Rolet's rich and erudite volume makes a distinguished contribution to the series Renaissance, as it testifies to the diversity of both the period and European cultural networks, and focuses on Achille Bochhi, a “figure-phare” or beacon of literary and artistic Bologna (13). Following upon her 2015 critical edition of Bocchi's Symbolicae Quaestiones, Rolet provides here the first edition, translation, and annotation of complementary texts: Bocchi's Democritus and Ptolemaeus and Giovanni Antonio Delfinio's commentary of Bocchi's In Symbolum Decimum. Rolet admirably examines the manuscript tradition of each and proposes a stemma indicating relationships between the Democritus, the Ptolemaeus, and other manuscripts, some hypothetical, some lost. Rolet's analysis of the Delfinio commentary is brief yet fascinating, since by comparing the Bologna manuscript with the British Library manuscript of Bocchi's Symbolicae Quaestiones she discovered that the commentary is not in the hand of Delfinio or an anonymous copyist, but in that of Bocchi, who also made corrections to the manuscript. She hypothesizes that Bocchi recopied an original Delfinio text to which he added modifications, perhaps with the editor's consent.

Chapter 1, on Bocchi's Démocrite ou la vanité, offers insights relating to the sermo, or inaugural discourse, for a university course on Cicero and Horace. Rolet focuses on key points such as laughter in antiquity and in Bocchi's day in theory and in practice, a laughter that denounces the vanity of human activity itself. She excels in stylistic analysis and defining terms: for sermo, its understanding since antique Rome as conversation and dialogic exchange. Although the orator is the only speaker, he exhorts his public, “Rions tous” (“Let's all laugh,” 69), creating a polyphonic text. A detour through Horace illuminates the sermo's style as diatribe yet rhapsody, gleaning literary strategies and ethical orientations from both antiquity and humanism while testifying to Bologna's effervescence. Rolet furnishes the Latin text of the Democritus, her French translation, and rich and copious notes. The latter identify citations and provide references from antiquity, the Bible, and modern scholarship on key topoi such as the valorization of tears, correlative with a condemnation of excessive laughter. They permit a deeper understanding of Bocchi's procedures: allusion, adaptation, parody, and paraphrase. Of particular interest is note 116 and figure 1, elucidating a first version of Bocchi's anticurialist poem Symbolum 124 and convincingly arguing Bocchi's authorship.

Chapter 2 presents Bocchi's Ptolemaeus, “Tolomei ou sur le devoir du prince face a ses detracteurs” (“On the duty of the prince confronting his detractors”). Rolet provides the first in-depth study of the text, an unequal conversation between three humanists—Claudio Tolomei, Gabriele Cesano, and Annibale Caro. She considers genre, dating, rhetoric, culture, law, and politics, the latter honoring Machiavelli's thought. After distinguishing the dialogue's principal protagonists, Tolomei and Cesano, Rolet draws an overall plan of the text with main developments and sources, designating its particular features while highlighting those related to previous traditions. Despite Bocchi's choice of Latin for the dialogue and Tolomei's choice of Italian for the letters to Cesano (annex 1) and his study of Machiavelli, Rolet argues convincingly against linguistic opposition and for convergence or an enunciative relationship. She underscores harmony between intellectual wisdom and political action, analyzing Caro's dramatic intervention in the epilogue and inviting Tolomei to respond to the prince.

A substantial analysis of “la menace du ‘crimen maiestatis’” (“the menace of ‘crimes against the ruler’”) includes a table of Bocchi's Latin terms, French definitions, and Cesano's Italian, plus a rich discussion of forms of attacks and detractors from antiquity to the Renaissance. A section on Machiavelli's influence on Tolomei analyzes passions and maladies in the individual that may become dangerous for the political order. As in medicine, the prince should permit a purgative or emetic, and authorize, to an extent, criticism and invective. Situating the dialogue in the era of the Farnese, Rolet reveals Machiavelli's stylistic and conceptual influence and Bocchi's appeal to history through exemplum and memoria. She provides Bocchi's previously unpublished Latin dialogue, her French translation, and abundant notes focusing on terms, sources, and relevant scholarship of today. Annexes demonstrate a common reservoir of arguments, Tolomei's letter in Italian to Cesano, and Guez de Balzac's epistle to Cospean.

Chapter 3 presents the previously unpublished text of Giovanni Antonio Delfinio's Petit Commentaire to Bocchi's Symbole 10, Rolet's French translation, and prolific notes that define terms, identify citations, elucidate historical allusions, and send the reader to pertinent modern scholarship. Her substantial and richly illustrated introduction examines the epigram and engraving of Symbole 10, its literary and artistic sources, and its philosophical perspectives in Renaissance debates on pleasure and virtue. After situating Delfinio and his theological and philosophical writings, Rolet probes the commentary's organization, providing a synoptic table and principal sources (Erasmus and Ficino). Not only a support for Bocchi's emblem, the commentary demonstrates Delfinio's reciprocate analysis between epigram and engraving, his attention to external elements, his art of cultural digression, and his passion for Aristotle. As with Bocchi's works of chapters 1 and 2, Rolet provides Delfinio's Latin text, her French translation, and linguistic, historical, and literary notes. She identifies errors, traces sources, and refers to early modern and modern scholars elucidating, for example, Delfinio's appeal to pagan, Christian, and even Muslim partisans of pleasure.

Highly informative, with in-depth analyses, Rolet's volume is a model of scholarship and includes a rich bibliography and index.