Leonardo Bruni, de Studiis et Litteris (22):
But come on, let’s not attribute everything to Homer and the Greeks. Just consider how much we should value the wisdom of our own Vergil, when he reveals those words as if from an oracle or one of nature’s secret recesses:
In the first place, the inward spirit nourishes the sky and the stars and the clear fields and the shining orb of the Moon and the Titan stars, and the mind poured through the limbs drives on the entire mass and mixes itself in a huge body. From there come the races of humans and herds, and the lives of the birds, and the monsters which Pontus bears under the marble sea. Those seeds possess a fiery strength and a celestial origin…
and so forth. When we read this, what philosopher do we not despise? Who ever wrote in such stark and knowledgeable terms about the nature of the soul?
Age vero, ne cuncta ad Homerum Graecosque referamus, Maronis nostril sapientia quam multi facienda est! Cum tamquam ex oraculo quodam adytoque naturae illa revelat:
Principio caelum ac terras camposque liquentis
lucentemque globum lunae Titaniaque astra
spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.
inde hominum pecudumque genus vitaeque volantum
et quae marmoreo fert monstra sub aequore pontus.
igneus est ollis vigor et caelestis origo
seminibus
et reliqua. Quae cum legimus, quem philosophum non contemnimus? Aut quis umquam de natura animi tam enucleate scienterque locutus est?
