In this stimulating book, Susanna de Beer underscores how, during the Renaissance period, the prestigious legacy of ancient Rome was appropriated in multiple and often antagonistic ways by a variety of agents. Based on a broad examination of Latin poems written in Europe between around 1350 and 1600, B. shows that several individuals and groups claimed exclusive inheritance of ancient Rome's power and glory in the context of Renaissance religious, political and cultural debates (such as discussions on the authority of the Papacy, conflicts between cities or proto-national formations and literary rivalries among humanists).
The Introduction clearly outlines the main theses of the book, its structure and methodological approach: B.'s investigation is grounded in literary analysis, benefits from acquisitions in the fields of imagology and reception studies and is concerned with matters of cultural and intellectual history. Here and later in the monograph, B. emphasises the ‘simultaneous proliferation’ (4) of references to Rome throughout Renaissance Europe and their inherently competitive nature. She moreover examines the logical mechanisms and rhetorical strategies underpinning Renaissance claims to the ancient Roman past. A useful distinction is made between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, that is, between Renaissance humanists who looked at Rome from — so to speak — a local, internal perspective and those who viewed it from a foreign, external one. At the same time, B. convincingly underlines the flexibility of such stances and the degree of ambivalence with which the same authors could embrace opposing views of Roman antiquity for different rhetorical purposes.
Ch. 1 offers a first overview of the ‘Renaissance battle for Rome’ in its general historical coordinates. After discussing Petrarch's plea for a revival of ancient Roman greatness in his own age, B. retraces the developments of this ‘rhetoric of renewal’ in the subsequent two centuries (especially in the context of the Papal Curia) and its concomitant contestation by ‘outsider’ parties (such as Protestant writers and northern European humanists), who rather emphasised the decline of Renaissance Rome as an ‘irreversible’ process.
The following four chapters delve into Renaissance claims to ancient Roman heritage with reference to four distinct, and yet interconnected, domains: power, morality, cityscape and literature. The focus of ch. 2 is on the Renaissance reuse of notions of Rome's imperial power drawn primarily from Virgil's Aeneid, namely: the conception of a divinely approved, eternal empire; the mention of a Trojan genealogy; the connection between Rome's physical location and its imperium; and the idea of a returning Golden Age. B. points out the ‘malleable’ character of these narratives, which could be deployed in favour of various secular and religious authorities (e.g. the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope). Ch. 3 deals with contrasting Renaissance accounts of Rome's morality. It argues that Renaissance authors provide opposing descriptions of the virtues and vices peculiar to both ancient and contemporary Rome in order to support contrasting religious and political causes, ranging from moral reform to anti-Papal polemics.
Ch. 4 takes into account the humanists’ ‘ambivalent responses’ to the ancient Roman remains (including expressions of marvel, awe and mourning) and the manifold meanings of ruins as images of Rome's splendour or decay, as ‘local heritage’ or ‘symbols of universal truths’. B. underlines how Renaissance humanists not only advocated for their patrons’ interests but also wrote on their own behalf, as self-aware literary agents. This important aspect is further explored in ch. 5, which revolves around the humanists’ self-portrayal as ‘new Romans’ and their demands for a renewal or transfer of ancient Roman cultural legacy. Among the topics considered here are the idea of poetry as a durable type of monument and the significance of Renaissance allusions to Rome's prestige as a means to authorise literature both in Latin and in vernacular languages.
Overall, the book provides a compelling account of Renaissance attitudes to ancient Rome by approaching a wide range of Latin poems in the service of a consistent and thorough argument, and yet at the same time pointing to the many-sided implications of the literary texts and cultural phenomena under consideration. As B. explains in the Introduction (20), the book builds on the analysis of an ‘exemplary’ selection of poems. In highlighting the pervasiveness of Renaissance images of Rome and their frequently agonistic or polemical function, B.'s work could indeed offer a useful frame against which to read even further texts (such as Jacopo Sannazaro's Latin epigrams).
Although the focus of the monograph is on the Renaissance, B. does acknowledge that the multi-faceted legacy of ancient Rome was appropriated and debated repeatedly from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages, as well as in modern times (e.g. 3–4, 34–5, 59, 64–5, 73, 81–3, 98, 164–5). The analysis of concepts like the alleged moral virtue or corruption of pagan and Christian Rome (ch. 3) could have benefited from further engagement with medieval Latin literature. It goes without saying, however, that a diachronic comparison between medieval and Renaissance approaches to Rome is outside the goals of B.'s investigation, which overall appears both far-reaching and clear in scope.
In sum, B.'s book sponsors a compellingly dynamic view of ‘Renaissance culture’ as a process of continuous ‘negotiation’ between different views of Roman antiquity in relation to pressing and often diverging interests. The volume is thus a valuable resource for scholars and readers interested in classical antiquity, the Renaissance and the ways in which the present can be informed by competing re-interpretations of the past.
