Fractal Translations: Ulysses’s “orazion picciola” and the Faits des Romains

Ambrogio Camozzi Pistoja, Harvard University

This note proposes to identify a passage of the Faits des Romains (henceforth FdR) as a source for Ulysses’s orazion picciola (Inf. 26.112–123), and to situate it within the broader intertextual framework of the hero’s final journey. The FdR itself is a prose compilation on the life of Julius Caesar, produced in northern France between 1213 and 1214.^[1] Drawing on Sallust’s De Catilinae coniuratione, Caesar’s Commentarii de bello Gallico, Lucan’s Pharsalia (as glossed by Arnulf of Orléans), Suetonius’s De vita Caesarum, and various other Latin and vernacular texts, the compilation quickly developed a complex manuscript tradition. No comprehensive recensio nor critical edition currently accounts for the manuscript variants of the Old French version, which survives in approximately sixty copies, including eleven – one of them preserved only as a fragment – produced in Italy before the end of the fourteenth century.^[2] Scholars and readers still turn to the edition by Flutre and Sneyders de Vogel (1935-1938), which reproduces the manuscript Vatican, BAV, MS Reg. Lat. [Reginensis Latinus] 839 supplemented by Paris, BnF, MS fr. 1391—a choice grounded in the quality of the text in these two manuscripts, which are also among the earliest known French copies.^[3] Although the editors justified their selection on the basis of a limited number of textual loci, their judgment has held up well and continues to offer a sound and serviceable textual foundation.

The FdR’s diffusion was swift, especially south of the Alps, where it circulated and was reproduced both in its original d’oïl prose and in numerous volgarizzamenti and Italian adaptations.^[4] These include at least three distinct Tuscan versions produced before the first quarter of the fourteenth century.^[5] Brunetto Latini drew directly on FdR in his Trésor composed during his exile (1260–66), and one of the first copies of the chronicle to arrive in Italy likely came with the entourage of Charles of Anjou, around the same time that Brunetto returned to Florence.^[6]

Given FdR’s foothold in Dante’s intellectual environment, scholars have sought to confirm echoes of the chronicle in his works. Dante may allude to the FdR in DVE 1.10.2, a passage that offers a critical reflection on the popularity of French historical prose works. More precisely, Dante observes—perhaps with a note of censure—that “the langue d’oïl alleges in its own favor (allegat pro se) that, on account of its easier and more delightful vulgarity (faciliorem ac delectabiliorem vulgaritatem), whatever has been reduced to prose or invented in prose (redactum sive inventum), is its own.”^[7] He continues with the example of the “Biblia cum Troianorum Romanorumque gestibus compilata” (“compilations of the Bible with the deeds of the Trojans and Romans”), an expression generally understood to refer to composite vernacular codices (in particular the pairing of the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César with the FdR) that merge biblical and pagan history to form a single, continuous universal chronicle.^[8]

Specific and, in my view, persuasive borrowings from the FdR have been identified by Giorgio Brugnoli in Inf. 28.102 and Par. 6.66, Claudine Turla and Claudia Berra in Purg. 1.78.^[9] In a 2018 lecture for Esperimenti Danteschi (Università Statale di Milano), I suggested that the FdR also underpins Dante’s depiction of Amiclas’s divinely inspired courage to embrace poverty (Par. 11.67–69).^[10] In each of these cases, determining the precise transmission route—directly from the French version, from the Latin originals of its sources, or from a volgarizzamento—remains often problematic, given the nature of the text and the complexity of its transmission. The case presented here offers, however, a further element of interest in support of the possibility that Dante engaged directly with the French version.

To contextualize the present proposal, which extends the inquiry into Dante’s use of the FdR to Ulysses’s orazion picciola, I shall first revisit a methodological framework that has proven useful for examining Inf. 26. In a 1966 study on the semiotic structures of the Commedia, D’Arco Silvio Avalle identified a four-part narrative schema that recurs across various ancient epic traditions.^[11] These four units, which he terms “functions,” articulate the compositional logic of both Dante’s Ulysses and an episode from the life of Alexander the Great, attested, among other sources, in Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis (c. 1185): (1) the hero resolves to embark on a perilous enterprise and incurs the sin of hubris; (2) he reveals his decision to his companions and exhorts them to join him in the pursuit of the temerarious enterprise; (3) having persuaded them, he leads the group beyond the established boundaries into a realm from which no one may return; (4) the reckless venture culminates in death.

Avalle applied the four-part narrative model to El libro de Alexandre, a 13th-century Spanish derivative of Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis, revealing significant narrative parallels with Dante’s Ulysses but yielding limited philological evidence in the way of shared lexicon or phrasing. I propose extending that model to a more revealing case: Cato’s march through the Libyan desert as transmitted in the FdR.^[12] This episode of the FdR reproduces the same four-part sequence, with each function emerging with comparable clarity and internal consistency: (1) Cato accepts full leadership over the Senate’s cause and, despite the notorious dangers, orders the flotilla to sail for Africa and brave the lethal shoals of the Syrtes (FdR 3.14 § 1–16); (2) Cato halts the column at the edge of the waste and delivers an exhortation binding his companions to a journey that violates the limits of both nature and—at least in Dante’s view—political order (3.14 § 18–22); (3) the group enters the perillous expanse and faces extreme trial (3.14 § 23–50); (4) the venture ends in defeat, with many soldiers perishing in the desert (ibid.) and Cato dying by suicide in Utica (3.18 § 26–28).

Unlike El libro de Alexandre, the Cato episode in the FdR offers close verbal parallels with Inferno 26, especially in the second sequence, in which the hero, at the threshold of the temerarious venture, delivers his exhortative speech. One passage in particular stands out, with key segments italicized to highlight the elements relevant to the present analysis (FdR 3.14 § 22):

Lues que Caton<s> fu o<i>ssuz des nes od cels qui le devoient suivre et il furent entré ou sablon, qui ses estoit et poudrex, il parla a ses compaignons por aguisier lor vertu a mal trere, et lor dist: “O li mien chevalier et li mien conpaignon, qui avez esleüe avec moi une seule voie de salu, ce est a morir en droite franchise plus qu’a vivre en servage, et por ce sivez mes tentes et mes loges, or est mestiers que vos apareilliez voz cuers et les confermez a grant oevre [de salu et] de vertu [...]. Cil soient mi conpaignon, qui hardiement voudront aler parmi toz perilz et souffrir chose qui soit covenable a noble cuer de Romain et digne de mon tesmoignage, se james Diex <nos> remene a Rome. Et se il i a nuls de vos qui mielz ainge promesse de repos et querge dolçor et delit plus que paine, auge a Damledieu la ou il li plera. […] Ge sui qui premereins enterrai ou travaill et me metrai parmi la desertine dou sablon brullé et ars […].” Par ceste parole les eschaufa si Catons, que lor vertuz lor doubla, et lor plot desveement li travax; e<t> se mistrent a la voie ou païs ou il soffrirent meinte paine ainz que il venisse<nt> ou regne Juba, dont onques puis ne Catons ne il ne retornerent.^[13]

od cels : C d[--]ux : P o ciaus | aguisier : C aus aguisier | lor vertu : C omit | et li mien conpaignon : C omit | seule : C omit | a : C omit : P omit | et por ce sivez mes tentes et mes loges : C omit | et les confermez : C omit ; P et confremeis | [de salu et] : C omit P omit | voudront : C voudront o moi | noble : P noble i | digne de mon : C omit : P digne de | remene : C amoine : P amainne | Et se il i a nuls de vos qui mielz ainge promesse de repos et querge dolçor et delit plus que paine, auge a Damledieu la ou il li plera : C Et sachiez que : P Et sil ia nul qui mieus aime proumesse de repos et doucour et delit plus que painne aille a Dumediue la ou il li plaira | enterrai ou travaill et me metrai parmi la desertine dou sablon brullé et ars : C se metra el travail et me metrai es desers | Par ceste parole les eschaufa si Catons, que lor vertuz lor doubla : C Ceste parole que Catons dist les eschaufa si a la painne soufrir | et lor plot desveement li travax : C omit : P Et lor plot mout bien li travaus | ou regne : P el pais | ne Catons ne il : C ne li un ne li autre : P ne ceus ne il

As soon as Cato was hauled off the ships with those who had to follow him and they had stepped into the sand, which was dry and powder-dusty, he spoke to his companions to sharpen their virtue for hardship and said to them: “O my knights and my companions, you who have chosen with me one single road to salvation, namely, to die in true freedom rather than to live in servitude, and therefore follow my tents and lodgings; now it is time that you ready your hearts and strengthen them for a great work [of salvation and] of virtue […]. Let those be my companions who will ardently wish to go through all perils and suffer whatever befits a noble Roman heart and is worthy of my testimony, if ever God brings us back to Rome. And if there is any among you who prefers a promise of repose and seeks sweetness and delight more than toil, let him serve Lord God, as it shall please Him […]. I shall be the first to enter the hardship and cast myself into the waste of the burned and scorched sand […]. With these words Cato so inflamed them that their virtue doubled, and toil pleased them madly; and they set out onto the road, into the land where they suffered many a hardship before they reached the realm of Juba, whence neither Cato nor they ever returned.^[14]

In order to test the consistency of my hypothesis and establish an appropriate textual basis for the literary analysis, I compared the Flutre-de Vogel edition with a sample of FdR manuscripts, pre-15th century, selected from those currently available online in digitized form. The passage in question appears in every manuscript I consulted, including:

Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale du Belgique (= KRB), MS 10168-10172. Rome, 1293. Digital reproduction available at: https://uurl.kbr.be/1621901

Brussels, KRB, MS 9104-9105, fols. 217-395. Paris (?), early 14th century. Digital reproduction available at: https://uurl.kbr.be/1787393

[C] Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 726. Southern Italy, late 13th–early 14th century. Digital reproduction available at: https://arca.irht.cnrs.fr/ark:/63955/md35t722kr98

Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 768. Northern France, first half of the 14th century. Digital reproduction available at: https://arca.irht.cnrs.fr/ark:/63955/md752f75rh92

Cologny [Genève], Fondation Martin Bodmer, MS 147. France, end of the 13th century. Digital reproduction available at: https://www.e-codices.ch/en/list/one/fmb/cb-0147

Mâcon, Archives départementales de Saône-et-Loire, MS H 362. France, 14th century. Digital reproduction available at: https://arca.irht.cnrs.fr/ark:/63955/md67jq087q7r

Paris, BnF, MS fr. 293. Venice, 1320-1330. Digital reproduction available at: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9009490w

Paris, BnF, MS fr. 246. Poitiers, 1364-65. Digital reproduction available at: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449715t

[P] Paris, BnF, MS fr. 295. Naples, c. 1324-1328. Digital reproduction available at: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8447879g

Paris, BnF, MS fr. 1391. Northern France, late 13th century. Digital reproduction available at: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b52523936b

Paris, BnF, MS NAF [Nouvelles acquisitions françaises] 3576. France, c. 1360-1370. Digital reproduction available at: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b85775308

Vatican, BAV, MS Vat. Lat. 4792. Pisa-Genoa, c. 1284-1299. Digital reproduction available at: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.4792

Vatican, BAV, MS Reg. Lat. 893. France, 13th century. Digital reproduction available at: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Reg.lat.893

Within this group, and in keeping with the non-stemmatic scope of this note, I have focused exclusively on the lexicosyntactic variants found in the italicized loci, insofar as they are pertinent to the proposed comparison with Dante’s orazion picciola.^[15] Following this examination, and in line with existing scholarship, I have chosen to append the variants of the Italian manuscripts Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 726 [C] (fol. 305r), considered both highly reliable and authoritative for the Italian branch of the tradition, and Paris, BnF, MS fr. 295 [P] (pp. 518-519).^[16] Both manuscripts have been linked to an Angevin milieu: C, possibly produced during the reign of Charles I of Anjou, in a cultural and historical context both preceding and proximate to Dante’s own; and P, commissioned in 1320s Naples to celebrate the marriage of Charles of Calabria, son and heir of King Robert, to Marie of Valois.^[17] The version of the passage found in these two manuscripts is consistent with that found in the other Italian manuscripts examined (Paris, BnF, fr. 293, fol. 68v; fr. 726, fol. 89v; Vatican, BAV, MS Vat. Lat. 4792, fols. 174v-175r; Brussels, KRB, MS 10168–10172, fols. 138v-139r), as well as in the French witness Brussels, KRB, MS 9104–9105, fol. 362r.^[18] Also, when considered alongside the Flutre-de Vogel edition—based on the early northern French copies Paris, BnF, MS fr. 1391 and Vatican, BAV, Reg. Lat. 893—C and P offer a sufficiently complementary and representative textual basis for controlling the lexicosyntactic variation relevant to this study. In the rare instances where a manuscript exhibits a variant that renders literary comparison with Dante’s text untenable—typically by omitting or altering a key word from the italicized loci—I have indicated this in a footnote. All such cases emerged from a broader verification of the passage across the full manuscript group examined and do not affect either of the two manuscripts used by Flutre and de Vogel, or the C and P witnesses on which the present analysis primarily relies.

The lexical, syntactical, and narrative correspondences between this passage of the FdR and the orazion picciola episode are unusually precise. Cato’s exhortation (C Il parla a ses compaignons por aus aguiser a mal trere) parallels Ulysses’ boast (Li miei compagni fec’ io sì aguti / con questa orazion picciola al cammino, Inf. 26.121-22). Both texts describe a leader who, through his speech, “sharpens” his “companions” for a doomed journey from which none will return. In Dante’s writings, aguto/acuto/aguzzo appears only as an adjective (never as the noun aguto, meaning “nail” in Old Italian), and is used either in the literal sense of “sharp” or “pointed” (e.g., coda aguzza, spada lucida e aguta) or in the figurative sense of “intense”—applied to fever (febbre), light (luci), sight (vista and occhio), and various spiritual faculties (memoria, fervore, intelligenza), including desire (voglia).^[19] Aguti al cammino is semantically exceptional in that it is the only occurrence in which the term means “keen,” “desirous,” which is the meaning of aguisier in the FdR passage.^[20] It is also the only case where the adjective governs a directional phrase headed by a, and the sole occurrence cast inside a causative frame (fec’ io sì aguti).^[21] Both features mirror the Old-French syntax of the FdR clause, in which aguisier governs the same animate direct object (C aus = the companions) and the same oblique complement (a doomed journey) as in Dante’s construction. The hypothesis of direct influence is further strengthened by the rarity of this meaning and syntactic usage of the acutus-family in the literature before or during Dante’s time. A search of the corpora OVI and DiVO shows only one Italian text in which the verbial form (aguzzare) appears with a directional a-phrase of purpose. This earlier analogue is found in Brunetto Latini’s volgarizzamento of Cicero’s Pro Ligario (quelli medesimi per le loro parole t’aguzzeranno a ffare crudeltade) based on the original Latin (eorum ipsorum ad crudelitatem te acuet oratio). The case is interesting in that, as in both Dante and the FdR, it is the speech itself that whets its addressee (here, Caesar) to action.^[22]

As mentioned earlier, establishing Dante’s use of material from the FdR is complicated by the composite nature of the chronicle, which draws on a number of sources, some of them circulating independently in his cultural background. The construct aguisier a / aguti al would appear to tilt the evidence towards decisively direct knowledge and use of the French text. It is worth stressing that neither the likely Latin source (Lucan, Pharsalia 9.382–405), nor any of the three Tuscan versions of the FdR, contains this construct—either because they preserve a different variant (versione lunga and intermedia), or because the detail is absent or omitted (Lucan and versione breve).^[23]

In the passage of the FdR, Cato urges his men to reject a life of servitude (vivre en servage) and to follow him forward (sievre), in an enterprise of great virtue (granz ouvres de vertuz) that may serve as testimony, “if ever God brings us back to Rome” (et tesmoingie se iames diex nos amoine a Roume). Likewise, Ulysses exhorts his companions not to live like brutes (viver come bruti, Inf. 26.119), but to pursue virtue and knowledge (seguir virtute e canoscenza, 120). The phrase qui hardiement voudront aler parmi toz perilz in the FdR echoes the language of Ulysses’s ardore (Inf. 26.97) and of the cento milia perigli (112–113) that his men, like Cato’s, have already faced by that point.^[24] Also significant is the FdR line et me metrai es desers, which begins a passage marked by anaphora of the first-person “I” that underscores Cato’s role as the expedition’s moral and physical forerunner.^[25] This self-assertive formulation may echo in Ulysses’s resolute ma misi me per l’alto mare (Inf. 26.100). The version preserved in a group of French manuscripts renders the phrase in a way that makes the potential echo even more marked: me metrai parmi la desertine.^[26] The alliteration on ‘m’ (me metrai parmi / ma misi me per) and the use of analogous directional prepositions (parmi la desertine / per l’alto mare) similarly convey a deliberate, self-initiated movement into a vast and treacherous expanse.

Whether it was indeed partly based on Cato’s speech in the FdR or not, Ulysses’s orazion picciola is rhetorically effective in the same way. Both speeches overcome the hesitation of reluctant companions, and both texts mark the outcome in very similar terms. Ulysses explains that his words made his compagni so eager for the voyage (cammino) that a pena poscia li avrei ritenuti (Inf. 26.123). Likewise, using a consecutive clause, Cato’s exhortation is said to have “inflamed” (eschaufa) his companions “so greatly for the pain to be endured that their virtue doubled” (si a la painne soufrir que lor vertuz lor doubla), and they set out on the path (voie) from which, we are told, none would return alive (dont onques puis ne li un ne li autre ne retornerent). Beyond the shared narrative structure, in which a charismatic leader speaks, hesitant companions are stirred, and a fatal venture ensues, one might also observe a subtler, perhaps merely memorial, lexical resonance in the recurrence of che a pena poscia and si a la painne soufrir que. Also worth noting, though less a matter of borrowing than a shared symbolic economy, is that in the Flutre-de Vogel version of the passage, Cato’s speech renders his companions “mad” for the undertaking (lor plot desveement li travax), just as Ulysses, after spellbinding his own men to cross uncharted waters, acknowledges the folly of the voyage (folle volo). One further parallel may be glimpsed in the formula by which Cato permits the faint-hearted to withdraw: “auge a Damledieu la ou il li plera,” literally, “let him go to God, where it shall please Him.” This idiom recalls Dante’s own formula “com’altrui piacque,” which he employs both for the tragic close of Ulysses’ voyage (Inf. 26.142) and for the moment when, by submitting to the command of Cato himself, Dante-the-character completes his crossing through Hell (Purg. 1.133).

It is worth pausing here to connect a significant and well-established fact: when Brunetto Latini turns to the FdR, he does so less as a historian than as a rhetorician.^[27] He treats the chronicle as a living expression of rhetorical training, a repository of exemplary speeches, accessible in the language of his lay, civic audience.^[28] In Book III of the Trésor, in the section devoted to rhetoric and politics, Dante’s “maestro” reproduces verbatim the speeches of Julius Caesar and Cato the Younger as they appear in the FdR (1.8 § 39-49). Dante’s own use of the FdR, in shaping Ulysses’s speech in canto 26, thus would have a clear and authoritative precedent in the work of his teacher—who was likely also his point of access to the text.^[29]

A further indication of this specific, instrumental, rhetorical reading of the content of the FdR in medieval Italy appears in the early fourteenth-century Neapolitan manuscript Paris, BnF, MS fr. 295, produced at the court of King Robert of Anjou (d. 1343), probably for the education of his son Charles of Calabria (d. 1328).^[30] The manuscript is rich with marginalia, and some annotations focus precisely on the Cato passage discussed here.^[31] When Cato begins to aguiser his companions for the perilous task ahead, one marginal gloss marks the passage as the opening of an exhortatio ad laborem (p. 518). Other annotations single out a later passage of the speech for its antithetical structure, marking mori pro libertate, vivere pro servitute (p. 518); another gloss teases out the speech’s finalitas, its intended emotional effect on the audience: animat [et] cordatur ad labores et vretutes (p. 519).

A comprehensive analysis of the pairing between Cato’s transgressive march against Caesar, and Ulysses’s hubristic voyage exceeds the scope of this note. Dante’s portrait of Ulysses, after all, draws on an extensive classical, biblical, and popular backdrop.^[32] The canto’s structure and lexicon, including key terms noted in the course of this note (e.g., esperienza, ardore, seguire, cammino, folle), reflect this wide-ranging intertextual fabric. Moreover, those same keywords also coalesce to form one of the foundational axes of the Commedia, recurring both before and after the episode under examination. It is far from my intention, therefore, to suggest that Cato’s oration to his companions as recounted in the Old French of the FdR should be read as an exclusive model to Dante’s Ulysses. Yet this French prose, whose presence I have tried to trace here, offers a linguistically plausible and poetically coherent strand in that tapestry. A fuller study will pursue this correlation in detail; for now, I only wish to observe that, by superimposing these parallel narratives, Dante creates a mise en abyme of literary transmission: oral and written, ancient and medieval, Latin and vernacular, vernacular and vernacular.^[33] The Greek Ulysses recounts, via the Latin Virgil, an oral speech delivered at Ceuta, which Dante then transcribes in Italian verse, drawing on the Old French Faits des Romains, itself a vernacular adaptation of Roman sources. It seems only fitting that such narrative fractality should emerge in the context of Malebolge, after the encounter with the fraudulent Geryon, a figure of the Commedia itself.^[34] The successful mapping of Avalle’s four-part structure onto the FdR exposes the fundamental fictionality of Dante’s Ulysses: the hero who once stole the Palladium now delivers a speech lifted from a French retelling of an anti-imperial Roman statesman.^[35] His orazion picciola is not a testament but a pastiche of material popular in Dante’s time. And as he sinks beneath the waves, the hero takes with him not only his doomed ambitions but the stolen voices and literary fragments that constructed them.

1. I am profoundly grateful to Claudio Lagomarsini and Maria Teresa Rachetta for their comments and corrections on an earlier version of this study. The bibliography on the FdR is particularly extensive. For convenience, the reader may turn to Filippo Pilati, “I volgarizzamenti italiani dei Faits des Romains. Indagini sulle versioni ‘ampia,’ ‘breve’ e ‘intermedia,’” Studi di filologia italiana 79 (2021): 49-94; along with Alison Cornish, Vernacular Translation in Dante’s Italy: Illiterate Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 59-100, which situates the FdR within the broader cultural movement of Italian volgarizzamenti. Since submitting a revised version of this essay, I have become aware of Dino Huseljic, I Faits des Romains in Italia: studio della tradizione manoscritta (PhD diss., Università di Siena and Universität Zürich, 2024–2025), a much needed foundational study. ↑

2. Flutre documented approximately seventy manuscripts in Louis Ferdinand Flutre, Les manuscrits des Fet des Romains (Paris: Hachette, 1932). An updated list is accessible via the Jonas portal of the IRHT/CNRS. A list, descriptions, and bibliography of the Italian manuscripts in Matteo Cambi, “Per la storia del ms. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canon Misc. 450,” Francigena 8 (2022): 35-68, esp. 36-40; and now Huseljic, I Faits des Romains, 13-14, 30-57. The fragment, recently identified by Gabriele Giannini, is Saumur, Médiathèque, MS 67. It belongs to the same family of Italian copies of the FdR produced in Genoa toward the end of the thirteenth century, namely Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (= BnF), MS fr. [français] 726; Paris, BnF, MS fr. 23082; and Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (= BAV), MS Vat. lat. [Vaticanus latinus] 4792. ↑

3. Li Fet des Romains. Compilé ensemble de Saluste et de Suetoine et de Lucan, ed. Louis-Fernand Flutre and Kornelis Sneyders de Vogel, 2 vols (Paris: Droz; Groningue, J.-B. Wolters, 1935-1938). The text of the chronicle is printed in the first of the two volumes (T. 1. Texte critique). Citations are given by book, chapter, and paragraph (§), following the numbering of this edition. ↑

4. For the cultural reception of the FdR, see Louis-Fernand Flutre, Li fait des Romains dans les littératures française et italienne du XIIIe au XVIe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1933); Bernard Guenée, “La culture historique des nobles: le succès des Faits des Romains (XIIIe–XVe siècles),” in La noblesse au Moyen Âge, XIe–XVe siècles: Essais à la mémoire de Robert Boutruche, ed. Philippe Contamine (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976): 261–88; Catherine Croizy-Naquet, Ecrire l’histoire romaine au début du XIIIe siècle. L’Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César et les Faits des Romains (Paris: Champion, 1999). For the Italian volgarizzamenti and adaptations, see Filippo Pilati, “I volgarizzamenti italiani dei Faits des Romains: Indagini sulle versioni ‘ampia’, ‘breve’ e ‘intermedia,’” Studi di filologia italiana, 79 (2021): 49–94. ↑

5. For the Tuscan versions, see Pilati, “I volgarizzamenti.” The redazione ampia is preserved in six copies, including Berlin, Staatsbibliothek-Preußischer Kulturbesitz, MS Hamilton 67, and Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 2418 (together constituting one complete witness, dated 1313). The redazione breve, traditionally known as Fatti di Cesare, is transmitted by approximately fifty manuscripts (see Pilati, “I volgarizzamenti,” 76–94). The redazione intermedia survives in six codices, including Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Gaddi reliqui 12 (early 14th century). ↑

6. See Guenée, “La culture,” 271-75; Cornish, Vernacular Translation, 82; Ella Williams, “Two Manuscripts of the Faits des Romains in Angevin Italy,” Italian Studies 72, no. 2 (2017): 157-76, esp. 158-65, which, developing Perriccioli Saggese’s analysis of the heraldic scheme of the Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 726, links the arrival of FdR in Italy in particular to the patronage of the Montfort family; but see Huseljic, I Faits des Romains in Italia, 35-36. On the circulation of the FdR material in Florence, see also Giulio Vaccaro, “Catilina e l’insegna dell’aquila nera in campo giallo: Origini incredibili e genealogie incredibili in un manoscritto fiorentino dei Fatti di Cesare,” in Studi di filologia offerti dagli allievi a Claudio Ciociola, ed. Luca D’Onghia and Giulio Vaccaro (Pisa: ETS, 2020), 345–62. ↑

7. As Mirko Tavoni observes, in the Latin, only redactum can govern ad vulgare prosaycum; the incidental sive inventum underscores the divulgative, rather than the original or creative, force of French, see Dante Alighieri, Opere, dir. Marco Santagata (Milan: Mondadori, 2014), I, 1235. ↑

8. On this, see Cornish, Vernacular Translation, 77-78; and Enrico Fenzi’s commentary, in Dante Alighieri, Le opere. Volume III. De vulgari eloquentia, ed. Enrico Fenzi, with the collaboration of Luciano Formisano and Francesco Montuori (Rome: Salerno, 2012), 68-69. On the joint manuscript circulation of Histoire ancienne and FdR, see Fabio Zinelli, “Au carrefour des traditions italiennes et méditerranéennes. Un légendier français et ses rapports avec l’Histoire Ancienne jusqu’à César et les Faits des romains,” in L’agiografia volgare. Tradizioni di testi, motivi e linguaggi. Atti del congresso internazionale (Klagenfurt, 15–16 gennaio 2015) ed. Elisa De Roberto and Raymund Wilhelm (Heidelberg: Winter, 2016), 63‒131; and Henry Ravenhall, “All Roads Lead to Rome: Revisiting the Pairing of the Histoire ancienne jusq’à César and the Faits des Romains in the Thirteenth Century,” Romania: revue trimestrielle consacrée a ’'étude des langues et des littératures romanes 139 (2021): 5‒36. ↑

9. Giorgio Brugnoli, “Svetonio,” in Enciclopedia Dantesca (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1976), V, 497; Idem, “‘… si sentì del duolo,’” Quaderni d’italianistica 14, no. 2 (1993): 255–59; Claudine Turla, Un percorso tra fonti e interpretazioni del Catone dantesco (Undergraduate thesis, Università degli Studi di Milano, 2013), 35-51, not consulted; Claudia Berra, “Catone custode della penitenza,” in Peccato, penitenza e santità nella Commedia, ed. Marco Ballarini, Giuseppe Frasso, and Francesco Spera (Rome: Bulzoni, 2016): 125–36; in addition to the studies listed by Berra, see the fundamental Violetta De Angelis, “‘... e l’ultimo Lucano’,” in Ead., Scritti di filologia medievale e umanistica, ed. Filippo Bognini and Maria Patrizia Bologna (Naples: M. D’Auria, 2011): 95-149, in particular 119–35. Attempts to disentangle the FdR from Lucan in Dante’s “library” are complicated by the intermediary role of Arnulf’s glosses, see Berthe Marti, “Arnulfus and the Faits des Romains,” Modern Language Quarterly 2 (1941): 3–23. ↑

10. Ambrogio Camozzi Pistoja, “Linguaggi parabolici e figurali nei canti XI e XII del Paradiso” (paper presented at Esperimenti Danteschi 2018. La Commedia dell’anima. Paradiso, Milan, September 24, 2018). Of the same view, Giuseppina Brunetti, “Con Amiclate (Par. XI, 68): Dante, Lucano e un accento,” Studi e problemi di critica testuale 103, no. 2 (2021): 93-104. ↑

11. D’Arco Silvio Avalle, “L’ultimo viaggio di Ulisse,” Studi Danteschi 43 (1966): 35‒68, reprint in Idem, Modelli semiologici nella Commedia di Dante (Milan: Bompiani, 1975): 33‒63. These “functions” recur across a range of ancient and medieval texts, see, e.g., Nicolò Mineo, “Eroi senza missione ed eroi predestinati: Ulisse, Enea, Dante,” in Idem, Saggi e letture per Dante (Rome: Sciascia, 2008): 73‒186. ↑

12. On the influence of Lucan on the orazion picciola, see William Stull and Robert Hollander, “The Lucanian Source of Dante’s Ulysses,” Studi Danteschi 63 (1991): 1‒52; and Antonio Montefusco, “La presenza di Lucano nella Comedìa: il fantasma della storia,” Linguistica e Letteratura 35 (2010): 83-108, in particular 100-02. ↑

13. Li Fet, 593-94. ↑

14. Translation mine. ↑

15. On the manuscript tradition of the FdR, see Louis-Ferdinand Flutre, Les manuscrits des Faits des Romains (Paris: Champion, 1932; repr. Slatkine, 1974); G. De Poerck, “Les Faits des Romains. À propos de deux ouvrages récents,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 15 (1936): 621–52; Claudio Lagomarsini, “I frammenti losannesi dei Fet des Romains,” Vox Romanica 77 (2018): 183–201, esp. 186-91; and Massimiliano Gaggero, “La storia antica nella Continuazione Rothelin di Guglielmo di Tiro,” in “La voie de prose”: La materia antica nel romanzo francese in prosa medievale, ed. Jacopo Fois (Bologna: Bologna University Press, 2022):113–40, esp. 125-38. ↑

16. Huseljic, I Faits des Romains. ↑

17. See Williams, “Two Manuscripts;” and Huseljic, I Faits des Romains, 33-36, 45-49, who is more cautious about the Angevin connection of C. ↑

18. On the basis of existing scholarship, I have treated the version of the text preserved in Vatican City, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4792, fols. 174v–175r as representative of the other two Italian manuscripts produced in the same late thirteenth-century Genoese milieu: Paris, BnF, MS fr. 23082 (https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b525003584) and Paris, BnF, MS fr. 726 (https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10022390t). ↑

19. For all references, see Vocabolario Dantesco, sub vocibus: aguto, aguzzo, aguzzare. On the semantic range and significance of the acutus family, see TLIO and GDLI sub vocibus. For the use in Dante, see Lucia Onder, “Acuto,” Enciclopedia Dantesca (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1970-78), I, 44-45; Barbara Fanini, “Punte di desiderio e sottigliezza d’ingegno. Osservazioni attorno all’acume dantesco dal cantiere del VD,” Bollettino dell’Opera del Vocabolario Italiano 24 (2019): 323-44, esp. 325-28. ↑

20. Another possible case, which however remains uncertain, is Purg. 8.19: “Aguzza qui, lettor, ben li occhi al vero, / ché ’l velo è ora ben tanto sottile, / certo che ’l trapassar dentro è leggiero.” The meaning of this address has long been debated. Nicola Fosca offers, in my view, a convincing interpretation in his commentary ad locum, as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, https://Dante.Dartmouth.EDU. One may wonder whether a reassessment of the FdR’s influence on aguti al cammino in Inferno 26 might also prompt a reconsideration of this crucial yet difficult apostrophe in Purgatorio 8. Here, the act of sharpening one’s gaze (aguzza … li occhi) may likewise suggest a state of eagerness for truth, a predisposition required to navigate the relationship between the events of the journey and their meaning. ↑

21. The same syntactic construction with an a-phrase appears once, with the verbal form aguzzare, in Purg. 8.19. ↑

22. Cicerone, Pro Ligario, pro Marcello, pro rege Deiotaro (orazioni cesariane). Volgarizzamento di Brunetto Latini, ed. Cristiano Lorenzi (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 2018), 175 and note. The next occurence is in Alberto della Piagentina’s volgarizzamento of Boethius’s Consolatio (1322-1332) (Fa’ che la mente s’aguzzi a cercare il sommo ben), edited in Il Boezio e l’Arrighetto nelle versioni del Trecento, ed. Salvatore Battaglia (Turin: UTET, 1929), 110. Paris, BnF, MS NAF 3576 omits the indirect object (a la mal trere). ↑

23. For the variant of the versione lunga, see Li fatti de’ Romani. Edizione critica dei manoscritti Hamilton 67 e Riccardiano 2418, ed. David P. Bénéteau (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2012), 512: “elli parlo a suoi compagni per conoscere loro vertù a male durare”; for the omission in the versione breve, see I fatti di Cesare: testo di lingua inedito del sec. XIV, pubblicato a cura di Luciano Banchi (Bologna: Romagnoli, 1863), 230-31; for the versione intermedia, I have examined the copy in Florence, Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana, MS Gaddi reliqui 47, fol. 182v: “egli parla a li suoi conpangni per tornare loro vertù a mal sofferire.” I thank Filippo Pilati for granting me access to a digital reproduction of the manuscript. ↑

24. For a different proposal, see Montefusco, “La presenza,” 101-102, who revisits the Lucanian source (Pharsalia 1.299-300: “Bellorum o socii, qui mille pericula…”) and enriches it with Arnulf of Orléans’s gloss. Without proposing to resolve questions of textual priority here, it is worth noting that the FdR draws heavily on the Lucan-Arnulf textual block and consistently reuses narrative and rhetorical patterns across its many sections. ↑

25. In two of the Italian copies consulted (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 293 and fr. 726), the reflexive form (me metrai) is replaced with an intransitive verb (entrera), shifting the emphasis away from the hero’s self-directed initiative. The French manuscript, Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 768 reads: je suis qui premerain parmi la desertine. ↑

26. This variant appears, among others, in the manuscripts used by Flutre and Sneyders de Vogel for their edition, as well as in Cologny (Genève), Fondation Martin Bodmer, MS 147; Vatican, BAV, MS Reg. Lat. 893; Paris, BnF, MS NAF 3576; and Mâcon, Archives départementales de Saône-et-Loire, MS H 362. ↑

27. Catherine Croizy-Naquet, “Les Faits des Romains. Une fortune diverse,” Anabases 4 (2006): 141-54, esp. 148. See also Maria Teresa Rachetta, “I discorsi e le storie. Sulla sezione retorica del Tresor di Brunetto Latini,” in «La voie de prose», 141-155, esp. 141-43, and 147-55. Some medieval authors treat the FdR in the opposite manner, primarily as a source of historical information, omitting the rhetorical sections such as the speeches; see, e.g., the Continuazione Rothelin as presented by Gaggero, “La storia antica.” ↑

28. Croizy-Naquet, “Les Faits”; Rachetta, “I discorsi.” ↑

29. On the possibility that Dante’s reuse of this rhetorical material reflects a critical or even adversarial stance toward Brunetto’s political, cultural, and linguistic agenda, see Cornish, Vernacular Translation, 126‒57; and Marco Veglia, “Brunetto Latini fra i violenti contro Dio,” in Aggiornamenti sulla Commedia. Vol. II, ed. Valeria Giannantonio and Antonio Sorella (Ravenna: Longo, 2022), 61‒77. ↑

30. William, “Two manuscripts,” 165-76. ↑

31. No marginal glosses were noted in the other copies examined. ↑

32. The bibliography on the sources of Inferno 26 is particularly vast. Almost everything written on Dante’s Ulysses before 1981 is catalogued in Anthony K. Cassell, “Ulisseana: A Bibliography of Dante’s Ulysses to 1981,” Italian Culture 3 (1981): 23‒45; another survey is in Massimo Seriacopi, All’estremo della «Prudentia». L’Ulisse di Dante (Rome: Zauli Arti Grafiche, 1994), esp. 155‒91. On the Virgilian influences, see at least the studies cited by Padoan (1977), Logan (1964), Iannucci (1984), and Freccero (1986). On Ovid, see Padoan (1977), De Robertis (1979), Stefanini (1990), Picone (1991); and Michelangelo Picone, “Il canto XXVI,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis. Inferno, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone (Florence: Cesati, 2000): 359‒73; Idem, “Il contesto classico del canto di Ulisse,” Strumenti critici 25 (2000): 171‒191; Giorgio Brugnoli, Studi Danteschi. III. Dante Filologo: l’esempio di Ulisse (Pisa: ETS, 1998); on Horace and Seneca, see John Scott, Dante magnanimo: studi sulla Commedia (Florence: Olschki: 1977): 147‒53; Tobias Leuker, “L’orazion picciola dell’Ulisse dantesco e un’invettiva di Seneca,” L’Alighieri 32 (2008): 92‒94; and Francesca Battera, “Dante, Inferno XXVI: Ulisse secondo Orazio e Seneca,” L’Alighieri. Rassegna dantesca 58, no. 2 (2021): 73‒96; on Cicero, see Dante Alighieri, Die göttliche Komödie, ed. Hermann Gmelin (Stuttgart: Klett, 1954), ad locum; and Francesca Battera, “Per Inferno XXVI e per Ulisse: Cicerone,” Lettere Italiane 72 (2020): 207‒31. Other recent convicing contributions, include discussions of Boethius, see Simone Marchesi, “Sottrasse me: Schede per la lettura intertestuale di un hapax dantesco,” Dante Notes (3 November 2020); and of the biblical and Aesopic traditions by Filippo Gianferrari, “A ‘Whirlwind of Eloquence:’ Sources for a Moral Reading of Ulysses’s ‘turbo’ (Inf. XXVI, 137),” Italian Studies 76, no. 1 (2021): 1-17. ↑

33. For another contribution toward this larger study, see Ambrogio Camozzi Pistoja, Dante’s Non-Linear Exemplarity (forthcoming for Toronto University Press, 2026). ↑

34. See Idem, La materia di Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 2024), 83–152. On the broader dynamics of vernacular mediation, see Emma Campbell’s reappraisal of “untranslatability” in medieval French literature, “not as an unchanging property of a source text but as a variable manifestation of non-isomorphism that appears through translations.” As Campbell demonstrates, the tension between translation and untranslatability is a structural condition of medieval textual culture, see Reinventing Babel: Translation and Untranslatability in Medieval French Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), citation at p. 5. ↑

35. See Simone Marchesi’s insightful discussion of “the agonistic dynamic intrinsic to the phenomenon of cultural transference and linguistic translation, of which translatio consists,” embedded in the Ulysses episode, in his Vernacular Edens: Tropes of Translation in Medieval European Fictions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2025), 89 and following. Marchesi goes on to explore these forms of linguistic mediation and cultural tradition both along the vertical axis, from Ulysses’s oration in Inferno 26, to Arnault’s speech in his Provençal tongue in Purg. 26, and finally to Adam’s meditation on the birth of the mutable, ever-renewing vernacular, in Par. 26; and along the horizontal axis, from Homer to Primo Levi. On the imagery and ideology of theft in Dante’s creative processes, see Guglielmo Gorni, “Cino ‘vil ladro.’ Parola data e parola rubata,” in Idem, Il nodo della lingua e il verbo d’amore (Florence: Olschki, 1981): 125‒139; Caron Ann Cioffi, “The Anxieties of Ovidian Influence: Theft in Inferno XXIV and XXV,” Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society 112 (1994): 77‒100. ↑