Sunday, February 18, 2024
What Would Make Me Happy
James Hankins, Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy: The Virtuous Republic of Francesco Patrizi of Siena (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2023), p. 49:
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In his poem “What Would Make Me Happy,” he tells his reader that if his youth could return to him again—a thing never to be hoped for—and Jupiter would grant all his wishes, he would choose to live under a just king who would offer him a compliant ear, protect the good, and destroy the bad. “Let me have a little house with a little well, a dim little kitchen lit by an ever-burning hearth, a fat little flock pasturing in a field, some land giving grain and good wine, a hill thick with olive trees, and a wood with trees for cutting, to give me firewood for the rest of my life.”The Latin poem (De optata felicitate) is printed on pp. 345-346 of Hankins' book.
Then comes the epigram’s pivot. Belying the topos of the simple life, the poet continues: “Let me have these little gifts and one truly great one: a library rivaling that of Pergamum!”
