On Famous Women

— XIII —

...completely by Albanzani Donato degli Albanzani (c. 1326–1411), a scholar and friend of Petrarch and Boccaccio who translated Boccaccio’s Latin works into Italian, was not understood by the copyist because [writing] in prose and in the first person was always less familiar. At other times, it happened that the Latin text and the Cassino codex A famous manuscript from the Abbey of Monte Cassino were not enough to keep Father Tosti Luigi Tosti (1811–1897), a Benedictine historian and monk at Monte Cassino on track. I return to Chapter XXI, and I pause at the little sermon that Boccaccio gives to lovers, prompted by the effeminacies of Hercules Boccaccio uses Hercules’ period of servitude to Queen Omphale, where he dressed in women's clothes and spun wool, as a warning against the "weakness" of love.

“Therefore, at the beginning, one must resist; one must restrain the eyes so they do not see vanity, close the ears like the asp, and with opposing (continual) labors tame lust, because love offers itself flatteringly to those who do not watch out, and it is pleasant at the first entry (and it is pleasant at first sight. And if it is received, it delights at the first entry) with cheerful hope; it encourages one to adorn the body and to refine one's habits (to adorn the body, for refined habits), to charms original: "lepori," which can mean wit, grace, or pleasantries, to dances, to songs, to music, to games, to gatherings, and to similar things (to well-mannered words, to dances, to songs, to music, to games, etc.).

Here the word lepore meaning wit or pleasantry seems so appropriate and natural that one cannot doubt that it fits perfectly. If, however, one considers that the original text has urban witticisms original: "facetias urbicas" and not charms original: "lepores"; that the Cassino codex consulted by Tosti reads adorn habits with palore (which is an evident metathesis [reversal of letters] of "parole" [words]); and that in our language we do not...