he referred to the plot of Adone as a ‘patchwork skirt … limited in range
and unable to offer [sufficient] variety of events’, repeatedly fleshed out by him ‘with
episodic actions, the best that I could’. Four years later he would still refer to his poem
as ‘quite poor in action’.49 Yet he persisted in retaining the myth of Venus and Adonis
as the poem’s main subject despite its apparent unsuitability.
This leads the reader to pose a set of questions, in part already anticipated at the
outset of this chapter. Why would Marino keep amplifying a story that offered but
minimal opportunities for narrative development? Why would he choose to perform
the delicate operation of integrating vastly heterogeneous materials, with the risk of
making the poem’s already fragile structure look even more precarious? Did he not
consider the dangers of exposing his work to criticism for its poor narrative organi-
zation and consequentiality, something which immediately occurred as soon as it was
published? What, in other words, was so special about narrating the story of Venus
and Adonis that would still make it worth being pursued?
All these questions, and notably the last, remain in part unanswered. Ever since
a critical debate on Marino’s Adone was initiated, the attention of critics has under-
standably focused on the poem’s controversial and in many respects revolutionary
formal features. The treatment of the subject of Venus and Adonis looks less extraor-
dinary in comparison. In the following sections two points in particular will be
addressed: the encouragement that Marino received from new literary experiments in
the pastoral genre, and the symbolic potential inherent in the myth.
Transgressive pastorals
At the end of Canto 1, Adonis meets the bucolic character of ‘Clizio the shepherd’. In
the ‘Allegory’ prefixed to the canto the episode is illustrated as follows:
Under the guise of Clizio is understood Giovan Vincenzo Imperiali, a Genoese
nobleman devoted to the belles-lettres, who has appropriated that name in his
poems. The praise of pastoral life [here comprised] alludes to Lo stato rustico (The
Rustic State), a poem elegantly composed by him.50
Giovan Vincenzo Imperiale (1582–1648) is not unknown to the specialist of seven-
teenth-century literary and artistic culture, but his being given such a prominent
position at the outset of Marino’s Adone may require some additional information.
The scion of one of the most prominent families of Genoa, Imperiale was an influ-
ential politician and patron of the arts, as well as a poet.51 He had been approached by
Marino in 1603 through the good offices of the Genoese painter Bernardo Castello,
and may have received Marino’s visit when the poet travelled to Genoa in 1608.52
Imperiale’s extensive pastoral poem Lo stato rustico had been published the year
before; it was subsequently reprinted with variants in 1611, and again in 1613.53 It
is a poem in fourteen ‘parts’ (parti) which extols the virtues of country life and its
associated principles of civil and political rectitude in opposition to the corrupting
urban negotium – a favourite topic among the nobility of Genoa, where the ideal of
a ‘rustic state’ inspired the extraordinary flourishing of villas that today dot the city’s
expanded urban and suburban areas.54
As far as the fable is concerned, Lo stato rustico narrates the journey of the
shepherd Clizio through Genoa and Northern Italy to Helicon under the guidance
of the Muse Euterpe. In this extraordinarily lengthy poem all the main themes of
pastoral poetry are developed with unprecedented largesse as well as with painstaking
attention to detail. The Stato rustico represents the radicalization of a tendency shared
by other successful pastoral works of the Renaissance and early Baroque age – that
of description prevailing against narration and action. Popular works, either mostly
in prose and verse or simply in prose, such as Sannazaro’s Arcadia (1504), Jorge de
Montemayor’s Diana (1559), Gil Polo’s Diana enamorada (1564), Rémi Belleau’s
Bergerie (15651, 15722), Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (1590), Lope de Vega’s Arcadia (1598),
Antonio Droghi’s Leucadia (1598), Lucrezia Marinella’s Arcadia felice (1605), and
Honoré d’Urfé’s Astrée (1607–18) offer stories where a small event or even a large
series of events may happen, but the description covers so much more.55 This literary
phenomenon entails an approach to narrative, as well as a type of readership very
different from those of today. This argument was established by Mario Praz as early
as 1943, when there was significant reluctance to acknowledge that such works could
ever have been as successful as they demonstrably were.
Is it possible … that current opinion may be right, when it maintains that works
which delighted generation after generation of readers, and were warmly praised
by high and low, are unreadable (except by antiquarians)? The style and happy
invention of Montemayor’s Diana which pleased no less a judge than Cervantes,
the ‘Sidneian showers of sweet discourse’ with which Richard Crashaw was daily
conversant, and d’Urfé’s monumental work, worshipped like a new gospel by Mme
de Rambouillet and her friends, should they stir no other muscles in our faces
than those reserved for yawning?56
Within the category of long pastoral narratives, Imperiale’s Stato rustico stands out by
being entirely in verse and for having brought the descriptive mode to unparalleled
62 Adonis
extremes.57 This was not meant to be a mere virtuoso exploit; rather, it was a delib-
erate departure from the Aristotelian notion of mimesis that had presided over the
composition of the greatest Renaissance epic, Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581)
– the blueprint in the early seventeenth century for any poet wishing to engage with
the ‘long poem’.58 Encouragement to use this format may have been inspired by the
new approach to epic poetry proposed by Lodovico Castelvetro, the most eminent
and unconventional literary critic of the Late Renaissance, when he insisted that epic
(as opposed to tragic) poets should be granted relative freedom.59 But Imperiale went
one step beyond Castelvetro’s stance, as his Stato rustico came to represent a bold
challenge and (at least for some time) a credible alternative to the Aristotelian and
Tassian poetics of the verisimile. The world of pastoral poetry – the fictional world par
excellence – became for him the testing ground for a number of daring innovations in
the domain of narrative poetry.
Marino’s interest in Imperiale’s poem is confirmed by a long list of literary debts.60
Suffice it to mention here an important motif shared by both poems: the journey of
initiation.61 As already observed, the Stato rustico presents a periegetic arrangement
with Clizio under the guidance of Euterpe, embarking on a journey which takes him
through both earthly (Italy) and celestial (Helicon) landscapes. In Marino’s poem,
Adonis’ initiation journey through Cyprus to the Third Heaven (Cantos 6–11) repre-
sents the most substantial addition to the traditional myth, and clearly points to
Imperiale’s poem as its model. Marino also paid an explicit tribute to Imperiale by
assigning to the character of Clizio a role in several crucial passages of the poem: the
beginning (Cantos 1–2), Adonis’ deadly hunt (18.46, 18.101), and the final celebra-
tions (20.76–9), where Clizio receives from Venus the symbolic prize of a syringe in
recognition of his excellence as a bucolic poet.
Jean Chapelain’s defence of the Adone

The original bucolic vein of Marino’s Adone is still detectable in a number of passages.
It is not confined to the mere presence of individual themes and motifs; it also filters
through a number of authorial statements. In the poem’s final stanza, as has already
been noted, the author signs off as ‘Fileno the fisherman’.
Qui tacque Apollo e ’l pescator Fileno,
che presente ascoltò quant’egli disse,
quanto diss’egli e tutto il filo apieno
di que’ tragici amori in carte scrisse. (20.515, 1–4)
Apollo fell silent, and Fileno the fisherman, who listened to all he had said; all he
had said, and the full story of those tragic loves transcribed on paper.
At the beginning of Canto 9, the authorial voice declares itself unable to sing either the
deeds ‘of the illustrious … captain who, fighting in just indignation, had the revenge
of the cruel torments inflicted upon the Messiah’, or ‘the world transformed into new
forms, in competition with the poet from Sulmona [i.e. Ovid]’.62 This allusion refers
to the twofold project which Marino had fostered for some time (and eventually put
aside): the Gierusalemme distrutta and Le Trasformazioni in emulation of Tasso’s
Gerusalemme liberata and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (as well as Nonnus’ Dionysiaca)
respectively.63 The Adone is thus defined as an enterprise requiring less ambition and
less inspirational vigour than those demanded of a proper epic poem, and the topical
declaration of modesty is based on the assumption that the poet’s ‘rough style cannot
afford that much’, and that he will therefore confine himself to ‘singing of Adonis and
the Cyprian goddess’.64 Another noteworthy passage occurs at Ad. 7.229–50, where
none other than Thalia – in her double role as one of the three Graces as well as the
Muse of pastoral poetry (as in Theoc. 16.107) – is assigned the task of singing a hymn
to Love.65 The tone of pastoral verses does not, however, chime with other equally
important passages such as the grandiloquent proem in praise of King Louis XIII,
for example, which, by virtue of its position, was not likely to escape the attention of
readers. Similarly at odds with any declaration of humility – however topical – is the
size of the poem itself.
Contradictions of this kind must have generated some anxiety in the man who took
upon himself the task of prefacing the poem’s first edition. Later in life, Jean Chapelain
wrote to Daniel Huet about the occasion that had prompted his preliminary ‘Discours’.
While Marino had thought an essay on the sister arts of poetry and painting might
have been an appropriate topic, Chapelain proposed instead to stress the uniquely
‘mixed’ nature of the poem – something that was also supposed to work as a buffer
against the foreseeable attacks of critics. According to Chapelain, Marino jumped for
joy from his chair and cried repeatedly ‘Oh, che bel motivo!’, giving Chapelain free
rein for his project.66
Chapelain’s ‘Discours’ is a strenuous dissection of the poem’s formal features, ably
conducted through a clever use of scholastic dialectics. It principally aims to vindicate
the legitimacy of the poem’s novelty in terms of its unusual combination of disparate
styles; besides, Marino’s adoption of the epic genre for an unwarlike subject is declared
suitable for a ‘poem of peace’ (‘Discours’, § 26).67 The stylistic inconsistencies of a
text so difficult to pigeonhole within the system of the genres persuaded Chapelain
to allude preemptively to the monstrous figure of Horace’s Art of Poetry (AP 1–5; cf.
‘Discours’, § 11–12). Then, having made a careful distinction between ‘natural’ and
‘unnatural’ novelty, he allowed for the possibility of moderate transgressions of the
received code. He concluded that Adone
is of a mixed character yet able to stand, as it is in its nature to be somewhat posed
between tragedy and comedy, the heroic [genre] and the romance; being charac-
terized by tones both grave and lofty (relevé) as regards characters and resolution,
as well as simple and humble (ravalé) in the actions leading up to the resolution
and in its detailed descriptions.68 (‘Discours’, § 39)
The observation that the poem is ‘posed between tragedy and comedy’ is a particu-
larly revealing one.69 An excellent supporting example is presented in Canto 5, ‘The
Tragedy’ (La tragedia), which refers to the story of Diana and Actaeon as staged by
Mercury and performed by actors before Venus and Adonis. As already mentioned,
the performance is preceded by the recollection of five other myths of similar content
64 Adonis
(Narcissus, Ganymede, Cyparissus, Hylas, Attis) which aims to alert Adonis to the
dangers of both love and hunting. The performance serves therefore an admonitory
purpose, akin to that of the inset episode of Atalanta and Hippomenes narrated by
Venus in Ov. Met. 10.543–707. This analogy is reinforced by the ineffectiveness of the
cautionary tales in both circumstances. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Adonis does not
heed Venus’ admonitions; in Marino’s poem, Adonis falls deeply asleep and misses
the ending of Actaeon’s tragic story, thus failing to draw any instructive lesson from
it (Ad. 5.149).
The presence of the ‘tragedy’ in Canto 5, however, serves more than one purpose.
The highest of genres is ostentatiously enacted in the canto’s title and the palpably
elaborate diction and rhetorical ornamentation; the performance of Diana and
Actaeon is even declared to adhere to the genre’s canonical length of five acts (Ad.
5.122–48).70 On the other hand, Marino introduces a device – that of Adonis falling
asleep – which threatens to turn tragedy into farce. Tragedy is thus simultaneously
displayed and denied. It may be interesting to note how readers responded to this
provocation. Many years after the poem had been published, Mme de Sévigné wrote
to Mme de Grignan about those episodes from the Adone that she considered worth
reading before any others, and claimed that ‘the canto of the comedy (comédie)
is admirable’.71 Comédie, rather than tragédie – a lapse both understandable and
instructive, so close had the two genres come to each other. Moreover, when one
considers the condition and role of its characters, the episode of Diana and Actaeon
is to the principal story of Venus and Adonis as a pars pro toto, insofar as the entire
poem is made to share the same ‘tragic’ status. By elevating the mythological idyll to
the highest rank in the hierarchy of genres, Marino was boldly trying to supersede
the hugely successful but double-edged notion of ‘tragicomedy’ which had become
popular since the publication of Battista Guarini’s Pastor fido (The Faithful Shepherd)
in the 1590s.72 There are also reasons to believe that the French context may have been
instrumental in encouraging such an audacious move. When Marino published his
Adone and had it prefaced by Chapelain in order to present it to the French public, he
had already spent eight years in Paris. Little is known about the influence exercised by
French authors over his work, and new lines of research are proposed in Chapter 5.73
In more general terms, however, sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France was
the place where the humble pastoral had reached the pinnacle of genre classification
through the elegant and flexible oxymoron of pastorale héroïque (or dramatique).74
Only in France could a prose roman pastoral such as Honoré d’Urfé’s Astrée (1607–27)
simultaneously enjoy resounding success and secure literary prestige and, in addition,
win the admiration of the poet Marino, who had been educated in the Italian cult of
the superiority of verse.75
Was Chapelain’s argument as successful in the long term as it was when it first
appeared? By appealing to and subtly arguing in favour of the double principle of
‘variety’ (diversité) and ‘marvel’ (merveille) governing Marino’s Adone (‘Discours’, §
75), the young French critic had tried his best. But as soon as readers had managed
to extricate themselves from Chapelain’s entangling web of reasoned distinctions and
exceptions, they came to the conclusion that the ‘Discours’ was meant to distract their
attention from, rather than elucidate, certain aspects of Marino’s poem. It is a fact that
the feeble links between the poem’s episodes, or rather tableaux, seriously endanger
the perception of the poem as a coherent whole. Narrative sequences do not generally
cross the boundaries of cantos but appear remarkably self-contained; in this respect,
Marino’s decision to assign a title to each canto is somehow suggestive of the fact that
idyll could attain the dignity of a heroic poem merely by the accumulation of (semi-)
independent narratives. It is not surprising that critics have frequently commented
unfavourably, stating that the narrative fragmentation affects the poem at its very
foundations and in its smallest components, with one critic famously charging the
Adone with being a poem composed from a succession of madrigals.76 Despite the
comparisons with Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata and Ariosto’s Orlando furioso that
Marino himself had suggested at some point,77 any similarity with those two poems
reveals itself as deceptive, for none of the typifying features of such poems are any
longer at play in the Adone – there is no narrative suspense technique used at the end
of cantos, no employment of entrelacement, no respect for stringent requisites dictated
by verisimilitude, no interplay between the text and the reader’s expectations other
than the exploitation of the ‘marvellous’ element in the new ‘baroque’ sense.78
The poem and the myth

It remains to be considered why Marino insisted on working with such a subject as
Venus and Adonis.
The issue is still under discussion, because the verdict on this question as
pronounced by the most authoritative Marino scholar has not been unanimously
accepted. When Giovanni Pozzi reflected on the actual significance of the myth in the
Adone, he declared himself reluctant to delve into ‘the thematic aspect typical of the
Adonis myth, namely the religious element implicit in the solar myth and the myth of
fertility’.79 This was a legitimate self-limitation, given the extent of Pozzi’s enterprise;
in his words one might even perceive a shade of impatience with what was at the time
of his writing – and perhaps still is – an exceedingly fashionable topic. On the other
hand, it would be difficult to regard the mythological component of the Adone as some
sort of inert ballast. As the following pages aim to show, the Adoniac myth of regen-
eration must have retained some importance in Marino’s eyes.
As Chapelain himself underlined (‘Discours’, § 124) and Pozzi confirmed, the
narrative timescale of the poem encompasses a whole year.80 It thus neatly overlaps
an entire seasonal cycle, and tallies with an allegorical interpretation of the story
as referring to the sun cult or the planting, growing and harvesting of wheat – two
separate interpretations of the Adonis myth that were often perceived as one.81 The
events of the story are related to the sequence within nature, and it is only a matter
of recognizing the relevant passages amidst the wealth of digressions that criss-cross
the main narrative. Adonis remains trapped underground ‘for the entire winter’ (Ad.
12.290.8),82 which in allegorical terms signifies his spending the winter months in the
underworld (or in the southern hemisphere). He rejoins Venus with the coming of
spring, so that the title of Canto 15, ‘The Return’, also works as an allegorical allusion.83
After Adonis’ death (Canto 18) and Venus’ lamentations (Canto 19), the funeral games
66 Adonis
of Canto 20 represent the ancient rites that commemorated the god and hastened
his return, which unfold over three days like the tridua of the ancient and Christian
tradition.84
The resolution of the story is the issue specifically under discussion here; it may
thus help briefly to recapitulate the events narrated within the poem’s final cantos. In
Canto 18, Adonis is killed by the boar, who, excited by the sight of Adonis’ bare upper
leg, hits him in the groin with one of his tusks in a maladroit attempt to kiss his thigh.
The boar is pardoned by Venus but breaks in repentance its own tusk against a rock,
in what looks like a deliberate act of self-emasculation (Ad. 18.241). The well-known
erotic implications of the myth, which Tarcagnota had already developed along the
same lines,85 are by Marino deliberately and audaciously contaminated with allusions
to the sacrifice of Christ. One example will suffice: Adonis’ wound, originally located
in the groin (galon, 18.97.4), is subsequently moved to the side by the use of the
very word, costato (18.152.7), which in Italian unambiguously designates the part
of the body where Christ received the spear thrust (Jn 19:34). Such daring cross-
contaminations have been masterfully illustrated by Pozzi in his commentary, and it
may be worth noting that they did not escape the attention of ecclesiastical censorship
when the Congregation of the Index was called upon to examine the poem after its
publication.86 In Canto 19, Venus is comforted by four deities recounting stories of
young heroes succumbing to premature death, only to be brought back to a new life by
virtue of wonderful transformations. This preludes the ritual incineration of Adonis’
remains. Prior to this, however, Venus has had the heart of her beloved extracted from
his lifeless body, sprinkled with nectar and turned into an anemone – a momentous
departure from the traditional myth, where Adonis’ blood, not his heart, is turned into
a flower. Venus then decrees that the funeral games must begin. Canto 20 is concerned
with ritual celebrations where mythical and contemporary historical characters share
the same narrative context.
There seems to be a widespread uncertainty querying the presence – let alone the
narrative function – of this final canto, which undoubtedly displays unique features
when compared to the rest of the poem. Tuzet hurriedly dismisses it at the end of an
otherwise detailed summary of the poem’s content.87 Pozzi calls it an après-poème, as if
it were a narratively unjustified coda.88 The succinct narration of the metamorphosis at
the end of Canto 19 seems to Pozzi a ‘rushed’ version of the Ovidian original, dictated
rather by Marino’s deference to the ancient source than by any genuine interest in
the significance of the transmutation. According to Pozzi, the metamorphosis ‘has
no bearing on the deeper significance of the story; the episode merely serves an
ornamental purpose’.89 Even the funeral games placed at the end of the poem look like
an oddity to Pozzi. There existed, he concedes, the authoritative example offered by
Book 23 in Homer’s Iliad, which, however, had had no imitators. Pozzi also insists that
the funeral games in Marino’s Adone are deprived of their natural prolongation and
outcome, the spring celebrations for the return of Adonis. This alleged omission would
thus be the ‘result of the metamorphosis that [Marino] had not accepted’.90 Once one
acknowledges that Marino rejected the centrality of metamorphosis as the guiding
principle of his ‘Ovidian’ poem, as Pozzi maintains, one ought also to acknowledge
that he had equally rejected the celebration of Adonis as a symbol of perpetual rebirth.
All the above points merit discussion, and the topos of the funeral games will
be dealt with first. The games provide the content and the title (‘The Spectacles’) of
Canto 20. It is not entirely true that the motif of the funeral games being situated
towards the end of a literary work was confined to the Iliad. The thoughts of a
Renaissance reader would have promptly echoed back to, for instance, Sannazaro’s
Arcadia. Pozzi was not unaware that when composing Canto 20, Marino had in mind
Chapter 11 of Sannazaro’s popular pastoral romance, but for some reason he did
not pursue the lead further.91 One should also note that, similarly to Adone 20, the
final book of Virgil’s Bucolics presents a combination of mythological and historical
characters.92
Another point that has already been raised but deserves closer scrutiny concerns
the central event of the games. This is the duel between the two young warriors,
Fiammadoro and Austria, who represent Louis XIII of France and his future wife
Anne of Austria.93 The duel is a fantastic and erotically charged dramatization of the
first, in fact quite pacific, encounter that took place between the two young princes
at the Franco-Spanish frontier in 1615, in anticipation of a double marriage that
would sanction a political alliance between the two powers.94 Marino devised the
scene in the grand manner of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, 3.21, where Clorinda’s
identity and stunning features are suddenly revealed to Tancredi, who had up to that
moment believed her to be a male knight. As Clorinda’s helm is struck and removed
by Tancredi’s spear, so also is Austria’s by the sword of her contender Fiammadoro, and
the blow reveals her unexpected feminine identity.
Ma, tolto il vel che ricopria la scena,
si scoverse il guerrier esser guerriera
e con le bionde chiome al’aura sparse
bella non men che bellicosa apparse.95 (Ad. 20.397.5–8)
But once the cloud that covered the scene has vanished, the male warrior is
revealed to be female, and with her fair hair scattered to the wind she looks as
beautiful as she is fierce.
Left dazzled and speechless at the sight of Austria’s beauty, Fiammadoro declares
himself vanquished by removing his helm and offering his throat to the enemy’s
sword. The effect of his self-revelation is equally astounding for both Austria and the
watching crowd.
Disse ed anch’ei restò, tolti gli schermi
dela cuffia di ferro, a capo ignudo
e parve un sol, qualor più luminosi
trae fuora i raggi in fosca nube ascosi. (Ad. 20.401.5–8)
He spoke, and having removed the protection of his iron helm he, too, remained
with his head uncovered, and there shone a sun, as when with brighter light its
beams pierce through a dark cloud.
Fiammadoro’s resemblance to the dead Adonis is such that Venus, who is presiding
over the games, cannot suppress her startled surprise:
68 Adonis
L’afflitta Citerea, quando il bel viso

si discoverse, ancorch’alquanto smorto,
arse a un punto e gelò, ché le fu aviso
di rivedere il caro Adon risorto.96 (Ad. 20.403.1–4)
Mournful Venus, as soon as his handsome though pale face was revealed, felt as if
she were burning and freezing alike, for she thought she was gazing on her dear
Adonis resurrected.
The fight is declared over and the two warriors are invited to reveal their identities. It
is at this juncture that readers realize they are confronted with not just one, but rather
two ‘Adones’. Both Fiammadoro and Austria share Adonis’ feature of supreme beauty,
and Fiammadoro even has an identical birthmark (Ad. 16.237 and 20.468). Austria
is made to recount how she once fought a boar at the same age as Adonis, with the
difference that she did so victoriously, even succeeding in saving a companion from
the beast’s wrath (20.438). Fiammadoro on the other hand narrates how his mother
Fiordigiglio (‘Fleur-de-lys’), sister to the King of France, was united in matrimony
with the King of England Morgano, regrettably affected by impotence; and how she
got impregnated by Mars after the god visited her in a dream (Ad. 20.444–53).97 On
discovering his wife’s ‘infidelity’, in a fit of wrath the jealous husband cuts her in twain
with his sword; he then realizes his misdeed, and lets himself fall on his own weapon,
while from the severed body of his spouse out comes baby Fiammadoro, who, collected
by one of his mother’s faithful servants, is returned to the court of France, where he
is raised as a member of the royal household (Ad. 20.454–71). Although narrated in
the guise of a chivalric romance, this is a patent rewriting of the Myrrha story, with
a typically blasphemous touch in the allusion to Fiammadoro’s heavenly origin (Ad.
20.451–2) parodizing Mary’s conception. While resembling Adonis in every respect,
both Fiammadoro and Austria possess in addition the energy and bravery required of
a real hero or heroine.98
Placed before an event like this, which represents an unprecedented innovation
– or rather extension – of the Adonis myth, the reader can only draw the following
conclusion. Not only has Adonis been revived in Fiammadoro and Austria but has
also been split, as it were, into two different entities, male and female. The event is
suggestive of those mythical stories where gods and demi-gods are imprisoned by
their inability to reproduce themselves and are in need of being dragged out of their
selfish, complacent state by an act of violence, usually entailing death by dismem-
berment (Orpheus, Dionysus, Osiris) or castration (Uranus, Attis). Likewise, Adonis
needs to experience his demise with similarly overt sexual overtones in order to
liberate his reproductive energies; like that of other ‘vitalistic’ figures, Adonis’ lot is
one of tragic and violent death leading to a revival which is both vigorous and fruitful.
In Marino’s poem, the separation of the distinctive sexual traits is an extraordinary
feature, yet far from unexpected, as it chimes with the traditional view of Adonis’
nature as typically twofold, indeed hermaphroditic.99 The protagonist’s androgynous
nature is stressed by Marino with almost obsessive insistence. The very combination of
Venus and Mercury as the tutors of Adonis for his journey of initiation would deserve
a separate and lengthy treatment, because it alludes to the two deities that begot
Hermaphroditus – as the combination of their Greek names, Hermes and Aphrodite,

is indeed meant to suggest – with further allusions to the astrological doctrines
that Marino had thoroughly investigated before embarking on his descriptions of
the cosmos in Cantos 10 and 11.100 Even by remaining within the confines of the
main story, however, the reader would find plenty of allusions to Adonis’ ambiguous
sexuality. He is repeatedly depicted by way of stereotypes and comparisons usually
employed for female behaviour of the most passive type (e.g. 3.126–7; 8.95.5–6) and
female beauty (16.187–94). When he is made prisoner by the sorceress Falsirena, he
is tellingly entrusted to a eunuch (12.286). Events lead him to cross-dress as a woman
(14.8–14) and be coveted by male suitors (14.24–33). He is explicitly accused of
having an effeminate nature (16.241–5). He eventually falls victim to the boar’s tusk
– an all-too-obvious phallic symbol – in what is clearly presented as a case of sexual
aggression.101
Now, by making the allegorical-historical and warlike personae of Fiammadoro
and Austria be perceived as a wondrous double resuscitation of the mythical and
unwarlike Adonis, Marino ingeniously managed to redirect a disengaged erotic idyll
towards a heroic celebration of the august French couple, with the intent of wishing
them a prolific union as well as a peaceful and prosperous reign. It must have been
a hurried solution largely dictated by necessity – an addition, or adjustment, devised
and inserted no earlier than the summer of 1620, when the strife between the King
and the Queen Mother had eventually ceased.102 Nevertheless, like all the other parts
of Marino’s poem, even this last-minute alteration was very carefully orchestrated and
polished. While appropriately stressing the martial nature of the two young princes,
Marino made a point of stating that love, rather than war, had ensured the transition
from the mythical world of Adonis to the world of historical reality, from the Golden
to the Iron Age. The point is conveyed through an able rephrasing of a famous
passage from the fifteenth idyll of Theocritus. There Adonis is said to be superior
to the greatest heroes because of his periodical return from the underworld, while
Agamemnon, Ajax, Hector, Patroclus and Pyrrhus the son of Achilles are denied such
a privilege (Theoc. 15.137–41). The Theocritean passage is evoked by Marino at the
culmination of the sequence of stories narrated in Canto 19, when Venus is consoled
for her loss and persuaded to proceed to the transformation of Adonis’ heart into an
anemone. The young people who tragically died for love – Hyacinthus, Pampinus,
Acis, Calamus and Carpus, Leander – are redeemed by their being transformed into
forms of vegetal life destined to a perpetual revival. The only exception is Achilles,
the victim not of love but of war. His story is narrated by his mother Thetis and ends
with the mourning for her son and the entire humankind, for whom no revival is
possible.103
Pur col nov’anno il fiore e la verdura
dele bellezze sue fa novo acquisto;
ma l’uom poi che la vita un tratto perde,
non rinasce più mai, né si rinverde. (Ad. 19.325.5–8)
Yet in the new year flowers and verdure gain their beauty back; but man, once he
has lost his life, will never be born again, nor will revive.
70 Adonis
It is a passage fraught with literary reminiscences – besides Theocritus, one perceives

broader echoes of ps.-Moschus, Catullus, Horace and Tasso.104 These authors all stress
the same event: the exclusion of the noblest creature from the cyclic revival of nature,
whereas the much humbler vegetal world is blessed with the prerogative of a discon-
tinuous yet perennial alternation of life and death. Symbolically transformed into the
modest anemone, Adonis ‘the non-hero’ can now return from the dead, and reappear
in the duplicated and ‘improved’ guise of Fiammadoro and Austria.
From myth to contemporary chronicle

Marino’s complex reinvention of the Adonis myth would require a much longer
discussion than is possible here. However, for one last unresolved issue an answer
can tentatively be offered: why does the anemone proceed from the metamorphosis
of Adonis’ heart, and not from that of his blood as in Ov. Met. 10.728–39 and the
remainder of the tradition?105 No matter how ‘rushed’ the metamorphosis may be,
such a deviation from the traditional story cannot be of marginal importance. Before
considering its political significance, a word or two should be spent on the literary
models that inspired it.
Innovation, in Marino’s works, is usually the product of source hybridization.
A rapid look at the mythographic tradition permits one to identify his source with
reasonable confidence. The metamorphosis of the heart is a unique, and therefore
distinctive, element of the Dionysian myth – more specifically, of the Orphic myth
of Dionysus Zagreus, arguably the most recondite and extravagant component of the
entire Dionysian saga. It may indeed have received disproportionate attention,106 while
however continuing to genuinely puzzle authoritative scholars (‘What does his heart
represent?’ is one of the questions posed by M. L. West in his work on the Orphic
poems).107 Late Renaissance and early Baroque authors (such as Marino) had an eye
for quirky mythological characters, and Dionysus Zagreus did indeed catch their
attention. Sources describe him as the infant son of Zeus and Persephone who, at the
instigation of jealous Hera, was torn to pieces and devoured by the Titans. Their fury
was such that only his heart could be rescued by Pallas Athena and delivered to Zeus,
who implanted it in his thigh (or swallowed it, according to a variant of the myth), so
that Dionysus could experience a second gestation and a second birth.108
Marino knew the story. In his poem he referred to it twice: once when he wrote of
Dionysus as ‘a strange and wonderful child, who was conceived once and born twice’,
and again as ‘he who came to the world of two wombs’.109 Natale Conti’s Mythologia
provided ample information about the episode, and Hyginus and several Church
apologists may have offered further useful elements.110 But it was, above all, Nonnus’
Dionysiaca that provided a syncretistic and multifarious picture of the entire saga,
encompassing and absorbing all the myths associated with Dionysus regardless of their
ethnic or geographic origins. First edited by Gerhart Falkenburg in 1569, Nonnus’
text had acquired great popularity thanks to the bilingual edition (Greek and Latin)
provided by Eilhard Lubin in 1605, subsequently included in the great collection of
Greek epic poets published at Geneva in 1606.111 Within this work, Dionysus Zagreus
is celebrated as the son of Zeus and Persephone, once killed and dismembered by
the Titans, then reborn of Zeus and Semele – thus as an earlier manifestation of
the god. The murder is narrated in Book 6 and is repeatedly mentioned or alluded
to throughout this poem, and the detail of the heart appears at Dion. 24.47–9112 – a
quick and presumably irrelevant reference for most readers; not however for eagle-
eyed Marino, who extensively read and used Nonnus’ poem as a virtually boundless
repository of mythological lore. The ‘fishing out’ of such a curious detail illustrates
better than any other example what Marino meant when he claimed that in the sea
where he found his catch nobody else was in the habit of sailing.113
A conflation of the two myths was favoured by a long list of mutual affinities. Both
Adonis and Dionysus are heroes in the proper sense of the term – that is, they are
believed to be in possession of a human as well as a divine nature. Both are hunters,
but also linked to the world of vegetation and crops (Dionysus to the cultivation of the
vine, Adonis to wheat); as such, they are the objects of cult for their periodic ‘death’
and ‘revival’ in tune with the cycle of the seasons.114 Both are the issue of incestuous
love, their mothers dying at the point of, or even before giving birth, and so the
theme of a death that generates life is, in both cases, emphatically stressed. At certain
stages in their lives they are both raised to the regal throne.115 Both are characterized
by pronounced sexual ambiguity.116 According to various syncretistic doctrines,
both their names are mere variants for designating the solar divinity.117 Athenaeus,
quoting from Plato Comicus’ lost Adonis, declared the eponymous character a lover
of both Venus and Dionysus (Deipn. 10.456a-b).118 Probus, quoting Philostephanus of
Cyrene’s Quaestiones poeticae (in Buc. 10.18), wrote that Adonis was said to be born of
Zeus without female intervention – indeed like Dionysus, or Athena. In a widely read
and authoritative source such as Plutarch’s Table Talk, Adonis is described as either
Dionysus’ lover or as Dionysus himself – an identity which one of the interlocutors
extends to the god of the Jews, Jehovah (Symp. 4.5–6, in Mor. 671B–D).
What is the ultimate significance and purpose of celebrating a vigorously regen-
erated life that proclaims its triumph over death? The metamorphosis of Adonis’
heart and Adonis’ reappearance as Fiammadoro (and Austria) have been interpreted
in several different ways: as a promise of a better future for the whole of mankind,
as suggested by Francesco Guardiani, who stressed similarities with the sacrifice of
Christ;119 or as a meta-literary symbol for Marino’s own transformation of the heroic
genre, as proposed by Cherchi.120 But there should be no doubt as to the fact that any
final additions to the plot were primarily inspired by the need to gratify the royal
dedicatees, and in some way to make the tale of Adonis suggestive of the dynasty it
purported to celebrate. Certainly, the rape of an effeminate adolescent by a wild boar
does not necessarily seem the most proper way of celebrating a royal lineage, and
Marino must have been well aware of this. On the other hand, the myth of regeneration
suited his intentions perfectly. The principle of economy ruling all last-minute altera-
tions, in literary works as well as in any other human activity, required of him that he
highlighted at least those parts and passages in the book that would be likely to catch
the eye of time-pressed (or bored) royal patrons, such as the title page, the dedicatory
epistle, the proem and the epilogue. Some of the elements characterizing these crucial
loci have already been noted. To these, one might further add the praise lavished in
72 Adonis
the proem on ‘the great Louis’, declared superior to ‘Adonis himself … in beauty and
dazzling splendour’ (Ad. 1.5.1–2) – a topical trait of the celebration of sovereigns in
early modern political discourse.121 Moreover, fond as he was of artful contrasts and
provocative oxymora, Marino knew how to balance the disparate ingredients of his
concoctions. To this end he introduced in the dedicatory letter to the Queen Mother a
flattering comparison between the young Louis and the figure of Hercules – the tradi-
tional hero of French royal eulogies, and an ‘anti-Adonis’ figure if any.122
One wonders, at this stage, whether further aspects of the Adone may invite
allegorical interpretation with a political slant. Would it be legitimate, for instance,
to perceive in Adonis’ piercing to death by the boar an allusion to the assassination
of Henry IV, who had fallen under Ravaillac’s dagger on 14 May 1610? The legend
of the fiery but good-natured Gascon king – also a daring hunter – was beginning
to emerge in France during those very years. In Marino’s Adone, the praise of Henry
is the necessary premise to the glory of Louis, and the grateful memory of the slain
king contributes to the exaltation of the widowed Queen Maria, wife and mother of
heroic sovereigns (Ad. 11.147–51, 20.492–3). Even if the imaginative association of
the Adoniac myth with a political message of burning urgency had been discovered by
Marino at the eleventh hour, it turned out to be a most timely invention.
5
Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (ii):

The king’s poem
The previous chapter tentatively outlined the way in which the uneventful story of
Venus and Adonis achieved an epic scale in Marino’s Adone; the changing perception
of mythological tradition and the evolution of literary genres were given priority over
all other arguments. The purpose of the present chapter is to attempt to elucidate the
relationship of the poem’s subject with the context in which the poem was completed
and where decisive support for its publication was obtained. More specifically, the
myth of Adonis as treated by Marino will be examined in the light of a twofold
problem which vexed the troubled French court during the second and third decades
of the seventeenth century: the transmission of regal power and the achievement of a
successful peace policy. These questions have, surprisingly, been neglected until now,
despite a number of clues that might have invited and indeed recommended closer
attention.
Such neglect is in part explicable. The Italian element in early seventeenth-century
France has until recently been perceived as an isolated anomaly, impervious to external
influence and circumscribable both in time (the period of Concini’s hegemony,
1610–17) and space (the Italianate circle of Maria de’ Medici). Such a perception is
in many respects the result of radical ‘de-Italianization’ conducted by the anti-Italian
party in France during the late 1610s and the early 1620s. Marino’s experience of France
also seemed to conform to the estrangement, real or to some extent only presumed,
of the Italian community. To be sure, Marino exercised a remarkable influence on an
entire generation of young French poets, and this has always been widely acknowl-
edged. Conversely, the extent of his interest in the French literary scene has never
been properly assessed. That French sources were well within Marino’s horizon has
been shown repeatedly and convincingly.1 More, however, needs to be done in this
area of Marino studies, as recent contributions show. The courtly and political pieces
of Marino’s French period, such as Il Tempio, the Epitalami and, above all, La sferza,
reveal the extent of his involvement in both French political affairs and with the local
ecclesiastical authorities.2 Similarly, certain institutional figures of that period have
gradually been given the attention they deserve. Among these, the case of Maria de’
Medici is prominent. For forty-two successive years Queen, Queen Dowager, Queen
Regent and Queen Mother of France, she was clearly more than merely the Florentine
wife and widow of Henry IV, as hostile contemporary polemicists would have her
74 Adonis
portrayed.3 Even the controversial personalities of the Marshal of France, Concino

Concini, and – to a lesser extent – his wife, Leonora Dori Galigai, have benefited from
critical reassessment.4 At all events, the dark legend of that couple’s private rule, as
divulged by contemporary pamphleteers, can no longer be taken at face value. It is
perhaps worth recalling in this context that Cardinal Richelieu, an exceptionally well-
informed witness of events as well as a former protégé of Concini, gave in his Mémoires
an insightful portrait of his sometime benefactor. Moved by a mixture of balanced
realism and posthumous pietas, Richelieu conceded that Concini might have amassed
great fortunes when in a position of almost absolute dominance, yet ‘he did hardly
benefit his relatives or compatriots, so that all his natural feelings were suffocated by
those he fostered for France’ – a statement which appears at least in part confirmed
by Concini’s lavish and undifferentiated patronage. Nor did Richelieu ignore the
exasperation caused by the Marshal’s haughty deportment, typical – as he noted – of
his Italian and Florentine descent, yet considerably less charlatan-like than the hostile
environment was wont to ascribe to other members of Concini’s nation. Richelieu also
commented favourably on Concini’s enterprising spirit and physical courage, claiming
that he ‘had as his principal goal that of elevating his own status to the greatest
attainable heights by a gentleman, while his second aspiration was the greatness of the
King and the State, and his third ambition the purposeful weakening of the kingdom’s
nobility’.5 At the pinnacle of his career, Richelieu credited his long-dead and disgraced
patron with the same ambitious goals he himself had come to pursue.6
The poem and the court

Once Marino had settled in Paris, the publication of his Adone depended on the
support of the French court. This is a point that can never be sufficiently stressed.
Marino may not have felt particularly inclined to attend courtly gatherings, as he
rather fostered an aspiration to a private, gentleman-like enjoyment of literary and
artistic beauties.7 Nevertheless, his safe position at court must necessarily have relied
on a solid network of French patrons and allies. In March 1622, he was even able to
report the very words spoken by Louis XIII to the Superintendent of Finances, Henri
de Schomberg, allegedly pronounced in his very presence while Schomberg was
conducting an austere spending review: ‘Cavalier Marino is not to be touched. See to
it that he is always abundantly remunerated.’8
When Concini was murdered and Maria de’ Medici banished from the court in the
spring of 1617, Marino’s hopes for a prompt conclusion to his poem’s vicissitudes were
shattered beyond imagination. The poem itself remained in the press for a number of
years awaiting completion, for printing had apparently begun as early as 1616, when a
dedication to Concini was planned.9 Then, on 24 April 1617, Concini fell. Two months
later, Marino lamented that the printing had been interrupted halfway and the money
granted for the purpose commandeered or ‘frozen’.
I must say I have lost a considerable amount of gold formerly deposited on my
behalf by the Marshal of unhappy memory [i.e. Concini] for the printing of my
Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (ii): The king’s poem 75
Adone, which had already been half accomplished. Yet the Queen Mother wants
me to continue with the printing, and promises that I shall receive compensation
for it.10
Printing resumed, but was again interrupted at various later stages until its completion
in April 1623.11 The variant readings, chaotic pagination and irregular signature
sequence in most extant copies of the first Parisian edition must result from the ups
and downs of its exceedingly long gestation. Together these inconsistencies offer an
eloquent picture of what a literary work might encounter when the original printer
died and those who had successively promised their patronage were either murdered
(Concini), promoted to the role of royal favourite and Constable of France, then
prematurely removed by death (Luynes), or engaged in fighting each other (Louis XIII
and Maria de’ Medici).12
For Marino, changing patrons became a complex business. It is evident that it was
not a simple matter of replacing the title page or the dedicatory letter in the printer’s
workshop by way of last-minute intervention.13 French political events had a direct
bearing on the actual writing-up and revision of the poem. In a letter of the second
half of July 1620, Marino announced to an Italian correspondent that all of France was
at war,14 and that at such an uncertain time he had decided to suspend his revision
work in expectation of a clearer outcome.
[I]f things were to turn sour for certain personages currently in favour and power,
I would be forced to change a good number of particular circumstances in my
book.15
The poem’s leading theme and purpose as proclaimed by Chapelain – Adone as ‘the
poem of peace’ – was also, inevitably, the prime requisite for its publication. Likewise,
it is easy to imagine that, if things had taken a different turn, the narration of French
events as given at Ad. 10.204–23 (covering the years 1615–16), 10.278–81 (1619–20),
and 20.504–14 (1621–2), would now read quite differently.16
According to Marino’s testimony as recalled above, in 1617 half of the version
that should have been offered to Concini had already been printed. If this claim is
true (and there are no serious reasons to believe why it should not be), one ought
to ask whether, and to what extent, the text of the earlier version was retained and
included in the final draft. Economic interest and common practice would dictate
that the original printed sheets be retained, at least insofar as was practicable.17 It
follows that further substantial interventions in the text of the poem may have been
limited to those portions still in manuscript form or in the process of being drafted;
on the other hand, any sizeable changes to the already printed or finished parts had
to be introduced in the form of added episodes or digressions. By overlapping with
the process of composition and general revision, the protracted printing of the text
was inevitably affected by interruptions and adjustments; in addition, the author was
forced to accept structural compromises more often than he might probably have
wished. It is not inappropriate to suggest that, during the years immediately preceding
publication, Marino must have worked on the text of his poem in the same way as
someone trying to make the scattered pieces of a jigsaw fit. The pieces themselves were
76 Adonis
of a very disparate nature: portions of printed text, manuscript drafts at various stages
of elaboration, episodes and descriptions (as well as sections borrowed from other
works) awaiting to be inserted, connecting passages, all in need of coalescing into a
homogeneous narration – indeed, the kind of ‘patchwork skirt’ Marino himself had
once devised as a fit description for his poem.18
As is well known, the manual operation of the early printing press made it possible
to halt and resume the printing at virtually every stage of the typographical process.
Considering the inordinate amount of time during which the poem remained in the
press – over six years, if the aborted version for Concini is taken into account – it is
only natural that those parts that had been printed first may have incurred the need
of revision at a later stage. At that point, changes could either be made by resorting to
extraordinary solutions, or simply be rejected as unfeasible. An example of the latter
eventuality, when the author declared himself unable to add a digression because the
canto in question had already been printed and the text could no longer be altered (the
passage in question being Ad. 7.141–8), is well known to Marino scholars; it occurs in
his letter of March 1621, a good two years before the poem was published.19 Another
passage (Ad. 10.278–81), positioned near the middle of the poem, makes reference to
a series of events that had occurred over the period between 1619 and October 1620;
it follows that the section in question must have been composed and printed no earlier
than the autumn of 1620. This passage looks strangely separated from an earlier one
in the same canto, where the political and military events for the period 1615–16 are
narrated (Ad. 10.204–23), so that Ad. 10.278–81 reads like an update inserted at the
eleventh hour. The same may be said of Ad. 11.89–90, a post-1617 insertion, in which
Luynes is revered as the new favourite – in effect, stanza 90 is a dexterous reformu-
lation of a stanza from the primitive manuscript version, in which Concini, instead,
had been praised.20
At this point, special consideration should be given to the question as to whether,
and how far, Marino expected his readers to approach his Adonis story – or at least
some parts of it – as an allegorical representation of, or allusion to, contemporary
political events. A comparison with John Barclay’s Latin novel Argenis (1621),
published in Paris at around the same time as Marino’s Adone, can be instructive
within this context. Argenis is a political allegory of the French Wars of Religion
of the last two decades of the sixteenth century. It is constructed as a roman à clef
and its characters are made to impersonate the main protagonists of the European
political scene of the time, all recognizable through names ingeniously and more or
less transparently recast as anagrams; yet, as has been correctly observed, ‘the author
himself warned his readers against too narrow a historical explanation of his heroes’.21
Political allegories in literary works, even in such literary works as Argenis whose plots
aim to reflect a clearly identifiable political situation, are often of a rather diffuse and
ambiguous nature. All differences considered, this also holds good for Adone, with the
further proviso that any allusive intent of a political nature was introduced into the text
quite late in the day, when most of the poem had already been shaped. An increasing
anxiety with regard to the poem’s ability to reflect the contemporary balancing of
powers in France becomes clear, as has been seen, in Marino’s correspondence from
the years 1619–23; it has also been noted that those parts which directly or indirectly
refer to the celebration of the French monarchy, and more specifically to Louis XIII
and Maria de’ Medici, are all – with the exception of a handful of stanzas at Ad.
10.278–81 – situated in such ‘peripheral’ positions as the title page, the dedicatory
epistle, the proem (Canto 1) and the epilogue (Cantos 19 and 20). These parts were
presumably devised and set for the press last, as the state of play they reflect implies
the rapprochement which occurred in August 1620 between the king and his mother.
This would tally with what is known about the setting and printing of early modern
books, which ordinarily started with the central sheets and quires and progressed in
opposite directions towards both ends. In this respect, it is worth noting that shortly
before Easter Sunday 1623, which fell on April 16, Marino was sending one of his
correspondents a printed copy of the entire poem ‘lacking’, as he tellingly wrote in the
accompanying letter, ‘two residual small quires of five [bifolia each,] comprising the
end of the Twentieth Canto and the dedicatory letter to the Queen Mother’. These were
the volume’s last and first quires respectively, which Marino was evidently retaining
for the purpose of last-minute adjustments.22 An even later addition is constituted by
Ad. 6.134–6, included in the ‘Errata corrige’ after the printing had ended. In the three
added stanzas, Venus praises the French lily and laments that it will be stained with
blood, and will thus share the same fate as the stained rose – a clear allusion, by way
of an episode from the Adoniac saga, to the troubles of France.23
Binet’s Adonis and Le Breton’s Adonis

Was Marino preceded by any French poets who utilized the figure of Adonis to
celebrate and/or commemorate French kings? If so, would he have been aware of the
existence of such works?
Marino’s famous and somewhat condescending declaration of his inability to
master the French language occurs in a famous letter from Paris dated 1615. ‘I have
devoted myself entirely,’ he wrote, ‘to the [study of the] French tongue, of which I
haven’t however been able to learn more than yes and no.’24 No reader has ever taken
this comment seriously: it sounds as disingenuous as it is implausible, occurring, as
it does, within the context of a letter entirely attuned to the jocular register. Yet the
doubt remains as to whether such a declaration may somehow have discouraged more
detailed investigations in a field that remains, in many respects, uncharted territory for
Marino scholars.25 Marino undoubtedly cherished a select number of French authors,
but, apart from a handful of names, not much is to be gained from his declarations
on the matter.
Charles Binet’s (1553–1600) greatest claim to fame today is to have been a disciple
and the first biographer of Ronsard; his name has already been mentioned in Chapter
2 in relation to the eclogue Adonis, ou le Trespas du Roy Charles IX, which appeared
in print in 1575.26 The eclogue forms part of a slim volume published for the joint
celebration of King Henry III’s coronation and marriage with Louise de Lorraine, both
events having taken place in the February of that year. The booklet itself is composed
of three main sections (with the addition of a few shorter laudatory poems not taken
into account at present): (1) Merveilleuse Rencontre sur les noms tournez du Roy et de
78 Adonis
Figure 2 C. Binet, Merveilleuse rencontre… Adonis… Les Daufins (Paris: Fédéric

Morel, 1575). Title page (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale – BnF)
la Royne (A Wonderful Conjuncture on the Rearranged Names of the King and Queen);
(2) Adonis, ou le Trespas du Roy Charles IX, Eglogue de Chasse (Adonis, or the Death
of King Charles IX, a Hunting Eclogue); (3) Les Daufins, ou le Retour du Roy, Eglogue
Marine (The Dolphins, or the Return of the King, a Marine Eclogue) [Fig. 2].27 The first
section is typically inspired by the French passion for anagrams and offers a combined
rearrangement (‘les noms tournez’) of the names ‘Henric de Vallois’ and ‘Louise de
Austrasie’ into the wishful sentence ‘Le lys reverdira sous cet hoeur d’aliance’ (‘the
fleur-de-lys will revive at this time of alliance’, p. 5). The eclogue Adonis follows, in
which the death of Henry’s elder brother and former King of France, Charles IX is
lamented. In the third principal section, entitled Les Daufins, ou le Retour du Roy, the
poet announces his intention to leave the woods now that ‘Adonis has deserted the
forests’ (‘depuis qu’Adonis les forests a laissé’, p. 20), and goes on to celebrate Henry
III as the new King of France subsequent to his return from the kingdom of Poland,
which he had occupied for the previous two years.28
It would be difficult to prove if Marino ever held a copy of this booklet in his
hand, as there are no compelling points of contact between his poem and Binet’s
eclogue. And yet one cannot fail to remark a series of interesting parallels. First, there
is an explicit reference to the late king as a dead Adonis, and the piece is dedicated
to a former prominent Italian member of Caterina de’ Medici’s court, the Marshal
of France, Albert de Gondy (Alberto Gondi, 1522–1602). Secondly, ‘the return’ of
‘the dolphins’ (Les Daufins) is an allegory of dynastic continuity in the genre of the
maritime eclogue, overtly allusive to Italian and indeed Neapolitan models (one of
the three nymphs singing the final chorus is revealingly designated as ‘Parthenope’).29
Thirdly, and finally, the lamentations over the king’s death constitute the premise of
the joyful celebrations for the coronation and marriage of his legitimate successor of
the same Valois blood. Once again, the emphasis is on the transmission of power – a
most sensitive topic in all ages, but made particularly acute by the turbulent political
climate of the 1570s, with the houses of Guise and Bourbon in competition with that
of Valois for the crown, in addition to the overall unsettled state of the kingdom in the
aftermath of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572).
A much more evident relationship, undetected until now, is that linking Marino’s
Adone to Gabriel Le Breton’s Adonis, a five-act tragedy performed before, and probably
written for, Charles IX [Fig. 3].30 It is unclear in which year Le Breton’s play was first
printed – presumably in 1579; but it must have achieved some degree of popularity,
as it was reissued several times (with extensive variants particularly in 1597) and
ultimately at Rouen in 1611, by which date its author had probably been dead for over
ten years.31 The 1611 edition is a virtually unchanged reprint of the 1597 edition and
includes the original dedicatory letter by François d’Amboise, dated Paris, 3 November
1578. In it, Amboise states that Le Breton’s Adonis had been first performed at court
several years before and had been much appreciated by Charles IX who had enjoyed
being identified with the protagonist. Subsequently the piece had a tendency to be
perceived as an intimation of the king’s untimely death.32 The reappearance of Le
Breton’s Adonis in 1611 may have depended on a number of reasons, but it is tempting
to assume that the tragic assassination of Henry IV, which occurred on 14 May 1610,
may have prompted it in the first place – as will be discussed in the following pages.
80 Adonis
Figure 3 G. Le Breton, Adonis. Tragedie françoyse (Rouen: Raphaël du Petit Val,

1611). Title page (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale – BnF)
The first noticeable feature of Le Breton’s Adonis is its literary status: a pastoral
drama ostentatiously elevated to the dignity of a tragic play. An undisputable nobility
of tone pervades the text, regardless of the quality of the final result.33 The suggestion
tentatively made in Chapter 4, that the French notion of a pastorale héroïque may
have stimulated Marino to expand his Adonis idyll into a veritable poem (as well as
ambitiously to entitle Canto 5 ‘The Tragedy’ as a suitable genre label for the ill-fated idyll
of Actaeon), can thus be presented here with the support of documentary evidence.34
Le Breton’s Adonis opens with Venus and Adonis as lovers (Act 1); it then shows
Mars and Diana planning their revenge on Adonis (Act 2). While Adonis is preparing
for the hunt, Cupid is punished for having meddled with his arrows, thus causing his
mother, Venus, to suffer the pangs of love (Act 3). The death of Adonis occurs off-stage
and is recounted by two hunters, Silvin and Montan (Act 4). The entire Act 5 is taken
up with a dialogue between ‘Venus’ and ‘Adonis’ shade’ (‘L’ombre d’Adonis’).
This brief account of the plot is sufficient to highlight some striking points of
resemblance with Marino’s poem. The episode of Venus punishing Cupid is borrowed
by Marino from Le Breton (Adonis, 513–82) but positioned right at the beginning of
the action (Ad. 1.11–19). Le Breton’s final act, on the other hand, with its dialogue
between Venus and ‘Adonis’ shade’ after the tale’s main action is concluded, goes a
certain length towards explaining the presence of Marino’s final canto (the après-
poème, in Pozzi’s own words), which has often puzzled critics.35 A more detailed
analysis shows the full extent of Le Breton’s influence on Marino’s poem. The tirades of
Mars (an innovation introduced by Ronsard, Adonis, 125–72), Diana and Venus in Le
Breton’s Adonis (175–273, 294–351 and 693–762, 787–852) are readapted by Marino
at Ad. 18.23–31, 33–41 and 19.154–62, 176–84 respectively – in part kept as direct
speeches performed by those same deities, in part reallocated to other characters. For
instance, the lamentation for the lot of mankind unfavourably compared with that of
plants, which elaborates in both texts on a well-known Theocritean passage (15.137–
41), is assigned to Venus by Le Breton (Adonis, 789–94 ‘Etrange et dure loi…’, ‘A law
both strange and harsh…’), and to Thetis by Marino (Ad. 19.325 ‘Strana legge…’).
A closer comparison of Marino’s Adone with Le Breton’s Adonis confirms certain
established habits of the Italian poet, such as his combined use of both ancient and
modern sources, this combination resulting in a refined intarsia effect.36 A good
example is offered by the description of the solitary and sombre valley inhabited by
the boar (Ad. 18.67–71). The Ovidian source here is not the Adonis episode, but rather
that of Meleager approaching the Calydonian boar.
Concava vallis erat, quo se demittere rivi
Assuerant pluvialis aquae; tenet ima lacunae
Lenta salix ulvaeque leves iuncique palustres
Viminaque et longa parvae sub harundine cannae.
Hinc aper excitus medios violentus in hostes
Fertur, ut excussis elisi nubibus ignes. (Met. 8.334–9)
There was a deep valley that collected streams of rainwater, falling near it: and it
held, in its depths, pliant willows, smooth sedges, and marsh grasses, and osiers
and tall bulrushes, above the lowly reeds. The boar was roused from there, and
82 Adonis
made a violent charge into the midst of its enemies, like lightning forced from
colliding clouds. (tr. A. S. Kline)
Le Breton produced an emphatic rephrasing of Ovid’s gloomy description of the boar’s
abode, aided by possible borrowing from Macrobius (‘for the unkempt and rude boar
delights in damp, muddy, and frosty places’, Sat. 1.21.4).37
Bien avant dans le bois un vallon écarté,
Solitaire, mussard, rempli d’obscurité,
Où des mois refroidis les ravines s’étanchent,
Nourrit de son limon les saules qui se penchent,
Le peuplier herculin, les cannes et roseaux,
Et couve paresseux la fange de ces eaux.
De là sort un sanglier, un sanglier qui demeure
Ronflant dedans mes yeux jusque à temps que je meure.
Le rocher garamant ni le sablon mortel
Des arabes déserts n’enfante rien de tel.38 (Adonis, 621–30)
Deep in the wood, where in the winter months the gullies are stagnant, a remote,
solitary, hidden and dark dale nourishes with its silt the pliant willows, the
Herculean poplar, the reed, sluggishly brooding over its miry waters. [Now] a
boar emerges from it, a snorting boar which will linger before my eyes until I die.
Neither the Garamantian rock, nor the deadly sands of the Arabian deserts give
birth to anything like it.
And this is Marino’s version, typical in its spectacular lavishness of detail:
Tra duo colli ch’al sol volgon le spalle
dense di pruni e di fioretti ignude,
nel cupo sen d’una profonda valle
giace un vallon che forma ha di palude;
e senon quanto ha solo un picciol calle
scagliosa selce in ogni parte il chiude.
Quel macigno che’l cerchia alpestro ed erto
lascia sol, bench’angusto, un varco aperto.
Quivi nel mezzo, di funeste fronde
ombreggiato pertutto, un lago stagna,
che con livido umor di putrid’onde
sempre sterile e sozzo il sasso bagna.
Non ha dintorno ale spinose sponde,
perché scoscese son, molta campagna,
ma breve piazza insu’l sentier si scerne,
tutta di greppi cinta e di caverne.
…
Quest’è l’albergo, del cinghial non dico,
ma del’ira del ciel che lo produsse.
Taccia pur Calidonia il grido antico

del flagello crudel che la distrusse.
L’arabo inculto o il garamanto aprico
mostro non ebbe mai ch’egual gli fusse.
Qui s’accovaccia e dentro l’acqua nera
stassi attuffata la solinga fiera.
Nel pantan che circonda un mezzo miglio
tra siringhe palustri il ventre adagia.
Splende nel fosco e minaccioso ciglio
d’un orribile ardor luce malvagia. (Ad. 18.67–71.1–4)
[67] Amidst two hills that show their back to the sun, dense with thorns and
barren with flowers, in the dark bosom of a deep valley, there lies a low swamp,
all surrounded by craggy rocks: only a narrow path leaves a narrow access to that
steep, walled circle of boulders. [68] There in the midst lies a stagnant pond under
the shadow of sombre branches, its murky, foul waters lapping the sterile and
filthy shores. Hardly any flatland around its thorn-covered and steep shores – only
a small stretch beside the path, surrounded by slopes and caves… [70] This is the
abode of the boar, nay, of the wrath of Heaven that begot him. Let Calydon be
mute now about the ancient fame of the cruel scourge that afflicted her. The uncul-
tivated Arab or the sun-scorched Garamant never saw the like. There crouches the
solitary beast, immersed in the dark water [71.1–4] amidst the marshy reeds, its
belly sunk in the swamp that stretches for half a mile around. A horrid gleam of
cruel light shines in its frowned and threatening eye.
Marino topically invites the reader to the agonistic competition between Ovid and
himself: ‘Let Calydon be mute now…’ (Ad. 18.70.3–4).39 Yet, his version is also silently
but patently in debt to Le Breton’s Adonis: see the double reference to the ‘unculti-
vated Arab’ (‘arabo inculto’) and the ‘sun-scorched Garamant’ (‘garamanto aprico’),
both absent in the Ovidian text and both transparent variations on Le Breton’s
‘Garamantian rock’ (‘rocher garamant’) and ‘deadly sands of the Arabian deserts’ (‘le
sablon mortel / Des arabes déserts’).
Further instances could be discussed, but the emerging picture is sufficiently clear
to establish the importance of Le Breton’s Adonis in this context. With the exception
of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the French poet’s work appears to be second to none in its
inspirational role for the Neapolitan poet, and is at least as influential as the sixteenth-
century vernacular re-elaborations of the Ovidian tale by Italian authors. Moreover,
the fact that Le Breton’s text showcased a connection between the myth of Adonis
and the vicissitudes of a former French king could only be regarded by Marino, given
the new political climate, as added support to the task he was trying to accomplish.
The French text left perceptible traces in those sections of Marino’s poem – Cantos 1,
2, and 18–20 – that he developed last. As such, Le Breton’s Adonis can claim to have
played a considerable role in shaping Marino’s Adone when that composition was
reaching its final stage.
84 Adonis
‘Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child’

As has been noted above, Le Breton’s Adonis was published again in 1611 in the
aftermath of another dynastic tragedy, the assassination of King Henry IV. On 14 May
1610, while his chariot was proceeding along the Parisian rue de Ferronnerie, Henry
IV was stabbed to death by François Ravaillac. The emotion stirred by the murder
was immense, both in France and in all Europe. A meticulous reconstruction is given
in Roland Mousnier’s The Assassination of Henry IV, which constitutes the necessary
point of departure for all future investigations of the event.40
Like the premature deaths of Henry II in 1559, of Charles IX in 1574 and of Henry
III in 1589, that of Henry IV left the French monarchy in a state of grave uncertainty
and vulnerability. More similarities with previous tragic events became rapidly
apparent. When Henry II unexpectedly died in a tournament in July 1559 and his
son François II followed him to the grave after reigning for just one-and-a-half years,
François’ younger brother Charles was proclaimed King of France in December 1560
and crowned, at the tender age of ten, at Reims in May 1561; for this reason he was
placed under the vigilant and – for the French – not easily forgettable guardianship of
his mother, Caterina de’ Medici, the Queen Regent. Almost forty years later, history
repeated itself. On the day following Henry IV’s murder, Louis XIII was proclaimed
King of France at the even tenderer age of eight and was placed under the control
of his mother, Maria de’ Medici, as Queen Regent. France was once again under
the pretended rule of a juvenile king, while a foreign female regent – and from the
same family as the detested Caterina – was in fact in charge. Little more was needed
to significantly trouble the slumbers of an entire generation. Many will have been
reminded of the ominous warning of Ecc. 10:16, ‘Woe to thee, O land, when thy king
is a child’.
What happened in the hours, and months, that followed Henry IV’s assassination
is relevant to a fuller understanding of Marino’s take on the myth of Adonis. Without
reference to such historical events, parts of his poem would be in danger of remaining
incomprehensible.
Following the opinion of her advisers, Maria de’ Medici hastily and deliberately
discarded all the time-honoured customs and ceremonies that regulated the transition
of power from one sovereign to his successor. Henry had only been dead for a few
hours when his eight-year-old son Louis was expedited to hold a lit de justice before
being officially proclaimed the new king, with the consent and in the presence of
the Queen Mother, who was simultaneously securing for herself the title of Queen
Regent.41 The perpetration of such an act was tantamount to a declaration that the
young Louis had seized power, both formally and effectively, under the aegis of his
mother’s regency. This was an unprecedented break with tradition. Ceremonial proce-
dures that governed the burial of deceased French kings and the proclamation of
their successors – encapsulated in the well-known formula ‘The king is dead, long live
the king!’ (Le roi est mort, vive le roi!) – entailed a much longer and more elaborate
sequence of progressive steps.42 Symbols of kingly rule were expected to remain with
the deceased sovereign, or rather with his effigy, for a number of days, to symbolize the
continuing presence of regal dignity beyond the death of its physical representative.
Meanwhile, the successor waited for his crowning and consecration, which would
bestow upon him the full status of a ruling monarch; up to and until that moment,
he remained ‘discreetly out of the public eye until the funeral was completed, and the
symbols of sovereignty continued to be affixed to the deceased king, particularly to
the effigy’.43 The majority of Renaissance scholars are familiar with one of the most
important books in their discipline, Ernst H. Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies,
where this complex issue is explored in light of the theoretical framework elaborated
upon by late medieval and early modern jurists.44
Now, all these conventions were brushed aside without hesitation by Maria. The
radical alteration of the ceremonial was principally designed to ensure the necessary
political and dynastic stability in the face of an impending void of power. It was also
timely for another reason: during that specific period, the Count of Soissons and the
Prince of Condé, Louis’ most dangerous rivals for the succession to the throne, were
not in Paris. Condé could have acceded to the throne if Maria’s marriage with Henry
had been declared null and void, making Louis a bastard – a possibility less remote
than one might think. When the Count and subsequently the Prince returned to
Paris, however, they found an already established situation, with Maria and her son
firmly in power.45 Thus although Maria’s move could be said to have been successful
both in the shorter as well as the longer term, in fact it left a long trail of discontent.
The extraordinary number of pamphlets published after 1610 which refer back to
Henry’s assassination show how shaky the foundations were upon which the regency
was balancing itself. In these publications, the murdered king features as the victim of
machinations perpetrated by occult forces aiming to obtain control of the kingdom.
The Jesuits were prime suspects since a former pupil of theirs, Jean de Chastel, had
made an attempt on Henry’s life in 1594 and caused the temporary expulsion of the
religious order from the French territories. A few years later, a prominent Spanish
Jesuit, Juan de Mariana, scandalously proclaimed the lawfulness of tyrannicide in his
De rege et regis institutione libri III (Three Books on Kings and the Office of Kingship,
1598).46 Unsurprisingly, Ravaillac, Henry’s assassin, was immediately portrayed as a
tool of Jesuitical conspiracies, even though his confession, extorted by torture, did
not reveal any evidence of his having had any dealings with the Society. The King of
Spain, Philip III and the Emperor Rudolph II, both members of the Habsburg family,
were further obvious suspects, due to the fact that Henry IV had continuously fought
the Spaniards as the principal supporters of the Catholic League, and was believed to
have been about to wage war against the Emperor at the very time of his assassination.
Then, when in the 1610s the Concinis acquired ascendancy at court with the support
of the Queen Regent (or rather l’italienne, in the words of her denigrators), it was the
turn of Italian courtiers to be identified as those who had profited most from Henry’s
removal – as if the deceased king had been the main obstacle between the resources
of the kingdom and their greed.
Imperilled by juridical impropriety and fierce political contrast, the concept of
dynastic continuity had to be emphasized by employing a new strategy. At that time,
the safest and most effective way of securing the throne for Louis XIII was to indis-
solubly associate his role with that of his father and predecessor. Hence, dynastic
propaganda found expression in a wealth of publications issued during the second
86 Adonis
decade of the seventeenth century – poems, orations, sermons and political pamphlets
in French, Latin and Italian. As Malherbe once observed to Peiresc, they seemed
to proliferate overnight like mushrooms.47 In this substantial body of literature,
father and son are persistently presented as one and the same person undergoing a
miraculous feat of death and resurgence, in line with the juridical principle that ‘royal
dignity never dies’ (dignitas non moritur).48 Both the deceased and new kings were
thus made the objects of simultaneous attention: while the former was mournfully
commemorated, the latter was celebrated with manifestations of joy.49 A number
of recurring themes can be gleaned from those double associations: death as the
necessary mournful stage before resurrection; frequent allusions to myths of self-
regeneration and occasionally to that of Adonis; Christological elements within the
narrative of Henry’s demise, including the fatal wound in the side and the pardoning
of the murderer; the depiction of Ravaillac as a savage beast; the theme of the victim’s
substantial identity with the successor, presented as his reincarnation; extensive use of
the symbol of the king’s heart.
All these themes are present, however sparsely and in varying guises, in Marino’s
Adone: death as the necessary stage before revival and regeneration (Ad. 18–20); the
Christological features of Adonis’ death (18.152, 179, 242–50); the pardoning of the
murderer represented by the savage boar (18.240); Fiammadoro – explicitly identified
as Louis XIII – in the semblance of a revived Adonis (20.403); the relevance given to
the heart of the victim (19.420). These themes were mostly inserted into the narrative
during the final stages of composition, when the need for Marino to give his tale a
celebratory and courtly twist had become a pressing concern.
‘The king never dies’

It was reported that, on hearing the news that the king, her husband, had been
murdered, Maria de’ Medici addressed the Chancellor Nicolas Brûlart de Sillery
saying: ‘Alas, the King is dead!’, to which Sillery allegedly replied: ‘Your Majesty will
excuse me: the kings never die in France’.50 The episode encapsulates the anguish and
the overall difficult state of affairs generated by the king’s death, as well as the confi-
dence that regal authority could not be shaken by what, in the grand scheme of things,
was considered a tragic but after all incidental occurrence.
The king’s almost immediate death after Ravaillac’s assault left a number of issues
unresolved. For the reputation of a sovereign who had cynically proclaimed Paris
‘well worth a Mass’, the fact of his dying without religious comforts represented
a problem.51 One thing had, however, been ascertained: Henry had played down
the effects of the stabbing by saying ‘It’s nothing’ (‘Ce n’est rien’) to the Duke of
Montbazon, who was sitting in the chariot next to him and who had anxiously
enquired about the king’s condition after the attack.52 Those appear to have been the
only words Henry uttered before losing consciousness a few moments afterwards. But
those few words were sufficient for the Canon of Riez, Gaspard Arnoulx, to insinuate
in his memorial sermon that the king might thereby have meant to pardon his own
murderer.
He says: ‘It’s nothing, do not kill him’; he pardons him. I definitely feel assured
that, if he had had a chance to speak, he would have uttered these beautiful
words.53
This line seems to have been abandoned by French panegyrists quite soon after, as it
was probably felt to conflict with the appalling procedure of Ravaillac’s execution, the
account of which cannot be read without a sense of disgust at the ingenuity of man’s
cruelty.54 On the other hand, the motif of pardoning curiously survived and became
a staple ingredient in sermons and orations of Italian preachers and panegyrists
commemorating the king’s death in various parts of Italy.55
Other orators were emboldened to draw a comparison between Henry’s last
hours and those of Christ, and to turn the deceased king into a sacrificial victim
consecrated by martyrdom. It was immediately noted, for example, that the murder
had taken place on a Friday.56 People residing far away from Paris, with no possible
connection with potential conspirators, declared they had received intimations of the
king’s impending death.57 Richelieu reports a considerable number of such sinister
premonitions in his Mémoires, the most ominous of which appears to have been the
collapsing of the maypole erected in the courtyard of the Louvre on May Day, only
a fortnight before the assassination.58 The fatal wound in Henry’s side, inflicted by
Ravaillac, resembled that of Jesus on the cross (Jn 19:34). Similar to a martyr’s death,
Henry’s death, too, could and indeed should be regarded as a second baptism, and,
furthermore, a baptism in blood.59 Like Jesus, as the Bishop of Riez pointed out in his
sermon by citing Lk 24:46, ‘it behooved him to die in order to rise from the dead’ –
albeit transfigured as the son he had ‘left behind [as] his likeness’ (Ecclus. 30:4), as
Gaspard Arnoulx, a canon of the same city, observed in another sermon on the king’s
death.60
Among the myths of regeneration evoked in this eulogizing literature, clear
preference is given to that of the phoenix rising from the ashes. Traditionally this
was one of the favourite symbols for the transmission of royal power, as Kantorowicz’
masterly investigation shows. According to Pythagoras’ inspired speech in the last
book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the phoenix was ‘that unique bird that renewed itself
and reseeded itself …, born again of its father’s body …, its cradle [being] its father’s
tomb’.61 Its dying day coincided with its birthday, so that the new bird resurrected from
the ashes could be regarded as ‘another, yet the same’ in respect of the deceased one
(Tertullian). Lactantius, Claudian and Ambrose claimed that ‘the Phoenix was “heir
to himself ” ’, which, as Kantorowicz observed, chimed with the Ordinary Gloss on
Inst. 3.1.3, ‘Father and son are one according to the fiction of law’ – a fundamental
principle in inheritance law.62 Kantorowicz further highlighted the special bond
that the image of the phoenix entailed between father and son with the exclusion of
female intervention. Since the fourteenth century the mythical bird had been likened
to a hermaphrodite, for by its own nature it needed not enter ‘into … compacts with
Venus’, as ‘he sired himself by his death’.63 Within the context of post-1610 France, not
only did the mutual bond of father and son as symbolized by the phoenix contribute
to the cementing of dynastic continuity, but also implicitly coincided with concerns
about the power held by a Queen Regent of Italian provenance, already under
88 Adonis
suspicion of having profited from her husband’s death – as a matter of fact, Maria
de’ Medici was assigned a very low profile in virtually all the occasional publications
about the death of her husband.64 Moreover, the duality inherent in the symbol of
the phoenix/hermaphrodite had far-reaching implications. In this context, one could
perhaps remember that Probus’ commentary in Virgil’s Ecl. 10.18 had provided a
version of the story, according to which Adonis had been ‘generated by Jupiter without
lying with a woman’; and that the circumstances of Fiammadoro’s birth, recalled in
Chapter 4, point equally to extraordinary monoparental birth.65 Indeed it is often the
case, as has been shown in a number of recent publications on late sixteenth- and early
seventeenth-century French political literature, that the figure of the hermaphrodite
as a symbol for the state as a ‘mixed body’ (corpus mixtum) could have a derogatory
meaning.66 However, the wonderful creature could equally be assigned a positive
connotation, for the persona mixta, or res mixta, has also been found to refer to the
virtuous combination of the king’s two bodies, the ‘body natural’ (the person of the
king) and the ‘body politic’ (the dignity the king represents). ‘What fitted the two sexes
of a hermaphrodite’, as Kantorowicz summarized, ‘fitted juristically also the two bodies
of a king.’67 One can now appreciate how the celebration of a royal progeny through the
myth of the androgynous Adonis might look far less inappropriate than our modern
mentality would have us believe.
Adonis as the born-again king

The post–1610 publications currently under consideration, and notably those in verse,
are characterized by a perceptible dominance of the pastoral genre. Apart from the
customary references to the Gallic Hercules, Henry IV is often styled as a benign deity
and referred to as Pan,68 in such a way that the Plutarchan motto ‘The great god Pan
is dead’ (De def. or. 17, 419A-E) is frequently mentioned with multiple variants.69 The
assimilation of the king’s lot to that of Adonis is comparatively rarer, yet sufficiently
conspicuous to catch the discerning eye. In the 1611 collection edited by Guillaume
Dupeyrat (1563–1645) and entitled Recueil de diverses poesies sur le trespas de Henry
le Grand (A Collection of Sundry Poems on the Death of Henry the Great), Myrrha
laments the king’s death, and Henry’s subjects are said to have shed tears over his dead
body and offered kisses
plus amers, et plus doux
Que n’en donna iamais la Royne infortunee
D’Erice, et de Paphos à son bel Adonee.70
more bitter and sweeter than those the unhappy Queen of Erice and Paphos [i.e.
Venus] ever gave to her handsome Adonis.
An otherwise unknown Nicolas de Paris, preaching for the memorial service at St
Gervais in Paris on 22 June 1610, evoked the gardens of Adonis as a symbol of the
frailty of the human condition.71 On another occasion, Ravaillac, the assassin, was
compared to a boar.72 But the most interesting texts are included in a collection of
sermons by the Jesuit orator Louis de Cressolles (1568–1634), delivered in the Jesuit
college of Rennes in commemoration of Henry (and in celebration of Louis) and
published in 1611.73
The fourth sermon, ‘On the course of kingly life and on Henry the Great’s noble
occupations’, includes a digression on hunting, an art mastered by the deceased king
and, according to the orator, the most suited to his personality, for Henry had followed
‘the inclination of his generous spirit and his own nature’ rather than spending his time
perusing the writings of the philosophers (an unsolicited but much-needed apology
for the king’s notorious lack of learning).74 The sermon is sealed with an inscription
where Europe is pictured sighing the King’s name, interpreted as an anagram:
HENRICVS BORBONIVS > VER ORBIS NVNC OBIS.75
Henry of Bourbon > [Once] the spring of the world, you now lie dead.
An epigram follows, in which the anagram is repeated and it is announced that
‘Winter is now raging, after the good King died’.76
The image of winter descending upon the earth provides the link to the following
sermon, ‘The balm of France and consolation of the common mourning, or, Louis
XIII, successor of Henry the Great’.77 In this remarkable piece of Latin oratory two
conjoined themes are expounded: everlasting royal dignity and lawful succession from
father to son guaranteed by their mutual resemblance. This is achieved through the
skilful arrangement of the sermon’s main argument around solar imagery. Although
a common feature of all ages, the association of the sun with monarchy reached
its peak in France under Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’; however, solar symbology had
already been intensively exploited by the eulogists of Louis XIII, the most extraor-
dinary example being the pamphlet written for the king’s entry into Lyon in 1623.78
For the purpose of stressing the continuity of his rule with that of his father, the solar
theme most frequently used was that of the eclipsed sun whose effulgence had been
but transitorily veiled by Ravaillac’s crime.79 This time, however, Cressolles resorted to
the Macrobian interpretation of the Adonis myth – although Adonis himself is never
explicitly mentioned, for obvious reasons of decorum. Cressolles introduces his topic
by conjuring up a vision of winter in Farthest Thule (‘In Thule quondam Insula…’),
a northern landscape where the sun actually disappears and the earth remains
enveloped in darkness for weeks of endless night, while the inhabitants anxiously
scrutinize the horizon for the first glimmer of light to reappear. At the end of this
vivid description, the preacher introduces the notion of the ‘Gallic Sun’ (Sol Gallicus)
and joyously announces that ‘Louis is a new sun born out of the departing one, and
most like it’.80
This, as far as can be ascertained, is the only case where the allegorical interpre-
tation of Adonis as the ever-returning sun is explicitly likened to the transmission
of regal power. On a side note, it is also the first occurrence of the translation of the
Adonis myth from the canicular heat of Mediterranean and Near Eastern countries
to a colder climate. As such, it anticipates by over 150 years the curious theories
of Jean-Sylvain Bailly (1736–93), who would vigorously maintain the northern
origin of all Egyptian, Eastern and Greek solar myths and of that of Adonis/Osiris
90 Adonis
in particular, as well as placing Plato’s mythical Atlantis in the farthest North.81 It is

also well-known that Bailly’s ideas were taken up again in the late nineteenth century,
later to nurture the new mythology of German National Socialism.82 Thus, by giving
a hyperborean twist to the Adonis myth, the Jesuit orator turned out to be an uncon-
scious (and guiltless) predecessor of those who came to support the racial and cultural
‘diffusionism’ radiating from the Germanic North.
The theme of rebirth, or resurrection, of the regal persona and its association with the
Adonis myth offered another opportunity for eulogy. As discussed in Chapter 4, Marino
invented the character of Fiammadoro as a veritable reincarnation of Adonis and, in
order to characterize the auspicious union of France and Spain, created Fiammadoro’s
female and identical counterpart Austria (Ad. 20.377–485).83 On a figurative level,
the presence of Fiammadoro and Austria at the end of the poem serves a very specific
purpose. The indisputably handsome, but self-content and sterile Adonis is replaced with
two young individuals who, while resembling him closely, present the necessary heroic
traits Adonis crucially lacked, fall in love with each other, are united in matrimony by
Venus and – most importantly – bring with them the promise of a future royal progeny.
There is hardly a need to stress the patent influence exercised by dynastic propaganda.
As a matter of fact, the episode is an imaginative transfiguration of the first encounter
between Louis XIII and Anne of Spain, which took place in 1615 on a pontoon bridge
over the Bidasoa river on the borders of France and Spain, between Hendaye and Irun.84
From a publication issued for the celebrations of the new alliance, La royalle reception
de leurs Majestez tres-chrestiennes en la ville de Bourdeaus, ou le siecle d’or ramené par les
alliances de France & d’Espaigne (The Royal Reception of Their Most Christian Majesties
in the City of Bordeaux, or, The Return of the Golden Age by the Alliances of France and
Spain), by another influential Jesuit Father, François Garasse, came the theme of the
identical spouses.85 Garasse observed that some of the bystanders admired the grace
of the young princesses, while others were struck by the majestic gravitas of the Queen
Mother or by the King’s ‘extraordinary beauty’. All, however,
never tired of remarking the incredible resemblance of the bride with the groom:
two siblings would never show a closer affinity than the two showed in all that
can be similar.86
Garasse also reported the praise of a learned Spanish orator who had compared
the royal wedding to that of Adam and Eve. The comparison, most appropriate in
the context of an event that was being likened to the return of the Golden Age, had
however omitted to stress
this mutual resemblance of bodies and humours, similar to that of the first couple:
for the Rabbis Aben Esra and Simon Bercepha have noted in their ‘Secrets’ that
Adam and Eve had marvellously similar countenances, whereby one of our
Christian poets called them Iuvenes aetate pares et forma geminos, young persons
equal in age and with bodies like twins.87
The topic of Adam and Eve as identical partners will re-emerge in the theological
debate on the primeval Androgyne, which also affected the reception of the Adonis
myth in the seventeenth century.
The king’s heart

Further events and chronicles of French courtly life ought to have been well within
Marino’s attention range. Some such events he may even have witnessed in person.
The invention of the theatrical machine as described at Ad. 5.127–45, for instance,
has been persuasively traced back to the one used in the performance of Tommaso
Francini’s Ballet de la délivrance de Renaud in the Louvre in January 1617 (and
possibly, further back, to Leonardo’s famous stage machine).88
But in Adone there are plentiful references to events that had taken place well
before Marino’s arrival in France. It has been suggested that a number of descrip-
tions occurring at Ad. 17 depend on the account of the celebrations for the marriage
by proxy of Maria de’ Medici with Henry IV that took place in Florence in 1600.89
The celebrations for the engagement of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria/Spain, which
extended over three days (5–7 April 1612), included a parade and a joust of French
knights on the Place Royale in Paris which appears to have inspired the grand finale of
Ad. 20.257–515; and the author of one of the brochures celebrating the event, Le Camp
de la place Royalle, was the very same Honorat Laugier de Porchères who had met
and befriended Marino in Turin and written a (lost?) piece on Adonis.90 In all these
circumstances, the vividness of the printed accounts was presumably enhanced by
the living memory of the participants, to whom Marino would have had access at the
court of the Queen Mother. When he was in Paris, Porchères organized with another
of Marino’s friends from his Turin years, Scipion de Gramont, the Louvre royal ballet
of 1619 on the subject of Tancredi in the enchanted forest (after Tasso, Gerusalemme
liberata, Canto 13).91
Of all the themes that typified royal propaganda in those years, the most striking
was that of the king’s heart. It will be remembered that Marino introduced the motif
of the heart of the dead Adonis at the end of Canto 19, right at the pivotal moment
of the metamorphosis. By so doing, he was perceptibly altering the traditional story.
The innovation, tentatively explained in Chapter 4, is the result of a ‘crossing’ with the
myth of Dionysus Zagreus, where the metamorphosis of the heart plays a decisive role.
It would seem, however, that the focus placed on Adonis’ heart was also intended to
include further allusions of a political nature.
The image and theme of the king’s heart came to occupy a very special place in a
series of commemorative and celebratory events following both Henry’s death and
Louis’ enthronement. According to custom, Henry’s body had been taken for burial to
Saint-Denis and his entrails to Notre-Dame, while his heart had been deposited ‘aux
Grands Jésuites’, the Jesuit church of Saint-Paul-des-Champs in the Marais, then part
of the Society’s great Parisian convent.92 It was a preliminary arrangement anticipating
a grander and most unusual ceremony, which was to obscure even the traditional
momentousness of the burial. As previously agreed by Henry himself, the final desti-
nation of his heart was to be the Jesuit college of La Flèche in the valley of the Loire
– which was, incidentally, the place where he had been conceived. The decision had
been taken in 1603 after the royal foundation of the college and the reconciliation
of the king with the Jesuit order. On that occasion, Maria, too, agreed that her heart
should be kept at La Flèche after her death.93
92 Adonis
It has already been noted that the Society of Jesus was taking a leading role in the
organization of the commemorative ceremonies for Henry’s death. At that time, the
Society’s members were in a serious predicament: while they were still enjoying a
prominent position at court, they nonetheless had to fight vigorously to defend it, as a
growing number of antagonists were making complaints and accusations of all kinds
against them and their privileges. The translation of the king’s heart from Paris to the
college of La Flèche in June 1610 came as an opportunity to reinforce the Society’s
bond with the memory of the deceased king and with the new rule of his wife and
son. It was a stirring and majestic event, orchestrated around a theme of great pathetic
impact.94 The entire apparatus devised for the purpose was dominated by the entwined
motif of the proclaimed identity of father and son and of dynastic regeneration, as
shown by the mottos displayed both within and without the church.
Similis in prole resurgo – ‘I revive in the likeness of my son’
Mors et vita juvat natos – ‘Death and life favours the progeny’
Feret jactura salutem – ‘Disgrace brings prosperity’
Partu coronato triumphat [Henricus] – ‘[Henry] rejoices in his crowned
son’.95
The heart itself, transported from Paris in a silver reliquary, was carried into the
church of St Thomas at La Flèche and placed on the top of a gilded floret. One wonders
whether the episode of Adonis’ heart which turned into a flower in Marino’s poem
may have somehow been reminiscent of this peculiar arrangement, which an extensive
number of publications described in great detail.96
The commemorations/celebrations did not stop there. The Society instituted
annual literary festivals with orations, poetry readings and theatrical performances,
mostly organized according to the classical and Christian paradigm of the triduum, or
three-day celebration. For a number of years they were held in various locations: La
Flèche and Paris primarily, but also in Reims, Rennes and Poitiers, places where the
Order had important colleges. Their success was ensured by involving in the organi-
zation some of the most prominent members of the order: over and above Cressolles
and Garasse, already mentioned, we should also remember here Pierre Coton (1564–
1626), Louis Richeôme (1544–1625), Nicolas Caussin (1583–1651) and Denis Pétau
(1583–1652) – indeed, the crème de la crème of the French Jesuit intelligentsia.97 A
range of publications proceeded from such events, a number of which appeared at La
Flèche: In anniversarium Henrici Magni obitus diem Lacrymae Collegii Flexiensis Regii
(The Tears of the Royal College at La Flèche for the Anniversary of the Death of Henry
the Great, 1611), where a consolatory French sonnet including praise of Galileo’s
discovery of Jupiter’s moons is believed to have been contributed by none other than
René Descartes, at that time a young pupil at the local college;98 Orationes variae …
item Poemata in depositione Cordis Henri Magni (Sundry Orations … also, Poems on
the Burial of the Heart of Henry the Great, 1612); and Pompa regia Ludovici XIII … a
Fixensibus Musis in Henriceo Societatis Iesu Collegio vario carmine consecrata (Regal
Pomp of Louis XIII … Consecrated with Sundry Poems by the Muses of La Flèche in the
Henrician College of the Society of Jesus, 1614).99 This last volume was edited by Pétau
and Caussin and dedicated to Louis XIII, who had personally attended the ceremony
Figure 4 P. P. Rubens, ‘The Triumph of Time and Truth with Louis XIII and Maria
de’ Medici’ (Paris, Musée du Louvre)
94 Adonis
with the Queen Mother and watched, among other things, a theatrical spectacle on an
unspecified mythological subject; here, too, it is tempting to see a potential real-life
model for the performance of the tale of Actaeon before Venus and Adonis at Ad. 5.100
The connection between the ‘matter of France’ and its reflection in Marino’s
Adone is not easily recognizable at first glance. Perhaps the most difficult step was to
acknowledge those ephemeral French publications as veritable sources of inspiration
for Marino during his Paris years, which entails bringing together and comparing
literary texts of widely divergent genres and formats, as well as acknowledging
Marino’s residence in France as an intensely participative period. Once this is recog-
nized, other well-known events or even artistic achievements may be looked at from a
new perspective. An eloquent example is provided by Rubens’ grand cycle of paintings
for Maria de’ Medici, now in the Louvre, which were devised and completed around
the same time (1622–5) as Marino’s poem was published.101 Although originally
intended to exalt Maria’s career in the glory of her new residence, the Luxembourg
Palace, the paintings’ topics were carefully vetted and revisited to avoid reworking
memories of her rift with the king. The pivotal piece, which somehow seals the entire
cycle, is the product of such a pacifying attempt. At its centre is shown the Triumph of
Time and Truth, while in the upper section Louis XIII offers Maria a heart encircled
in a laurel garland [Fig. 4]. This last detail is ordinarily interpreted as a generic token
of mutual devotion or affection, as well as reconciliation.102 But in light of what has just
been discussed, one might suggest that what Louis is offering Maria is actually Henry
IV’s heart, under whose good auspices the rule of his sometime wife and son is thus
presented as a model of peaceful harmony.
It appears, though, that the poem’s connection with the French world ceased to be
relevant as soon as Marino left Paris in 1623. Once removed from its original context,
his poem enjoyed an altogether different kind of reception, which Marino himself
promoted by way of a new ‘authorized’ Venetian edition.103 In the eyes of Italian
and European readers, who had no preoccupations regarding dynastic propaganda,
the attractive features of the poem resided elsewhere: it was primarily a model of
masterful versification, a virtually inexhaustible repository of poetic imagery, and an
engrossing topic for anyone wishing to wrestle with the subtleties of genre-labelling.
Last, and certainly not least, Marino’s Adone excited curiosity for its tendency to defy
the expected standards of decorum, decency and confessional orthodoxy. This was in
part to determine its destiny, and in part to induce another unexpected transformation
of the Adonis myth.
6
The seventeenth-century aftermath
On returning from Paris to take up residence in Rome, Marino knew that he was due
to appear before the Tribunal of the Inquisition and that his Adone would be put under
scrutiny by the Congregation of the Index of Forbidden Books. He had merely waited
for the right moment, not to escape the inescapable, but rather to reduce the negative
effect of the trials to a tolerable minimum.
This final chapter introduces the issue of the inquisition and censorship conducted
by the Church of Rome against Marino and his poem, action which led to the poet’s
confinement and, after his death, the inclusion of his book in the Index of Forbidden
Books. The events have been fully elucidated in Carminati’s recent monograph on
Marino, the Inquisition and ecclesiastical censorship, which, in addition, includes
new and important information on literary society in Rome during the 1620s. More
particularly, Carminati deals with the hostility endured by Marino from certain
quarters and the support he received from others. This combination of disparate
factors will be rapidly sketched out in the following pages, also taking into account the
reception of the Adonis myth in the years before and after the appearance of Marino’s
Adone. A final section will be devoted to the unexpected and anomalous mutation the
myth was subjected to in Giovan Battista Ferrari’s Hesperides (1646), a masterpiece
of Roman Baroque. The mythographic fantasies of this great Latinist and botanist,
constructed along the lines set by Pontano one-and-a-half centuries before, constitute
an appropriate conclusion to the Adonis saga in the early modern age.
The legacy of Marino’s Adone

A confessional element is bound to feature prominently in any assessment of Marino’s
legacy. Overall, to be sure, censorship did not prevent readers from accessing his texts.
The scholarly debate on the Adone continued unabated well into the 1640s; attempts
to produce an amended text that would fulfil the expectations of the Congregation of
the Index were reiterated (albeit unsuccessfully) until the very end of the seventeenth
century.1 It was unlikely that any seventeenth- or eighteenth-century poet would not
be familiar at least with the poem’s most famous episodes. According to the metic-
ulous census of Marino’s editions conducted by the late Francesco Giambonini, even
convent libraries could not afford not to keep among their holdings a copy of Marino’s
96 Adonis
Adone or any other popular (and inevitably controversial) work of his. Such copies
carried the explicit warning proibito (‘forbidden’) followed by the class of censorship
– prima classe (‘first class’), the equivalent of ‘irredeemable’, to which Marino’s Adone
was eventually assigned in 1627. It is presumed that permission from the superior of
the relevant establishment was required to obtain a copy for personal use.2
However (and predictably), the circulation of the text was hindered by the work’s
inclusion in the Index, and as time went by it became more and more difficult for
ordinary readers to obtain copies. As noted above, censure struck in 1627 after a
series of Italian editions followed the first Parisian edition of 1623. The series quickly
dried up, and the printing of the text was confined to geographical areas outside the
Congregation’s reach, such as the reformed territories of the Netherlands, Germany,
the British Isles and occasionally France, while the publishing houses of Italy and other
Catholic countries would only rarely be willing to risk issuing the text with a falsified
place of publication.3 On the other hand, the publication of Marino’s ‘approved’ works
came progressively to dominate the field. The ensuing result was a somewhat distorted
image of his œuvre. While his Italian and European reputation continued to depend
on Adone and a selection of his most brilliant erotic lyrics, his published output was
in fact increasingly represented by a limited number of sacred pieces: the Dicerie sacre
(Sermons, 1614), La strage degl’innocenti (The Slaughter of the Innocents, 1632), and the
three lyrics entitled ‘La fede’ (‘Faith’), ‘La speranza’ (‘Hope’) and ‘La carità’ (‘Charity’).4
The final and unmitigatedly damning verdict inflicted on Marino’s poem also
inhibited a fuller exploitation of the legacy of the myth. In this respect one can only
remark the small number of imitations inspired by the poem itself. Its countless
episodes and characters did not influence authors to compose a number of derivative
narrative works comparable to those inspired by Ariosto’s Orlando furioso or by Tasso’s
Gerusalemme liberata. It was rather a matter of readers selectively appreciating, and
frequently imitating, superbly crafted passages and episodes, whose intrinsic narrative
value by contrast elicited relatively little interest (with the partial exception of musical
theatre productions). Additionally, the waning of Baroque aesthetics contributed to
the slow but inexorable decline of Marino’s authority. Up until the Romantic Age,
Marino was held to be a recognized master of verse-craft to whom budding poets
would confidently turn when learning their trade, even though the title of his poem
was whispered, rather than openly proclaimed as suitable reading. No scenario is
more memorable than the one evoked by Francesco De Sanctis, referring to the young
Pietro Metastasio in early eighteenth-century Rome. As soon as his beloved but stern
classicizing mentor Gian Vincenzo Gravina was laid in his grave, Metastasio threw
himself upon Tasso’s and Guarini’s poems, ‘and above all Marino’s Adone’, savouring
them like forbidden fruits.5
Given these circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that the most significant
work inspired by Marino’s Adone should be produced before the sentence of the Index
was published. Moreover, this work was not a poem to be read, but rather one to be
set to music and sung: Ottavio Tronsarelli’s La catena d’Adone (The Chain of Adonis)
with music by Domenico Mazzocchi, first performed in Rome in 1626 in the manner
of the recently developed genre of melodrama.6 Tronsarelli’s is the first of a series
of adaptations for the musical stage, with occasional grand events – such as Paolo
The seventeenth-century aftermath 97
Vendramin’s Adone. Tragedia musicale (Venice 1639), set by Francesco Manelli – but
more frequently in the guise of ballets and pantomimes.7 Beyond the borders of Italy,
Marino’s influence is best detected in La Fontaine’s Adonis (written 1658, published
1669), both in the dedication (which appears to echo various passages of Chapelain’s
‘Discours’) and in the text itself. One wonders how this influence could have ever been
doubted.8 Yet it should also be noted that La Fontaine’s Adonis is inspired by a radically
divergent poetical ideal; it is a modest masterpiece of delicacy and restraint, and as
such quite remote from the cornucopian wealth of Marino’s poem.
Marino’s Adone and the Index of Forbidden Books

Clizia Carminati’s Giovan Battista Marino tra inquisizione e censura has shown that
the examination of Marino’s Adone by the Congregation of the Index was the final act
of a long battle fought by the Church of Rome against a clever and elusive antagonist.
All along Marino had been aware of the potential difficulties his poem was set to
encounter. In 1616 he had tried to pre-empt such difficulties by applying directly to
the Pope for a printing privilege, to which effect he secured the good offices of Concini
(at the time still the envisaged dedicatee) and the papal Nuncio in France, Roberto
Ubaldini, who approached the Cardinal nephew, Scipione Borghese on Marino’s
behalf.9 It would appear that the attempt led to no concrete result, because three years
later Marino announced the following project to the Venice-based publisher Giovan
Battista Ciotti: ‘If no other impediment interferes with my plans, I shall have the Adone
and the Strage degl’innocenti printed [here]. These two long poems cannot possibly
be sent to Venice, as the inquisitor would have them castrated [i.e. censored].’10 The
letter also served as a cover for the attached manuscript of the Galeria, which Ciotti
was about to print. It makes very instructive reading as to the matter of censorship
and how to elude it.
[On the margin of the text of the Galeria] you will find some additional annota-
tions, and the marks will show you where you should insert those sonnets or
madrigals which are on those [other] pieces of paper. The ‘Portraits’ section has
plenty of satirical texts – I am pretty sure the father inquisitor will not let them
pass. This is why I placed them in a separate small quintern in the event they
should be removed, as their removal would by no means spoil the work. I must
warn you that, if you are not going to print them, they should remain with you
and no living person be allowed to draw copies from them.11
While suitable for a collection of short pieces, the ruse could not have worked as
successfully with a long narrative poem. The only way forward, according to the
friendly advice of Guido Bentivoglio, Ubaldini’s successor as papal Nuncio to France,
was that of ‘purging the Adone of its licentious parts’.12 Thus, when the death of the
hostile Paul V Borghese and the subsequent election of Gregory XV Ludovisi in 1621
made it possible for Marino to make concrete plans for his return to Italy, the revision
of the Adone became part of the inevitable deal with the ecclesiastical authorities.
In this way, two distinct problems – the enquiry conducted by the Tribunal of the
98 Adonis
Inquisition since 1607 following an accusation of heresy, and the examination of the
Adone by the Congregation of the Index – eventually coalesced into one. The proce-
dures took place in Rome, where Marino’s arrival generated considerable excitement
among the members of ecclesiastical and literary cliques.
The first move for Marino was to make amends in front of the Tribunal of the
Inquisition. He could initially count on the support of the Pope himself and of his
Cardinal nephew, Ludovico Ludovisi. The procedure, however, was initiated under
the new pontificate of Urban VIII Barberini, as Gregory died just a few weeks after
Marino’s arrival in Rome. The conclusive sentence, dated 9 November 1623, stated
that Marino had abjured his minor or ‘light’ (levis) heresy and been commanded
to perform the prescribed penance, not to leave Rome without permission, and to
undertake the correction of his poem.13 A hostile source insinuated that during the
abjuration ceremony Marino had received the humiliation of wearing the so-called
abitino or abitello (‘little robe’), the penitential garment imposed on those who were
suspected or declared guilty of heresy. The same source also insisted that the seemingly
independent choice by Marino of his accommodation in Rome – the palace of the
Crescenzi family who had hosted him on his first arrival in the City in 1600 – in
fact concealed a veiled form of house arrest enforced on him by the Inquisition.14
According to Carminati, the only sign of relatively ‘favourable’ treatment could
perhaps be seen in the (exceptional) semi-private nature of the procedures – a circum-
stance, or privilege, that a certain reticence in the surviving documentation appears to
confirm. This is probably as far as Marino’s powerful allies and protectors could go.15
Once the business of the abjuration was complete, it was expected that Marino
would start revising his Adone. Carminati’s rigorously documented and utterly fasci-
nating account of the dealings and intrigues conducted both within and without the
precinct of the Vatican palaces shows that, all things considered, the Roman context
was not favourable to Marino. Apart from the inquisitorial trial, derogatory comments
against him were being freely circulated, while the tastes of Barberinian literary circles
could not have been further from his own.16 Still, he could count on the support of
highly positioned prelates and lay friends. A sense of hostility appeared to prevail,
however, and Marino rapidly lost interest in the revision project. He left the task to his
fellow poet and friend Antonio Bruni, and moved to Naples in the spring of 1624.17
There he took up residence in the convent of the Theatine Fathers – presumably
another forced abode. At that point, the hitherto discreet nature of the procedure
came into the open. At the session of 22 April 1624, Cardinal Giannettino Doria
asked the Congregation of the Index to address the revision of the Adone as a matter
of urgency. The tone of the minutes recording the sessions becomes perceptibly sterner
and the invitations extended to Marino to complete the revision more pressing. An
agreement over the formula ‘suspended until corrected’ (donec corrigatur) was reached
on 27 November 1624.18 Ironically, Cardinal Doria had formerly been the dedicatee
of Marino’s Third Book of the Lira (1614), where there was no dearth of erotic or,
indeed, obscene pieces.19 For his part, Marino was trying to forestall or at least
mitigate further hostile decisions by alternately promising a revised text from Naples
and announcing an imminent return to Rome, while secretly beginning to entertain
the idea of migrating once again.20 But on 26 March 1625 he died, and with his death
any urgency or, indeed, hope of seeing his poem published with the approval of the
Congregation lost momentum.
His friends and admirers were still hoping that an acceptable text of the Adone
would eventually be produced. The authoritative Academy of the Umoristi – arguably
the most prestigious literary academy of Rome and all of Italy in those years – offered
in November 1625 to take responsibility for the revision, with the clear intent
of pre-empting potential draconian measures emanating from the Congregation’s
decisions. But the result evidently did not satisfy the Master of the Sacred Palace, the
Dominican Father Nicola Riccardi, known as Padre Mostro (‘Prodigy’) for his prowess
as a preacher, who had been put in charge of the assessment of the proposal. One year
later, in November 1626, he rejected the amended text proposed by the Academy.21
The Adone was ultimately included in the Index of Forbidden Books on 4 February
1627.
The reasons for the indictment are not entirely clear. As Carminati has shown,
the Adone was repeatedly taken in their hands by different censors at different times,
and the reports they produced are inevitably affected by a diversity of approach
and purpose. An overall agreement on some crucial points may nevertheless be
determined. The report summarizing the position of Father Riccardi, drafted by the
Congregation’s secretary, Francesco Maddaleno Capiferro, offers the best and most
thorough, albeit succinct, illustration of why Marino’s Adone had to succumb to eccle-
siastical censure. After a general scolding of the ‘multiple and most lewd obscenities’
(plurimas laidissimas spurcetias) and the ‘foulest licences’ (foedissimas lascivias), as
well as the ‘impious exaggerations’ (irreligiosas hiperboles), the ‘profanation of sacred
expressions’ (profanum usum sacrarum vocum) and various other improprieties, the
list includes a reference to ‘a number of blasphemies’ (nonnullas quoque blasphemias),
which consist of occurrences of sacred imagery and language disrespectfully readapted
to a pagan context – such as the birth of Cupid described in a fashion similar to that
of Christ (partum … Amoris ex Venere quomodo alterum Christum natum de Virgine),
the attributes of the Blessed Virgin ascribed to Venus (immaculatam atque intactam
fuisse … Venerem), the temple of Venus depicted as a Christian church (eius templum
ad modum Sacrarum Ecclesiarum), and so forth.22
Carminati’s thorough comments on each specific accusation deserve attentive
reading.23 Among other things, she has demonstrated that the charge concerning the
birth of Cupid (Ad. 7.141–8) is a characteristic result of Marinian ‘source crossing’.
That Marino had imitated for the purpose Nonnus, Dion. 42.125–42 and 186–210, as
he himself confessed in a letter, is signalled in Pozzi’s commentary.24 But Carminati
has convincingly added to the blend a number of passages readapted from Sannazaro,
De partu Virginis, Books 2 and 3 (the episodes of the Visitation and of Christ’s birth),
which Marino skilfully interwove in the fabric of his text: the censor’s worries would
thus be fully explained. She has also recalled that one century after the appearance of
Sannazaro’s poem (1526), whose daring mixture of Christian and pagan ingredients
had been famously criticized by Erasmus, the debate on the legitimacy of such experi-
ments was being revived in the literary circles surrounding Pope Urban VIII; and that
the real target of such a belated censure was in all probability, as already suggested by
Eraldo Bellini, Marino himself.25
100 Adonis
Adonis and the theological debate

The deep-seated motives behind the Congregation’s censure demonstrably went
beyond the poem’s obscenities, and were concentrated rather on graver questions
of impiety and blasphemy. Pierantonio Frare has recently suggested that Marino’s
treatment of the Adonis myth may have been regarded as problematic because of its
lack of compliance with the accepted (and expected) praxis of myth allegorization.
Ordinarily this would have necessitated the de-emphasizing of the myth’s significance
to the advantage of Christian truths and morals.26 Lorenzo Scoto’s prose ‘Allegories’,
prefixed to each canto, were supposed to perform exactly that task: by placing a
judgemental stigma on the poem’s most unpalatable episodes, they were to reveal the
‘true’ significance of such episodes in the perspective of edifying allegoresis. However,
when elements of Christian imagery are introduced into a pagan story, any attempt
at interpreting that story allegorically is bound to defeat its own purpose, at least in
part; and any attached moralizing intent may be in danger of looking hypocritical or
even misleading – a contradiction dutifully noted by Frare.27 According to him, the
Christian element in Marino’s Adone would foreshadow a figurative or typological
(rather than allegorical) approach to the relationship between pagan myths and
the Christian truth.28 The typological approach stems from a well-defined strand of
biblical exegesis and is typically applied to Old Testament stories and cognate episodes
of the New Testament, with the principal aim of stressing the full realization of the
Hebrew premise in the Christian Gospels, but in such a way as to imply some sort of
reverse validation for the premise as well. If one of two terms of such comparisons
is replaced with a pagan myth, a problem is likely to emerge. Even so, a typological
relationship between pagan myths and Scriptures might have appeared acceptable
after all, as will be seen further on. What must have been perceived as problematic,
and even perverse, was the fact that in Marino’s Adone the Christian element is present
solely in ambiguous allusions or – worse – as parody.29
In the opening stanzas, Marino had claimed that his poem, ‘like an uncouth
Silenus’, hid in its bosom ‘high mysteries’ and ‘celestial arcana’.30 But is this claim
supported by the poem’s actual contents? While there is no doubt that Marino showed
remarkable and even defiant audacity in treating matters as delicate as those outlined
above, his approach would, at best, suggest impudent provocation, rather than a
genuine inclination to pursue specific philosophical doctrines or to adopt theological
positions bordering on the heretical. The literary achievement appears always to have
been paramount for him. Thus, it is a matter of tracing a boundary between what
Marino may have reasonably expected from a literary work such as his Adone, and
what other people may have wished to see in it. A good case in point is a recent and
ponderous volume by Marie-France Tristan, in which the author attempts to construct
a philosophical system from and around Marino’s works, with mixed results – because
it is not always easy to trace its foundations back to the actual texts on which the whole
construction purports to be based. One could even question the assumption made in
the subtitle of the book – ‘an essay on Cavalier Marino’s philosophical poetry’ – that
Marino ever wrote ‘philosophical poetry’ as such.31
Similarly, the view that would portray Marino as the conscious promoter and
initiator of a coherent (and somewhat occult) libertine philosophy also seems less than
utterly convincing. Libertinage cloaked in philosophical garments was an intellectual
trend that developed in France around the time of Marino’s residence, and some
of its French representatives may have taken inspiration from Marino’s own works.
But it seems appropriate to stress that Marino’s influence remained confined to the
domain of literature and did not penetrate the citadel of philosophical studies.32 Even
the promising connection with Giulio Cesare Vanini (1585–1619), the controversial
Apulian philosopher who had moved to France after a life fleeing from the Inquisition
and who was burned at the stake in Toulouse in 1619 for atheism, is now less clear-cut
than it seemed when first highlighted by Giorgio Fulco. It is incontestably surprising
to see Marino quoted as an accomplished authority on questions of natural philosophy
in Vanini’s De admirandis Naturae Reginae Deaeque mortalium arcanis libri quatuor
(Four Books on the Wonderful Secrets of Nature, the Queen and Goddess of Mortal
Beings, 1616); in addition, Vanini had previously worked in the library of the papal
Nuncio, Roberto Ubaldini, with whom Marino had close ties.33 Nonetheless, the
picture of Marino en philosophe naturel turns out to be somewhat evanescent when
contrasted with the relevant passages in the Adone, and to be rather dependent on his
familiarity with general topics of natural philosophy (and on a wonderful ability to
articulate them in verse), than on any presumed adhesion to defined lines of thought.34
New enquiries could develop from exploring themes which are admittedly very
broad and not easy to gauge, but which play an important role in Marino’s Adone and
do turn up in Vanini’s works. Two such themes are, for instance, the astral conjunction
of Venus and Mercury as connected to ‘stories … full of adulterous acts and other
infamies, and the loves of young boys’ (according to Cardano), and the influence
exercised by Jupiter, Venus and Mercury on monstrous births such as hermaphrodites
(according to Ptol. Tetr. 3.9).35 As already observed in Chapter 4, to place Adonis’
initiation journey under the joint supervision of Venus and Mercury (who together,
according to the ancient myth, begot Hermaphroditus) would be clearly allusive
to their tutee’s double nature. The significance of such a combination is repeatedly
recalled in astrological commentaries and treatises prompted by ps.-Ptolemy’s
Centiloquium, such as Pontano’s De rebus coelestibus libri, where the conjoined Venus
and Mercury are said to produce infertility and hermaphroditism – two broadly but
typically Adoniac characteristics.36
Another point that may deserve further investigation is the indirect involvement
of Adonis in the debate on the creation of Man as narrated in the First Chapter of
Genesis, on the nature of Adam and his assumed hermaphroditism. This debate was
revived in France in the second and third decade of the seventeenth century, and bore
a connection with Vanini which continued after his death. Two influential works of
the time, the biblical commentary of the Jesuit Cornelis van den Steen (1567–1637)
– whose name is better known in the Latinized form of Cornelius a Lapide – and
Marin Mersenne’s (1588–1648) Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim (Most Famous
Questions on Genesis, 1623), vigorously rejected the view that Adam had originally
been a hermaphrodite. Rabbinic exegesis, as well as the harmonistic tendencies
present in the works of Leone Ebreo (Judah Leon Abravanel, 1465–1523), Francesco
102 Adonis
Zorzi (1466–1540) and the same Vanini, associated the separation of the male and
female characters in the Genesis with the Platonic Androgyne (Symp. 190a–192c).37
The reader will probably recognize in this theological conundrum the same topic
that Father Garasse and Marino were exploiting at that period for the sake of royal
propaganda.38 That Adonis could, and perhaps should, be assimilated to Adam was
a point made in the anonymous and hyper-syncretistic Observations appended to
Conti’s Mythologia in the Geneva edition (by Gabriel Carterius) of 1596, subsequently
reprinted in most later editions.39 There, a connection is made with the Persian
paradises (‘gardens’) via a reference to Xen. Oec. 4.2 (on Cyrus’ paradise at Sardis and
the figure of the ‘ruler as gardener’ as a metaphor of good governing); with a number
of passages from the New Testament which refer to the twin notion of earthly and
heavenly paradise; with the pseudo-etymological arguments of ‘Adonis’ < Gr. hēdonē
‘pleasure’ < Hebrew ‘Eden’ and, alternatively, of ‘Adonis’ < ‘Adamus’; and finally, with
the equivalence of the Gardens of Adonis and the Garden of the Hesperides.40
A more explicit connection linking Adonis to Christ was made by none other than
a Lapide himself in his commentary in Ezekiel, first published in Antwerp in 1621 and
reprinted in Paris in 1622.41 On tackling the famous episode of the lamentation by the
women of Jerusalem for the death of Tammuz/Adonis (Ez. 8:14), the great biblical
commentator reported approvingly on scholars who interpreted the flourishing and
decaying of the gardens of Adonis as ‘mystically’ (mystice) comparable ‘to the dying
and rising Christ’, who, a Lapide acknowledged, ‘is indeed our Adonis, our sun, our
joy, our love’.42 Just as the death of Tammuz/Adonis had been lamented by the women
of Jerusalem, so Christ’s was mourned by the Virgin and the holy women, and by
any ‘pious and holy soul’ contemplating ‘their Adonis, as though he were their bride-
groom, on the cross’, and ‘embrac[ing] him in his resurrection with a new exultation
and jubilation’.43
It is against this wider and perhaps confusing landscape that the seventeenth-
century reception, in both lay and religious circles, of Marino’s Adone should be more
broadly assessed.
Return to the Hesperides – Epilogue

This final section allows the story to come full circle in an unusual fashion. Here, the
reader will witness a return to matters discussed in Chapter 1, that is, to Pontano and
his citrus trees, however ‘cleansed’ of any explicit reference to Adonis. For the Adonis
myth, as reshaped by Pontano, inspired one of the foremost accomplishments of
Barberinian Rome, Giovan Battista Ferrari’s Hesperides (1646); but, by means of what
can only be described as a surgical operation of censorship, the presence of the ancient
myth was removed, presumably as a consequence – as will be seen in the following
pages – of the Roman vicissitudes of Marino’s Adone.
The figure and work of Giovan Battista Ferrari (1584–1655), born in Siena and
an eminent personality in the Society of Jesus, has been examined over the past few
decades by several authoritative scholars, and most thoroughly by David Freedberg.44
Ferrari, a professor of Hebrew in the Roman Collegio Romano and an accomplished
rhetorician, also made his reputation as a first-class botanist. His two major publica-
tions, De florum cultura libri IV (On the Cultivation of Flowers, in Four Books, 1633;
Italian tr. 1638) and Hesperides, sive de malorum aureorum cultura et usu libri quatuor
(Hesperides, or the Cultivation and Use of Golden Apples, in Four Books, 1646), are
among the most beautiful artefacts ever to come out of a typographer’s workshop.45
Printed in the most elegant Roman typeface and superbly illustrated with plates of
flowers, flower arrangements, citrus fruit, and narrative scenes from new mythological
aitia devised by Ferrari himself for the purpose, their realization involved the best
engravers (Johann Friedrich Greuter, Claude Mellan, Cornelis Bloemaert, Claude
Goyrand, Camillo Cungi), who translated into print original drawings by the most
illustrious masters living at the time (Pietro da Cortona, François Perrier, Nicolas
Poussin, Guido Reni, Francesco Albani, Andrea Sacchi, Giovanni Lanfranco and
Domenichino, amongst others). Ferrari’s books constitute a summa of Renaissance
garden culture.46 They encompass, in a supremely refined balance, thorough schol-
arship, taxonomic exactitude (as far as progress in botanical science then allowed),
mythographic inventiveness, elegance of Latin style, and exquisite artistic taste.
In many additional respects, Ferrari’s Flora and Hesperides are typical products
of Barberinian Rome and its extraordinarily fertile environment.47 Freedberg has
splendidly elucidated this point, clarifying, in particular, the selfless collaboration of
Cassiano dal Pozzo and his entourage on Ferrari’s projects.48
But we are particularly concerned here with Ferrari’s works – and notably his
Hesperides – which are characterized by an elusive feature: the glaring absence of
references to Adonis in contexts where one would expect such references to turn up
on every page. This is particularly striking in the case of the Hesperides, along with
a dependence on Pontano’s Horti Hesperidum, the most frequently cited authority in
Ferrari’s text.
This absence of Adonis – never noticed before – can only be explained in terms
of the persisting hostility towards Marino’s Adone in Barberinian circles. A token of
such hostility is already apparent in Ferrari’s Flora. The preface, addressed to ‘The
flower-friendly reader’, begins with a plea for the moralization of the ancient Floralia
festivals, occasions when the libertine impulses of the Roman population were given
full vent. Flora, alternatively ‘the Venus of the gardens’ (Venus hortensis) or – worse
– Priapus, had jurisdiction over the Floralia and indeed over all gardens, according
to the so-called procuratio hortorum.49 Such jurisdiction Ferrari wanted to claim back
for a less objectionable patroness: his newly found ‘Flora pudica’, not inclined ‘to
compromise morality’, but rather willing ‘to sow flowers in people’s souls’.50 The ethos
informing ancient pagan gardens, such as those of Epicurus and of ‘the Kings Adonis
and Alcinous’, is thus firmly rejected.51 Ferrari is for a jardin moralisé; for a (to parodize
a celebrated Baroque title) Flora trasportata al morale. Already as early as 1625, in a
speech entitled ‘Aetas Florea’ (‘The Age of Flora’), Ferrari had censured Adonis’ tale
as ‘most vain’, ‘doleful’ and in patent contrast with the delightful aspect of the flower
with which it was associated, the anemone.52 Subsequently, in his Flora, he deplored
the fact that ancient authors (the marginal rubric lists Pliny, Nicander and Theocritus)
should have linked the anemone to the story of Venus and Adonis, ‘thus turning the
radiance of this most innocent flower into gloom because of the tragic grief caused
104 Adonis
by an impure tale’.53 Not a single word on Marino; which does not however mean that
Ferrari had no cognizance of the Adone. In fact, in one of the new myths invented for
Flora, the ‘breezy nymph’ Aurilla seems a patent imitation of Marino’s homonymous
character at Ad. 18.54
The case for ‘redeeming’ citrus trees may have been even stronger. In early modern
Italian literature, citrus trees feature regularly in descriptions of pleasant places.
Over and above Boccaccio’s Decameron, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and of course
Pontano’s Horti Hesperidum and other texts discussed in Chapter 1, citrus trees and
fruit materialize in Francesco Fileremo Fregoso’s La cerva bianca (3.11, 6.6), Ariosto’s
garden of Alcina (Orlando furioso, 6.21), I dodici canti (11.44) and Tasso’s garden of
Armida (Gerusalemme liberata, 16.10–11). They are often characterized as ‘wanton’
because of the natural concurrence of their male and female components, which leads
to perpetual self-fecundation and year-round fertility.55 Marino himself had treated
the topic with characteristic shrewdness in the idyll ‘Proserpina’, where he described
Proserpine moving across an orchard while gazing around in surprise at ‘lewd
oranges, big lemons and huge citrons’, all prodigiously shaped like ‘big virile members’.
E più qualor passando
dai vermigli roseti ai verdi arbusti,
l’alte spalliere, e i pastini ben culti
de’ frondosi boschetti
di mirar si compiace,
da’ cui rami pendenti aranci osceni,
grossi limoni e smisurati cedri,
non saprei dir per quale
virtute occulta et artificio ignoto
di strania agricoltura,
o per qual di Natura
giocosa industria e capriccioso scherzo,
figurando in se stessi
di gran membra virili
prodigiose forme,
fanno con provocar ne’ riguardanti
il diletto del gusto, onta ala vista.56 (‘Proserpina’, 697–713)
When [Proserpine] moves past the vermillion rosebush to the green shrub, she
enjoys gazing at the tall espaliers and neatly laid-out grounds of leafy groves.
Lewd oranges, big lemons and huge citrons hang from the branches in prodi-
gious shapes of big virile members (whether by some hidden virtue of theirs and
some strange, unknown cultivation art, or whether by Nature’s playful industry
and capricious sport, I could not tell), which offend the onlookers’ sight, while
delighting their taste.
Ferrari’s Hesperides reinforces the moralizing drive, previously declared in his Flora,
by bringing the story back to the virtuous Herculean labour in the mythical garden.57
Hercules features on the engraved title page of the work, leaning on a pedestal
Figure 5 C. Bloemaert after Domenichino, ‘The Tale of Leonilla’, engraving, from

G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646)
106 Adonis
Figure 6 ‘Fingered or multifarious citron’ (Malum citreum digitatum seu

multiforme), etching and engraving, from G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646)
Figure 7 ‘Childing citron-lemon’ (Limon citratus alterum includens), etching and

engraving, from G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646)
Figure 8 ‘Differently-shaped, multi-childing citron-lemon’ (Aliae formae citrati

limonis alios includentis), etching and engraving, from G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides
(1646)
in a position of repose, while the dragon lies vanquished at his feet, and one of
the Hesperides offers a wreath of citrus leaves to the conquering hero. The first
book serves an introductory purpose, covering the discussion of the archaeological
evidence concerning Hercules and the Hesperides, the etymologies of the three main
citrus varieties, and the ancient and modern sources mentioning them. Each of the
three subsequent books is devoted to the analytic examination of the peculiarities of
each variety of citrus and its association with one of the Hesperides: citrons (Aegle),
lemons (Arethusa) and oranges (Hesperthusa).58
The absence of any reference to Adonis is, as I have already said, striking, especially
given the fact that about 200 lines from Pontano’s Horti Hesperidum are transcribed
in Ferrari’s Hesperides – one-sixth of the entire poem. It is therefore clear that the
omission is deliberate. But in Books 2, 3 and 4, the Adoniac matter re-emerges in what
would appear to be disguise. In his Flora, Ferrari had introduced a number of digres-
sions in the form of mythological aitia. These digressions are in sections where he
allows free rein to his literary ambitions, to his highly personalized use of Latin, as well
as to his choice of ‘a prose style approaching the poetic’, all of which deserve separate
examination.59 For his Hesperides Ferrari invented the three new myths of Harmonillus
(81–8), Tirsenia (Harmonillus’ mother, 273–5) and Leonilla (Harmonillus’ sister,
417–21). Both in the development of the stories and in the accompanying illustra-
tions, these aitia patently imitate and adapt the myth of Myrrha and Adonis. The
allusive nature of the illustrations is such that the drawing by Domenichino that
108 Adonis
served as the model for the Leonilla engraving [Fig. 5] was once genuinely mistaken
by an expert judge for a representation of Myrrha giving birth to Adonis.60 It is as if
the Adoniac myth had sneaked back into the book, metamorphosed and multiplied
in truly Pontanian fashion. There is an inherent ambiguity in this complex operation,
which prompts one to wonder whether Ferrari’s censoring attitude was driven by a
genuinely edifying intent, or whether it was simply a ploy necessitated by ideological
circumstances unfavourable to the reuse of the Adonis myth.
The extraordinary shapes of the citrus fruit were, according to Marino, the result of
‘Nature’s playful industry and capricious sport’. This wasn’t in itself unusual. The image
of Nature as nonchalant, prodigal and inexhaustibly productive chimed with a tenet
of Renaissance collective imagination: the fascination for the entwined notions of
abundance (copia) and variety (varietas). In annotating Diosc. Mat. med. 42 (‘On apple
fruit in general’), Marcello Virgilio had emphasized ‘the virtually boundless variety
of playful nature [as shown] in apple fruit’, particularly in relation to species, colour,
shape, taste, smell, and time of ripening.61 When in the presence of an extraordinary
‘fingered or multifarious citron’ (Malum citreum digitatum seu multiforme [Fig. 6]),
Ferrari subscribed to the same view, freely admitting that ‘in no other kind of apple
fruits does Nature play more wantonly’, and that ‘in this type of tree, Nature appears
to exert not so much the art of producing apple fruit as the art of moulding’.62 The very
concept of ‘sport of Nature’ (monstrum) remains for him, as for many other botanists
of his time, a guiding principle of fundamental importance, primarily for classificatory
purposes. But in his case, the ‘distorted’ or ‘misshapen’ fruit also stimulates his mytho-
graphic fantasy. As Freedberg explains, each of Ferrari’s aitia is introduced to elucidate
Figure 9 ‘Foetus-bearing orange’ (Aurantium foetiferum), etching and engraving,

from G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646)
Figure 10 ‘Hermaphrodite or horned orange’ (Aurantium hermaphroditum seu

corniculatum), etching and engraving, from G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646)
Figure 11 ‘Misshapen orange’ (Aurantium distortum), etching and engraving, from
G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646)
110 Adonis
‘the origins of a group of teratological specimens of citrons, lemons, and oranges’

respectively.63 Thus the myth of Harmonillus follows the description of the already
mentioned ‘fingered or multifarious citron’, and the myth of Tirsenia is considered
to be the mythographic equivalent of such fruits as the ‘childing citro-lemon’ (Limon
citratus alterum includens [Fig. 7]) and the ‘differently-shaped, multi-childing citro-
lemon’ (Aliae formae citrati limonis alios includentis [Fig. 8]); whereas the third
myth of Leonilla is meant to illustrate the equally surprising ‘foetus-bearing orange’
(Aurantium foetiferum [Fig. 9]), the ‘hermaphrodite or horned orange’ (Aurantium
hermaphroditum seu corniculatum [Fig. 10]) and the ‘misshapen orange’ (Aurantium
distortum [Fig. 11]).64 Ferrari may not go as far as to glorify, as Marino does, Nature’s
capriciously mimetic powers in producing fruit shaped like sexual organs, but he
certainly does not refrain from documenting them visually. It is also apparent that the
inexhaustibly fecund activity of such trees exerts a fascination which is difficult for
him to resist, both as a scientist and as a man of letters. ‘We are generally horrified at
[the sight of] abortions and monstrosities in living beings, while we love them in apple
fruit’ – this is his preliminary comment when he tackles his ‘misshapen orange’. Two
lines after these comments, he allows himself to admit that his exemplar came ‘from
Naples, where even monstrous things are beautiful’.65
It is not clear whether Ferrari intended to allude to anything (or anyone?) specific
when he mentioned Naples’ unique gift of turning the monstrous into the beautiful.
Whatever the answer, the reader is left musing about what the dominant note in a
work like Ferrari’s Hesperides might be: whether it is the edifying intent he himself
proclaimed, or the will to tell once again the tale of Nature’s unquenchable and vital
impulse. Before him, the fascinating subject of the ‘loves of plants’ had stimulated
the fantasy of such sensuous poets as Claudian, Tasso and Marino. After him, apart
from his direct imitators, language allusive to the supposedly intense sexual activity of
plants would creep into the otherwise chastised prose of Carl Linné’s Nuptiae arborum
(1729, The Marriage of Trees), and would later on inspire Charles Darwin’s The Loves
of Plants (1789).66
Ferrari’s Hesperides is thus the last of Adonis’ epiphanies examined in this book.
It presents unusual characteristics because, as has been seen, elements of the ancient
myth and its early modern revivals were remodelled to comply with the expectations of
a Christian society that aimed to resemanticize pagan tales. Because of this, it provides
an excellent example of the way in which an ancient myth managed to survive in a
different and even hostile context. It is not so much a question concerning the story
per se, but rather one affecting the transmission of symbolic forms to audiences of
disparate epochs, with differing backgrounds and differing sensibilities. On balance,
such symbolic forms ‘may be singular to the point of idiosyncrasy, and may yet have
so strong an appeal that they will hold their own, or stimulate a new integration, in
alien surroundings’. Key to their vitality is the principle described by Henri Frankfort
as ‘survival as revival’, which aims at self-preservation no matter how transient the
nature of such cultural forms may be – and what could be more transient than Adonis,
and all that he represents? According to Frankfort, it is that mechanism of ‘survival as
revival’ that allows such forms to endure the ravages of time, oblivion and censorship,
and endows them with the power to ‘overcome their own death’.67
Notes
Preface
1 Tuzet, Mort et resurrection d’Adonis, p. 9: ‘Pourquoi s’occuper d’Adonis? La légende, à
première vue, paraît mince’. Cf. also Wilhelm Roscher, ‘Adonis’, in Roscher, I, col. 70:
‘Dieser ziemlich einfache Mythus …’ (‘This rather simple story ...’).
2 Henri Frankfort, Henrietta A. Frankfort, John Albert Wilson and Thorkild Jacobsen,
Before Philosophy. The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative
Thought in the Ancient Near East (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1948).
3 James G. Frazer, The Dying God (London: Macmillan, 1914); also, by the same
author, Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild (London: Macmillan, 1912), 2 vols; and
Adonis Attis Osiris.
4 Cf., amongst others, Wolf Wilhelm Friedrich von Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun: Eine
Untersuchung zur Geschichte des Glaubens an Auferstehungsgötter und an Heilgötter
(Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1911); Pierre Lambrechts, ‘La “resurrection” d’Adonis’, Annuaire
de l’Institut de Philologie et d’Histoire Orientales et Slaves 13 (1953) = Mélanges
Isidore Lévy, pp. 207–40; Henri Frankfort, ‘The Dying God’, Journal of the Warburg
and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958), pp. 141–51; Atallah, Adonis, pp. 268–301; Walter
Burkert, ‘The Great Goddess, Adonis, and Hyppolitus’, in Id., Structure and History
in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: The University of
California Press, 1979), pp. 99–122; Ribichini, Adonis; Adonis. Relazioni del colloquio
in Roma 1981 (Rome: Consiglio Italiano delle Ricerche, 1984).
5 Detienne, Les jardins d’Adonis.
6 See especially Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1990).
7 Giovanni Casadio, ‘The Failing Male God. Emasculation, Death and Other
Accidents in the Ancient Mediterranean World’, Numen 50 (2003), 231–68
(pp. 231–5, 248–54).
8 The most relevant contributions are those by Joseph D. Reed: ‘The Sexuality of
Adonis’, Classical Antiquity, 14 (1995), pp. 317–47; ‘At Play with Adonis’, in John F.
Miller, Cynthia Damon and K. Sara Myers (eds), Vertis in Usum: Studies in Honor
of Edward Courtney (Munich and Leipzig: Saur, 2002), pp. 219–29; ‘New Verses on
Adonis’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 158 (2006), pp. 76–82; and his
edition of Bion of Smyrna, The Fragments and The Adonis (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997).
9 Giovan Battista Della Porta, Magiae naturalis libri viginti (Frankfurt: Andreas
Wechel, 1597), pp. 91–2 (2.20 ‘Ut mulieres pulchros pariant filios’): ‘ut in
magnatum cubiculis, et prospectu, Cupidinis, Adonidis, et Ganimedis imagines
propendeant…: unde venerem exercentes, uxores animo ea versant, imo fortissimo
imaginatione animus rapiatur, et gravidae diutius eas contemplentur, sic partus inde
112 Notes
conceptus eam formam imitabitur’. Cf. Plin. HN 35.6. The same idea was repeated in
Tommaso Campanella’s Città del sole, Norberto Bobbio (ed.) (Turin: Einaudi, 1941),
p. 27.
Introduction
1 Walter Burkert, Greek Religion. Archaic and Classical, trans. J. Raffan (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1985), p. 1.
2 For a thorough survey and discussion of the sources and their mutual relations,
see Wilhelm Greve, De Adonide (Diss. Leipzig, 1877); Wilhelm H. Roscher,
‘Adonis’, in Roscher I.1, cols 69–77; Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris, I, pp. 1–159;
Atallah, Adonis; Martin P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion (Munich:
Beck, 1967), 2 vols, I, pp. 725–8 and II, pp. 649–51; Ribichini, Adonis; Tuzet, Mort
et résurrection d’Adonis; Detienne, Les jardins d’Adonis; Reed, ‘The Sexuality of
Adonis’.
3 Ovid was in debt to Nicander’s lost Heteroioumena (Metamorphoses), which
Antoninus Liberalis summarized in part in his Metamorphōseon Synagogē. Cf.
P. M. C. Forbes Irving, Metamorphosis in Greek Myths (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1990), pp. 24–32; and most recently Ingo Gildenhard and Andrew Zissos (eds),
Transformative Change in Western Thought. A History of Metamorphosis from Homer
to Hollywood (Oxford: Legenda, 2013).
4 Originally Jupiter had laid a claim on a third share, which he eventually forfeited to
his daughter Venus.
5 See in particular Schol. Theocr. 3.48; Hyg. Fab. 251; Hymn. Orph. 55.10. Cf. Roscher,
‘Adonis’, cols 69–70.
6 Bucolici Graeci, A. S. F. Gow (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952). The Dead
Adonis, on the other hand, presents the slightly humorous aftermath with a speaking
boar that pleads its innocence before Venus, blaming the fatal aggression on a
sudden and irresistible desire to kiss Adonis’ thigh. The Greek Bucolics also offer
variant accounts of selected details, such as the rose being stained by the blood of
Adonis, rather than the anemone growing out of it (Bion 1.66).
7 Bion von Smyrna, Adonis. Deutsch und griechisch von Ulrich von Wilamowitz-
Moellendorff (Berlin: Weidmann, 1900), p. 12 (also in Wilamowitz, Reden und
Vorträge (Berlin: Weidmann, 1967), p. 299): ‘In der südlichen Welt stirbt die Natur
im Sommer. Die bunte, strotzende Vegetation des Frühjahrs erliegt der Glut,
die sie zu kurzem üppigen Leben erweckt hatte. Man empfindet das, wenn man
Empfindung hat, auch heute als gewaltsam, vorzeitig, als den Tod der Jugend und
Schönheit’. Cf. Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun, p. 169; Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris, I,
p. 228.
8 Franz Cumont, ‘Adonies et canicule’, Syria 16 (1935), pp. 46–50; Detienne, Les
jardins d’Adonis, passim. On the presumed date of the Adonia cf. infra, note 10.
9 ‘Das Adonisfest blieb ein Fest der Frauen’ (Wilamowitz in Bion, Adonis, p. 13; Id.,
Reden und Vorträge, p. 300); also Reed, ‘The Sexuality of Adonis’, passim.
10 Sappho, Frgs 140 and 168; Pl. Phdr. 276b–277a; Ar. Pax, 416–20, Lys. 393; Theoc. 15;
Bion; Amm. Marc. 22.9.15. On the Adonia see Martin P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste
von religiöser Bedeutung, mit Anschluß der attischen (Leipzig: Teubner, 1906), pp.
384–7; Ludwig Deubner, Attische Feste (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1956), pp. 220–4;
Notes 113
Detienne, Les jardin d’Adonis, passim. A recent review of the evidence suggests an
anticipation of the date of the Adonia to the spring: Matthew P. J. Dillon, ‘ “Woe for
Adonis”: But in Spring, not Summer’, Hermes 131 (2003), pp. 1–16.
11 See e.g. Paul Kretschmer, ‘Mythische Namen. 4. Adonis’, Glotta 7 (1916), pp. 29–39;
Günther Zuntz, ‘On the Etymology of the Name Sappho’, Museum Helveticum 8
(1951), 12–35 (‘Appendix B: On Adonis’, pp. 34–5: ‘My suggestion is twofold: (1)
Adon is the name of the god of Byblus and not a mere title; and (2) this is not
Semitic but Asianic’).
12 Cf. Hans Bernsdorff, ‘The Idea of Bucolic in the Imitators of Theocritus’, in Marco
Fantuzzi and Theodore Papanghelis (eds), The Brill’s Companion to Greek and Latin
Pastoral (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), 167–207 (pp. 201–2).
13 Fulg. Myth. 3.8.124 (‘adon enim graece suavitas dicitur’); Remigius of Auxerre, in
Mart. Cap. 2.74.13, Lutz (ed.) (‘Adon cantans interpretatur’). Cf. Anth. Pal. 6.275;
Myth. Vat. III 11.17; Bocc. Gen. 2.52.4.
14 Pl. Phdr. 276b; Plut. Mor. 560B-C; Epict. 4.8.36.
15 Zenob. 4.21. The saying was prompted by the seemingly nonsensical words that
Adonis would have uttered in response to a plain question.
16 Zenob. 5.47. Cf. Detienne, Les jardin d’Adonis, p. 101: ‘Séducteur, … Adonis se
trouve exclu du monde de la guerre et de la chasse. Pour les Grecs, il est l’antithèse
parfait d’un héros guerrier comme Héraclès’ (‘Adonis the seducer … is excluded
from the world of war and of hunting. To the Greeks he is the perfect antithesis of a
warrior hero such as Hercules’, trans. Janet Lloyd).
17 Lucian, Syr. D. 6; Lactant. Div. Inst. 1.17.10.
18 Cf. e.g. Origen, Selecta in Ezech. 8.14 (PG 13, col. 780); Euseb. Praep. Evang. 3.2 (PG
21, col. 200); Firm. Mat. Err. prof. rel. 9.1 (PL 12, cols 1004–5); Jerome, In Ezech.
3.13–16 (PL 25, cols 85–6); Cyril of Alexandria, In Is. 18.1–2 (PG 70, cols 440–1).
19 Plut. De Is. et Os. 15–17; Paus. 2.20.6, 3.17.5; Lucian, Syr. D. 6–7; Amm. Marc.
19.1.11, 22.9.15.
20 Hymn. Orph. 56.5ff.; Procl. Hymn. 1.26; Auson. Epigr. 32, 33; Macrob. Sat. 1.21;
Iohannes Lydus, De mens. 2.5; Mart. Cap. 2.191–2; further sources in Roscher,
‘Adonis’, cols 73–5.
21 Macrob. Sat. 1.21.1–6 ‘Adonin quoque solem esse non dubitabitur … Ab apro autem
tradunt interemptum Adonin, hiemis imaginem in hoc animali fingentes’).
22 Cf. Polymnia Athanassiadi and Michael Frede (eds), Pagan Monotheism in Late
Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999).
23 Salomon Reinach, ‘Zagreus, le serpent cornu’, in Id., Cultes, mythes et religions
(Paris: Laffont, 1996), 555–60 (pp. 555–6): ‘les auteurs de basse époque qui sont nos
seuls informateurs ont sans doute, comme tous les Anciens, cédé à la manie de la
conciliation et du syncrétisme ... Ainsi, nous nous trouvons opérer sur une sorte de
concordance résultant de la juxtaposition de fragments qui proviennent eux-mêmes
de concordances...’.
24 Cf. e.g. Alain de Lille’s Anticlaudianus, 6.226, 7.42–4 (in Alain de Lille,
Anticlaudianus, Robert Bossuat (ed.) (Paris: Vrin, 1955), pp. 149, 158); Fausto
Ghisalberti, ‘Arnolfo d’Orléans, un cultore di Ovidio nel sec. XII’, Memorie del
Reale Istituto lombardo di scienze e lettere. Classe di lettere, scienze morali e storiche
24 (1932), pp. 157–234; John of Garland’s Integumenta Ovidii, 419–20 (Giovanni di
Garlandia, Integumenta Ovidii. Poemetto inedito del secolo XIII, Fausto Ghisalberti
(ed.) (Messina and Milan: Principato, 1933), p. 68); Fausto Ghisalberti, Giovanni
del Virgilio espositore delle ‘Metamorforsi’ (Florence: Olschki, 1933), pp. 91–2. On
114 Notes
the medieval exegesis of Ovid’s Metamorphoses see Frank T. Coulson, The ‘Vulgate’
Commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Toronto: Toronto Medieval Latin Texts,
1991). For a general overview, see Jane Chance, Medieval Mythography. I. From
Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, A.D. 433–1177. II. From the School
of Chartres to the Court of Avignon, 1177–1350 (Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 1994–2000), 2 vols.
25 Jerome, Epist. 58.3 (PL 22, 281); In Ezech. 3.13 (PL 25, 82: amasius Veneris).
26 John of Garland, Integumenta Ovidii, ed. Ghisalberti, p. 68, with further references
to Bernardus Silvestris and Arnulf of Orléans. The same passage is reported in
Kathryn L. McKinley, Reading the Ovidian Heroine: ‘Metamorphoses’ Commentaries,
1100–1618 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p. 71, whose translation I do not follow. I had no
access to Lester Kruger Born, The Integumenta on the Metamorphoses of Ovid by
John Garland (Diss. Chicago 1929).
27 This is a very unsatisfactory attempt at translating a series of syntactically elliptic
passages. The references to gallipot (quam dat amarus amor) and to the ‘Lion Sun’
in combination with heightened lust (fervens / Cum leo luxuries) seem reasonably
clear, and the same could be said of the common equivalence apples = testicles
(genitalia), i.e. reproductive strength. ‘Both lions’ (uterque leo) must refer to the
metamorphosed Atalanta and Hippomenes: the same expression is used for the
couple in Giovanni del Virgilio’s early fourteenth-century Ovidian commentary
(Ghisalberti, Giovanni del Virgilio espositore, p. 92).
28 Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le roman de la rose, 15645–734, Félix Lecoy
(ed.) (Paris: Champion, 1965–70), 3 vols, II, pp. 226–8. On the ‘restructuring’ of the
Ovidian source as performed by Jean de Meun, see Sylvia Huot, The Romance of the
Rose and its Medieval Readers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp.
79–81.
29 Ovide moralisé: poeme du commencement du quatorzième siècle, Cornelius de Boer
et al. (eds) (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1915–38), 5 vols, IV, pp. 98–5. Cf. Janis
Vanacker, ‘Non al suo amante più Diana piacque’. I miti venatori nella letteratura
italiana (Rome: Carocci, 2009), pp. 100–1, for a thorough illustration of the four
exegetical sections.
30 Giovanni Boccaccio, Genealogie deorum Gentilium, Vittorio Zaccaria (ed.) (Milan:
Mondadori, 1998–9), 2 vols (also Id., Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, (ed. and trans.)
Jon Solomon (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2011), I). On
Boccaccio’s predecessors see Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 220–5; Teresa Hankey, ‘La Genealogia
deorum di Paolo da Perugia’, in Michelangelo Picone and Claude Cazalé Bérard
(eds), Gli Zibaldoni di Boccaccio. Memoria, scrittura, riscrittura. Atti del Seminario
internazionale di Firenze-Certaldo, 26–28 aprile 1996 (Florence: Cesati, 1998),
pp. 81–94.
31 See Otto Gruppe, Geschichte der klassischen Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte
während des Mittelalters im Abendland und während der Neuzeit, in Roscher,
Supplement V.4 (1921), pp. 22–6; Seznec, Survival, pp. 220–4; Rudolf Pfeiffer, History
of Classical Scholarship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 20–22; Boccaccio,
Genealogie (ed. Zaccaria), II, p. 1613; Vittorio Zaccaria, Boccaccio narratore, storico,
moralista e mitografo (Florence: Olschki, 2001), pp. 112–26. See also Chapter 3.
32 On the fifteenth-century reception of Statius in particular see M. D. Reeve,
‘Statius’ Silvae in the Fifteenth Century’, Classical Quarterly 27 (1977), pp. 202–25;
Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti, L’Orfeo del Poliziano. Con il testo critico dell’originale
Notes 115
e delle successive forme teatrali (Rome: Antenore, 2000), pp. 5–10; Carlo Caruso,
‘Poesia umanistica di villa’, in Tatiana Crivelli (ed.), ‘Feconde venner le carte’.
Studi in onore di Ottavio Besomi (Bellinzona: Casagrande, 1997), 2 vols, II, pp.
272–94; Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti, ‘La ricezione delle Silvae di Stazio e la poesia
all’improvviso nel Rinascimento’, in Lucia Bertolini and Donatella Coppini (eds),
Gli antichi e i moderni. Studi in onore di Roberto Cardini (Florence: Polistampa,
2010), 3 vols, III, pp. 1283–324. On the Nux see Richard C. Jensen, ‘Coluccio
Salutati’s Lament of Phyllis’, Studies in Philology 65 (1968), 109–23, also discussed
in Chapter 1, p. 16.
33 Boccaccio, Gen. 2.51. On a manuscript of Macrobius that presumably belonged to
Boccaccio, see Antonia Mazza, ‘L’inventario della parva libraria di Santo Spirito e la
biblioteca di Boccaccio’, Italia medioevale e umanistica 9 (1966), 1–74 (p. 19).
Chapter 1: An ancient myth revisited: Adonis as citrus tree

1 For Pontano’s biography see Erasmo Pèrcopo, ‘La vita di Giovanni Pontano’, Michele
Manfredi (ed.), Archivio storico delle province napoletane 61 (1936), pp. 116–250;
62 (1937), pp. 57–237; Carol Kidwell, Pontano. Poet and Prime Minister (London:
Duckworth, 1991); Liliana Monti Sabia, ‘Profilo biografico’, in Liliana Monti Sabia-
Salvatore Monti, Studi su Giovanni Pontano (Messina: Centro interdipartimentale di
studi umanistici, 2010), 2 vols, I, pp. 1–31.
2 Naples, 15(?) April 1521 to Antonio Seripando: ‘Il povero Pontano, quando facea
versi assai e volea increpitare a noi, dicea: “Uomini di paglia, e voi che fate?” ’, in
Iacopo Sannazaro, Opere, Alfredo Mauro (ed.) (Bari: Laterza, 1961), p. 387.
3 On the textual tradition of Pontano’s poems see the Introduction to Giovanni
Pontano, Carmina, Benedetto Soldati (ed.) (Florence: Barbèra, 1902–5), 2 vols, I;
Carlo Dionisotti, ‘Juvenilia del Pontano’ (1964), in Scritti di storia della letteratura
italiana, Tania Basile, Vincenzo Fera and Susanna Villari (eds) (Rome: Edizioni
di Storia e Letteratura, 2009–), 5 vols, II, pp. 73–94; Mauro De Nichilo, I poemi
astrologici di Giovanni Pontano. Storia del testo, con un saggio di edizione critica del
‘Meteororum liber’ (Bari: Dedalo, 1975); Id., ‘Lo sconosciuto apografo avellinese del
De hortis Hesperidum di Giovanni Pontano’, Filologia e critica 2 (1977), pp. 217–46;
Monti Sabia-Monti, Studi, passim.
4 Pontano, De am. coniug. 2.4.63–70; 2.7.25–34; Erid. 1.28.1–6; 1.36; 1.39; 2.3;
2.21.9–12. Cf. also Liliana Monti Sabia, ‘Tra realtà e poesia: per una nuova
cronologia di alcuni carmi del De amore coniugali di Giovanni Pontano (I 5–8)’, in
Monti Sabia-Monti, Studi, I, pp. 477–97, discussing and solving the doubts expressed
by Giovanni Parenti, Poëta Proteus alter. Forma e storia di tre libri di Pontano
(Florence: Olschki, 1985), pp. 92–9.
5 Ancient precedents are listed in Forbes Irving, Metamorphosis, p. 129.
6 Pontano, Iambici, 1.17–19, 2.17–20.
7 Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti, ‘Schede per una storia della poesia pastorale nel secolo
XV: la scuola Guariniana a Ferrara’, in Franco Alessio and Angelo Stella (eds), In
ricordo di Cesare Angelini. Studi di letteratura e filologia (Milan: Il saggiatore, 1979),
pp. 96–131. Also, N. G. Wilson, From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian
Renaissance (London: Duckworth, 1992), pp. 36 (on Theocritus’ popularity in the
Mantuan school of Vittorino da Feltre), 96, 107 (on Politian’s 1483–4 course on
116 Notes
Theocritus), 117 (on Andronicus Callistus lecturing on Theocritus in Bologna), 118

and 127–8 (on Codro lecturing on Theocritus in Bologna and advising Manuzio on
textual cruces in the texts of the Greek Bucolics).
8 Bucolici Graeci, A. S. F. Gow (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), p. xii. On the
Aldine print and its two different issues, which also present different contents, see
Carlo Vecce, ‘Un codice di Teocrito posseduto da Sannazaro’, in Antonio Manfredi
and Carla Maria Monti (eds), L’antiche e le moderne carte: studi in memoria di
Giuseppe Billanovich (Rome, Padua: Antenore, 2007), 597–616 (esp. pp. 601–2),
with considerations on Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS XXII 87, formerly in the
possession of Sannazaro, and the circulation of the Greek Bucolics in late fifteenth-
and early sixteenth-century Naples. See also infra, p. 134, n. 86, for the questions
raised by the Codex’ readings.
9 Theocritus, A. S. F. Gow (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950),
2 vols, I, p. 190.
10 For marjoram (amaracus) as a plant sacred to Venus, cf. Eridanus 1.39.67–8. In Serv.
auct. in Aen. 1.693, Amaracus is said to be a son of Kinyras and the perfume-mixer
of Venus (Forbes Irving, Metamorphosis, p. 278). Cf. also Isid. Etym. 4.12.8, 17.9.14;
Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll, ‘Amarakos’, in RE I, p. 114; Id., ‘Amarakos’, in Roscher, I.1,
p. 266.
11 Mustard’s otherwise excellent survey of the Greek Bucolics’ popularity among
modern poets surprisingly ignores Pontano (Wilfred P. Mustard, ‘Later Echoes of the
Greek Bucolic Poets’, American Journal of Philology 30 (1909), pp. 245–83; 39 (1918),
pp. 193–8). A double variation on Bion’s theme of the anemone born from Venus’
tears and the rose stained with Adonis’ blood (Bion 1.64–8) occurs in Pontano’s
Eridanus, 1.36 and 1.39, both of uncertain dating. At ps.-Mosch. 3.80–4, Venus is
said to long more for Bion than the kiss ‘she printed on Adonis’ dying lips’. On the
revival of pastoral poetry in the early Italian Renaissance see Enrico Carrara, La
poesia pastorale (Milan: Vallardi, 1936), Chapters III and IV; W. L. Grant, Neo-Latin
Literature and the Pastoral (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
1965); Stefano Carrai (ed.), La poesia pastorale del Rinascimento (Padua: Antenore,
1998).
12 The Manutian edition includes the Meteororum liber as well, and is the first
neo-Latin collection of didactic poetry to appear in print: cf. Walther Ludwig,
‘Neulateinische Lehrgedichte und Vergils Georgica’, in D. H. Green, L. P. Johnson
and Dieter Wuttke (eds), From Wolfram and Petrarch to Goethe and Grass. Studies
in Honour of L. Forster (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1982), 151–80 (pp. 151–2); Yasmin
Haskell, ‘Renaissance Latin Didactic Poetry on the Stars: Wonder, Myth, and
Science’, Renaissance Studies 12 (1998), pp. 495–522.
13 Cf. Pontano, Carmina, Soldati (ed.), pp. XXV–XXXV; Benedetto Soldati, La poesia
astrologica nel Quattrocento. Ricerche e studi (Florence: Le Lettere, 1986), p. 260; De
Nichilo, I poemi astrologici, pp. 11–12.
14 Soldati, La poesia astrologica, Chapters I–IV. Manilius’ Astronomica features in
the short and presumably incomplete list of Pontano’s books (Pèrcopo, ‘La vita di
G. Pontano’, I, pp. 246–7; cf. also Michele Rinaldi, ‘Per un nuovo inventario della
biblioteca di Giovanni Pontano’, Studi medievali e umanistici 5–6 (2007–8), pp.
163–97). On Bonincontri see Soldati, La poesia astrologica, Chapters II–III; Cecil
Grayson, ‘Bonincontri, Lorenzo’, in DBI 12 (1970), pp. 209–11.
15 On Bonincontri’s Manilius (Rome: [s.n.], 1484) see Remigio Sabbadini, ‘Notizie
storico-critiche di alcuni codici latini’, Studi italiani di filologia classica 7 (1899),
Notes 117
99–136 (pp. 110–14); L. D. Reynolds (ed.), Texts and Transmission (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 236 and 238. Further contributions are listed in
Concetta Bianca, ‘Pomponio Leto e l’invenzione dell’Accademia romana’, in Marc
Deramaix (ed.), Les Académies dans l’Europe humaniste: idéaux et pratiques. Actes
du Colloque international de Paris (10–13 juin 2003) (Geneva: Droz, 2008), 25–56
(p. 26). Housman had no direct access to Bonincontri’s Manilius but saw a selection
of his valuable emendations in the apparatus of a late sixteenth-century edition,
and had words of commendation for them while lamenting that ‘Scaliger and
Bentley and the modern editors [had] unduly neglected [them].’ (M. Manilius,
Astronomicon libri quinque, recensuit et enarravit A. E. Housman (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1937), 5 vols, I, p. xii). On another contemporary and
highly influential astrological poet, Basinio Basini of Parma, see Soldati, La poesia
astrologica, Chapter I; Augusto Campana, ‘Atti, Isotta degli’, in DBI 4 (1962), pp.
547–56; Id., ‘Basinio da Parma’, in DBI 7 (1965), pp. 89–98.
16 A medal by Adriano Fiorentino struck not long after 1500 shows Pontano on the
obverse and Urania holding a globe and a lyre on the reverse – reproduced in
Fausto Nicolini, L’arte napoletana del Rinascimento e la lettera di Pietro Summonte
a Marcantonio Michiel (Naples: Ricciardi, 1925), p. 167, and in Kidwell, Pontano, p.
313. In the fresco portrait painted in the town hall of Cerreto (the poet’s birthplace)
in 1536, Pontano is sitting at his desk writing verse while Urania crowns him with
the poetic garland (reproduced in Kidwell, Pontano, p. 299). Pontano himself, in his
dialogue Asinus, self-deprecatingly pictured himself while composing his Urania
as an absent-minded investigator of the stars (Id., Dialoghi, Carmelo Privitera (ed.)
(Florence: Sansoni, 1943), p. 308): on this charming self-characterization cf. Scevola
Mariotti, ‘Per lo studio dei dialoghi del Pontano’, in Id., Scritti medievali e umanistici
(Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1976), 185–207 (p. 187).
17 Thus Manuzio in the dedication of his Statius (August-November 1502) to Pontano:
‘divinum illud opus tuum’ (‘that divine poem of yours’), in Pontano, Carmina,
Johannes Oeschger (ed.) (Bari: Laterza, 1948), p. 459; also in Aldo Manuzio editore.
Dediche, prefazioni, note ai testi, Giovanni Orlandi (ed.). Introduction by Carlo
Dionisotti (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1975), 2 vols, I, p. 62.
18 Naples, 29 August 1505: ‘riservando pur ad voi la Urania come cosa maiore’
(Pontano, Carmina, Oeschger (ed.), p. 464); ‘Quis hunc putet a Naeniolis illis
depressisque versiculis ad Uraniae gradatim sublimitatem ascendisse?’ (‘Who would
have thought that he could gradually ascend from those pretty Lullabies and humble
little pieces to the sublime heights of Urania?’, Ibid., p. 469).
19 Urania had originally four books until the structure of the poem was revised in 1496
(De Nichilo, I poemi astrologici, pp. 25–6).
20 The rubrics read ‘De Mercurio et Argo’ (Ur. 1.464–73), and ‘De Adonide et Venere’
(Ur. 1.474–506).
21 Macrob. Sat. 1.19.12, 14, based on Ov. Met. 1.720–1. Cf. e.g. the theme of blood
linking the successive episodes of the Iron Age, Astraea, the Giants, Lykaon and
Caesar, in Met. 1.149, 157, 162, 201, 235. On the Ovidian presence in Urania,
Francesco Tateo, ‘Ovidio nell’Urania di Pontano’, in Italo Gallo and Luciano Nicastri
(eds), Aetates Ovidianae. Lettori di Ovidio dall’antichità al Rinascimento (Naples:
Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1995), pp. 279–91.
22 The similarity between the names of the myrtle tree (murrhinē) and the myrrh tree
(murrhis), as Ingo Gildenhard kindly suggests to me, may well have struck Pontano.
Serv. auct. in Aen. 5.72 claims that the tree into which Myrrha was transformed
118 Notes
was a myrtle tree. While describing a sanctuary to the Graces at Elis, Pausanias
(first published by Aldo Manuzio’s heirs in 1516) says that ‘the rose and the myrtle
are sacred to Aphrodite and connected with the story of Adonis’ (6.24.7). Aulo
Giano Parrasio, Pontano’s good friend and a member of his academy, owned a MS
copy of Pausanias (now Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS III AA 16bis): cf. Aubrey
Diller, ‘The Manuscripts of Pausanias’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American
Philological Association 88 (1957), 169–88 (p. 187); Caterina Tristano, La biblioteca
di un umanista calabrese: Aulo Giano Parrasio (Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 1988), p.
80, No 43. On the relationship of myrtle and myrrh see Baudissin, Studien, II, pp.
198–201; a discussion of the erotic significance of both plants in connection with
Pl. Phdr. 244a in Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in
Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp.
472–3; on analogies between Myrrha and the character of Myrrhina in Aristophanes’
Lysistrata, cf. Detienne, Les jardins d’Adonis, pp. 94–7.
23 The myrtle is among the plants mentioned by Ovid as moving towards Orpheus
(Met. 10.98 ‘bicolor myrtus’). It is worth remembering that the Adonis episode is
also located in Met. 10.
24 Macrob. Sat. 1.21.1: ‘lugens ... dea, quod sol annuo gressu per duodecim signorum
ordinem pergens partem quoque hemisphaerii inferioris ingreditur, quia
de duodecim signis zodiaci sex superiora sex inferiora censentur’.
25 Macrob. Sat. 1.21.11: (‘Nec in occulto est neque aliud esse Osirin quam solem, nec
Isin aliud esse quam terram, ut diximus, naturamve rerum: eademque ratio, quae
circa Adonin et Attinem vertitur, in Aegyptia quoque religione luctum et laetitiam
vicibus annuae administrationis alternat’ (‘For it is no secret that Osiris is none other
than the sun and Isis, as we have said, none other than the earth or world of nature,
and the explanation which applies to the rites of Adonis and Attis is applicable
also to the Egyptian rites, to account for the alternation of sorrow and joy which
accompany in turn the phases of the year’, trans. P. V. Davies).
26 Pontano, Antonius, in Id., Dialoghi, Privitera (ed.), pp. 75–6. See also the more
recent edition: Id., Dialogues. Vol. I. Charon and Antonius, Julia Haig Gasser (ed.)
(Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 198–200.
Foreign origin and linguistic inability is admitted by Macrobius himself in Sat. Praef.
1.11.
27 Cf. Erasmus, Ciceronianus, in Desiderius Erasmus, Opera omnia (Leiden: Petrus
van der Aa, 1703–6), 10 vols, I, col. 1007A (Philoponus speaking): ‘[Macrobius] sua
lingua non loquitur, et si quando loquitur, Graeculum Latine balbutire credas’ (‘He
does not speak with his own voice; and even when he does, you would believe it is
some graeculus stammering in Latin’).
28 Parenti, Poëta Proteus alter, pp. 8–11. On Seneca’s much-quoted passage on ‘honey-
making’ as a metaphor for eclectic imitation (ad Luc. 84), see Petrarch, Fam. 23.19,
and the less frequently cited Macrob. Sat. 6.1.6 and 5.16.12 (as suggested by Luca
Cadili, ‘Viamque adfectat Olympo’: memoria ellenistica nelle ‘Georgiche’ di Virgilio
(Milan: LED, 2001), p. 10). On the art of literary allusion cf. Giorgio Pasquali,
‘Arte allusiva’, in Id., Pagine stravaganti di un filologo, Carlo Ferdinando Russo (ed.)
(Florence: Le Lettere, 1994), 2 vols, II, pp. 275–82; Gian Biagio Conte, The Rhetoric
of Imitation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996).
29 Cf. Gianni Borgo, ‘Il mito di Adone nella cultura rinascimentale italiana. Saggio di
iconologia letteraria’, Levia gravia, 2 (2000), 219–51 (pp. 232–3).
30 There has been some confusion about the actual content of Pontano’s poem. In the
Notes 119
dedicatory epistle of Pontano’s Opera (May–August 1505) to Johannes Collauer,

Aldo Manuzio omits lemons: ‘Delectabunt [te] horti Hesperidum citriorum et
citrorum cultu pervario’ (‘With its description of the multifarious cultivation of
oranges and citrons, the Horti Hesperidum will delight you’, in Pontano, Carmina,
Oeschger (ed.), p. 467; Aldo Manuzio editore, I, p. 90). Grant, Neo-Latin Literature,
p. 59, omits citrons, while Vladimiro Zabughin, Vergilio nel Rinascimento italiano
da Dante a Torquato Tasso (Trent: Università degli Studi, 2000), 2 vols, II, pp. 76–7,
only mentions cedri (‘citrons’), and so do Vittorio Rossi, Il Quattrocento (Milan:
Vallardi, 1938), p. 486; Pèrcopo, ‘La vita di G. Pontano’, II, pp. 117–22; Monti
Sabia in Poeti latini del Quattrocento, Francesco Arnaldi, Liliana Monti Sabia and
Lucia Gualdo Rosa (eds) (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1964), p. 780; De Nichilo, ‘Lo
sconosciuto apografo’, pp. 225, 245; Borgo, ‘Il mito di Adone’, pp. 233–4, as well as
several others. Kidwell, Pontano, p. 295, vaguely refers to ‘a citrus tree’. All varieties
are correctly identified by William Roscoe, The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth
(Liverpool: J. McCreery, 1805), 4 vols, IV, p. 91; Soldati, La poesia astrologica, p. 271;
Domenico Lanza, ‘Agrumi’, in EI 2 (1930), 6–10 (p. 8); Santi Floridia, Gli agrumi
(Catania: Muglia, 1936), pp. 26–7, 71–2; Ludwig, ‘Neulateinische Lehrgedichte’, p.
151; Francesco Calabrese, La favolosa storia degli agrumi (Palermo: L’Epos, 2004),
p. 24. The distinction between citrius (‘orange’) and citrus (‘citron’) is explicitly
made by Pontano at Hort. Hesp. 2.180–95, and emphasized by the marginal rubric
‘Quo differat citrius a citro’ (‘In what respect the orange differs from the citron’).
Contemporary authors may occasionally use a different terminology: cf. e.g. Celio
Calcagnini’s De citrio, cedro et citro commentatio, dedicated to the physician and
botanist Antonio Musa Brasavola, where citrius stands for the orange tree, and
cedrus and citrus for two different varieties of cedar tree (Celio Calcagnini, Opera
aliquot (Basel: Froben, 1544), pp. 479–83). In the popular Byzantine collection of
treatises on agriculture known as Geoponica, Gr. kitrion is used for ‘citron’ (Geop.
10.7.8): cf. Robert Rodgers, ‘Kepopoiia: Garden Making and Garden Culture in
the Geoponika’, in Antony Littlewood, Henry Maguire and Joachim Wolschke-
Bulmahn (eds), Byzantine Garden Culture (Dumbarton Oaks: Dumbarton Oaks
Research Library and Collection, 2002), 159–75 (p. 167). See in general Franz Olck,
‘Citrone’, in RE, III.2, cols 2612–24, and the chapter on ‘Agrumi’ in Victor Hehn,
Kulturpflanzen und Haustiere in ihrem Übergang aus Asien nach Griechenland und
Italien sowie in das übrige Europa (Berlin: Borntraeger, 1911), pp. 442–56 (abridged
English translation: The Wanderings of Plants and Animals from their First Home,
trans. J. S. Stallybrass (London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1885), pp. 329–39).
31 The variants of the myth are listed and discussed in Richard Wende, Quaestiones
mythologicae de Hesperidum fabula (Diss. Breslau 1875); Konrad Seeliger,
‘Hesperiden’, in Roscher, I.2, cols 2594–603.
32 The privilege of growing citrus trees was shared by few other places in Italy, namely
the bay of Naples, Sicily, Calabria, Liguria, Tuscany, and Sardinia (Floridia, Gli
agrumi, pp. 54–75, on the evidence provided by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
authors such as Flavio Biondo and Leandro Alberti).
33 Naples, 13 November 1500, in Alessandro Luzio – Rodolfo Renier, La coltura e le
relazioni letterarie di Isabella d’Este Gonzaga, Simone Albonico (ed.). Introduction
by Giovanni Agosti (Milan: Sylvestre Bonnard, 2005), p. 250 (also in Pontano,
Carmina, Soldati (ed.), I, p. XVII note, and ed. Oeschger, p. 459): ‘Ho alcune
cose dedicate al vostro nome, ma le cose de ingenio hanno bisogno de multa
et longa limatione; però la V. Ex.tia habia patientia: culte quando siano faranno
120 Notes
honore ad lei et al auctore, quando vadano inculte succederia el contrario’. On the

chronology of the composition see Salvatore Monti, ‘Ricerche sulla cronologia dei
Dialoghi’, in Monti Sabia-Monti, Studi, II, 757–826 (pp. 807–11, 815); De Nichilo,
‘Lo sconosciuto apografo’, pp. 218–28; Bruno Figliuolo, ‘Nuovi documenti sulla
datazione del De hortis Hesperidum di Giovanni Pontano’, Studi rinascimentali 7
(2009), pp. 11–15.
34 On the battle of the Taro, also known as the battle of Fornovo, see Francesco
Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, 2.9, Silvana Seidel Menchi (ed.) (Turin: Einaudi, 1971),
3 vols, I, pp. 188–97.
35 Cf. Vladimiro Zabughin, ‘Un beato poeta (Battista Spagnoli, il Mantovano)’, Atti
dell’Accademia dell’Arcadia 1 (1917), 61–90 (p. 74); Grant, Neo-Latin Literature, p. 46;
Pèrcopo, ‘Lettere di G. P.’, p. 53; Id., ‘La vita di G. P.’, p. 215.
36 Pontano’s behaviour was stigmatized in a memorable passage of Guicciardini’s Storia
d’Italia, 2.5 (Seidel Menchi (ed.), I, pp. 169–70), as well as in other contemporary
sources. The episode is discussed in Pèrcopo, ‘La vita di G. P.’, pp. 203–7; Monti
Sabia, ‘L’estremo autografo’; Kidwell, Pontano, pp. 1–18, 350–4.
37 Hort. Hesp. 1.329–30, 332 (‘violenta Brigantum / … imperia’; ‘vidisti … patrios
foedata sede penates’). Cf. also the gloss to the eclogue ‘Acon’, 154 in Pontano,
Eclogae, Monti Sabia (ed.), p. 115.
38 Hort. Hesp. 2.562–6. Pontano’s wish for the return of the Aragonese dynasty
must have been formulated after Frederick of Aragon’s deposition (2 August
1500). Since Sannazaro followed the king into exile, the passage referring to his
absence from Naples (Hort. Hesp. 2.297–308) must have also been drafted after
that date.
39 Carlo Dionisotti, ‘Giorgione e la letteratura di corte’, in Id., Appunti su arti e lettere
(Milan: Jaca Books, 1994), 111–16 (p. 112). Pontano’s contacts with Francesco
Gonzaga are more likely to have been of a political nature: cf. Luzio-Renier, La
coltura, p. 250.
40 Cf. the letter sent from Naples to Isabella by Iacopo d’Atri, Count of Pianella, on
17 March 1499 (in Luzio-Renier, La coltura, pp. 248–9; cf. also Pèrcopo, ‘La vita di
G. P.’, I, pp. 213–14; De Nichilo, ‘Lo sconosciuto apografo’, pp. 222–3). The statue was
never cast, but a preparatory drawing survives in the Louvre: cf. D. S. Chambers and
J. Martineau (eds), Splendours of the Gonzaga. Catalogue of the Exhibition, London,
Victoria and Albert Museum, 4 November 1981–31 January 1982 (London: Victoria
and Albert Museum, 1981), p. 55.
41 Cf. Hort. Hesp. 1.9, where Virgil’s shade is evoked, and Aegidius, in Pontano,
Dialoghi, pp. 260–1, on Pontano’s comparing his own poem to Virgil’s Georgics.
On the revival of didactic poetry in humanistic circles see Ludwig, ‘Neulateinische
Lehrgedichte’, passim.
42 On the popularity of the Georgics and of Columella’s Tenth Book in fifteenth-century
Italy see below, note 46, and the Introduction to Columella’s Res Rustica. Incerti
auctoris Liber de arboribus, R. H. Rodgers (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010).
43 Virgil, Georgics, R. F. Thomas (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988),
2 vols, I, p. 179; Id., Georgics R. A. B. Mynors (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994),
pp. 117–18; Id., Georgica, Manfred Erren (ed.) (Heidelberg: Winter, 1985–2003),
2 vols, II, pp. 352–5; Olck, ‘Citrone’, in RE, III.2, col. 2613. The problem was
identified and discussed by Ermolao Barbaro (†1493) in his posthumously published
Corollarium (1516), 1.176 (‘Citrea’) (Id., In Dioscoridem Corollariorum libri quinque
(Cologne: Iohannes Soter, 1530), fol. 18r–v), and by Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi
Notes 121
... nelli sei libri di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo della materia medicinale (Venice:
Valgrisi, 1568), 5 vols, I, p. 268.
44 On Pontano and Pliny see Michele Rinaldi, ‘Un codice della Naturalis Historia di
Plinio il Vecchio annotato da Giovanni Pontano: il manoscritto Barberiniano Latino
143 della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana’, Studi medievali e umanistici 4 (2006), pp.
161–202.
45 Cf. Politian’s commentary on Virgil, G. 2.126–7, as an example of what the best
humanist scholarship could achieve when reading and interpreting the Virgilian
passage in question (Angelo Poliziano, Commento inedito alle Georgiche di Virgilio,
Livia Castano Musicò (ed.) (Florence: Olschki, 1990), pp. 106–9). Oranges
and presumably lemons were brought (perhaps, in the case of lemons, brought
again) to Western Europe from China and India via Persia by the Arabs (Hehn,
Kulturpflanzen und Haustiere, pp. 444–5 (Engl. trans. The Wanderings, pp. 331–2);
Olck, ‘Citrone’, in RE, III.2, col. 2612; Floridia, Gli agrumi, pp. 15–19, 22, 56–62).
It has been suggested that the ancient Romans simply lacked the terminology to
distinguish between different types of citrus trees and fruits, and that archaeological
evidence from Pompeii, Carthage and the Basilica of Santa Costanza in Rome
should authorize the view that the ancients cultivated not only citrons but also
lemons and oranges as well (Samuel Tolkowsky, Hesperides. A History of the Culture
and Use of Citrus Fruits (London: J. Bale & Co., 1938), pp. 90–100). Substantial
doubts do remain, however, especially as regards oranges: see the more prudent
opinions of Olck, ‘Citrone’, in RE, III.2, col. 2612, and of Calabrese, La favolosa
storia, pp. 89–91.
46 Zabughin, Vergilio nel Rinascimento italiano, I, pp. 234, 254, on the relevance in
this respect of the fifteenth-century Virgilian commentaries by Cristoforo Landino
(1424–92) and Antonio Mancinelli (1452–ca. 1505). Of Columella’s Book Ten
four fifteenth-century commentaries survive today – by Giulio Pomponio Leto,
Curio Lancillotto Pasio, Giovanni Battista Cantalicio and Giovan Battista Pio (cf.
Virginia Brown in Paul Oskar Kristeller et al. (eds), Catalogus translationum et
commentariorum. Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries:
Annotated Lists and Guides (Washington: Catholic University of America Press,
1960–), III, pp. 173–93). On the effects of this new trend on Neo-Latin and
vernacular poetry see Caruso, ‘Poesia umanistica di villa’; Carrai (ed.), La poesia
pastorale nel Rinascimento; La letteratura di villa e di villeggiatura. Atti del Convegno
di Parma, 29 settembre–1 ottobre 2003 (Rome: Salerno, 2004). An excellent
overview of bucolic and georgic poetry in European culture is offered by Klaus
Garber (ed.), Europäische Bukolik und Georgik (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1976).
47 Reported by R. G. M. Nisbet in his Preface to Mynors’ commentary on Virgil’s
Georgics, p. vi.
48 Portogalli was the common Italian name for ‘oranges’ until the early twentieth
century: cf. Giorgio Pasquali, ‘Mutamenti nel paesaggio italiano’ (1942), in Id.,
Lingua nuova e antica, Gianfranco Folena (ed.) (Florence: Le Monnier, 1985),
315–43 (p. 318). Etymologically related forms survive in several Southern Italian
dialects and in various other languages (notably Modern Greek and Arabic) along
the coasts of the Eastern Mediterranean.
49 Floridia, Gli agrumi, pp. 25–6; Calabrese, La favolosa storia, pp. 127–32. Cf.
also Calcagnini, Opera aliquot, p. 481. For later testimonies, Floridia, Gli agrumi,
pp. 74–5.
122 Notes
50 Carmen M. Radulet, Vasco da Gama. La prima circumnavigazione dell’Africa

1497–1499 (Reggio Emilia: Edizioni Diabasis, 1994).
51 According to the description offered by De Nichilo, the passage in question is
present in the MS Capone (Avellino, Biblioteca Provinciale), fols 2r–21v, which
antedates the first edition (De Nichilo, ‘Lo sconosciuto apografo’, pp. 244–5).
Georges Gallesio (Traité du Citrus (Paris: Fantin, 1811)), Floridia, Tolkowski and
Calabrese, all seem to have bypassed Pontano’s reference. Liliana Monti Sabia’s ‘Echi
di scoperte geografiche in opere pontaniane’, in Monti Sabia-Monti, Studi, II, pp.
1135–57, deals with references to the Columbian voyages in Pontano’s De rebus
coelestibus.
52 Pontano does however refer to both ‘sweet’ and ‘sour’ local citria, apparently
obtained through crossing (Hort. Hesp. 2.432–75); see Floridia, Gli agrumi, pp. 22,
23, 26–9. Gallesio, Traité, pp. 297–322, maintained that the sweet oranges cultivated
in Southern Europe during the late Middle Ages had been imported from the East
by the Genoese. Tolkowski, Hesperides, p. 238, thought them to be the progeny
of those cultivated in the early Christian era, of which however no written record
survives (for a discussion of the archaelogical evidence see supra, note 45).
53 In Aegidius reference is made to the recent death (1501) of Gabriele Altilio, Bishop
of Policastro: cf. Pontano, Dialoghi, p. 255.
54 Pontano, Dialoghi, pp. 261–3. The proem of the Horti Hesperidum does indeed
present a combination of Virgilian and Lucretian elements very skillfully
intertwined.
55 Pontano, Dialoghi, p. 261. On Tamira see Lucia Gualdo Rosa and Patricia Osmond,
‘Piero Tamira’, Repertorium Pomponianum (www.repertoriumpomponianum.it/
pomponiani/tamira_piero.htm [accessed 22 May 2013]).
56 Pontano, Dialoghi, p. 261.
57 On Leto’s commentary on Virgil see Aldo Lunelli, ‘Il commento virgiliano di
Pomponio Leto’, in Atti del convegno virgiliano di Brindisi nel bimillenario della
morte (Perugia: Istituto di Filologia Latina dell’Università, 1983), pp. 309–22; Id.,
‘Leto, Giulio Pomponio’, in Enciclopedia virgiliana (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia
Italiana, 1983–91), 5 vols, III, pp. 192–5; Giancarlo Abbamonte, ‘Esegesi virgiliana
nella Roma del Secondo Quattrocento: osservazioni sulle fonti del commento di
G. Pomponio Leto alle Georgiche’, in Ugo Criscuolo (ed.), Societas studiorum. Per
Salvatore D’Elia (Naples: Dipartimento di Filologia classica dell’Università di Napoli,
2004), pp. 545–83; Id., ‘Gli studi lessicografici negli ambienti accademici di Roma
e Napoli nella seconda metà del Quattrocento’, in Les Académies dans l’Europe
humaniste, pp. 339–67. Politian’s commentary remained unpublished until 1990.
58 In Serv. auct. in Buc. 8.37, the aition of the apple-tree is narrated in connection
with Adonis. Melos, a Delian, comes to Cyprus and befriends Adonis. When he
hears of Adonis’ death, he hangs himself from a tree, and the tree is changed into
an apple-tree by Venus. Melos’ son, who bears the same name, goes back to Delos
and teaches Delians how to shear sheep (Gr. mēla), which are thus named after him
(Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll, ‘Melos’, in Roscher, II.2, cols 2648–9). The real difficulty
resides in determining the actual circulation of this story. The portion of text
in question survives in only one manuscript (L = Leiden, Voss. Lat. O.80, ninth
century, provenance uncertain), which was first published by Pierre Daniel in 1600.
See John J. H. Savage, ‘The Manuscripts of the Commentary of Servius Danielis on
Virgil’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 43 (1932), 77–121 (pp. 79–82 on L);
P. K. Marshall, ‘Servius’, in Reynolds (ed.), Texts and Transmission, 385–8 (p. 386).
Notes 123
59 Lucr. 5.32 (‘aureaque Hesperidum ... fulgentia mala’); Verg. Buc. 3.71 (‘aurea mala’),
6.61 (‘Hesperidum ... mala’); Ov. Met. 10.650 (‘aurea poma’). See in general John
Sargeaunt, The Trees, Shrubs and Plants of Virgil (Oxford: Blackwell, 1920), p. 75;
Benjamin O. Foster, ‘Notes on the Symbolism of the Apple in Classical Antiquity’,
Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 10 (1899), pp. 39–55, complemented with
Antony R. Littlewood, ‘The Symbolism of the Apple in Greek and Roman Literature’,
Ibid. 72 (1968), 147–81 (esp. pp. 163–5), and Jürgen Trumpf, ‘Kydonische Äpfel’,
Hermes 88 (1960), pp. 14–23.
60 Text in Pontano, Carmina, Soldati (ed.), II, p. 144; Pontano, Carmina, Oeschger
(ed.), pp. 156–7; Poeti latini del Quattrocento, pp. 478–9.
61 Poeti latini del Quattrocento, pp. 478 and 475.
62 Cf. also the three epigrams ‘De citro’ in the Codex Salmasianus (Anthologia latina,
Alexander Riese (ed.) (Leipzig: Teubner, 1894–5), 2 vols, I.1, pp. 150–1). For earlier
Greek sources not accessible to Pontano cf. Olck, ‘Citrone’, col. 2614.
63 Fully discussed by Olck, ‘Citrone’, cols 2616–7.
64 Cf. e.g. Plin. HN 5.1.12 and 13.29.91. In his Castigationes Plinianae (1493), Ermolao
Barbaro made repeated attempts to explain the presence of such confusing variant
readings in the textual tradition of Plin. HN 5.1.12, 13.29.91, 16.26.66 (Ermolao
Barbaro, Castigationes Plinianae et in Pomponium Melam, Giovanni Pozzi (ed.)
(Padua: Antenore, 1973–9), 4 vols, II, pp. 322, 712; III, p. 1251). See also Marcello
Virgilio’s note to his translation of Dioscorides, Pedacii Dioscoridae Anazarbei De
medica materia libri sex (Florence: Filippo di Giunta, 1518), fol. 72r.
65 Cf. Calcagnini, Opera aliquot, p. 479. On the reception of Athenaeus in the
fifteenth century see Anna Lucia Di Lello-Finuoli, ‘Per la storia del testo di Ateneo’,
in Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae VII (Vatican City: Bibliotheca
Apostolica Vaticana, 2000), pp. 129–82.
66 On the Hermeneumata as a didactic tool for learning Greek in the fifteenth century
see A. C. Dionisotti, ‘From Ausonius’ Schooldays? A Schoolbook and Its Relatives’,
Journal of Roman Studies 72 (1982), pp. 83–125. In his youth Pontano took Greek
classes under Gregory Tifernas and George of Trebizond (Pèrcopo, ‘La vita di G. P.’,
I, p. 10).
67 Georg Goetz and Gotthold Gundermann (eds), Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum.
II. Glossae Latinograecae et Graecolatinae (Leipzig: Teubner, 1888), p. 315 (24);
Georg Goetz (ed.), III. Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana. Accedunt Hermeneumata
medicobotanica vetustiora (Leipzig: Teubner, 1892), pp. 26 (22), 358 (75), 442 (9),
477 (41), 545 (71).
68 As cited in Zabughin, Vergilio nel Rinascimento italiano, I, pp. 228. Mancinelli’s
phrase ‘to my sparse “citerean” trees’ (‘meis quibusdam citereis arboribus’) occurs
in his note to Verg. Buc. 7.6 (a frigido vento). It refers to the damage done by the
March and April winds to his citrus (?) trees, and sounds like a personal response to
the line where Meliboeus says he is constructing a repair to defend myrtles from the
cold wintery wind. On Mancinelli see Remigio Sabbadini, Antonio Mancinelli. Saggio
storico-letterario (Velletri: Tip. Sartori, 1877); Zabughin, Vergilio nel Rinascimento
italiano, ad indicem; Carla Mellidi, ‘Mancinelli, Antonio’, in DBI 68 (2007), pp.
450–3.
69 Leslie F. Smith, ‘A Notice of the Epigrammata of Francesco Patrizi, Bishop of Gaeta’,
Studies in the Renaissance 15 (1968), 92–143 (pp. 110–12).
70 Ugolino Verino, Panegyricon ad Ferdinandum regem et Isabellam reginam
Hispaniarum de Saracenae Baetidos gloriosa expugnatione, József Fógel and László
124 Notes
Juhász (eds) (Leipzig: Teubner, 1933), p. 33: ‘Cedat odoratis nutrix Aeneia pomis /
Malaque pervigili Hesperidum servata dracone, / Alcinoi et biferi cedant pomaria
Paesti ...’ (442–4 ‘Let Aeneas’ nurse [scil. Caieta/Gaeta] with her scented fruits yield,
let the apples of the Hesperides guarded by the vigil dragon, and the orchards of
Alcinous and the orchards of twice-bearing Paestum yield ...’). For ‘twice-bearing
Paestum’ (referring however not to citrus trees but to roses), cf. Verg. G. 4.119; Mart.
12.31; Politian, Epigrammata latina, 37.17 (Angelo Poliziano, Prose volgari inedite
e poesie latine e greche edite e inedite, Isidoro Del Lungo (ed.) (Florence: Barbèra,
1867), pp. 128–9).
71 Coluccio Salutati, Conquestio Phillidis, 145–52, in Jensen, ‘Coluccio Salutati’s
Lament of Phyllis’, p. 120. It appears that Salutati regarded the ‘apples from Media’
(147 ‘Medica ... poma’) as the fruit of a tree different from the ‘humble citron’
(150 ‘humilem ... citrum’), mentioned three verses later on. ‘Nudo ... robore’ (149)
referring to a trunk without leaves is in all likelihood an allusion to Stat. Theb. 6.351.
72 Plin. NH 19.19.49 ‘Hesperidum hortos ac regum Adonidis et Alcinoi itemque
pensiles, sive illos Semiramis … fecit’.
73 Virginia Brown in Kristeller et al. (eds), Catalogus translationum et
commentariorum, III, pp. 181–4. While the text in the surviving MSS of Leto’s
commentary reads ‘Adonis vero regis’, in at least three fifteenth-century printed
editions (Venice 1480, Bologna 1494, Reggio Emilia 1499) the text erroneously
reads ‘Ante omnes [alternatively ‘omnis’] vero regis’, where the name of Adonis has
altogether disappeared. Pliny’s ‘King Adonis’ must bear some connection with the
palatial gardens of Imperial Rome, the Adonea. The closest reference to the Adonea
in ancient texts is Philostr. Vita Apoll. 7.32, where the Emperor Domitian is said to
have sacrificed to Pallas Athena ‘in the hall of Adonis’ decorated with pots of herbs
and flowers according to the Syrian custom.
74 Hence Servius, followed by many, could state that in the Garden of the Hesperides
‘were golden apples sacred to Venus’ (in Aen. 4.84 ‘erant mala aurea Veneri
consecrata’). The golden apple awarded to Venus by Paris was the token of her
victory over Juno and Minerva in the beauty contest instigated by Eris, goddess of
discord.
75 Pliny on the other hand refers to the anemone as a ‘flower that never opens unless
the wind blows, from which it derives its name’ (NH 21.94.165 ‘flos nunquam se
aperit nisi vento spirante, unde et nomen accipere’), while the Servian gloss at Aen.
5.72 describes it as ‘the flower which is allegedly never shaken off by the wind’
(‘florem, qui numquam vento decuti dicitur’) – a derivation perhaps suggested by
Gr. adonētos ‘unshaken’. See the excellent discussion by August Ferdinand Naeke in
his ‘De diis qui “secum sua gaudia gestant” [Lydia (App. Verg.) 45 (148)] digressio’,
in Carmina Valerii Catonis cum Aug. Ferd. Naekii annotationibus, Ludwig Schopen
(ed.) (Bonn: Koenig, 1847), 178–82 (p. 180).
76 Vita Donatiana, 3: ‘speciem maturae arboris refertaeque variis pomis et floribus’,
reproduced in nearly all the subsequent ancient and medieval lives of Virgil. Cf.
Vitae Vergilianae antiquae, Giorgio Brugnoli and Fabio Stok (eds) (Rome: Istituto
Poligrafico dello Stato, 1997), pp. 19, 62, 78–9, 165, 213, 225, 237, 265–6. One also
wonders whether the episode may by implication refer to the bay tree as a sterile
plant: cf. Otto Gruppe, Geschichte der klassischen Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte,
in Roscher, Supplement, V.4, p. 36. On the rivalry between the bay and the orange,
see infra.
77 Hort. Hesp. 1.571: ‘Et fructu felix et flore et fronde recenti’.
Notes 125
78 Theophr. Caus. pl. 1.11, 1.18.5; Plin. HN 12.7.15; Solin. 46.4; Serv. in G. 2.127;
Pallad. 4.10.16; Macrob. Sat. 3.19.4; Isid. Etym. 17.7. Cf. Hehn, Kulturpflanzen
und Haustiere, pp. 444–5 (Engl. trans. The Wanderings, p. 335); Pasquali,
‘Mutamenti’, p. 317.
79 See in particular Pietro de’ Crescenzi, Ruralia commoda, Will Richter and Reinhilt
Richter-Bergmeier (eds) (Heidelberg: Winter, 1995–8), 2 vols, II, p. 112. For further
references see Calabrese, La favolosa storia, pp. 117–21.
80 Introduction to Day 3.8, in Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, Vittore Branca (ed.)
(Turin: Einaudi, 1985), p. 325.
81 Cf. Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Lucia A. Ciapponi and Giovanni
Pozzi (eds) (Padua: Antenore, 1980), 2 vols, I, pp. 80 (‘di spectatissimi citri, di
naranci et di limoni’) and 365 (‘lo interno ... arborario ... era tutto di meli rancii,
limonarii et citri’; also pp. 100, 115, 292, 305, 339). The frequent appearance of citrus
trees and fruits in fifteenth-century painting should also be thoroughly investigated:
for a preliminary survey, Calabrese, La favolosa storia, pp. 137–8.
82 Cf. also Verg. G. 2.87, and notably Stat. Silv. 1.3.81.
83 Cf. the discussion on the ‘art of beginning’ in Pontano’s Aegidius (supra, note 54).
84 Hort. Hesp. 1.67: ‘Perpetuum Veneris monumentum at triste dolorum’. Cf. Ov. Met.
10.725–6 ‘luctus monimenta manebunt / semper, Adoni, mei’.
85 As observed by Zabughin, Vergilio nel Rinascimento italiano, II, p. 176.
86 On this point, Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti, ‘Boiardo elegiaco e Tito Vespasiano
Strozzi’, in Andrea Comboni e Alessandra Di Ricco (eds), L’elegia nella tradizione
poetica italiana (Trent: Dipartimento di Scienze Filologiche e Storiche, 2003), pp.
81–102; Francesco Tateo, ‘Napoli neo-latina e la tradizione di Petrarca’, in Dirk
Sacré and Jan Papy (eds), Syntagmatia. Essays on Neo-Latin Literature in Honour
of Monique Mund-Dopchie and Gilbert Tournoy (Leuven: Leuven University Press,
2009), 105–17 (pp. 115–17).
87 Zabughin, Vergilio nel Rinascimento italiano, I, pp. 242–3, provides an excellent
analysis of Pontano’s treatment of Virgilian and Ovidian sources.
88 Cf. Parenti, Poëta Proteus alter, pp. 8–11.
Chapter 2: Adonis and the Renaissance idyll

1 For an overview see Luca Carlo Rossi, ‘Gli umanisti e i poeti latini. Vizi e
virtù degli dei’, in Pietro Gibellini (Gen. ed.), Il mito nella letteratura italiana
(Brescia: Morcelliana, 2005), 5 vols, I (Gian Carlo Alessio (ed.), Dal Medioevo al
Rinascimento), pp. 315–34.
2 Cf. Martin McLaughlin’s classic monograph Literary Imitation in the Italian
Renaissance. The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to
Bembo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
3 Carlo Dionisotti, ‘Appunti sulle Rime del Sannazaro’, in Scritti, II, 1–37 (pp. 21–9 for
a masterly analysis of the Latin-vernacular relationship in the early decades of the
sixteenth century).
4 On the debate on imitation see Carlo Dionisotti, Gli umanisti e il volgare fra Quattro
e Cinquecento (Milan: 5 Continents, 2003); McLaughlin, Literary Imitation; JoAnn
DellaNeva (ed.), Ciceronian Controversies, trans. B. Duvick (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2007).
126 Notes
5 Maurizio Vitale, La questione della lingua (Palermo: Palumbo, 1984).

6 Cf. Dionisotti, ‘Appunti sulle Rime del Sannazaro’, pp. 35–7; Id., ‘Bembo, Pietro’, in
DBI 8 (1966), 133–51 (p. 142).
7 Cf. Bruno Migliorini, Storia della lingua italiana (Milan: Bompiani, 1994), pp.
343–4.
8 Cf. Lelio Gregorio Giraldi, Modern Poets (De poetis nostrorum temporum), John
L. Grant (ed.) (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2011),
pp. 16 and 17; Carlo Dionisotti, ‘Appunti sul Tebaldeo’, in Id., Scritti, III, pp. 379–87.
9 Sannazaro, Epigrams, 3.9, in Id., Latin Poetry, trans. M. C. J. Putnam (Cambridge,
MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 360. For the scene in Aegidius
see Pontano, Dialoghi, p. 267. Cf. also, at the end of Sannazaro’s pastoral romance
Arcadia (12.7), the ominous dream of ‘a magnificent orange tree’ (‘un albero
bellissimo di arangio’) felled to the ground ‘with its leaves and flowers and fruit’
(‘con le frondi e i fiori e i frutti sparsi a terra’), which has been interpreted as an
allegory for the end of the Aragonese rule in Naples (cf. Sannazaro, Arcadia, Carlo
Vecce (ed.) (Rome: Carocci, 2013), pp. 291–2).
10 Perhaps with an added Lucretian flavour (Lucr. 4.3–4 ‘iuvat ... novos decerpere
flores / insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam / unde prius nulli velarint
tempora musae’; ‘I like ... plucking new flowers and gaining for my head a noble
garland with which the Muses never crowned the temples of a man’).
11 Jacopo Sannazaro, De partu Virginis, Charles Fantazzi and Alessandro Perosa (eds)
(Florence: Olschki, 1988), p. 82. In Sannazaro, The Major Latin Poems, trans. R.
Nash (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996), p. 63, citria is translated as
‘orange trees’, whereas Putnam (Sannazaro, Latin Poetry, p. 93) offers ‘orchards’.
As the fruit is ordinarily designated by the neuter while the tree is in the feminine
gender, citria may have been given in this context the meaning of citreta (‘citrus
groves’).
12 Suburbanum Agustini Chisii, 196–207. Text edited in Mary Quinlan-McGrath,
‘Blosius Palladius, Suburbanum Agustini Chisii. Introduction, Latin Text and English
Translation’, in Humanistica Lovaniensia 39 (1990), 93–157 (p. 127).
13 Elegiae, 3.2, in Francesco Maria Molza, Elegiae et alia, Massimo Scorsone and
Rossana Sodano (eds) (Turin: RES, 1999), pp. 63–6. In the autograph (Vatican City,
Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Borg. Lat. 367), Molza had initially written
laurus, which he then changed to citrus (Molza, Elegiae et alia, p. 64). The elegy
is entitled ‘Ad Octavium Farnesium iuventutis principem’ (‘To Ottavio Farnese
[1523–86] Prince of Youth’). It must have been written before 1538, when Ottavio
married Margherita of Austria, and certainly before 1540 as no mention is there
made of the title of Duke of Camerino Ottavio acquired in that year.
14 Gilbertus Nucillanus, ‘De laudibus horti’ (‘In Praise of [His] Garden’), in
Bucolicorum autores XXXVIII, Johannes Oporinus (ed.) (Basel: Oporinus, 1546),
733–8 (p. 736 ‘Adonidis arbor’).
15 Luigi Alamanni – Giovanni Rucellai, La coltivazione e Le api (Padua: Comino, 1718),
pp. 181–2: ‘pianta … che fu trovata in ciel’ (5.674–5); ‘O rozza antica età, che fusti
priva / Di questo arbor gentil…’ (5.694–5).
16 Girolamo Fracastoro, Syphilis, Geoffrey Eatough (ed.) (Liverpool: Cairns, 1984),
pp. 38–40, 64, 72; cf. also Girolamo Fracastoro et al., Carminum editio II (Padua:
Comino, 1739), 2 vols, I, pp. 4–5, 21–2, 27–8. In one epistle and two epigrams
addressed to Matteo Giberti, Datarius of Pope Clement VII and Bishop of Verona,
Fracastoro eulogized the citrus groves of Lake Garda (Carmina, I, pp. 117–20, 154,
Notes 127
155; see also the Appendix of ‘Fragmenta’, with separate pagination, I, pp. 22, 24,
29, for fragments of poems on the same topic addressed to Giberti). The figure of
Adonis inspired that of Ilceus, one of the poem’s main characters: see Eatough’s
Introduction to Fracastoro, Syphilis, pp. 21–2.
17 Vittorio Rossi, ‘Per la cronologia e il testo dei dialoghi De poetis nostrorum
temporum di Lilio Gregorio Giraldi’, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 37
(1903), pp. 246–77, still provides the best guide to the complex compositional
process of Giraldi’s work and the many anchronisms that survive in the published
text. A brief overview of the same process, based on Rossi’s article, is given in
Giraldi, Modern Poets, pp. xxv–xxviii. On Giraldi’s biography see Simona Foà,
‘Giraldi, Lilio Gregorio’, in DBI 56 (2001), pp. 452–5.
18 Giraldi, Modern Poets, pp. 34/35: ‘Urania vero, Meteora, Hesperidum horti, eclogae,
epigrammata, elegiae, et cetera Ioviani Pontani Umbri carmina et quae plurima
pedestri oratione scripsit faciunt ut in his tabularum imaginibus illum inter proceres
commemorem; quin et cum omni fere antiquitate conferam, tametsi non idem,
ut quibusdam videtur, in omnibus praestat (nonnunquam enim nimis lascivire et
vagari videtur) nec plane ubique se legibus astringit. Quod iis minus mirum videri
poterit qui illum sciverint in magnis regum et principum negotiis diu versatum
et modo bellorum modo pacis condiciones et foedera tractasse non minus quam
Phoebum et Musas coluisse. Quis tamen eo plura? Quis doctius? Quis elegantius?
Quis denique absolutius composuit? Enucleatius? Exquisitius?’.
19 The debate may be said to have begun in earnest after the appearance of Francesco
Robortello’s edition and commentary (1548) and of Bernardo Segni’s vernacular
translation (1549) of Aristotle’s Poetics.
20 Giraldi, Modern Poets, pp. 34/35: ‘Et licet eius quidam hoc tempore gloriae parum
aequi sint aestimatores, non illis tamen ipse concedam, ni meliora vel ipsi fecerint
vel ab aliis facta attulerint, id quod ad hanc ipse diem non vidisse fateor ...’.
21 Dionisotti, ‘Bembo, Pietro’, p. 134. The subject chimes with Bembo’s interest in
astronomy as shown by his personal library: Massimo Danzi, La biblioteca di Pietro
Bembo (Geneva: Droz, 2005), pp. 121–2, 142. A fifth-century illustrated manuscript
of Virgil, the so-called Vergilius Vaticanus (Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica
Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 3225) that used to belong to Pontano was subsequently
acquired by Bembo (cf. Jacopo Morelli, Notizia d’opere di disegno nella prima metà
del secolo XVI. esistenti in Padova, Cremona, Milano, Pavia, Bergamo, Crema e
Venezia, scritta da un Anonimo di quel tempo (Bassano: [s.n.], 1800), pp. 21, 136–8;
Danzi, La biblioteca, p. 47). Vittorio Cian, Un decennio della vita di M. Pietro Bembo
(1521–1531): appunti biografici e saggio di stui sul Bembo (Turin: Loescher, 1885), p.
103 note, suggested that the Virgil manuscript might have been donated to Bembo
by Pontano in 1492; Bembo is however likely to have acquired it around or after
1521: cf. Remigio Sabbadini, ‘Brevi notizie storiche di classici’, Giornale storico della
letteratura italiana 100 (1932), 267–76 (p. 268); Massimo Danzi, La biblioteca, p. 47.
Bembo’s own transcription of Pontano’s De fortuna is in Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale
Marciana, MS Lat. VI 233 (3668).
22 Like several of Fracastoro’s shorter poems on the Garda region, it was dedicated to
the Bishop of Verona, Matteo Giberti: see supra, note 16.
23 The three Latin poems are Laocoon, Curtius, and presumably the verse epistle Ad
Octavium et Fredericum Fregosos. The Laocoon in particular was greatly praised by
Bembo: cf. Pietro Bembo, Lettere, Ernesto Travi (ed.) (Bologna: Commissione dei
testi di lingua, 1987–93), 4 vols, I, p. 222 (Venice, 5 May 1506).
128 Notes
24 Giraldi, Modern Poets, pp. 36 and 37: ‘cuius [scil. Bembi] mira illa fuit semper in
imitandis optimis auctoribus tam Latinis quam vernaculis felicitas, ut non Bembum
plerumque loquentem sed quem ille sibi proposuerit vel audire vel legere videamini’.
25 Bembo, Lettere, II, pp. 315–17 (Padua, 26 November 1525). For the episode of
guaiacum or ‘sacred wood’ cf. Fracast. Syph. 3.30–89 and ff.
26 Bembo’s suggestions (‘Avvertimenti’) can be read in Girolamo Fracastoro, Scritti
inediti, Francesco Pellegrini (ed.) (Verona: Valdonega, 1955), pp. 38–61. For the
episode of quicksilver cf. Fracast. Syph. 2.270–453.
27 Bembo, Lettere, II, p. 327 (Padua, 5 January 1526): ‘Ché dove dite che Virgilio fa
digressioni ne’ suoi poemi, vi rispondo che anco voi ne fate in questi libri tante, che
è bene assai. Benché altro è digressione, e altro favola del tutto nuova. Anzi, Virgilio
stesso, quando fa la favola d’Aristeo, non la finge tutta da sé, ma la trae e toglie dalle
antiche. Di Pindaro non potete trar buono essempio, ché è poeta lyrico e ditirambico
...’. Virgil’s Aristaeus, which was to Bembo a model of decorum, to a modern reader
like Robert Graves appeared exemplary of ‘the irresponsible use of myth’ and ‘a
mythologically absurd conception’ (Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (London:
Penguin, 1992), p. 280: 82.5).
28 Ibid.: ‘Del Pontano non parlo. Del quale se io avessi ad imitar cosa alcuna, vorrei imitar
di lui le virtù, e non i vitii. Questo finger le favole in esso è così vizioso, che per questo
non si può leggere alcun de’ suoi poemi senza stomaco’. See also Bembo’s ‘Avvertimenti’
(in Fracastoro, Scritti inediti, p. 52), where Pontano’s Urania too gets stigmatized: ‘Né
voglio che in questo vi vaglia l’autorità del Pontano, conciossiacosa che le cose vitiose di
un nuovo non devono prevalere alle ragionevoli et virtuose degli antichi. Esso in questa
parte di fingere le favole è vitiosissimo, et la Urania sua è tutta piena di satietà et di
fastidio per questo’ (‘I do not accept that Pontano’s authority should be of any support to
you here, for the vices of modern authors must not outweigh the balanced solutions and
virtues of the ancients. On the matter of inventing [new] tales he is very self-indulgent,
and because of it his Urania generates a strong sense of surfeit and disgust’).
29 Cf. Ludwig, ‘Neulateinische Lehrgedichte’, pp. 151–2.
30 Giraldi, Modern Poets, pp. 98 and 99: ‘in quibus [scil. three books on syphilis] cum
antiquos consectatur poetas, tum praecipue Pontanum, quem celebrat, aemulatur’.
In his ‘Avvertimenti’, as regards Syph. 1.445–6, Bembo remarked: ‘Questa a me pare
imitatione più tosto del Pontano che di Virgilio’ (‘This looks to me like an imitation
of Pontano rather than of Virgil’). A few lines below, commenting on the adjective
‘Benacide’ (‘of Garda’) occurring twice in the final section of Book One (Syph. 1.448,
460), he insisted: ‘Questo “Benacide” non vorrei fosse detto in tutto questo libro più
di una volta, che è nuova voce, et non vorrei che in queste cose imitate il Pontano’
(‘This “Benacide” should not be used more than once in the entire book. Is is a new
term, and I would not like you to imitate Pontano in these matters’). Both passages
can be read in Fracastoro, Scritti inediti, p. 46.
31 Fracast. Syph. 1.24–52; 2.38–49; 2.212–2.
32 Bembo, Lettere, III, p. 189 (Padua, 8 October 1530). Among the testimonia Eatough
reports a reference to Fracastoro’s poem from Bembo’s Historia veneta, Book 3
(Fracastoro, Syphilis, p. 210).
33 It was first published in 1842 by Angelo Mai in his Spicilegium Romanum (Rome:
typis Collegii Urbani, 1839–44), 10 vols, VIII, pp. 488–504, in a shorter, censored
version presumably dating to the second half of the sixteenth century. This shorter
text has then been re-edited in Pietro Bembo, Carmina, Rossana Sodano (ed.)
(Turin: RES, 1990), pp. 100–19, while the longer and original version preserved in
Notes 129
Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 9977, has more recently appeared

as Pietro Bembo, Sarca. Integra princeps editio, Otto Schönberger (ed. and trans.)
(Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994): see in particular pp. 15, 58, 79; also
reprinted and translated into English by Mary P. Chatfield in Pietro Bembo, Lyric
Poetry (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2005).
34 That is, after 1524–5, yet – according to internal evidence – before Sannazaro’s death
(1530). At Sarca 604 it is prophetised that Sannazaro ‘will be celebrated throughout
the world while still alive’ (‘toto vivens cantabitur orbe’), where the allusion is to a
living person. The fact that Sannazaro’s eulogy includes his De partu Virginis may
not necessarily be proof that Sarca was written after the publication of that poem
(1526), as Schönberger assumes (p. 15). The long-due appearance of Sannazaro’s
poem had become some kind of a joke amongst its expectant readers, including
Bembo (cf. Bembo, Lettere, II, p. 354). Chatfield (Bembo, Lyric Poetry, p. xvii) offers
an exceedingly loose chronological delimitation (1524–38).
35 Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. by S. G. C.
Middlemore (London and New York: Allen & Unwin-Macmillan, 1928), p. 259. It is
reported in Bembo, Sarca, Schönberger (ed.), p. 22.
36 Bembo, Sarca, 144 ‘Garda tui simul et nostri sit gurgitis heres’ (‘Let Garda be the
heir of both your waters and mine’).
37 They entail growing citrus trees in coves protected by rocky walls against the
northerly winds.
38 Bembo, Lyric Poetry, Chatfield (ed.), p. xviii.
39 See Chapter 1, note 12. Schönberger (Bembo, Sarca, p. 76) refers ll. 587–9 to
Pontano’s prose work De rebus coelestibus, which in the context of a praise of
Virgilian imitators does not make sense – in fact those lines allude to Urania,
1.20–31, even showing verbal borrowings from Pontano’s poem. Schönberger may
have been misled by Mai’s explanatory note, where Urania is referred to by its
subtitle De stellis (Spicilegium Romanun, VIII, p. 504 note).
40 Cf. Cesare Segre’s ‘Les isotopies de Laure’, in Herman Parret and Hans-Georg
Ruprecht (eds), Exigences et perspectives de la Sémiotique. Recueil d’hommage pour
A.J. Greimas (Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1985), 2 vols, II, pp.
811–26; also as ‘Le isotopie di Laura’, in Cesare Segre, Notizie dalla crisi (Turin:
Einaudi, 1993), pp. 66–80. On the symbology of poetic garlands see the seminal
work by Joseph B. Trapp, ‘The Owl’s Ivy and the Poet’s Bays. An Enquiry into Poetic
Garlands’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958), pp. 227–55.
41 Cf. Nicole Bingen, ‘Amomo (1535): Jean de Maumont? ou Antonio Caracciolo?’,
Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 62 (2000), pp. 521–59.
42 The bibliographical sources offer contradictory information on this point. Angela
Asor Rosa, ‘Gallani, Giuseppe Leggiadro’, in DBI 51 (1998), pp. 512–13, relies on
Girolamo Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana (Venice: [s.n.], 1795–6), 9
vols, VII.3, p. 1178, and Ireneo Affò, Memorie degli scrittori e letterati parmigiani
(Parma: Stamperia Reale, 1789–97), 5 vols, IV, pp. 49–52. Both scholars refer
in turn to the same MS source (Angelo Maria Edoari Da Erba, Compendio
copiosissimo dell’origine, antichità, successi e nobiltà della città di Parma, Parma,
Biblioteca Palatina, MS Parm. 922, fol. 201). According to Tiraboschi, Edoari
mentions a poem in ottave and five cantos entitled La scuola d’Adone – a likely
misreading or misprint (owing to the similarity of the letters) for La favola d’Adone.
Affò reports the title as La favola d’Adone, equally claiming that it is in ottave
and five cantos. However, Angelo Pezzana was able to ascertain that in Edoari’s
130 Notes
Compendio the indication concerning the poem’s metre and length refers to another
text, and that La favola d’Adone is in fact described as ‘in versi heroici’ (‘in heroic
verse’), that is, in endecasillabi sciolti or blank verse (Angelo Pezzana, Memorie degli
scrittori e letterati parmigiani … continuate (Parma: Tipografia Ducale, 1825–33), 7
vols, VI.2, p. 499; VII, p. 664).
43 A variation on the theme of ps.-Theoc. The Dead Adonis.
44 According to Frédéric Lachèvre, Bibliographie des recueils collectives de poésies
publiés de 1597 à 1700 (Paris: H. Leclerc, 1901–5), 4 vols, II, p. 682; IV, p. 172, this
is an unpublished poem preserved in a manuscript copied in 1668 by a Vivien and
belonging, in the early 1900s, to the poet’s heir, Léon de Berluc-Pérussis. A note by
Vivien suggests that Venus may stand for the celebrated ‘Reine Margot’ and Adonis
for an unnamed Provençal gentleman who was killed while standing next to the
door of the Queen’s chariot. In the manuscript the piece is dedicated to Cardinal
Richelieu. On Laugier de Porchères (1572–1653) and his contacts with Italian poets,
notably with Giovan Battista Marino, see Henri Lafay, La poésie française du premier
XVIIe siècle (1598–1630): esquisse pour un tableau (Paris: Nizet, 1975), pp. 368–77;
Maria Luisa Doglio, ‘Charles-Emmanuel Ier de Savoie, Honoré Laugier de Porchères
et Isabella Andreini entre poèmes d’amour, devises et “théatre” encomiastique (avec
un sonnet inédit de Charles-Emmanuel Ier)’, XVIIeme siècle 44 (1997), pp. 647–57; also
Chapter 5, p. 91.
45 Cf., e.g. Navagero’s eclogue ‘Damon’ (1509–10?, in Lusus, 20.71–85), Garcilaso de
la Vega’s ‘Third Eclogue’ (1536?, ll. 145–68), and Rémy Belleau’s Bergerie (1565, ll.
66–9 and 79–85). In his ‘Damon’, Navagero adopts the pastoral code to allude to
the Venetian defeat at Agnadello (1509) and the ensuing talks with the victor Pope
Julius II (1510), who would subsequently take sides with Venice against the former
French ally (Enrico Carrara, La poesia pastorale, p. 384 on the eclogue’s political
sub-text). The purpose and tone of the eclogue suggest that it was written during
that delicate transition phase. Carrara (Ibid.) convincingly identified the ‘Sebetheius
Aegon’ (l. 70) mentioned in relation to Adonis as Pontano – another patent tribute
to the Horti Hesperidum.
46 For an overiew see Alice Hulubei, L’Eglogue en France au XVIe siècle. L’époque des
Valois (1515–1589) (Paris: Droz, 1938), notably pp. 190–3, 510–19; Jean Braybrook,
‘The Epic in Sixteenth-Century France’, in Gerald Sandy (ed.), The Classical Heritage
in France (Leiden-Boston-Cologne: Brill, 2002), 351–91 (pp. 358–9). On the
influence persistently exercised in France by the Adonis episode in the Roman de
la rose (on which cf. the Introduction, p. 5), see Hélène Naïs, Les animaux dans la
poésie française de la Renaissance. Science, Symbolique, Poésie (Paris: Didier, 1961),
pp. 17, 437–8.
47 See Chapter 5, pp. 79–83. The first edition’s assumed date of 1579 seems to depend
on the dating of the dedicatory letter by François d’Amboise (3 November 1578),
which precedes the text of the tragedy in all editions; the most recent editor,
however, has been unable to locate a copy of a 1579 edition. Cf. Gabriel Le Breton,
Adonis, Mario Bensi (ed.), in Théâtre français de la Renaissance. La tragédie à
l’époque d’Henri III. Deuxième Série, 1574–9 (Florence-Paris: Olschki-PUF, 1999), 5
vols, I, p. 446. On the uncertainty concerning the author’s Christian name (Gabriel,
or rather Guillaume?), see Ibid., pp. 400–1, and infra, Chapter 5, note 30.
48 Colin Burrow, ‘Original Fictions: Metamorphoses in the Faerie Queene’, in Charles
Martindale (ed.), Ovid Renewed: Ovidian Influences on Literature and Art from the
Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998),
Notes 131
99–120 (pp. 107–12), refers to ‘stories which have undergone a sea-change in the
transition from Ovid to Spenser’ (p. 108). See also the anthology Variazioni su Adone
I–II, Andrea Torre and Stefano Tomassini (eds) (Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 2010), 2 vols.
49 See Marzia Pieri, La scena boschereccia nel Rinascimento italiano (Padua: Liviana,
1983); Vanacker, ‘Non al suo amante più Diana piacque’, passim.
50 Cf., e.g. Myth. Vat. I 232; Myth. Vat. II 130; Myth. Vat. III 7.3. See Tuzet, Mort et
résurrection d’Adonis, p. 26.
51 Giulia Piccaluga, ‘Adonis, i cacciatori falliti e l’avvento dell’agricoltura’, in Bruno
Gentili and Giuseppe Paioni (eds), Il mito greco. Atti del Convegno internazionale
(Urbino 7–12 maggio 1973) (Rome: dell’Ateneo and Bizzarri, 1977), pp. 33–51; cf.
contra Marcel Detienne, ‘Le chasseur malheureux’, Quaderni urbinati di cultura
classica 24 (1977), pp. 7–26. For a recent assessment see Alessandro Testa, Miti
antichi e moderne mitologie (Turin: Aragno, 2010), pp. 291–378.
52 In Prob. in Buc. 10.18, the question of Adonis’ ‘double occupation’ is addressed thus:
‘Hunc venandi studiosum fuisse et ab apro interisse: atque ita plurimis cognitum.
Pastorem non invenimus fuisse, sed amatoriam fictam Veneris induxit historiam’
(‘That he was fond of hunting and got killed by a boar, it is known to many. We did
not find [anywhere] that he was a shepherd, but this gave rise to the invented love
story with Venus’).
53 See p. 34; Donald Stone Jr, ‘Ronsard, Rhetoric, and Adonis’, L’Esprit créateur 12
(1972), pp. 183–8; Id., ‘L’Adonis de Ronsard et Andrea Navagero’, Bibliothèque
d’Humanisme et Renaissance 43 (1981), pp. 155–8. After its first publication in 1564,
the piece was included by Ronsard among his elegies: cf. Pierre de Ronsard, Œuvres
complètes, Jean Céard, Daniel Ménager and Michel Simonin (eds) (Paris: Gallimard,
1993–4), 2 vols, II, p. 1397.
54 See Carrara, La poesia pastorale, Chapters II–IV; Werner Krauss, ‘Über die
Stellung der Bukolik in der ästhetischen Theorie des Humanismus’, in Garber
(ed.), Europäische Bukolik and Georgik, 140–64 (pp. 143–4); Guido Martellotti, ‘La
riscoperta dello stile bucolico (da Dante al Boccaccio)’, in Id., Dante e Boccaccio e
altri scrittori dall’Umanesimo al Romanticismo (Florence: Olschki, 1983), pp. 91–106.
For an overview of the pastoral genre in the ancient world see Marco Fantuzzi and
Theodore Papanghelis (eds), The Brill’s Companion to Greek and Latin Pastoral
(Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2006).
55 On the textual tradition of the Roman Bucolics cf. M. D. Reeve, ‘The Textual
Tradition of Calpurnius and Nemesianus’, Classical Quarterly 28 (1978), pp. 223–38;
Id., ‘Calpurnius and Nemesianus’, in Reynolds (ed.), Texts and Transmission, pp.
37–8. On the Corpus Theocriteum see Chapter 1, p. 7. A representative canon
of bucolic authors, both ancient and modern, is given in Oporinus’ anthology
Bucolicorum autores XXXVIII; similarly a collection of Latin poems on hunting was
published in Venice by the heirs of Aldo Manuzio in 1534 (reprinted in Lyon by
Gryphius in 1537 and several other times thereafter), including Grattius’ Cynegetica,
Ovid’s Halieutica, Nemesianus’ Cynegetica (as well as his and Calpurnius’ Bucolica),
and Card. Adriano Castellesi’s Venatio (first published 1505). For an overview
of early sixteenth-century classicizing bucolic in Italian (with bibliography), see
Luciana Borsetto, ‘L’egloga in sciolti nella prima metà del Cinquecento. Appunti sul
liber di Girolamo Muzio’, in Donatella Rasi (ed.), Miscellanea di studi in onore di
Giovanni da Pozzo (Rome-Padua: Antenore, 2004), pp. 123–61.
56 On Castiglione’s bucolic output see Claudio Vela, ‘Il Tirsi di Baldesar Castiglione e
Cesare Gonzaga’, in Carrai (ed.), La poesia pastorale nel Rinascimento, pp. 245–52.
132 Notes
57 On the extraordinary popularity of Navagero’s Lusus see Emmanuele Antonio

Cicogna, Delle inscrizioni veneziane (Venice: Picotti, 1824–53), 6 vols, VI, pp.
469–538; Andrea Navagero, Lusus, Alice E. Wilson (ed.) (Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf,
1973); Giovanni Cotta and Andrea Navagero, Carmina (Turin: RES, 1991).
58 Luigi Alamanni, Opere toscane (Lyon: Sebastianus Gryphius, 1532–3), 2 vols, I, pp.
155–60; Id., Versi e prose, Pietro Raffaelli (ed.) (Florence: Le Monnier, 1859), 2 vols,
I, pp. 27–31. The first Lyonnaise edition bears ‘Daphni, et Menalca’ as the eclogue’s
two interlocutors – a mistake for ‘Daphni, et Dameta’. On Alamanni see Henri
Hauvette, Luigi Alamanni (1495–1556). Sa vie et son œuvre (Paris: Hachette, 1903);
Carrara, La poesia pastorale, pp. 385–9; Roberto Weiss, ‘Alamanni, Luigi’, in DBI 1
(1960), pp. 568–71; Elisabeth Frege Gilbert, Luigi Alamanni – Politik und Poesie: Von
Machiavelli zu Franz I (Frankfurt: Lang, 2005). Fourteen Latin eclogues – one of
which, ‘Pharmaceutria vel Doris’, is a lament on Adonis’ death with a final jubilation
for his return – are ascribed to Alamanni in a Florentine manuscript (Florence,
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Magliab. VIII.10.1444), and published in
Alamanni, Versi e prose (ed. Raffaelli), II, pp. 409–45 (the Adonis eclogue at 430–1).
On the doubtful attribution to Alamanni see however Hauvette, Luigi Alamanni, pp.
432–6.
59 Carrara, La poesia pastorale, pp. 389–92. For the circumstances of the composition
of ‘Venere’, see Muzio’s own comment in the letter to Ottonello Vida published by
Luciana Borsetto, ‘Lettere inedite di Girolamo Muzio tratte dal codice Riccardiano
2115’, Rassegna della letteratura italiana 94 (1990), 99–179 (p. 160). ‘Venere’ presents
an interesting variation on the theme by having the king as Mars attacked by a boar,
at which sight Venus, reminded of Adonis’ lot, is frozen by fear into a marble statue.
This looks like a ‘crossing’ with the myth of Pygmalion, which in Ovid Met. 10
precedes the episode of Adonis, with changed as well as inverted roles. According to
both ancient and modern mythographers and poets, Pygmalion was Adonis’ great
grandfather (Apollod. Bibl. 3.14.3; Ov. Met. 10.297–9; Boccaccio, Gen. 2.49–53),
with the obvious complications generated by Myrrha being at the same time Adonis’
mother as well as his ‘sister’ (cf. Ov. Met. 10.348 ‘tune soror nati genetrixque
vocabere fratris?’ ‘And will you be called your son’s sister, your brother’s mother?’).
60 Cf. Bingen, ‘Amomo (1535)’, passim. Another poet and diplomat who authored a
Fábula de Adonis (1553) was the above-mentioned Diego Hurtado de Mendoza,
ambassador in Venice and Rome and Governor of Siena.
61 Carrara, La poesia pastorale, p. 297; Stefano Carrai, I precetti di Parnaso. Metrica e
generi poetici nel Rinascimento italiano (Rome: Bulzoni, 1999); Borsetto, ‘L’egloga
in sciolti’; Marco Ariani, ‘Dilatazioni meliche’, in Giovanni Da Pozzo (ed.), Il
Cinquecento. Storia letteraria d’Italia (Milan-Padua: Vallardi-Piccin, 2006–7), 3 vols,
II, 1127–52 (pp. 1132–4).
62 Alamanni, Opere toscane, I, sig. [*2v]: ‘quella certa affettation’; Giangiorgio Trissino,
La quinta e la sesta divisione della Poetica, in Bernard Weinberg (ed.), Trattati di
poetica e retorica del Cinquecento (Bari: Laterza, 1970–4), 4 vols, II, p. 88: ‘la rima ...
al parlare rustico e pastorale non ben si conviene’ (‘rhyming verse ... is not suitable
for rustic and pastoral speech’). See Paola Cosentino, ‘Una “zampogna tosca” alla
corte di Francia: le egloghe in versi sciolti di Luigi Alamanni’, Filologia e critica 28
(2003), 70–95 (pp. 72–4); Ariani, ‘Dilatazioni meliche’, p. 1133 note.
63 Alamanni, Opere toscane, I, pp. 155–60 (1 ‘Lung’Arno...’; 135–6 ‘se il canto mio /
Oltre alle rive d’Arno il corso stende’; 137 ‘Tu il mio maestro sei, tu scorta e duce’ –
cf. Dante, Inf. 2.140 ‘Tu duca, tu signore e tu maestro’).
Notes 133
64 Cf. e.g. the role played by Henry Duke of Anjou (later King of Poland, then King of
France as Henry III) and his court, which contemporaries used to describe as more
accomplished and influential than that of the king himself (Hulubei, L’Eglogue en
France, pp. 511–14).
65 Fatally wounded on 30 June 1559, Henri II died after ten days of atrocious
sufferings. On the social and cultural dimension of royal huntings see Claude
d’Anthenaise and Monique Chatenet (eds), Chasses princières dans l’Europe de la
Renaissance (Paris: Actes Sud, 2007).
66 Claude Binet, Adonis, ou le Trespas du Roy Charles IX, in Merveilleuse Rencontre sur
les noms tournez du Roy et de la Royne… (Paris: Fédéric Morel, 1575), pp. 8–9. See
Chapter 5, pp. 77–9.
67 Le Breton, Adonis, ed. Bensi, p. 453: ‘Oréades chasseuses ... Charles, votre
support, / Charles, votre Adonis, vostre mignon, est mort’. The date ‘1574’
following the sonnet’s title may refer to a performance of the piece; alternatively it
might allude to the year of the king’s death.
68 ‘Adonis qui fut le cher mignon du feu Roi Charles d’heureuse mémoire’ (Ibid.,
p. 451).
69 Pierre de Ronsard, ‘Elegie sur le livre de la chasse du feu Roy Charles IX’, in Œuvres
complètes, I, p. 1154. See also La chasse royale composée par le roy Charles IX (Paris:
Potier, 1857), p. XXXVIII.
70 Le Breton, Adonis, Bensi (ed.), p. 449. The title of Le Breton’s Adonis reads Adonis
Tragedie francoyse de Gabriel Le Breton Niueronis [for ‘Niuernois’], Seigneur de la
Fon, with ‘Tragedie’ standing out in large block capitals: see Fig. 3.
71 See the discussion of such terms in Bernsdorff, ‘The Idea of Bucolic’, pp. 204–5.
72 Julius Caesar Scaliger, Poetices libri septem, Luc Deitz and Gregor Vogt-Spira (eds),
with the collaboration of Manfred Fuhrmann (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-
Holzboog, 1994–2003), 5 vols, I, p. 94. Cf. Krauss, ‘Über die Stellung der Bukolik’,
p. 153.
73 Carrara, La poesia pastorale, pp. 383–442; Carrai (ed.), La poesia pastorale nel
Rinascimento, passim.
74 Ludovico Dolce’s Stanze nella favola d’Adone amounts to 85 stanzas, Giovanni
Tarcagnota’s Adone to 74, Girolamo Parabosco’s Favola d’Adone to 54.
75 Lodovico Dolce, Stanze nella favola d’Adone, in Id., Il Capitano. Comedia (Venice:
Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari, 1545), fol. 42v. In 1537 he had earned Aretino’s praise
as a ‘poet above the average’ (‘non mediocre poeta’): cf. Pietro Aretino, Lettere,
Paolo Procaccioli (ed.) (Rome: Salerno, 1997–2002), 6 vols, I, p. 314. On Dolce:
Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna, ‘Memoria intorno la vita e gli scritti di messer
Lodovico Dolce letterato veneziano del secolo XVI’, Memorie del Reale Istituto
Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 11 (1862), 93–200 (pp. 102, 124, 145–6, 153 and
176 for his contacts with Crivello); Giovanna Romei, ‘Dolce, Lodovico’, DBI 40
(1991), pp. 399–405; Ronnie H. Terpening, Lodovico Dolce, Renaissance Man of
Letters (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).
76 Dolce, Stanze nella favola d’Adone, fols 43r and 45r: ‘Donna bella e gentil’ (1.2); ‘belle
harene’ (12.6); ‘non lunge a Peschiera’ (12.5).
77 Tarcagnota, L’Adone, reprinted in Angelo Borzelli, Il Cavalier Giambattista Marino
(Naples: Priore, 1898), pp. 307–24. See Gennaro Tallini, La ‘Favola d’Adone’ da
G. Tarcagnota a G.B. Marino. Studi sulla letteratura regionale del basso Lazio tra
Rinascimento e Barocco (Pescara: Libreria dell’Università, 2002). Tallini is preparing
a new edition of the three Adonis poems.
134 Notes
78 Girolamo Parabosco, Favola d’Adone, in Id., Il terzo libro delle lettere amorose
(Venice: Griffio, 1558), fol. 40r. The Favola d’Adone is at fols 40v–50r. Parabosco’s
Lettere amorose eventually grew to four books and was frequently reprinted. On the
erotic component see Gabriele Bucchi, “Meraviglioso diletto”: la traduzione poetica
del Cinquecento e le ‘Metamorfosi’ d’Ovidio di Giovanni Andrea dell’Anguillara (Pisa:
ETS, 2011), pp. 79–82.
79 See on this point Bucchi, “Meraviglioso diletto”, pp. 79–82.
80 The point has been excellently made by Borgo, ‘Il mito di Adone’, pp. 243–7.
81 Ronsard, Adonis, in Œuvres complètes, II, p. 324: ‘… l’oublia pour aimer un Anchise’
(362); ‘Telles sont et seront les amitiez des femmes, / Qui au commencement
sont plus chaudes que flames: / Ce ne sont que souspirs, mais en fin telle amour
/ Resemble aux fleurs d’Avril qui ne vivent qu’un jour’ (365–8). The ‘banal and
somewhat misogynistic ending’ has been noted by Philip Ford, Ronsard’s Hymnes:
A Literary and Iconographical Study (Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and
Studies, 1997), p. 274.
82 A likely variation on Hyg. Fab. 58 (‘Smyrna’), where the mother of Smyrna/Myrrha,
Cenchreis, is said to have boasted her daughter’s beauty as superior to that of Venus.
83 Dolce, Stanze nella favola d’Adone: ‘or de le capre, or de l’agnelle / Con le celesti man
le poppe immonde’ (fol. 45v); ‘tutti quei lavori / Che fan le pastorelle ed i pastori’
(fol. 46v). – as noted by Alessandro Martini, ‘Oltre l’idillio’, in Francesco Guardiani
(ed.), Lectura Marini (Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1989), 13–23 (pp. 14–15).
84 Navagero, ‘Damon’, 74 (‘Adonidis ignes’), 73 (‘et caelum, et fulgentia sidera
linquens’). ‘Adonidis ignes’ is a direct borrowing from Pontano, Hort. Hesp. 1.214.
Navagero’s ‘rustic’ Venus is an imitation – with variatio – of Ovid’s depiction of
Venus in ‘hunting mode’ (Ov. Met. 10.532–9).
85 Cf. the Introduction, note 6.
86 Tarcagnota, L’Adone, p. 307. Tarcagnota assumed the poppy to be identical with the
anemone; see also Chapter 3, note 10, for Equicola’s similar opinion. Dioscorides
however, followed by his commentator Mattioli, rejected such an identity as illusory
(Mattioli, I discorsi … nelli sei libri di Pedacio Dioscoride, II, pp. 650–4). See also
Vecce, ‘Un codice di Teocrito’, p. 615, who identifies in Antonio Seripando’s the hand
that changed the original reading papaverem for anemonem in the Latin version of
the Corpus Theocriteum (Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS XXII 87, once belonging
to Sannazaro) as a more suitable translation for Gr. anemōnan at Bion 1.66 (cf.
supra, Chapter 1, note 8). Vecce contextually observes that Seripando had access to
one of the most authoritative manuscripts of Dioscorides, the so-called ‘Neapolitan
Dioscorides’ (Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, Neap. Gr. 1). For Venus’ tearing her
hair in desperation cf. Ov. Met. 10.722–3 (‘capillos / rupit’). Maidenhair as capillus
Veneris is recorded in ps.-Apul. Herb. 47, widely diffused in manuscript copies and
first published in 1481 as Herbarium Apulei Platonici: see Herbarium Apulei 1481
– Herbolario volgare 1522, Erminio Caprotti and William T. Stearn (eds) (Milan:
Il Polifilo, 1979). I am ignorant of any predecessor Tarcagnota may have had in
producing the aition of maidenhair.
87 In Ovid the demarcation is emphasized by the insertion of the episode of Atalanta
and Hippomenes. On the suppression of the Myrrha episode see Borgo, ‘Il mito di
Adone’, pp. 243–5.
88 Cf. John Doebler, ‘The Reluctant Adonis: Titian and Shakespeare’, Shakespeare
Quarterly 33 (1982), pp. 480–90.
89 The myth’s ancient iconography, too, was dominated by the same themes: cf. Brigitte
Notes 135
Servais-Soyez, ‘Adonis’, in Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae (Zurich and

Munich: Artemis and Winckler, 1981–99), 8 vols, I.1, pp. 222–9; I.2, pp. 160–70.
90 Jane Davidson Reid, The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts,
1300–1990s, with the assistance of Chris Rohrmann (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1993), 2 vols, I, pp. 25–40, offers an excellent preliminary survey of the
fortuna of the Adonis myth in the figurative (as well as literary) tradition of the
Western world. At p. 28, the entry ‘M. Philone (Louis des Masures), c. 1515–1574.
Adonis. Tragedy. Lausanne: 1586’ must be amended to ‘Adonias’ and removed: it is
in fact a theatrical piece on Adonias the fourth son of David, based on 1 Kings 1–2.
91 Raffaello Borghini, Il riposo (Florence: Marescotti, 1584), p. 64–5.
92 Lodovico Dolce to Alessandro Contarini (1555–6?), cited in Paola Barocchi (ed.),
Scritti d’arte del Cinquecento (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1971–7), 3 vols, I, p. 788 note:
‘Fu questa poesia di Adone poco tempo adietro fatta et mandata dal divin Tiziano al
Re d’Inghilterra. ... E vedesi che nell’aria del viso [di Adone] questo unico maestro
ha ricercato di esprimere certa graziosa bellezza, che participando della femina, non
si discostasse però dal virile: vuo’ dire che in donna terrebbe non so che di uomo et
in uomo di vaga donna: mistura difficile et aggradevole e sommamente (se creder
dobbiamo a Plinio) prezzata da Apelle’. Also cited by Borgo, ‘Il mito di Adone’, pp.
248–9, who notes Dolce’s emphasis on Adonis’ androgynous nature. The painting
was meant for the wedding of Queen Mary of England with Philip II of Spain, who
was King of England from 1554 to 1558.
93 Aphthon. Progymn. 22 (English translation in Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of
Prose Composition and Rhetoric, trans. George A. Kennedy (Leyden: Brill, 2003), p.
97); Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (ed. Pozzi-Ciapponi), I, pp. 365–7. E. H.
Gombrich, ‘Hypnerotomachiana’, in Id., Symbolic Images. Studies in the Art of the
Renaissance (London: Phaidon, 1972), pp. 102–8, 220–1, was the first to signal the
importance of Aphthonius’ Progymnasmata for the presence of the double motif in
the pictorial tradition. See also Peter Dronke, ‘Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia
and Its Sources of Inspiration’, in Id., Sources of Inspiration. Studies in Literary
Transformations, 400–1500 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1997), 161–240
(pp. 174–5). Piermario Vescovo, ‘La tintura delle rose e la morte di Adone. Tra
Poliziano e Sebastiano del Piombo’, Lettere italiane 49 (1997), pp. 555–71, draws
attention to the Latin translation of Aphthonius’ passage in Politian’s Miscellanea, 11
(in Id., Opera (Florence: Miscomini, 1489), sig. [C3v]), and to Lorenzo’s sonnet ‘Non
de’ verdi giardini ornati e colti’ (136.5–8, in Lorenzo de’ Medici, Canzoniere, Tiziano
Zanato (ed.), Florence: Olschki, 1991, p. 87). Cf. also Nonn. Dion. 41.207–11, and
Geop. 11.17, both known to Politian (cf. Alessandro Perosa – Sebastiano Timpanaro
Jr., ‘Libanio (o Coricio?), Poliziano e Leopardi’, Studi italiani di filologia classica 27–9
(1956), pp. 411–25). On the contradictory evidence provided by the ancient texts,
see Naeke, ‘De diis … digressio’, p. 180.
94 Bodo Guthmüller, Ovidio Metamorphoseos vulgare (Florence: Cadmo, 2008); Id.,
Mito, poesia, arte. Saggi sulla traduzione ovidiana nel Rinascimento (Rome: Bulzoni,
1997); Vanacker, ‘Non al suo amante più Diana piacque’.
95 Nicolò degli Agostini, Tutti li libri de Ovidio Metamorphoseos tradutti dal litteral in
verso vulgar con le sue allegorie in prosa (Venice: Nicolò Zoppino and Vincentio di
Pollo, 1522). See Guthmüller, Mito, poesia, arte, pp. 203–12 on Carnarius’ Historia
de Mirra (a printed text discovered by Guthmüller in Seville’s Biblioteca Colombina,
which appears to have survived in a single copy); pp. 204–59 on Agostini; pp.
261–80 on later developments. Another adaptation of the Myrrha tale is in Giovan
136 Notes
Battista Schiafenato’s Rime (Venice: Nicolini da Sabio, 1534), on which Bucchi,

‘Meraviglioso diletto’, p. 74.
96 Elisabetta Baruzzo, Nicolò degli Agostini continuatore del Boiardo (Pisa: Giardini,
1983).
97 Guthmüller, ‘Le Metamorfosi di Ovidio in forma di romanzo’, in Id., Mito, poesia,
arte, pp. 97–123.
98 Le trasformationi di M. Lodovico Dolce (Venice: Gabriel Giolito, 1553; facsimile edn
New York and London: Garland, 1976). Cf. Guthmüller, Ovidio Metamorphoseos
vulgare, p. 271. The title of the 1539 anticipation reads Il primo libro delle trasformationi
d’Ovidio da M. Lodovico Dolce ... tradotto (Venice: Binsone and Pasini, 1539).
99 On Dolce’s treatment of the Adonis story see Guthmüller, Mito, poesia, arte, pp.
217–26; Borgo, ‘Il mito di Adone’, pp. 223–9.
100 Gabriele Bucchi, ‘Meraviglioso diletto’, back cover; see p. 247 on the amplification
of the erotic aspects in the episode of Venus and Adonis. On Anguillara see also
Guthmüller, Mito, poesia, arte, pp. 125–43; Id., Ovidio Metamorphoseos vulgare, pp.
270–5. On further innovations introduced by Anguillara in the Adonis episode, see
Vescovo, ‘La tintura delle rose’, pp. 561–2, 569–70.
101 De le Metamorfosi d’Ovidio libri III di Giovanni Andrea dell’Anguillara (Paris:
Wechel, 1554); Le Metamorfosi di Ovidio di Gio. Andrea dell’Anguillara (Venice:
Griffio, 1561).
102 On the extraordinary success of Ovid in Renaissance France see Ann Moss, Ovid
in Renaissance France: A Survey of the Latin Editions of Ovid and Commentaries
Printed in France before 1600 (London: Warburg Institute, 1982). The success
continued unabated in the first decades of the seventeenth century, with at least
one or more editions of Ovidian texts – most commonly a French translation of the
Metamorphoses – coming out every year. Cf. Roméo Arbour, L’ère baroque en France.
Répertoire chronologique des éditeurs de texts littéraires (Geneva: Droz, 1977–85),
4 Parts, I–II. For a general view of the publication of Italian texts in Renaissance
France see Émile Picot, Les Français italianisants au XVIe siècle (Paris: Champion,
1906), 2 vols; Nicole Bingen, Philausone (1500–1660). Répertoire des ouvrages en
langue italienne publiés dans les pays de langue française de 1550 à 1660 (Geneva:
Droz, 1994); Jean Balsamo, ‘ “Per fargli dar l’animo dalla stampa di Francia”: Marino,
l’Adone et le livre italien à Paris dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle’, in Claudio
Sensi (ed.), Maître et passeur: per Marziano Guglielminetti dagli amici di Francia
(Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2008), 197–212 (pp. 209–12).
103 Biographical information on Orologi can be found in Giuseppe Orologi, Novelle ...
intitolate ‘I successi’ (Lucca: Canovetti, 1867), pp. III–XXIV; Paolo Cherchi, Polimatia
di riuso: mezzo secolo di plagio, 1539–1589 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1998), pp. 176–86;
Bucchi, ‘Meraviglioso diletto’, pp. 295–301.
104 Latin literary texts were often granted tacit immunity on the understanding that
learned readers would exercise discretion. For an overview in English of the complex
situation see Ugo Rozzo, ‘Italian Literature on the Index’, in Gigliola Fragnito (ed.),
Church, Censorship and Culture in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001), pp. 194–222; by the same Fragnito, Proibito capire. La Chiesa
e il volgare nella prima età moderna (Bologna: Il mulino, 2005).
105 On Tasso’s acceptance of the operating principle of allegory for the intelligence of
his poem, see Torquato Tasso, Lettere poetiche, Carla Molinari (ed.) (Milan-Parma:
Fondazione Bembo-Guanda, 1995), pp. 324–5, 456–68. The ‘Allegory’ can be read
in Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata, Angelo Solerti (ed.) (Florence: Barbèra, 1895–6),
Notes 137
3 vols, II, pp. 25–30. On the difficulties raised by the application of allegorical
exegesis see however Bucchi, ‘Meraviglioso diletto’, pp. 296–8.
Chapter 3: Adonis in sixteenth-century mythography

1 On Renaissance mythography see Gruppe, Geschichte der klassischen Mythologie,
pp. 26–44; Franck L. Schoell, ‘Les mythologistes italiens de la Renaissance’, Revue
de littérature comparée 55 (1924), pp. 5–25; Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods,
esp. pp. 219–56; Don Cameron Allen, Mysteriously Meant.The Rediscovery of Pagan
Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance (Baltimore and London:
The Johns Hopkins Press, 1972); Jon Whitman (ed.), Interpretation and Allegory.
Antiquity to the Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2000), esp. pp. 269–73; Virgilio Costa,
‘Natale Conti e la divulgazione della mitologia classica in Europa tra Cinquecento
e Seicento’, in Eugenio Lanzillotta (ed.), Ricerche di antichità e tradizione classica
(Tivoli: Tored, 2004), pp. 257–307.
2 Juan Luis Vives, De tradendis disciplinis (The Transmission of Knowledge), 3.6
(‘felicius quam illo erat saeculo sperandum’), cited in Giammaria Mazzuchelli,
Gli scrittori d’Italia, cioè, Notizie storiche e critiche intorno alle vite e agli scritti dei
letterati italiani (Brescia: Bossini, 1753–63), 3 vols in 6 parts, III.2, p. 1337; Lelio
Gregorio Giraldi, De deis Gentium varia et multiplex historia (Basel: Iohannes
Oporinus, 1548), sig. α3r (‘ut ea ferebant tempora’).
3 Giovanni Boccaccio, Peri genealogias deorum libri XV cum annotationibus Jacobi
Micylli. Eiusdem de montium, sylvarum, fontium, lacuum, fluviorum, stagnorum et
marium nominibus liber I (Basel: Johannes Herwagen, 1532).
4 Boccacce de la Genealogie des Dieux (Paris: Verard, 1498; Ibid.: Le Noir, 1531,
facsimile repr. New York: Garland, 1976; Ibid.: Nicole Eve, 1578).
5 [Giovanni Boccaccio], Geneologia de gli Dei. I quindeci libri ... sopra la origine et
discendenza di tutti gli Dei de’ gentili, con la spositione e sensi allegorici delle favole, e
con la dichiaratione dell’historie appartenenti a detta materia. Tradotti et adornati per
messer Giuseppe Betussi da Bassano (Venice: Al segno del Pozzo [Comin da Trino],
1547).
6 Cf. Giraldi, De deis Gentium ... historia, sig. [α2v]- α3r, signalled by Pfeiffer, History
of Classical Scholarship from 1300 to 1850, p. 22 note, and noted in passing by Allen,
Mysteriously Meant, p. 223. For the corrupt variant reading see the critical apparatus
in Lactantius Placidus, In Statii Thebaida commentum, R. D. Sweeney (ed.) (Stuttgart
and Leipzig: Teubner, 1997), 2 vols, I, p. 293; Jon Solomon, ‘Boccaccio and the
Ineffable, Aniconic God Demogorgon’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition
19 (2012), pp. 31–62.
7 Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship 1300–1850, pp. 21–2, also mentions Voltaire
(Le songe de Platon), Carducci (‘La moglie del gigante’ 26, in Rime e ritmi, 1898),
d’Annunzio (‘Anniversario orfico’ 44, in Alcyone, 1903 – a tribute to Shelley), and
various other authors. See also Carlo Landi, Demogòrgone (Palermo: Sandron, 1930);
Boccaccio, Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, Solomon (ed.), I, pp. xii–xiii; Pierantonio
Frare, ‘Adone. Il poema del neopaganesimo’, Filologia e critica 35 (2010), 227–49
(pp. 231–2).
8 Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS N.III.10. Cf. Mario Equicola, La redazione
manoscritta del ‘Libro de natura de amore’, Laura Ricci (ed.) (Rome: Bulzoni,
138 Notes
1999). A biographical sketch of Equicola and his works in Paolo Cherchi,

‘Equicola, Mario’, in DBI 43 (1993), pp. 34–40. The standard monograph on
Equicola is that by Stephen Kolsky, Mario Equicola. The Real Courtier (Geneva:
Droz, 1991).
9 In the published version the passage appears in Book 2, with negligible textual
alterations: cf. Mario Equicola, Libro de natura de amore (Venice: Lorio da Fortes,
1525), fols 59v–60r. On the reception of the book see Mario Pozzi, ‘Mario Equicola
e la cultura cortigiana: appunti sulla redazione manoscritta del Libro de natura de
Amore’, in Id., Lingua, cultura, società. Saggi sulla letteratura italiana del Cinquecento
(Alessandria: Ed. dell’Orso, 1989), 101–18 (pp. 102–4).
10 Equicola, La redazione manoscritta, p. 427–8: ‘Li poeti dixero [Venere] essere
stata inamorata di Adone, il quale significa il Sole, secundo la religione di Assyrii,
observata da Phenici. La terra è divisa in doi hemispherii. Questo superiore, che
habitamo noi, di Venere si dice; lo inferiore, deli antipodi, secundo li antiqui habita
Proserpina: sei mesi piange Venere, cioè quel tempo che ’l Sole è nel’altro hemiperio
(lo porco segnale, il qual ammazò Adone, la ivernata intendono. [The text appears to
be corrupt here, as one would have expected something like ‘[per] lo porco segnale
... la ivernata intendono’. Segnale is a North-Italian inflection for Tuscan cignale
‘boar’.] Altri dicono che Adone nacque di Myrrha, cosa grata [a] Venere, adpropriata
al coito et – come Petronio dice – di Venere incitamento. È ammazato Adone, cioè
libidine, lo quale cessa con la età et non resurge. Adone suavità significa. De li soi
horti in Platone et in Plinio legemo. Pausania grammatico affima li horti di Adone
chiamarsi quelli dove erano finocchi e lactuche, et quelli che si soleno tenere in vasi
dinanzi alle fenestre, che altro in essi non è che delectatione, donde è nato proverbio
contra li homini da poco, che curano cose legiere, di poco fructo. Theocrito ne fa
mentione, et canta le lacrime di Venere sparse sopra il morto Adone esserse converse
in papavero, et lo sangue di Adone havere tinte le rose’. For the confusion between
the poppy and the anemone see Chapter 2, note 86.
11 Equicola, La redazione manoscritta, p. 427 note (‘Secundo Macrobio, la terra...’).
Cf. Chapter 1, notes 26 and 27, for Pontano’s and Erasmus’ dismissive treatment of
Macrobius as an insufficiently authoritative source.
12 Bucolici Graeci, Gow (ed.), p. 153; Bion of Smyrna, The Fragments and the ‘Adonis’,
Reed (ed.), pp. 77–8.
13 Desiderius Erasmus, Veterum maximeque insignium paroemiarum, id est adagiorum
collectanea (Paris: Johann Philipp, 1500), fol. XLIXr: ‘Adōnidos kēpoi, id est
Adonidis horti. Pausanias grammaticus Adonidis ait hortos lactucis et feniculis
frequentes ac Veneri dicatos fuisse, in quibus semina deponi haud aliter quam
in testis solerent, eoque rem in proverbium abiisse contra futiles ac leviculos. De
Adonio lege Plinium li. xxi. ca. x. Meminit de his hortis et Plato, unde flosculos
protinus emorituros colligi significat’. Cf. Id., Opera Omnia. Adagiorum Collectanea,
Felix Heinimann and M. L. van Poll-van de Lisdonk (eds) (Amsterdam: Elsevier
Science, 2005), pp. 238–9 (No 700), where Erasmus’ source for Pausanias’ proverb
is identified in Ermolao Barbaro’s notes to his own Castigationes Plinianae (1493),
Pozzi (ed.), IV, p. 1480. Erasmus’ entry was to be altered (e.g. by replacing the
reference to Pliny with one to Plut. Mor. 560B-C) and expanded in the second
Aldine edition of 1508 (Desiderius Erasmus, Collected Works. Adages I.i.1 to
I.v.100, trans. by Margaret Mann Phillips, annotated by R. A. B. Mynors (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1982), pp. 51–2). In his Praise of Folly, 8, Erasmus
famously compared the scents of the Fortunate Isles – Folly’s birth-place – to those
Notes 139
of the Gardens of Adonis. On the transmission of Pausanias’ proverb see Felix

Heinimann, ‘Vergessene Fragmente des Attizisten Pausanias?’, Museum Helveticum
49 (1992), 74–87 (pp. 81–2).
14 Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods, p. 234; Allen, Mysteriously Meant, p. 224.
15 Cf. the editions Basel: Iohannes Hervagius, 1535; Basel: Iohannes Hervagius, 1549;
Basel: Ex Officina Hervagiana, 1570; Paris: Guillaume Julien, 1578; Lyon: Giovanni
de Gabiano, 1608. Hieronymus Commelinus’ Mythologici Latini (Frankfurt: Ex
Bibliopolio Commeliniano, 1599) added Firmicus Maternus’ De errore profanarum
religionum libri and Fulgentius’ Virgilian Allegories.
16 Cited in Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris, I, p. 29 note. The Etymologicum magnum was
first published in 1499 (Venice: Nikolaos Blastos and Anna Notaras).
17 The Suda was first published in 1499 (Milan: Giovanni Bissolo and Benedetto
Mangio), Hesychius in 1513 (Venice: Manuzio). For the association of Adonis with
Aōos, see Friedrich Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders
der Griechen (Leipzig and Darmstadt: Leske, 1836–43), 4 vols, II, p. 422; Deborah
Dickmann Boedeker, Aphrodite’s Entry into Greek Epic (Leiden: Brill, 1974), p. 67.
18 Polydore Virgil, Adagiorum opus (Basel: Iohannes Bebel, 1532; 1st edn 1498), pp.
111–12 (‘Nihil sacrum’, No CCXV); Erasmus, Adagia 1508, 1.8.37, No 737 (‘Nihil
sacri es’), in Id., Collected Works. Adages I.vi.1 to I.x.100 (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1982), p. 143; Id., Opera Omnia (Amsterdam: North-Holland
Publishing Co., 1997), II.2, p. 258, after Zenob. 5.47. Cf. Introduction, p. 3. See
also Vecce, ‘Un codice di Teocrito’, p. 607, for a note transcribing the proverb on
the margin of Theocr. 5.21–2 in the manuscript belonged to Sannazaro (Naples,
Biblioteca Nazionale, MS XXII.87).
19 Iohannes Ravisius Textor, Officina, partim historiis, partim poeticis referta disciplinis
(Paris: Reginald Chauldière, 1532), fols XIXv–XXr (‘Occisi ab apris’), CIVr–v
(‘Formosi et formosae’), CIXr–v (‘Amasii deorum et hominum’), CLVIIIv–CLIXr
(‘Venatores’). At fol. CIXv (‘Amasii deorum et hominum’), Pont. Ur. 1.474–5 is cited
on a par with Ov. Ars am. 1.75 and Prop. 2.13.52–6.
20 Textor, Officina, fol. CXXVIIr (‘Mulieres doctae’), ‘Stultior Praxillae Adonide’.
Cf. Desiderius Erasmus, Collected Works. Adages II.vii.1 to III.iii.100, trans. and
annotated by R. A. B. Mynors (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), p. 95,
after Zenob. 4.21.
21 Iohannes Ravisius Textor, Epithetorum opus, ut utilissimum ita absolutissimum
(Basel: [Brylinger], 1576). Cf. C. F. H. Brugmann, ‘Epitheta deorum quae apud
poetae Graecos leguntur’ (1893) and Iesse Benedictus Carter, ‘Epitheta deorum quae
apud poetae Latinos leguntur’ (1902), in Roscher, Supplement, V.1–2. Adonis is
listed only in Carter’s repertoire (p. 3), which includes heroes as well as gods. Apart
from the exclusion of modern authors, Carter’s list has remained substantially the
same as Textor’s.
22 Textor, Epithetorum opus, pp. 9–10. Codro’s poems were first published in Bologna
in 1502; the line is from the second book of his Silvae (cf. Codro, Opera (Basel:
Heinrich Petris, 1540), p. 361). Augurelli’s Latin poems were published by Aldo
Manuzio in 1505; the Latin poems of the two Strozzi, father (Tito Vespasiano) and
son (Ercole), in 1513: they can be accessed in ‘Poeti d’Italia in lingua latina’ (www.
poetiditalia.it [accessed 22 May 2013]) in the text provided by M. Niero and Anita
Della Guardia (Tito Vespasiano and Ercole Strozzi, Poesie latine tratte dall’Aldina
e confrontate coi codici (Modena: Tipografia Editrice Moderna, 1916) respectively.
On the complex textual tradition of T. V. Strozzi’s poems see now Antonia Tissoni
140 Notes
Benvenuti, ‘Prime indagini sulla tradizione degli Eroticon libri di Tito Vespasiano
Strozzi’, Filologia italiana 1 (2004), pp. 89–112.
23 John Marston, ‘The Second Satire’, in Id., Works, Arthur Henry Bullen (ed.) (London:
J. C. Nimmo, 1887), 3 vols, III, p. 270; cited by E. H. Gombrich, ‘The Subject
of Poussin’s Orion’, in Id., Symbolic Images. Studies in the Art of the Renaissance
(London: Phaidon, 1972), 119–22 (p. 120). Rather than Cartari’s Imagini, Marston’s
‘Imagines deorum’ are likely to be those of Albricus ‘The Philosopher’; the ‘Booke of
Epithets’ probably refers to Textor’s Epitheta.
24 Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods, pp. 224–9, and Allen, Mysteriously Meant,
pp. 218–21, on the shortcomings of early sixteenth-century compilations.
25 Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods, pp. 231; Simona Foà, ‘Giraldi, Lilio Gregorio’,
in DBI 56 (2001), pp. 452–5.
26 Giraldi, De deis Gentium ... historia, pp. 400–1.
27 Giraldi, De deis Gentium ... historia, p. 565. Giraldi’s reference to Origenes’ Contra
Celsum, Book 4 must be a misprint. For ‘Adoneus’ also cf. Catull. 29.7.
28 Allen, Mysteriously Meant, pp. 224–5.
29 Cornutus’ treatise had been known to Politian since 1491 and was first published
by Manuzio in 1505. Cf. Alessandro Perosa (ed.), Mostra del Poliziano. Catalogo
(Florence: Sansoni, 1954), Nos 60 and 259. The Scholia Theocritea, first published by
Zacharias Kallierges in Rome in 1516, was reprinted in Basel and Paris in 1541, 1543
and 1545.
30 Giraldi, or rather the typographer, must have misread Gabanta for Gauantos (‘of
Gauas’) at Lyc. Alex. 831. As regards Abobas (A234), Hesychius’ text now reads
hupo Pergaion rather than hupo Persaion: cf. Hesychius, Lexicon, Kurt Latte, Peter
Allan Hansen and Ian C. Cunningham (eds) (Copenhagen-Berlin: Munksgaard-de
Gruyter, 1953–2009), 4 vols, I, p. 11. Cf. further Creuzer, Symbolik, II, p. 422; Egon
Wellesz, Ancient and Oriental Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 251;
and Burkert, Structure and History, pp. 194–5, on the association of Adonis with
wailing wind instruments (gingros ‘pipe’, as in Athen. Deipn. 4.174f.; abobas ‘pipe’).
31 ‘Adonosiris’ appears to be a formation analogous to the better known ‘Horapollo’, the
mysterious author of the Hieroglyphica.
32 Giraldi, De deis Gentium ... historia, p. 566. This will be silently corrected by Natale
Conti, Mythologiae … libri X (Venice: Al segno della Fontana, 1581), p. 349.
33 Giraldi, De deis Gentium ... historia, p. 565 (‘tum perfectos fructus, tum deciduos
flores’). In fact, the allegory of flowers is referred by both authors to Attis, who was
commonly assimilated to Adonis.
34 Detienne, Le jardins d’Adonis, p. 102: ‘l’impuissance sexuelle et le défaut de puissance
vitale … Dans toute la tradition grecque, de la botanique à la comédie, la laitue
est dotée de la même réputation fâcheuse dont le bromure jouit encore dans les
casernes’. Cf. also Casadio, ‘The Failing Male God’, pp. 250–2.
35 Andrea Alciato, Emblemata (Venice: Aldo’s Sons, 1546), fol. 17v, under the title
‘Amuletum Veneris’ (‘The Remedy of Venus’).
36 The ancient sources on the aphrodisiac power of colewort (nowadays more
commonly termed rocket) are collected in Marvin L. Colker, ‘Venus: A Humanist’s
Epigrams on Love’, Humanistica Lovaniensia 44 (1995), 107–36 (p. 130). In Cesare
Ripa’s Iconologia (Rome: Lepido Faci, 1603), p. 295, the image given for ‘Libidine, o
Lussuria’ (‘Lechery, or Lust’) is that of a fawn with grapes in his hand and a crown
of colewort on his head. The association of Adonis with aphrodisiac potions derived
from myrrh is made in Fulg. Myth. 3.8; Myth. Lat. III 7.3; Bocc. Gen. 2.52.3.
Notes 141
37 Detienne, Les jardins d’Adonis, p. 103; before him, C. M. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry
from Alcman to Simonides (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 212–14.
38 On the complex interaction between Sappho, Phaon, Adonis and Aphrodite, see
Gregory Nagy, ‘Phaethon, Sappho’s Phaon, and the White Rock of Leukas: “Reading”
the Symbols of Greek Lyric’, in Ellen Greene (ed.), Reading Sappho: Contemporary
Approaches (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 35–57 (pp. 40–1, 52–3,
57).
39 J. D. Beazley, ‘Some Inscriptions on Vases: V’, American Journal of Archaeology 54
(1950), 310–22 (p. 321). The quotation is from Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 53.5–8.
40 Lelio Gregorio Giraldi, Historiae poetarum tam Graecorum quam Latinorum dialogi
decem (Basel: Isingrin, 1545), p. 977.
41 Vincenzo Cartari, Le immagini degli dèi, Caterina Volpi (ed.) (Rome: De Luca,
1996), pp. 592–4. Besides Volpi’s introduction and the discussion of Cartari’s work
in the works listed in note 1 supra, see Marco Palma, ‘Cartari, Vincenzo’, in DBI 20
(1977), pp. 793–6, and Manlio Pastore Stocchi’s introduction to Vincenzo Cartari, Le
imagini de i dei de gli antichi, Ginetta Auzzas, Federica Martignago, Manlio Pastore
Stocchi and Paola Rigo (eds) (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1996), pp. VII–XLII, where
however the importance of Cartari’s acquisitions in the domain of mythological
iconography appears somewhat overstated.
42 On Conti see Roberto Ricciardi, ‘Conti (Comes, Comitum, De Comitibus), Natale
(Hieronymus)’, in DBI 28 (1983), pp. 454–7; Costa, ‘Natale Conti’, passim.
43 Giraldi De deis Gentium … historia, sig. [SS 6r] (Apollodorus); Id., Historia
poetarum, p. 348, and De deis Gentium … historia, sig. [SS 6v] (Isaac Tzetzes).
Seznec stresses Giraldi’s extensive use of manuscript material, as well as his attention
to the textual tradition of the works he was scrutinizing (The Survival of the Pagan
Gods, p. 235 note).
44 First edition, Venice: [Comin da Trino?], 1567 [more Veneto = 1568]. All quotations
are from the second edition (Venice: Al segno della Fontana, 1581). Cf. Costa,
‘Natale Conti’, pp. 273–6, on the revisors of the Frankfurt edition Jean Obsopée
and Friedrich Sylburg (Frankfurt: Wechel, 1581), and their relationship with Conti;
pp. 280–4, on the still unresolved question of Conti’s sources – on which see also
Paola Ceccarelli, ‘Sostratos’ (BNJ 23), ‘Aretades of Knidos’ (BNJ 285), ‘Ktesiphon’
(BNJ 294), in Brill’s New Jacoby. Editor in Chief: Ian Worthington (University of
Missouri), Brill Online, 2012. As far as the chapter on Adonis is concerned, the
differences between the said editions are negligible.
45 Costa, ‘Natale Conti’, pp. 257–60. The hostility may have originated from Conti’s less
than correct approach to Giraldi, who had been unanimously praised by such men
as Montaigne, Scaliger, Casaubon and Vossius (cf. Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan
Gods, p. 231).
46 Conti, Mythologiae … libri X, p. 351: ‘nam si contentiones ex Aristotelis libris
eximantur, perbreves erunt sententiae, quae nunc magnis voluminibus continentur’.
On further similar passages cf. Costa, ‘Natale Conti’, pp. 277–8.
47 Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon. From Magic to Science (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 73–134; Barbara Garman Garner, ‘Francis Bacon, Natalis
Comes and the Mythological Tradition’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes 33 (1970), pp. 264–91.
48 Conti, Mythologiae … libri X, p. 671 (‘Quod omnia Philosophorum dogmata sub
fabulis continebantur’). Adonis (p. 686) is interpreted in light of the Macrobian
allegory of the seasons’ alternation.
142 Notes
49 Cf. Sven Lövgren, ‘Il Rosso Fiorentino a Fontainebleau’, Figura 1 (1951), pp.
57–76; Rebecca Zorach, ‘ “The flower that falls before the fruit”. The Galerie
François Ier at Fontainebleau and Atys excastratus’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et
Renaissance 62 (2000), pp. 63–87; Claudio Castelletti, ‘Pirro Ligorio e la Magna
mater. Interpretazioni iconografiche, allegoriche e sincretistiche della dea Cibele
dall’antichità al Rinascimento’, Horti Hesperidum 1 (2011), 75–133 (pp. 81–2).
50 Federico Zeri, Pittura e Controriforma. L’“arte senza tempo” di Scipione da Gaeta
(Venice: Neri Pozza, 2001), pp. 25, 86; Cristiana Ilari, ‘Il mito di Adone nel Palazzo
Orsini di Monterotondo’, Storia dell’arte 74 (1992), pp. 25–47; John Hunter, Girolamo
Siciolante pittore da Sermoneta, 1521–1575 (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1996),
pp. 55–9, 117–8. Images of the frescoes are accessible at http://www.fondazionezeri.
unibo.it/ [accessed 22 May 2013].
51 Walter Friedlaender, Das Kasino Pius des Vierten (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1912), pp.
129–32 (Anhang B XI); Graham Smith, The Casino of Pius IV (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1977), p. 15.
52 Smith, The Casino of Pius IV, p. 76.
53 Ibid., pp. 77–9. The bibliography on Ligorio’s complex and multifarious personality
is extensive. On the points debated here, see Erna Mandowsky and Charles Mitchell,
Pirro Ligorio’s Roman Antiquities. The Drawings in MS. XIII.B.7 in the National
Library of Naples (London: The Warburg Institute, 1963), with Carlo Dionisotti’s
review in Rivista storica italiana 75 (1963), pp. 890–901 (reprinted as ‘Pirro Ligorio’,
in Id., Appunti su arti e lettere, pp. 131–44); Robert W. Gaston (ed.), Pirro Ligorio
Artist and Antiquarian (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana, 1988); R. D. Coffin, Pirro Ligorio.
The Renaissance Artist, Architect and Antiquarian (University Park, PA: Penn State
Press, 2004); [Anonymous], ‘Ligorio, Pirro’, in DBI 65 (2005), pp. 109–14; Carmelo
Occhipinti, Pirro Ligorio e la storia cristiana di Roma. Da Costantino all’Umanesimo
(Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2007), and his project for a digital edition of Ligorio’s
Roman Antiquities, http://pico.sns.it/ligorio2/ligorio.php [accessed 22 May 2013].
54 Smith, The Casino of Pius IV, pp. 77–9.
55 Borghini, Il riposo, p. 571: ‘Dipinse nella loggia sopra il vivaio alcune historiette di
Venere, e di Adone e il nascimento di Bacco, e altre favole con gratiosa maniera’.
Also cited in Smith, The Casino of Pius IV, p. 76 note (but with wrong page
number).
56 Smith, The Casino of Pius IV, p. 81; Marcello Fagiolo and Maria Luisa Madonna, ‘La
Casina di Pio IV come “enciclopedia” ’, in Daria Borghese (ed.), La Casina di Pio IV
in Vaticano (Turin and New York: Allemandi, 2010), 58–77 (pp. 67–8). In the same
volume, Caterina Volpi, ‘L’oro, il marmo e la porpora: la decorazione della Casina’,
pp. 44–57.
57 Caterina Volpi, ‘La favola moralizzata nella Roma della Controriforma: Pirro Ligorio
e Federico Zuccari, tra riflessioni teoriche e pratica artistica’, Storia dell’arte NS 9
(2004), pp. 131–60.
58 Smith, The Casino of Pius IV, pp. 12–13, on the similarities with Villa Giulia.
59 Overviews of the debate on the arts in the second half of the sixteenth century
are offered by Paolo Prodi, Ricerca sulla teorica delle arti figurative nella Riforma
Cattolica (Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1984); Christian Hecht, Katholische Bildertheologie
im Zeitalter von Gegenreformation und Barock: Studien zu Traktaten von Johannes
Molanus, Gabriele Paleotti und anderen Autoren (Berlin: Mann, 2012). The main
reference texts are collected in Paola Barocchi (ed.), Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento
fra Manierismo e Controriforma (Bari: Laterza, 1960–2), 3 vols. See now the recently
Notes 143
published Federico Borromeo, Sacred Painting. Museum, ed. and trans. by Kenneth
Sprague Rothwell, introduction and notes by Pamela M. Jones (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2010).
Chapter 4: Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (i): From pastoral

to epic poem
1 Alexander Pope, A Discourse on Pastoral Poetry, in The Poems of Alexander Pope,
John Butt (ed.) (London-New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961–9), 11 vols. I, p. 23.
2 On this topic see in general Emilio Russo, Marino (Rome: Salerno, 2008), pp.
347–50, 353–9 (with bibliography). See also Instabilità e metamorfosi dei generi nella
letteratura barocca, Simona Morando (ed.) (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2007).
3 See, for an overview, Helga Grubitzsch-Rodewald, Die Verwendung der Mythologie
in Giambattista Marinos ‘Adone’ (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1973). According to Giovanni
Pozzi, the mythological element in Marino’s Adone is characterized by an acceptance
of the Ovidian principle of the multiplicity of stories, yet deprived of the centrality of
metamorphosis as the main narrative mechanism (cf. Pozzi, ‘L’elemento mitologico’,
in Marino, Adone, II, pp. 50–2).
4 For this short summary I rely on Borzelli, Il Cavalier Giambattista Marino;
Alessandro Martini, ‘Marino, Giovan Battista’, in DBI 70 (2008), pp. 517–31; Russo,
Marino. Both Martini and Russo absorb and discuss the relevant bibliography.
Further significant advancements concerning Marino’s biography are progressively
registered in the following notes. The most important monograph in English on
Marino remains James V. Mirollo’s The Poet of the Marvelous: Giambattista Marino
(New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1963).
5 In a miscellaneous manuscript dated 1601 (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS ital.
575), Alessandro Martini has recently discovered a section of poems by Marino,
many of which would only appear in print thirteen years later in the ‘Third Part’
of his Lira (1614). Intriguingly, at their appearance in 1614 those poems would be
hailed (or stigmatized) as exemplary of a ‘new manner’. Why would Marino keep
them in the drawer for over a decade? Cf. Alessandro Martini, ‘ “Tempro la lira”: le
poesie del Marino in un codice per nozze del primissimo Seicento (BNF, ital. 575)’,
in Emilio Russo (ed.), Marino e il Barocco, da Napoli a Parigi (Alessandria: Edizioni
dell’Orso, 2009), pp. 13–56.
6 Marino, Lettere, p. 603; Giovan Battista Marino, La Lira, Maurizio Slawinsky (ed.)
(Turin: RES, 2007), 3 vols, III, p. 33: ‘Ma chi rubba e non sa nascondere il furto
merita il capestro; e bisogna saper ritignere d’altro colore il drappo della spoglia
rubbata, accioché non sia con facilità riconosciuto’.
7 Marino, Lettere, p. 249; also in Id., La sampogna, Vania De Maldé (ed.) (Milan-
Parma: Fondazione Pietro Bembo-Guanda, 1993), p. 51: ‘Sappia tutto il mondo che
infin dal primo dì ch’io incominciai a studiar lettere, imparai sempre a leggere col
rampino, tirando al mio proposito ciò ch’io ritrovava di buono, notandolo nel mio
Zibaldone et servendomene a suo tempo, ché insomma questo è il frutto che si cava
dalla lezzione de’ libri’.
8 Marino, Lettere, p. 249; Id., La sampogna, p. 52: ‘Assicurinsi nondimeno codesti
ladroncelli che nel mare dove io pesco et dove io trafico essi non vengono a navigare,
né mi sapranno ritrovar addosso la preda s’io stesso non la rivelo’.
144 Notes
9 On Pontano see Parenti, Poëta Proteus alter, pp. 10–11: ‘l’immagine del poeta-Proteo
evoca quella del poeta-fur’ (‘the image of the poet as Proteus is meant to evoke that
of the “poet as thief ” ’). On the derogatory association of Marino with Proteus,
favoured by the etymological word-play on his surname (Proteus as the archetypical
‘sea-god’, It. dio marino), cf. Eraldo Bellini’s Umanisti e lincei: letteratura e scienza
a Roma nell’età di Galileo (Padua: Antenore, 1997), pp. 125–7. On Proteus in
sixteenth-century literature see Luciana Borsetto, ‘Figure di Proteo nel Cinquecento.
Metamorfosi del profeta marino in Patrizi, Sannazaro, Tasso’, in Ead., Riscrivere gli
antichi, riscrivere i moderni (Alessandria: Ed. dell’Orso, 2002), pp. 243–71.
10 For Marino’s famous and somewhat byzantine distinction between the three
categories of translation, imitation and plagiarism (‘tradurre ... imitare ... rubare’),
see Marino, Lettere, pp. 245–54; Id., La sampogna, pp. 43–60.
11 Marino, Lettere, pp. 526–37. The letter was edited by Guglielminetti on the basis of
seventeenth-century editions of the text, and the place from which it is dated, ‘Dal
Senato, li X febraro 1612’ (‘From the Senate, 13 February 1612’), does not make
sense. The correct reading must surely be ‘Dal Serrato’ (‘From prison’): cf. Vatican
City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Capponi 31, fol. 130r, as suggested in
Carlo Caruso, ‘Retrospettiva mariniana’, Rassegna europea della letteratura italiana 4
(1986), 9–34 (p. 9).
12 A fuller version of the letter has been discovered and published by Emilio Russo,
Studi su Tasso e Marino (Padua-Rome: Antenore, 2005), pp. 138–84.
13 The solemn dedication of the Dicerie sacre to Paul V, arranged like an inscription of
extraordinary length and elaborate style, was apparently interpreted by the pontiff
as mockery: cf. K. T. Butler, ‘Two Unpublished Letters of Giambattista Marino’,
Modern Language Review 31 (1936), pp. 550–5. Ironically, the very same inscription
jeopardized Marino’s plans to move to England, because King James I regarded
it as a genuinely enthusiastic praise of the pope: cf. Butler, ‘Two Unpublished
Letters’; Giorgio Fulco, ‘La corrispondenza di Giambattista Marino dalla Francia’,
in Id., La “meravigliosa” passione. Studi sul Barocco tra letteratura ed arte (Rome:
Salerno Editrice, 2001), 195–215 (pp. 197–200). The inscription can be read in
Giovan Battista Marino, Dicerie sacre e Strage de gl’Innocenti, Giovanni Pozzi (ed.)
(Turin: Einaudi, 1960), pp. 69–70. It received high praise in Emanuele Tesauro, Il
Cannocchiale aristotelico (Turin: Zavatta, 1670; facsimile reprint with Introduction
and Indices, Savigliano: Editrice Artistica Piemontese, 2000), pp. 246–7.
14 The original plan seems to have entailed a dedication to the young king, Louis XIII:
cf. Russo, Marino, p. 152 note.
15 Danielle Boillet, ‘Marino et les “Fluctuations de la France”: Il Tempio (1615) et les
Epitalami (1616)’, in Danielle Boillet and Corinne Lucas (eds), L’actualité et sa mise
en écriture dans l’Italie des XVe–XVIIe siècles (Paris: Université Paris III Sorbonne
nouvelle, 2005), pp. 205–43.
16 Marino, Adone, II, pp. 113–21. An incomplete version of the text, limited to the first
three cantos, survives in two manuscripts: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS ital.
1516, fols 112–46; Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 12894, fols 1–26 (a copy of the
Parisian manuscript). See Pozzi’s detailed analysis in Marino, Adone, II, pp. 727–47;
Emilio Russo, ‘L’Adone a Parigi’, Filologia e critica 35 (2010), pp. 267–88. Emilio
Russo is preparing a critical edition of the text.
17 Cf. Hélène Duccini, Concini. Grandeur et misère du favori de Marie de Médicis
(Paris: Albin Michel, 1991), pp. 322–36. Cardinal Richelieu narrated in his Mémoires
how he managed to extricate himself of a difficult situation while approaching the
Notes 145
Pont-Neuf during the tumult (Armand Jean du Plessis, Mémoires du cardinal de

Richelieu (Paris: Librairie Renouard, H. Laurens successeur, 1908–31), 10 vols, II,
p. 195–6). Extracts are given in Gabriel Hanotaux, Histoire du cardinal de Richelieu
(Paris: Didot, 1893–1947), 6 vols (vols II–VI in collaboration with the Duc de la
Force), II, pp. 195–6; Duccini, Concini, pp. 328–9.
18 Marino must have felt shaken by it. In a letter of 1617 he alluded to ‘accidenti
horrendi’ (‘horrendous events’), clearly referring to Concini’s barbarous murder
(Giorgio Fulco, ‘Pratiche intertestuali per due performances di Mercurio. Lettura del
Canto X dell’Adone’, in Id., La “meravigliosa” passione, 3–43 [p. 13]).
19 Les contre-veritez de la cour. Avec le dragon à trois testes ([Paris]: [s.n.], 1620), sig.
a3r: ‘L’evesque de Luçon est un pauvre idiot’). It has, however, been suggested that
the comment might have been ironic (Edouard Fournier (ed.), Variétés historiques
et littéraires. Recueil de pièces volantes rares et curieuses en prose et en vers (Paris:
Jannet, 1855–63), 10 vols, IV, p. 338 note).
20 Clizia Carminati, ‘Note per la Sferza di G.B. Marino’, in Agnès Morini (ed.),
L’invective. Histoire, formes, stratégies (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de
Saint-Étienne, 2006), pp. 179–204. Publication was eventually held up for reasons of
political expediency, and La sferza appeared posthumously in print in 1625.
21 Marino, Lettere, pp. 210, 220–1, 223, 234, 332.
22 They included, amongst others, Théophile de Viau, Georges de Scudéry, Tristan
l’Hermite, Marc-Antoine de St-Amant, Vincent Voiture, and later Jean de La
Fontaine. See Charles William Cabeen, L’influence de Giambattista Marino sur la
littérature française dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle (Grenoble: Allier, 1904);
Cecilia Rizza, ‘L’Orphée di Tristan e l’Orfeo del Cavalier Marino’, Convivium 4
(1954), 429–39; Ead., ‘L’influenza italiana sulla lirica francese del primo Seicento:
il problema critico’, Studi francesi 2 (1957), pp. 264–70, 432–6; Ead., ‘Tradizione
francese e influenza italiana nella lirica del primo Seicento’, Lettere italiane 10
(1958), pp. 431–54. Further bibliographical information in Russo, Marino, pp.
172–3 note.
23 Cf. Russo, Marino, pp. 171–3, who reports the relevant passage from the biography
of Marino’s nephew Francesco Chiaro (p. 172 note).
24 On Giovan Carlo Doria see Viviana Farina, Giovan Carlo Doria promotore delle
arti a Genova nel primo Seicento (Florence: Edifir, 2002). On Luigi Centurione
(1597–1659), mentioned in Rubens’ I palazzi di Genova (Antwerp: Meursius, 1622)
as the owner of Palazzo Lomellino in the Genoese Strada Nuova, see Gianni Bozzo,
Beppe Merlano and Max Rabino (eds), Palazzo Nicolosio Lomellino di Strada Nuova
a Genova (Milan: Skira, 2004).
25 A derogatory comment on Marino had been made by Barberini as early as 1613:
cf. Carlo Delcorno, ‘Un avversario del Marino: Ferrante Carli’, Studi secenteschi 16
(1975), 69–150 (p. 148).
26 Bellini, Umanisti e lincei, pp. 93–101, 111–14, 123–7; Clizia Carminati, Vita e morte
del Cavalier Marino (Bologna: I libri di Emil, 2011).
27 Clizia Carminati, Giovan Battista Marino tra inquisizione e censura (Padua:
Antenore, 2008).
28 See also infra, Chapter 6.
29 This section can be skipped by the informed reader. A more detailed summary
is provided by Pozzi in Marino, Adone, II, pp. 771–91; cf. also Martini, ‘L’Adone’,
777–97 (in part. pp. 779–81), and Tuzet, Mort et résurrection d’Adonis, pp. 173–86.
Russo, Marino, pp. 280–5, offers a most helpful, canto-by-canto outline of the poem’s
146 Notes
main sources of inspiration. See also the Introduction to Giovan Battista Marino,
Adone, Emilio Russo (ed.) (Milan: BUR, 2013).
30 On the contradictions raised by Adonis’ unresolved marital status see Danielle
Boillet, ‘Dire l’“inonesto gioco” dans le chant VIII de l’Adone’, in Sensi (ed.), Maître
et passeur, 213–35 (pp. 221–2).
31 A. E. Housman, ‘Swinburne’, in Id., Collected Poems and Selected Prose, Christopher
Ricks (ed.) (London: Penguin, 1988), 277–95 (p. 282). For the comparison with
Mozart cf. Giovan Battista Marino, Rime amorose, Ottavio Besomi and Alessandro
Martini (eds) (Modena: Panini, 1987), p. 11.
32 Russo, ‘L’Adone a Parigi’, p. 284: ‘Un’opera cresciuta come una collezione, mano a
mano arricchita di innesti per affluenze improvvise, ma anche rimodulata e ritagliata
all’interno, secondo un movimento potenzialmente senza termine’.
33 Pozzi in Marino, Adone, II, pp. 103–21; Martini, ‘L’Adone’, pp. 777–8; Russo, Marino,
pp. 251–64.
34 Borzelli, Il Cavalier Giovanbattista Marino, p. 210.
35 Sospiri d’Ergasto Version A, in Marino, Sampogna, De Maldé (ed.), p. XCIV.
36 Since the publication of Sannazaro’s Maritime Eclogues, the maritime eclogue had
become Naples’ own brand of pastoral poetry. See Nicholas Smith, ‘The Genre
and Critical Reception of Jacopo Sannazaro’s Eclogae piscatoriae (Naples, 1526)’,
Humanistica Lovaniensia 50 (2001), pp. 199–219.
37 Cf. Theoc. 1.27–61. When the Sospiri d’Ergasto was published in a revised version
(Version B) in 1620, the anonymous ‘illustrious hand’ was changed to that of Guido
Reni (Sospiri d’Ergasto, Version B, in Marino, Sampogna, De Maldé (ed.), pp. 595–6).
38 Cf. Martini, ‘Oltre l’idillio’, pp. 14–15; and supra, p. 34.
39 One suspects on the authority of Verg. Buc. 4.1–3. On Venus’ occasional ‘bourgeois’
slips see Claudia Micocci, Sondaggi sull’‘Adone’ di Marino (Rome: Aracne, 2009), pp.
44–6.
40 See in particular Pozzi’s introduction to Marino, Adone, II, pp. 3–150, exemplary for
learned clarity and methodological novelty.
41 Amongst the best known episodes are the description of the rose (3.154–61), the
chant of the nightingale (7.32–62), the amorous encounter of Venus and Adonis
(8.89–95, 122–49), the description of the lunar spots with the praise of Galileo
(10.25–47), the toilet of Venus (17.65–82), the death of Adonis (18.46–97), and
Venus’ lament over his body (18.150–68). For a pertinent comment by Mme de
Sévigné see infra, note 71. In his History of Italian Literature (1870), Francesco De
Sanctis famously singled out the description of the rose as a prodigious example
of Baroque style (Storia della letteratura italiana, Gianfranco Contini (ed.) (Turin:
UTET, 1968), pp. 641–2).
42 Marino, Lettere, p. 53: ‘l’Adone, il quale è diviso in tre libri’; Ibid., 608–9 (also in
Marino, Lira, Slawinsky (ed.), II, p. 40): ‘poco meno di mille stanze ... distribuito in
quattro libri’.
43 Marino, Lettere, p. 188 (cf. also pp. 189 and 191).
44 Marino, Lettere, p. 206.
45 Cf. Russo, ‘L’Adone a Parigi’, pp. 277–8.
46 Pozzi in Marino, Adone, II, pp. 114–15.
48 See in general Russo, Marino, pp. 220–30, 247–50.
49 Marino, Lettere, p. 206: ‘gonnella rappezzata ... angusta e incapace di varietà
d’accidenti’, therefore enriched with ‘azioni episodiche, come meglio mi è stato
Notes 147
possibile’; Ibid., p. 268: ‘la favola è alquanto povera d’azioni’. He kept highlighting
(and excusing) his poem’s faults after its publication (Ibid., pp. 394–7).
50 Marino, Adone, Canto I, ‘Allegoria’: ‘Sotto la persona di Clizio s’intende il signor
Giovan Vincenzo Imperiali, gentiluomo genovese di belle lettere, che questo nome si
ha appropriato nelle sue poesie. Nelle lodi della vita pastorale si adombra il poema
dello Stato rustico, dal medesimo leggiadramente composto’ (Marino, Adone, I,
p. 47). On the role assigned to Clizio in Marino’s Adone, see Martini, ‘Oltre l’idillio’;
Danielle Boillet, ‘Clizio et Fileno dans l’Adone de Marino’, in Russo (ed.), Marino e il
Barocco, pp. 259–87.
51 On Imperiale see Renato Martinoni, Gian Vincenzo Imperiale politico, letterato
e collezionista genovese del Seicento (Padua: Antenore, 1983); Franco Vazzoler in
Eugenio Buonaccorsi et al. (eds), La letteratura ligure. La Repubblica aristocratica
(1528–1797) (Genoa: Costa & Nolan, 1992), 2 vols, I, pp. 274–94; Emilio Russo
and Franco Pignatti, ‘Imperiale, Gian Vincenzo’, in DBI 62 (2004), pp. 297–302. On
the pictorial decoration of his Genoese palace see Ezia Gavazza, ‘La committenza
dell’affresco nelle dimore genovesi’, in Piero Boccardo (ed.), L’Età di Rubens. Dimore,
committenti e collezionisti genovesi (Milan: Skira, 2004), 87–101 (pp. 87–90, 100).
Matteo Ceppi is currently working towards the reconstruction of Imperiale’s
extensive private library.
52 Cf. Marino, Lettere, pp. 32–48.
53 Giovanni Sopranzi, ‘Le tre redazioni dello Stato rustico’, in Renato Reichlin and
Giovanni Sopranzi, Pastori barocchi fra Marino e Imperiali (Fribourg: Editions de
l’Université, 1988), pp. 75–140.
54 Cf. Lauro Magnani, Il tempio di Venere. Giardino e villa nella cultura genovese
(Genoa: Sagep, 1987).
55 Carlo Caruso, ‘Prosa e metro nel romanzo italiano del Seicento’, in Andrea Comboni
and Alessandra Di Ricco (eds), Il prosimetro nella letteratura italiana (Trent:
Dipartimento di Scienze storiche e filologiche, 2000), pp. 427–62.
56 Mario Praz, Ricerche anglo-italiane (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1943),
p. 5.
57 On the peculiarities of Imperiale’s style, see Carmela Colombo, Cultura e tradizione
nell’‘Adone’ di G.B. Marino (Padua: Antenore, 1967), pp. 67–84; Ottavio Besomi,
Ricerche intorno alla ‘Lira’ di G.B. Marino (Padua: Antenore, 1969), pp. 142–50; Id.,
Esplorazioni secentesche (Padua: Antenore, 1975), pp. 88–112, 118–28; Giovanni
Pozzi, ‘Anamorfosi poetiche nelle maniere di Cinque-Seicento’, in Id., Alternatim
(Milan: Adelphi, 1996), pp. 191–204.
58 Guido Arbizzoni, Marco Faini and Tiziana Mattioli (eds), Dopo Tasso. Percorsi
del poema eroico (Rome-Padua: Antenore, 2005); Sergio Zatti, ‘L’Adone e la crisi
dell’epica’, in Id., L’ombra del Tasso. Epica e romanzo nel Cinquecento (Milan: Bruno
Mondadori, 1996), 208–30 (pp. 221–2, 225–6, 228–9).
59 Lodovico Castelvetro, La poetica di Aristotele volgarizzata ed esposta, Werther
Romani (ed.) (Bari: Laterza, 1978–9), 2 vols. See Joel Elias Spingarn, A History of
Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908),
pp. 107–24; George Saintsbury, A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe
(Edinburgh and London: Blackwood and Sons, 1949), 3 vols, II, pp. 80–9, still
useful for its learned and wide-ranging approach despite its frequent idiosyncratic
verdicts; Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1961), 2 vols, I, 871–3; Baxter Hathaway, The
Age of Criticism: The Late Renaissance in Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
148 Notes
1962), pp. 146–50; Andrea Battistini and Ezio Raimondi, ‘Retoriche e poetiche
dominanti’, in Alberto Asor Rosa (ed.), La letteratura italiana. Le forme del testo. I.
Teoria e poesia (Turin: Einaudi, 1984), vol. III.1, 5–339 (pp. 82–98); Daniel Javitch,
‘The Assimilation of Aristotle’s Poetics in Sixteenth-Century Italy’ and ‘Italian Epic
Theory’, in Glyn P. Norton (ed.), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Volume
3. The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 53–66,
205–15.
60 See Pozzi’s edition of Marino’s Adone, ad indicem.
61 Augusta López-Bernasocchi, ‘Una nuova versione del viaggio in Parnaso: lo Stato
rustico di Gian Vincenzo Imperiale’, Studi secenteschi 33 (1982), pp. 63–90.
62 Ad. 9.6.1–3 ‘del duce ... famoso e chiaro / che, di giusto disdegno in guerra armato,
/ vendicò del Messia lo strazio amaro’; 9.6.5–6 ‘col Sulmonese al paro, / il mondo in
nove forme trasformato’.
63 On Nonnus see pp. 70–1.
64 Ad. 9.6.7–8 ‘ma poich’a rozzo stil non lice tanto, / seguo d’Adone e di Ciprigna il
canto’.
65 Pozzi in Marino, Adone, II, pp. 387–9.
66 Jean de Chapelain, Lettres, Philippe Tamizey de Larroque (ed.) (Paris: Imprimerie
nationale, 1880–3), 2 vols, II, p. 215. The passage is reported in Carminati, Marino
tra inquisizione e censura, pp. 191–2, with further important references, notably
to Nino Accaputo, ‘Sulla genesi della “Préface” dell’Adone’, Annali dell’Istituto
Universitario Navale di Napoli 36 (1966), pp. 75–98, which I was unable to access.
See also Jean Chapelain, Opuscules critiques, Alfred C. Hunter (ed.), introduced and
revised by Anne Duprat (Geneva: Droz, 2007), pp. 50–5.
67 The definition of Marino’s Adone as a ‘poëme de paix’ had evident political
implications, inherent in the divisive conflicts of the previous years: see infra,
Chapter 5.
68 ‘[Adone] est mixte sans se ruiner, le tout partant de sa nature, comme posé entre la
tragedie et la comedie, l’heroïque et le romant; tenant du grave et du relevé tant pour
les personnes agissantes que pour la catastrophe et du simple et du ravalé tant pour
les actions qui precedent cette fin que pour les descriptions particularisées’ (Marino,
Adone, I, pp. 19).
69 On the tragic element in Marino’s Adone see Marco Corradini, ‘Adone: il tragico e
la tragedia’, in Id., In terra di letteratura. Poesia e poetica di Giovan Battsta Marino
(Lecce: Argo, 2012), pp. 225–77.
70 Cf. Pozzi’s explanatory note at 5.124.7.
71 Mme de Sévigné, Correspondance, Roger Duchêne (ed.) (Paris: Gallimard, 1972–8),
3 vols, I, p. 445: ‘Le chant de la comédie est admirable’. She also reported that ‘M.
Chapelain ... says that Adone is delightful in some respects, but also tediously long’
(‘M. Chapelain [...] dit que l’Adone est délicieux en certains endroits, mais d’une
longueur assommante’), and that Chapelain suggested she should read Cantos 5
and 7 before all the others. The aged Chapelain also described Marino’s Adone as ‘a
sea without bottom or shores, which nobody but St-Amant managed to travel in its
entirety’ (reported in Antoine Adam, Théophile de Viau et la libre pensée française
en 1620 (Paris: Droz, 1935), p. 444: ‘une mer qui n’a ni fond, ni rives, et que jamais
personne que St-Amant n’a pu courir entièrement’).
72 See Vittorio Rossi’s classic work Battista Guarini e il ‘Pastor fido’. Studio biografico-
critico con documenti inediti (Turin: Loescher, 1886), especially the Second Part.
Pastoral drama and the Late Renaissance debate on tragicomedy have attracted
Notes 149
considerable interest in recent years: see Lisa Sampson, Pastoral Drama in Early
Modern Italy: The Making of a New Genre (Oxford: Legenda, 2006).
73 See Russo, Marino, pp. 173–4, for excellent bibliographical information and a lucid
discussion of the status quaestionis.
74 Lafay, La poésie française du premier XVIIe siècle, p. 113, claims that the nuanced
nature of such stylistic solutions makes it difficult to draw clear dividing lines
between the genres involved (‘les distinctions n’y sont pas toujours faciles’).
75 Cf. Marino, Lettere, pp. 204 and 241, for evidence of his contacts with d’Urfé.
76 Tommaso Stigliani, L’occhiale. Opera difensiva (Venice: Carampello, 1627), p. 89
(‘poema di madrigali’).
77 See supra, p. 59.
78 Certain narrative devices typical of Renaissance chivalric poems may be said to
survive in the ‘picaresque’ section of the Adone (Cantos 12–15), often, however, with
a parodic intent.
79 Marino, Adone, II, p. 48: ‘l’aspetto tematico originario di quella favola, cioè la natura
religiosa del mito solare e di fecondazione, implicito nel mito di Adone’.
80 Marino, Adone, II, pp. 30–1.
81 Cf. Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris, I, pp. 227–31, where the relevant sources are
transcribed and discussed in detail.
82 Ad. 12.290.8: ‘quasi il corso ... di tutto il verno’.
83 James V. Mirollo, ‘The Problem of “ritorni” (Canto XV: Il ritorno)’, in Lectura
Marini, pp. 255–66, does not seem to take the allegorical meaning of Adonis’
“returns” into account.
84 That the ancient Adonia did regularly take place over a triduum was the conviction
of Emil Glotz, ‘Les fêtes d’Adonis sous Ptolémée II’, Revue des études grecques 32
(1920), pp. 169–222, supported amongst others by Franz Cumont, ‘Les Syriens en
Espagne et les Adonies à Séville’, Syria 8 (1927), 330–41 (pp. 340–1). This has been
shown to be uncorroborated speculation: cf. Atallah, Adonis, pp. 134–40, and before
him Roland de Vaux, ‘Sur quelques rapports entre Adonis et Osiris’, Revue biblique
42 (1933), pp. 31–56.
85 See supra, p. 34; also Corradini, ‘Tancredi e il cinghiale’, in Id., In terra di letteratura,
179–99 (pp. 182–3), for a discussion of the complex revisitation of the episode made
by Marino, with his usual combination of both ancient and early modern sources.
The episode had in the meantime penetrated vernacular epigrammatic poetry: cf.
Valerio Belli, Madrigali (Venice: G. B. Ciotti, 1599), fol. 9r, Difesa per lo cinghiale
ch’uccise Adone secondo la favola di Teocrito (Defense of the boar that killed Adonis
according to Theocritus’ tale), which ends on the following note (ll. 7–8): ‘Solo baciar
lo volse, e non s’avide / C’ha l’arme in bocca, e che ’l suo bacio ancide.’ (‘He only
wanted to kiss him, and did not realize that he has a weapon in his mouth, and that
his kiss can kill’).
86 Marino, Adone, II, pp. 62–4, 641–61; Francesco Guardiani, La meravigliosa retorica
dell’‘Adone’ (Florence: Olschki, 1988), pp. 52–6. Cf. also Frare, ‘Adone. Il poema
del neopaganesimo’, pp. 228–32, who draws attention to the sustained comparison
between Christ and Pan in Marino’s Dicerie sacre. On ecclesiatical censorship see
Carminati, Marino tra inquisizione e censura, pp. 242–68 (esp. 253ff.) and 346; and
Chapter 6.
87 Tuzet, Mort et résurrection d’Adonis, p. 186.
88 Marino, Adone, II, p. 695.
89 Marino, Adone, II, p. 662: ‘La metamorfosi non ha nessun rilievo sul piano
150 Notes
dei significati profondi del racconto; è un episodio con funzioni meramente

ornamentali’. See however Francesco Guardiani’s dissent on this point (Guardiani,
La meravigliosa retorica dell’‘Adone’, pp. 52–9).
90 Marino, Adone, II, p. 695: ‘il seguito della metamorfosi ch’egli non aveva accettato’.
91 Marino, Adone, II, p. 708.
92 Cf. Bruno Snell, ‘Arkadien: Die Entdeckung einer geistigen Landschaft’, in Garber
(ed.), Europäische Bukolik and Georgik, 14–43 (pp. 16–17).
93 Ad. 20, ‘Allegoria’: ‘I due che sono gli ultimi a comparire rappresentano Spagna
e Francia’ (‘The last two appearing on the scene stand for Spain and France’). Cf.
Guardiani, La meravigliosa retorica dell’‘Adone’, p. 58; Id., ‘I trastulli del cinghale’ and
‘Il gran teatro del mondo, ovvero il mondo a teatro’, in Lectura Marini, pp. 301–16
and 325–40 respectively; Paolo Cherchi, ‘Il re Adone’, in Francesco Guardiani (ed.),
The Sense of Marino (Ottawa: Legas, 1994), pp. 9–33.
94 While Louis XIII was marrying Anne of Austria, Louis’ sister Elizabeth married
Anne’s brother, the Prince of Asturias and future King Philip IV of Spain (cf. Ad.
10.204–6). An exhaustive discussion of the significance of the event is provided by
José María Perceval, Opinión pública y publicidad (Siglo XVII). Nacimiento de los
espacios de comunicación pública en torno a las bodas reales de 1615 entre Borbones
y Habsburgo. Thesis, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, 2003, 4 vols (http://
ddd.uab.cat/pub/tesis/2003/ [accessed 22 May 2013]). Marino may have utilized
contemporary reports of that encounter for this episode. See Chapter 5, p. 90.
95 Note the similarities with Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata, 3.21.5–8, emphasized by the
use of the same rhyme-words: ‘Ché, rotti i lacci a l’elmo suo, d’un salto / (Mirabil
colpo!) ei le balzò di testa; / E le chiome dorate al vento sparse, / Giovane donna
in mezzo ’l campo apparse’ (‘For every lace he broke and every thong, / And in the
dust threw down her plumed crest, / About her shoulders shone her golden locks,
/ Like sunny beams, on alabaster rocks’, trans. E. Fairfax). Cf. also Petrarch, Rerum
vulgarium fragmenta, 90.1 ‘Erano i capei d’oro a l’aura sparsi’, and Verg. Aen. 1.319
(of Venus disguised as a Spartan maiden) ‘dederatque comam diffundere ventis’.
96 See in particular Paolo Cherchi, La metamorfosi dell’‘Adone’ (Ravenna: Longo, 1996),
pp. 21–5. Grubitzsch-Rodewald, Die Verwendung der Mythologie in Giambattista
Marinos ‘Adone’, does not deal with the points discussed in the following pages.
97 Louis as ‘son of Mars’ (Martis genus) is a constant feature of French courtly
propaganda of these years.
98 Cherchi, La metamorforsi dell’‘Adone’, pp. 24–5, has been the first to signal the
significance of Adonis’ birthmark and of Austria’s victorious hunt for a correct
interpretation of the episode. The very same Cherchi has summarized the matter
thus: ‘Their physical features combined, as well as the combined history of their
upbringing, bring back to life the androgynous Adonis, metamorphosed into a
couple which will provide the origins of the French royal family’ (in Peter Brand
and Lino Pertile (eds), The Cambridge History of Italian Literature (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 307).
99 Cf. e.g. Conti, Mythologiae ... libri decem, p. 350, where is quoted the relevant
passage from Hymn. Orph. 56.5 on Adonis as ‘boy and girl alike’ (‘pariter puer atque
puella’ in Conti’s translation). See also Athen. Deipn. 10.456a-b, on Adonis as an
object of carnal love for both Venus and Dionysus. Photius’ Library, first published
in 1601 and after 1606 repeatedly printed with a facing Latin translation, refers
to a lost work by Euphorion where the androgynous Adonis is said to have been
‘the lover of Venus and of Hercules’ (‘Adonidem, suum [i.e. Venus’] et Herculis
Notes 151
amasium’), and to have ‘had intercourse with Venus as a man, with Apollo as a
woman’ (‘Adonis [narrant] Androgynus cum esset, ut vir cum Venere, ut mulier
cum Apolline, congressus est’) (Phot. Bibl. 151b.5, in Photius, Myriobiblon, sive
Bibliotheca, David Hoeschel (ed.), tr. Andreas Schott ([Geneva]: Oliva Pauli
Stephani, 1611), cols 473/474; 485/486).
100 Marino’s keen interest in astrology is reflected in his request of specific information
on the subject in a letter of 1605 (Marino, Lettere, p. 49). On the occurrence of the
technical term ‘anaretico’ (‘anaretic’) at Ad. 11.185.5 referring to the twenty-ninth
or final degree of a zodiac sign, cf. Gianfranco Folena, ‘Anaretico (da Tolomeo al
Marino)’, Lingua nostra 38 (1977), p. 31; Micocci, Sondaggi sull’‘Adone’, pp. 9–11.
101 See the introduction by Pozzi and his note at Ad. 18.97.4 in Marino, Adone, II, pp.
34–5 and 649; Zatti, ‘L’Adone e la crisi dell’epica’, pp. 224–5; also Maria Cristina
Cabani, ‘Le parole del cinghiale: Adone, XVIII, 236–9’, Studi secenteschi (2005), pp.
71–89; Paolo Cherchi, ‘Processo al cinghiale (Adone, XVIII 234–41)’, Bollettino di
italianistica 2 (2009), pp. 69–83.
102 This is suggested by the reconstructed chronology of the poem’s composition. See
Pozzi in Marino, Adone, II, pp. 110–21; Martini, ‘L’Adone’, pp. 777–8; Russo, Marino,
pp. 259–64.
103 The medieval tradition that pictured Achilles as a victim of love because of his
falling for Polixena, established by Benoît de Saint-Maure in his Roman de Troie,
17531–84 and ff. (Id., Le Roman de Troie, Léopold Constans (ed.) (Paris: Firmin
et Didot, 1904–12), 6 vols, III, pp. 145–8) and still valid for Dante (Inf. 5.65–6), is
disregarded by Marino.
104 Ps.-Mosch. 3.99–104, Catull. 5.4, Hor. Carm. 4.7, Tasso Ger. Lib. 16.15.1–4. See
on this passage the acute observations made by Corradini, ‘Adone: il tragico e la
tragedia’, pp. 227–34.
105 As outlined above (supra, p. 116, note 11), the variants in the tradition concern
the nature of the flower, with the rose occasionally replacing the anemone – cf.
Bion 1.66; Hyg. Fab. 258; Pervig. Ven. 23 (although as a result of a seventeenth-
century emendation); Serv. auct. in Buc. 10.18. Cf. also Frare, ‘Adone. Il poema del
neopaganesimo’, pp. 233–5, on the importance of the transformation of Adonis’
heart in Marino’s revisitation of the myth.
106 As lamented by Zuntz, Persephone, p. 167: ‘... the Orphic Zagreus (whose
standing with modern mythographers would not be what it is, if Fate had
allowed Aischylos’ Lykourgeia to survive rather than Nonnos’ perverse Dionysiaka)’.
107 M. L. West, The Orphic Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 142.
108 A thorough discussion of the ancient sources in Christian August Lobeck,
Aglaophamus, sive De theologiae mysticae Graecorum causis libri tres (Königsberg:
Borntraeger, 1829), 2 vols, I, pp. 552–86; cf. also Salomon Reinach, ‘Zagreus, le
serpent cornu’, in Id., Cultes, mythes et religions, pp. 555–60; James G. Frazer,
Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild (London: Macmillan, 1912), 2 vols, I, pp. 12–16;
Johannes Schmidt, ‘Zagreus’, in Roscher, VI, cols 532–8.
109 ‘Stranio parto e mirabile, che fue / una volta concetto e nacque due’ (Ad. 2.28.7–8);
‘Colui che di due ventri al mondo nacque’ (Ad. 18.206.2). Further tokens of
hybridization occur in Canto 16, where Adonis is explicitly compared to Dionysus
(Ad. 16.242.5–8) and his coronation as King of Cyprus celebrated with a Bacchic
triumph (Ad. 16.250–63). It may be worth noting in passing that ‘coming to the
world twice’ is, according to Paul, an exclusive prerogative of Christ (Heb 9:27–8).
110 Conti, Mythologiae ... libri decem, pp. 323 and 333; Hyg. Fab. 167; Clem. Al.
152 Notes
Protr. 2.17.2–18.1 (PG 8); Arn. Adv. Nat. 5.19 (PL 5); Firm. Mat. Err. prof. rel.
6.1–4 (PL 12). Clement explicitly censured the amorous encounters of the gods
in relation to the Adoniac and Dionysian festivities (Protr. 2.33–4). Marino’s
familiarity with the writings of the Church Fathers is largely testified by his
Dicerie sacre, albeit mainly through the use of compendia and repertoires
(on which see Pozzi’s Introduction and commentary). Proclus’ hymn to
Athena, where the episode of Zagreus is narrated, remained unpublished until
the middle of the eighteenth century (cf. Proclus, Hymni, Ernst Vogt (ed.)
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1957), p. 21). Further sources, many of which
accessible to Marino, are listed in Frazer, Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, I,
pp. 13–14.
111 Nonnus, Dionysiaca, nunc primum in lucem edita, ex Bibliotheca Joannis Sambuci.
Cum lectionibus et coniecturis Gerarti Falkenburgii, et indice copioso (Antwerp:
Plantin, 1569); Id., Dionysiaca. Nunc denuo in lucem edita, et Latine reddita per
Eilhardum Lubinum (Hannover: C. Marnius et Haeredes J. Aubrii, 1605). See also
the following note.
112 Poetae Graeci veteres carminis heroici scriptores, Jacques Lect (ed.) (Geneva: Pierre
de la Rouiere, 1606), 2 vols, II, p. 457. The river Hydaspes asks Dionysus for mercy
by recalling his services to Zagreus as Dionysus’ former self, when as a child he had
been entrusted to the river’s nymphs: ‘Et tu fers Zagrei totum corpus, sed tu ipsi / Da
gratiam sero perfectam, a quo es. Primigeni enim, / Ex corde exortus es decantati
Bacchi’ (‘You have the whole shape of Zagreus, but grant this late favour to him from
whom you are sprung. You proceeded from the heart of the celebrated first-born
Bacchus’).
113 Cf. supra, p. 52. On Nonnus cf. Marino, Lettere, pp. 293, 424, and Chapelain’s
‘Discours’ (§§ 44, 123). One is also reminded of Marino’s aborted project for a
‘Dionysian’ poem entitled Le Trasformazioni. See Pozzi, Adone, II, ad indicem.
114 Cf. Hyg. Fab. 251 ‘Qui licentia Parcarum ab inferis redierunt’ (‘Those who returned
from the underworld with the permission of the Parcae’), which includes both
Adonis and Dionysus.
115 Conti, Mythologiae … libri decem, pp. 348–51 (Adonis); 313–38 (Dionysus). The
crowning of Adonis as King of Cyprus at Ad. 16.250–63, is imitated after the Bacchic
triumph of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: cf. Angelo Colombo, ‘Le “arti industri”.
Motivi e forme dell’apoteosi di Adone’, in Guardiani (ed.), Lectura Marini, pp.
267–83.
116 See Walter F. Otto, Dionysus. Myth and Cult (Bloomington and London: Indiana
University Press, 1965), p. 176, for references to, amonst others, Eur. Bacch. 353;
Clem. Al. Protr. 2.34.3–5; Apollod. 3.4.3; Nonn. Dion. 14.159–67. Cf. Deborah
Lyons, Gender and Immortality. Heroines in Ancient Greek Myth and Cult (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 112: ‘From the moment of his strange double
birth, [Dionysus] is marked by gender confusion’.
117 Hymn. Orph. 42.7, 56.3–6; Auson. Epigr. 32, 33; Procl. Hymn. 1.24–6; Mart. Cap.
2.191–2. Cf. Introduction, pp. 3–4. On further ancient texts attesting to Adonis’
syncretism with Dionysus, see Reed, ‘At Play with Adonis’, p. 221, note 10.
118 Cf. The Fragments of Attic Comedy after Meinecke, Bergk and Kock, John Maxwell
Edmonds (ed.) (Leiden: Brill, 1961), 3 vols, III, pp. 490–3.
119 Guardiani, La meravigliosa retorica dell’‘Adone’, p. 52–6.
120 Cherchi, La metamorfosi dell’‘Adone’, pp. 93–124.
121 Ad. 1.5.1–2: ‘E te, ch’Adone istesso, o gran Luigi, / di beltà vinci e di splendore
Notes 153
abbagli’. Cf. Cherchi, ‘Il re Adone’, passim; Id. (ed.), Il re Adone (Palermo: Sellerio,
1999); Micocci, Sondaggi sull’‘Adone’, pp. 16–17.
122 Marino, ‘Dedicatoria’ §§ 1–5, 37, in Adone, I, pp. 3–4, 10. For the traditional contrast
between Adonis and Hercules, see supra, pp. 2–3, 113 note 16, and Pozzi’s comment
at Ad. 2.1–2 (in Marino, Adone, II, pp. 205–6). On the ‘Gallic Hercules’ see Robert
E. Hallowell, ‘Ronsard and the Gallic Hercules Myth’, Studies in the Renaissance 9
(1962), pp. 242–55; Marc-René Jung, Hercule dans la littérature française du XVIe
siècle: de l’Hercule courtois à l’Hercule baroque (Geneva: Droz, 1966); Corrado
Vivanti, ‘Henry IV, the Gallic Hercules’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes 30 (1967), pp. 176–97; Sergio Bertelli, The King’s Body. Sacred Rituals of
Power in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: Penn State Press, 2003),
pp. 168–9.
Chapter 5: Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (ii):

The king’s poem
1 Since at least the article by Adolfo Gaspary, ‘Di una fonte francese del Marino’,
Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 15 (1890), pp. 306–9; a comprehensive
overview in Russo, Marino, pp. 170–9.
2 Boillet, ‘Marino et les “Fluctuations de la France” ’; Carminati, ‘Note per la Sferza di
G.B. Marino’.
3 Michel Carmona, Marie de Médicis (Paris: Fayard, 1981); Benedetta Craveri, Amanti
e regine. Il potere delle donne (Milan: Adelphi, 2010), pp. 103–52; Helga Hübner and
Eva Regtmeier, Maria de’ Medici, eine Fremde: Florenz, Paris, Brüssel, London, Köln
(Frankfurt: Lang, 2010).
4 Cf. Duccini, Concini, passim (pp. 362–89 on Galigai); Boillet, ‘Marino et les
“Fluctuations de la France” ’.
5 Richelieu, Mémoires: ‘Il ne fit quasi aucun bien à ses parents ni à ceux de sa nation,
afin qu’on vît que tous ses sentiments naturels étoient étouffés par ceux qu’il avoit
pour la France’ (II, p. 231); ‘Il étoit naturellement soupçonneux, comme Italien et
Florentin, moins charlatan que le commun de sa nation ne porte, entreprenant,
courageux, quoique la médisance qui attaque toujours ceux qui ont la prémière
puissance, ait voulu dire’ (II, p. 228); ‘il avoit pour principal but d’élèver sa fortune
aux plus hautes dignités où puisse venir un gentilhomme, pour second désir la
grandeur du Roi et de l’Etat, et, en troisième lieu, l’abaissement des grands du
royaume …’ (II, p. 228). On the other hand, Richelieu did not hesitate to promote
a different image of Concini when he aimed to show that his political strategy was
a straightforward continuation of that of Henry IV: cf. Duccini, Concini, pp. 391–2,
on the pressure Richelieu exercised on the historian Scipion Dupleix during the
composition of the latter’s Histoire de Louis le Juste, XIIIe du nom, roy de France et de
Navarre (1633).
6 For an overview of the testimonies see Duccini, Concini, pp. 390–412. Among those
who deplored Galigai’s unfair trial were Bassompierre, Saint-Simon and Voltaire
(Ibid., p. 399).
7 See the excellent characterization offered by Russo, Marino, pp. 170–6.
8 Marino, Lettere, p. 332: ‘[I]l re istesso disse di sua bocca a monsignor Schombert:
– Il cavalier Marino non bisogna toccarlo, e fate che sia benissimo pagato
154 Notes
sempre –’. For the correct dating of the letter – March 1622, not 1623 – see
Fulco, ‘La corrispondenza di G.B. Marino dalla Francia’, p. 206. Contacts with
influential French personages had already been established in Turin: cf. Marziano
Guglielminetti, ‘Marino e la Francia’, in Id., Tecnica e invenzione nell’opera di
Giambattista Marino (Messina-Florence: D’Anna, 1964), pp. 143–205. The laudatory
poems prexifed to Marino’s Il Ritratto del Serenissimo Don Carlo Emanuello duca
di Savoia (Venice: B. Giunti and G. B. Ciotti, 1608) include pieces by the following
French authors: Scipion de Gramont, Honorat Laugier de Porchères, Pierre Berthelot
and Louis Porcellet, the second also praised in Marino’s Ritratto, stanza 162: cf. the
recent edition by Giuseppe Alonzo (Rome: Aracne, 2011), pp. 12–13, 100.
10 The letter, dated 16 July 1617, was made known by Fulco, ‘Pratiche intertestuali’,
p. 13: ‘È vero, che posso dire essermi caduta di mano una notabile quantità d’oro, già
depositata per me da quella infelice memoria del Maresciale per la impressione del
mio Adone, della quale io era già alla metà. Ma la Regina madre vuole ch’io seguiti la
stampa con promessa di risarcire i miei danni’.
11 Russo, Marino, pp. 257–63; Id., ‘L’Adone a Parigi’, pp. 277–8. The dedicatory epistle
to the Queen Mother is dated 30 August 1622 – another eight months were to elapse
before the poem came out of the press.
12 Cf. Francesco Giambonini, Bibliografia delle opere a stampa di Giambattista Marino
(Florence: Olschki, 2000), 2 vols, I, No. 1. Abraham Pacard, who had previously
printed Marino’s Sampogna, was replaced by Olivier de Varennes: see Balsamo, ‘ “Per
fargli dar l’animo dalla stampa di Francia” ’, pp. 204–9; Id., ‘Giambattista Marino
et ses imprimeurs-libraires parisiens’, Bulletin du Bibliophile 1 (2010), pp. 100–18.
References to payments due to Marino by Luynes occur in letters from the period
1619–21, while Luynes was trying to recover the money deposited by Concini
(Marino, Lettere, pp. 220–1, 232, 234).
13 Cf., e.g. Bingen, Philausone, p. 49, No. 34, on Giovan Battista Andreini’s La
Campanazza, published in the critical year 1621: the surviving copies show that the
original dedicatee, the Duke of Guise, was hurriedly replaced by Louis XIII.
14 Marino, Lettere, p. 283. For the dating cf. Fulco, ‘La corrispondenza di G. B. Marino
dalla Francia’, p. 205. The conflict between the King and the Queen Mother came
to an end with a skirmish won by the king’s troops on 7 August 1620 (the so-called
‘Drôlerie des Ponts-de-Cé’), followed by the ratification of the peace treaty on
August 10.
15 Marino, Lettere, p. 283: ‘... e già tutta la Francia è in guerra. ... se le cose andassero
contrarie per alcuni personaggi, che al presente sono in favore ed in grandezza, sarei
costretto a mutar nel libro molte circostanze particolari’. Cf. Russo, Marino, p. 259.
16 See Pozzi’s exhaustive commentary (Marino, Adone, II, pp. 456–8, 463–5, 723–4).
17 The surviving textual witnesses of the version for Concini are incomplete:
see Chapter 4, note 16. On the likely content of this earlier version see Pozzi’s
observations in Marino, Adone, II, pp. 112–13, 121; Russo, Marino, pp. 255–62,
291–4; Id., ‘L’Adone a Parigi’.
18 See Chapter 4, note 49; also Russo, ‘L’Adone a Parigi’, passim.
19 Marino, Lettere, pp. 309–10; Fulco, ‘La corrispondenza di G.B. Marino dalla Francia’,
p. 204, for the correct dating of the letter. Canto 7 is a portion of text with which
Marino tampered extensively, as shown by the number and size of variant readings
contained in different copies of the 1623 Paris edition. Cf. Marino e i Marinisti,
Guglielmo Guido Ferrero (ed.) (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1954), pp. 7–8; Marino,
Notes 155
Adone, II, pp. 755–6; Balsamo, ‘Giambattista Marino et ses imprimeurs-libraires

parisiens’, pp. 112–18.
20 See Pozzi’s illustration of the passages in question, their political implications and
the relations between the manuscript version and the printed text (Marino, Adone,
II, pp. 463–5, 727–47). See also Russo, ‘L’Adone a Parigi’, pp. 274–5. For further
attempts to date selected passages on the basis of intertextual relations and variant
readings see Vania De Maldé, ‘ “Il mondo in nove forme trasformato” (canto VI: il
giardino del piacere)’, in Lectura Marini, pp. 89–102; Antonio Vassalli, ‘Falsirena
in musica: un’altra redazione del soliloquio d’amore (canto XII: La fuga)’, Ibid., pp.
201–11.
21 Josef IJsewijn, ‘John Barclay and his Argenis. A Scottish Neo-Latin Novelist’,
Humanistica Lovaniensia 32 (1983), 225–50 (p. 228); Caruso, ‘Prosa e metro nel
romanzo italiano del Seicento’, pp. 446–9, 458–62. Many further examples could
be mentioned: cf. e.g. Duccini, Concini, pp. 390–1, on Pierre Matthieu’s extensive
production of political allegories against the Concinis.
22 Marino, Lettere, p. 348: ‘mi mancano ancora due ultimi quinternetti con la fine del
ventesimo canto e la lettera di dedicazione alla reina madre’. The last quire included
Ad. 20.504–14, where are narrated Louis XIII’s military campaigns of 1621–2 in
Western and Southern France (cf. Marino, Adone, II, pp. 723–4).
23 On the staining of the rose see supra, pp. 36 and 135, note 93; for the variant
readings in the ‘Errata corrige’ see Marino, Adone, II, pp. 747–68.
24 Marino, Lettere, pp. 553–8; the passage in question at p. 553 (‘mi son dato tutto
al linguaggio francioso, del quale però altro sin qui non ho imparato che “oui” e
“nani” ’).
25 See e.g. Paolo Cherchi, ‘Elementi ludici nel plagio mariniano’, Quaderni
d’italianistica 21 (2000), 45–57 (esp. pp. 51–3).
26 See Chapter 2, p. 32. On Binet as a biographer see Katherine MacDonald, Biography
in Early Modern France, 1540–1630: Forms and Functions (Oxford: Legenda, 2007),
pp. 45–58.
27 Claude Binet, Merveilleuse Rencontre sur les noms tournez du Roy et de la Royne.
Presenté à leurs Majestéz. Plus, Adonis, ou le Trespas du Roy Charles IX. Eglogue de
Chasse, à Mess. Albert de Gondy Comte de Retz et Marechal de France. Les Daufins,
ou le Retour du Roy, Eglogue Marine, avec le chant des Sereines, qui est en Epithalame
sur son mariage, à Monsieur du Faur, Seign. de Pybrac (Paris: Fédéric Morel, 1575).
28 Because of a misprint, the title of the third eclogue (Les Daufins) reads ‘Daphnis’
in Daniel Ménager, ‘L’éclogue funèbre de la Renaissance’, in Les Funérailles à la
Renaissance, Jean Balsamo (ed.) (Geneva: Droz, 2000), 403–13 (p. 406, note).
29 See Ménager, ‘L’éclogue funèbre de la Renaissance’, pp. 405–7, on the influence
exercised by the Neapolitan tradition on Renaissance French texts.
30 Very little is known about the author of the tragedy, a playwright – as well as a
translator – who was active in the years encompassing the reigns of Charles IX
(1560–74) and Henry III (1574–89). Some uncertainty remains as to his correct first
name – whether Gabriel, now regarded as more likely, or Guillaume (cf. also below,
note 33). See Le Breton, Adonis, ed. Bensi; M. Grandmotet, ‘Étude sur la tragédie
d’Adonis de G. Le Breton, seigneur de La Fon’, Bulletin de la Société Nivernaise 1
(1854), pp. 211–30; Jean-Claude Ternaux, ‘Ovide, Ronsard et Le Breton: à propos
d’Adonis’, Revue des Amis de Ronsard 16 (2003), pp. 63–85, which I was unable
to access. A sonnet by Le Breton included in a collection of comedies by Pierre
Larivey (1579), as well as another prefacing Alessandro Piccolomini’s Philosophie
156 Notes
et institution morale (1581), were noticed by Jules (Gyula) Haraszti, ‘La comédie
française de la Renaissance et la scène’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 16
(1909), 285–301 (pp. 296–7, where a confusion between Le Breton and Guillaume
Chasble is also noted, which may help explain the doubts concerning Le Breton’s
first name); another sonnet included in the Tumulus for Odet de Tournebu (Othonis
Turnebi in suprema curia Parisiensi advocati tumulus (Paris: Mamert Patisson, 1582),
fol. 18v) was signalled by Picot, Les Français italianisants, II, p. 151. François Grudé,
sieur de La Croix du Maine, La Bibliothèque (Paris: Abel l’Angelier, 1584), p. 143,
declared Le Breton was still alive in 1584.
31 The modern editor has counted seven different editions – 1579, 1597 (two, with
substantial variant readings), 1599, 1600, 1606 and 1611 – but has been unable to
locate a copy of the first (Le Breton, Adonis, Bensi (ed.), p. 446).
32 Le Breton, Adonis, Bensi (ed.), p. 451. On François d’Amboise see his Œuvres
complètes, Dante Ughetti and Renato Tullio De Rosa (eds) (Naples and Rome:
Edizioni scientifiche italiane-Bulzoni, 1973–9), 2 vols, as well as Dante Ughetti,
François d’Amboise, 1550–1619 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1974); Patrizia de Capitani, Du
spectaculaire à l’intime. Un siècle de ‘commedia erudita’ en Italie et en France (début
du XVIe siècle–milieu du XVIIe siècle) (Paris: Champion, 2005), p. 240, on d’Amboise
as the author of the comedy Les Néapolitaines.
33 François and Claude Parfaict, Histoire du théatre françois depuis son origine jusqu’à
présent (Amsterdam: Aux depens de la compagnie, 1735–51), 15 vols, III, pp. 373–4,
387–9, pronounced a negative verdict on the piece. They insist on Le Breton’s first
name being Guillaume (Ibid., pp. 388–9), thus reaffirming the position of La Croix
du Maine, Bibliothèque, p. 143.
34 On the implications of entitling Canto 5 ‘The Tragedy’ see supra, p. 64.
35 See supra, pp. 65–7.
36 A technique Ottavio Besomi elucidated in examining the episode of Cupid and
Psyche (Canto 4) in light of Marino’s combined use of Apul. Met. 4.28–6.24, and
Ercole Udine’s Psiche (1599). Cf. Ottavio Besomi, ‘Composizione ad intarsio nel
canto IV dell’Adone’, in Id., Esplorazioni secentesche (Padua: Antenore, 1975), pp.
9–52; Marino, Adone, II, pp. 262–99 (commentary by Besomi); Id., ‘Amore e Psiche
in intarsio (canto IV: La novelletta)’, in Guardiani (ed.), Lectura Marini, p. 49–72.
Udine’s poem is now available in a modern edition: Ercole Udine, La Psiche,
Salvatore Ussia (ed.) (Vercelli: Mercurio, 2004).
37 Macrob. Sat. 1.21.4 ‘quod aper hispidus et asper gaudet locis umidis lutosis
pruinaque contectis’.
38 Le Breton, Adonis, Bensi (ed.), pp. 478–9, partly imitated from Ronsard, Adonis, 185–8.
39 Ad. 18.70.3–4 ‘Taccia pur Calidonia...’. For the topos of ‘outdoing’ cf. Ernest Robert
Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 162–5.
40 Roland Mousnier, L’assassinat d’Henri IV (Paris: Gallimard, 1964).
41 Ralph E. Giesey, The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France (Geneva: Droz,
1960), p. 180, discussing the account given by Le Mercure françois, ou la suitte de
l’histoire de la paix (Paris: Jean Richer, 1611), 425r–434v.
42 For the first recorded occurrences of the famous French cry and its successive
developments see Giesey, The Royal Funeral Ceremony, pp. 142–4.
43 Cf. Giesey, The Royal Funeral Ceremony, p. 179, on the absence of a similar
ceremony after the death of Henry IV. Cf. in particular Chapter IX ‘The Effigy as the
King Alive’, pp. 145–75.
Notes 157
44 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. A Study in Mediaeval Political

Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 314–450, including the
preliminary results of Giesey’s enquiries. See also, by Giesey, the collection of essays
Rulership in France, 15th–17th Centuries (Aldershot-Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2004),
notably Chapters IX, XI–XIV, XVI.
45 Cf. Bassompierre, Mémoires, I, pp. 281, 283–4; Mousnier, L’assassinat d’Henri
IV, p. 120; Jacques Hennequin, Les oraisons funèbres d’Henri IV: les thèmes et la
rhetorique (Lille: Université de Lille III, 1978), 2 vols, I, pp. 164–6.
46 De rege et regis institutione libri III (Toledo: Pedro Rodrigo, 1599; 1st edn 1598),
pp. 74–5: ‘Equidem in eo consentire tum philosophos tum Theologos video, eum
Principem qui vi et armis rempublicam occupavit, nullo praeterea iure, nullo
publico civium consensu, perimi a quocumque, vita et principatu spoliari posse’
(‘Indeed I notice that both philosophers and theologians agree that the prince who
seizes the state with force and arms, without legal right or the public approval of his
citizens, may be killed by anyone and deprived of his life and ruling power’). See,
in general, Jean-Marie Prat, Recherches historiques et critiques sur la Compagnie de
Jésus en France du temps du p. Coton, 1564–1626 (Lyon: Briday, 1876–8), 5 vols; Eric
Nelson, The Jesuits and the Monarchy: Catholic Reform and Political Authority in
France (1590–1615) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).
47 Quoted by Hennequin, Les oraisons funèbres d’Henri IV, I, p. 19.
48 On the history of the formula see Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, pp. 383–450.
49 A typical example is offered by the title of a miscellaneous volume published on
the first anniversary of the assassination: Larmes de Tristesse, renouvelees au retour
du jour qui ravit le roy Henry le Grand. Larmes de joye, publiees à la proclamation
du roy tres-chrestien Louys XIII, son fils, par M.D.S.G.V. (Paris: Jean Nigaud,
1611).
50 Giesey, The Royal Funeral Ceremony, p. 180 (quoting from the Mercure françois, fol.
424v): ‘ “Helas! Le Roy est mort.” “Vostre Majesté m’excusera, les Rois ne meurent
point en France.” ’ Giesey observes (p. 182) that one can in fact assign the date of
1611 to the ‘sanctification’ of the principle in the formula ‘Le roi ne meurt jamais,
ou, le roi est mort, vive le roi’, which appeared for the first time in the 1611 edition
of Antoine Loisel’s collection of legal maxims, Institutes Coutumières. In the previous
editions of Loisel’s work (1607, 1608, 1609), the slogan does not occur: cf. Antoine
Loisel, Institutes Coutumières, Michel Reulos (ed.) (Paris: Librarie du Recueil Sirey,
1935), p. 19. See also Richard A. Jackson, ‘Vive le roi!’. A History of the French
Coronation from Charles V to Charles X (Chapel Hill-London: University of North
Carolina Press, 1984), pp. 15–23, 131–3, 144–6, 148–54.
51 Hélène Germa-Romann, ‘Exemplaire et singulière, la mort du roi (de Charles VIII à
Louis XIII)’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 60 (1998), 673–706 (esp. pp.
691–3, 697).
52 Mousnier, L’assassinat d’Henri IV, p. 984.
53 Gaspard Arnoulx, in Guillaume Dupeyrat (ed.), Les oraisons et discours funèbres de
divers autheurs, sur le trespas de Henry le Grand (Paris: Robert Estienne and Pierre
Chevalier, 1611), p. 522 (also quoted in Hennequin, Les oraisons funèbres d’Henri
IV, I, p. 50). Hennequin’s survey of the sacred and profane orations delivered for
the death of the king offers the best account of the themes developed by Henry’s
panegyrists. The volume by the same author, Henri IV dans ses oraisons funèbres ou
la naissance d’une légende (Paris: Klincksieck 1977), reproduces only a portion of the
former work.
158 Notes
54 Mousnier, L’assassinat d’Henri IV, p. 994, deliberately refrained from detailing the
appalling procedure, which is described in Carmona, Marie de Médicis, pp. 171–3.
55 Cf., e.g. Serafino Collini, Oratione nelle essequie del Christianissimo Re di Francia
Henrico Quarto, celebrato dalle Altezze Serenissime di Mantova il giorno 7 di giugno,
l’anno MDCX (Venice: Iseppo Marcello, 1610), sig. A4v: ‘è più bella impresa
(secondo Cassiodoro) il perdonar all’inimico (com’egli fece) ch’il vincere una Città’
(‘it is a worthier enterprise (according to Cassiodorus) to pardon the enemy (as
he did) than to conquer a city’); Gio. Paolo Fabbri, Apollo consigliero per la salute
di Francia. Canzone (Venice: Marco Alberti, 1610), fol. [3r]: ‘HENRICO / … a
l’uccisor pietoso amico. / … né, perchè ’l reo l’ancida, / vendetta vuol de i machinati
colpi’ (‘HENRY … a merciful friend to his murderer … wishing no retribution on
the offender for the blows this intended for him’). Because of its dynastic link with
France, Medicean Florence commemorated Henry IV with special emphasis: see
Giuliano Giraldi, Esequie d’Arrigo Quarto Cristianissimo Re di Francia, e di Navarra:
celebrate in Firenze dal Serenissimo Don Cosimo II, Granduca di Toscana (Florence:
Sermartelli, 1610); Francesco Campani, Arno in Toscana al fiume Sena in Francia,
nell’essequie del Christianissimo Augusto, e pacifico Re Enrico il Grande di questo nome
IIII. Re di Francia, e III. di Navarra, fatte in Firenze l’Anno 1610. il dì 15. di Settembre
(Florence and Bologna: Vittorio Benacci, 1610). On the Florentine funeral apparatus
see Eve Borsook, ‘Art and Politics at the Medici Court. IV: Funeral Décor for Henry
of France’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 14 (1969–70), pp.
201–34.
56 Charles de Saint-Sixt (Bishop of Riez), Sermon funebre prononcé en l’Eglise
Cathedrale de Riez … le premier Iuin, 3. Feste de la Pentecoste, 1610 (Paris: Jean Petit-
Pas, 1610), p. 95 (cf. Hennequin, Les oraisons funèbres, I, p. 81).
57 Germa-Romann, ‘Exemplaire et singulière’, pp. 678–83, 691–3, 697.
58 Richelieu, Mémoires, I, p. 76; the same episode is reported by Bassompierre, who
was present at the scene (François de Bassompierre, Journal de ma vie. Mémoires, the
Marquis of Chantérac (ed.) (Paris: Renouard, 1870–7), 4 vols, I, p. 271). According
to both Richelieu and Bassompierre, Henry made fun of what a superstitious
German prince and his people might have imagined on witnessing such a mishap,
and impatiently discarded all fears as unsubstantiated and absurd.
59 Saint-Sixt, Sermon funebre, p. 94 (also Hennequin, Les oraisons funèbres, I, pp. 80–1).
60 Saint-Sixt, Sermon funebre, p. 94 (also Hennequin, Les oraisons funèbres, I, pp. 80–1):
‘Oportebat Christum pati et resurgere a mortuis’; Arnoulx, in Dupeyrat (ed.), Les
oraisons et discours funèbres, p. 524 (also Hennequin, Les oraisons funèbres, I, p. 87):
‘il a laissé apres soy son semblable’.
61 Ov. Met. 15.392 (‘Una est, quae reparet seque ipas reseminet, ales’), 402 (‘Corpore de
patrio parvum phoenica renasci’), 405 (‘cunasque suas patriumque sepulcrum’). See
in general Silvia Fabrizio-Costa (ed.), Phénix: mythe(s) et signe(s) (Bern: Lang, 2001).
62 For references to the citations see Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, pp. 385–95.
63 Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, p. 390.
64 Because of its complexity, the subject would require a separate treatment.
65 Prob. in Ecl. 10.18 ‘ex Iove sine ullius feminae accubitu procreatus’. See Chapter 6 for
the theologians’ debate on the hermaphrodite.
66 See, e.g. Kathleen P. Long, Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2006), and more specifically John O’Brien, ‘Betwixt and Between:
Hermaphroditism and Masculinity’, in Philip Ford and Paul White (eds),
Masculinities in Sixteenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge French Colloquia,
Notes 159
2006), 127–46 (pp. 132–44). See in general Hermann Baumann, Das doppelte
Geschlecht: Ethnologische Studien zur Bisexualität in Ritus und Mythus (Berlin:
Reimer, 1955), pp. 168–91; Marie Delcourt, Hermaphroditea. Recherches sur l’être
double promoteur de la fertilité dans le monde classique (Bruxelles: Collection
Latomus, 1996).
67 Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, pp. 10–11. The hermaphrodite as a symbol
for the corruption of the state may have indeed resulted from the banalization of
the original concept, which outside juridical circles was likely to be perceived as
counter-intuitive.
68 Cf. the expression ‘Le grand Pan est mort’ in an ode by the same Dupeyrat, in
Guillaume Dupeyrat (ed.) Recueil de diverses poesies sur le trespas de Henry le Grand
thres-chrestien Roy de France & de Navarre, et sur le sacré et couronnement de Louis
XIII, son successeur. Dedié à la Royne, Mère du Roy, Regente en France (Paris: Robert
Estienne and Pierre Chevalier, 1611), fol. 24v; also Antoine Le Blanc, ‘Pan. Eclogue
funèbre. Sur le trespas de Henry le Grand’, Ibid., fols 90r–97v.
69 According to Plutarch, when the boatswain Thamous was approaching Paxos
with his ship, a cry was heard three times over, announcing ‘The great god Pan is
dead’ (Pan ho megas tethnēke). The episode was re-examined by Felix Liebrecht in
1856 and by Salomon Reinach in 1907, both concluding that the announcement
might have resulted from a confusion of the boatwain’s name with the Syrian
name of Adonis (‘Tammuz’), and that – according to Reinach – the cry should
have originally sounded like ‘Thamous, Thamous, Thamous the very great is dead’
(Thamouz, Thamouz, Thamouz panmegas tethnēke). However, as far as I know, the
association of this famous episode with Tammuz/Adonis had not yet occurred to
anybody in the early seventeenth century. See Felix Liebrecht, ‘La Mesnie furieuse,
ou la Chasse sauvage’, in Id., Des Gervasius von Tilbury ‘Otia imperialia’ (Hannover,
Rümpler, 1856), 173–211 (p. 180); Salomon Reinach, ‘La mort du Grand Pan’, in Id.,
Cultes, mythes et religions, pp. 323–33; cf. Frazer, The Dying God, pp. 6–7.
70 Dupeyrat (ed.), Recueil de diverses poesies, fols 94r and 96r.
71 Hennequin, Les oraisons funèbres, II, p. 263.
72 ‘In regicidam’, in Dupeyrat (ed.), Recueil de diverses poesies, fols 106r–108v, ‘triste
bidental’ (fol. 107r), with variatio on Hor. AP 471.
73 [Louis de Cressolles], Orationes, quibus pompam exequiarum atque funus Henrici
Magni Galliae & Navarrae Christianissimi Regis moerens cohonestavit Collegium
Rhedonense Societatis Iesu (Rennes: T. Harenaeus, 1611). On Cressolles see Augustin
de Backer – Carlos Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus (Bruxelles
and Paris: O. Schepens – A. Picard, 1890–1932), 12 vols, II, col. 1654. On Jesuit
oratory and its position in seventeenth-century letters see Marc Fumaroli, L’âge de
l’éloquence: rhétorique et ‘res literaria’ de la Renaissance au seuil de l’époque classique
(Geneva: Droz, 2002).
74 Cressolles, ‘Oratio IIII. De regiae vitae cursu et egregiis Henrici Magni
occupationibus’, in Id., Orationes, 105–46 (pp. 133–4).
75 ‘EVROPAE SVSPIRIVM. ANAGRAMMA’, Ibid., pp. 150–1.
76 ‘Ibid., ‘Iam desaevit hyems, nam Rex bonus occidit…’.
77 Cressolles, ‘NEPENTHES Galliae et communis luctus consolatio, sive de Ludovico
XIII. Henrici Magni successore’, Ibid., pp. 153–94.
78 Le soleil au signe du Lyon, d’ou quelques paralleles sont tirez avec le tres-Chrestien,
tres-Iuste, & tres-Victorieux Monarque Louys XIII. Roy de France et de Navarre,
en son Entree triomphante dans sa Ville de Lyon (Lyon: Jean Jullieron, 1623). See
160 Notes
Françoise Bardon, Le portrait mythologique à la cour de France sous Henri IV

et Louis XIII: mythologie et politique (Paris: Picard, 1974), pp. 37, 46–9. For the
traditional association of the sun with kingship see Ernst H. Kantorowicz, ‘Oriens
Augusti – Lever du roi’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 17 (1963), pp. 117–77.
79 Cf. Bardon, Le portrait mythologique, pp. 46–9.
80 Cressolles, ‘NEPENTHES Galliae’, in Id., Orationes, p. 156: ‘LVDOVICVM novum
quendam solem esse exortum illi abeunti simillimum’. In the same volume (pp.
200–8), the ‘Vaticinium Apollinis de Ludovico XIII’ can be profitably compared with
Apollo’s prophecy on Louis XIII at Ad. 20.486–514.
81 Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Lettres sur l’origine des sciences, et sur celle des peuples de l’Asie
(London-Paris: Elmsley-De Bure, 1777), pp. 255–6; Id., Lettres sur l’Atlantide de
Platon et sur l’ancienne histoire de l’Asie (Ibid., 1779), pp. 104–27. This was not
an altogether unjustified fantasy, at least for those assuming, as Bailly did, that
the Adonis myth must have originally been a solar cult inspired by a natural
phenomenon. ‘Within the Arctic Circle, where the sun annually disappears for
a continuous period’, as Frazer wrote explaining Bailly’s theory, ‘[Adonis’] yearly
death and resurrection would certainly be an obvious idea’ (Frazer, Adonis Attis
Osiris, I, p. 130).
82 See Dan Edelstein, ‘Hyperborean Atlantis: Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Madame Blavatsky,
and the Nazi Myth’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 35 (2006), pp. 267–91.
Adolf Hitler appears to have derived from Alfred Rosenberg, and occasionally
cherished for his table-talk, the myth of a hyperborean Atlantis (Ibid., p. 291); he
however showed disregard for such theories in public, while exhibiting a preference
for Graeco-Roman art and architecture (cf. Suzanne L. Marchand, Down from
Olynpus. Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1870 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 350). For the little-known episode of Hitler
interpreting Gemanic jewellery preserved in Rome as evidence of the existence of
Atlantis as the lost centre of radiation of Northern (i.e. Aryan) art, see Ranuccio
Bianchi Bandinelli, Memorie di un borghese. Nuova edizione con i diari inediti
1961–1974, Marcello Barbanera (ed.) (Milan: Editori Riuniti, 1996), p. 122.
83 See Chapter 4, pp. 67–9.
84 The event took place in anticipation of the double marriage between Louis XIII and
Anne of Austria, and between Louis’ sister Elizabeth with Anne’s brother, the Prince
of Asturias and future King Philip IV of Spain, also recalled at Ad. 10.204–6 (see
supra, Chapter 4, note 94). Incidentally, the scene was immortalized by Rubens in
one of his grand paintings for the cycle of Maria de’ Medici, approximately around
the time when Marino’s Adone was completed.
85 Bordeaux: Simon Mellanges, 1615. On Garasse see de Backer-Sommervogel, III, cols
1184–94. Social historians have already stressed the symbolic value of this episode,
although never in connection with Marino’s poem. Cf. e.g. Abby E. Zanger, ‘Making
Sweat: Sex and the Gender of National Reproduction in the Marriage of Louis XIII’,
Yale French Studies 86 (1994), pp. 187–205; Ead., ‘État de transpiration et génération
de l’état: la représentation du corps politique dans le mariage de Louis XIII’, in
Ronald W. Tobin (ed.), Le corps au XVIIe siècle (Paris-Seattle-Tübingen: 1995), pp.
389–405. The most informed and reliable guide remains the thesis by Perceval,
Opinión pública y publicidad (Siglo XVII), cited in Chapter 4, note 94, which the
author is hoping to turn into a book in due course.
86 Garasse, La royalle reception de leurs Majestez tres-chrestiennes en la ville de
Bourdeaus, ou le siecle d’or ramené par les alliances de France & d’Espaigne, recueilli
Notes 161
par le commandement du Roy (Bordeaux: Simon Mellanges, 1615), pp. 107–8: ‘ne
pouvoient se souler de remarquer l’incroyable resemblance des espousez: car deux
frères n’eurent jamais plus de rapport, qu’ils avoient par ensemble en tout ce qui peut
estre semblable’. Cf. Jean-Baptiste Honoré Raymond Capefigue, Richelieu, Mazarin,
la Fronde et le règne de Louis XIV (Paris: Duféy, 1835), p. 137; Zanger, ‘État de
transpiration’, pp. 398–400.
87 Garasse, La royalle reception, p. 108: ‘ceste convenance de la semblance de corps,
et d’humeurs, come elle estoit en ces premier mariés: car les Rabins, Aben Esra
et Simon Bercepha ont remarqué en leurs secrets, qu’Adam et Eve estoient
merveilleusement semblables de visage, d’où l’un de nos Poëtes Chrestiens l’avoit
apris lors qu’il les appelloit Iuvenes aetate pares & formâ geminos, jeunes hommes
semblables en corps et en aage’. The two rabbis are Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra
(1089/92–1167) and Simon ben Yohai called Cepha (second century ce). I have been
unable to identify the author of the line quoted by Garasse.
88 See Harold M. Priest, ‘Marino, Leonardo, Francini, and the Revolving Stage’,
Renaissance Quarterly 35 (1982), pp. 36–60; on Leonardo’s stage machine see Carlo
Pedretti, Studi vinciani: documenti, analisi ed inediti leonardeschi (Geneva: Droz,
1957), pp. 90–8; Id., Leonardo & io (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), pp. 399–401.
89 Marzia Cerrai, ‘A proposito del XVII canto dell’Adone: il poema del Marino e le
descrizioni fiorentine delle feste per Maria de’ Medici’, Studi secenteschi 44 (2003),
pp. 197–218.
90 Honorat Laugier de Porchères (ed.), Le Camp de la place Royalle, ou Relation de ce
qui s’y est passé les cinquième, sixième, & septième iour d’Avril, mil six cens douze,
pour la publication des mariages du Roy, & de Madame, avec L’Infante, & le Prince
d’Espagne, le tout recueilli par le commandement de Sa Majesté (Paris: Jean Micard
and Toussaint du Bray, 1612). See also Porchères’ poem (‘Ce que peut le vers, et
l’image’) in praise of Marino’s Il ritratto, ed. 1608, pp. 26–7, as well as Marino’s praise
of Porchères in the very same poem (stanza 162). On Porchères’ unpublished poem
on Adonis, record of which survives in an early twentieth-century bibliography, see
Chapter 2, note 44.
91 Relation du grand ballet du Roy, dancé en la salle du Louvre le 12 fevrier 1619, sur
l’adventure de Tancrède en la Forest enchantee (Paris: Jean Sara, 1619), pp. 5, 6,
37–46. Tancredi was played by Luynes.
92 Mousnier, L’assassinat d’Henri IV, p. 986.
93 Camille de Rochemonteix S.J., Un collège de Jésuites aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: le
Collège Henri IV à La Flèche (Le Mans: Leguicheux, 1889), 4 vols, I, pp. 137–58; Paul
Calendini, ‘Les cœurs de Henri IV et de Marie de Médicis à la Flèche’, Revue Henri
IV 1 (1905–6), pp. 8–14 (reprint Geneva: Mégariotis Reprints, 1978). Both the urns
that preserved the hearts of the two sovereigns were destroyed during the French
Revolution and their contents dispersed (Rochemonteix, Un collège de Jésuites, I, pp.
155–6).
94 See Le convoy du cœur de Tres-auguste, Tres-clement et Tres-victorieux Henry le
Grand IIII. du nom, Tres-Chrestien Roy de France et de Navarre, depuis la Ville de
Paris iusques au College Royal de la Fleche (Paris: François Rezé, 1610); Mercure
françois, fols 466r–469v; Annuae litterae Societatis Iesu Anni M.DC.X. (Dilligen: the
widow of Johann Mayer, 1615?), pp. 138, 141.
95 Le convoy du cœur, pp. 26–30. See also Rochemonteix, Un collège de Jésuites, I, pp.
150, 219–23 (for a selection of the devices affixed to the front of the church at La
Flèche, see I, facing pp. 141 and 220).
162 Notes
96 See for all Mercure françois, fol. 469r: ‘un fleuron doré avec ses branches, pour poser
ce cœur royale’ (‘a gilded floret with its branches, where this royal heart could be
lain’). Cf. also Le convoy du cœur, pp. 29–30; Annuae litterae Societatis Iesu Anni
M.DC.X, p. 141. A complete list of accounts in Rochemonteix, Un collège de Jésuites,
I, pp. 143 note.
97 On all these eminent members of the Society of Jesus see de Backer-Sommervogel,
Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, ad voces.
98 Cf. Karl Six S.J., ‘Descartes im Jesuitenkolleg von La Flèche’, Zeitschrift für katholische
Theologie 38 (1914), pp. 494–508; the text of the sonnet in Rochemonteix, Un collège
de Jésuites, I, pp. 147–8 note. Marino’s famous eulogy of Galileo at Ad. 10.42–5 also
includes a reference to Jupiter’s moons.
99 A complete list in de Backer-Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus,
III, cols 774–82 (‘Flèche, Collège de la’).
100 The subject of the performance, which took place on the morning of 3 September
1614, is not mentioned in Litterae Societatis Iesu Annorum Duorum, MDCXIII,
et MDCXIV (Lyon: Claude Cayne, 1619), pp. 472–4; a detailed account of the
ceremonies in Rochemonteix, Un Collège de Jésuites, III, pp. 96–101, who reports
that in the evening a tragedy (Godefroy de Bouillon) and a comedy (Clorinde) were
also performed.
101 Cf. John Rowlands, Rubens. Drawings and Sketches. Catalogue of an Exhibition at
the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum (London: British
Museum, 1977), p. 110. Rubens, who resided in Antwerp at the time, signed the
contract on 22 February 1622; the following year he personally brought to Paris 9
incomplete canvasses; the entire cycle was inaugurated on 8 May 1625.
102 Michael Jaffé, Rubens. Catalogo completo (Milan: Rizzoli, 1989), p. 272, No 711.
103 Venice: Sarzina, 1623.
Chapter 6: The seventeenth-century aftermath

1 Carminati, Marino tra inquisizione e censura, passim.
2 See on this particular aspect Carlo Caruso’s review of Francesco Giambonini,
Bibliografia delle opere a stampa di Giambattista Marino (Florence: Olschki, 2000),
2 vols, in Modern Language Review 98 (2003), pp. 735–6.
3 Giambonini, Bibliografia, I, pp. 40–7, lists eight seventeenth-century editions
published between 1627 and 1680 (Nos 10–17), none of them in Italy.
4 Caruso, ‘Retrospettiva mariniana’, pp. 32–4.
5 De Sanctis, Storia della letteratura italiana, p. 750: ‘E morto il Gravina, si gettò
avidamente sul frutto proibito, e la Gerusalemme liberata, l’Aminta, il Pastor fido e
soprattutto l’Adone furono il suo cibo’.
6 La catena d’Adone posta in musica da Domenico Mazzocchi (Venice: Vincenti, 1626).
In 1620 Alessandro Striggio and Iacopo Peri had been commissioned by the court of
Mantua to write an opera entitled Adone, which was however never performed and
has not survived.
7 On the influence of Marino’s Adone on early Italian opera see Marzio Pieri’s
contribution to Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli (eds), Storia dell’opera
italiana. VI. Teorie e tecniche, immagini e fantasmi (Turin: EDT, 1987), pp. 264–70.
Vendramin’s Adone (first performed 1639, published Venice: Sarzina, 1640) was long
Notes 163
believed to have been set to music by Monteverdi. See Tomassini (ed.) Variazioni su
Adone. II. Libretti musicali e di ballo (1614–1898).
8 Jean de La Fontaine, ‘Adonis’, in Id., Œuvres complètes, Pierre Clarac (ed.) (Paris:
Gallimard, 1958), II, pp. 3–19, and 797–8 for the text of the original dedication to
Fouquet. At p. 799 the peculiar observation that La Fontaine may not have been
able to read Italian. See, however, the more recent Marc Fumaroli, ‘Politique et
Poétique de Vénus: l’Adone de Marino et l’Adonis de La Fontaine’, La Fablier 5
(1993), pp. 11–16; Jürgen Grimm, ‘L’Adone de Marino et l’Adonis de La Fontaine:
une comparaison structurale’, in Le dire sans dire et le dit. Études lafontainiennes II
(Paris-Seattle-Tübingen: Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 1996),
pp. 1–11.
9 Fulco, ‘Pratiche intertestuali’, p. 12; Carminati, Marino tra inquisizione e censura,
p. 159.
10 Marino, Lettere, p. 125: ‘Intanto (se altro impedimento non mi disturba) io farò
stampare l’Adone e la Strage degl’innocenti, che son due poemi grandi, i quali non è
possibile a mandargli in Venezia, perché mi sarebbono castrati dall’inquisitore’. Only
the Adone will be published in Paris according to this plan. The Strage will appear in
Venice in 1632.
11 Ibid.: ‘Vi troverete dentro alcune postille aggiunte: le chiavi vi dimostreranno in
qual luogo hanno da entrare i sonetti o i madriali, che sono in que’ pezzetti di carta.
Nel capo de’ Ritratti vi è una quantità di cose burlesche, le quali son sicurissimo che
non saranno passate dal padre inquisitore. Perciò io l’ho messe in un quinternetto
separato, accioché in ogni caso si possano levar via, poiché con levarle non si vien
a guastar punto l’opera; avertendovi che se non si stampano, le dobbiate conservare
presso di voi, senza darne copia a persona nata’.
12 Letter from Melun, 7 April 1620 (‘purgar l’Adone dalle lascivie’), in Guido
Bentivoglio, Memorie e lettere, Costantino Panigada (ed.) (Bari: Laterza, 1934),
p. 401; cited by Carminati, Marino tra inquisizione e censura, p. 158.
13 Carminati, Marino tra inquisizione e censura, pp. 184–6. Marino had already
removed a number of risqué expressions from the poem’s second edition (Venice:
Sarzina, 1623): cf. Danielle Boillet, ‘Les scandaleuses libertés du style lascif dans
l’Adone de Marino’, Italies 11 (2007), pp. 379–418.
14 Carminati, Marino tra inquisizione e censura, pp. 182–3, 193–9. The source in
question was Marino’s eternal rival Tomaso Stigliani.
15 Ibid., pp. 187–8.
16 Bellini, Umanisti e Lincei, pp. 93–114, 122–7.
17 Bruni was expected to work together with a high prelate in charge of overseeing
the whole process. Cf. Maurizio Slawinsky, ‘Marino, le streghe, i cardinali’, Italian
Studies 54 (1999), pp. 52–84 (esp. on Card. Desiderio Scaglia); Carminati, Marino
tra inquisizione e censura, pp. 225–8.
18 Carminati, Marino tra inquisizione e censura, pp. 207–16.
19 Ibid., pp. 208. The reference is to the famous (or infamous) ‘Duello amoroso’ (‘Love
duel’), in Marino, Lira, Slawinsky (ed.), II, pp. 321–3.
20 Carminati, Marino tra inquisizione e censura, pp. 222–7.
21 Ibid., pp. 242–51.
22 Ibid., pp. 255–7, 346.
23 Ibid., pp. 255–68.
24 Marino, Adone, II, p. 380–2; Marino, Lettere, p. 293, where however Marino
places the episode in Canto 6, not 7: poor memory? Or perhaps a token that the
164 Notes
distribution of the matter had not yet been defined when the letter was written on 5
January 1621?
25 Carminati, Marino tra inquisizione e censura, pp. 258, following Bellini, Umanisti e
Lincei, p. 124. Erasmus criticized Sannazaro in his Ciceronianus (1528), in Desiderius
Erasmus, Opera omnia (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1971), I.2, pp. 700–1.
26 Frare, ‘Adone. Il poema del neopaganesimo’, p. 232 (‘lo svuotamento del mito a
favore della verità cristiana’) and passim.
27 Ibid., pp. 232–3.
28 On the figurative or typological interpretation of the Bible as applicable to
literary texts, Frare refers primarily to Erich Auerbach’s seminal article ‘Figura’,
in Id., Gesammelte Aufsätze zur romanischen Philologie (Bern: Francke, 1967),
pp. 55–92.
29 Frare, ‘Adone. Il poema del neopaganesimo’, pp. 232–5; see also the comments
offered by Marco Corradini in ‘Marino e la Bibbia’ and – more generally on the
issue of parody – in ‘Parodie mariniane’ (Id., In terra di letteratura, pp. 71–106 and
165–77 respectively).
30 Ad. 1.10.1–4: ‘Ombreggia il ver Parnaso e non rivela / gli alti misteri ai semplici
profani, / ma con scorza mentita asconde e cela, / quasi in rozzo Silen, celesti arcani’.
Cf. Tasso, Ger. lib. 1.3.
31 Marie-France Tristan, La scène de l’écriture. Essai sur la poésie philosophique du
Cavalier Marin (Paris: Champion, 2002); see also the revised Italian translation,
Sileno barocco: il « Cavalier Marino » fra sacro e profano (Lavis: La Finestra, 2008).
Analogous doubts have been expressed by Russo, Marino, p. 275; Carminati, Marino
tra inquisizione e censura, pp. 321–2; Frare, ‘Adone. Il poema del neopaganesimo’,
pp. 231–2.
32 See the discussion of this point in Corradini, ‘Parodie mariniane’, p. 166, and in
Russo, Marino, pp. 173–5.
33 Cf. Fulco, ‘Pratiche intertestuali’, pp. 5–13, who refers to Giulio Cesare Vanini,
De admirandis Naturae Reginae Deaeque mortalium arcanis libri quatuor (Paris:
Perier, 1616), p. 264 (reference to Marino); p. 170 (reference to Ubaldini); another
reference to Ubaldini in Id., Amphitheatrum aeternae providentiae divino-magicum,
christiano-physicum, nec non astrologo-catholicum adversus veteres Philosophos,
Atheos, Epicureos, Peripateticos & Stoicos (Lyon: By the widow of Antoine de Harsy,
1615), pp. 77–8. On Vanini see, in general, Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and
Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923–58), 8 vols,
VI, pp. 568–73; Francesco Paolo Raimondi (ed.), Giulio Cesare Vanini dal tardo
Rinascimento al ‘libertinisme érudit’. Atti del Convegno di studi, Lecce, Taurisano
24–26 ottobre 1985 (Galatina: Congedo, 2003); Didier Foucault, Un philosophe
libertin dans l’Europe baroque: Giulio Cesare Vanini (1585–1619) (Paris: Champion,
2003), reviewed by Raimondi in Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 121 (2005),
pp. 129–32, and in Bruniana & Campanelliana 9 (2003), pp. 480–2; and Raimondi’s
monograph Giulio Cesare Vanini nell’Europa del Seicento, con una appendice
documentaria (Pisa-Rome: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 2005).
34 Hence the difficulty with associating certain passages from Marino’s Adone with
Vanini’s influence rather than, e.g. Girolamo Cardano’s or – as recently suggested by
Francesco Paolo Raimondi – Julius Caesar Scaliger’s (‘Tracce vaniniane nell’Adone
del Marino?’, in Marino e il Barocco, pp. 347–83).
35 Vanini, Amphitheatrum, pp. 61–2 (‘Mercurius iunctus Veneri ... fabulis, quae plenae
sunt etiam adulteriis, & flagitiis aliis, & amoribus puerorum’), and p. 279 (reference
Notes 165
to Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos is given by Vanini as 3.8). On the polemic Vanini-Cardano,

see Francesco Paolo Raimondi, ‘Cardano e Vanini tra sapere pre-scientifico e scienza
moderna: significato e limiti della presenza cardaniana nei testi vaniniani’, Physis 41
(2004), pp. 1–29.
36 Giovanni Pontano, Centum Ptolomaei sententiae ad Syrum Fratrem a Pontano e
Graeco in Latinum tralatae, atque expositae. Eiusdem Pontani libri XIII. de rebus
coelestibus. Liber etiam de Luna imperfectus (Venice: Aldo Manuzio and Andrea
Torresani, 1519), fols 249v–250r (‘De configurationibus facientibus sterilitatem, et
hermaphroditos’). See also Chapter 4, pp. 68–9. It is important to remember the
distinction between the nature of Hermaphroditus as resulting from the union of
Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (as in Ov. Met. 3.285–388), which is supposed to be
a neutrum, and that resulting from the union of Hermes and Aphrodite, which is
supposed to be an utrumque (Delcourt, Hermaphroditea, p. 34).
37 Cornelius a Lapide, Commentaria in Pentateuchum Mosis (Antwerp: Nutius &
Meursius, 1616), writes at Gen. 1:27 (‘Masculum et feminam creavit eos’) that ‘one
innovator in France recently claimed that Adam was created a hermaphrodite,
and that he was of female, as well as male, sex’ (‘Hinc novator quidam in Francia
nuper asseruit, Adamum creatum esse hermaphroditum, fuisseque eum tam
feminam, quam masculum’). See also Marin Mersenne, Quaestiones celeberrimae in
Genesim (Paris: Cramoisy, 1623), pp. 1055, 1219–22. Both a Lapide and Mersenne
repeatedly confute Vanini’s positions on this point, but it is unclear whether he can
be identified as the unnamed novator. See in general, Francesco Paolo Raimondi,
‘Vanini et Mersenne’, Kairos. Revue de la Faculté de Philosophie de l’Université de
Toulouse-Le Mirail 12 (1998), pp. 181–253. References to Leone Ebreo are to the
Third Book of his celebrated Dialoghi d’amore, Santino Caramella (ed.) (Bari:
Laterza, 1929), pp. 289–312. Zorzi’s twenty-ninth ‘problem’ on Adam’s androgyny
(In Scripturam sacram, et philosophos, tria millia problemata (Paris: Bessin &
Alliot, 1622), fols 4v–5r), is refuted in Mersenne’s Observationes et emendationes ad
Francisci Georgii Veneti Problemata in Genesim (Paris: Cramoisy, 1623), pp. 41–4.
38 See supra, Chapter 4, pp. 67–9, and Chapter 5, p. 90.
39 I am citing from [Anonymous], ‘Observationum in totam de Diis Gentium
narrationem libellus’, in Conti, Mythologiae … libri decem (Padua: Pietropaolo Tozzi,
1616), 588–614 (‘Adonis horti’, p. 588).
40 On Xenophon’s episode see Wolfgang Fauth, ‘Der königliche Gärtner und Jäger
im Paradeisos. Beobachtungen zur Rolle des Herrschers in der vorderasiatischen
Hortikultur’, Persica 8 (1979), pp. 1–53; Ribichini, Adonis, pp. 98–9.
41 Cornelius a Lapide, Commentaria in Ezechielem prophetam (Antwerp: M. Nutius &
Brothers, 1621; Paris: Apud Societatem Minimam, 1622).
42 Cornelius a Lapide, Commentaria in Scripturam sacram. Tomus duodecimus,
complectens expositionem litteralem et moralem in Jeremiam, Threnos, Baruch et
Ezechielem (Paris: Louis Vives, 1860), p. 562: ‘alii nonnulli … sat congrue haec [i.e.
‘Adonis horti’] mystice adaptant Christo morienti et resurgenti; Christus enim est
noster Adonis, noster sol, nostrum gaudium, noster amor’. The translations, here
slightly adapted, are by M. J. Doherty, ‘Ezekiel’s Voice: Milton’s Prophetic Exile and
the Merkavah in Lycidas’, Milton Quarterly 23 (1989), 89–121 (p. 113), where the
passage from a Lapide’s commentary is quoted to elucidate the Adoniac allusions in
Milton’s Lycidas.
43 Cornelius a Lapide, Commentaria in Scripturam sacram, p. 562: ‘Et quaelibet anima
pia et sancta per omnem vitam assidue hunc suum Adonidem, quasi sponsum, in
166 Notes
cruce contemplatur, luget et admiratur: ac resurgentem nova exultatione et jubilo

complectitur’ (cf. Doherty, ‘Ezekiel’s Voice’, p. 113). For his information on Adonis,
a Lapide relied principally on Giraldi’s De deis Gentium, from whose work he quotes
Alciati’s epigram (see Chapter 3, pp. 44–5) and a number of ancient sources.
44 See Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi’s Introduction to Giovan Battista Ferrari, Flora overo
Cultura dei fiori, trans. Ludovico Aureli (Rome: Pier’Antonio Facciotti, 1638) –
facsimile reprint, with contributions by Alberta Campitelli and Margherita Zalum
(Florence: Olschki, 2001); David Freedberg, ‘Cassiano dal Pozzo’s Drawings of
Citrus Fruits’, in Il Museo Cartaceo di Cassiano dal Pozzo. Cassiano Naturalista,
Quaderni Puteani 1 (1989), pp. 10–36; Id., ‘From Hebrew and Gardens to Oranges
and Lemons: Giovanni Battista Ferrari and Cassiano dal Pozzo’, in Francesco Solinas
(ed.), Cassiano dal Pozzo: Atti del Seminario Internazionale di Studi (Rome: De
Luca, 1989), pp. 37–72; Id., ‘Ferrari on the Classification of Oranges and Lemons’,
in Elisabeth Cropper, Giovanna Perini, and Francesco Solinas (eds), Documentary
Culture. Florence and Rome from Grand-Duke Ferdinand I to Pope Alexander VII.
Papers from a Colloquium held at the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1990 (Bologna:
Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1992), pp. 287–306; Id., ‘Ferrari and the Pregnant Lemons
of Pietrasanta’, in Alessandro Tagliolini and Margherita Azzi Visentini (eds), Il
Giardino delle Esperidi. Gli agrumi nella storia, nella letteratura e nell’arte (Florence:
Edifir, 1996), pp. 41–58; Id., ‘Poussin, Ferrari, Cortone et l’Aetas Florea’, in Alain
Mérot (ed.), Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). Actes du Colloque Poussin au Musée du
Louvre ... 19–21 octobre 1994 (Paris: La documentation française, 1996), 2 vols, I, pp.
337–62; David Freedberg and Enrico Baldini (eds), Citrus Fruit – The Paper Museum
of Cassiano dal Pozzo. Series B, Natural History, Part 1 (New York: Harvey Miller,
1997); David Freedberg. The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings
of Modern Natural History (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,
2002), pp. 46–52.
45 Giovan Battista Ferrari, De florum cultura libri IV (Rome: Stefano Paolini, 1633); Id.,
Hesperides, sive De malorum aureorum cultura et usu libri quatuor (Rome: Hermann
Scheus, 1646).
46 The bibliography on Italian Renaissance gardens is immense. On the importance
of Ferrari’s work, see Isa Belli Barsali, ‘Una fonte per i giardini del Seicento: il
trattato di Giovan Battista Ferrari’, in Giovanna Ragionieri (ed.), Il giardino storico
italiano. Problemi di indagine, fonti letterarie e storiche (Florence: Olschki, 1981),
pp. 221–34; Elisabeth B. MacDougall, ‘A Cardinal’s Bulb Garden: A Giardino Segreto
at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome’, in Ead., Fountains, Statues, and Flowers: Studies
in Italian Gardens of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Washington, DC:
Dumbarton Oaks, 1994), pp. 219–345, with bibliography.
47 The patrons’ merits are praised through frequent allusions to flower nectar as the
divine food of bees, the noble and chaste little animals that feature in the Barberini
crest. On the chastity and nobility of bees see Verg. G. 4.197–9 and 219–22; cf. also
Wilhelm Drexler, ‘Melissa’, in Roscher, II.2, cols 2637–42.
48 See in particular Freedberg, ‘From Hebrew and Gardens’; Freedberg and Baldini
(eds), Citrus Fruit – The Paper Museum, pp. 62–77.
49 On Priapus cf. Verg. G. 4.111 (tutela Priapi), and App. Virg. Cat. 3*.17–18; on the
procuratio hortorum, Varro Rust. 1.1.6.
50 Ferrari, Flora, sig. *3r (‘una Flora pudica, che non contamini i costumi; ma che
semini i fiori negli animi’); Lat. edn 1633, sig. a3r. On the Athenian ‘Aphrodite in
the gardens’, cf. Paus. 1.19.2, Plin. HN 19.36, Luc. Im. 4.6, Luc. Pro im. 8, 18. On the
Notes 167
significance of the topic, see Ernst Langlotz, Aphrodite in den Gärten (Heidelberg:
Winter, 1954); Rachel Rosenzweig, Worshipping Aphrodite: Art and Cult in Classical
Athens (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), pp. 31–5.
51 Ferrari, Flora, p. 3; Lat. edn 1633, pp. 4–5.
52 Giovan Battista Ferrari, Orationes (Lyon: Louis Prost, 1625), 219–381 (pp. 299–30,
‘vanissima fabula ... lugubrem fabulam’). On Ferrari’s ‘Aetas Florea’, first noticed
and discussed by Freedberg in relation to Poussin’s pictorial work, cf. Freedberg,
‘Poussin, Ferrari, Cortone et l’Aetas Florea’, pp. 343–4.
53 Ferrari, Flora, p. 173 (‘rendendo in tal guisa funesto il riso di questo fiore
innocentissimo col tragico lutto di impura favola’); Lat. edn 1633, p. 173.
54 Ibid., pp. 94–5; Lat. edn 1633, pp. 92–3. On Marino’s Aurilla see Pozzi’s commentary
in Marino, Adone, II, pp. 641–2. On a side note, it may be interesting to observe that
the Italian translation of Ferrari’s Flora was subjected to revision by Ferrante Carli,
a former antagonist of Marino, and that Carli operated on instigation of that very
same Father Riccardi who, ten years before, had pronounced the final verdict on the
Adone. Cf. Ferrari, Flora, sig. **r. On Carli see Delcorno, ‘Un avversario del Marino’;
Martino Capucci, ‘Carli, Ferdinando (Ferrante), in DBI 20 (1977), 150–2 (p. 151).
55 Francesco Fileremo Fregoso, La cerva bianca, Giorgio Dilemmi (ed.) (Bologna:
Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1976), pp. 184, 232; [Anonymous], I dodici canti.
Épopée romanesque du XVIe siècle, Ferdinand Castets (ed.) (Montpellier: Coulet et
Fils, 1908), p. 310.
56 Marino, Sampogna, De Maldé (ed.), p. 317.
57 Both works seem to have derived from a common plan, and at some point the
material may have been intended for one single work, as a letter by Peiresc to
Cassiano dal Pozzo of 30 September 1631 appears to suggest. Cf. Nicolas-Claude
Fabri de Peiresc, Lettres à Cassiano dal Pozzo (1626–1637), Jean-François Lhote and
Danielle Joyal (eds) (Clermont-Ferrand: Adosa, 1989), pp. 75–7 (also on citrus trees,
pp. 226–7).
58 Massimo Ceresa, ‘Ferrari, Giovanni Battista’, in DBI 46 (1996), pp. 595–8,
misunderstands the content of Ferrari’s Hesperides when he states that citrus fruits
are there divided in ‘limoni, aranci e agrumi malformati, cioè “mala citrea” ’ (p. 597),
thus misinterpreting mala citrea (‘citrons’), for ‘deformed citrus fruit’. Deformed fruit
do however play a considerable role in the book.
59 Ferrari, Flora, p. 9 (‘con istile, benché di prosa, prossimo al poetico’); Lat. edn 1633,
p. 11. Freedberg has repeatedly underlined the opportunity of such a study.
60 John Pope-Hennessy, The Drawings of Domenichino in the Collection of His Majesty
the King at Windsor Castle (London: Phaidon, 1948), p. 105, No. 1271, and plate 69;
already noticed by Freedberg, ‘From Hebrew and Gardens’, p. 52 note.
61 Marcello Virgilio in Dioscorides, De medica materia libri sex, fol. 70v (‘De malis
omnibus’): ‘Infinita pene in malis est ludendis naturae varietas’.
62 Ferrari, Hesperides, p. 75: ‘Caeterum nullo ludit in pomo natura licentius’; ‘hac in
arbore natura eadem non artem pomariam, sed figlinam exercere videatur’.
63 Freedberg, ‘Ferrari and the Pregnant Lemons of Pietrasanta’, p. 43.
64 For all these varieties see the entries in Freedberg and Baldini (eds), Citrus Fruit –
The Paper Museum.
65 Ferrari, Hesperides, p. 413: ‘Abortus et monstra in animantibus plerunque horremus,
amamus in pomis’; ‘Id ex urbe Neapoli, cuius res quoque monstrosae formosae sunt’.
66 Giovanni Pozzi, Des fleurs dans la poésie italienne (Fribourg: Éditions universitaires
Fribourg Suisse, 1989), pp. 20–1, citing Claud. Nupt. Hon. et Mar. 240–51; Tasso,
168 Notes
Aminta, 1.1, and Ger. lib. 16.16; Marino, Ad. 2.131, 6.132, 7.108 and 246. On
Ferrari’s (especially German and Dutch) imitators see Freedberg, ‘From Hebrew and
Gardens’, p. 72, and Tongiorgi Tomasi’s Introduction to Ferrari, Flora, passim.
67 Frankfort, ‘The Dying God’, p. 151.
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Index of manuscripts
Avellino, Biblioteca Provinciale

Capone 122n. 51
Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale

Centrale, Magliab. VIII.10.1444 132n. 58
Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek
Voss. Lat. O.80 122n. 58
Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional

12894 144n. 16
Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale

III AA 16bis 118n. 22
XXII 87 116n. 8, 134n. 86
Neap. Gr. 1 134n. 86
Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale

ital. 575 143n. 5
ital. 1516 144n. 16
Parma, Biblioteca Palatina

Parm. 922 129n. 42
Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale

N.III.10. 137n. 8
Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana

Capponi 31 144n. 11
Vat. Lat. 3225 127n. 21
Borg. Lat. 367 126n. 13
Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana

Lat. VI 233 (3668) 129n. 21
Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

9977 129n. 33
Index of principal passages cited
Alain de Lille, Anticlaudianus 6.226, Augurelli, Giovanni Aurelio, Carmina

7.42–4, 113n. 24 1.11.14, 43
Alamanni, Luigi Augustine, Civ. Dei 7.25, 44
‘Adone’ 1, 135–6, 137, 31; 132n. 63 Ausonius 13.53.7, 42; 32, 33, 43; 113n. 20;
Della coltivazione libri sei 5.674–5, 152n. 117; 19.11, 42
694–5, 23; 126n. 15
Opere toscane, I, sig. [*2v], 132n. 62 Barbaro, Ermolao
Alciato, Andrea, Emblemata (1546), Corollarium in Dioscoridem 1.176,
‘Inguina dente fero’, 44 120n. 43
Alighieri, Dante, Inf. 2.140, 31; 132n. 63; in Plin. HN 5.1.12, 13.29.91, 16.26.66,
5.65–6, 151n. 103 123n. 64
Amboise (d’), François, ‘Sonnet sur la Belleau, Rémy, Bergerie 66–9, 79–85, 130n.
tragedie d’Adonis, 1574’, 32; 133n. 45
67 Belli, Valerio, ‘Difesa per lo cinghiale
Ammianus Marcellinus 19.1.11, 113n. 19; ch’uccise Adone’, in Madrigali, fol.
22.9, 113n. 19; 22.9.15, 44; 112n. 10 9r, 149n. 85
Annuae litterae Societatis Iesu Anni Bembo, Pietro
M.DC.X., pp. 138, 141, 161n. 94; Prose della volgar lingua 1.14–19, 2.3,
162n. 96 22
Anonymous, I dodici canti 11.44, 104 [?] Sarca 144, 129n. 36; 183–94,
Anth. lat. (Codex Salmasianus), ‘De citro’, 405–619, 576–604, 28; 587–9, 129n.
Riese (ed.) I.1, pp. 150–1, 123n. 62 39; 604, 129n. 34
Anth. Pal. 6.275, 113n. 13 Benoît de Saint-Maure, Roman de Troie
Aphthonius, Progymnasmata 22, 36; 135n. 17531–84, 151n. 103
93 Bible
Apollodorus 3.4.3, 152n. 116; 3.14.3, 132n. Ecc. 10:16, 84
59; 3.14.4, 1 Ecclus. 30:4, 87
Apuleius, Met. 4.28–6.24, 156n. 36 Ez. 8:13–14, 113n. 20; 8:14, 102; 8:16,
Apuleius Platonicus, Herb. 47, 134n. 86 113n. 20
Ariosto, Ludovico Gen. 1:27, 165n. 37
Cinque canti 1.4, 40 1Kings 1–2, 135n. 90
Orlando furioso 6.21, 104 Binet
Aristophanes Adonis, pp. 8–9, 32
Pax 416–20, 112n. 10 Les Daufins, p. 20, 77
Lys. 393–6, 44; 393, 112n. 10 Bion, Epitaph. Adon. 1, 1, 112n. 10; 64–6,
Arnobius, Adv. Nat. 5.19, 152n. 110 41; 66, 134n. 86; 151n. 105
Arnoulx, Gaspard, in Dupeyrat (ed.), Les Blosius Palladius, Suburbanum Agustini
oraisons et discours funèbres, p. 524, Chisii 196–207, 23; 126n. 12
85; 158n. 60 Boccaccio
Athenaeus, Deipn. 2.80a, 44; 45; 3.83 a-d, Gen. deor. Gent. 1.Pref.3.8, 40; 2.49–53,
3.84c-d, 15; 4.174, 44; 140n. 30; 132n. 59; 2.51, 115n. 33; 2.52.4,
10.456a-b, 71; 150n. 99 113n. 13; 140n. 36; 2.53.2–4, 41
198 Index of principal passages cited
Decameron, Introduction to 3.8, 17; Cousin of Nozeroy, Gilbert ‘De laudibus

125n. 80 horti’, in Bucolicorum autores
Boiardo, Matteo Maria, Inamoramento de XXXVIII, p. 736, 23; 126n. 14
Orlando 2.13.29, 40 Crescenzi (de’) Pietro, Ruralia commoda,
Borghini, Raffaello, Il riposo, pp. 64–5, 48; Richter and Richter-Bergmeier
135n. 91; 571, 142n. 55 (eds), II, p. 112, 125n. 79
Cressolles (de) Louis, Orationes, pp. 133–4,
Calcagnini, Celio, Opera aliquot, p. 479, 89; 159n. 74; pp. 150–1, 89; 159n.
123n. 65 75–6; pp. 156, 89; 160n. 80; pp.
Carducci, Giosuè, ‘La moglie del gigante’ 200–8, 89, 160n. 80
26, in Rime e ritmi, 137n. 7 Cyril of Alexandria, In Is. 18.1–2, 113n. 18
Cartari, Vincenzo, Le immagini degli dei,
Volpi (ed.), pp. 592–4, 141n. 41 d’Annunzio, Gabriele, ‘Anniversario orfico’
Catullus 5.4, 70; 151n. 104; 29.7, 140n. 27; 44, in Alcyone, 137n. 7
64, 28 Dead Adonis, the 2, 2; 7–16, 34; 35; 48
Chapelain (de), Jean, ‘Discours … sur Dioscorides, Mat. med. 42, 108
le poëme d’Adonis du Chevalier Dolce, Ludovico, Stanze nella favola
Marino’, §§ 11–12, 26, 39, 63; § 75, d’Adone, 1.2, 12.5–6, 33; 133n. 76;
64; § 124, 65 17.5–6, 22.7–8, 34; 134n. 83
Claudian, Nupt. Hon. et Mar. 240–51, Donatus, Vita Verg. 3, 124n. 76
167n. 66 Dupeyrat, Guillaume, Recueil de diverses
Clement of Alexandria, Protr. 2.17.2–18.1, poesies, fol. 24v, 88; 159n. 68; 94r
33–4, 151–2n. 110; 2.34.3–5, 152n. and 96r, 159n. 70; 106r–108v, 88;
116 159n. 72
Codro (Giovanni Urceo), ‘De Ioanne
Marsilio Oda’, 74, 42–3 Epictetus 4.8.36, 113n. 14
Collini, Serafino, Oratione, sig. A4v, 158n. Equicola, Mario, Libro de natura de amore
55 4.5, 41
Colonna, Francesco, Hypnerotomachia Erasmus
Poliphili, Ciapponi and Pozzi (eds), Adagia 1.8.37, 139n. 18; 2.9.11, 42
I, pp. 80, 100, 115, 292, 305, 339, Adagia (first version), fol. XLIXr, 138n.
365, 18, 125n. 81 13
Columella, De re rustica 10, 13, 121n. 46 Ciceronianus, in Opera omnia I, 1007A,
Conti, Natale, Mythologiae … libri X, Book 118n. 27
5, 47; pp. 313–38, 152n. 115; 323, Praise of Folly 8, 138n. 13
333, 151–2n. 110; 348–51, 152n. Etymologicum magnum, Gaisford (ed.),
115; 350, 150n. 99; 351, 141n. 46; p. 19.9–21, 117.33, 175.6–9, 42
671, 686, 141n. 48 Euripides, Bacch. 353, 152n. 116
Contre-veritez (Les) de la cour, sig. a3r, Eusebius, Praep. Evang. 3.2, 113n. 18;
145n. 19 3.11.12, 44
Convoy (Le) du cœur …de Henry le Grand
IIII, pp. 26–30, 92; 161n. 95; 162n. Fabbri, Gio. Paolo, Apollo consigliero, fol.
96 [3r], 158n. 55
Cornutus, Theol. Gr. Comp. 28, 54–5, 43 Ferrari, Giovan Battista
Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum. II. Goetz ‘Aetas Florea’, in Orationes, pp. 299–30,
and Gundermann (eds), p. 315 (24); 103; 167n. 52
123n. 67; III. Goetz (ed.), pp. 26 Flora, sig. *3r, 103; 166n. 50; sig. **r,
(22), 358 (75), 442 (9), 477 (41), 545 167n. 54; p. 9, 107; 167n. 59; p. 73,
(71), 123n. 67 104
Hesperides, pp. 81–8, 273–5, 417–21, Iohannes Lydus, De mens. 2, 113n. 205
107; p. 75, 108; 167n. 62; p. 413, Isidore of Seville, Etym. 4.12.8, 17.9.14,
110; 167n. 65 116n. 10; 17.7, 125n. 78
Firmicus Maternus Err. prof. rel. 6.1–4,
152n. 110; 9.1, 113n. 18 Jean de Meun [and Guillaume de Lorris],
Folengo, Teofilo, Baldus 18.312, 22.376, Roman de la Rose 15645–734, 114n.
22.441, 23.338, 23.400, 40 28; 15687, 5
Fracastoro, Girolamo Jerome
Carmina, I, pp. 117–20, 154, 155, Epist. 58.3, 114n. 25
126–7n. 16 in Ezech. 3.13–16, 113n. 18; 3.13, 114n.
‘Fragmenta’ I, pp. 22, 24, 29, 127n. 16 25; 8.14, 44
Syphilis, 1.24–52, 24; 128n. 31; 1.445–6, John, Gospel of, 19:34, 66; 87
448, 460, 128n. 30; 2.38–49, 24; John of Garland, Integumenta Ovidii
128n. 31; 2.212–22, 128n. 31; 413–20, 4
2.220–2, 24; 2.270–453, 128n. 26; Justinian, Inst. 1.1.3, viii; 3.1.3, 87
3.30–89, 128n. 25;
Fregoso, Francesco Fileremo, La cerva Lactantius, Div. Inst. 1.17.10, 113n. 17
bianca, 3.11, 6.6, 104 Lactantius Placidus, in Stat. Theb. 4.516, 40
Fulgentius, Myth. 3.8.124, 2; 41; 113n. 13; Lapide (a), Cornelius
140n. 36 in Ez. 8:14, 102; 165–6n. 42
in Gen. 1:27, 165n. 37
Garasse, François, La royalle reception, pp. Le Blanc, Antoine, ‘Pan. Eclogue funèbre’,
107–8, 90; 160–1n. 86–7 in Dupeyrat (q. v.), Recueil, fols
Garcilaso de la Vega, Egl. 3.145–68, 130n. 45 90r–97v, 88; 159n. 68
Geoponica 10.7.8, 119n. 30; 11.17, 135n. 93 Le Breton, Gabriel, Adonis 175–273,
Giraldi, Lelio Gregorio 294–351, 513–82, 81; 621–30, 82;
De poetis nostrorum temporum 1.37–8 693–762, 787–852, 789–94, 81
24; 1.39, 25; 26; 1.175, 27 Leone Ebreo, Dialoghi d’amore, Book
De deis Gentium, sig. α3r, 137n. 2, 6; Three, 165n. 37
Syntagm 8, 43; Syntagm 13, 43 Litterae Societatis Iesu Annorum Duorum,
Grattius, Cyneg. 66–7, 44 MDCXIII, et MDCXIV, pp. 472–4,
Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia 2.5, 120n. 36; 162n. 100
2.9, 120n. 34 Lucian
Im. 4.6, 166n. 50
Hesychius, Lexicon, Latte (ed.), A1231, Pro im. 8, 18, 166n. 50
H652, 42; A234, Π4281, 44; 140n. Syr. D. 6, 6–7, 113n. 19; 28.30, 44
30 Lucretius 4.3–4, 126n.10; 5.32, 123n. 59
Homer Luke, Gospel of, 24:46, 87
Il. 23, 66; 67 Lycophron, Alex. 831, 44; 140n. 30
Od. 7.113–32, 18
Horace Macrobius, Sat. 1.17–23, 113n. 20; 1.19.12,
AP 1–5, 63; 471, 159n. 72 1.19.14, 117n. 21; 1.21, 44; 47;
Carm. 4.7, 70; 151n. 104 1.21.1, 41; 118n. 24; 1.21.1–6, 113n.
Hyginus, Fab. 58, 134n. 82; 167, 151n. 20; 1.21.4, 41; 82; 156n. 37; 1.21.6,
110; 251, 112n. 5; 152n. 114; 258, 10; 1.21.11, 118n. 25; 3.19.3–5,
151n. 105 13; 3.19.4, 125n. 78; 5.16.12, 6.1.6,
Hymn. Orph. 42.7, 152n. 117; 55.10, 112n. 118n. 28
5; 56, 44; 46; 56.3–6, 152n. 117; Marcello Virgilio, in Dioscorides, fol. 70v,
56.5, 113n. 20 108; 167n. 61; 72r, 123n. 64
Mariana (de) Juan, De rege et regis Marston, John, ‘Satire II’ 26–8, 43
institutione libri III, pp. 74–5, 85; Martial 13.37, 14.89, 15; 12.31, 124n. 70
157n. 46 Martianus Capella 2.188, 191–2, 4;
Marino, Giovan Battista 2.191–2, 113n. 20; 152n. 117
Adone 1, ‘Allegory’, 60–1; 147n. 50; 1, Mattioli, Pietro Andrea, Discorsi, I, p. 268,
77; 1.5.1–2, 72; 152n. 121; 1.10.1–4, 120–1n. 43; II, pp. 650–4, 134n. 86
164n. 30; 1.11–19, 81; 2.1–2, 153n. Medici (de’), Lorenzo, Canzoniere 135.5–8,
121; 2.28.7–8, 151n. 109; 2.131, 135n. 93
168n. 66; 3.126–7, 69; 3.154–61, Mercure françois, fols 466r–469v, 161n. 94;
146n. 41; 5, 63; 94; 5.122–48, 64; 469r, 162n. 96
5.127–45, 91; 5.149, 64; 6.132, Mersenne, Marin
168n. 66; 6.134–6, 77; 7.32–62, Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim,
146n. 41; 7.108, 168n. 66; 7.141–8, pp. 1055, 1219–22, 101; 165n. 37
76; 99; 7.229–50, 63; 7.246, 168n. Observationes et emendationes ad
66; 8.89–95, 146n. 41; 8.95.5–6, Francisci Georgii Veneti Problemata
69; 8.122–49, 146n. 41; 9.6, 62–3; in Genesim, pp. 41–4, 165n. 37
148n. 62; 10, 11, 69; 10.25–47, Milton, John, Paradise Lost 2.965, 40
146n. 41; 10.204–6, 160n. 84; Molza, Francesco Maria, Elegiae 3.2, 23;
10.204–23, 75, 76; 10.278–81, 75; 126n. 13
76; 77; 11.89–90, 76; 11.147–51, ps.-Moschus, Lament for Bion 1–2, 1; 80–4,
72; 11.185.5, 151n. 100; 12.286, 69; 116n. 11; 98–105, 7; 99–104, 70;
12.290.8, 65; 14.8–14, 14.24–33, 151n. 104
69; 15, 65; 16.187–94, 69; 16.237, Myth. Vat. I 232, 131n. 50
68; 16.241–5, 69; 16.242.5–8, 151n. Myth. Vat. II 130, 131n. 50
109; 16.250–63, 151n. 109; 152n. Myth. Vat. III 7.3, 131n. 50; 140n. 36;
115; 17, 91; 17.65–82, 146n. 41; 18, 11.17, 41; 113n. 13
65; 104; 18.23–31, 81; 18.33–41, 81;
18.46–97, 146n. 41; 18.67–71, 81; Navagero, Andrea, Lusus 20.75–7, 34;
82–3; 18.70. 3–4, 156n. 39; 18.97.4, 130n. 45; 20.70, 130n. 45
66; 151n. 101; 18.150–68, 146n. 41; Nemesianus 2.73, 42
18.152, 66; 86; 18.179, 86; 18.206.2, Nonnus of Panopolis, Dion. 6, 71;
151n. 109; 18.240, 86; 18.241, 14.159–67, 152n. 116; 24.47–9, 71;
66; 18.242–50, 86; 19, 65; 66; 77; 152n. 112; 41.207–11, 135n. 93;
91; 19.154–62, 81; 19.176–8; 81; 42.125–42, 186–210, 99
19.325, 81; 19.325.5–8, 69; 19.420,
86; 20, 66, 77; 20, ‘Allegory’, 150n. Oppius, De silvestribus arboribus (lost), 13
93; 20.257–515, 91; 20.377–485, Origen
90; 20.397.5–8, 67; 20.403, 86; Contra Celsum 6.32, 43
20.403.1–4, 20.438, 20.444–53, Selecta in Ezech. 8.14, 113n. 18
20.451–2, 20.454–71, 20.468, 68; Ovid
Ad. 20.486–514, 160n. 80; 20.492–3, Ars am. 1.75, 9; 42; 139n. 19; 1.510, 42
72; 20.504–14, 75; 155n. 22; 20.515, Her. 4.7–8, 9
1–4, 62 Met. 1.149, 157, 162, 201, 235, 720–1,
‘Proserpina’ 697–713, in Sampogna, 104 117n. 21; 1.149–50, 15; 1.548–56,
Ritratto del Serenissimo Don Carlo 2.333–66, 19; 3.285–388, 165n. 36;
Emanuello Duca di Savoia 162, 7.188–9, 8.334–9, 81; 10.86–105, 9;
154n. 8 10.98, 118n. 23; 10.297–9, 132n.
Sospiri d’Ergasto, Version A, De Maldé 59; 10.298–502, 4; 10.298–739,
(ed.), p. XCIV, 58 1; 10.348, 132n. 59; 10.503–59,
4; 10.542–52, 5; 10.543–707, 64; in Verg. G. 2.126–7, 121n. 45

10.560–707, 4; 16; 10.650, 123n. Miscellanea 11, 135n. 93
59; 10.708–39, 4; 19; 10.722–3, Polydore Virgil, Adagiorum opus CCXV,
134n. 86; 10.725–6, 125n. 84; 139n. 18
10.728–39, 70; 10.738–9, 17; 11.419, Pontano
9; 15.137–41, 81; 15.392, 402, 405, Aegidius, in Dialoghi, Privitera (ed.),
87; 158n. 61 p. 255, 122n. 53; pp. 261–3, 122n.
ps.-Ovid, Nux, 16 54–6
Ovide moralisé 10.1960–39, 5 Antonius, in Dialoghi, pp. 75–6, 118n.
26
Palladius 4.10.16, 125n. 78 Asinus, in Dialoghi, p. 308, 117n. 17
Parabosco, Girolamo, Favola d’Adone, in Il Centum Ptolomaei sententiae … a
terzo libro delle lettere amorose, fol. Pontano … tralatae, atque expositae,
40r, 134n. 78 fols 249v–250r, 165n. 36
Paul, Heb 9:27–8, 151n. 109 De amore coniugali 2.4.14, 15;
Pausanias 1.19.2, 167n. 50; 2.20.6, 3.17.5, 2.4.63–70, 15; 115n. 4; 2.7.25–34,
113n. 19; 6.24.7, 118n. 22 115n. 4; 2.7.32, 42
Pausanias the Grammarian, Frg α27 Erbse Iambici 1.17–19, 2.17–20, 115n. 6;
(ed.), 41 5.18–21, 7
Pervigilium Veneris 23, 151n. 105 Erid. 1.28.1–6, 115n. 4; 1.36, 1.39,
Petrarch 115n. 4; 116n. 11; 1.39.67–8, 116n.
Fam. 23.19, 118n. 28 10; 2.3, 2.21.9–12, 115n. 4
Rer. vulg. frag. 90.1, 150n. 95; 126.40–2, Hort. Hesp. 1.9, 12; 18; 120n. 41; 1.26,
20 1.30–45, 18; 1.39–42, 20; 1.46–55,
Philostephanus of Cyrene, Quaestiones 12; 1.67, 125n. 84; 1.77–88, 19;
poeticae, 71 see also Probus 1.97–101, 20; 1.214, 134n. 84;
Philostratus, Vita Apoll. 7.32, 124n. 73 1.221, 42; 1.329–30, 1.332, 120n.
Photius, Bibl. 151b.5, 151n. 99 37; 1.343–63, 13; 1.571, 17; 124n.
Plato 77; 2.180–95, 119n. 30; 2.297–308,
Phdr. 276b–277a, 112n. 10; 276b, 41; 120n. 38; 2.432–75, 122n. 52;
42; 113n. 14; 244a, 118n. 22 2.562–6, 120n. 38;
Symp. 190a–92c, 102 Ur. 1.20–31, 129n. 39; 1.464–73, 117n.
Plautus, Men. 144, 43 20; 1.471–3, 8; 1.474–7, 9; 139n.19;
Pliny the Elder, HN 5.1.12, 15; 123n. 64; 1.474–506, 117n. 20; 1.485–7, 9;
12.7.14–16, 13; 12.7.15, 125n. 78; 1.500–6, 10; 5.494, 42
13.29.91, 15; 123n. 64; 16.26.66, Pope, Alexander, A Discourse on Pastoral
123n. 64; 19.19.49, 17; 124n. 72; Poetry 1, 49
124n. 75; 19.36, 167n. 50; 21.10.60, Porchères (de), Honorat Laugier
41; 42; 21.94.165, 124n. 75; Camp (Le) de la Place Royalle, 161n. 90
35.36.79, 35 ‘Ce que peut le vers, et l’image’, in
Plutarch Marino, Il ritratto, pp. 26–7, 161n.
Alcib. 18.5, 44 90
De def. or. 17, 419A-E, 88 Probus, in Buc. 10.18, 71; 88; 131n. 52;
De Is. et Os. 15–17, 357A-E, 113n. 19 158n. 65
Mor. 560B-C, 113n. 14; 138n. 13 Proclus, Hymn. 1.24–6, 152n. 117; 1.26,
Nic. 13.7, 44 113n. 20
Symp. 4.5–6, 671B-C, 71; 113n. 20 Propertius 2.13.52–6, 139n. 19; 2.13.53,
Poliziano, Angelo 43
Epigrammata latina 37.17, 124n. 70 Ptolemy, Tetr. 3.9, 101
Relation du grand ballet du Roy, pp. 5, 6, Tasso, Torquato

37–46, 161n. 91 Aminta 1.1, 168n. 66
Remigius of Auxerre, in Mart. Cap. Gerusalemme liberata 1.3, 164n. 30;
2.74.13, 2, 113n. 13 3.21, 67; 150n. 95; 13, 91; 16.10–11,
Ripa, Cesare, Iconologia, p. 295, 140n. 36 104; 16.15.1–4, 70; 151n. 104;
Ronsard, Pierre 16.16, 168n. 66
Adonis 9, 30; 125–72, 81; 185–8, 156n. Terence, Eun. 372, 45
38; 362, 365–8, 33; 134n. 81 Textor, Iohannes Ravisius
‘Elegie sur le livre de la chasse du feu Officina, fols XIXv–XXr, CIVr–v,
Roy Charles IX’ 39–40, 32 CIXr–v, CLVIIIv–CLIXr, 139n. 19;
fol. CXXVIIr, 139n. 20
Saint-Sixt (de), Charles, Sermon funebre, p. Epithetorum opus, pp. 9–10, 139n. 22
94, 158n. 60 Theocritus 1.1, 2; 1.27–61, 146n. 37;
Salutati, Coluccio, Conquestio Phillidis 5.21–2, 139n. 18; 6.1–5, 31;
147–52, 16; 124n. 71 112n. 10; 15, 1; 7; 15.113–4, 41;
Sannazaro, Iacopo 15.137–41, 69; 16.107, 63
Arcadia 11, 67; 12.7, 126n. 9 Theophrastus
De part. Virg. Books Two and Three, Hist. plant. 4.4.2, 13; 15
99; 3.511–13, 23 Caus. pl. 1.11, 1.18.5, 125n. 78
Epigrams 3.9, 126n. 9 Trissino, Giangiorgio, La quinta e la sesta
Sappho, Frg 140, 168, 112n. 10 divisione della Poetica, Weinberg
Scaliger, Julius Caesar, Poetices libri septem, (ed.), II, p. 88, 31; 132n. 62
Deitz and Vogt-Spira (eds), I, p. 94, 32 Tzetzes, John and Isaac, in Lyc. Alex.
Schol. Theocr. 3.48, 43; 112n. 5 831–3, 46
Seneca, ad Luc. 84, 118n. 28
Servius Urceo, Giovanni see Codro
in Aen. 4.84, 15; 124n. 74
in Buc. 5.10, 16 Vanini, Giulio Cesare
in G. 2.127, 125n. 78; 2.131, 13 De admirandis Naturae Reginae
auct. in Aen. 1.693, 116n. 10; 5.72, Deaeque mortalium arcanis, pp. 170,
117n. 22 264, 101; 164n. 33
auct. in Buc. 8.37, 122n. 58; 10.18, Amphitheatrum aeternae providentiae,
151n. 105 pp. 61–2, 164–5n. 35; 77–8, 164n.
Shakespeare, William, Sonnets 53.5–8, 45; 33; 279, 164–5n. 35
141n. 39 Varro, Rust. 1.1.6, 166n. 49; 2.1.6–7, 15
Solinus 46.4, 125n. 78 Verino, Ugolino, Panegyricon 442–4, 16;
Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene 123–4n. 70
1.5.22, 40; 3.1, 3.6, 29; 4.2.47, 40 Virgil
Statius Aen. 1.319, 150n. 95; 2.792–3, 6.700–1,
Silv. 1.3.81, 125n. 82 9
Theb. 6.351, 124n. 71 Buc. 1.3–4, 31; 3.71, 123n. 59; 4.1–3,
Stigliani, Tommaso, L’occhiale, p. 89, 149n. 76 146n. 39; 6.61, 123n. 59; 7.6, 123n.
Strabo 16.1.27, 44 68; 10, 67; 10.18, 42
Strozzi, Tito Vespasiano, Eroticon libri G. 1.89–90, 11; 2.87, 125n. 82;
4.8.28, 43 2.126–35, 13–14; 2.133–4, 17; 3.136,
Suda A517 Adler (ed.), 42 45; 4.111, 166n. 49; 4.119, 124n. 70;
4.144–8, 13–14; 4.197–9, 219–22,
Tarcagnota, Giovanni, Adone 15–26, 34; 166n. 47
134n. 86 App. Virg. Cat. 3*.17–18, 166n. 49
App. Virg. Lydia 45 (148), 124n. 75 Zenobius 4.21, 113n. 15; 139n. 20; 5.47,
Vives, Juan Luis, De tradendis disciplinis 113n. 16; 139n. 18
3.6, 137n. 2 Zorzi, Francesco, In Scripturam sacram, et
Voltaire, Le songe de Platon, 137n. 7 philosophos, tria millia problemata,
fols 4v–5r, 165n. 37
Xenophon, Oec. 4.2, 102
Index of names
Abate (dell’), Nicolò 35 solar cult of 3–4

abobas (‘pipe’) 140n. 30 son of
Abobas, Persian/Pergamean name for Cinyras and Myrrha 1
Adonis 44 Phoenix and Alphesiboea 1
Abocchino, Gioseppe 33 Theias and Smyrna 1
Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra 90, 161n. 87 as wheat 43, 65, 71
Abravanel, Judah Leon see Leone Ebreo Adonosiris, worshipped in Amathus
Acis 69 (Cyprus) 44, 140n. 31
Actaeon 30, 31, 55, 63, 64, 94 Adriani, Marcello see Marcello Virgilio
Adam 90, 102, 165n. 37 Aegle (Hesperides) 107
Adler, Ada 42 Agamennon 69
adon see Fulgentius Agliè (d’), Ludovico San Martino 53
Adonea, Roman palatial gardens 124n. 73 aition of
Adonia 2, 3, 44, 112n. 10, 149n. 84 Adonis as citrus tree 11–20
Adonias, son of David 135n. 90 apple tree (melos) 122n. 58
Adonis guaiacum or ‘sacred wood’ 26
and Adam 90, 101–2, 165n. 37 Harmonillus (citron tree), Tirsenia
and censorship 95–110 (lemon tree) and Leonilla (orange
as Christ xi, 3, 5, 35, 66, 71, 86, 87, 99, 102 tree) 107–10
and the Church Fathers xii, 1, 3 maidenhair 34, 134n. 86
as citrus tree 11–20 Phyllis as almond tree 16
as a ‘dying god’ xi, 5, 110 quicksilver 26, 103
and Eastern deities xi, 3–4, 44, 102 Ajax 69
etymologies of 2, 113n. 11 and 13 Alain de Lille 113n. 24
in Ferrari’s Hesperides 102–10 Alamanni, Luigi 29
Gardens of 2, 8, 41, 42, 44, 102 and Dante 31
and the Greek Bucolics 1–2, 7–8, 112n. exiled to France 30
6, 116n. 8 Latin eclogues ascribed to 132n. 58
in Marino’s Adone 49–72, 73–94 praises orange tree 23
in medieval allegorical interpretations and Theocritus 31
4–5 and Virgil 31
as a myth of regeneration xi, 3, 10, 11, Albani, Francesco 35, 103
65–71, 85–94 Alberti, Leandro 119n. 30
political significance of 71–2 Albricus ‘the Philosopher’ 42, 140n. 23
in Pontano’s Horti Hesperidum 11–20 Alciato, Andrea 44–5, 166n. 43
in Pontano’s Urania 8–11 Alcina, enchantress in Ariosto’s Orlando
in Renaissance art 35–6, 47–8 furioso 104
in Renaissance mythography 40–7 Alcinous, King of the Phaeacians 16, 17,
shared by Venus and Proserpine 1 18, 103
in sixteenth-century Italian and French Aldobrandini, Cardinal Pietro 52
poetry 28–35, 77–83 Alexandria, cult place of Adonis 2
206 Index of names
Alighieri, Dante 22, 24, 30, 31, 151n. 103 Aretino, Pietro 33
allegorical interpretations of pagan myths Argos 8
1–5, 10, 15, 31, 36–8, 43, 46–8, 55, Ariosto, Ludovico, 21, 22, 36, 40, 59, 65,
65, 69, 89, 100 96, 104
and political 72, 76, 79 Aristaeus 47
Allegri, Antonio see Correggio in Virgil’s Georgics 27, 128n. 27
Allen, Don Cameron 43 Aristophanes 44
Alphesiboea, wife of King Phoenix 1 Aristotle 25, 46, 62, 127n. 19
Amaracus, son of Cinyras 116n. 10 see also Armida, enchantress in Tasso’s
marjoram (amaracus) Gerusalemme liberata 104
Amathus, city in Cyprus 44 Arnoulx, Gaspard, Canon of Riez 86, 87
Amboise (d’), François 32, 79, 130n. 47, Arnulf of Orléans, commentator of Ovid’s
156n. 32, Metamorphoses 113n. 24, 114n. 26
Ambrose 87 Astraea 15
Ammianus Marcellinus 2, 3, 44 Atalanta 4, 16, 134n. 87
Ammon, Lybian Sun god 4 Athena see Pallas Athena; Minerva
Amomo see Caracciolo, Antonio Bishop Athenaeus
of Troyes on Adonis and Dionysus as lovers 71
Anchises 9, 33 on Adonis and lettuce 44
Androgyne 90, 102 on Adonis and Phaon 45
Andronicus Callistus 116n. 7 on citrus trees 15
anemone fifteenth-century reception of 123n. 65,
Adonis’ blood turned into xi, 1, 19 140n. 30, 150n. 99
etymology (from anemos ‘wind’) 17, Athens, cult place of Adonis 2
124n. 75 Atri (d’), Iacopo 120n. 40
Anguillara (dell’), Giovanni Andrea 37, Attis 47
136n. 100 Adonis, the Sun and 3–4, 10, 140n. 33,
Anne of Austria/Spain, Queen of France 10
57, 67, 90, 150n. 94, 160n. 84 emasculation of 68
as ‘Austria’ (in Marino’s Adone) 57, 67–8, his lot compared to Adonis’ 64
69, 70, 71–2, 86, 90 Auerbach, Erich 164n. 28
Antioch, cult place of Adonis 2 Augurelli, Giovanni Aurelio 43
Antoninus Liberalis 112n. 3 Augustine 44
Aōos, Adonis and 42 Aurilla, character of Marino’s Adone and of
Aphaca, burial place of Adonis in Lebanon Ferrari’s Hesperides 104
42 Ausonius 3, 5
Aphrodite 1, 2, 45, 69, 118n. 82, 141n. 38, Adonis and Dionysus 43
165n. 36 see also Venus uses the form ‘Adoneus’ 43 see also
‘Aphrodite in the gardens’ 166–7n. 50 Catullus; Plautus; Origenes
Aphthonius, reporting variant of Adonis Austria, character in Marino’s Adone, see
myth 36, 135n. 93 Ann of Austria/Spain, Queen of
Apollo 55, 56 France
Apollodorus 1, 42, 46
apple tree, aition of (Melos) 122n. 58 Bacchus 45, 47, 48 see also Dionysus
apples, golden see Hesperides Bacon, Francis 46
Apuleius 156n. 36 Bailly, Jean-Sylvain 89–90, 160n. 81
Apuleius Platonicus 134n. 86 Barbaro, Ermolao
Aratus 42 on variant readings of citrus/cedrus in
Arethusa (Hesperides) 107 Pliny’s Historia naturalis 123n. 64
Index of names 207
on Virgil’s citron tree 120n. 43 Biondo, Flavio 119n. 32

Barberini, Maffeo see Urban VIII, Pope Bloemaert, Cornelis 103, 105
Barbieri, Giovan Francesco see Guercino Blosius Palladius 23
Barclay, John 76 boar
Bassompierre (de), François Calydonian 81–3
on Dori Galigai’s unfair trial 153n. 6 in the Adonis myth
on intimations of Henry IV’s death breaks its tusk in self-punishment (in
158n. 58 Marino’s Adone) 57
bay tree (laurus nobilis) dominated by insane passion 2
compared to citron 13 as the Jews killing Jesus in medieval
compared to orange 20, 23, 28 allegories 5
features in Virgil’s ‘Lives’ 17 kills Adonis 1
Petrarch’s tree 28 in love with Adonis 34, 35, 66, 112n.
sacred to Phoebus Apollo 18 6, 149n. 85
as a sterile plant 124n. 76 in Ovid, Le Breton and Marino 81–4
Beazley, J. D. 45 Ravaillac as 72, 88
bees, in the Barberini crest 166n. 47 on trial in Dead Adonis, The (q. v.) 7,
Belleau, Rémy 29, 61 47
Bellini, Eraldo 99 its tusk allegorically interpreted as a
Bembo, Pietro 21, 126–9 plough 41
author of Benacus 25, 26 as winter in Macrobius’ allegory 3, 10,
author (?) of Sarca 27–8, 129n. 34, 129n. 41
35–9 Boccaccio, Giovanni 47, 104
criticizes Fracastoro’s Syphilis 26–7 citrus trees in the Decameron 17
criticizes Pontano’s verse 25–7 Decameron a model of vernacular prose
promoter of classicizing Latin and 22
Italian vernacular 22 Demogorgon 40, 115n. 33
Benoît de Saint-Maure 151n. 103 Genealogie deorum Gentilium inspiring
Bentivoglio, Guido, papal Nuncio in new myths 5
France 97 sixteenth-century reception of
Bérluc-Perussis (de), Léon 130n. 44 Genealogie 40–2, 137
Bernardus Silvestris 114n. 26 Boiardo, Matteo Maria 36, 40
Berrettini, Pietro see Cortona, Pietro da Bonincontri, Lorenzo 8, 116–7n. 15
Berthelot, Pierre 154n. 8 Borghese, Cardinal Scipione 97
Besomi, Ottavio ix, 156n. 36 Borghini, Raffaello 35, 142n. 55
Betussi, Giuseppe 40 Borromeo, Federico 142n. 59
Bianchi Bandinelli, Ranuccio 160n. 82 Bourbon, family of 79
Billerbeck, Margarethe 44 Bowra, C. M. 45
Binet, Claude 29, 32, 77–9 Bracciolini, Poggio 8
Bion of Smyrna 1 Brasavola, Antonio Musa 119n. 30
identified as the author of the Lament Brûlart de Sillery, Nicolas 86
for Adonis (by Camerarius) 41 Bruni, Antonio 98
imitated by Alamanni 31 Buonsignori, Giovanni 36
imitated by Binet 32 Byblos, cult place of Adonis 2, 3–4, 44
Lament for Adonis 7
Pontano’s variation on 116n. 11 Calabrese, Francesco 121n. 45
quoted as Theocritus by Equicola and Calamus 69
Giraldi 41, 44 Calcagnini, Celio 119n. 30
variant of the Adonis myth 112n. 6–7 Calderini, Domizio 5
208 Index of names
Caliari, Paolo see Veronese, Paolo on Adonis reborn as Fiammadoro and

Callimachus of Cyrene 44 Austria 150n. 96 and 98
Calpurnius 30 Chigi, Agostino 23
Calydon, home of Meleager’s boar 81–3 Cicero 5, 22
Cambiaso, Luca 35 Ciceronianism 22
Camerarius, Joachim 41 Cinyras, King of Cyprus 1, 47
Campani, Francesco 158n. 55 Ciotti, Giovan Battista 97
Cantalicio, Giovanni Battista 121n. 46 Cipollone, Annalisa ix
Capiferro, Francesco Maddaleno 99 citrus fruits and trees 11–20, 102–10
Caracciolo, Antonio, Bishop of Troyes 29, citron 13–17, 104–8, 119n. 30, 123n. 64
31 lemon 13–18, 104–8, 119n. 30
Carbo, Hieronymus see Carbone, Girolamo orange 11–20, 23–4, 28, 104–8, 119n.
Carbone, Girolamo 14 30, 121n. 45 and 48, 122n. 51 and 52,
Cardano, Girolamo 164n. 34 126–7
Carli, Ferrante 167n. 54 Claretti, Onorato 51, 53
Carminati, Clizia ix, 55 Claudian 87, 110
on Marino, Inquisition and the Index Clement VII, Pope 30
95, 97–9, 163–4 Clement VIII, Pope 52
Carnarius, Emilianus 36, 135–6n. 95 ‘Clizio the shepherd’ see Imperiale, Giovan
Carpus 69 Vincenzo
Carracci, Annibale 35 Clorinda 67
Cartari, Vincenzo 39, 45–6 Codro (Antonio Urceo), 42–3, 116n. 7
Carterius, Gabriel 102 colewort (eruca), arousing effect of 45,
Casaubon, Isaac 141n. 45 140n. 36
Castello, Bernardo 61 Collini, Serafino 158n. 55
Castelvetro, Lodovico 62 Colonna, Francesco 125n. 81
Castiglione, Baldassarre 21, 30 Columella
Catullus 27–8, 70 De re rustica, Book Ten 13, 14
uses the form ‘Adoneus’ 43 see also fifteenth-century commentaries on De
Ausonius; Plautus; Origenes re rust. Book Ten 17, 120n. 42, 121n.
Caussin, Nicolas 92 46
Cenchreis 134n. 82 Comes, Natalis see Conti, Natale
Centurione, Luigi 54, 145n. 24 Comin, Jacopo see Tintoretto
Ceppi, Matteo 147n. 51 Concini, Concino, Marshal of France 73,
Ceres 45, 47 see also Cybele 74, 85
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de 63 assassination of 53, 74, 145n. 18
Chapelain (de), Jean 75, 97 Marino’s Adone originally dedicated to
on the narrative time-frame of Marino’s 53, 74–6, 144n. 16, 154n. 17
Adone 65 Marino’s patron 53, 73–6
prefaces Marino’s Adone 54, 55, 62–4 Richelieu’s judgment of 74, 97, 153n. 5
views of Marino’s Adone 63, 148n. 66–8 Condé, Henry II of Bourbon, Prince of 85
and 71 Contarini, Alessandro 135n. 92
Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy 52 Conti, Natale
Charles IX, King of France 37, 84 Adonis 46–7
dedicatee of Binet’s Adonis 32, 77–9 Adonis’ ambiguous sexuality 150n. 99
identified with Adonis 32, 79 Adonis and Dionysus 70, 152n. 115
Chasble, Guillaume 156n. 30 anonymous Observations appended to
Chastel (de), Jean 85 Mythologia (Geneva 1596) 102
Cherchi, Paolo 71 Giraldi and 46, 140n. 32, 141n. 45
Index of names 209
Mythologia 39, 43, 45–6 Della Porta, Giovan Battista xii

philosophical and moralising stance of Demogorgon 40, 137n. 6–7
his Mythologia 46–7, 48 Descartes, René 92
revisors of Mythologia (Frankfurt 1581) Detienne, Marcel xii, 44, 113n. 16
141n. 44 Diana 56, 63, 64, 81
Cornelisz, Cornelis 35 Dionisotti, Carlo 22
Cornutus, Annaeus Dionysus 3, 43, 70–1, 151–2 see also
Adonis as wheat 43 Bacchus
the boar’s tusk as plough 43 Adonis and 3, 43, 70–1, 91
Theol. Gr. Comp. known to Politian Adonis, Jehovah and 71
140n. 29 dismembered by the Titans 68
Theologiae Graecae compendium 42 as twice-born Zagreus 91 70–1, 91,
Corradini, Marco 149n. 85, 151n. 104, 151–2
164n. 29 and vine 71
Correggio (da), Antonio 35 Dioscorides 108, 120–1n. 43, 123n. 64
Cortona (da), Pietro 103 on anemone and poppy 134n. 86
Coton, Pierre 92 Dis 3–4
Cousin of Nozeroy, Gilbert 23 Dolce, Ludovico 29
Crashaw, Richard 63 ‘Allegories’ in the Trasformationi 37
Cratinus of Athens 45 Favola d’Adone 32–4, 35, 37
on Venus, Phaon and lettuce 44 on ‘rustic’ Venus 34, 58
Crescenzi (de’), Pietro 125n. 79 on Titian’s ‘Venus and Adonis’
Crescenzi (Roman family) 98 35–6
Cressolles (de), Louis 89, 92 translations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Creusa 9 36–7
Crivello, Paolo 33 Domenichino 35, 103, 105, 107
Cueva de Garoza, Juan de la 29 Dori Galigai, Leonora 53, 74, 85
Cungi, Camillo 103 criticism of her unfair trial 153n. 6
Cupid 43, 47, 55, 56, 60, 81, 99 Doria (Genoese family) 52
Cybele 48 see also Ceres Doria, Cardinal Giannettino 98
Cyparissus 64 Doria, Giovan Carlo 54, 145n. 24
Cyprus, cult place of Venus and Adonis 2, Dorisbe, character of Marino’s Adone 56
44, 55, 56, 62 Droghi, Antonio 61
Cyrus, King of Persia 102 Dumuzi, Sumerian deity xi
Cythera, cult place of Venus 56 Dupeyrat, Guillaume 88
Dupleix, Scipion 153n. 5
Daniel, Pierre 122n. 58
Daphne 19 Earth, the 47
Darwin, Charles 110 Elizabeth of Bourbon, sister of Louis XIII
Davis P. V. 10 160n. 84
De arboribus liber (On Trees) 13 Epictetus 2
De Nichilo, Mauro 122n. 51 Equicola, Mario, Adonis in Libro de natura
De Sanctis, Francesco 96, 146n. 41 de Amore 40–1, 137–8
Dead Adonis, The 2 Erasmus, Desiderius of Rotterdam 23
guilty boar put on trial by Venus 7, 34, Adonis in Adagia 41–2, 118n. 27, 138n.
35, 47, 112n. 6, 130n. 43 13, 139n. 18 and 20
Degli Agostini, Nicolò, translation of criticizes Macrobius’ language and style
Ovid’s Metamorphoses 36, 135–6n. 10
95–6 criticizes mixture of Christian and
210 Index of names
pagan elements in Sannazaro’s De François I, King of France 30–1

partu Virginis 99, 118n. 27, 164n. 25 François II, King of France 84
Erbse, Hartmut 41 Frankfort, Henri 110
Este (d’), Isabella 12, 120n. 40 Frare, Pierantonio 100
Etymologicum magnum 139n. 16 Frazer, James G. xi–xii, 5
Adonis and Aōos 42 Frederick of Aragon, King of Naples 23,
Aphaca as Adonis’ burial place 42 120n. 38
Euphorion see also Photius Freedberg, David 102, 103, 108, 167n. 59
Adonis’ androgynous nature 150n. 99 Fregoso, Francesco Fileremo 104
Eusebius of Caesarea 44 Fresnaye, Vauquelin de la 29
Euterpe (Muse) 61 Fulco, Giorgio 101, 154n. 8, 154n. 10,
Eve 90 164n. 33
Ezekiel 3, 102 Fulgentius 41, 42, 43, 139n. 15
etymology of Adonis 2
Fabbri, Giovan Paolo 158n. 55
Falkenburg, Gerhart 70 Gabanta see Gauas
Falsirena, character of Marino’s Adone 56, Gaeta 16
69 Gaisford, Thomas 42
Ferdinand II the Catholic, King of Spain Galilei, Galileo 56, 162n. 98
16 Gallani (de’), Giuseppe Leggiadro, Favola
Feronia 47 d’Adone (lost) 29, 129–30n. 42
Ferrari, Giovan Battista 95 Gallesio, Georges 122n. 52
Adonis 103, 107–10 Gama, Vasco da, and ‘sweet oranges’
Flora 103–4 13–14
Hesperides 102–10 Ganymede 64
Fiammadoro, character of Marino’s Adone, Garasse, François 90–1, 92
see Louis XIII, King of France Garda, Lake 11, 12, 16, 27–8
Ficino, Marsilio 46 gardens of
‘Fileno the fisherman’, character of Adonis 2, 8, 41, 42, 44, 88, 102
Marino’s Adone see Marino, Giovan Alcina 104
Battista Alcinous 16, 17, 18, 103
Fiordigiglio, character in Marino’s Adone Armida 104
68 Cyrus 102
Firmicus Maternus 139n. 15 Hesperides 12–20, 23, 102–10
Flora Semiramis 17
Ferrari’s ‘Flora pudica’ 103–4 Gauas, Cyprian deity 44
jurisdiction over gardens (procuratio Gelati, Academy of (Bologna) 52
hortorum) 103–4 Geneva 70
Floralia 103 Genoa 52, 61
Folengo, Teofilo 40 Geoponica 119n. 30
Fontainebleau 47 Giambonini, Francesco 95
Fornovo di Taro, battle of 12, 120n. 34 Giberti, Matteo, Bishop of Verona 126–7n.
Fracastoro, Girolamo 16
admiration for Pontano’s Horti Giesey, Ralph E. 157n. 44, 156n. 41–3
Hesperidum 23–4 Gilbertus Cognatus Nucillanus see Cousin
corresponds with Bembo about Syphilis of Nozeroy, Gilbert
and Pontano 26–7, 126–9 Gingrēs, Phoenician deity 44
Syphilis 22 gingros (‘pipe’) 140n. 30
Francini, Tommaso 91 Giorgione da Castelfranco 35
Index of names 211
Giovanni Battista di Jacopo see Rosso Habert, François 29

Fiorentino Harmonillus, character in Ferrari’s
Giovanni del Virgilio 114n. 26 Hesperides 107, 110
Giraldi, Giuliano 158n. 55 Hector 69
Giraldi, Lelio Gregorio Helen of Troy 45
Adonis and lettuce 44–5 Heliades 19
Adonis and Phaon 45 Helicon 61, 62
appraisal of Pontano’s poetry 24–6, Hennequin, Jacques 157n. 53
127–8 Henry II, King of France 30, 31, 37, 84,
Boccaccio’s Demogorgon 40, 137n. 6–7 133n. 64
Conti and 46, 141n. 45 Henry III, King of France 77, 84, 133n. 64
De deis Gentium 39–40, 42, 43–5, 46, 47 see also Henry of Valois, Duke of
source of a Lapide’s Comm. in Anjou
Ezechielem 166n. 43 Henry IV, King of France
syncretistic approach to myths 44, 140n. assassination of 72, 73, 79
30 Louis XIII and 84–94
Giulio Romano 35 Henry of Valois, Duke of Anjou 79, 133n.
Mars chasing Adonis 36 64 see also Henry III, King of France
Goltzius, Hendrik 35 Hera 70 see also Juno
Gondi, Alberto 79 Hercules 2, 12, 72, 104–5, 107, 153n. 122
Gondy (de), Albert see Gondi, Alberto Gallic 88, 153n. 122
Gonzaga, Francesco, Duke of Mantua 52 hermaphrodite
Gonzaga, Francesco, Marquis of Mantua, Adam as 101–2
dedicatee of Pontano’s Horti Adonis as 68–9
Hesperidum 11–12 ‘hermaphrodite orange’ 109–10, 158–9n.
Gow, A. S. F. 7 65–7
Goyrand, Claude 103 the king’s ‘two bodies’ as 88
Graces, three 43, 47, 63 as neutrum or utrumque 165n. 36–7
Gramont (de), Scipion 91, 154n. 8 phoenix as 87–8
Granada 16 Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and
Grant J. L. 24, 25 Aphrodite 68–9, 101, 165n. 36
Grattius 44 Hermeneumata 15, 123n. 66–7
Graves, Robert 128n. 27 Hermes 69, 165n. 36 see also Mercury
Gravina, Gian Vincenzo 96 Hesiod 13
Great Mother, the 2, 11 Hesperides 11–20, 102–10 see also citrus
Gregory XV, Pope 54, 97, 98 fruit and trees
Greuter, Johann Friedrich 103 apples of 4, 11–20, 102–10, 123n. 59 see
Grignan, Françoise-Marguerite de Sévigné, also citrus fruit and trees
Countess of 64 Garden of 12–20, 23, 102–10 see also
Guardiani, Francesco 71, 149n. 86, 150n. gardens
89 Hesperthusa (Hesperides) 107
Guarini, Battista 64, 96 Hesychius
Guarino, Battista 7 Abobas 44
Guercino 35 Adonis and Aōos 42
Guicciardini, Francesco 120n. 34 and 36 Gardens of Adonis 42
Guillaume de Lorris 114n. 28 Pugmaion 44
Guillet (du), Pernette 29 variant reading Persaion/Pergaion 140n.
Guise, family of 79 30
Guthmüller, Bodo 36 Hippolytus 30
212 Index of names
Hippomenes 4, 16, 30, 134n. 87 Landino, Cristoforo 121n. 46

Hitler, Adolf 160n. 82 Lanfranco, Giovanni 103
Homer 25 Lapide (a), Cornelius
funeral games (Il. 23) 66–7 Adonis as Christ 102, 165n. 37, 165–6n.
garden of Alcinous (Od. 7) 18 41–3
Horace 63, 70 rejects view of Adam as the Androgyne
Horapollo 140n. 31 101–2
Housman, A. E. 8, 117n. 17 Larivey, Pierre 155n. 30
Huet, Pierre Daniel 46, 63 Latium 3–4
Hyacinthus 69 Latte, Kurt 42
Hyginus 42, 70, 134n. 82, 152n. 114 Laura (Petrarch’s) 20
Hylas 64 laurel see bay tree
Hymni Orphici 3, 44, 46, 70 Le Breton, Gabriel
on Adonis’ androgynous nature 150n. Adonis 29, 32–3, 79–83
99 Adonis and Charles IX 79
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, citrus trees and Adonis and the tragic genre 29, 32,
Adonis’ grave 18, 36, 104, 125n. 81 Fig. 3
biographical details 155–6n. 30–1 and
Imperiale, Giovan Vincenzo 60–2 33
as ‘Clizio the shepherd’ (in Marino’s first name uncertain 130n. 47
Adone) 55, 57, 60–2 Marino and 81–3
incest Leander 69
Adonis and Dionysus born of 71 Leo X, Pope 22, 24
Myrrha with Cinyras 1, 33 Leo XI, Pope 52
Index of Forbidden Books 37, 95, 96, 97–9 Leonardo da Vinci 91, 161n. 88
Congregation of 66, 95, 97–9 Leone Ebreo, on the Androgyne 101, 165n.
Inquisition, Tribunal of 55, 95, 98, 101 37
Iohannes Lydus 3 Leonilla, character in Ferrari’s Hesperides
Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain 16 105, 107–8, 110
Isidore of Seville 17 Leto, Giulio Pomponio, commentary on
Columella’s De re rustica, Book Ten
Jacoby, Felix 46 14, 17, 121n. 46
James I, King of England 144n. 13 lettuce (lactuca)
Jean de Meun 5 anti-aphrodisiac 45
Jehovah, as Adonis or Dionysus 71 frigid nature of 44–5
Jerome 4, 44, 114n. 25 sown in the Gardens of Adonis 41–2
John of Garland, allegorical interpretation Liebrecht, Felix, on Pan and boatswain
of Adonis 4, 113n. 24, 114 n. 27 Thamous (q. v.) at Paphos 159n. 69
Julius II, Pope 130n. 45 Ligorio, Pirro 48
Juno 33, 34 see also Hera Linné, Carl 110
Jupiter 33, 88 see also Zeus Loisel, Antoine 157n. 50
planet 92 Lope de Vega y Carpio, Félix Arturo 29, 61
Adonis y Venus 29
Kantorowicz, Ernst H. 85, 87, 88 Louis XIII, King of France 37, 53, 54, 63,
67, 69, 74, 75, 77
La Flèche, college of 91–4 as ‘Fiammadoro’ (in Marino’s Adone) 57,
La Fontaine (de), Jean 97, 145n. 22, 163n. 8 67–8, 69, 70, 71–2, 86, 90
Lactantius 87 Henry IV and 84–94, 150n. 94, 160n. 84
Lactantius Placidus 40, 137n. 6 Louis XIV, King of France 89
Index of names 213
Louise de Austrasie see Louise of Lorraine persecuted by the Inquisition 54–5, 94,
Louise of Lorraine, Queen Consort of 95–9
France 77–9 marjoram (amaracus)
Lubin, Eilhard 70 aition of 116n. 10 see also aition
Lucian 3, 44 in Pontano’s Iambici 7–8
Luciani, Sebastiano see Sebastiano del Mars 56, 81
Piombo Marston, John 43
Lucretius 14, 15, 18, 126n. 10 Martial 15
Ludovisi, Cardinal Ludovico 98 Martianus Capella
Luynes, Charles d’Albert, Duke of 54, 75, medieval commentaries on De nuptiis
76, 154n. 12, 161n. 91 Philologiae et Mercurii 2, 4
Lycophron 44, 46 syncretistic approach to myths 3–4
Martini, Alessandro 143n. 4–5
Machiavelli, Niccolò 21 Mary, Queen of England 135n. 92
Macrin, Salmon 29 Matthieu, Pierre 155n. 21
Macrobius Mattioli, Pietro Andrea
allegorical interpretation of Adonis 3, 5, on anemone and poppy 134n. 86
8, 10, 13, 15, 17, 41, 43, 48, 89, 113n. on Virgil’s citron tree 120–1n. 43
21, 115n. 33, 117n. 21 Mazzocchi, Domenico 96
description of boar 82, 141n. 48 Medea 9
his Latin criticized by Pontano and Medici (de’), Cardinal Giulio 30
Erasmus 10, 11, 118n. 24–8, 138n. 11 Medici (de’), Caterina, Queen of France
maidenhair (capelvenere/capillus Veneris) 31–2, 79, 84
34, 134n. 86 Medici (de’), Lorenzo 36, 135n. 93
Malherbe, François de 86 Medici (de’), Maria, Queen of France 37,
Mancinelli, Antonio 53, 54, 55, 69, 71, 73, 74, 75, 77,
commentary on Virgil’s Georgics 15, 84–94, 160n. 84
121n. 46, 123n. 68 Melanion see Hippomenes
Manelli, Francesco 97 Meleager 56
Manilius, imitated in Pontano’s Urania 8, and the Calydonian boar 81–3
116–7n. 15 Mellan, Claude 103
Manto 28 Melos see apple tree
Mantua 12, 27 Memphis 3–4
Manuzio, Aldo 7, 8, 28, 41, 116n. 7, 117n. Mendoza (de), Diego Hurtado 132n. 60
18 Fábula de Adonis 29
Marcello Virgilio 108, 123n. 64 Mercure françois (Le) 156n. 41, 157n. 50,
Mariana (de), Juan 85, 157n. 46 162n. 96
Marinella, Lucrezia 61 Mercury 55–6, 63, 68–9, 101 see also
Marino, Giovan Battista Hermes
Adone 35, 37, 38 Mergellina 23
biography of 51–5 Mersenne, Marin 101, 165n. 37
citrus trees, Ferrari and 103–4, 108, 110 Metastasio, Pietro 96
dedicates Adone to Concini 53, 74–6, Micyllus, Jacobus 40
144n. 16, 154n. 17 Milton, John 40
and ecclesiastical censorship 94, 95–9 Mincio, river 27, 33
as ‘Fileno the fisherman’ (in Adone) 56, Minerva 124n. 74 see also Pallas Athena
57, 62 Minturno, Sebastiano, ‘De Adoni ad apro
at the French court 71–2, 73–7 interempto’ 29
imitates Le Breton’s Adonis 79–83 Mithras 3–4
214 Index of names
Molza, Francesco Maria, Adonis as citrus Observations, by anonymous, appended to

tree 23, 126n. 13 Conti’s Mythologia (Geneva 1596)
Montaigne (de), Michel Eyquem 141n. 45 102
Montan, character in Le Breton’s Adonis 81 Obsopée, Jean 141n. 44
Montbazon, Hercule of Rohan, Duke of 86 Olck, Franz 121n. 45
Montemayor, Jorge de 61 Oppius De silvestribus arboribus (lost),
Monterotondo 47 quoted by Macrobius 13
Monteverdi, Claudio 52, 163n. 7 Origenes, uses the form ‘Adoneus’ 43 see
Morgano, King of England, character in also Ausonius; Catullus; Plautus
Marino’s Adone 68 Orologi, Giuseppe, ‘Allegories’ in
ps.-Moschus, Lament for Bion 1, 7, 70 Anguillara’s translation of Ovid’s
Mousnier, Roland 84 Metamorphoses 37, 136n. 103
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 57 Orpheus 9, 68
Murray, A. T. 18 Orphic Hymns see Hymni Orphici
Murtola, Gasparo 52 Osiris, Egyptian deity xi, 3–4, 10, 68
Muzio, Girolamo, eclogue ‘Venere’ 29, Ovid 42, 47
30–1, 132n. 59 Adonis in Metamorphoses, Book Ten 1
Mynors, R. A. B. 13 on the anemone 17
myrrh (murrhis) 9, 117n. 22, 140n. 36 on Atalanta and Hippomenes 16
Myrrha 37, 88 on golden apples 15
etymology of 4 imitated and translated in sixteenth-
her mother Cenchreis 134n. 87 century Italy 34, 35, 36–8
incest 1, 16, 33, 41 imitated in Pontano’s Horti Hesperidum
myrrh and myrtle 9, 117–8n. 22 19–20
story of imitated in Pontano’s Urania 8–9
imitated by Ferrari (Hesperides) Marino and 62, 64, 66–7
107–8 Marino, Le Breton and 81–3, 143n. 3
parodied by Marino (Ad. 20) 68 medieval allegorizations 4–5
in sixteenth-century literature 34, 47 Nicander and 112n. 3
as the Virgin Mary in medieval on the phoenix 87
allegories 5 in Renaissance France 136n. 102
myrtle (murrhinē) 9, 117–8n. 22, 118n. 23, ps.-Ovid, Nux 5, 16
123n. 68 Ovide moralisé 5, 114n. 29
Ovidio Metamorphoseos vulgare 36
Naiads 18
Napaeae 18 ‘Padre Mostro’ see Riccardi, Nicola
Narcissus 64 Paestum 16
Navagero, Andrea 30, 34, 130n. 45, 134n. Palaephatus 42
84 Pales 47
Nemesianus 30, 42 Palladius (fourth century ce) 17
Nicander of Colophon, on Adonis and Pallas Athena 70, 71, 152n. 110 see also
lettuce 44, 103, 112n. 3 Minerva
Nicolas de Paris 88 Pampinus 69
Nile 3–4 Pan 48
Nonnus of Panopolis and Christ 149n. 86,
Dionysiaca and Marino’s Adone 63, 71, as Henry IV 88, 159n. 68–9
99 Parabosco, Girolamo, Favola d’Adone 29,
Dionysus’ heart (Dion.) 70–1, 152n. 32–4, 58
111–3 Parcae 33
Index of names 215
Parrasio, Aulo Giano 118n. 22 Pio, Giovan Battista 121n. 46

Pasio, Curio Lancillotto 121n. 46 Pippi, Giulio see Giulio Romano
Pasquali, Giorgio 121n. 48 Pius III, Pope 48
Passerat, Jean 29 Pius IV, Pope 47–8
pastoral poetry 29–36, 50–1, 58, 60–2, 64, Plato
77–83, 88–9 on the Androgyne 102
Patrizi, Francesco 16 and Atlantis 90
Patroclus 69 on the Gardens of Adonis 2, 41, 42
Paul IV, Pope 37 Plato Comicus 71
Paul V, Pope 52, 97, 144n. 13 Plautus, uses the form ‘Adoneus’ 43 see also
Pausanias 3, 118n. 22 Ausonius; Catullus; Origenes
Pausanias the Grammarian, on the Pliny the Elder
Gardens of Adonis 41, 44, 139n. 13 Adonea (q. v.) 124n. 73
peach tree 13 on Adonis as a suitable image for
Peiresc (de), Nicolas-Claude Fabri 86, pregnant women to look at xii
167n. 57 on ancient gardens 17, 41, 42
Pellegrino, Camillo 58 on the Hesperides and citron trees 15
Perceval, José María 150n. 94, 160n. 85 Historia naturalis 103
Perdicca 30 nomenclature of citrus trees 15 see also
Peri, Iacopo 162n. 6 Barbaro, Ermolao
Perrier, François 103 Pontano and 120–1n. 43–4
Persephone 1 see also Proserpine on pot gardens of citron trees 13
Dionysus Zagreus son of 70–1 Plutarch
Peruzzi, Baldassarre 35 Adonis and Dionysus 3
Pétau, Denis 92 Adonis, Dionysus and Jehovah 71
Petrarch 13, 20, 22, 28, 118n. 28 death of the Great Pan 88, 159n. 69
Petrarchism 22, 28 Gardens of Adonis 2
Petronius 41 Politian see Poliziano, Angelo
Pezzana, Angelo 129–30n. 42 Polixena 151n. 103
Phaon, and Adonis 44, 45, 141n. 36 Poliziano, Angelo
Philip II, King of Spain (and of England) on Aphthonius and Adonis 36, 135n. 93
35, 135n. 92 commentary on Virgil’s Georgics 14,
Philip III, King of Spain 85 120–1n. 45
Philip IV, King of Spain 150n. 94, 160n. 84 on inspiration in ancient and modern
Philip, Prince of Asturias see Philip IV, poets 5
King of Spain Polo, Gil 61
Philostephanus of Cyrene, on Adonis son Polydore Virgil 42, 139n. 18
of Zeus 71 Pontano, Giovanni 6
Philostratus, Adonea (q. v.) 124n. 73 Adonis 6–8, 8–20
phoenix, symbol of regeneration 87, 158n. citrus trees and fruit 11–20
61 fame after death 22–4
Phoenix, husband of Alphesiboea 1 Ferrari and 102–4, 107–8, 130n. 45,
Phornutus see Cornutus, Annaeus 144n. 9
Photius, quotes Euphorion on Adonis on hermaphrodites 101
150–1n. 99 and the Greek Bucolics
Phurnutus see Cornutus, Annaeus and the Hesperides 11–20
Piccolomini, Alessandro 155n. 30 Horti Hesperidum 11–20, 28–9, 103–4,
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 46 119–30
Pindar 26–7 praised and criticized 24–8
216 Index of names
Urania 8–11, 18, 24, 28, 117n. 18 and Raimondi, Francesco Paolo 164–5n. 33–5
19–21 and 37
Pope, Alexander 49 Rambouillet, Catherine de Vivonne,
Porcellet, Louis 154n. 8 Marchioness of 54, 61
Porchères (de), Honorat Laugier Rangone, Claudio 30
befriends Marino in Turin 91 Raphael 35
Le Camp de la place Royalle (1612) Ravaillac, François, assassin of Henry IV
161n. 90 72, 84, 85, 86–7, 88, 89
(lost?) MS of his Venus affligée dedicated Reinach, Salomon
to Richelieu 130n. 44 on Pan and boatswain Thamous (q. v.)
organizes the Louvre Royal Ballet (1619) 159n. 69
130n. 44, 154n. 8 on syncretism 4, 113n. 23
Venus affligée sur la mort d’Adonis 29, Remigius of Auxerre, on the etymology of
91, 130n. 44 Adonis 2
portogalli 13–14, 121n. 48 see also citrus Reni, Guido 103, 146n. 37
fruit and trees Riccardi, Nicola 99, 167n. 54
Poussin, Nicolas 35, 103, 167n. 52 Richelieu, Armand Duplessis, Bishop of
Pozzi, Giovanni 59, 65–7, 81, 99, 143n. 3, Luçon and Cardinal
149n. 79, 150n. 90, 155n. 20, 167n. banned from Paris 53
66 escapes the populace’s wrath after
Pozzo (dal), Cassiano 103, 167n. 57 Concini’s death 144–5nn. 17, 19
Praxilla judgment on Concini 74, 153n. 5
‘Sillier than Praxilla’s Adonis’ 2, 42 MS of Porchères’ Venus affligée
Praz, Mario 62 dedicated to 130n. 44
Priapus 47, 103, 166n. 49 premonitions of Henry IV’s death 87,
Primaticcio, Francesco 35 158n. 58
Probus, quotes Philostephanus of Cyrene Richeôme, Louis 92
on Adonis as the son of Zeus 71 Ripa, Cesare 140n. 36
Proclus 42 Robortello, Francesco 127n. 19
Adonis and the Sun 3 Roman de la rose 5, 130n. 46
on Dionysus 152n. 110 Ronsard, Pierre 29, 77
procuratio hortorum 103–4 Adonis 29–34
Propertius 43 Adonis as a hunter and a shepherd 30,
Proserpine see also Persephone 31
at the antipodes 1, 41 Charles IX as the ‘Rose Adonienne’
and citrus fruit 104 32
sharing Adonis with Venus 1, 41 closure in Adonis 33, 134n. 81
in the underworld 1, 41 Le Breton and 81, 156n. 38
Proteus, Pontano and Marino as 10, 52, Navagero and 34
144n. 9 ‘rustic’ Venus 34, 58
Psyche 55 Roscher, Wilhelm H. 42
ps.-Ptolemy 101 Rosenberg, Alfred 160n. 82
Pucci, Francesco 14 Rosso Fiorentino 35, 47
Puccius see Pucci, Francesco Rubens, Peter Paul 52
Pugmaion, Cyprian deity 44 cycle for Maria de’ Medici 160n. 84,
Pygmalion, Adonis’ great grandfather 162n. 101
132n. 59 ‘Triumph of Time and Truth’ Fig. 4,
Pyrrhus, son of Achilles 69 94
Pythagoras 87 ‘Venus and Adonis’ 35
Index of names 217
Rudolph II, Emperor 85 citron trees and ‘golden apples’ 13, 15,
Russo, Emilio ix, 143n. 4, 145–6n. 29, 16, 17, 124n. 74
149n. 73, 153n. 7 Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal,
Marchioness of
Sacchi, Andrea 103 on Marino’s Adone 64, 146n. 41, 148n.
Sadoleto, Giulio 26 71
Sadoleto, Iacopo Shakespeare, William 29, 35, 45, 141n. 39
Bembo and 22, 127n. 23 sheep (mēla), Varro’s (q. v.) etymology of
Bembo, Pontano and 26 ‘apples’ 15, 122n. 58
Saint-Amant (de), Marc-Antoine 145n. 22, Shelley, Percy Bysshe 40
148n. 71 Siciolante, Girolamo of Sermoneta 47
Saint-Gelais (de), Mellin 29, 31 Sidney, Philip 29, 61
Saint-Sixt (de), Charles, Bishop of Riez 87, Sidonio, character in Marino’s Adone 56
158n. 60 Silvin, character in Le Breton’s Adonis 81
Salmacis 165n. 36 Simeoni, Gabriele 31
Salutati, Coluccio 16, 124n. 71 Simon ben Yohai, called Cepha 90, 161n.
Sannazaro, Iacopo 6, 8, 21, 22, 61 87
criticized by Erasmus 164n. 25 Smith, Graham 47–8
Marino and 67, 99 Smyrna see Myrrha
maritime eclogue and 146n. 36 Soissons, Louis of Bourbon, Count of 85
MS of Theocritus belonging to 116n. 8, Solinus 17
134n. 86, 139n. 18 Spenser, Edmund 29, 40
orange trees and 23, 24, 126n. 9 and 11 Statius 5, 28, 114–5n. 32
praised in Sarca 28, 129n. 34 Steen, Cornelis van den see Lapide (a),
Santi, Raffaello see Raphael Cornelius
Sanvitale, Fortuniano 55 Stephanus of Byzantium, on Adonosiris 44
Sappho 2 Stigliani, Tommaso 149n. 76
Phaon and 45, 141n. 38 Strabo 44
Sardis 102 Striggio, Alessandro 162n. 6
Savoy, Cardinal Maurice of 54 Strozzi, Tito Vespasiano 43
Savoy, Marguerite of 52 suavitas see Fulgentius
Scaliger, Joseph Justus 46, 141n. 45 Suda 139n. 17
Scaliger, Julius Caesar, on pastoral poetry Gardens of Adonis 42
32, 164n. 34 Summonte, Pietro 8, 117n. 19
Schiafenato, Giovan Battista 135–6n. 95 Sun, pagan deity 3–4, 47–8
Schomberg (de), Henri 74 Adonis and 3–4, 47–8
Scoto, Lorenzo 55, 100 Gallic (Sol Gallicus) 89
Scudéry (de), Georges 145n. 22 Swinburne, Algernon Charles 57
Sebastiano del Piombo 35, 36 Sylburg, Friedrich 141n. 44
Sebethus, river 18
Segni, Bernardo 127n. 19 Tamira, Piero 14
Semele 71 Tammuz, Babylonian deity xi see also
Semiramis 17 see also gardens Thamous
Seneca 10 as Adonis 3, 44, 102
Serapis, Egyptian deity 3–4 and the Great Pan 159n. 69
Seripando, Antonio 115n. 2, 134n. 86 Tancredi, character in the Louvre Royal
Servius 43 Ballet (1619) 67
Adonis and Melos 122n. 58 see also aition played by Luynes (q. v.) 91, 161n. 91
Amaracus (q. v.) 116n. 10 Tarcagnota, Giovanni
218 Index of names
Adone 29, 32–4, 58 Trissino, Giangiorgio 31, 132n. 62

aition of maidenhair (q. v.) 34, 66, 134n. Tristan (François) l’Hermite 145n. 22
86 Tristan, Marie-France 100
anemone and poppy 134n. 86 Tronsarelli, Ottavio 96
the boar in love with Adonis 34 Tuzet, Hélène xi, 66
Taro see Fornovo di Taro Typhon 3–4
Tasso, Torquato 70, 96, 110 Tzetzes, Isaac 46
allegory and censorship 37, 136–7n. 105 Tzetzes, John 46
garden of Armida 110 see also gardens
Gerusalemme liberata 37, 59, 62 Ubaldini, Roberto, papal Nuncio in France
Gerusalemme liberata and Marino’s 97, 101
Adone 59, 62, 63, 65, 67 Udine, Ercole 156n. 36
Tancredi 91, 104 Umoristi, Academy of (Rome) 99
Tebaldeo, Antonio 23 Urania (Muse) 18, 23, 117n. 16
Tempe 18 Uranus 68
Terence 45 Urban VIII, Pope 54, 98, 99, 145n. 25
Tertullian 87 Urceo, Antonio see Codro
Tesauro, Emanuele 144n. 13 Urfé (d’), Honoré 62, 64, 149n. 75
Textor Ravisius, Joannes 42–3, 139n.
19–22, 140n. 23 Valois, family of 79
Thamous, boatswain 159n. 69 van Dyck, Anton 35
Thamus see Tammuz Vanini, Giulio Cesare 101–2, 164–5n. 33–4
Thamuz see Tammuz and 37
Thamyras see Tamira, Piero Varro
Theias, King of Assyria 1 etymology of ‘apples’ 15, 122n. 58
Theocritea, Scholia, on Adonis as wheat 43 Vasari, Giorgio 35
Theocriteum, Corpus 2 Vatican Mythographer III 41
fifteenth-century circulation 7, 30, 41 Vecellio, Tiziano see Titian
Theocritus 1, 2 Vendramin, Paolo, Adone. Tragedia
in fifteenth-century Ferrara 7 musicale 96–7
in fifteenth-century Naples 7, 115–6n. Venus
7–8, 134n. 86, 139n. 18 Adonis’ mistress xi, 1 and passim
imitated by Alamanni 31, 41, 44 as the Great Mother 10–11
imitated by Le Breton 81, 103 and lettuce 44–5
imitated by Marino 58, 69–70 and Mercury 68, 101
Theophrastus 13, 15, 17 and the Hesperides 17
Thetis 69, 81 her hair turned into maidenhair 34 see
Tintoretto 35 also maidenhair, aition
Tiraboschi, Girolamo 129–30n. 42 in mourning for Adonis 10–11, 41
Tirsenia, character in Ferrari’s Hesperides in rustic mode 34, 58–9
107, 110 orange trees sacred to 18–19, 23–4
Titans 70–1 planet 15
Titian, ‘Venus and Adonis’ 35 Venus hortensis (‘Venus of the gardens’)
Titus 60 103
Tixier de Ravisi, Jean see Textor Ravisius, as the Virgin Mary 5, 68, 99
Joannes see also Aphrodite
Tolkowski, Samuel 121n.45, 122n. 52 Vergerio, Pier Paolo 33
Tournebu (de), Odet 156n. 30 Vergil, Polydore 42
Triptolemus 3–4 Verino, Ugolino 16, 123–4n. 70
Index of names 219
Veronese, Paolo 35 Vulcan 43, 47, 56

Vesuvius, Mount 18
Viau (de), Théophile 145n. 22 Walahfrid Strabo 13
Vida, Marco Girolamo 22 West, M. L. 71
Vida, Ottonello 132n. 59 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (von), Ulrich 2
Virgil 9, 25–8, 30, 31, 42, 67, 88, 120–1n. wind instruments, Adonis and 140n. 30 see
43, 127n. 21, 128n. 27 also gingros (‘pipe’); abobas (‘pipe’)
ancient biographies of 17 Wittard, Claude 40
and citron trees 13, 15, 17
imitated by Bembo 25 Xenophon 102, 165n. 40
imitated by Fracastoro 26
imitated by Pontano 10–13 Yonge, C. D. 44
imitated in Sarca 26–7
recommended as a model of style 22 Zabughin, Vladimiro 20, 24
tomb of 18 Zampieri, Domenico see Domenichino
Vittorino da Feltre 115n. 7 Zeus 70–1 see also Jupiter
Vivien 130n. 44 Zorzi, Francesco, on the Androgyne
Voiture, Vincent 145n. 22 101–2, 165n. 37
Voltaire 153n. 6 Zuccari, Federico 47–8
Vossius, Isaac 141n. 45 Zuccari, Taddeo 35

Caruso, Carlo Adonis The Myth of The Dying God in The Italian Renaissance

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Adonis

The Myth of the Dying God in

50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway

Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published 2013

© Carlo Caruso, 2013

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

List of illustrations vii

1 An ancient myth revisited: Adonis as citrus tree 6

2 Adonis and the Renaissance idyll 21

3 Adonis in sixteenth-century mythography 39

4 Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (i): From pastoral to epic poem 49

The poem and the myth 65

5 Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (ii): The king’s poem 73

6 The seventeenth-century aftermath 95

1 G. B. Marino, L’Adone (Paris: Olivier de Varennes, 1623). Title page

In the following pages I shall assume knowledge of such common equivalences as

Hammon et arentis Libyes ac Byblius Adon.

An ancient myth revisited: Adonis as citrus tree

Pontano and the myth of Adonis

The solar myth in Pontano’s Urania

The Garden of the Hesperides

Competition with the ancients

The search for the Hesperides

Adonis as citrus tree

New myths out of ancient verse

Adonis and the Renaissance idyll

The legacy of Pontano

The pitfalls of inventiveness

other contemporary poet should be acknowledged as equally outstanding. He

Adonis and the vernacular idyll: the eclogue

nothing comparable to Pontano’s Horti Hesperidum is to be seen for over a hundred

‘Venere’, a political allegory based on a reworking of the Adoniac episode.59 A final

Adonis and the vernacular idyll: the stanzaic poem

Ovid’s Adonis in translation

Adonis in sixteenth-century mythography

As observed in the previous chapter, an adherence to the tradition of the pastoral-

Early attempts at a new mythography

Lelio Gregorio Giraldi’s pagan gods

Hinc genitali arvo tantum lactuca resistit,

Natale Conti’s explanation of myths

resorting to ‘medieval’ distinctions and classifications as historice, physice, ethice,

The solar myth of Adonis in decorative cycles

Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (i): From

In 1704, the sixteen-year-old Alexander Pope commenced his Discourse on Pastoral

Figure 1 G. B. Marino, L’Adone (Paris: Olivier de Varennes, 1623). Title page

Marino’s life and works

or at least of benign acceptance.20 Marino’s proximity to the newest favourite, Charles

An outline of the Adone

Origin and growth of the ‘grand poem’

Jean Chapelain’s defence of the Adone

The poem and the myth

L’afflitta Citerea, quando il bel viso

Hermaphroditus – as the combination of their Greek names, Hermes and Aphrodite,

It is a passage fraught with literary reminiscences – besides Theocritus, one perceives