Izbicki, 'Antiquarian and the Myth of Antiquity:  The Origins of Rome in Renaissance Thought', Bryn Mawr Medieval Review 9504
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmmr/bmmr-9504-izbicki-antiquarian

@@@@95.4.14, Jacks, The Antiquarian and the Myth of Antiquity

<i>The Antiquarian and the Myth of Antiquity:  The Origins of Rome in
Renaissance Thought.</i> Philip Jacks.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University
Press, 1993.  Pp. xix, 376.  ISBN 0521441528
     Reviewed by Thomas M. Izbicki, Johns Hopkins University.

     Philip Jacks' book is less concerned with the actual origins of Rome
than with the myth of Rome, especially the city's mythical origins. 
Discussion of that topic throughout the Renaissance was founded more on
contradictory, often forged, texts and sheer imagination than on physical
evidence.  Nor is the actual origin of Rome, particular interpretation of
Varro's reference to Romulan Rome as <i>urbs quadrata</i>, this volume's
only theme.  Parallel to speculation about the origins of the eternal city
there is the effort to graft other Italian cities onto the myths of Aeneas
and Romulus.  Other controversies were concerned with the origins of the
Latin language and the superiority of the organized community
(<i>civitas</i>) to the built environment (<i>urbs</i>).  Little
attention, however, is paid to Constantinople as the Second Rome;  and
none to Moscow as the third. 

     These themes are developed in an elliptical manner that often is
difficult to follow.  The structure of the book is roughly chronological,
but it is easy to miss some of the references to events outside the
narrative of scholarly theorizing.  Jacks, moreover, writes a difficult
style, using odd words like "confundity" (p. 260), which are not readily
comprehended.  Some sentences are so cryptic as to puzzle the reviewer. 
For example, the reference to Juan de Torquemada (p. 110), my own main
research topic, was hard to disentangle.  The author, however, has been
well served by the press, which has placed illustrations near the texts
describing them. 

     A precis of certain key points, chapter by chapter, is in order.  The
first chapter speaks of the Roman cult of the city's origins, especially
Augustan use of the myths of Aeneas and Romulus.  Attention also is given
to the figure of the <i>lupa nutrix</i>, depicting the she wolf which
nursed Romulus and Remus.  These themes and others continued long after
the Western Empire fell.  The Carolingians and Ottonians grafted
themselves onto the Roman myth, and the Roman commune looked to the
<i>lupa</i> and other relics to vindicate its authority.  Cola di Rienzo
made especial use of these relics, even as Petrarch introduced more
exacting scholarly standards for the study of antiquity.  Even the poet
made more use of imagination than of a critical examination of monuments
when he toured the city.  Maps of Rome, based on medieval cartographic
conventions, remained more symbolic that descriptive. 

     The second chapter summarizes many themes of the early fifteenth
century.  Alberti gave symbolic mapping of Rome a geometric turn, which
continued through the sixteenth century.  Other humanists in the papacy's
employ, especially Poggio and Flavio Biondo, were more interested in the
ruins themselves;  but even they fell back on imagination when evidence
failed them.  Controversy abounded, including a quarrel over the origins
of Siena, which pitted Biondo against Pius II and his secretary. 

     The third chapter looks at the later fifteenth century, especially at
the Roman Academy and Annio of Viterbo.  Pomponio Leto led a concentrated
effort to learn from the sources and to reconstruct the chronology of the
ancient city.  Here the book gains its greatest coherence, despite a
diversion into the effort to establish the natal horoscope of the city of
Venice.  Leto's efforts led him not only into close study of antiquity,
including speculation about the <i>urbs quadrata</i>, but into political
controversy, falling afoul of Paul II.  (The author might have made
reference to the work of Trame and Laboa on Rodrigo Sanchez de Arevalo,
who had charge of the members of the Academy who were imprisoned in Castel
Sant' Angelo.) The efforts of scholars after Leto to wrestle with these
issues were complicated by the forgeries of Annio of Viterbo, which misled
many, though not all scholars interested in the origins of Rome. 

     The fourth chapter, even closer knit than the third, focuses on the
reign of Leo X, that papal Maecenas.  The Medici pope was described by
propagandists as the new Numa, and efforts in his time to describe and
preserve ancient monuments drew the attention of no less a figure than
Raphael.  Raphael's antiquarian efforts influenced the work of Fabio
Calvo, whose depiction of <i>Roma quadrata</i>, the city of Romulus, was
followed by a picture of an octagonal under Servius Tullius, and then by a
series of round figures reminiscent of Alberti's geometric depiction of
the Eternal City. 

     The Leonine golden age ended with the Sack of Rome in 1527.  Calvo
himself perished a captive of the mercenaries who had seized the city. 
His successors, however, continued efforts to understand and depict the
<i>urbs</i>, even while the papacy renovated the city about them.  In the
last chapter, Jacks makes reference to these and other topics, though the
chapter lacks the greater coherence of the preceding two.  The <i>lupa</i>
was removed to the Palazzo dei Conservatori, and the consular <i>fasti</i>
were recovered in a damaged state.  Other archeological evidence too
contributed to ending the period of loose speculation based on conflicting
texts, and these same researches contributed to reform of the calendar. 
Depiction of the city itself became more descriptive and less geometric,
but round images of the ancient ruins continued through the century. 

     What Jacks has given us here is less the development of a single
theme than a mosaic of loosely-related topics, many of them quite
interesting in their own right.  This approach illustrates the nature of
antiquarian scholarship, both its strengths and its weaknesses;  but it is
left to the reader to decide which of these themes are of greatest
interest to them.  A tighter structure might have highlighted the most
important ones in a more effective manner.