A Summary of 'The Cicero'

by Will Darden

In the Ciceronianus (1528), a dialogue subtitled The Ideal Latin Style, the Dutchman Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536) attacks the notion that the Latin prose of the Roman author Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) is the only model worthy of imitation by sixteenth-century European writers. This notion was being promulgated by humanists in Italy, and so the Ciceronianus may represent, among other things, a contest of national pride. At the end of this essay, I shall also argue briefly that this work may partly represent an attempt by Erasmus to reassert or reinforce his reputation as the foremost European man of letters. In addition to summarizing the contents of this work, I may at times lapse into an analysis or independent appraisal of what I think Erasmus is trying to say. Although the Ciceronianus was composed in response to a particular historical stimulus, implicit in it are universal principles about the nature of good writing and speaking, principles that are valid today. These principles emerge from the Socratic questioning of the dialogue between its three characters Bulephorus, Nosoponus, and Hypologus. These universal principles are the mature fruit of an experienced author (Erasmus would have been close to sixty years old at this time), and their presence in the Ciceronianus lifts the work above the level of mere scholarly polemic. The dialogue begins by attempting to debunk the Ciceronian model from a purely literary perspective. It has here the decidedly academic flavor of classicists trotting out their arguments for and against Cicero as well as other Greek and Roman authors. In a more serious vein, the next section questions the appropriateness of the pagan Ciceronian model for sixteenth-century Christian literary life. A third section catalogues Roman and European writers past and present who have failed to measure up to the Ciceronian standard in the judgment of Nosoponus, the character representing the Italian ultra-Ciceronian view. The final section recapitulates and encapsulates Bulephorus's prescription for the development of a proper Latin prose style. Imitation has its place, but it must leave room for self-expression in the service of Christian goals.

The Ciceronianus, written by a 'Dutch word-spinner,' has its origins partly in the career of a Frenchman who went to school in Italy.

Christophe de Longueil (pronounced "Longguy," 1488-1522) was a young French scholar who aborted a legal career in favor of literary pursuits. In order to further his literary education, Longueil traveled to Italy, where he attached himself to Pietro Bembo and Jacopo Sadoleto, becoming their joint prot»g». Bembo and Sadoleto were at that time the leaders of Italian Ciceronianism, a literary movement which exalted the written style of the classical Roman lawyer, politician, and author, M. Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) as the exclusive exemplar of correctly written Latin. Allowing for degrees of intransigence, these Italian neo-Ciceronians subscribed to the view that Marcus Tullius was to be the final arbiter in permissible diction, idioms, figures of speech, and even in the metre of Latin prose. In short, perfect Latin was equated with perfect imitation of Cicero's style. In his personal quest to achieve this Ciceronian style, Longueil was reputed to have read nothing but the works of Cicero for five years. Longueil's arguably arcane literary endeavors and those of Italian Ciceronianism might have gone their own way untroubled and unmolested, but for the fact that Longueil had sent a letter to a friend in which he criticized northern Europe's foremost contemporary man of letters, none other than Erasmus of Rotterdam. A personal meeting between the two men at Louvain in 1519 was unsatisfactory, and whatever personal animus Erasmus felt towards this proponent of Italian Ciceronianism may have played a role in rousing him to attack in print a school of thought about which he had long felt antipathy. In 1528 Froben published the Ciceronianus, in which Erasmus attacks the notion of slavish imitation of Cicero as the best and only means of achieving an acceptable written Latin style.

In undertaking to demolish the position of the extreme Ciceronian party, Erasmus is careful not to put all his cards on the table at once. Bulephorus, who represents Erasmus, begins the dialogue by asking Nosoponus, a prospective Ciceronian, to describe the methods he uses in imitating Cicero's prose. Nosoponus obliges, and the resulting description of his painstaking efforts is designed to make those efforts look ridiculous to the eyes of the reader. Under the prodding of Bulephorus' disingenuous questioning (Bulephorus, after all, is already convinced of the vacuousness of the extreme Ciceronian position), Nosoponus convicts himself in the eyes of the reader of not just the undesirability, but even the unattainability of his goal of imitating Cicero exactly. The tone is light, and Bulephorus and Hypologus almost seem to be having some fun at the expense of their unsuspecting interlocutor. This initial tone, however, belies the earnestness of the author's intent. For in the middle portion of the text the dialogue is transformed, momentarily, into a pulpit from which Bulephorus preaches against the goal of extreme Ciceronianism as one which is not merely indifferent to Christian culture, but openly hostile to it. Quite suddenly and unexpectedly the dialogue is no longer a dispassionate inquiry into the merits and feasibility of trying to imitate Cicero. Nothing less the than the salvation of one's soul hangs in the balance.

At the outset of the dialogue, Bulephorus and his sidekick, Hypologus, see a mutual student friend, Nosoponus, in an arcade. When Hypologus expresses dismay at the sickly appearance of Nosoponus ("He's more like a ghost than a human being."), Bulephorus diagnoses his disease as 'zelodulea,' Greek for 'style-addiction.'

At this point we don't know to whose style Nosoponus is addicted, and nor does the dull Hypologus ask for elaboration. Bulephorus then asks Hypologus to join him in a conspiracy in which both of them, feigning the same malady,

will attempt to free Nosoponus from the grip of this style-addiction. Hypologus agrees, Nosoponus is summoned into their presence, and the dialogue is off and running. Nosoponus readily admits that he is indeed ill, but is evasive about the nature of his illness. At length, he confesses that he is ill for lack of possessing the nymph whom he loves, the nymph Persuasion (i.e. eloquence), which he finally identifies with the Ciceronian style. Bulephorus interjects, "Now I understand the state your in. You're out to win that lovely, splendid title of 'Ciceronian'." Bulephorus, pretending to want the same title, asks Nosoponus to reveal his "plan of campaign." What recipe can one follow in order to achieve the pure Ciceronian style in writing and speaking? The resulting description given by Nosoponus lends an aura of religiosity or cult to the act of imitation. The portrait of Cicero hanging in his study, his nocturnal work habits and dietary restrictions, his reliance on astrology for choosing just the proper time to work, all mark Nosoponus as a true proselyte of the Ciceronian faith. Then, of course, there is the obsessive need for isolation in which to write, an inner sanctum free from distraction. Hypologus, temporarily forgetting his role in the conspiracy, blurts out: "When I'm trying to work at night, I'm often troubled by mice as well." This description of the externals behind the imitation of Cicero seems like good fun, and one can imagine Bulephorus and Hypologus having to work hard to keep deadpan expressions as they listen to Nosoponus talk about his routine. But Erasmus very likely included them for a more serious purpose. Each of the practices just described had pagan antecedents, and while it might seem anachronistic of Erasmus to try to taint his opponents with an allegation of anti-Christian behavior, the Roman Academy, a citadel of neo-Ciceronianism, had in fact been closed in 1467 on just such a suspicion of paganism.

Having described some of the incidentals of his writing routine, Nosoponus gets down to brass tacks as he describes a three-volume reference work he has compiled to assist him in the imitation of Cicero. First, there is an 'alphabetical lexicon' listing the vocabulary found in the works of Cicero. No word outside of this lexicon can be employed by an imitator of Cicero. But this dictionary doesn't merely gloss words. Accompanying each definition is a listing of those forms of the word which are found in Cicero as well as a list of those which are not. For example, under amo the dictionary not only indicates that amaveras is a form found in Cicero, but also notes the absence of a shortened version of the same verb form, amaras. Not only the vocabulary, but the actual "inflections, derivatives, and compounds of each separate word" must be attested in the Ciceronian corpus before they can be employed in composition, and these Nosoponus identifies by "put[ting] a little red mark against the ones which are in Cicero, and a black one against those that are not." Such a volume is obviously of staggering proportion. "It's a load for a camel's back," says Bulephorus, while Hypologus ironically quotes a tag from Virgil: "Slight the theme on which my toil is spent."

Nosoponus misses the irony. Nor does he seem to object to the provenance of the quotation, which he finishes. Next in this set of reference volumes is a phrase book containing the Master's characteristic idioms and expressions. Finally, a third volume deals with metrical patterns found in Cicero's prose. And just how are these massive reference works of pristine Ciceronian usage to be applied to the task of composition? Nosoponus describes the manner in which he goes about writing a letter to a friend:

I read over as many letters of Cicero as I can; I consult all my lists. I pick out some characteristic Ciceron-ian idioms, and some figures of speech and phrases; then some rhythms; finally, when I've got myselfthoroughly fitted up with this sort of equipment÷I go back to the actual content.

In Nosoponus' world, style takes precedence over content, and he is unabashed by this formula. "It's a matter of real skill," he proudly tells his two fellow students, "to find ideas to fit these nice expressions." Not surprisingly, imitating Cicero in such a painstaking way is time consuming. Composing at the rate of one period (i.e. a complex sentence) a night, a six-period letter is not necessarily finished in a week owing to the demands of revision. "You must reshape what you've written ten times," cautions Nosoponus, "check it against your word lists ten times, in case some tiny illegitimate word has slipped past your guard."

Bulephorus, bypassing the vulnerable details of the program just sketched, turns his attack instead upon its fundamental premise: Cicero's example must be followed completely and exclusively. In a series of Socratic questions Bulephorus tries to show that if eclecticism in style has been successful for painters and sculptors of undoubted genius, surely such an approach is preferable in the arts of writing and speaking as well. Cicero's overall superiority ought not to obscure the fact that in certain specific areas other classical authors hold an advantage. The Greeks were better at humor, while Cicero's attempts at humor in his speeches were sometimes clumsy or even inappropriate. Seneca was certainly more adept at creating aphorisms, and nobody would ever dream of imitating Cicero's mediocre sallies into the realm of poetry. Furthermore, is the Ciceronian model to be followed lockstep even where it is mistaken ("Heracles!" says the startled Nosoponus, "Faults in Cicero?") or just plain idiosyncratic?

Nosoponus, blithely ignoring the inevitable conclusion of his own answers to these questions, cheerfully retorts, "But that's what lovers do--they adore even the warts on the beloved!" But gradually the tone of these proceedings has been changing. This is no longer the collaborative search of three students for the best way to achieve the title of Ciceronian. When Bulephorus accuses Nosoponus and his fellow travelers of practicing a shallow Ciceronianism and even goes so far as to attack the character of the Master himself, Nosoponus cries foul: "Let's cut out discussion of characterÛit's the virtues and strengths of eloquence we're debating." The gloves are off, and Bulephorus seems to recede into the background as his creator, Erasmus, steps forward on the stage to address the audience directly.

Copying the mere externals of Cicero's style will not result in works of genius comparable to those of the Master himself. Why? In his pursuit of the Ciceronian ideal, Nosoponus neglects to cultivate his own voice as a writer. "[N]o mere attempt," warns Bulephorus, " to reproduce an effect is going to develop the rhetorical virtues. We have to produce them from within ourselves." Cicero's own rhetorical virtues, such as "his rich and happy gift of invention, his skill in arrangement, ÷his effectiveness in stirring emotions, the charm that captivated his audience,÷in short that mind that still breathes through his writings," are a part of his unique genius, which is inimitable. Indeed, it was precisely this genius which rescued Cicero from his own faults as an artist. His "slack and flabby" oratorical style, his verbosity, his rigid adherence to rules of rhetoric, were faults "counterbalanced" by the Master's "remarkable virtues÷[which] don't lend themselves to imitation and it's no use seeking them via example or precept; they come only from one's own natural genius." Seen in this light, the Ciceronian model is more insidious than inviting, although Nosoponus still feels that men of "outstanding minds of superhuman ability" can master it. "If they are also blessed with tireless enthusiasm, then there is some hope of their recapturing the Ciceronian idiom."

The dialogue has thus far revolved around the technical feasibility of imitating the style of a particular classical author. With its references to ancient authors and its uncomplicated discussion on matters of language, this academic debate has thus far lacked a moral imperative. But with Nosoponus still undeterred in his quest to imitate Cicero and only Cicero, Bulephorus brings out the big guns. If the ultra-Ciceronians choose to pursue their impossible goal, that's one thing. But the goal itself represents an abandonment of Christian responsibility, if indeed it is not immoral.

Bulephorus, characteristically indirect, once again uses the Socratic method to raise the issue of the morality of imitating Cicero's style in contemporary literary efforts. Asserting that that the periodic, comparatively ornate style of Cicero's Latin would have been regarded as completely 'inapposite' by Romans of earlier epochs, Bulephorus does wring from Nosoponus the concession that stylistic preferences (on the part of authors and audiences) vary over time. What is appropriate and highly regarded by one generation might be totally distasteful and inappropriate for the next. Nosoponus concedes that Cicero's style would have displeased Romans of the tougher, hard-bitten eras of Cato the Censor and Scipio Africanus. "The ears of [such an] audience would have rejected that polish and rhythm of his, being accustomed of course to a more rugged form of speech." And why is this ? "Their language matched the customs of the age they lived in." Such a statement provides Bulephorus with the opening he needs to insert what is arguably the piece de resistance of his arguments against the ultra-Ciceronian position, a speech made by an Italian imitator of Cicero before Pope Julius II and his cardinals on the occasion of Good Friday. Erasmus was himself an auditor, and his indignation is manifest in the account given by Bulephorus. Bulephorus begins by describing the speaker as one "who held the same view as you do, Nosoponus, that is, he was an aspirant after Ciceronian eloquence." And in the specific instance of this speech, his aspiration proved his undoing. The sublimity of the Good Friday story should provide any speaker, "even one endowed with quite ordinary gifts of expression÷[with the opportunity] to wring tears even from men of stone[.]" Yet this orator failed and failed miserably, if the audience's complete lack of response was any gauge. For they showed neither despair at the description of Christ's sufferings (in fact, Bulephorus says he wanted to laugh) nor joy when the orator did his best to represent the ultimate triumph and glory of His death. And why was this? Simply put, the speaker erred in imposing an utterly alien, Ciceronian style upon a theme for which it was never intended. For in this speech the sacrifice of Christ was compared to the self-sacrifice of such classical heroes as the Decii, Quintus Curtius, Cecrops, Menoecus, and Iphigenia. Likewise, this speaker compared the injustice done to Christ with miscarriages of justice from antiquity involving Socrates, Phocion, Epaminondas, Scipio, and Aristides. Finally, the triumphs of such Roman generals as Scipio, Aemilius Paulus, and Julius Caesar were invoked to convey the sense of joy which the ultimate triumph of the Cross should arouse in all believers. "In short," says Bulephorus, "this Roman spoke so Romanly that I heard nothing about the death of Christ." Of course, this is precisely what Bulephorus finds so objectionable about the speech. The fire of the Christian message has been totally obscured in a welter of classical allusions as the speaker strives after the Ciceronian idiom. The neo-Ciceronians applauded the speech, and would grant it entrance to the temple of excellence. To Bulephorus, it was simply ineffective and profane, being totally bereft of the Christian idioms more appropriate for communicating the mysteries of Christ. But then, such a perversion was only to be expected, insofar as the Ciceronians do not simply avoid, but "positively despise and recoil from" the rich corpus of a millennium of Christian literature which stands ready to inspire and assist any speaker or writer. And if this aversion is not symptomatic of some deeper, more sinister condition, at the very least it denies the Ciceronians the very vocabulary they need to express the mysteries of the faith. To drive this point home, Bulephorus asks the still unrepentant Nosoponus to consider the following conventional (but sincere) rendition of the Christian faith:

Jesus Christ, the Word and the Son of the eternal Father, according to the prophets came into the world, and having been made man, of his own free will surrendered himself to death and redeemed his church; he turned aside from us the wrath of the Father whom we had offended, and reconciled us to him so that, being justified by the grace of faith and delivered from tyranny, we might be ingrafted into the church, and persevering in the communion of the church, might after this life attain the kingdom of heaven.

Straightforward and unadorned, this version has an immediate, visceral appeal. Ah, but let a Ciceronian commissar with his doctrinaire notions about proper vocabulary get hold of the same sentiments, and this will be the result:

The interpreter and son of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, our preserver and king, according to the oracles of the seers winged his way from Olympus to the earth and, assuming the shape of a man, of his own free will consigned himself to the spirits of the dead to preserve the republic; and thus asserting the freedom of his assembly or state or republic, quenched the thunderbolt of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, directed at our heads, and renewed our good relations with him, in order that, being restored to innocence by the generous gift of our persuasion, and manumitted from the lordship of the denouncer, we might be co-opted into citizenship of the state and, persevering in the society of the republic, might, once the fates summon us to depart this life, achieve the sum total of all things in the company of the gods.

Even the Scholastics wrote in a more appropriate idiom than this, asserts Bulephorus, a comparison so shocking that Nosoponus, forgetting his true Master, utters words from the uncouth and unciceronian playwright, Terence, "What a monstrous statement!" The Ciceronian idiom has completely failed to capture the essence of the original Christian version, an idea that Bulephorus succinctly reinforces later in the dialogue by this analogy to art:

Tell me this, Nosoponus. If someone were to break up a mosaic with a fine representation of the rape of Ganymede, and try to rearrange the same stones to depict Gabriel bringing the celestial message to the maiden of Nazareth, wouldn't the resulting work be stiff and unsatisfactory, not because the methods werebad, but because they did not fit the requirements of the subject?

But if the inappropriateness of this idiom is manifest (and Nosoponus does go so far as to agree that style must be appropriate to the content) then the question remains, why do the Ciceronians persist in it? Hypologus attributes their behavior to prejudice. Classical allusions have more of a cachet than do their poorer cousins taken from patristic literature or even the Bible. Bulephorus' explanation is much more sinister:

It's paganism, believe me Nosoponus, sheer paganism, that makes our ears and minds accept such an idea. The fact is we're Christians only in name. Our bodies may have been dipped in the holy water, but our minds are unbaptized. The sign of the cross may have been put on our brows, but the cross itself is repudiated by the mind within. We have Jesus on our lips, but it's Jupiter Optimus Maximus and Romulus that we have in our hearts."

The tone of indignation here seems genuine enough, as Bulephorus (Erasmus) expostulates at some length at the blas» attitude to things Christian implied in the high, neo-Ciceronian style. Such an attitude poses particular hazards for students, a concern that runs throughout the dialogue. Indeed, Erasmus had long been concerned about a recrudescence of paganism as a result of contact with classical literature.

While the spiritual danger lurking in the blind imitation of Cicero is paramount, there are more utilitarian objections to it as well. First, such a mode of expression is not appropriate in a sixteenth-century Christian society where daily living and religious issues are inextricably linked. Second, its not just the Ciceronian style but Latin itself which is no longer employed in the councils of civil government. According to Bulephorus, Latin is only used in embassies to Rome as the traditional but tired medium of exchange between uncomprehending and bored diplomats.

Nosoponus, not impervious to but still unconvinced by such arguments, opines that if Bulephorus is correct, men of letters everywhere face a stark literary choice. "Are you urging us to speak the way Thomas and Scotus wrote." His horror is palpable, but Bulephorus is reassuring and constructive. First, the reassurance: "÷there is something in between the Scotuses and Cicero's apes [i.e. slavish imitators of Cicero]." Now for the constructive proposal: an alternative way of imitating Cicero, one that leads to genuine eloquence. The Ciceronians have been too preoccupied with merely copying the superficial characteristics of the Master's style, his diction, figures of speech, and rhythms. They have ignored not only Cicero's own eclecticism in matters of style but his faults as well, faults acknowledged both by himself and even by some of his unawed contemporaries (Cicero's friend Atticus marked up the orator's letters with a red pen). But the fundamental mistake in trying to recapture the essence of Cicero is that the one quality which made his speeches and literary efforts work cannot itself be recaptured: Cicero's innate genius. It was this genius which made virtues out of qualities which in other writers and speakers are clearly faults. Cicero's style was at times disorganized, verbose, rule-bound, flashy, slanderous, casual, ingratiating, and effeminate. But he avoided these pitfalls, and he did so because he possessed "many remarkable virtues to counterbalance the things that can be criticized." But it is precisely these virtues that cannot be imitated, for they arise in "one's own natural genius." The neo-Ciceronians, like apes impersonating men, can never hope to achieve more than a superficial imitation of their model, and the effort required to do even this will be staggering in respect of time and health. It could even be fatal.

The key to achieving true Ciceronian style lies not so much in imitating Cicero as it does in cultivating a unique and personal mode of expression. How is this achieved? First, the prospective writer or speaker must be well read in the works of the best authors, not just one. Bulephorus recommends the classical Latin poets for beginning students before they tackle Cicero's prose. Futhermore, students should be well versed in rhetorical theory (most likely Quintilian's Institutiones oratoriae) and have a wide acquaintance with other ancient prose authors before they come to Cicero. For how can those without such a background recognize, let alone imitate, the technical merits of the Ciceronian model? Like a bee who flits among flowers of all varieties, the student's eclecticism, once digested and internalized, will unconsciously reinforce the natural bent of his own mind and supply him with a unique style of his own. Words, figures of speech, cadences all will flow outward effortlessly in the service of the writer's convictions. And above all, it is this sense of conviction, interacting with the writer's eclectic literary paradigm, that will produce a Ciceronian-like eloquence profoundly different from the way in which Nosoponus and his Italian confederates have understood that term. For the contemporary European writer, the conviction or sincerity which drives eloquence cannot come from the forensic culture of Rome fossilized in the Ciceronian corpus. Instead, it proceeds out of the engagement of the pious citizen with the Christian culture around him. For Bulephorus, the truly Ciceronian style is acquired by

the person who studies Christian philosophy with as much application as Cicero did pagan philosophy; who drinks in the psalms and prophets with as much enthusiasm as he [Cicero] did the poets; who works as hard and as long to understand the commands of the apostles, the rites of the church, the origins, progress, and decline of the Christian world as he laboured to grasp the rights and laws governing the provinces, municipalities, and allied states associated with the city of Rome; who, finally, adapts all he as learnt by such studies to suit his present situation.

The writer or speaker who addresses contemporary issues, both religious and secular, from this Christian perspective will possess an intrinsic style fired by conviction. Bulephorus' appeal is heartfelt, and Nosoponus pronounces himself 'nearly cured.' Hypologus, perhaps hoping to save himself (and you, dear reader) from any more strictures, simply says, "Oh, I got better a long time ago."

Erasmus showed considerable savvy in the way in which the seriousness of his charges against the extreme Ciceronians escalates, reaching a crescendo in that section of the text where Bulephorus vents his indignation at the classicized Good Friday sermon alluded to above. Allegations of paganism and antichristian behavior at the outset of his argument might have branded this tract as just another polemical exercise in an age replete with them. In gradually turning up the heat on his Ciceronian opponents, Erasmus is inviting his readers to linger long enough to hear not just part, but all of Bulephorus's objections. Nor are these objections recklessly made in a bid to win a literary brawl. They seek to convince speakers and authors of the necessity of maintaining the primacy of Christian themes in any literary effort, if not to aid in recalling the extreme Ciceronians to their senses and back into the fold of Christ. To some extent, therefore, the Ciceronianus can be viewed as arguing for an educational program in which broad and rigorous classical learning is the indispensable but always subservient tool for presenting those themes which promote the gospel of Christ. Additionally, the Ciceronianus may also be seen as an effort on the part of its author to maintain his dominant role in determining the direction of European letters. There is evidence that Erasmus was not reluctant to assert his reputation as an author/scholar at the expense of others. The name calling of his Italian opponents may have made him even more jealous of his literary eminence, and more determined to call attention to it by a prescriptive tract of this sort.

But it is the call to freedom of expression which gives this dialogue its greatest value. At a time (1528) when he must have had ample opportunity to reflect on how badly freedom of expression in the hands of radicalized men had fractured the unity of Christendom, Erasmus' exhortation to independence of style is remarkable and humanistic.

For what follows, see Betty I. Knott's introduction (pp.324-336, passim) to her translation of the Ciceronianus.

Beginning the dialogue with a reference to illness on the part of a Ciceronian aspirant is rough stuff on the part of Erasmus, given the untimely death of Longueil.

Following the prescription of the ancient physician, Celsius. (cf. n.9/p.545) cf. n.413/ p.568 and n.630/p.583

amaveras, 'you had loved'

Virgil, Georgics,4.6-7. (cf. n.42/p.548) p.354

On the authority of Aulus Gellius, the phrase in potestatem esse ('to be in the power of) is found in Cicero instead of the more regular in potestate esse. The fault lies in the Òem of potestatem in the first expression. (cf. n.152/p.554 and n.153/p.555)

According to Bulephorus, Cicero wouldn't use the superlative form novissimus ('latest, last'), although other Roman authors had no scruples about employing this word. Italian Ciceronians of the fifteenth century reopened the debate on this particular word. (cf. n.158/p.555)

Nosoponus criticizes as unclassical the contemporary expressions used in opening and closing a letter, e.g. Carolo Caesari Codrus Urceus salutem ('To the Emperor Charles, from Codro Urceo'), where the name of the recipient precedes the name of the sender.

This reference to "superhuman ability" is apparently echoed in a letter written by the Italian Pietro Bembo (1470-1547, papal secretary, cardinal, member of the Roman Academy) concerning the imitation of Cicero. It gave rise to the suspicion that Erasmus intended Nosoponus to be a caricature of Bembo. (cf. n.260/ p.560) The Italian opposition can only have been even more enraged to see such a venerable Ciceronian so treated.

The speaker may have been one Tommaso Fedra Inghirami (1470-1516), Vatican librarian (1505), and acclaimed in some quarters as the Cicero of his age. (cf. n.307/ p.562)

This excerpt and the one which follows are both found on p.389.

cf. n.338/ p.564 for the reference to the Roman playwright Terence (c. 195-159 BC). Such references abound in this dialogue (cf. n.46/ p. 548), and may be Erasmus' way of mocking the preeminence granted to Cicero by his Italian imitators.

pp.438-439

p.394

The Ciceronianus was dedicated to Johann von Vlatten, 'scholaster' (cf.p.335) or director of education (cf.337) at St.Mary's, Aachen. Other references to the education of the young occur in the dedicatory epistle (cf. p.337) and at the end the dialogue (cf. p.445).

In a letter of 1516/17 to the Hebrew scholar Wolfgang Capito, Erasmus worries about this connection between paganism and the classics: "There is one thought that causes me anxiety; it is the fear that under the appearance of a renascence of ancient learning paganism may attempt to rear its head, for even among Christians there are some who acknowledge Christ practically in name only, while within their hearts they breath the spirit of paganism;" (p.111, Erasmus and His Age. Ed. Hans J. Hillebrand, trans. Marcus A. Haworth, S.J. [New York, 1970] )

However, Pope Leo X , a connoisseur of these highly wrought Latin speeches, was present on 16 June 1519 at the ultra-Ciceronian oration given by Celso Mellini denouncing Christophe Longueil. So Bulephorus was wrong. There was in fact an audience for this kind of thing.

Christophe de Longueil, the dedicated and precocious Ciceronian, feared assassination and fled from Rome in 1519 (cf. n.796/ p.598). He died at an early age (thirty-two) and in poverty. Bulephorus repeatedly alludes to the physical hardships of pursuing the Ciceronian model.

p.400

In the Ciceronianus Erasmus needlessly (and therefore, I would argue, deliberately) insulted his eminent French counterpart, Guillaume Bude (1468-1540). Bude, apparently discounting Erasmus' explanations, never again corresponded with the latter after the publication of the Ciceronianus. (p.331)

'Barbarus,' and 'Batavus' were epithets used by the Italian Ciceronians to belittle Erasmus. (cf. p . 3 2 7 )

The Ciceronianus: The Ideal Latin Style, by Erasmus of Rotterdam, Ed. Betty I. Knott, v.28, Collected Works of Erasmus, Ed. A.H.T. Levi (Toronto, 1986).

First published June 10, 2002; last updated June 12, 2002

Copyright 2002, GJL