Note 92 — VIII. TO HORATIUS FLACCUS[92]

This letter (as also the following one to Vergil) is written in verse, and is translated into verse by Fracassetti, who assigns to it the date 1337 or 1350. The chances are in favor of the later date; for Petrarch himself says (in the prefatory letter to Socrates, Vol. I, p. 25) that the letter he addressed to Cicero (Fam., XXIV, 3, dated 1345) served as a precedent for the other letters to the classical authors. The letters to Horace and to Vergil really belong to the Epistolae Poeticae, the collection of which was dedicated to Barbato da Sulmona (Fam., praefatio, I, pp. 15, 16, and Fam., XXII, 3). Their presence here, then, must be due to the subject-matter.