Famous Women

by Giovanni Boccaccio

Overview

After the composition of the Decameron, and under the influence of Petrarch’s humanism, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) devoted the last decades of his life to compiling encyclopedic works in Latin. Among them is Famous Women, the first collection of biographies in Western literature devoted exclusively to women.

The 106 women whose life stories make up this volume range from the exemplary to the notorious, from historical and mythological figures to Renaissance contemporaries. In the hands of a master storyteller, these brief biographies afford a fascinating glimpse of a moment in history when medieval attitudes toward women were beginning to give way to more modern views of their potential.

Famous Women, which Boccaccio continued to revise and expand until the end of his life, became one of the most popular works in the last age of the manuscript book, and had a signal influence on many literary works, including Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Castiglione’s Courtier. This edition presents the first English translation based on the autograph manuscript of the Latin.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674003477
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	04/26/2001
Series:	The I Tatti Renaissance Library , #1
Pages:	560
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.30(d)
Language:	Latin

About the Author

Virginia Brown is Senior Fellow, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

De Eva parente prima

Scripturus igitur quibus fulgoribus mulieres claruerint insignes, a matre omnium sumpsisse exordium non apparebit indignum: ea quippe vetustissima patens, uti prima, sic magnificis fuit insignis splendoribus. Nam, non in hac erumnosa miseriarum valle, in qua ad laborem ceteri mortales nascimur, producta est, nec eodem malleo aut incude etiam fabrefacta, seu eiulans nascendi crimen deflens, aut invalida, ceterorum ritu, venit in vitam; quin imo—quod nemini unquam alteri contigisse auditum est—cum iam ex limo terre rerum omnium Faber optimus Adam manu compegisset propria, et ex agro, cui postea Damascenus nomen inditum est, in orto delitiarum transtulisset eumque in soporem solvisset placidum, artificio sibi tantum cognito ex dormientis latere eduxit eandem, sui compotem et maturam viro et loci amenitate atque sui Factoris letabundam intuitu, immortalem et rerum dominam atque vigilantis iam viri sociam, et ab eodem Evam etiam nominatam.

    Quid maius, quid splendidius potuit unquam contigisse nascenti? Preterea hanc arbitrari possumus corporea formositate mirabilem. Quid enim Del digito factum est quod cetera non excedat pulchritudine? Et quamvis formositas hec annositate peritura sit aut, medio in etatis flore, parvo egritudinis inpulsu, lapsura, tamen, quia inter precipuas dotes suas mulieres numerant, et plurimum ex ea glorie, mortalium indiscreto iudicio, iam consecute sunt, non superflue inter claritates earum, tanquam fulgor precipuus, et apposita est et in sequentibus apponenda veniet.

    Hec insuper,tamiure originis quam incolatus, paradisi civis facta et amicta splendore nobis incognito, dum una cum viro loci delitiis frueretur avide, invidus sue felicitatis hostis nepharia illi suasione ingessit animo, si adversus unicam sibi legem a Deo impositam iret, in ampliorem gloriam iri posse. Cui dum levitate feminea, magis quam illi nobisque oportuerit, crederet seque stolide ad altiora conscensuram arbitraretur, ante alia, blanda quadam suggestione, virum flexibilem in sententiam suam traxit; et in legem agentes, arboris boni et mali poma dum gustassent, temerario ausu seque genusque suum omne futurum ex quiete et eternitate in labores anxios et miseram mortem et ex delectabili patria inter vepres glebas et scopulos deduxere.

    Nam, cum lux corusca, qua incedebant amicti, abiisset, a turbato Creatore suo obiurgati, perizomatibus cincti, ex delitiarum loco in agros Hebron pulsi exulesque venere. Ibi egregia mulier, his facinoribus clara, cum prima—ut a nonnullis creditum est—vertente terram ligonibus viro, colo nere adinvenisset, sepius dolores partus experta est; et, quibus ob mortem filiorum atque nepotum angustiis angeretur animus, eque misere passa; et, ut algores estusque sinam et incomoda cetera, fessa laboribus moritura devenit in senium.

Eve, Our First Mother

As I am going to write about the glories for which women have become famous, it will not seem inappropriate to begin with the mother of us all. She is the most ancient of mothers and, as the first, she was singled out for special honors. She was not brought forth in this wretched vale of misery in which the rest of us are born to labor; she was not wrought with the same hammer or anvil; nor did she come into life like others, either weak or tearfully bewailing original sin. Instead (and this never happened to anyone else, so far as I know), after the most excellent Creator of all things had formed Adam from earthly clay with his own hand and had taken him from the field later called Damascene to the garden of delights, he made Adam fall into peaceful slumber. With a skill known only to himself, God brought forth a woman from Adam's side as he lay sleeping. Adult, ripe for marriage, joyful at the beauty of the place and at the sight of her Maker, she was also the immortal mistress of nature and the companion of the man who, now awake, named her Eve.

    Could anything greater and more glorious ever happen to someone at birth? We can imagine, besides, how marvelously beautiful her body was, for whatever God creates with his own hand will certainly surpass everything else in beauty. Beauty, to be sure, perishes with old age, and even in the flower of youth it may vanish from a slight attack of illness. Yet, since women count beauty among their foremost endowments and have achieved, owing to the superficial judgment of mortals, much glory on that account, it will not seem excessive to place beauty here and in the following pages as the most dazzling aspect of their fame.

    Eve, furthermore, became a citizen of Paradise as much by right of origin as of residence, and she was cloaked in a radiance unknown to us. While she and her husband were eagerly enjoying the garden's pleasures, the Enemy, envious of her happiness, impressed upon her with perverted eloquence the belief that she could attain greater glory if she disobeyed the one law that God had laid upon her. With a woman's fickleness, Eve believed him more than was good for her or for us; foolishly, she thought that she was about to rise to greater heights. Her first step was to flatter her pliant husband into her way of thinking. Then they broke the law and tasted the apple of the Tree of Good and Evil. By this rash, foolhardy act they brought themselves and all their future descendants from peace and immortality to anxious labor and wretched death, and from a delightful country to thorns, clods, and rocks.

    The gleaming light which clothed them disappeared. Rebuked by their angry Creator and covered by a girdle of leaves, they were driven out of Eden and came as exiles to the fields of Hebron. There, while her husband tilled the soil with the hoe, this distinguished woman, famous for her above-mentioned deeds, discovered (so some believe) the art of spinning with the distaff. She experienced the pains of frequent childbirth and also suffered the grief which tortures the mind at the death of children and grandchildren. I shall pass over the cold and heat and her other sufferings. Finally she reached old age, tired out by her labors, waiting for death.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	xi
	Dedication	1
	Preface	4
I.	Eve, Our First Mother	7
II.	Semiramis, Queen of the Assyrians	8
III.	Opis, Wife of Saturn	12
IV.	Juno, Goddess of Kingdoms	13
V.	Ceres, Goddess of the Harvest and Queen of Sicily	14
VI.	Minerva	17
VII.	Venus, Queen of Cyprus	19
VIII.	Isis, Queen and Goddess of Egypt	21
IX.	Europa, Queen of Crete	23
X.	Libya, Queen of Libya	24
XI-XII.	Marpesia and Lampedo, Queens of the Amazons	25
XIII.	Thisbe, a Babylonian Maiden	27
XIV.	Hypermnestra, Queen of the Argives and Priestess of Juno	30
XV.	Niobe, Queen of Thebes	33
XVI.	Hypsipyle, Queen of Lemnos	35
XVII.	Medea, Queen of Colchis	37
XVIII.	Arachne of Colophon	39
XIX-XX.	Orithya and Antiope, Queens of the Amazons	41
XXI.	Erythraea or Herophile, a Sibyl	42
XXII.	Medusa, Daughter of Phorcus	43
XXIII.	Iole, Daughter of the King of the Aetolians	45
XXIV.	Deianira, Wife of Hercules	48
XXV.	Jocasta, Queen of Thebes	49
XXVI.	Almathea or Deiphebe, a Sibyl	50
XXVII.	Nicostrata or Carmenta, Daughter of King Ionius	52
XXVIII.	Pocris, Wife of Cephalus	56
XXIX.	Argia, Wife of Polynices and Daughter of King Adrastus	57
XXX.	Manto, Daughter of Tiresias	60
XXXI.	The Wives of the Minyans	61
XXXII.	Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons	64
XXXIII.	Polyxena, Daughter of King Priam	65
XXXIV.	Hecuba, Queen of the Trojans	66
XXXV.	Cassandra, Daughter of King Priam of Troy	67
XXXVI.	Clytemnestra, Queen of Mycenae	68
XXXVII.	Helen, Wife of King Menelaus	70
XXXVIII.	Circe, Daughter of the Sun	74
XXXIX.	Camilla, Queen of the Volscians	76
XL.	Penelope, Wife of Ulysses	78
XLI.	Lavinia, Queen of Laurentum	81
XLII.	Dido or Elissa, Queen of Carthage	82
XLIII.	Nicaula, Queen of Ethiopia	90
XLIV.	Pamphile, Daughter of Platea	91
XLV.	Rhea Ilia, a Vestal Virgin	92
XLVI.	Gaia Cyrilla, Wife of King Tarquinius Priscus	94
XLVII.	Sappho, Girl of Lesbos and Poetess	95
XLVIII.	Lucretia, Wife of Collatinus	96
XLIX.	Tamyris, Queen of Scythia	98
L.	Leaena, a Prostitute	100
LI.	Athaliah, Queen of Jerusalem	102
LII.	Cloelia, a Roman Maiden	106
LIII.	Hippo, a Greek Woman	108
LIV.	Megullia Dotata	109
LV.	Veturia, a Roman Matron	110
LVI.	Tamaris, Daughter of Micon	114
LVII.	Artemisia, Queen of Caria	115
LVIII.	Virginia, Virgin and Daughter of Virginius	120
LIX.	Irene, Daughter of Cratinus	123
LX.	Leontium	124
LXI.	Olympias, Queen of Macedonia	125
LXII.	Claudia, a Vestal Virgin	127
LXIII.	Virginia, Wife of Lucius Volumnius	129
LXIV.	Flora the Prostitute, Goddess of Flowers and Wife of Zephyrus	131
LXV.	A Young Roman Woman	133
LXVI.	Marcia, Daughter of Varro	135
LXVII.	Sulpicia, Wife of Fulvius Flaccus	137
LXVIII.	Harmonia, Daughter of Gelon of Sicily	139
LXIX.	Busa of Canosa di Puglia	140
LXX.	Sophonisba, Queen of Numidia	143
LXXI.	Theoxena, Daughter of Prince Herodicus	146
LXXII.	Berenice, Queen of Cappadocia	149
LXXIII.	The Wife of Orgiago the Galatian	151
LXXIV.	Tertia Aemilia, Wife of the Elder Africanus	153
LXXV.	Dripetrua, Queen of Laodicea	155
LXXVI.	Sempronia, Daughter of Gracchus	156
LXXVII.	Claudia Quinta, a Roman Woman	157
LXXVIII.	Hypsicratea, Queen of Pontus	159
LXXIX.	Sempronia, a Roman Woman	162
LXXX.	The Wives of the Cimbrians	165
LXXXI.	Julia, Daughter of the Dictator Julius Caesar	167
LXXXII.	Portia, Daughter of Cato Uticensis	168
LXXXIII.	Curia, Wife of Quintus Lucretius	170
LXXXIV.	Hortensia, Daughter of Quintus Hortensius	171
LXXXV.	Sulpicia, Wife of Truscellio	172
LXXXVI.	Cornificia, a Poetess	174
LXXXVII.	Mariamme, Queen of Judaea	175
LXXXVIII.	Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt	178
LXXXIX.	Antonia, Daughter of Antony	184
XC.	Agrippina, Wife of Germanicus	185
XCI.	Paulina, a Roman Woman	187
XCII.	Agrippina, Mother of the Emperor Nero	189
XCIII.	Epicharis, a Freedwoman	194
XCIV.	Pompeia Paulina, Wife of Seneca	196
XCV.	Sabina Poppaea, Wife of Nero	198
XCVI.	Triaria, Wife of Lucius Vitellius	201
XCVII.	Proba, Wife of Adelphus	202
XCVIII.	Faustina Augusta	205
XCIX.	Symiamira, Woman of Emesa	207
C.	Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra	210
CI.	Joan, an Englishwoman and Pope	215
CII.	Irene, Empress of Constantinople	217
CIII.	Gualdrada, a Florentine Maiden	219
CIV.	Constance, Empress of Rome and Queen of Sicily	221
CV.	Camiola, a Sienese Widow	223
CVI.	Joanna, Queen of Jerusalem and Sicily	230
	Conclusion	232
	Note on the Text	235
	Notes	237
	Bibliography	257
	Index	263

Editorial Reviews

An aristocratic devotion to our culture continues to manifest itself even today in the most prestigious centers of study and thought. One has merely to look at the very recent (begun in 2001), rigorous and elegant humanistic series of Harvard University, with the original Latin text, English translation, introduction and notes.

Il Sole 24 Ore - Vittore Branca

The Loeb Classical Library…has been of incalculable benefit to generations of scholars… It seems certain that the I Tatti Renaissance Library will serve a similar purpose for Renaissance Latin texts, and that, in addition to its obvious academic value, it will facilitate a broadening base of participation in Renaissance Studies… These books are to be lauded not only for their principles of inclusivity and accessibility, and for their rigorous scholarship, but also for their look and feel. Everything about them is attractive: the blue of their dust jackets and cloth covers, the restrained and elegant design, the clarity of the typesetting, the quality of the paper, and not least the sensible price. This is a new set of texts well worth collecting.

Times Literary Supplement - Kate Lowe

Whispered in the language of the dead, tales of one hundred and six famous and infamous women of ancient times breathe new life in this inaugural edition of the Harvard I Tatti Renaissance Library’s Famous Women… Giovanni Boccaccio’s book emerges as the earliest amalgam of biographies celebrating and describing the deeds of women exclusively, flushed with the timeless air of antiquity… [I]n its first English translation, [Famous Women] bridges the boundaries of language and fosters the perpetual rediscovery of Renaissance intellectualism.

Fore Word Magazine - Karen Wyckoff

Harvard University Press’s I Tatti Renaissance Library is the only library offering to scholars, students and citizens the sublime works of the Italian Renaissance written in Latin and translated into lucid English... Famous Women is a wonderfully enjoyable book to read in its style of fine clearness. The stories are tales of virtue. Courageous women defend honor and truth and in their defense they give us magnificent models to follow in this life of adversity.

Window on Italy

A monument of classical scholarship for its time, [Famous Women] contains the biographies of women renowned for valor in warfare and fearlessness in the face of death, for writing and the arts, for political rulership, and for the particularly womanly virtues of marital chastity and devotion to husbands living and dead...The book became immensely popular in the late Middle Ages, and it was quickly translated into the major languages of Western Europe. It has now been given an expert and readable English translation...Famous Women is an appropriate book with which to inaugurate this series, since it stands at a cusp in cultural history between medieval attitudes and the new mental universe of the Renaissance.

New Republic - David Quint

In 1362, Boccaccio...wrote specifically "for the ladies," this time in Latin...[on] a subject as stately as the city's soaring ruins and luminous marble statues: "Famous Women"...(biographies of 106 women, beginning with "Eve Our First Mother" and ending with the monarch to whose lady-in-waiting he dedicated the book, Queen Joanna "of Sicily and Jerusalem")...In a pungent new translation by Virginia Brown, [Boccaccio's] famous women hold up very well indeed. This beautiful little book...spearheads a new publication program designed to make accessible important works of Renaissance Latin to modern readers...the success of Famous Women suggests that the ladies read their Boccaccio as we are invited to read him: with forbearance for his foibles and delight in the tales he tells with such gusto and skill.

New York Times Book Review - Ingrid D. Rowland

The Loeb Classical Library...has been of incalculable benefit to generations of scholars...It seems certain that the I Tatti Renaissance Library will serve a similar purpose for Renaissance Latin texts, and that, in addition to its obvious academic value, it will facilitate a broadening base of participation in Renaissance Studies...These books are to be lauded not only for their principles of inclusivity and accessibility, and for their rigorous scholarship, but also for their look and feel. Everything about them is attractive: the blue of their dust jackets and cloth covers, the restrained and elegant design, the clarity of the typesetting, the quality of the paper, and not least the sensible price. This is a new set of texts well worth collecting.
— Kate Lowe

Times Literary Supplement

Whispered in the language of the dead, tales of one hundred and six famous and infamous women of ancient times breathe new life in this inaugural edition of the Harvard I Tatti Renaissance Library's Famous Women...Giovanni Boccaccio's book emerges as the earliest amalgam of biographies celebrating and describing the deeds of women exclusively, flushed with the timeless air of antiquity...[I]n its first English translation, [Famous Women] bridges the boundaries of language and fosters the perpetual rediscovery of Renaissance intellectualism.
— Karen Wyckoff

Fore Word Magazine

A monument of classical scholarship for its time, [Famous Women] contains the biographies of women renowned for valor in warfare and fearlessness in the face of death, for writing and the arts, for political rulership, and for the particularly womanly virtues of marital chastity and devotion to husbands living and dead...The book became immensely popular in the late Middle Ages, and it was quickly translated into the major languages of Western Europe. It has now been given an expert and readable English translation...Famous Women is an appropriate book with which to inaugurate this series, since it stands at a cusp in cultural history between medieval attitudes and the new mental universe of the Renaissance.
— David Quint

New Republic

An aristocratic devotion to our culture continues to manifest itself even today in the most prestigious centers of study and thought. One has merely to look at the very recent (begun in 2001), rigorous and elegant humanistic series of Harvard University, with the original Latin text, English translation, introduction and notes.
— Vittore Branca

Il Sole 24 Ore

In a pungent new translation by Virginia Brown, [Boccaccio's] famous women hold up very well indeed...The success of Famous Women suggests that [Renaissance] ladies read their Boccaccio as we are invited to read him: with forbearance for his foibles and delight in the tales he tells with such gusto and skill.
— Ingrid D. Rowland

New York Times Book Review

While largely known for the Decameron (c.1351), Boccaccio exercised a profound influence on British and European literature with his Latin De mulieribus claris. Geoffrey Chaucer inserted a translation of the "Zenobia" chapter into his "Monk's Tale," and Christine de Pizan took Famous Women as a starting point for her City of Women. Inspired by Petrarch's Lives of Famous Men, it represents the first biographical compendium of women's lives. Boccaccio prepared 106 brief lives of women ranging from Eve to Joanna, Queen of Jerusalem. Covering both the virtuous and the infamous, his figures are drawn mostly from Greco-Latin Antiquity, though he does offer an account of Pope Joan. While Boccaccio reflects the biases of the Late Middle Ages, he aims to be balanced and sympathetc in his accounts. This edition provides the original Latin with a graceful and accurate translation by medievalist Brown on facing pages, the first translation in almost 40 years. Her efforts are a profound contribution to literature. Highly recommended. T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah, GA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

For good or evil, as wife, mother, or whore, these women have the splendor of clarity; their individual destinies are sharply defined.

New York Review of Books - Tim Parks

Whatever his intentions—and it may be that feminism was a long-term outgrowth of the humanism that he pioneered—Boccaccio launched a lasting genre that urged women, as well as men, to reach for glory, and gave them examples to live by.

The New Republic - David Quint

In a pungent new translation by Virginia Brown, [Boccaccio's] famous women hold up very well indeed...The success of Famous Women suggests that [Renaissance] ladies read their Boccaccio as we are invited to read him: with forbearance for his foibles and delight in the tales he tells with such gusto and skill.

Ingrid D. Rowland