Note 120 — X. TO HOMER

Fam., XXIV, 10 (to Horace) and XXIV, 11 (to Vergil) are in the form of poetic epistles. In 1359 (cf. Fam., XX, 7, note) Petrarch separated all those letters which he did not destroy into two groups: the prose epistles, which he dedicated to Socrates (Fam., praefatio, I, pp. 15, 16, and Fam., XXIV, 13), and the poetic epistles, which he dedicated to Barbato da Sulmona (praef., loc. cit., and Fam., XXII, 3). The appearance in this collection, therefore, of the poetic epistles to Horace and to Vergil, must be due to their subject-matter, for they very naturally fall among those letters written “veteribus illustribus viris” (Vol. III, p. 306).