Note 121 — X. TO HOMER

Apparently, Petrarch had received a letter purporting to be from the shade of Homer. The author of it is unknown. If it came from Florence, then of course it must have emanated from the circle of his Florentine friends. However, in Vol. 5, pp. 197, 198, Fracassetti, commenting upon the words, “Tua illa Bononia quam suspiras . . . unum habet” (Vol. III, p. 301), but reading “qua suspiras,” translates, “That Bologna of yours whence you send such laments,” and hazards the suggestion that the letter to which this of Petrarch is a reply came from Bologna and not from Florence. We may go a step farther. Since Homeric scholars in Italy were so scarce at the time, and since Petrarch states that Bologna could boast of but one—Pietro di Muglio or de Muglo (cf. n. [139])—it would seem (if Fracassetti be right) that Pietro di Bologna was responsible for the pseudo-Homer letter. As Messrs. Robinson and Rolfe perhaps justly remark of that letter (Petrarch, p. 253, n. 2): “It must have been even more interesting than this reply, in its unconscious revelation of mediaeval limitations.”