Note 718 — Chapter IV · THE DISCOVERY OF MAN. SPIRITUAL DESCRIPTION IN POETRY.
S. G. C. (Samuel George Chetwynd) Middlemore translation
The famous Lionardo Aretino, the leader of the humanists at the beginning of the fifteenth century, admits, ‘Che gli antichi Greci d’umanita e di gentilezza di cuore abbino avanzanto di gran lunga i nostri Italiani;’ but he says it at the beginning of a novel which contains the sentimental story of the invalid Prince Antiochus and his step-mother Stratonice—a document of an ambiguous and half-Asiatic character. (Printed as an Appendix to the Cento Novelle Antiche.)