The Swerve (50 page)
Authors: Stephen Greenblatt
ACKNOWLEDGMENTSSpinoza, Baruch, 10, 68
spirits, 62, 194–95
Starace, Tommaso, 64
statues, 55, 62, 63, 88, 90, 117, 158, 209, 211, 212
Stobaeus, Joannes, 82
Stoicism, 69, 82, 96, 104–5, 240, 244
Strozzi family, 113, 301
nSuetonius, 275
nsuffering, 75–76, 101, 103, 106–9, 183, 195–98
suicide, 53–54, 94, 109
Sulla, Lucius Cornelius, 273
n
, 275
nsuperstition, 2, 6, 10–11, 18–19, 36, 72, 74–75, 183, 184, 193–97, 199, 249, 299
nSuso, Henry, 108
swerve (
clinamen
) principle, 7–13, 188–89, 297
nSwitzerland, 29, 152, 162, 206
Symeon Stylites, Saint, 68
Symonds, John Addington, 146
synagogues, 91
Syria, 62, 67
Tacitus, 63
Tantalus, 76
Tasso, Torquato, 242
taxation, 15, 22, 33, 49, 56, 111–12, 126, 287
n
, 289
ntelescopes, 239
Temple of Apollo, 275
nTemple of Daphne, 62
Temple of Jupiter, 156
Temple of Peace, 275
ntemples, 62, 67, 88, 89, 90, 156, 275
nTennyson, Alfred Lord, 54
Teresa, Saint, 108
Terranuova, 34, 111, 211, 210–18
Terranuova Bracciolini, 218
Tertullian, 47–48, 99–100, 101, 284
n
, 285
n
, 300
nTeutonic knights, 14, 15
Theodosius I, Emperor of Rome, 89–90
theology, 16, 17, 27, 65, 75–76, 94–108, 120, 136–37, 163, 208, 252–54, 282
n
–83
n
, 285
nTheophilus, 90, 91
Theophrastus, 304
nThirty Years’ War, 14–15
Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 252–53
Tiberian Library, 275
ntime, 186–89, 196–97, 237, 239, 244, 256
Timocrates, 277
nTommaso da Sarzana, 214
Torah, 39
torture, 170, 240, 255
transition, 5–7, 10, 145–46, 186–87, 217, 243–45, 259–60, 263
translations, 88, 168, 210, 212, 215
tribon
(cloak), 92Turkey, 82, 216
Tuscany, 34, 45, 141
Twelve Good Men, 127
“Twentieth,” 66
Uccello, Paolo, 218
Ulm, 15
Ulpian Library, 275
nUlysses, 288
numbilicus
(wooden stick), 56underworld, 76, 180
universe, 5–8, 73–74, 87, 186, 187, 189, 194, 220, 237, 238–39, 250–52, 306
nUrban VI, Pope, 293
n
–94
nUtopia
(More), 227–33, 251, 304
nValla, Lorenzo, 149–50, 213, 215, 221–26, 303
nvapulatio
(cudgeling), 106Varro of Atax, 23–24
Vatican, 20, 46, 142
Vatican Library, 46, 58, 155–56, 221, 296
nVegetius Renatus, Flavius, 35
Vegio, Maffeo, 302
nVelleius, Gaius, 69–70
vellum, 40, 115–16
Venice, 32, 121, 122, 130–31, 136, 239–40
Venus, 1–2, 10, 140, 175, 198, 201–2, 228, 247, 251, 260–61
Vergerio, Pier Paolo, 162
Veronese, Paolo, 305
nVesalius, Andreas, 10
Vespasian, Emperor of Rome, 275
nVespasiano da Bisticci, 129, 133
Vespucci, Amerigo, 229–30
Villa of the Papyri, 54–59, 63–65, 68, 70–72, 79, 81, 82
virgarum verbera
(hitting with rods), 106Virgil, 23, 43, 51–52, 58, 61, 96, 120, 121, 123, 132, 176, 247, 273
nVirgin Mary, 10, 166
virtue, 102, 128–29, 138–39
Visconti family, 153
Vitruvius, 62
void, 74, 75, 102, 187, 188–89
volcanic eruptions, 54–59, 63–64, 67
Voltaire, 262
Voss, Isaac, 204
Vulcan, 99
Vulgate Bible, 95–96
warfare, 24, 49, 59, 79, 89, 153, 192, 195, 226–27, 281
nwater, 73, 86
water-soluble ink, 82–83, 86
“Way of Cession,” 160–61
“Way of Compromise,” 161
“Way of Council,” 161
wealth, 20–22, 113, 127, 151, 192, 210–11, 215, 219, 301
n
, 304
n“wergild” codes, 38
witchcraft, 17, 18–19, 92–93, 217
women, 17, 66, 76, 85, 91–93, 127–29, 143–44, 174–76, 210, 212, 217, 220, 257–58
wool trade, 113, 114, 126, 287
nWretchedness of the Human Condition, The
(Poggio), 216–17writing, 37–38, 62, 112–16, 121, 130, 135, 155–56, 179
Wycliffe, John, 168, 253
Yeats, William Butler, 197
Zabarella, Francesco, 162, 205
Zamora, Padre, 250
Zenodotus, 88
Zephyr, 10, 267
nZwingli, Huldrych, 253
THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHER
whose work gave rise to the story that I trace in these pages believed that life’s highest end was pleasure, and he took particular pleasure in the community of his friends. It is only fitting then that I acknowledge the rich and sustaining network of friends and colleagues who have enhanced the writing of this book. Over the course of a year at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin I spent many pleasurable hours discussing Lucretius with the late Bernard Williams, whose marvelous intelligence illuminated everything that it touched. And some years later at the same wonderful Berlin institution I participated in an extraordinary Lucretius reading group that gave me the critical impetus I needed. Generously guided by two philosophers, Christoph Horn and Christof Rapp, the group, which included Horst Bredekamp, Susan James, Reinhard Meyer-Kalkus, Quentin Skinner, and Ramie Targoff, along with more occasional visitors, worked its way with exemplary care and contentiousness through the poem.
A second wonderful institution—the American Academy in Rome—provided the perfect setting for the bulk of the book’s writing: Nowhere else in my experience is the precious opportunity to sit quietly and work so exquisitely braided together
with
Epicurean pleasure. To the Academy’s director, Carmela Vircillo Franklin, and its capable staff, along with a host of fellows and visitors, I owe a deep debt of gratitude. My agent, Jill Kneerim, and my editor, Alane Salierno Mason, have been extraordinarily helpful, generous, and acute readers. Among the many others who have given me advice and assistance, I want to single out Albert Ascoli, Homi Bhabha, Alison Brown, Gene Brucker, Joseph Connors, Brian Cummings, Trevor Dadson, Kenneth Gouwens, Jeffrey Hamburger, James Hankins, Philip Hardie, Bernard Jussen, Joseph Koerner, Thomas Laqueur, George Logan, David Norbrook, William O’Connell, Robert Pinsky, Oliver Primavesi, Steven Shapin, Marcello Simonetta, James Simpson, Pippa Skotnes, Nick Wilding, and David Wootton.
My students and colleagues at Harvard have been a source of constant intellectual stimulation and challenge, and the stupendous library resources of this university have never ceased to amaze me. I owe particular thanks for research assistance to Christine Barrett, Rebecca Cook, Shawon Kinew, Ada Palmer, and Benjamin Woodring.
My deepest debt of gratitude—for wise advice and for inexhaustible pleasure—is to my wife, Ramie Targoff.
Adams, H. P.
Karl Marx in His Earlier Writings
. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1940.Adams, John Quincy. “Dinner with President Jefferson,”
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of his Diary from 1795 to 1848
, ed. Charles Francis Adams. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1874–77, pp. 60–61.Alberti, Leon Battista.
The Family in Renaissance Florence
, trans. Renée Neu Watkins. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1969, pp. 92–245.———.
Dinner Pieces
, trans. David Marsh. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies in Conjunction with the Renaissance Society of America, 1987.———.
Intercenales
, ed. Franco Bacchelli and Luca D’Ascia. Bologna: Pen-dragon, 2003.Albury, W. R. “Halley’s Ode on the Principia of Newton and the Epicurean Revival in England,”
Journal of the History of Ideas
39 (1978), pp. 24–43.Allen, Don Cameron. “The Rehabilitation of Epicurus and His Theory of Pleasure in the Early Renaissance,”
Studies in Philology
41 (1944), pp. 1–15.Anon. “The Land of Cokaygne,” in Angela M. Lucas, ed.,
Anglo-Irish Poems of the Middle Ages: The Kildare Poems
. Dublin: Columbia Press, 1995.Aquilecchia, Giovanni. “In Facie Prudentis Relucet Sapientia: Appunti Sulla Letteratura Metoposcopica tra Cinque e Seicento,”
Giovan Battista della Porta nell’Europa del Suo Tempo
. Naples: Guida, 1990, pp. 199–228.The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus: Fragments
, trans. and ed. C. C. W. Taylor. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.Avrin, Leila.
Scribes, Script and Books: The Book Arts from Antiquity to the Renaissance
.
Chicago
and London: American Library Association and the British Library, 1991.Bacci, P.
Cenni Biografici e Religiosita di Poggi Bracciolini
. Florence: Enrico Ariani e l’arte della Stampa, 1963.Bailey, Cyril.
The Greek Atomists and Epicurus: A Study
. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928.Baker, Eric.
Atomism and the Sublime: On the Reception of Epicurus and Lucretius in the Aesthetics of Edmund Burke, Kant, and Schiller
. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.Baldini, Umberto.
Primavera: The Restoration of Botticelli’s Masterpiece
, trans. Mary Fitton. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1986.Barba, Eugenio. “A Chosen Diaspora in the Guts of the Monster,”
Tulane Drama Review
46 (2002), pp. 147–53.Barbour, Reid.
English Epicures and Stoics: Ancient Legacies in Early Stuart Culture
. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.Baron, Hans.
The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in the Age of Classicism and Tyranny
. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955.Bartsch, Shadi, and Thomas Bartscherer, eds.
Erotikon: Essays on Eros, Ancient and Modern
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.Beddie, James Stuart.
Libraries in the Twelfth Century: Their Catalogues and Contents
. Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1929.———. “The Ancient Classics in the Medieval Libraries,”
Speculum
5 (1930), pp. 1–20.Beer, Sir Gavin de.
Charles Darwin: Evolution by Natural Selection
. New York: Doubleday, 1964.Benedict, St.
The Rule of Benedict
, trans. Monks of Glenstal Abbey. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1994.Bernard of Cluny. “De Notitia Signorum,” in l’abbé Marquard Herrgott, ed.,
Vetus Disciplina Monastica, Seu Collection Auctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti
. Paris: C. Osmont, 1726, pp. 169–73.Bernhard, Marianne.
Stifts-und Klosterbibliotheken
. Munich: Keyser, 1983.Bernstein, John.
Shaftesbury, Rousseau, and Kant
. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1980.Berry, Jessica. “The Pyrrhonian Revival in Montaigne and Nietzsche,”
Journal of the History of Ideas
65 (2005), pp. 497–514.Bertelli, Sergio. “Noterelle Machiavelliane,”
Rivista Storica Italiana
73 (1961), pp. 544–57.Billanovich, Guido. “Veterum Vestigia Vatum: Nei Carmi dei Preumanisti Padovani,” in Giuseppe Billanovich et al., eds.,
Italia Medioevale e Umanistica
. Padua: Antenore, 1958.Biow, Douglas.
Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries: Humanism and Professions in Renaissance Italy
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.Bischhoff, Bernhard.
Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne
, trans. Michael M. Gorman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.Bishop, Paul, ed.
Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the Classical Tradition
. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004.Black, Robert. “The Renaissance and Humanism: Definitions and Origins,” in Jonathan Woolfson, ed.,
Palgrave Advances in Renaissance Historiography
. Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 97–117.Blades, William.
The Enemies of Books
. London: Elliot Stock, 1896.Blondel, Eric.
Nietzsche: The Body and Culture
, trans. Seán Hand. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991.Boitani, Piero, and Anna Torti, eds.
Intellectuals and Writers in Fourteenth-Century Europe. The J. A. W. Benett Memorial Lectures, Perugia, 1984
. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1986.Bolgar, R. R., ed.
Classical Influences on European Culture, a.d. 1500–1700
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.Bollack, Mayotte.
Le Jardin Romain: Epicurisme et Poésie à Rome
, ed. Annick Monet. Villeneuve d’Asq: Presses de l’Université Charles-de-Gaulle-Lille 3, 2003.Benoît de Port-Valais, Saint.
Colophons de Manuscrits Occidentaux des Origines au XVIe Siècle/Benedictins du Bouveret
. Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1965.Boyd, Clarence Eugene.
Public Libraries and Literary Culture in Ancient Rome
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1915.Bracciolini, Poggio.
The Facetiae, or Jocose Tales of Poggio
. Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1879.———. “Epistolae—Liber Primus” in
Opera Omnia
, ed. Thomas de Tonelli. Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1964.———. Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Nicolis
, trans. Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1974.———.
Lettere
, ed. Helene Harth. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1984.———.
Un Vieux Doît-Il Se Marier?
trans. Véronique Bruez. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1998.———.
La Vera Nobilita
. Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1999.Brady, Thomas, Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, eds.
Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation
. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.Brant, Frithiof.
Thomas Hobbes’ Mechanical Conception of Nature
, trans. Vaughan Maxwell and Anne I. Fansboll. Copenhagen: Levin & Munks gaard, 1928.Bredekamp, Horst.
Botticelli: Primavera. Florenz als Garten der Venus
. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1988.———. “Gazing Hands and Blind Spots: Galileo as Draftsman,” in Jürgen Renn, ed.,
Galileo in Context
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 153–92.Bredvold, Louis. “Dryden, Hobbes, and the Royal Society,”
Modern Philology
25 (1928), pp. 417–38.Brien, Kevin M.
Marx, Reason, and the Art of Freedom
. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.Brody, Selma B. “Physics in Middlemarch: Gas Molecules and Ethereal Atoms,”
Modern Philology
85 (1987), pp. 42–53.Brown, Alison. “Lucretius and the Epicureans in the Social and Political Context of Renaissance Florence,”
I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance
9 (2001), pp. 11–62.———.
The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence
. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.Brown, Peter.
Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.———.
The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, a.d. 200–1000
. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.Bruckner, Gene A.
Renaissance Florence
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969, 1983.Bull, Malcolm.
The Mirror of the Gods
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.Bullough, D. A.
Carolingian Renewal: Sources and Heritage
. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1991.Burns, Tony, and Ian Fraser, eds.
The Hegel-Marx Connection
. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan Press, 2000.Calvi, Gerolamo.
I Manoscritti di Leonardo da Vinci dal Punto di Vista Cronologico, Storico e Biografico
. Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1925.Campbell, Gordon. “Zoogony and Evolution in Plato’s Timaeus, the Presocratics, Lucretius, and Darwin,” in M. R. Wright, ed.,
Reason and Necessity: Essays on Plato’s Timaeus
. London: Duckworth, 2000.———.
Lucretius on Creation and Evolution: A Commentary on De Rerum Natura, Book Five, Lines 772–1104
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.Campbell, Keith. “Materialism,” in Paul Edwards, ed.,
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy
. New York: Macmillan Company and The Free Press, 1967, pp. 179–88.Campbell, Stephen J. “Giorgione’s Tempest, Studiolo Culture, and the Renaissance Lucretius,”
Renaissance Quarterly
56 (2003), pp. 299–332.———.
The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este
. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.Camporeale, Salvatore I. “Poggio Bracciolini versus Lorenzo Valla: The
Orationes
in
Laurentium Vallam
,” in Joseph Marino and Melinda W. Schlitt, eds.
Perspectives on Early Modern and Modern Intellectual History: Essays in Honor of Nancy S. Struever
. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2000, pp. 27–48.Canfora, Luciano.
The Vanished Library
, trans. Martin Ryle. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.Cariou, Marie.
L’Atomisme; Trois Essais: Gassendi, Leibniz, Bergson et Lucrèce
. Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1978.Casini, Paolo. “Newton: The Classical Scholia,”
History of Science
22 (1984), pp. 1–58.Casson, Lionel.
Libraries in the Ancient World
. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.Castelli, Patrizia, ed.
Un Toscano del ’400: Poggio Bracciolini, 1380–1459
. Terranuova Bracciolini: Amministrazione Comunale, 1980.Castiglioni, Arturo. “Gerolamo Fracastoro e la Dottrina del
Contagium Vivum
,”
Gesnerus
8 (1951), pp. 52–65.Celenza, C. S. “Lorenzo Valla and the Traditions and Transmissions of Philosophy,”
Journal of the History of Ideas
66 (2005), pp. 24.Chamberlin, E. R.
The World of the Italian Renaissance
. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982.Chambers, D. S. “Spas in the Italian Renaissance,” in Mario A. Di Cesare, ed.,
Reconsidering the Renaissance: Papers from the Twenty-first Annual Conference
. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992, pp. 3–27.Chang, Kenneth. “In Explaining Life’s Complexity, Darwinists and Doubters Clash,”
The New York Times
, August 2, 2005.Cheney, Liana.
Quattrocento Neoplatonism and Medici Humanism in Botticelli’s Mythological Paintings
. Lanham, MD, and London: University Press of America, 1985.Chiffoleau, Jacques.
La Comptabilité de l’Au-Delà: Les Hommes, la Mort et la Religion dans la Région d’Avignon à la Fin du Moyen Age (vers 1320–vers 1480
). Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1980.Christie-Murray, David.
A History of Heresy
. London: New English Library, 1976.Cicero.
The Speeches of Cicero
, trans. Louis E. Lord. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937.———.
Tusculan Disputations
, trans. and ed. J. E. King. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960.———.
De Natura Deorum; Academica
, trans. and ed. H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.———.
Cicero’s Letters to His Friends
, trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey. Harmondsworth, UK, and New York: Penguin Books, 1978.Clanchy, M. T.
From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307
. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.Clark, A. C. “The Literary Discoveries of Poggio,”
Classical Review
13 (1899), pp. 119–30.