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In a letter to Carlo MazzeiMazzei, Carlo, written a year after the publication of the second edition of Eudemia in ten books, RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio addressed his correspondent’s apparently negative reaction to his work:

Doubtless some aspects of my Eudemia have recently caused you offense because, in recounting the vices of several people, I have more than once exceeded the bounds of moderation. But keep in mind the works of HoraceHorace, JuvenalJuvenal, and others, who did the very same thing with the utmost freedom of speech and sentiment. Consider in particular PetroniusPetronius Arbiter Arbiter, whom I have attempted to imitate. As you can see, he rubbed the city with much salt and vinegar, just as Horace says about LuciliusLucilius Gaius. Finally, do not forget that my work is a satire, which I consider extremely difficult not to write in the face of mankind’s corrupt and irredeemable morals.1

Implied in this passage is that, because of its criticism of contemporary mores, Eudemia was not universally well received.

In his own defense, RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio inserts himself into a long and venerable line of ancient Roman satirists, whose legendary libertas (freedom of speech), he argues, enabled them to criticize their own societies. Rossi names PetroniusPetronius Arbiter Arbiter as his most immediate model, whose Satyricon, with its episodic tale and mix of prose and verse, is the closest ancient work to Eudemia in terms of genre. As additional models he cites the verse satirists HoraceHorace, JuvenalJuvenal, and LuciliusLucilius Gaius, and he closes this passage with a phrase inspired by a line in Juvenal’s first satire, “difficile est saturam non scribere” (“it is difficult not to write satire”).2

RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio invokes these ancient satirists as cover for any offense he may have caused. So what if he went a little too far in poking fun at his contemporaries (“non semel modestiae fines praeterierim”)? Is that really any different from what the greatest satiric poets from Rome’s illustrious past had done? Rossi’s explanation of his satiric pedigree, however, merits examination. First of all, Rossi is inserting himself into two distinct satiric traditions: prosimetric Menippean satire in the Petronian vein,3 and the verse satire of LuciliusLucilius Gaius, HoraceHorace, and JuvenalJuvenal. Second, and more important, he is pinning his defense on the question of libertas, which, out of all of the ancient predecessors he mentions, was only enjoyed by Lucilius.

LuciliusLucilius Gaius’s poetry, which survived only in fragmentary form, is known primarily through HoraceHorace’s two books of satires, but also through the satires of PersiusPersius and JuvenalJuvenal. A citizen of Republican Rome, member of the equestrian class, and friend of ScipioScipio Africanus Aemilianus, Lucilius famously “gave free rein to his pugnacious temperament, attacking Scipio’s political enemies, his own literary opponents, and anyone he happened to dislike.”4 In the satires of Horace, Persius, and Juvenal—reflecting a period of time spanning the late republic and early empire—Lucilius served as a model of freedom of speech that could only be aspired to by later authors, but that could not be emulated on account of the changed political situation.5

As Niall Rudd explains regarding HoraceHorace, “In 39 B.C. as a pardoned Republican and a man of no social consequence he could not afford to give indiscriminate offense.”6 PersiusPersius and JuvenalJuvenal, who were writing, respectively, under the emperors Nero and Domitian (at least for Juvenal’s early satires), were constrained by a similar lack of libertas that found a creative outlet in satire. Additionally, although libertas is not an overt theme in the Satyricon, the novelistic genre—the fantastical voyage in the comic tradition—enabled PetroniusPetronius Arbiter to comment, albeit obliquely, on his own society.7 More than 1,500 years separated RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio from his ancient models, of course, yet he nevertheless composed his satire in similarly restrictive circumstances. Living in Rome under the absolutist rule of Pope Urban VIIIUrban VIII, Pope, and within the constraints of the Counter-Reformation, finding one’s works on the Index of Prohibited Books was a real danger, and running afoul of orthodox views was a risky proposition.8

A useful lens through which to view RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio’s insertion of his work into the two satiric traditions, as well as his invocation of libertas, is what Howard WeinbrotWeinbrot, Howard D. terms the “harsh” and “soft” modes of satire.9 Menippean satire is generally characterized as falling within the harsh mode; that is to say, it is an attack on societal vice via the slanderous mocking of people and customs. The verse satire of LuciliusLucilius Gaius, famous for its “censorious ridicule,”10 is another example of this harsh mode. HoraceHorace, on the other hand—the verse satirist Rossi cites most frequently throughout his body of work—presented a soft mode of satire that eschewed personal attacks and offered a moral corrective by praising virtue.11 In his letter to MazzeiMazzei, Carlo, Rossi implies that, with Eudemia, he wants to have it both ways. On the one hand, he claims to be part of a long line of free speakers stretching all the way back to Lucilius, choosing as his most overt model the harsh genre of Menippean satire; on the other hand, he exhorts his readers to view him as a soft-spoken, latter-day Horace, who, meaning no harm, is just trying to point out society’s flaws in a humorous way in order to expunge or correct them.

RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio’s soft, Horatian stance, which becomes fully expressed in his 1646 letter to MazzeiMazzei, Carlo, was not always in evidence. In fact, a close reading of Rossi’s correspondence over the entire publication process of Eudemia reveals that Rossi’s satiric persona underwent a consciously constructed transformation from harsh to soft as a strategy of self-defense in response to the reaction his satire generated.

In two separate letters to Giovanni Zaratino CastelliniCastellini, Giovanni Zaratino written in the early 1630s, RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio explicitly describes Eudemia as rendering humorous, yet accurate, depictions of his milieu: “This satire, or, if you will, this history, which is what I call it”12; and “My satire—or rather my history … for although I sprinkled my stories with made-up elements, they are true and they happened during my lifetime.”13 Rossi’s conflation of history and satire underscores what GriffinGriffin, Dustin H. describes as the genres’ shared referential nature and rhetorical purpose: “Like the satirist, the historian distinguishes between the virtuous and the wicked, and perpetuates the memory of both.”14

RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio’s insistence on the truth of his satire also calls to mind another literary model for Eudemia in the harsh mode, which he does not overtly acknowledge: LucianLucian of Samosata’s Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα (A True Story), in which a first-person narrator recounts the “true story” of his fantastical voyage to fictional lands.15 Unlike Lucian’s narrator, who destabilizes his narrative from the outset by declaring that he is a liar who is “writing about things which I have neither seen nor had to do with nor heard from others,”16 Rossi puts himself forward as a truth teller whose historia, he insists, is based on things that actually happened. While he might be saying this for rhetorical effect, demonstrating his familiarity with Lucian’s tale, his claim to truth telling is nevertheless borne out by the fact that, unlike Lucian’s fantasy landscapes—peopled with strange creatures and characters from ancient history and mythology—Rossi’s Eudemia presents characters who can, to a large extent, be traced to Rossi’s circle of friends.

In the same letters to CastelliniCastellini, Giovanni Zaratino, referenced above, RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio tells his friend that he was encouraged to publish his satire and that the censors “were said to have enjoyed both the subject and the style, and did not deem it unworthy of publication.”17 But communications immediately following Eudemia’s 1637 publication indicate that its reception was not entirely positive. Particularly relevant are two letters, both from the year 1638, to Cardinal Francesco BarberiniBarberini, Francesco (dated March 31) and to Clemente MerlinoMerlino, Clemente, judge of the Roman Rota (dated October 25), each of which reads like an apologia for the novel.18 The common theme of these letters is Rossi’s desire to mitigate any offense caused by his satire. In both of them he attempts to distance himself from his work, while at the same time standing by his use of humor to expose and expunge immoral behavior. The seeds of the rhetorical defense that Rossi would put forth eight years later, in his letter to MazzeiMazzei, Carlo, are found in these early justifications.

After an initial (and implausible) denial that he was the author of Eudemia,19 RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio’s letter to Cardinal Barberini addresses complaints he heard about his satire being “pernicious, corrupting of morals, and damaging to the dignity and reputation of those associated with the [papal] court.”20 Rossi stresses that his book is a work of fiction, that it does not refer to any real people, and that only a person of ill will would associate the morally questionable characters in his satire with anyone in real life (a statement that is a complete reversal of his earlier claims to truth-telling). Most importantly, he makes the case that he is not narrating acts of immorality in a witty and elegant manner in order to praise such acts, but to make fun of them, or rather, to hiss at them and drive them away.21 Rossi is not yet explicitly referencing HoraceHorace’s corrective laughter, but this is certainly implied.

RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio’s letter to Clemente MerlinoMerlino, Clemente is longer and more substantial, putting forth a detailed rationale for his satire (“totam libri mei rationem”). His letter builds to a defense from an initial posture of distancing and minimizing, in which he claims that the satire was not his idea; his friends made him write it; it was meant to be seen only by a few people; and it merely consists of “ridiculae fabellae” (“ridiculous little stories”). For the first time, Rossi also introduces the notion, which he would go on to repeat on other occasions, that two books were left out of the 1637 edition, implying that these “missing” books would have clarified his intent or softened people’s reaction to it.22 By the end of the letter, Rossi embraces a full-throated defense of his use of satire to expunge immorality from society:

What more suitable, useful, and agreeable means of censure can be found, that can effectively insinuate itself into the minds of men, than that which exposes, in fictional characters—with real names concealed, times and locations changed—the sinful dispositions of the mind, as if through fun and jest? Ancient writings testify to the fact that this was always lawful and permitted according to both Greek and Roman custom. Was it not HoraceHorace who said, “Who is to prevent someone from telling the truth, as long as he is laughing”? “But,” they insist, “in your discourse you present the vile passions of certain private individuals, passions that are filthy even to think about let alone recount, on full display as if in living color.” Those people are perhaps among those whom it pleases to pursue these base and shameful acts, rather than to run away once they have partaken in them. So what if these acts are, as you say, foul, execrable, and worthy of every punishment? They nevertheless contain a certain hilarity that has the power to spur useful laughter and, most importantly, to expose and mock the schemes and tricks of shameless men.23

Most central to RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio’s defense of his work in this letter to MerlinoMerlino, Clemente is the notion of “useful laughter,” which is an inherent part of the soft Horatian satiric mode. HoraceHorace’s embrace of wit and humor as a corrective to societal ills is clearly expressed, for example, in Sat. I.X.14–5.24 This spirit, fortified by Rossi’s almost direct quotation in his letter of Horace’s Sat. I.I.24–5, is congruent with the author’s desire to be seen not as a harsh mocker like LuciliusLucilius Gaius, PetroniusPetronius Arbiter, or LucianLucian of Samosata, but as a gentle humorist like Horace, who desires to guide people to good behavior through laughter. Indeed, taking a cue from the reaction to his satire and his apologiae in defense of it, Rossi weaves this Horatian satiric mode into his expanded 1645 edition. Books Nine and Ten are more generic in their humor—targeting caricatures or ridiculous archetypes rather than actual people—and they contain more instances of praise, the most notable being a 177-line poem praising HumanusHumanus (Urban VIII), his pseudonym for Pope Urban VIIIUrban VIII, Pope. What is more, the Horatian satiric mode is personified in a character named IcosippusIcosippus (Gian Vittorio Rossi), an accomplished scholar who was criticized by a few scolds for a certain book he published—in which he took to task the questionable morals of certain individuals—but then defends himself in a long speech about the virtue of useful laughter. That Icosippus is a stand-in for Rossi himself is clear, as is the presence of the themes at the heart of the apologia as encapsulated in the Merlino letter.