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ОглавлениеIntroduction
Gian Vittorio RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio and Eudemia
Gian Vittorio RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio had an ax to grind. His Eudemiae libri decem tells the story of Flavius VopiscusFlavius Vopiscus Niger (Gian Vittorio Rossi?) Niger and Paulus AemiliusPaulus Aemilius Verus Verus, who escape from Rome in the aftermath of the conspiracy of SejanusSejanus, Lucius Aelius and become shipwrecked on Eudemia, an island located off the coast of Mauritania. They are rescued by a fellow Roman named GalloniusGallonius (Gabriel Naudé?), who becomes their guide. The two travelers discover a society of Latin speakers governed by a class of people called dynastae, administered by incompetent poliarchi (senators) and magistrates, where petty rivalries thrive, hard work and skill are trumped by personal relationships and favors, and where, as Luisella GiachinoGiachino, Luisella puts it, everything revolves around the “sinister omnipresence and omnipotence of money.”1 Writing under the pseudonym Ianus Nicius Erythraeus, Rossi brought to bear his vast knowledge of ancient and contemporary authors, his acerbic wit, and his mastery of Latin to weave a tale that, despite its fictional time and place, is a mordant critique of his own society: Rome under the reign of Pope Urban VIIIUrban VIII, Pope and the powerful Barberini family.
It is clear both from his own writings and from contemporary assessments of his talent that RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio was well read, witty, and, above all, an excellent Latinist. He was a member of the Accademia degli Umoristi, an influential literary academy that attracted intellectuals from all over Europe and was frequented by Rome’s high society, including Maffeo Barberinisee Urban VIII, Pope, later Pope Urban VIIIUrban VIII, Pope. Rossi hoped that his education, skills, and connections would lead to a fruitful career in the Roman Curia, but this never came to fruition. After a life of professional frustration, Rossi retired to a private life of reading and writing.
Among the literary products of his retirement years was Eudemia, described by Luigi GerboniGerboni, Luigi as a “venting of old grudges.”2 Published first in 1637 in eight books, and then in 1645 in ten books, Eudemia falls squarely within what Jennifer MorrishMorrish, Jennifer calls the “golden age of the Neo-Latin novel.”3 As Mark T. RileyRiley, Mark T. explains, examples of extended Latin prose fiction in the vein of ApuleiusApuleius’s Metamorphoses or PetroniusPetronius Arbiter’s Satyricon were rare until the early seventeenth century, when John BarclayBarclay, John published Euphormionis lusinini satyricon (Parisiis: Huby, 1605).4 Following Barclay’s satire, which, like Petronius’s Satyricon, was “full of lively incident and satirical descriptions of contemporary people and institutions,”5 RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio unleashed his arsenal of learning and wit against his contemporaries with full awareness of his ancient and modern generic predecessors.
Eudemia is at once an entertaining tour de force of Classical erudition and an intimately personal introduction to his own circle. As GiachinoGiachino, Luisella explains, Eudemia’s plot is secondary to “what today we would call ‘gossip,’ the incessant and vicious scuttlebutt that animates and involves all of the characters.”6 RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio becomes our guide—our GalloniusGallonius (Gabriel Naudé?)—as he introduces us to his friends, lets us in on the debates of the day, and airs his grievances with a society that admired him but never completely embraced him.
State of Scholarship on Eudemia
Gian Vittorio RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio was a prolific writer who maintained an active correspondence with friends in high places, enjoyed a reputation as a superlative Latinist among his contemporaries, and remained famous in Northern Europe, particularly in Germany, for more than a century after his death.1 In spite of this, however, he remains a largely unexplored figure in Italian literature. Luigi GerboniGerboni, Luigi, the nineteenth-century scholar who wrote the most extensive biography of Rossi, lamented that this Roman author had all but been ignored even by Italian scholars: “Our critical tradition has forgotten his [literary output], or rather, has never known about it”2; likewise, Benedetto CroceCroce, Benedetto remarked that, unfortunately, nobody showed any interest in Rossi.3 The most recent and thorough analysis of Eudemia is Luisella GiachinoGiachino, Luisella’s 2002 article “CiceroCicero, Marcus Tullius libertinus: La satira della Roma barberiniana nell’Eudemia dell’Eritreo,” in which she offers a detailed summary of the work and discusses its major themes. Giachino also authored the entry for Rossi in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani.4
Though literature specifically on Gian Vittorio RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio and his works is slight, interest in Neo-Latin literature in general has happily been increasing. In the 1970s Jozef IJsewijnIJsewijn observed that, with regard to scholarly work on Neo-Latin authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, “almost everything remains to be done.”5 Thirty years later, the scholarly status of Neo-Latin authors had not changed much when Jennifer MorrishMorrish, Jennifer remarked that they were “little known today and not much read” because, among other things, most of the texts are available only in their original Latin and do not exist in modern editions.”6 More recently, there has been significant progress in creating new editions and translations of Neo-Latin texts, notably the I Tatti Renaissance Library (Harvard University Press), the Bibliotheca Latinitatis Novae Neo-Latin Texts and Translation series (Leuven University Press), the Bloomsbury Neo-Latin Series, and the present NeoLatina series (Tübingen: Narr-Verlag). New reference works such as Brill’s Encyclopedia of the Neo-Latin World, the Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin, and the Guide to Neo-Latin Literature from Cambridge University Press have also brought ever greater scholarly attention to Neo-Latin literature.
Despite this increased interest, Gian Vittorio RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio has largely been ignored, his works usually mentioned only in passing as part of a larger list of Neo-Latin authors and texts.7 Factors that have contributed to Rossi’s near obscurity include the fact that he was writing in Latin at a time when vernacular languages were ascending in Europe as the principal vehicle for literary expression and exchange of ideas; none of his work was ever translated for a broader reading public8; and, in the case of Eudemia, readers over the centuries may have lost interest in the satire because it was too tied to Rossi’s own circle of acquaintances, thus, to quote Dustin GriffinGriffin, Dustin H., “los[ing] referential power over time.”9
RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio’s works deserve further scholarly attention both on their own merits and because they provide a window into the dynamic cultural period in which he lived. Rossi was an insider witness to seventeenth-century Rome, a period that could be characterized as, in the words of Jozef IJsewijnIJsewijn, a “thriving center of Latin literature on an international scale.”10 His literary output was prolific and encompassed many genres, including letters, dialogues, orations, biographies, poetry, and, of course, fiction. Last but not least, his works are highly enjoyable to read because his personality—by turns witty, incisive, pious, and caustic—comes through on almost every page.
