Renaissance Society of America

Cristoforo Landino's Aeneid and the Humanist Critical Tradition

Author(s): Craig Kallendorf
Source: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Winter, 1983), pp. 519-546
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of
America
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RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY
Edited by BRIDGET GELLERT LYONS & EDWARD P. MAHONEY
Associate Editors s. F. JOHNSON C. WILLIAM MILLER
MARGARET L. RANALD

CristoforoLandino'sAeneid andtheHumanist
CriticalTradition*
by CRAIG KALLENDORF

There is little question that the Virgil criticism of early Italian

humanism reachedits zenith in the DisputationesCamaldulenses
of Cristoforo Landino. Professor of rhetoric and poetry at the Flor-
entine Studium from 1457 to 1497, Landino was active in the circle of
philosophers, poets, and scholarsassociatedwith Marsilio Ficino and
often referredto now as the "Platonic Academy of Florence." The

*Researchfor this articlewas supportedby grantsfrom the Newberry Libraryand

the University of North Carolina.I am gratefulto ProfessorVirginiaBrown and Dr.
Arthur Field for sharing with me the results of their work on Virgil in the early
Renaissance,and to ProfessorsPaulOskarKristeller,PhilipStadter,andBarbaraGold
for reading an earlierversion of this paper and suggesting a number of substantial
improvements.
In quoting early texts throughout this article, I have expandedabbreviationsand
contractionsand followed the modern typographicalconventions with respectto i/j,
u/v, and vv.
1Foran introductionto Landino'slife and works, see FrankJ. Fata, "Landinoon
Dante," Diss. Johns Hopkins 1966, pp. 2-27; Arthur Field, "The Beginning of the
Philosophical Renaissance in Florence, I454-I469," Diss. University of Michigan
I980, pp. 200-207; E. Garin, Testi inediti e rari di CristoforoLandino e FrancescoFilelfo
(Florence, 1949), pp. 3-I I; A.M. Bandini, Specimenliteraturaeflorentinaesaeculi XV, 2
vols. (Florence, 1747-51); and Alessandro Perosa, "Una fonte secentesca dello Speci-
men del Bandini in un codice della Biblioteca Marucelliana," Bibliofilia, 42 (1940), 229-
56. On the Platonic Academy, see Paul O. Kristeller, "The Platonic Academy of
Florence," in Renaissance Thought II (New York, 1965), pp. 89-IOI; Nesca A. Robb,
Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance(London, 1935); and A. della Torre, Storia dell'
accademiaplatonica di Firenze (Florence, 1902).
[ 5191
520 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

dialogue, written in 1472 and set a few years earlierin the monastery
at Camaldoli,2begins as an examinationof the active and contempla-
tive lives and the natureof the summumbonum(Books I and II). Since
Landino believed that Virgil also described the summumbonumand
the path by which we reachit,3 Books IIIand IV of the Disputationes
turn to the Aeneid as a parallel source of philosophical truth. The
result is an extended allegory of the first half of the poem, an allegory
that follows Aeneas scene by scene from the sensual pleasures of
Troy through the active life (Carthage)to the contemplative life in
Italy.
Landino did not confine his discussion of the Aeneidto the Disputa-
tiones.We know that he lectured on the poem during the academic
year 1462-63, and the notes for this course were identified in 1978 at
the Biblioteca Casanatensein Rome (Codex 1368).4 This manuscript
touches on quite a number of Landino's key allegoricalideas, sug-
2Fora discussionof the problemsraisedin datingthe dialogue,see PeterLohe, "Die
Datierung der 'DisputationesCamaldulenses'des Cristoforo Landino,"Rinascimento,
9 (I969), 291-99 and the introduction to Lohe's criticaledition of the Disputationes
Camaldulenses (Florence, 1980), pp. xxx-xxxiii. An alternativeapproachis taken by
Roberto Cardiniin La criticadelLandino(Florence,I973), p. 152, n. 37.
3All citations of the Disputationes
are from Lohe's criticaledition; this referenceis
found on p. I Io. We should note thatLandino'sinterestin the ethicalcontentof poetry
has its roots in the medieval accessusad auctorestradition,which began the study of a
classical poem with an introductory analysis of the work and its author. The last
section of this analysisconsideredwhich partof philosophythe poem should be placed
under ("cuipartiphilosophiaesupponatur"),andthe answergenerallygiven was "eth-
ics." Arnulfof Orleans,for example, does this with the Metamorphoses, which "is to be
placedunderethics, since it teachesus to scorn those temporalthings which aretransi-
tory and inconstant,a teachingwhich is relevantto morality"("ethicesupponiturquia
docet nos ista temporaliaque transitoriaet mutabilia,contempnere,quod pertinetad
moralitatem,"as quoted by Fausto Ghisalbertiin "Arnolfo d'Orleans, un cultore di
Ovidio nel secolo XII," Memoriedel RealeIstitutoLombardo, 24 [1932], I81). On the
accessusad auctores,see Edwin A. Quain, S.J., "The Medieval Accessusad Auctores,"
Traditio, 3 (I945), 2I5-64; Fausto Ghisalberti, "Mediaeval Biographies of Ovid,"
JWCI, 9 (1946), Io-59; and Accessus ad Auctores, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Berchem-
Brussels, I954).
4Information on the courses that Landino gave at the Studium may be found in
Cardini, La criticadel Landino, pp. I6-I7 and Manfred Lentzen, "Zum gegenwartigen
Stand der Landino Forschung," WolfenbittelerRenaissanceMitteilungen, 5 (I98I), 93-
94. The 1462-63 commentary was identified by Arthur Field and announced in "A
Manuscript ofCristoforo Landino's First Lectures on Virgil, I462-63," RQ, 3 I (978),
17-20; I was able to examine this manuscript in the fall of 1981, after studying Lan-
dino's other work on Virgil, and feel confident that Field's attribution is correct.
Cardini, La criticadel Landino, pp. 312-26 has published the preface to the year's lec-
tures, "Clarissimi viri Christophori Landini praefatio in Virgilio habita in gymnasio
Florentino, I462."
 CRISTOFORO LANDINO'S AENEID 521

gesting that the seminal points in the Disputationeswere already cir-

culating in Florence in the early I46os. What is more, Landino pub-
lished a line by line commentary to the whole Aeneid in 1488, a
commentary which quickly entered the canon of scholarly aids
found in the often-reprinted "Vergilius cum commentariis
quinque."5 Though it emphasizes other issues, this commentary
makes passing references to many of the same allegorical points
taken up at length in the dialogue. Finally, Landino wrote a com-
mentary to Dante's Commedia.6 Since he believed that Dante used the
Aeneidas a model in this same quest for the summumbonum,Landino
often begins his interpretation of the Commedia,especially in the
Inferno,by presenting brief allegorizationsof relevantpassages from
Virgil. Thus many key ideas from the Disputationesmay also be
found elsewhere in Landino'sscholarlywritings.
Landino's moral allegory was widely known in its own day. The
Disputationeswas first published in 1480, and it was reprintedeight
times by 1605, with Italiantranslationsappearingtwice during this
period. Its audiencewas international,since reprinteditions appeared
in Strasbourg, Paris, Geneva, and Basel, and a copy of the editio
princepshas been identified in the library ofJohn Shirwood, Bishop
of Durham.7 We should also remember that the impact of the Dispu-
tationesis not limited to literature;for example, the disposition of
scenes in Pietro da Cortona's Galleriadi Enea, in Rome's Palazzo
Doria Pamphili, rests on the painter's study of Landino.8What is

5References to the 1488 commentary are to Vergiliuscumicommentariisquinque (Ven-

ice, I493).
6Landino's Dante commentary was first printed in Florence, 1481: Comentodi Chris-
tophoroLandino Fiorentinosopra la Comediadi Danthe Alighieri Poeta Fiorentino(Hain Nr.
5946). I have referred to the Venice, 1536 edition: Cantica del divino poeta Danthe
Alighierifiorentino, See also Landino's "Prolusione dantesca," in Scritticriticie teorici,ed.
Roberto Cardini (Rome, 1974), 1,45-55; the same speech is edited by Manfred Lent-
zen, who feels that it is Landino's inaugural lecture in the Florentine Studium ("Cristo-
foro Landinos Antrittsvorlesung im Studio Fiorentino," RomanischeForschungen, 8I
[1969], 60-88).
7Bibliographical information on the Disputationes Camaldulensesmay be found in
the introduction to Lohe's edition, pp. xvi-xvii, xxiv-xxix. On Bishop Shirwood and
his copy of the Disputationes, see P. S. Allen, "Bishop Shirwood of Durham and His
Library," EHR, 25 (1910), 445-56.
8Virgilio nell'arte e nella culturaeuropea,the catalogue of an exhibition held at Rome's
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, 24 September to 24 November 1981, ed. Marcello
Fagiolo (Rome, 1981), pp. 161-71.
522 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

more, Landino'scommentariespresentedat least some of his allegor-

ical observations from the Disputationesto other readers. His 1462-63
lecture series introduced his ideas to his students in Florence, and the
1488 commentary became a best seller of sorts, since it was included
in nineteen of the thirty-five editions of Virgil published between its
first appearance and I500.9 And the Dante commentary, because it
was written in Italian, made many of the same points availableto a
less scholarly audience.
As the most fully developed expression of Landino'sVirgil criti-
cism, the Disputationesis thus centralto the receptionof the Aeneidin
RenaissanceItaly. Yet surprisingly,modern scholarswho have writ-
ten on the dialogue have not adequatelyexplored its relationshipto
the Aeneidcriticism of Landino'shumanistpredecessorsand contem-
poraries. Don Cameron Allen, for example, is interestedin the Dis-
putationes as it relates to the broad tradition of Renaissanceallegory,
and Eugen Wolfs often-cited articleis most valuablefor its treatment
of Landino's cultural and philosophical interests. Carrying through
this interest in Landino's philosophy, Arthur Field uses the Disputa-
tionesas part of his argument that the emphasis on the contemplative
life in Medici Florence did not require a renunciationof the active
life. Eberhard Miiller-Bochat establishes Landino's debt to the
Odysseus of Neoplatonic tradition, and Michael Murrin uses the
Disputationesas the focal point for a general discussion of Virgil's
Platonism. Landino's ideas about poetry and literary criticism pro-
vide a subject for Roberto Cardini, and a number of fine studies have
examined Landino'sDante commentary in relationto his work with
the Disputationes.Vladimiro Zabughin does look briefly at the role of
Landino's work in ItalianRenaissanceVirgil criticism, but the ambi-
tious scope of his survey keeps him from devoting sufficient atten-
tion specifically to the Disputationes.10 In other words, the available

9Information on Landino's published commentary may be found in Giuliano Mam-

belli, Gli annali delle edizioni virgiliane (Florence, 1954), pp. 30-40. The editions entered
under numbers 56 and 71 may also have contained Landino's commentary.
"'Don Cameron Allen, Mysteriously Meant: The Rediscoveryof Pagan Symbolism and
Allegorical Interpretationin the Renaissance(Baltimore, 1970), pp. 142-54; Eugen Wolf,
"Die allegorische Vergilerklarung des Cristoforo Landino," Neue Jahrbiicherfur das
klassischeAltertum, Geschichte,unddeutscheLiteraturund fir Pddagogik,43 (1919), 453-79;
Arthur Field, "Beginning of the Philosophical Renaissance," pp. 207, 234-36;
Eberhard Miiller-Bochat, Leon Battista Alberti und die Vergil-Deutungder Disputationes
Camaldulenses. Zur allegorischenDichter-Erkldrungbei CristoforoLandino, Schriften und
 CRISTOFORO LANDINO'S AENEID 523

studies do not focus in detail on the Aeneiditself and on how the

Disputationesshaped and reshapedthe way in which Landino's con-
temporaries interpretedthe poem. This articleaims to provide that
focus by assessing Landino'splace within the traditionof Italianhu-
manist Aeneidcriticism.
* * *

When calledto teach rhetoricand poetry at the FlorentineStudium,

Landino received tangible recognition for his achievements as a cul-
tural heir of Petrarchand the Florentinehumanist tradition. Thus he
lectured on Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, and Virgil, and he
translatedPliny's NaturalHistoryin an effortto stimulateappreciation
for the ancient authors.11And, in the prefatory matter to his Dante
commentary, Landinooffers a eulogy of Florenceas the birthplaceof
the Italian cultural revival. Beginning with Dante, he writes, the
revival of eloquence has continued with Petrarch, Boccaccio, Salu-
tati, Bruni, Poggio, Traversari, Alberti, Palmieri, Niccoli12-and,
by extension, with Landino himself. We should expect, then, that
Landino will turn to the Aeneid with this same awareness of the
culturaltraditionin which he saw himself participating.
Near the beginning of the third book of the Disputationes,at the
point where he takes up his allegorizationof the Aeneid,Landinothus
announces his intentions in a way that invites us to examine his
commentary more closely as a partof this tradition:
What you are seeking, moreover, is much nobler, something which lies more
hidden in obscurity and has never been revealed in its own sequential order by
anyone, as far as I know, up to this point. Neither grammarian nor rhetorician
knows this, but it must be brought to light from the deepest secrets ofphiloso-

Vortrage des Petrarca-Instituts K61n, 21 (Krefeld, 1968), p. 13; Michael Murrin, The
Allegorical Epic: Essays in Its Rise and Decline (Chicago, 1980), pp. 28-34; Roberto
Cardini, La critica del Landino, pp. 39-65, 94-I00, 106-I2; Frank Fata, "Landino on
Dante," pp. 29-61; Manfred Lentzen, Studien zur Dante-Exegese CristoforoLandinos,
Studi italiani, 12 (Cologne, 1971), pp. 137-51; Eberhard Muller-Bochat, "Der alle-
gorische Aneas und die Auslegung des danteschen Jenseits im 14. Jahrhundert,"
Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch,44/45 (1967), 59-8I; Michele Barbi, Dellafortuna di Dante nel
secolo XVI (Pisa, 1890), pp. 150-79; and Vladimiro Zabughin, Vergilionel Rinascimento
italiano da Dante a TorquatoTasso (Bologna, 1921-23), I, 94-202.
"Cardini, La criticadel Landino, pp. 16-17 and Field, "Beginning of the Philosophi-
cal Renaissance," p. 205.
12Sigs. AA6-AA7.
524 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

phy, for you wish to know what Virgil meantin his mysteriesconcerningthe
wanderingsof Aeneasandthe departureof thatman to Italy.13

This passage raises two questions for the modern scholar who ap-
proaches the Disputationesas a part of the humanists'work on Virgil.
First, what are the implications of Landino'sdecision to analyze the
Aeneid as a source of philosophicaltruth (truth derived "from the
deepest secrets of philosophy")?The second question, which is more
difficult to answer, revolves aroundhow Landinocan claim to be the
first to explicate the hidden meaning of the poem ("what you are
seeking . . . has never been revealed in its own sequential order by
anyone, as far as I know, up to this point"). In trying to answer these
questions, we shall see how carefullyLandino defines his intentions
in relation to his humanist predecessorsand contemporaries.
When he lectured on the Aeneid at the Florentine Studium,and
when he put his notes in order for publicationin 1488, Landino was
approachingthe poem asgrammaticus and rhetor.The result is a com-
mentary in the best tradition of humanist philology. Although Lan-
dino gave in here with some regularityto his love of allegorizing, the
1488 commentary ostensibly sets out to explain difficult words and
phrases, locate forgotten placenames, identify rhetoricalfigures, and
the like. When he takes up the Aeneidin the Disputationes,however,
Landino self-consciously turns away from this approach to extract
from the poem what can be derived "from the deepest secrets of
philosophy." He is able to do this because he also saw poetry as a
source of philosophical truth. Drawing on a passage from Boccac-
cio's Genealogiedeorumgentilium,Landino refersto the philosophical
content of poetry as "civic theology," which he defines as follows:

Indeed, for that reason the third [kind of theology] is called "civic," since
precepts for living the good and happy life are brought forth from it. Therefore
the poets-the most learned men you can find-generally mix together all
these things into one, so that by a certain optimum proportion they at the same
time caress the ears with the greatest pleasure and nourish the mind with

13"Quodautem petis, id et multo divinius est et magis in obscuro latet et a nullo,

quod ego quidem sciam, hactenus sua serie patefactum, quod neque grammaticus
neque rhetor noverit, sed sit ex intimis philosophiae arcaniseruendum. Vis enim
nosse, quid per sua illa aenigmatade Aeneae erroribusdeque eius hominis in Italiam
profectionesibi Maro voluerit" (pp. I 7-18). The translationand all those that follow
are my own.
 CRISTOFORO LANDINO'S AENEID 525

profound knowledge, leading us to virtue and morality and to the highest

14
good itself.
The content of poetry, in other words, consists of preceptsfor living
a virtuous and happy life-moral philosophy, we would customarily
call it. In teaching us ethics, these precepts ultimately lead us to the
summumbonumitself. If we recall that the first two books of the
Disputationesdiscuss this same search for the highest good, it is easy
to see how Landino the philosopher shades into Landino the Virgil
critic.
In theory, then, the function of the philosopher-criticdiffersfrom
that of the grammarian-rhetorician.Landino confirms this point in
his 1488 commentary when he writes, "for as in our Disputationes
Camaldulenses we executed the function of an expounder of philoso-
phy, so in this commentary we shallperformthe offices of grammar-
ian and teacherof rhetoric."15Nevertheless, we should note that the
line by line commentary is by no means free of the influence of
philosophical criticism, since, as the preface clearly states, the real
value of the poem lies in its ethicalcontent:
Moreover, in regardto living the good andhappylife, who could not see that
all the precepts by which the human life is properly trained can easily be
brought forth and perceivedfrom this poet, as from the honored springs of
philosophy? . . . Virgil's poem portraysevery kind of human life, so that
thereis no class, age, sex, or, finally,no conditionwhich could not learnfrom

14"Tertium[genus theologiae]vero iccircocivile appellant,quiainde ad bene beate-

que vivendum praeceptapromantur.Consuevere igitur poetae, quibus nihil doctius
reperias,haec omnia ita confundereatque in unum conmiscere, ut optimo quodam
temperamentoeodem tempore et aures summa voluptate demulceantet mentem re-
conditadoctrinaalantac nos ad rectumatquehonestumet ad ipsum summum bonum
deducant" (Disputationes Camaldulenses, p. 167). Landino is referring here to Varro's
division of theology into mythical, physical, and civic, a distinction preserved in
Augustine, Civ. Dei 6.5 and presented in turn by Boccaccio, Genealogie deorumgenti-
lium libri, ed. Vincenzo Romano (Bari, 1951), II, 767-68. See also the "Prolusione
dantesca," where Landino concludes that in poetry countless rules and examples for
speaking well and for acting well are found (ed. Roberto Cardini, in La critica del
Landino, p. 368).
15"Nam quemadmodum in chamaldulensibus philosophi interpretis munus obivi-
mus, sic in his commentariis grammatici rhetorisque vices praestabimus" (fol. 112).
The preference of the humanist commentary for grammatical and rhetorical material
has been stressed by Jozef IJsewijn, "Laurentius Vallas sprachliche Kommentare," in
Der Kommentarin derRenaissance,ed. August Buck and Otto Herding, Kommission fur
Humanismusforschung, Mitteilung, I (Boppard, I975). IJsewijn argues that Valla
freed the commentary of moralizing tendencies, although some later humanists were
less rigid than he in preserving the distinction (p. 97).
526 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

it the entirety of its duties. With what keenness, I ask you, with what flood of
words does he rail at fear, cowardice, prodigality, incontinence, impiety,
treachery, and every kind of injustice along with the remaining vices? On the
other hand, with what praises and rewards does he attend invincible magna-
nimity and a deliberate undertaking of dangers on behalf of country and par-
ents, relatives and friends? With what praises and rewards does he accompany
respect for a god, dutiful conduct toward one's ancestors, and affectionate
esteem for all?16

Although he is writing as a grammarian-rhetoricianhere, Landino

takes this opportunity to direct the reader'sattention to the ethical
content of the poem he is about to study. The Aeneid, Landino
writes, is a complete source of ethical precepts for all men and
women, a pattern for praising virtue and condemning vice. In a
sense, the moral content of the poem justifies the labors of the philol-
ogist, and the philological commentary in turn provides the founda-
tion for the work of the philosopher-critic.
The Disputationes,then, aims to provide an exposition of the con-
tent of the Aeneidaccording to the principlesof moral philosophy, an
exposition that Landino consciously sets apart in theory from the
commentaries of the humanist grammarian-rhetoricians.This much
is clearenough; what is less clearis his intention in claiming original-
ity for this philosophical exposition. Landino certainly knew the

'6"Quodautemad bene beatequevivendum pertinet,quis non videatomnia quibus

vita humana recte instituatur,praeceptaab hoc poeta veluti ex adorandisphilosophiae
scatebrispromi facile ac percipiposse? . . . Maronispoema omne humanaevitae ge-
nus exprimit, ut nullus hominum ordo, nulla aetas, nullus sexus sit, nulla denique
conditio, quae ab eo sua officianon integre addiscat.Qua obsecro ille acrimonia,quo
verborum flumine, metum, ignaviam, luxuriam, incontinentiam,impietatem, per-
fidiam, ac omnia iniustitiaegenera reliquaquevitia insectatur,vexat? Quibus contra
laudibus, quibus praemiisinvictam animi magnitudinem,et pro patria, pro parenti-
bus, pro cognatis amicisque consideratampericulorumsusceptionem, religionem in
deum, pietatem in maiores, charitatemin omnes prosequitur?"("ChristophoriLan-
dini Florentinide peculiariPubliiVirgiliiMaronislaude,honestapraefatio,"in Virgil's
Opera[Venice, 1544;reprintNew York, 1976],fols. i-ii of the "Praenotamenta.")See
also the "Praefatio in Virgilio," in La criticadel Landino, ed. Roberto Cardini, pp. 324-
26: "Indeed, if you set forth [Virgil] for yourselves to imitate as a standard and model
of life, you will perceive that nothing will be lacking from those things which are
associated with living a happy and blessed life"("Quem [Maronem] quidem si vobis
tamquam normam exemplarque vitae ad imitandum proposueritis, nihil ex iis quae ad
bene beateque vivendum pertinent vobis defuturum sentietis"). Landino makes the
same point in a recently discovered oration on Virgil from the I46os, which is edited
by Arthur Field in "An Inaugural Oration by Cristoforo Landino in Praise of Virgil
(From Codex '2,' Casa Cavalli, Ravenna)," Rinascimento,2nd ser., 2I (1981), 243.
 CRISTOFORO LANDINO'S AENEID 527

works of Fulgentius, for instance, and their congruence of aim is

apparenteven from the title of Fulgentius'study: ExpositioVirgilianae
continentiaesecundum philosophosmoralis.17The Expositiointerpretsthe
Aeneidas a descriptionof the process by which man grows to ethical
maturity, a process in which the books of the Aeneidcorrespond to
stages of growth from infancy to maturity. Fulgentius' analysis is
leisurely enough to comment on many of the key scenes in the poem,
so that the Cyclops story, for example, shows how a child who is
released from fear of his guardianabandons himself to youthful er-
ror, and the burials of Palinurus("wandering vision") and Misenus
("empty praise") representnecessary steps along the path to ethical
maturity.18Landino also draws regularly from the commentary of
Bernardus Silvestris, which is single-mindedly moral. Bernardus
finds in the Aeneid"the greatest . . . examples and practicalmeans
for approaching the virtuous and fleeing what is forbidden,"19and
his description of the heroic journey as ethical maturation, like
Fulgentius', incorporates detailed treatments of many key passages
from the Aeneid,especially from Book VI. In fact, one of Landino's
most distinctive features-the descriptionof the multiple descensus ad
inferos as a guide to Aeneid VI-can be traced back ultimately to

17Thetext appears in Fulgentius' Opera, ed. Rudolfus Helm (Leipzig, I898), pp. 8I-
I07. The Expositio was commonly available through the Middle Ages and the Renais-
sance (see Remigio Sabbadini,Le scopertedei codicilatini e grecine' secoliXIV e XV
[Florence, 1914; rpt. Florence, 1967], II, 224-25), and it played an influential role in
shaping Petrarch'sapproachto Virgil (Pierrede Nolhac, "Virgile chez Petrarque,"
Studi medievali, NS 5 [I932], 222-23).
18Expositio Virgilianaecontinentiae,pp. 93-94 on the Cyclops; on Palinurusand Mi-
senus, ibid., pp. 95-96.
19"Maxima .. .exempla et excogitationesaggrediendihonestaet fugiendiillicita,"
The Commentary on the FirstSix Booksof the AeneidCommonlyAttributed to Bernardus
Silvestris,ed. JulianWardand ElizabethFrancesJones(Lincoln,Neb., 1977), pp. 2-3.
Though the evidence regardingauthorshipof the commentary is inconclusive, the
Joneses consider the attributionto Bernardussuspect; see the introduction to their
edition of the text, pp. ix-xi. Allen, Mysteriously
Meant,pp. I39-40 and note 2I indi-
cates that the commentarywas known to Landinobut was not printedin the Renais-
sance. It was also known to Salutati,whose De laboribus Herculiswas an important
source of allegoricalmaterialfor the Disputationes(Lentzen,Studienzur Dante-Exegese,
pp. I49-50). Giorgio Padoan, "Tradizionee fortuna del commento all' 'Eneida' di
Bernardo Silvestre," Italia medioevalee umanistica,3 (I960), 234-36 argues that the
impactof Bernardus'work is greaterthanhis detractorsmight think, andthe survey of
manuscriptsmade for the Jones edition shows that the commentary remainedfairly
popularthrough the fifteenthcentury.
528 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

Bernardus.2"We cannot even say that Landinowas the first humanist

to provide the poem as a whole with an interpretationwhich stressed
its philosophical content. The allegory found in Petrarch's Seniles
4.4, for example, describes Aeneas' role as a traveller through the
treacherousseas of life and the temptations (such as sensuallove) that
must be overcome along the way.21 Moreover, Francesco Filelfo's
letter to Ciriaco d'Ancona, which is cited in the Disputationes,fore-
shadows Landino'sinterest in the active and contemplative lives as a
criticalmotif in the Aeneid:
For [Virgil] says that he "sings of arms," by which he refers to warlike and
active virtues, for arms are the instruments of waging war and fighting. And
he says that he sings of "the man," by which he refers to the refined and
intellectual virtues, in which wisdom and prudence hold pre-eminence...
And thus in the first six books of the Aeneid contemplation especially and
deliberation hold their place, but in the second six books there is praise for
action.22

For Filelfo, as for Landino, the Aeneid must be interpreted "from the
deepest secrets of philosophy."
Interestingly enough, our effort to evaluate Landino's claim to
originality here is complicatedby his decision to preparea philosoph-
ical ratherthan a philological commentary. If we wish to check up on
sources for a given passage in the dialogue, we have to consider not
only those few "commentaries" and letters which deal explicitly
with the philosophical content of the Aeneidas a whole, but also with
the many other treatments of moral philosophy in general which
might draw on Virgil for examples and precepts. For instance, we
know that Landino and Ficino readone another'swork,23and Ficino
adinferosaretreatedat length in
2°Seebelow, pp. 543-44. The types of the descensus
the Disputationes,pp. 212-I9; Bernardus'treatmentappearson p. 30 of his Commen-
tary.
21Thisletter may be found in Petrarch'sOperaquaeextantomnia(Basel, 1581), pp.
786-89. On Petrarch'sapproachto Virgil in general,see Pierrede Nolhac, Petrarque et
l'Humanisme, 2nd ed. (Paris, I907), pp. I40-6I.
22"Ait [Vergilius] enim se canere arma quo ad virtutes bellicas et activas, nam
bellandi pugnandique instrumenta sunt arma. Et virum quo ad virtutes urbanas intel-
lectivasque in quibus sapientia tenet et prudentia principatum. ... Itaque in primis
sex aeneidos libris contemplatio maxime et consultatio locum habet. In secundis autem
libris sex actionis est laus" (EpistolarumFrancisciPhilelphi librisedecim[Paris, 1513], fols.
5-5v).
23We know from a letter to Bartolomeo Scala that Ficino read the Disputationes at
some point: "I have read the Disputationes Camaldulensesof Cristoforo Landino; in
these books he penetrates the utmost recesses of Virgil" ("Legi quaestiones Chris-
tophori Landini Camaldulenses: in iis libris Maronis adyta penetrat"; quoted by Lent-
 CRISTOFORO LANDINO'S AENEID 529

even serves as a minor characterin the Disputationes.Thus we would

expect some cross-fertilizationwhen we read in an appendix to Fi-
cino's Philebuscommentary that Minerva,Juno, and Venus represent
the contemplative, active, and pleasurablelifestyles, so that "for this
reason Aeneas is representedas afflictedand disturbedon account of
Juno, that is, on account of zeal for ruling."24FrancescoFilelfo, to
select another example, wrote a fairly popular treatiseon moral phi-
losophy, De moralidisciplina,and the Aeneidis one of his favorite
sources for illustrative material;in discussing the virtue of courage,
for example, he explains the incompatibility of bravery and despair
by referring to Aen. II.354.25A number of humanist dialogues also
mention the Aeneidas a source of ethical insight. In Petrarch'sSecre-
tum, for example, Francescoallegorizes the storm from Aen. I. 5off.
as a struggle between reasonand the irascibleand concupiscentappe-
tites, to show in general how virtuous sententiaecan help restrainthe
passions.26Poggio Bracciolini's De avaritiain turn presents an ex-
tended allegory of Aeneas' encounter with the Harpiesas a part of its
treatment of greed.27

zen in his Studien zur Dante-Exegese, pp. I53-54, n. 48). Likewise, Landino describes
his pleasure at the opportunity to examine a work of Ficino's: "You will easily per-
ceive, therefore, of what sort these things are and how much they should be esteemed,
from that as yet unpolished book which our Marsilio is preparing but has not yet
published. But when I had tarried at his house in Figline, I chanced upon that book,
opened it, and read through a number of passages with the greatest pleasure" ("Haec
igitur et qualia sint et quanti facienda, facile ex eo libro percipies, quem nondum
expolitum in manibus hic noster Marsilius habet nec adhuc edidit. Verum ego, cum
apud ipsum in Fighinensi divertissem, casu in eum incidens aperui locosque quosdam
summa cum voluptate percurri"; Disputationes Camaldulenses,p. 260).
24"Propterea fingitur Aeneas objunonem perturbatione vexatus, id est, ob studium
imperandi" (Marsilio Ficino: The 'Philebus' Commentary, ed. and trans. Michael J. B.
Allen [Berkeley, I975], p. 449, cited by Lentzen, Studien zur Dante-Exegese, p. I53).
The dating of this work is difficult to establish precisely, but Landino does refer explic-
itly to Ficino's Philebus commentary in the Disputationes Camaldulenses(p. 68), as Allen
(The 'Philebus' Commentary, p. io) and P. 0. Kristeller (Supplementum Ficinianum
[Florence, I937], I,CXXII) note.
25FrancisciPhilelphi de morali disciplinalibri quinque(Venice, 1552), fol. 66. Aeneas at
this point encourages his troops in a cause he considers hopeless: "the one salvation for
the conquered is to hope for no salvation" ("Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem").
26Secretum, in Prose, ed. G. Martellotti and E. Carrara, La letteratura italiana, storia e
testi, 7 (Milan and Naples, n.d.), pp. 122-24; cf. Sen. 4.4. This allegorical interpreta-
tion was popular among the early humanists; see also II comentodi Giovanni Boccaccio
sopra la commedia,ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence, 1863), pp. 249-50, and Filelfo's De
moralidisciplina, fol. 5.
27De avaritia, in Prosatori latini del Quattrocento,ed. Eugenio Garin, La letteratura
italiana, storia e testi, 13 (Milan and Naples, n.d.), pp. 254-56.
530 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

To complicate matters still further, we should remember that the

humanists' interest in moral philosophy colored their approach to
belles lettresin general, so that we find ethical precepts and examples
scattered throughout most other genres as well. For instance, early
mythological manuals like Boccaccio's Genealogie deorumgentilium
often contain a defense of poetry, which stresses the value of poetry
in inculcating virtue:
Let [the detractorsof literature]readandstudy in the Aeneidwhat exhortations
thereareof Aeneasto his companionson the enduranceof coming labors;what
eagernesswas his in going nobly through the wounds of death for the well-
being of his country; what devotion toward his father, whom he carriedto
safety on his shoulders through houses all afire and collapsing temples and
throughthe midst of enemy forcesanda thousandflyingspears;what mercyto
his enemy Achaemenides;what strengthof spiritin ridiculingandbreakingthe
chainsof wanton love; whatjustice and generositytoward friendsand stran-
gers in offeringgifts to those who deservedthem at the gamesheld in Sicily on
the anniversaryof Anchises'death;what prudence,how much cautionin the
descent to the underworld;what exhortationsto glory his fathergave him;
what skill was his in forming friendships;how greatan obligingnessand trust-
worthinessin carryingthroughwhat he began;how compassionatelyhe wept
at the death of his friend Pallas;and what warnings he frequentlygave his
son.28
For Boccaccio, as for Landino, the Aeneid is a sourcebook in applied
moral philosophy, a collection of scenes and sayings that depict cour-
age and prudence, pietas and clemency and munificence. Moral phi-
losophy also forms the foundation for the humanist theory of educa-
tion,29 as we see from the title of popular pedagogical tracts like

28"Legant et perlegant,que sint in Eneidaad patientiam laborumemergentium

exhortationesEneeadsocios,quisardorillipulchrepervulneramortisprosalutepatrie
fuerit,queergapatrempietas,quemhumerisperardentesundiquedomoset ruentia
templa,perquemedioshosteset millevolantiateladevexitin tutum,quein Achemeni-
demhostemclementia,quodroburanimiadilludendas frangendasque amorispetulci
catenas,queiustitiaatquemunificentia muneribus
circaamicosetexterosin exhibendis
benemeritis,ludisin anniversarioAnchisispatrisapudAcestemperactis,quepruden-
tia, quantacircumspectio in descensuad Inferos,quegenitorisad eum suasionesad
gloriam,que eius in iungendisamicitiissolertia,quamgrandiscomitasfidesquein
conservandis susceptis,quampiein Pallantisamicimortelacrime,queeiusad filium
persepe monita" (II,727-28).
treatisesof Vergerio,Bruni,Vegio,AeneasSylvius,andBattista
29Theeducational
Guarinoformedthe foundationfor the practiceof greatteacherslike Guarinoda
VeronaandVittorinodaFeltre,a practicewhichemphasized characterdevelopment.
As LodovicoCarbonewrites,"Fornotonlycorrectgrammar, butalsogoodcharacter
was learnedfrom Guarino.... All his readingselections,examples,and precepts
 CRISTOFORO LANDINO'S AENEID 531

Maffeo Vegio's De educatione liberorum et eorumclarismoribus.Poetry

like the Aeneidthus teaches the student to praisevirtue and flee vice,
with Aeneas (who is endowed with every virtue) serving the first
function and Dido the second.3"If we turn to the letter collections of
the day, we find discussionsof the books the humanistswere reading
and the philosophical problems they encountered there. For exam-
ple, Coluccio Salutati,whose writings Landinocites frequentlyin his
Disputationes,readsVirgil in searchof what pertainsto upright living
and good character,31and his letters to Giuliano Zonarini, Giovanni
da San Miniato, Giovanni Dominici, and Pellegrino Zambeccariap-
proach poetry in general and the Aeneidin particularwith the inter-
ests of Landino's philosophical criticism prominently displayed.32
Even invective can touch on the same mattersas the Disputationes.As
partof the generaldefense of poetry, for instance, Petrarch'sInvective
contramedicumargues that Virgil wrote about the virtues and human
perfection; this approach then leads to condemnation of lust in the
appearanceof Venus at Aen. II. 89ff.33
We see, then, that the humanists discussed the moral philosophy
of Virgil's Aeneidin a broad spectrum of literaryand scholarly writ-
ings.34Landino's eulogy of Florentine culture, along with his cita-

were related to living a good and happy life" ("Nec enim solum recta litteratura, sed
boni etiam mores a Guaryno discebantur. ... Omnes eius lectiones, omnia docu-
menta, omnia praecepta ad bene beateque vivendum referebantur"; in Lodovici Car-
bonis . . . oratio habita in funere praestantissimioratoriset poetae Guaryni Veronensis, in
Giulio Bertoni, Guarino da Veronafra letteratie cortigiania Ferarra[1429-60] [Geneva,
192I], p. 168).
30Maffeo Vegio, De educationeliberorumet eorumclaris moribus,ed. M. W. Fanning
and A. S. Sullivan, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Latin, I, fasc. 1-2 (Washing-
ton, DC, 1933-36), pp. 87-88.
31Epistolariodi Coluccio Salutati, ed. Francesco Novati (Rome, I89I-19I ), 1,304.
32These letters may be found in the Epistolario, 1,298-307, 321-29, III,285-308,
IV, 170-240, with additional commentary in B. L. Ullman, "Observations on No-
vati's Edition of Salutati's Letters," in Studies in the Italian Renaissance(Rome, 1955),
pp.2I5-I6, 232, 237.
33Invectivecontra medicum, in Opere latine, ed. Antonietta Bufano (Turin, 1975),
II,908.
34The examples of Virgil criticism cited for each genre are by no means the only
ones available. Although an interest in moral philosophy is inherent in Italian human-
ism from its decisive beginnings with Petrarch, this interest did not necessarily result in
sophisticated, technically innovative philosophical speculation. Georg Voigt ap-
proaches this point rather pejoratively when he writes, "was sie [the humanists] Philo-
sophiren nennen, ist nicht viel mehr als die Wiederholung und Variation der klassis-
chen Gemeinplatze fiber die Unbestimmtheit und Unabwendbarkeit des Todes und
532 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

tions and allusions in the Disputationesitself, indicate that he was

familiar with prominent humanists like those we have considered,
and thus with many if not all of the more obvious sources and paral-
lels to his work. In other words, his claims to originality prove even
more puzzling once we move the frame of referenceaway from the
tradition of grammatical-rhetoricalcommentary. What innovation
can Landino possibly claim for himself when he writes that his philo-
sophical interpretation"hasnever been revealedin its own sequential
order by anyone, as far as I know, up to this point"?
To answer this question, we should look again at the scope and
extent of Landino's study as he defines it. It is true that he cannot
claim to be the originator of each and every detail in his analysis,
since many of these points had been taken up before him by other
critics whose interest in moral philosophy appearsin letters, invec-
tives, and mythology manuals as well as overtly philosophical trea-
tises. However, he does claim to be the first to take up these matters
"sua serie," which we could reasonably(if not a little freely) interpret
as "point by point, in their own sequential order." This is not the
same as citing passages from the Aeneidin isolation, as they serve to
illustratedifferentpoints in differentcontexts. If Landinois claiming
to be the first to provide a thorough, systematic, scene by scene
interpretation of Virgil's ethical content, then we can see how his
work differs from those who turned to the Aeneidfor sententiaeand

iiber die Hinfalligkeit alles Irdischen,iiber Tugend und Laster,iiber das Gliick und
hochste Gut, iiberJugend und Alter, Freundschaftund Dankbarkeit,Reichtum und
Geniigsamkeit,Stolz und Demuth, Ruhm und Bescheidenheitund dergleichenmehr.
Oft tritt es deutlichhervor, dass der Autor philosophischeFlorilegienbesassund sich
aus ihnen unterrichtete,was Terentiusoder Virgilius, Cicero oder Boethius, Horatius
oder Augustinus iiber dieses oderjenes Thema gesagt" (Die Wiederbelebung desclassis-
chenAlterthums,oderdas ersteJahrhundert derHumanismus, ed. Max Lehnerdt,3rd ed.
[Berlin, I893], 11,454).This passagehas ramificationsthat do not concernus now for
the history of philosophy, but by making Virgil a source for non-technical moral
philosophizing, it also has implicationsfor literarycriticism. Currentscholarshipon
Landino,unfortunately,has done littleto developtheseimplications.The introduction
to Thomas H. Stahel'stranslationof Books IIIand IV of the Disputationes ("Cristoforo
Landino'sAllegorizationof the Aeneid:Books III and IV of the Camaldolese Disputa-
tions," Diss. Johns Hopkins I968, pp. I5-2I), Eugen Wolfs general article on the
dialogue ("Die allegorische Vergilerklarung,"pp. 470-72), and Lentzen's study of
Landinoon Dante (Studienzur Dante-Exegese,pp. 148-5I) list a few of the most basic
humanistic texts containing moral allegories of the Aeneid.Each of these secondary
works, however, has its focus elsewhere, so that the scope of Landino'ssource study
and its importancefor his allegorizationshave remainedessentiallyunexamined.
 CRISTOFORO LANDINO'S AENEID 533

exempla to adorn their literary efforts. So interpreted, Landino's

claim is beginning to make sense.
Nevertheless, one question remains: did not Fulgentius and
Bernardus Silvestris also present systematic treatments of Virgil's
philosophical content, treatmentswhich considerablyantedateLan-
dino's? Although Landino's phrase "as far as I know" ("quod ego
quidem sciam") allows for the possibility that relevantmaterialmay
have escaped his attention, this does not solve our problem here,
since both the Expositioand the commentary of BernardusSilvestris
left their impact on the Disputationes.35 There are, however, two
relevant approachesto this question. Looking at the context of Lan-
dino's claim for originality, we see that he is distinguishinghis philo-
sophical interpretation from the grammatical-rhetoricalcommen-
tary that he relied on in his teaching, a genre much appreciatedby the
humanists and generallyidentified with them. If in doing so Landino
is implicitly distinguishing his interpretation of the Aeneid from
those of other humanists,his claim for originality is valid, since the
Disputationesis indeed the first thorough philosophicalinterpretation
of the Aeneidassociatedwith the new learning. What is more, we can
go one step furtherif we try again to pin down the meaning of "sua
serie." Both Fulgentiusand BernardusSilvestrisallegorizethe Aeneid
in the order in which Virgil wrote it, beginning with Book I and
taking up in turn Books II, III, IV, and so forth. Landino abandons
Virgil's in mediasres presentation and takes Books II and III before
Book I. If "sua serie" indeed means "point by point, in their own
sequential order," then Landino is indeed the first to provide a
straightforwardaccount of Virgil's philosophical content following
the actualchronology of events ratherthan Virgil's literaryrecasting
of them.
Thus, we see that Landino is claiming to be the first humanist to
produce a systematic, properly ordered interpretationof the moral
philosophy in Virgil's Aeneid. This point is worth establishing be-
cause it gives us the proper frame of reference with which to ap-
proach the Disputationes.Landinowrote his philosophicalanalysisof
the poem as a humanist critic working self-consciously in the tradi-
tion of men like Petrarch, Boccaccio, Salutati, Poggio, and Bruni.
Thus it is only by reading his work next to theirs that we can fully

35Seeabove, notes 17 and I9.

534 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

appreciatehis achievement, which is of necessity both derivative and

innovative.
* * *

As the first humanist to attempt a systematic analysisof AeneidI-

VI according to the principlesof moral philosophy, Landinotook on
a more difficult task than those who approached the poem as an
occasional source of exemplaand sententiae.The observations of his
predecessors, of course, saved him from having to work out every
detail of his allegory by himself. However, the tradition of philo-
sophical commentary availableto Landinowas not a fully consistent
one, with one passage or scene from the Aeneidalways receiving the
same interpretationby every critic. Furthermore,the most common
treatment of any given passage was not necessarilycompatible with
the development of Landino'sallegory as a whole. Thus the Disputa-
tionesis the result of a conscious reworking of the Virgilian critical
tradition, an effort to select among various interpretive options in
order to produce a complete, internallyconsistent moral allegory of
the first six books of the Aeneid.

According to Landino, Aeneas representsthe man in searchof the

summumbonum,that highest good of the philosopherswhich is found
in knowledge of the divine. Thejourney to Italyrepresentsthe strug-
gle through life to attain that goal. The ethical foundation for this
journey appearsin Macrobius and Porphyry:
Forthe divinelyinspiredPlato, when he hadtreatedthe samevirtuespertaining
to life and conductwhich othershad treated,at last separatedthem in different
ranksor kinds, so that he shows that they are practicedin one way by those
who love the political assembly and the state. The virtues are cultivatedin
anotherway by those who desireto forget every aspectof theirmortalityand,
moved by hatredfor things human, are elevatedto the knowledge of divine
mattersalone. Finally, the virtuesare practicedin a third way by those who,
having been purifiedby this time from every contagion,engage themselvesin
divine affairsonly. He thus calledthese first virtues "civic," the second ones
"purgatorial,"and the third "those of a spiritat last purified.". . . There is,
however, this thing in common to all these ranks, that if virtue leads them,
they guide everythingtowardthe standardof the good andhonorable.36

36"Divinusenim Plato, cum virtutesde vita et moribuseasdemquas ceteriposuis-

set, ita ad postremum illas diversis sive ordinibus sive generibus distinguit, ut alia
quadamrationeab iis illas coli ostendat,qui coetus ac civitatesadamant,aliaab iis, qui
omnem mortalitatem dediscere cupientes et humanarumrerum otio moti ad sola
 CRISTOFORO LANDINO'S AENEID 535

Anyone who wants to attain heavenly felicity must begin with the
challenges of daily living and cultivate the virtues of social and civic
life. When able to withdraw from the press of human affairs,he can
concentrate more easily on the divine, though he will still find vices
to struggle against. Those who succeed in completely freeing them-
selves from evil have attainedthe summumbonum.Landino'sallegori-
cal interpretation of the Aeneid is designed to show that Aeneas
makes this ethicaljourney through the gradationsof virtue until his
spirit is purged, as the Dante commentary explains:
And throughall of this [Virgil]shows allegoricallythatAeneas,havingarrived
in Italy (that is, at contemplation),first investigatesthe natureof the vices,
afterwards is purged from them, and after having been purged, is able to
contemplate the things in which happiness consists.37
All three levels of virtue arehonorable, of course, but Aeneas' ethical
journey is from the lowest grade of virtue to the highest, so that
Landino's moral allegory becomes an elevation of the contemplative
life over the active.38
Unfortunately, the path to heavenly felicity is not a direct one, so
that Aeneas' journey is delayed by a series of moral impediments.
The first of these is "lussuria," which Landino defines as unre-
strained sensuality;its symbol is Troy, the home of Aeneas' youth.

divina cognoscendaeriguntur,aliapostremoab iis, qui ab omni iam contagioneexpiati

in solis divinis versantur. Primas igitur civiles dixit, secundas purgatorias ac tertias
animi iam purgati. ... Est autem omnibus his ordinibus hoc commune, ut virtute
duce cuncta ad boni rectique normam dirigant" (DisputationesCamaldulenses,pp. 153-
54). One of Landino's sources for the gradation of virtues is Macrobius, Corn. in somn.
Scip. 1.8.5-I3; see Michael Murrin, The Allegorical Epic, p. 221, n. 67. Macrobius also
includes a fourth gradation, which exists in the mind of God itself and from which all
the others descend in order (I .8. Io). Since this kind of virtue is restricted to the mind of
God, there is little reason for Landino to refer to it in his application of Macrobius'
schema to Aeneas' journey. In "An Inaugural Oration," p. 239, n. I, Field notes that
Landino's discussion of the gradations of virtue also parallels that of Porphyry's De
occasionibussive causisad intelligibilia nos ducentibus,which is taken from Plotinus, Enn.
1,2 ("De virtutibus"), and that Landino used this doctrine of the virtues in his I462-63
commentary. Although Landino often echoed Ficino, we should note that Ficino's
work on Porphyry and Plotinus is later than the Disputationes; see Kristeller, Supple-
mentumFicinianum,I,CXXVI-CXXVIII, CXXXV, CLVII-CLIX.
37"Et per questo tutto allegoricamente dimostra [Virgilio] che giunto Enea in Italia
cio e alla contemplatione prima investiga la natura di vitii, di poi si purga da quelli, et
purgato puo contemplare le cose dove consiste la beatitudine" (fol. I6V).
38Foran opposing view of the relative importance of the active and contemplative
lives in Landino's thought, see Field, "The Beginning of the Philosophical Renais-
sance," pp. 207, 234-36.
536 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

The second impediment is avarice, which is representedby Thrace

and the Harpies. The third is ambition, the immoderate desire for
political power as it appearsinJuno. The virtuous man could proceed
directly to the summumbonumwere it not for these detours, which
Landino refersto in his Dante commentary as "piacere,""utile," and
"honore."39As we might expect, the dramaof Landino'sallegorical
interpretation results from the tension between Aeneas' ascent
through the gradationof virtues and these three obstacles.
Simply stated, the DisputationesCamaldulensesrepresents Lan-
dino's effort to place the major scenes from the first six books of the
Aeneidinto this largerpatternof ethicalconflict and growth. In order
to see how this overriding patternof interpretationguides Landino's
relationshipto the criticalwork of the other humanists, we shall look
in turn at the role of "piacere," "utile," and "honore" in Aeneas'
ethical development. A brief examination of Aeneas' descent to the
underworld follows, at which point we should be able to draw some
general conclusions about how Landinoused the sources availableto
him.
Beginning with Book II, Landino allegorizes Troy as the life of
sensual pleasures (Disp. Cam., p. I28).40 Aeneas loves this life while
he is young, since even those who finally attainheavenly felicity find
that in youth, sense dominates reason (p. 120). Anchises, who as
Aeneas' earthly father stands for sensuality, objects at first to leaving
Troy (p. 13 ), and Paris is so addicted to sensual pleasure that he
perishes with his city (p. 121). But Aeneas' mother, who stands for
love of heavenly things, appearsto her son and shows him the gods
struggling to overthrow Troy (pp. 129-30). This moves him to
leave, though reluctantly,and to overcome the temptations of sensu-
ality.
The association of Troy with the sensuallife is a commonplace of
humanist thought. Petrarchlinks Troy to pleasurableliving in his
letter allegorizing the Aeneid, and when Augustine in the Secretum
wants to accuse the aging Petrarchof burying himself in temporal
delights, he associates him with the city of Troy, lost to wine and

39The clearest explanation of this point may be found in the Commentary to

Dante's Commedia, fol. 6. As we shall see, these moral underpinnings play a crucial role
in the Disputationes as well.
40In order to avoid overburdening the notes, references to Landino's Disputationes
Camaldulenseswill be included in the text from this point on.
 CRISTOFORO LANDINO'S AENEID 537

sleep on the night of its downfall (cf. Aen. 11.265).The mythology

manuals make this especially clear;in Salutati'sDe laboribusHerculis,
for example, Troy under king Priam is synonymous with dissolute
living. This association in effect goes back to theJudgment of Paris,
as Boccaccio explains in the Genealogie,since even then the Trojan
shepherd rejected the active and contemplative lifestyles offered by
Juno and Minerva in favor of Venus' life of pleasures.41Troy and the
Trojan prince Paris were morally tainted in humanist mythology,
and Landino simply absorbs this into his allegory as the first source
of conflict ("piacere")in Aeneas' ethicaldevelopment.
When we turn to Venus, however, the situation becomes more
complex. Petrarchrefersthree times to Venus' appearanceat the end
of Book II (11.589ff.), where she shows Aeneas how the gods are
fighting over Troy and urges him to leave. The point is the same
each time: nothing drives men further from the divine than sexual
love. In the same vein, Boccaccio's entry in the Genealogieassociates
Venus with "the life of pleasure,"making her a godly counterpartto
the city of Troy.42 Landino, however, prefers another approach.
Citing Plato's Phaedrus(266A-B) and Symposium(i8oD-E), he predi-
cates the existence of two Venuses, one "heavenly" ("caelestis")and
the other "ordinary" ("vulgaris," pp. 125-26). This doctrine of the
two Venuses appearsin BernardusSilvestris, but it is developed at
length by Marsilio Ficino in his commentary to Plato's Symposium,
where he distinguishes the heavenly Venus ("intelligentia")from the
second one, the force of sexual generation.43The mainstream of

41Petrarch, Sen. 4.4 and Secretum,pp. I80-82; Salutati, De laboribusHerculis, ed. B.

L. Ullman (Zurich, 1951), 1,252; and Boccaccio, Genealogie, 1,304.
42Petrarch, Rerummemorandarum libri, ed. Giuseppe Billanovich, Edizione nazionale
delle opere di Francesco Petrarca, vol. 5, pt. Ia (Florence, 1943), p. 141; De sui ipsius et
multorum ignorantia, in Opere latine, ed. Antonietta Bufano, II,1I2-I4; and Invective
contramedicum,II,952. See also the Genealogie, I, I49.
43Bernardus Silvestris, Commentary,pp. 9-IO, and Marsilio Ficino, Commentairesur
le banquetde Platon, ed. R. Marcel (Paris, I956), pp. 153-55. Ficino's Symposium com-
mentary was completed in I469, although a number of minor additions were made
later; see the introduction to Marcel's edition, pp. 11-41; James A. Devereux, S.J.,
"The Textual History of Ficino's De amore," RQ, 28 (1975), I73-74; and Kristeller,
SupplementumFicinianum, I,CXXIII-CXV. As S. Gentile notes ("Per la storia del testo
del 'Commentarium in Convivium' di Marsilio Ficino," Rinascimento,2I [1981], 17),
Landino cites Ficino's commentary on Plato's Symposium in Book IV of the Disputa-
tiones (p. 214). The doctrine of the two Venuses was popular among the Florentine
Neoplatonists; see Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance(New Haven, I958),
pp. 100-28.
538 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

humanist criticism had associated Virgil's goddess with the second

Venus, but Landino'svision of the poem as a whole moves Aeneas to
the contemplation of the divine, the realm of the heavenly Venus.
Accordingly, Aeneas' mother appearsin Book II to take him away
from the corporalpleasuresof Troy (pp. 125-26) and starthim on the
path to Landino's summumbonum.In using Venus to extract Aeneas
from the snares of sensuality, Landino turns to the Plato scholarship
of Ficino rather than the moral allegory of Petrarchand Boccaccio,
because the heavenly Venus is such a useful contributionto the devel-
opment of his philosophical commentary as a whole. At a point
where the criticaltraditiondivides, Landinomakes his choice with an
eye to the development of his largerallegoricalscheme.
The treatmentof AeneidIIIin the Disputationesalso becomes more
comprehensible when we readit with one eye on the humanist criti-
cal tradition. When Aeneas leaves Troy, he lands first in Thrace, the
symbol of rapacity (p. I37). Leaving Thrace, he proceeds to Crete
because his mortal father misinterpretsthe oracle telling him to seek
out his origin, to "know thyself' (pp. 138-41), but the Penates turn
Aeneas toward Italy, the understandingof heavenly affairs(pp. 141-
44). The steersman, however, is Palinurus,who representsthe appe-
tite that obeys the senses alone (passion) rather than that which is
properly subject to reason (thatis, the will; pp. I44-45). Under such
guidance Aeneas sails off course again, this time to the Strophades
and to the Harpies, the symbols of avarice:
Nevertheless,notthat[vice]by whichwe seizefromthatsourcefromwhichit
is leastfittingto seize-for Thracehassignifiedthatto us-but somethingelse,
whichis broughtaboutwhen,fromthosethingswe havenow produced,we
give minimalassistance to thosewhomlaw, nature,andthebondof human
society demand thatwe assist.(p. I45)44
The prophet Helenus sends Aeneas on again to Italy, but first he
must sail the tempestuous sea of appetite, a sea endangered by the
Scylla of dissipation and the Charybdis of avarice (p. 15I). Then he
encounters Polyphemus (the proud tyrant)and heads off to Carthage
(p. 156).
If we searchdiligently through the works of the earliercommenta-
44"Nonillud [vitiuml tamen, quo inde rapimus,unde minime convenit,-id enim
nobis Thracia designavit-verum aliud, quod tunc patratur,cum ex iis, quae iam
peperimus, minime illis subvenimus, quibusius naturaqueac humanaesocietatisvin-
culum subveniendumpostulat."
 CRISTOFORO LANDINO'S AENEID 539

tors, we can generallyfind someone who has presentedthe key parts

of Landino'sallegory in much the same manneras he has. Interpreta-
tions of Polyphemus as the proud tyrant and Scylla as libido can be
found in the Genealogiedeorumgentilium,and Palinurus'association
with unrestrainedsensuality is paralleledin the other major mytho-
logical sourcebook of early humanism, Salutati'sDe laboribusHercu-
lis. Ranging a little further afield, we can find in Macrobius a well-
known explanation of the "know thyself' oracle that fits Landino's
applicationof it to Aeneas'journey through life to heavenly felicity.
Boccaccio also cites Virgil's outcry against greed from the Thracian
episode in his allegorization of Dante's wolf, itself the symbol of
avaricein another allegory of spiritualdevelopment.45The most fre-
quently cited passagein the humanist criticismof Book III,however,
is the description of the Harpies, whose associationwith avaricecan
be tracedfrom Fulgentiusand BernardusSilvestristhrough the early
Renaissance mythographers to Poggio's treatise on avarice, where
the analysis of this incident from the Aeneidassumes a prominent
place in the discussion.46
Once again, however, we must do more than cite sources and
parallels to understand Landino's achievement in the Disputationes.
With the exception of the Harpies-avariceequation, these sections of
Book III were not particularlypopular with Landino's predecessors
and contemporaries. Yet the allegory of Aeneid III takes up more
space in the Disputationes than that given to the Dido material,which,
as we shall see, was very popularwith the humanist critics. It is hard

450n Scylla, see Boccaccio, Genealogie,11,494;on Polyphemus, ibid., 1,5o1 (cf.

Fulgentius, Expositio Virgilianae continentiae, pp. 93-94); on Palinurus, see Salutati,
Epistolario,II, 230-3I; on the "know thyself' oracle, see Macrobius, Corn.in somn.
Scip. 1.9.3; on the Thracian episode, see Boccaccio, II comento,I, 182.
46Fulgentius, Mythologiarum libriIII (Basel, I570), fol. 124; BernardusSilvestris,
Commentary, pp. 74-75; Boccaccio, Genealogie, II,529-30; Salutati, De laboribusHercu-
lis, 1,237-38; Poggio, De avaritia,pp. 254-56. Poggio's treatiseappearsin two manu-
scripts exhibited at the Laurentianlibrary from October 1980 to January 1981 and
describedin the catalogue to that exhibition, PoggioBracciolininel VI centenario della
nascita:codicie documentifiorentini,
ed. RiccardoFubini and Stefano Caroti (Florence,
1980).Item 29 includesthe De avaritiain a seriesof texts typicalof ecclesiasticalmoral-
izing, a series that was formed by GiovanniDominici, generallyno friendto human-
ism. Item 30 includes the same treatiseamong a collection of Bruni's works (p. I I).
Item 29 is especiallyinterestingbecauseit suggests thatthe humanisticmoralcommen-
tary to Virgil may have been reachingeven those who did not shareLandino'shuman-
ist inclinations.
540 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

to explain this special interestin one of Virgil's less appealingbooks,

until we consider Landino'sremarkshere as partof the development
of his moral allegory as a whole. The three chief impediments to a
pilgrimage like Aeneas', we recall,are sensuality, greed, and political
ambition. Landino finds symbols of the first of these in Scylla, the
second in Thrace, the Harpies, and Charybdis, and the third in Po-
lyphemus, so that materialof limited interestto other commentators
is exactly what he needs at this point to develop his own moral
allegory. The differenceis primarilyone of emphasis, but it enables
us to pick up the key points from the Disputationesmore accurately
than would a reading that lacked grounding in the criticaltradition.
Following the chronological rather than the dramatic order of
events in the poem, Landinoturnsnext to the encounterwithJuno to
illustrate his third moral impediment, the ambitious yearning for
political power. For Landino,Juno is the goddess of political ambi-
tion who becomes angry at Aeneas because he does not seek after
honors and offices (p. 159). Juno drives him to Carthage, a city
special to her becauseit representsthe active life. Landinois carefulto
note here that Carthageand the civic life are praiseworthyenough in
themselves-we recall that the civic virtues are the first step on the
gradation of virtues leading to heavenly felicity. However, these
same qualities become an impediment when they distracta pilgrim
like Aeneas from his higher goal:
Therefore they enter a port of this kind who, having long striven for the
highest things and terrified at last by the difficulty of the task, devote themsel-
ves to a life centered in human society; when they engage in this life and have
refined themselves in the civic virtues, they carry away no ordinary praise.
Nevertheless they are far away from that divine excellence we seek. (p. 174)47

By this point, Aeneas should have loftier aspirations.

As we might expect by now, there is some precedent for the
association ofJuno with the active life. If we turn to the mythogra-
phers, we find that Fulgentius interpretsJuno in this way in his
treatment of the Judgment of Paris, and Boccaccio in turn cites
Fulgentius in his entry on Juno in the Genealogie.48 This association

47"Huiuscemodiigitur portum subeunt, qui supremadiu sectati ac postremo dif-

ficultatedeterritise in vitam socialemconferunt,in quacivilibusvirtutibusexculti cum
versentur laudem non mediocrem reportant. Longe tamen ab ea divinitate, quam
quaerimus,absunt."
48Fulgentius,Mythologiae,fol. I29; Boccaccio, Genealogie,11,438.
 CRISTOFORO LANDINO'S AENEID 541

was not a common one, however, and the humanist critics did not
customarily bring it to bear explicitly on the Aeneid. Nevertheless,
we can find one clear precedent for what Landino has done. In his
appendix to the Philebuscommentary, MarsilioFicino allegorizesthe
Judgment of Parisso that Minerva presidesover wisdom, Juno over
political power, and Venus over sensual pleasure. Then he applies
this to epic: "For this reason Aeneas is representedas afflictedand
disturbed on account of Juno, that is, on account of zeal for ruling,
and in the same way Ulysses is harried."49This is the same interpre-
tation presentedin the Disputationes,and it is easy to see the attraction
it held for Landino. His allegory of AeneidII treated sensuality, and
AeneidIIIofferedseveralexamples of avarice,leaving this third major
impediment to ethicalprogress unexamined except for a brief look at
Polyphemus as tyrant. Ficino's analysisofJuno offers what amounts
to a startingpoint for that examination.
When he turns to the Dido materialin Book IV, Landino carries
through this same approachin what becomes his most remarkable
departurefrom the general criticaltradition of Aeneidcommentary.
Book IV was immensely popularwith the humanistcritics, but com-
mentators from Petrarchonward had agreed that the philosophical
problems raised here center on love and sensual temptation. This is
not to say that all the humanist critics extracted exactly the same
lessons from this story. Petrarch, for example, concludes a discus-
sion of female chastity in De remediisutriusquefortunae by glancing at
Dido and concluding that only men could be steadfastand loyal. In
his treatise on moral philosophy, Filelfo quotes Virgil's famous
maxim on the fickleness of women (Aen. IV. 569-70) in order to
contrast the rationalpowers of men with the powerful sensualforces
dominating women, children, and animals. Vegio's treatiseon edu-
cation makes Dido an exemplumfor all women on the bitter fruits of

49"Propterea fingitur Aeneas obJunonem perturbatione vexatus, id est, ob studium

imperandi, eademque ratione agitatur Ulixes" (The 'Philebus'Commentary,ed. M. J.B.
Allen, p. Io). In another consideration of the goddesses Minerva, Juno, and Venus and
what they stand for, Ficino gives a more precise definition ofJuno's realm: "Under the
title of'political power,' we consider to be included authority in government, civic and
military alike, the abundance of wealth and the distinction of glory, and the talent
associated with business" ("Sub appellatione potentiae authoritatem in gubernatione
civili pariter atque militari, divitiarumque affluentiam et splendorem gloriae, nego-
tiosamque virtutem comprehendi putamus"; Epistulae, in Opera omnia, ed. M.Sanci-
priano [Basel, I576; rpt. Turin, I959], vol. II, fol. 919).
542 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

libido, a point well suited to this pedagogical context. To be sure,

critics like Boccaccio and Salutatifocus on Aeneas, but they do so to
praise him for escaping Dido's carnalsnares.5"No matter what the
context, the Carthaginianepisode led to a discussion of voluptasin
early humanistic criticism.
Obviously, Landino could not ignore this traditional approach
completely. Thus when he introduces Dido, he explains that her
demise shows the fall from temperancethrough continence and in-
continence to intemperance, as libido rises up and takes control of
her. But he moves immediately to shift the context of the discussion
by attributingDido's downfall to the fact that her virtues arethose of
the civic life, and thus inchoate, not absolute (pp. 182-83). Now the
deeper meaning of Book IV turns on a differentproblem, the ambi-
tious yearning for political power:
When Virgil says these things, he depicts the civic life with almost divine
wisdom. Indeed, when men engage in this life with such a lofty spirit that,
scorning things human, they a little afterward are about to go from this first
class of virtues to those which are called "purgatorial," and from there finally
they strive to reach those virtues which are "of a purified spirit," nevertheless
they are so enervated by the lures of earthly affairs that they almost forget the
heavenly virtues which they had set as their sole objective. For instance, pas-
sion for ruling longs to join Aeneas to Dido, that is, moreover, to set an
eminent man over a kingdom. (pp. I84-85)'5
For Landino, Aeneas and Dido areindeed united by lust, but it is lust
for political power, so that their descent into the cave to escape the
storm becomes a descent to politicaloffice (p. 185). And the warning
from Mercury that sends Aeneas away from Carthage finally forces
him to abandon kingdoms and powers in favor of the higher virtues

5'Petrarch, De remediis utriusque fortunae (Cremona, 1492), sig. ilr (cf. Liber sine
nomine,in Petrarcas'BuchohneNamen'unddie pipstlicheKurie,ed. Paul Piur [Halle/
Saale, I925], p. I85); Filelfo, De moralidisciplina, fol. 41; Vegio, De educatione,pp. 87-
88; Boccaccio, Genealogie,11,722-23(cf. Petrarch,Sen. 4.4); and Salutati,Epistolario,
111,233, 235.
5'"Quae cum dicit Maro, divina paene sapientiavitam socialem depingit. In qua
cum ita quidem excelso animo versentur, ut humana contemnentes ex hoc primo
virtutum genere paulo post in eas venturisint, quas purgatoriasappellant,atqueinde
ad illas tandem, quaesunt animi purgati,pervenirecontendant,tamenillecebrisrerum
terrenarumita molliuntur, ut caelestium,quas sibi solas proposuerant,paene oblivis-
cantur.Libido enim imperandiAeneamDidoni coniungere,id autemest virum excel-
lentem regno praeficerecupit."
 CRISTOFORO LANDINO'S AENEID 543

(p. 194). This is not the moral underpinningthat Landino'spredeces-

sors and contemporariesidentified in AeneidIV; rather, it is the one
that he needs at this point in his allegorical study, a point where
Aeneas has conqueredother passionsand vices (p. I94). For Landino,
the ultimate significance of the Carthage episode is determined not
by previous commentary on Book IV, but by the need to move
Aeneas beyond the third and final stumbling block in his ethical
journey. At this point, we see Landinothe innovator most clearly.
Having overcome the major impediments to moral growth,
Aeneas is now ready for the next phase in his ethical development,
the descent to the underworld. Everything Aeneas has done so far
leads up to this, so that Landinois especially carefulto pin down the
allegoricalsignificanceof AeneidVI. He identifies five possible inter-
pretations of the descensus ad inferos:
For that headlong fall of spirits from the highest heaven into these bodies is
believed by Plato to be a descent to the underworld. Christians truly warn that
the souls of the guilty are drawn from their own bodies to the underworld.
Likewise, we say that living men descend to the underworld when they fall
into vice. There are also those who believe that by magic and incantations
certain descents, so to speak, come about, so that spirits can be called forth
from this. But beyond these four descents, there is a fifth which, it seems,
ought not to be omitted, for we also direct our course to the underworld when
we cast the light of our reason and our effort into speculating on the nature of
evil and of all the vices. (p. 2 8)52

Though each of these are interpretive possibilities, Landino passes

quickly over the first four because they are not exactly what he is
interestedin here. The virtuous hero who has arrivedat the threshold
of the underworld has progressed well on the path to the summum
bonum,so that the Christian punishment for sin and the figurative
falling into vice recede into the background. Magic has a certain
disreputableflavor to it, and the descent of spirit into body is not the
most important partof Landino'sinterestin the Aeneid.The essential

52"Nampraecipitatioilla animorum a supremo caelo in haec corpora ad inferos

descensusesse a Platonecreditur.Christianivero scelestorumanimase suis corporibus
ad inferostrahiadmonent. Dicimus itidem viventeshomines, cum in vitia labuntur,ad
inferos ruere. Sunt quoque qui credantmagicis artibuset carminibusfieri veluti des-
census quidam, ut inde evocarianimaepossint. Verum praeterhos quattuordescensus
quintus qui est non videtur omittendus:nam et ad inferos tendimus, cum lumen ra-
tionis nostraeac industriamin mali ac omnium vitiorum naturamspeculandamdeici-
mus.
544 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

natureof virtue and vice, however, is at the centerof Landino'sstudy

of Virgil, and the hero who has successfully struggled with sensual-
ity, greed, and political ambition would clearlybenefit from a basic
theoreticalknowledge of moral philosophy. Thus Landinobases his
analysis on the fifth type of descensusad inferos,the contemplative
inquiry into the natureof vice.
Once this patternhas been established,Landino'sobservations on
the various scenes of Book VI become stages in the contemplative
process by which Aeneas deepens his understanding of right and
wrong. The Sibyl, for example, is his guide on the quest for the
summumbonum(p. 205), and the golden bough represents wisdom
itself (pp. 224-26). Misenus representstemporal glory, which must
be buried and left behind by anyone who seeks ethical maturity (pp.
226-29). Charon stands for free will (pp. 237-40), and Cerberus'
barking signifies that bodily need for food, drink, and sleep that so
often draws us to vice (pp. 241-42). The GreatSinnerswarn us about
the sufferings of the wicked after death (pp. 251-53), while the stop
in the Elysian fields leads to a Platonicjustificationfor virtuous living
(p. 253). By the time Aeneas passesout of the ivory gate, he has come
to understand how man is rewarded or punished after death on the
basis of his life on earth, and thus why one should struggle as he has
against sensuality, greed, and ambition.
As we might expect, it is possible to tracesources and parallelsfor
Landino'sinterpretationsof most of these scenes.53These allegorical
observations are ultimately important not in themselves, however,

530n the Sibyl, see BernardusSilvestris,Commentary,

p. 31. On the golden bough,
see Fulgentius, Expositio Virgilianaecontinentiae,p. 96; Bernardus Silvestris, Commen-
tary, p. 58; and Salutati, De laboribusHerculis, I, I I and II,573-77. Misenus is interpreted
as temporal glory in Fulgentius, Expositio Virgilianae continentiae, pp. 95-96, and
Bernardus Silvestris, Commentary,p. 60. Charon as free will is presented in great detail
in both Salutati's De laboribusHerculis, II,556-57, 563-69, and in the Disputationes, so
that Charon is old because nothing is older than the spirit endowed with free choice; his
two eyes show that the will is free to incline toward either reason or passion; his
garment is filthy because it stands for the body, which clothes the soul, and so forth.
Cerberus' barking is allegorized in the De laboribusHerculis, II,539-40. Representative
treatments of the Great Sinners may be found in Fulgentius, Expositio Virgilianae con-
tinentiae, pp. 99-IoI; Macrobius, Com. in somn. Scip. 1.10.12-15; Bernardus Silvestris,
Commentary, pp. 108-12; and Boccaccio, Genealogie, 1,44-46, 154-57, 262, and II,467-
68, 667 and II comento, 1,94-96. On Virgil's Elysian Fields, see Boccaccio, Genealogie,
1,78-79, and Salutati, De laboribusHerculis, 11,443, 533-34, and De seculoet religione, ed.
B. L. Ullman (Florence, 1957), p. 74.
 CRISTOFORO LANDINO'S AENEID 545

but as part of a larger effort to reach a basic understandingof virtue

and vice through contemplation. This larger interpretive pattern,
Landino'sdescensus ad inferos,is also not his own invention; it may be
found in Bernardus Silvestris' Virgil commentary and in Salutati's
De laboribusHerculis.54 But the fact that we have identified a source
for this scheme should not blind us to the fact that most humanist
criticsdid not impose this patternon AeneidVI. It appealsto Landino
because it gives him a startingpoint for solving his most basic prob-
lem, that of incorporatingthe mass of detail presentedby Virgil and
his critics into a unified, internally consistent ethical system. Inter-
preted in this way, Aeneas' trip to the underworld provides a theo-
reticalunderpinningfor the moral allegory that precedesit, an expla-
nation of vice and its consequences that rounds off the discussion of
"piacere,""utile," and "honore." Thus Landino'sallegory of Book
VI provides a fitting conclusion to his analysisof the first half of the
Aeneid.
At this point, we are in a position to evaluate Landino's achieve-
ment in the DisputationesCamaldulenses. He was not the originator of
each and every detail presented in his allegory, as we have seen, so
that the equation of Troy with sensuality, the Harpies with avarice,
and Charon with free will were purely derivative on his part, tradi-
tional associations that he picked up as they fit his needs. Yet Lan-
dino's allegorizationcannot be dismissed as the product of mindless,
passive reception. The effort to unify the random observations of his
predecessorsand contemporariesinto an allegory with direction and
consistency forced Landino to impose his own vision onto what he
found. Common associations like Venus and sensuality were dis-
carded when they did not advance his argument, and material that
held comparatively little interest for most early humanists (like
Aeneid III) received significant discussion when the critical context
demanded it. When pushed, as he was with the Dido material, Lan-
dino was willing to radicallyreorient the traditionalapproachto the
poem, provided that by so doing, he could move Aeneas one step
furthertoward the summumbonum.
The result is an Aeneidthat we may no longer recognize, one in

54Bernardus Silvestris, Commentary, p. 30 presents four of the five descensusad in-

feros, with the descent by magic omitted; Salutati's discussion may be found in De
laboribusHerculis, pp. 6oo-oi.
546 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

which every scene is part of a larger, all-embracingallegoricalstrug-

gle. Aeneas remains a hero, but one of a different kind from that
traditionally associated with classicalepic. The significant realm of
heroic activity is no longer Horace's "deeds of kings and com-
manders, and doleful wars" (Arspoetica73), but the mental and spir-
itual battlefieldon which man struggles for virtue. As he puts it in his
1488 commentary, "truly there is need for the heroic virtues if any-
one wishes to endure this difficultspeculativeundertaking."55Those
critics who had gone before Landino, of course, had taken tentative
steps in this direction whenever they appliedsections from the Aeneid
to their speculations in this area. Yet Landino was, as he claims, the
first humanist to provide a detailed, systematic explication of the
Aeneidaccording to the principlesof moral philosophy. In the com-
pleteness of its treatmentand the popularityof its content, Landino's
analysisof Virgil had a greaterimpact on the study of the Aeneidthan
the work of any other humanist of his time. The contemplative
journey of Landino's Aeneid thus marks an important stage in the
history of Virgilian criticism.
TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

55"Heroicae enim virtutes opus sunt si quis hanc speculandi difficultatem tolerare
vult," fol. 219v.