Theological Origins of Modernity

54 chapter two
focus on Scipio and titled his poem Africa. In this work, Scipio’s triumph
over Carthage and the virtues of republican Rome come in large measure
to replace Caesar’s more problematic virtues and his foundation of the
Roman empire as the supreme model of the virtuous life. 55 In part this
choice is a refl ection of Petrarch’s underlying republican sympathies,
which were also evident in his friendship and support for Cola di Rienzo’s
republican revolution in Rome in 1347. 56 Scipio, however, was also a better
example for Petrarch because he was more refl ective and introspective
than Caesar.
Petrarch’s Scipio is beautiful, tall, barrel-chested, muscular, chaste, and
tranquil; he possesses great gravity and grace; he is a harsh foe, a sweet
friend, immune to fortune’s boons and blows, and indiff erent to wealth.
He venerates true glory, is pious, fi lled with rectitude, confi dent in battle,
and courageous. He is also a lover of solitude, beauty, justice, and his fatherland.
57 It is hard to imagine a more perfect man. Scipio for Petrarch is
exemplary not merely because he conquers Carthage but because he conquers
himself. It is this that makes him a true paragon of virtue. 58 He not
only is virtuous, virtue is the only thing that delights him. 59 Virtue, as he
sees it, is the only truly lovable thing because it conquers death and insures
one’s fame, which stands fast against everything except time that undoes
everything. 60
Petrarch’s Hannibal, by contrast, is a man without virtue. His martial
skills are easily equal to those of Scipio, but he is faithless and untrustworthy,
resentful of the world and the gods, cruel of heart, insatiate for
blood, in league with infernal powers, given to savage wrath, impious, and
overconfi dent. 61 All of his victories are thus hollow and empty because he
is not master of himself but a slave to his passions. For similar reasons, he
is incapable of true friendship and unable to endure solitude.
Africa thus presents two supreme moral examples: the virtuous and heroic
man who can disdain fortune because of the strength of his character,
and the “Machiavellian” man who is willing to do anything to secure victory
but who is never master of himself and his own desires. 62 Both dramatically
and philosophically, however, the work is fl awed. Dramatically,
its hero is simply too good. He combines all of the pagan social virtues and
a kind of Christian otherworldliness. 63 He has nothing to overcome, no
internal struggle, no fl aws with which we can sympathize. He is a statue
placed on a pedestal so high above the reader’s head that it is scarcely possible
to behold him, let alone emulate him.
Philosophically, the work fails because it vacillates between the praise
of fame and the praise of virtue. Petrarch knew that most great men are