Esercizi di filologia: la Senile II 4

[Autom. eng. transl.] Taking his cue from the fact that texts falsely attributed to him circulate, Petrarch gives his friend Lelio (Lello Tosetti) a lesson in philology. He intends to dismantle attribution problems that touched the ancients, using the tools offered by the examination of the manuscript tradition, by the comparison of sources and by stylistic evaluation. Among the five authors taken into consideration - Aristotle, Origen, Seneca, Agostino and Ambrogio - two are those to whom he dedicates a detailed examination, Seneca and Ambrose. For Seneca he examines the false attributions of De quattuor virtutibus, De moribus and Proverbia and 'recovers' the Ad Polybium by separating it from De brevitate vitae. For Ambrose it proves that the De moribus Brachmanorum, instead assigned to Palladio, cannot be attributed to him. Finally, the assignment of the medieval De vetula to Ovid does not need any denial as its falsity is evident.