1 The most thorough discussion of imitation is Gmelin, Hermann, “Das Prinzip der Imitatio in den romanischen Literaturen der Renaissance,” Romanische Forschungen, 46 (1932), 83–360 Google Scholar. See also Lenient, Charles, De Ciceroniano bello apud recentiores (Paris, 1855)Google Scholar, Sabbadini, Remigio, Storia del ciceronianismo e di altre questioni letterarie nell'età della rinascenza (Torino, 1885)Google Scholar, Norden, Eduard, Die antike Kunstprosa vom VI. Jahrhundert v. Chr. his in die Zeit der Renaissance (Darmstadt, 1958), pp. 773–781 Google Scholar, Sandys, John Edwin, Harvard Lectures on the Revival of Learning (Cambridge, 1905)Google Scholar, although his chapter, “The History of Ciceronianism,” pp. 145—173, is largely dependent on Sabbadini, McKeon, Richard, “Literary Criticism and the Conception of Imitation in Antiquity,” Modern Philology, 34 (1936), 1–35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Ulivi, Ferruccio, L'imitazione nella poetica del rinascimento (Milano, 1959)Google Scholar, Vasoli, Cesare, “L'estetica dell'Umanesimo e del Rinascimento,” in Momenti eproblemi di storia dell'estetica, parte prima (Milano, 1959), esp. pp. 345–354 Google Scholar, 380-383, Struever, Nancy S., The Language of History in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Historical Consciousness in Florentine Humanism (Princeton, 1970), pp. 147 Google Scholar ff.; Elaine Fantham, “Imitation and Evolution: The Discussion of Rhetorical Imitation in Cicero De oratore 2.87-97 and Some Related Problems of Ciceronian Theory” and “Imitation and Decline: Rhetorical Theory and Practice in the First Century After Christ,” Classical Philology, 73 (1978), 1-16, 102-116. The best discussion of the interaction between the theory and practice of imitation and of the type of reading which imitative literature requires is Greene, Thomas M., “Petrarch and the Humanist Hermeneutic,” in Italian Literature: Roots and Branches, ed. Giose Rimanelli and Kenneth John Atchity (New Haven, 1976), pp. 201–224 Google Scholar. I am greatly indebted to Greene's work on imitation.

2 See, for example, Smith, A. J., “Theory and Practice in Renaissance Poetry: Two Kinds of Imitation,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 47 (1964), 212–243 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 De imitationi libri tres (Venice, 1545), p. 43^v. Unless otherwise indicated all translations are my own.

4 The boundaries between the types of imitation are fluid in some theorists, and in practice it is often difficult to distinguish precisely imitation from emulation or following. Consequently I use imitation to designate both the larger class and one member of it. I fear that greater terminological precision, although perhaps more convenient, would result in too rigid a system of classification.

5 Compare the fine discussion of the tension between Du Bellay's reverence for the ancients and his impulse towards iconoclasm in Ferguson, Margaret W., “The Exile's Defense: Du Bellay's La Defence et illustration de la langue françoyse ,” PMLA, 93 (1978). 275–289 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Stackelberg, Jürgen v., “Das Bienengleichnis: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der literarischen Imitatio ” Romanische Forschungen, 68 (1956), 271–293 Google Scholar.

7 Nevertheless Macrobius does change what he finds in Seneca. The most revealing additions are quoted in the text, but are not the only ones. The comparison at Sat. i.pr.8 does not come from Seneca. Macrobius also omits large portions of Seneca's letter: the digression on natural history, the contrast between father/son and manjimago, the “magni vir ingenii” who impresses his own form on what he draws from others. The omission of the “magni vir ingenii” may be due to Macrobius’ modesty (cf. his own concern over his ability to write good Latin, sections IIff.), but it might reflect his shift of emphasis from transformation to orderly management: he does not want his material to be unrecognized, as Seneca asserts can happen. Also, the resemblance of father to son is irrelevant to Macrobius’ redisposition. Consequently, Petrarch's criticism is not entirely just: “non enim flores apud Senecam lectos in favos vertere studuit, sed integros et quales in alienis ramis invenerat, protulit” (Le Familiari, ed. Vittorio Rossi and Umberto Bosco [Florence, 1933-42], 1.8.3-4). Cf. Erasmus’ criticism of Macrobius’ centones, II Ciceroniano, ed. Angiolo Gambara (Brescia, 1965), p. 204.

8 Macrobius excuses his reproduction of others’ words as follows: “nee mihi vitio vertas, si res quas ex lectione varia mutuabor ipsis saepe verbis quibus ab ipsis auctoribus enarratae sunt explicabo; quia praesens opus non eloquentiae ostentationem, sed noscendorum congeriem pollicetur” (i.pr.4). Borrowing and its unscrupulous cousin, theft, like culling flowers, are frequent images of nontransformative imitation or following.

9 “Oratio super Fabio Quintiliano et Statii Sylvis,” in Prosatori latini del Quattrocento, ed. Eugenio Garin (Milan and Naples, 1952), p. 878. The lines from Lucretius are 3.11-12.

10 See the letter to Cortesi, Prosatori, pp. 902-904.

11 I list a few more instances of apian metaphors in nontransformative contexts to show their general diffusion in the Renaissance, since the reader of von Stachelberg's collection of Bienenglekhnisse receives the impression that only medieval authors use them to support advice to gather material from a wide variety of sources. Cinzio, Giovambattista Giraldi, “Super imitatione epistula,” in Trattati di poetica e retorica del Cinquecento, ed. Bernard Weinberg (Bari, 1970—74), vol. 1, pp. 199–200 Google Scholar, cites the metaphor as a typical argument for eclectic imitation against Ciceronianism. Ronsard uses the metaphor at least four times in connection with gathering. The most revealing case is “Sonnet, à M. des Caurres, sur son livre de Miscellanees,” in which Ronsard praises the compiler of a florilegium; see Oeuvres complètes, ed. Gustave Cohen (Paris, 1950), vol. 2, pp. 942-943. The other instances may be found, vol. 2, pp. 390—391, 614, 862 (I owe these references to Castor, Grahame, Pléiade Poetics: A Study in Sixteenth Century Thought and Terminology [Cambridge, 1964], p. 72 Google Scholar). See also Ramus, Petrus, Ciceronianus (Paris, 1557), p. 18 Google Scholar, and Antonius Muretus, M., Variorum Lectionum libri viii (Venice, 1559)Google Scholar, book 8, chap. 1.

12 See the letter to Poliziano, Prosatori, p. 910.

13 Quintilian 10.1.19; Macrobius, Sat. I.pr.7; Petrarch, Fam. 22.2.12, Seniles 2.3; Poliziano, Prosatori, p. 904; Erasmus pp. 176, 178, 290 (quoted below), 300; Celio Calcagnini, “Super imitatione commentatio,” Trattati 1.213; Dolet, Etienne, De Imitatione Ciceroniana, in Emile V. Telle, L'Erasmianus siue Ciceronianus d'Etienne Dolet (1535) (Geneva, 1974), pp. 18 Google Scholar, 63, 76, 91; Florido, Francesco, Succisivarum lectionum libri tres (Basel, 1539), p. 126 Google Scholar; Bellay, Du, La Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris, 1970), p. 42 Google Scholar; Sidney, , An Apologie for Poetrie, in Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith (Oxford, 1904), vol. 1, p. 203 Google Scholar; “Timber,” Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford, Percy and Evelyn Simpson, vol. 8 (Oxford, 1947), p. 638. In order not to burden the text unnecessarily I will here list some examples of the monkey and crow metaphors, which always (with the exception of Villani, who calls Salutati “scimmia di Cicerone” as a compliment) are used pejoratively to indicate particularly slavish, nontransformative imitation. For the ape see Horace, Sat. 1.10.18; Seneca the Elder, Contr. 9.3. 12-13; the three ancient and numerous medieval uses of simia cited by Curtius, Ernst Robert, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, 1953), pp. 538–540 Google Scholar; Fillipo Villani, Le vite d'uomini illustri fiorentini, cited by Gambaro, Ciceroniano, p. xxxii; Petrarch, Fam. 23.19.13; Poliziano, Prosatori, p. 902; Cortesi, Prosatori, p. 906 and “De hominibus doctis dialogus,” in Philippi Villani Liber de civitatis Florentiae famosis civibus, ed. Gustavus Camillus Galetti (Florence, 1847), p. 234; Pico, , Le epistole “De imitatione” di Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola e di Pietro Bembo, ed. Giorgio Santangelo (Florence, 1954), pp. 29, 63, 70, 71Google Scholar; Erasmus, with whom simius is a favorite term of mockery, pp. 86, 100, 108, 118, 136, etc.; Sperone Speroni, Opere (Venice, 1740), vol. 2, p. 365 (joined with a crow comparison); Du Bellay, p. 107; Harvey, Gabriel, Ciceronianus, ed. Harold S. Wilson (Lincoln, 1945), p. 80 Google Scholar, alluding to Erasmus, p. 100. Horace, Epis. 1.3.19, reworks the Aesopian fable of the crow and the stolen plumage to dissuade Celsus from plundering the Palatine library for his writings. After Horace, the cornicula becomes a commonplace: Petrarch, Fam. 22.2.17; Pico, p. 34; Erasmus, p. 204; Calcagnini, Trattati 1.216; Speroni 2.365; Ricci, p. 75; Johann Sturm, De imitatione oratorio (Strassbourg, 1574), schola to book 3, chap. 1; Harvey, p. 4 (perhaps alluding to Ricci).

14 Ciceroniano, p. 290. The representative nature of this passage is highlighted by the fact that it is one of the very few passages of which Dolet, in his attack on Erasmus (p. 91), approves.

15 See my “Imitation and the Renaissance Sense of the Past: The Reception of Erasmus’ Ciceronianus,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 9 (1979), 155-177.

16 Seneca, Ep. mor. 84. 8; Petrarch, Fam. 23.19.11; Cortesi, Prosatori, pp. 906 (quoted by Erasmus, p. 298), 908. Pico criticizes Cortesi's comparison, p. 63.

17 Because of the inaccuracies of the printed editions of the Disputationes Camaldulenses I translate from the manuscript, written by Pietro Cennini in 1474, preserved in the Laurentian Library (Plut. 53.28). This passage appears f. 197^v.

18 De imitatione oratorio 2.3. Of all the theorists of imitation Sturm is the most insistent on dissimulation, which finds a place in his theory from his earliest days (see Nohilitas Literata [1538; ed. Philip Müller, Jena, 1680], p. 69). By the time of his major work on imitation, De imitatione oratorio (1574), he has elaborated a sixfold scheme for dissimilation which he calls “occultationis partes” (book 3, chap. 1). Parthenio, Bernardino, Delia imitatione poetica (Venice, 1560), p. 48 Google Scholar, offers specific advice on methods of dissimulation, but not in as great detail as Sturm.

19 Compare Montaigne on his memory in “De la praesumption,” Oeuvres complètes, ed. Albert Thibaudet and Maurice Rat (Paris, 1962), p. 635: “Je feuillette les livres, je ne les estudie pas: ce qui m'en demeure, c'est chose que je ne reconnois plus d'estre d'autrui; c'est cela seulement dequoy mon jugement a faict son profict, les discours et les imaginations dequoy il s'est imbu; l'autheur, le lieu, les mots et autres circonstances, je les oublie incontinent.” Cicero, De oratore 2.59-60, uses sunburn as a metaphor for unintentional influence, and E. K., in his dedicatory letter to Gabriel Harvey, uses Cicero's comparison to defend Spenser's archaic diction: “In whom [older English authors] whenas this our Poet hath bene much travelled and throughly redd, how could it be, (as that worthy Oratour sayde) but that walking in the sonne although for other cause he walked, yet needes he mought be sunburnt; and having the sound of those auncient Poetes still ringing in his eares, he mought needes in singing hit out some of theyr tunes. But whether he useth them by such casualtye and custome, or of set purpose and choyse … “ (Spenser, Poetical Works, ed. J. C. Smith and E. de Selincourt [Oxford, 1912], p. 416). Compare Wilson, Thomas, The Arte of Rhetorique (1560), ed. G. H. Mair (Oxford, 1909), p. 5 Google Scholar. I owe these references to sunburn to Kalstone, David, Sidney's Poetry: Contexts and Interpretations (Cambridge, 1965), p. 191, n. 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 The “De Arte Poetica” of Marco Girolamo Vida, ed. and tr. Ralph G. Williams (New York, 1976), 3.257-258. I quote Williams’ translation here and elsewhere with an occasional modification.

21 Quoted by Nolhac, Pierre de, Pétrarque et l'humanisme (Paris, 1907), vol. 2, p. 92 Google Scholar. De Nolhac, p. 91, shows that Silvanus is a name Petrarch often used for himself.

22 Cf. Sturm, De imitatione oratoria 1.11. For theft and imitation see Stemplinger, Eduard, Das Plagiat in der griechischen Literatur (Leipzig and Berlin, 1912)Google Scholar and White, Harold Ogden, Plagiarism and Imitation during the English Renaissance: A Study in Critical Distinctions (Cambridge, 1935)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Hesiod, , Works and Days, ed. M. L. West (Oxford, 1978), p. 147 Google Scholar.

24 See “Homers Wettkampf,” in Nietzsche, Friedrich, Werke, ed. Karl Schlechta (Munich, 1969), vol. 3, p. 294 Google Scholar. Nietzsche, however, argues that Hesiod's conception of the value of envy is typically Greek and alien to moderns.

25 Robert V. Merrill, “Eros and Anteros,” Speculum, 19 (1944), 274ff., discusses this passage and Calcagnini's Anteros sive de mutuo amore.

26 Weinberg prints “semper astris” instead of the correct “serperastris“; see Calcagninus, Caelius, Opera (Basel, 1544), p. 275 Google Scholar. Calcagnini is referring to Varro, de lingua latina 9.11.

27 In other passages, however, Lucretius asserts the originality of treating such difficult subjects in Latin verse by reversing the vestigia topos: “avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante/trita solo” (1.926-927 = 4.1-2). For similar assertions of originality see Virgil, Geo. 3.289-294, and Horace, Epist. 1.19.21-2 and Ars poetica 285-8.

28 For a formulation dependent on Quintilian see Daniel Barbaro, “Delia eloquenza,” Trattati 2.359.

29 Seneca, Ep. mor. 79.16; Pliny, Epist. 6.11.2; Longueil, quoted by Telle, L'Erasmianus, p. 313; Dolet, p. 66; Ricci, p. 66^v; Parthenio, pp. 65, 87; Ramus, p. 78; Ascham, letter to Sturm, The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, ed. Giles (London, 1864), pp. 180, 181; Sturm, Nobilitas Literata, p. 23; Harvey, pp. 82, 102.

30 In my opinion there is no doubt that Petrarch is emulating the passage from Seneca rather than just using a topos. Petrarch refers to Ep. mor. 33.7, a section against “captare flosculos,” in three different letters (Fam. 1.3.4, 4.15.17” 24-1-9). The second of these letters contains a long exhortation, based on Seneca, not to excerpt and paraphrases the via and vestigia sentence: “Placet ignota tentare, ubi sepe viam non inveniens aut vageris aut corruas; placet illorum segui vestigia…” (4.15.18). For Petrarch's thorough acquaintance with Seneca, especially the letters to Lucilius, see de Nolhac, vol. 2, pp. 115-126. It is ironic that Petrarch is violating his own advice against “captare flosculos” and excerpting from commentaries in Fam. 22.2; his quotation from Lucretius comes from Macrobius (Sat. 6.2.3). Petrarch, as de Nolhac (vol. 1, pp. 159-160) shows, has no first-hand knowledge of Lucretius.

31 One final vestigia topos deserves citation because at least two other authors—Erasmus, pp. 296, 302 (quoted below), and Parthenio, p. 107—approve and quote it. I refer to Poliziano's (Prosatori, p. 904): “Sed ut bene currere non potest qui pedem ponere studet in alienis tantum vestigiis, ita nee bene scribere qui tamquam de praescripto non audet egredi.” A few examples of dux to advocate or approve close imitation: Petrarch, Fam. 24.4.4-5; 24-7-3. 24.9.1; 24.12.3,18,22,23,24,42; Cortesi, Prosatori, pp. 906, 910; Bembo, pp. 51,54; Dolet, p. 56; Ascham, letter to Sturm, p. 182; Levin to Harvey, Ciceronianus, p. 38. One finds path used similarly in Bembo, p. 56; Vida 3.185; Dolet, p. 66. Quintilian (10.5.7), Pico (p. 26), and Levin (Harvey, p. 38) use via to support emulation.

32 Reiff, Arno, interpretatio, imitatio, aemulatio: Begriff und Vorstellung literarischer Abhängigkeit bei den Römern (diss. Cologne, 1959), pp. 73ff.Google Scholar, claims that aemulatio becomes a fixed critical term in the age of Tiberius. The evidence does not bear him out. Phaedrus’ use of aemulatio, 2. ep. 7, is more plausibly explained as moral rather than technical; his prologues and epilogues are obsessed with envy and the criticism he may receive (calumniari, 1. prol. 5; liuor, obtrectare, 2. ep. 10; livor, 3. prol. 60; obtrectare 4. prol. 15-16; livor, 4.22.1; invidia, 5. prol. 9). But the major objections to taking aemulatio as a designation for a type of imitation are that it often appears as a synonym for imitatio and that Quintilian in 10.2 and Seneca in Ep. mor. 84, the two most extended and most important discussions of imitation in the first century (and perhaps in any other), discussions which Reiff curiously neglects, do not use aemulatio, although they are advocating it. Quintilian's only use of aemulari in 10.2 occurs at section 17 in a list of imitators who fall into the vitia nearest to the virtutes of their models; the context shows that he is just varying his verbs, not using a technical term. At 10.1.61 Quintilian refers to Horace's “Pindarum quisquis studet aemulari” (Od. 4.2.1) as follows: “propter quae Horatius eum merito nemini credit imitabilem.” And Pliny, who frequently has aemulor and aemulatio to describe literary relationships, often uses it synonomously with imitatio, for instance in Epist. 1.2.2-3 and 1.5.12-13, as Reiff admits (p. 85), and 8.6.13. At 6.11.2 Pliny makes aemulari and “meis instare vestigiis” synonomous. Pliny's joining of improba with aemulatio at 1.2.3 and 7.30.5 suggests that he has its ambiguous moral significance, not a technical literary one, in mind. I do not question the existence of varying conceptions of imitation in the first century, nor do I challenge the usefulness of aemulatio to describe one of them, provided that one realizes that it is not an ancient technical term. (For similar criticisms of Reiff see the review by Fuhrmann, Manfred, Gnomon, 33 [1961], 445—448 Google Scholar). Several classicists make a distinction between imitatio and aemulatio. See, for example, Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Ulrich von, Sappho und Simonides: Untersuchungen über griechische Lyriker (Berlin, 1913), p. 323 Google Scholar; Martinazzoli, Folco, Sapphica et Vergiliana: Su alcuni temi letterari della tradizione poetica classica (Bari, 1958)Google Scholar, esp. “Introduzione: imitazione, emulazione, originalità,” pp. 7-31; G. M. A. Giube,The Greek and Roman Critics (Toronto, 1965), p. 211. In particular see Gordon Williams’ fine discussion of imitatio and aemulatio in postvirgilian epic, Change and Decline: Roman Literature in the Early Empire (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1978), pp. 193-213.

33 Cf. Pasquali, Giorgio, Orazio lirico (Florence, 1920), pp. 119–123 Google Scholar.

34 One would like to know who these shrewd people are. Does Erasmus have particular people in mind, is he referring to an idea “in the air,” or is he just being casual without intending to suggest anyone? As observed earlier, Pico and Bembo come closest to making a distinction between imitatio and aemulatio. Perhaps Erasmus heard such a distinction during his stay in Rome in 1509, during which visit he heard the Ciceronian sermon which alarmed him so much (see Ciceroniano, pp. lvii-lviii and pp. 128ff.). In any event Erasmus claims that he did not know the correspondence between Pico and Bembo until after the publication of the Ciceronianus: see the letter to Vlatten, 24 January 1529, Ciceroniano, p. 326.

35 Ricci's sequi/imitari/aemulari distinction, quoted in the introduction to this paper, may be indebted to Erasmus, although it also recalls Bembo's above-quoted progression from imitandum to assequi contendamus to praetereamus. A member of Bembo's circle in Venice, Daniel Barbaro, in his “Della eloquenza” (1557) also offers a threefold division of imitation: “Et in brieve, bisogna aprir gli occhi e nello imitare i dotti et eccellenti uomini si richiede considetare di che forma essi sieno più abondanti e di che meno, acciò che sapendo per qual cagione essi stati sieno tali, ancora non sia tolto il potere agli studiosi de accostarsi loro, et aguagliarli, e se possibile è (che pure è possible al modo già detto) di superargli” (Trattati 2.450). With these tripartite divisions of imitation contrast Sturm's opposition between servile and free imitation, De imitatione oratorio 1.2.

36 Seneca the Elder and Macrobius both appear to recognize a dissimulative and nondissimulative type of imitation. Seneca is commenting on imitations of the Virgilian phrase, “plena deo,” (which does not appear in our texts of Virgil). He reports that Ovid liked the phrase and transposed it to his Medea: “non subripiendi causa, sed palam mutuandi, hoc animo ut vellet agnosci” (Suas. 3.7). In Macrobius, Sat. 1.24.18, Eustathius briefly contrasts Virgil's two methods of imitation: artifex dissimulatio andprofessa imitatio. Neither Seneca nor Macrobius is referring to emulation.

37 Aemulatio, of course, is no panacea; difficulties remain. The reader starts with a resemblance between texts, not a guide pointing to emulations as opposed to imitations. Even if the author, Petrarch, Poliziano, or Jonson, for example, has expressed a preference for emulation, there is no guarantee that he may not borrow a phrase here and there in a nontransformative, nonemulative fashion. For authors who have not written on imitation/emulation one can only try to deduce from their work which type of imitation they generally approve and practice. Also, it is difficult to be sure whether an emulation is striving with the structure, themes, premises of its model or only striving with the expression; the emulation may not extend beyond a stylistic trick, as often in Vida. Frequently a major interpretive difficulty arises in trying to determine if an emulation is reworking a particular passage or a topos; one is not sure just what is being contended with. I hope to elaborate these points in a future study.

38 Later Erasmus eliminates the paradox by suggesting that Cicero redivivus would adapt himself to the stylistic standards of the present. See Ciceroniano, p. 274.

39 For Christian sun imagery and typology see Rahner, Hugo, Griechische Mythen in christlicher Deutung (Zürich, 1966), pp. 89 Google Scholarff., and Dölger, Franz Joseph, Sol Salutatis: Gebet und Gesang in christlichem Altertum (Münster, 1925)Google Scholar, esp. “Jesus als Sonne der Auferstehung und Sol Invictus,” pp. 364ff. Donne's “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward” contains a pointed example:

The pun son (of God)/sun, of course, inspires numerous passages of English religious poetry in the Renaissance.

40 Sannazaro, Arcadia, “Eclogue” 11.55-63; Marot, “Complaincte de Madame Loyse de Savoye” 177-180; Castiglione, “Alcon” 54-64; Drummond, “Alcon” 37-44. All these poems may be found in the convenient collection, The Pastoral Elegy: An Anthology, ed. Thomas Perrin Harrison (1939; New York, 1968).