Complete Works of Angelo Poliziano

...which take a middle foot exceeding four beats, and are called prokoilios [prominent-bellied] from the nature of the thing. Such as that verse in Homer: πατρόκλῳ ποθέων ἀνδροτῆτά τε καὶ μένος ἠΰ [longing for the manhood and noble strength of Patroclus]. But since many attributed what I had sought out of a desire for novelty to an ignorance of syllables, I immediately instructed those friends of mine to whom any copies might have come, to bring those verses into a square, as it were, according to this model: Strike with light, for light is most pleasing to the gods above. And likewise: O maidens, a blush shone forth without delay, which the morning rose, etc. For what folly, or rather what wickedness, would it have been to continue performing even a good play once the people had hissed it off? Therefore, I greatly entreat you to see to it at the first opportunity—I would not dare say by your own hand, but by that of some scholar—that both passages be thus amended in as many copies as are there. For we shall immediately take care by letter that the power to do so is granted to the booksellers as well.

The first syllable of liquere is short.

Now truly, as to your hardly permitting the first syllable of liquentibus to be pronounced short, I was certainly following Virgil in that, whose lines are surely most well-known: In the beginning the sky and the lands and the liquid plains... and the fire and the horrible beast and the liquid river. Nor does it escape me, however, that liquentia mella [melting honey] is used by the same author, so that there is as much distinction in meaning as there is in quantity.

The second syllable of orichalcum is short.

But you also criticize orichalcum being pronounced with a short second syllable, even though that syllable is marked with a diphthong. In addition, in that very passage I was then interpreting, Callimachus—who was then the one to be followed by me above all others, although he is at other times a most weighty authority—had said Callimachus. ὀρ’ ἐς ὀρείχαλκον [look to the orichalcum]. For as to the fact that Statius Statius. employs it otherwise by his own right, he evidently cheats the diphthong of one letter: which he also fails to correct in the name of the Pleiades.

Boeotia.

Finally, you ask the same thing: why I also write Boeotia [with the diphthong]. Boeotia. But indeed, I could ask in turn why you prefer Boeotia [without it], when there is surely no transition among the Greeks into these vowels that either precepts have handed down, or reasons have persuaded, or authority has approved—unless perhaps we are looking to the The common folk. unlearned common folk, who are to be held of no account at all among the erudite, of whom we have always considered you the chief. Add to this that all manuscripts which are still judged to have the character of uncorrupted antiquity preserve this spelling of ours for that word, just as it first migrated from the Greek.

These, then, are the things I had to say for my cause at this time. But since you alone, the most celebrated of all the professors of our age, feel otherwise, I no longer trust myself in anything, but go over plainly to the Who the Pyrrhonists are, see Aulus Gellius, book 11, chapter 5. Pyrrhonists; nor do I henceforth affirm or deny that anything absolutely exists, just as it is represented to us either by the senses themselves or finally by the mind. I desire, however, to hear what you think about the rest, and I shall be more grateful to you daily the more often, the more freely, or even finally the more severely you rescue me from my errors. Farewell.

BATTISTA GUARINI TO HIS ANGELO POLIZIANO, GREETINGS.

Decorative woodcut initial A featuring a classical figure or putto amidst foliage.
I am wonderfully emboldened that a small opportunity has been given to us—with our Pico acting as an intermediary more of Pallas than of Mars—to converse somewhat through letters regarding our common studies. For I hope it will be that my love for your learning will forge a friendship between us. You should by no means wonder that I wrote some things to Pico himself so hesitantly and fearfully regarding the golden book of your Miscellanea; such are the manners of these times that if there is any sap of more liberal wit, so too is there a candid and stainless simplicity. I love and revere all the learned, and I know not how, I admire the new ones even more than the ancients. For since at this time there is both a loss of books and an ignorance of certain customs, and of many...