Open access. © 2018 Paolo Cherchi, published by De Gruyter. This work is
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https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110419306-013
Paolo Cherchi
The Inventors of Things in Boccaccio’s
De genealogia deorum gentilium
The topic of this paper can be defined as “modest,” considering that we will
discuss only a small amount of the vast body of Boccaccio’s De genealogia
deorum gentilium, otherwise known simply as the Genealogie; it can be defined
as “important,” given the vital function that material has on the work as a whole;
and it can be defined as “fundamental” insofar as the Genealogie has contributed
greatly to revamping a literary genre. The paper’s subject is Boccaccio’s
“inventor of things,” upon which he touches in his Genealogie. He did not devote
any special section to it, instead discussing the topic in a number of passages of
varying length, ranging from one paragraph to entire chapters, scattered throughout
the work. Yet taken together these fragments create a discourse that, properly
put into context, sheds light on Boccaccio’s notion of myth, mythical language,
and the relationship between myth and history. By dealing with the subject of the
“inventors,” Boccaccio brought to light an ancient theme that had been forgotten
for many centuries; most importantly to us, he developed the essential notion of
“historical truthfulness” in myths, thus touching upon the crucial debate over
the nature of myths: are they pure fiction, or do they refer to historical realities
under the disguise of fabulous language?
Inventors were so highly esteemed in the classic world that a literary genre
was “invented” to celebrate them; “heurematic” literature had origins dating
back to the ancient Sophists, according to Plato.1
In his Protagoras, Plato notes
the importance of inventors when he touches on the story of Prometheus
(320C–344A), the myth that focuses on the man as maker and shaper of things,
as the creator of the techné that fosters the development of societies, frees man
from limitations of the physis, and gives a decisive role to the nomos, the law.
1 For the scholarship on the heurematic literature see Karl Thraede: Erfinder II. In: Reallexikon
fur Antike und Christentum. Edited by Theodor Klauser/ Ernst Dassmann/ Franz Joseph Dolger.
Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann 1950. Vol. 5, coll. 1191–1278; Karl Thraede: Das Lob des Erfinders: Bemerkungen
zur Analyse der Heuremata-Kataloge. In: Rheinisches Museum zur Vorgeschichte 105
(1961), p. 158–186; Brian Capenhaver: The Historiography of Discovery in the Renaissance: the
Sources and Composition of Polydore Vergil’s ‘De inventoribus rerum’ I–III. In: Journal of Warburg
and Courtauld Institutes 41 (1978), p. 192–214; Patricia Falguieres: Les inventeurs des choses. Enquetes
sur les arts et naissance d’une science de l’homme dans les cabinets du XVIe
siecles. In:
Histoire de l’art et anthropologie. Actes de Colloques Musee du quai Branly. In: www.actesbranly.
revues.org/94; Catherine Atkinson: Inventing Inventors in Renaissance Europe: Polydore Vergil’s
‘De inventoribus’. Tubingen: Siebeck 2007.
 The Inventors of Things in Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium   245
A considerable contribution to the theme of the significance of inventors
came from Herodotus who, viewing things from an historical angle, maintained
that many inventions had come to Greece from Egypt and Babylon (2:53), where
inventors were held as divinities. This notion pointed the heurematic theme in a
theological direction and led to the thinking of gods as benefactors of humanity,
especially insofar as they invented all sorts of things useful to mankind.
These ideas were elaborated upon by Euhemerus in a work that has been lost
to us. However, ample sections of it were preserved by Lactantius (Inst. I; XI; XIII;
XIV; etc.) one of the Fathers of the Church. From Euhemerus we have “Euhemerism:”
the theory that gods must be seen as creations of the human imagination,
which transformed great rulers, legislators, and inventors into superior and
eternal beings after their deaths.
There was a third way of seeing the inventors; in this view, they were merely
fantastic creations of the human imagination because the inventions themselves
were the results of incidental factors. For example, the melting of metals was not
the invention of any particular man but rather the result of volcanic activities or
of stones or ores burning in some forest fire (we can see this kind of explanation
in Lucretius’ De rerum natura, V. 1241–1268).
These varying opinions led to the three types of theology described by
Varro. The first was “natural” theology, which excluded the figures of the inventors
because the inventions themselves were the fruit of nature; the second was
“mythical” theology, which considered the inventors mythical figures; and the
third was the theology of “religious cults,” which considered the inventors to be
divinized creatures, worthy of religious devotion. This classification by Varro was
borrowed by Saint Augustine, and Boccaccio refers to it in the Genealogie;2
it is
clear that he was well aware of this tradition.
The ancient world dealt repeatedly with this topic and often produced catalogues
of “inventors of things.” Confining ourselves to the Latin world, we see
Lucretius dwelling on the inventions of things worked out by nature; we have seen
the fusion of metals, and we may add now hunting, farming, and other inventions
of this kind. Pliny thought the inventors were real people, only some of whom
were divinized; for him the inventions were the result of the techné or ars, and not
of chance or Nature. Pliny made a list of over two-hundred inventors, gathering
them in a chapter of his Naturalis historia (VII 56), a passage that would become
2 Prohemium 1, 18, p. 50. Our references here and henceforth are to Genealogie deorum gentilium.
Edited by Vittorio Zaccaria. 2 vols. Milan: Mondadori 1998. This edition – which constitutes
vol 7 and 8 of Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio edited under the direction of Vittore Branca –
contains the Latin text and the translation into Italian.
246   Paolo Cherchi
an indispensable piece of the heurematic literature, referenced and plagiarized
endlessly. To the Greek and Latin tradition we must add the Biblical one, headed
by Josephus Flavius, who maintained that all inventors of things were present in
the books of the Bible, and the pagan inventors did nothing more than carry the
knowledge forward; for example, Moses taught the art of music to Orpheus.
With the advent of Christianity the theme experienced a rapid decline as the
pagan divinities faded away or were degraded to demonic figures, and the inventions
were thought to be gifts of divine providence, sent to provide mankind with
the tools to live increasingly well. Mythology, too, saw a remarkable decline to
the point of disappearance, since it was considered a dangerous carrier of pagan
values. In Fulgentius and Macrobius, mythology is a “typological” interpretation
that sees myths as precursors to Christian truths; in this context the inventors
are all but forgotten. The brief chapter that St. Isidore devotes to them in his Origenes
(or Etymologiae VII 11) has a purely informative function, a simple entry
in his summa.
Rumblings of a revival were heard in the so-called “Twelfth Century Renaissance.”
In that climate of cultural curiosity, ancient mythology did not awaken
fears of contaminating the Christian creed; in fact, it aroused so much curiosity
that several mythographic collections were produced. These handbooks told the
mythical stories and occasionally explained their allegorical meanings, in order
to satisfy the needs of readers of ancient texts containing mythological references,
chiefly poetry.3
Among the best-known collections are the so-called Mythographi
vaticani: three books, each by a different author, each different in the arrangement
and wealth of materials, all three helpful for reading and commenting on
ancient authors. Boccaccio mentions them often – especially the third, which he
attributes to Alberico. In the works of these mythographers the qualification of
“inventor” crops up only occasionally in the story of some individuals, and on
those few occasions their inventions are recalled merely as part of their memorable
deeds.
The first notable consideration of “inventors” occurs in Hugh of Saint Victor’s
Didascalicon, in which all of the arts and disciplines have their inventors. It is
easy to understand why the author is interested in pointing out the “inventors”
3 A survey of the Medieval mythographic literature in: Robert Earl Kaske/ Arthur Gross/ Michael
W. Twomay (eds.): Medieval Christian Literary Imagery: A Guide to Interpretation. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press 1998, the chapter 6 “Mythography” p. 104–116. A wealth of data can be
found in Jeane Chance’s studies on mythography, of which I recommend the last volume published
because of its relevancy to our subject: Jean Chance: Medieval Mythography. Volume 3: The
Emergence of Italian Humanism, 1321–1475. Gainesville: University of Florida Press 2014.
 The Inventors of Things in Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium   247
of philosophy, of grammar, of weaving or ironwork, because these disciplines
constitute a knowledge which must be transmitted through teaching; thus it is
normal to think about their “first teachers,” who must also be considered their
inventors: they know per causas, and nobody can teach something better than
its inventor.
About a century later in Italy, in a culture already tinged by proto-humanistic
curiosity, the De viribus illustribus et de originibus by Guglielmo da Pastrengo
appeared.4
It presents a very long catalogue of “firsts,” among which are listed the
“inventors.” Opening the list is Abel, the “first to offer gifts to God,” and Adam,
the first man. This gives us a hint that the list follows an alphabetical order. In it
we find not only biblical characters but also persons like Cato the Censor, Gorgias
the Sophist, Epicurus, a Roman who created a tank to breed eels, and an endless
number of people who were the “firsts” at something or otherwise distinguished
themselves. One has the impression that Pastrengo is composing a “heuristic”
catalogue rather than a “heurematic” one; that is, he has compiled a catalogue
useful to writers of histories and encyclopedias.
What’s interesting about Pastrengo’s work is that it was composed around
the same time Boccaccio was composing his Genealogie. The proximity highlights
the huge difference between the two works: Pastrengo was composing a work of
erudition, drawing on classical and biblical sources in the proto-humanistic style,
whereas Boccaccio was set to claim the legitimacy of myth both as history and as
poetry. In Boccaccio’s ambitious and original plan the “inventors” acquired a new
and important role.
To begin, we must say that the inventors’ theme in the Genealogie does not
occupy the space one would expect in a work focusing on “origins,” as the title
implies.Infactitisfairtosaythattheinventors’presenceisdisappointinglyscarce,
especially if we consider the opinion that the Genealogie is an euhemeristic work.5
I find such a reading generally unacceptable, because even though the Genealogie
4 Guglielmo da Pastrengo: De viris illustribus et de originibus. Edited by Guglielmo Bottari. Padova:
Antenore 1991.
5 The bibliography on the Genealogie is relatively limited compared to other works of Boccaccio.
For our purposes we point out some of the most recent studies: Manlio Pastore Stocchi: Giovanni
Boccaccio. La «Genealogia deorum gentilium»: una novita bibliografica. In: Piero Gibellini (ed.):
Il mito nella letteratura italiana. Vol. 1, Dal Medioevo al Rinascimento. Ed. by Gian Carlo Alessio.
Milano: Morcelliana 2005 (Biblioteca morcelliana, 1), p. 229–245; Luigi Canetti: Boccaccio
teologo. Poesia e verita alla fine del Medioevo. In: Intersezioni 31, 2 (2011), p. 179–196; Bodo Guthmuller:
Il mito tra teologia e poetica. In: Intersezioni, 31, 2 (2011), p. 219–230; Jon Solomon, Gods,
Greeks, and Poetry (Genealogia deorum gentilium). In: Victoria Kirkham/ Michael Sherberger/
Janet Levarie Smarr (eds.): Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press 2014, p. 235–244; Jon Solomon is in the process of editing the Genealogy of the
248   Paolo Cherchi
contains euhemeristic elements, Boccaccio’s general way of approaching myths
is not based on the “rationalization” that was typical of euhemeristic analysis.
What can be euhemeristic in the description of Demagorgon, that primitive divinity
utterly invented by Boccaccio, which opens the work? In fact, the Genealogie
inverts that course: it is not that men are deified because of their extraordinary
achievements, as Euhemerus maintained, but rather that the divinities descend to
the world of men through the concept of “genealogy” – or, at best, both meet at the
intermediate level of a “superior man,” who, like Prometheus, steals the power of
the gods and bestows it upon mortals. We will come back to this important point.
In order to characterize the Genealogie we might define it as a study, indeed
a true epos of the art of interpretation, of the exegetical and hermeneutical labors
and travails of many generations through the myths, an attempt to understand
whether they are pure fantasy, how and when they were formed, what truths they
hide, which language they use, and how they are related to history. The Genealogie
holds an immense legacy of stories that have fascinated generation after generation
from the early philosophers on. Hence the most conspicuous aspects of
the work. First, the congestion of the ancient sources, or auctoritates. Second, the
position taken by the author: Boccaccio places his own interpretations of the myths
alongside those of the other auctores, who only chronologically precede him. He
does not impose his own interpretation, nor does he take sides; rather, he simply
adds his proposals to the others, and he is far from giving them as definitive. All
proposals are more or less acceptable because the interpretation of myth is like that
of poetry; these are opinions rather than definitive statements. This is because the
language of myth is polysemous – their meanings are inexhaustible, and Boccaccio
must have thought future interpreters might come along with new interpretations.
In this sense he was aware that his Genealogie was an opera aperta (“open
work”), able to expand infinitely that exegetical epos of which he was just one
bard. If we see the Genealogie in this way, then we may understand why Boccaccio
added two books to the main corpus of his work, but did not examine any new
myths. Books fourteen and fifteen are dedicated to the defense of poetry, one of
the earliest and most important in medieval times, just at the threshold of the
Humanistic period. Far from being the appendix many critics have seen, these
Pagan Gods. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 2011 (The I Tatti Renaissance Library,
46) the only volume (bks I–V) that has appeared so far. Special mention deserves the essay of
David Lummus: Boccaccio’s Poetic Anthropology: Allegories of History in the “Genealogie deorum
gentilium libri”. In: Speculum 1987, 3 (July 2012), p. 724–765: “special” because I was not able
to see it in time to use it for this present work, and special because of its quality and originality.
It gives me great comfort to see that some of the ideas I present here coincide in some points with
Lummus’s notion of “historic anthropology.”
 The Inventors of Things in Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium   249
books are an integral part of the larger work, one that grows organically from the
main conception of the Genealogie, offering the “aesthetic” key to the thesis that
the work advances in a different way.
The accumulation of myths and interpretations makes the work feel like
a summa, and it is often seen and used as such. It is a plausible characterization,
and the presence of the Genealogie in the histories of mythographic literature
and the pictorial arts – as well as the constant consultation by poets and
writers – confirms the summa role it has played. Boccaccio himself may have contributed
to the view of his work as an attempt to impose order on myth, to classify
the intricate legacy of ancient mythologies. He pretends to have undertaken this
enormous task at the request of the King of Cyprus, who confesses a strong wish
to have a clear picture of the distant and confused world of myth, where kinships
are multiple, where histories have many variations, where different names designate
the same individual, where discrepancies are only too frequent. But we
have learned to be cautious with similar authorial statements, since they often
turn out to be a rhetorical device used to explain the birth of a work, and a noble
one at that. The lengthy research the Genealogie required makes it hard to believe
that Boccaccio started planning the work only when the king of Cyprus put forth
his request, which, from what we can gather from Boccaccio’s indications, must
have occurred in 1362 or thereabouts. Since the first edition of the Genealogie was
ready in 1365, the time span for the composition would have been just three years,
too short for a work of such magnitude.
We have clues that Boccaccio was exposed to the idea of a “genealogy of
gods” in his Neapolitan days; sketches on this subject were jotted down in his
Zibaldone. Would it be too daring to say that he began toiling with the idea at
the time he closed the Decameron, and began dealing then with the problem of
how to interpret a tale? In that epilogue – so similar to the two final books of the
Genealogie – Boccaccio had the surprise of seeing his novelle interpreted in ways
he did not intend. As the author, he saw interpreters take his tales out of context,
extrapolating words and expressions and freely twisting their meanings. It was a
lesson in hermeneutics that found its ideal testing ground in ancient mythology.
Myths are stories with no known author, therefore there is no way to go
back and settle a dispute among different readings, nor is there any test to distinguish
a good interpretation from a bad one except good sense. This holds
true when interpreting any text, especially those that are quite distant from us
in time, as Petrarch tells us.6
However, myths present additional difficulties that
6 Petrarch makes this point in his Seniles IV 5. In: Pétrarque, Lettres de la vieillesse. Rerum senilium
libri. Edited by Elvira Nota. 4 vols. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. 2002–2006; our letter is found in
vol. II, 2003, p. 73–103.
250   Paolo Cherchi
literary texts in general may not present, and the majority of these difficulties
depend on our ignorance of the culture that produced them: what was their
context, where and when were they born, who listened to them, and how did
they understand them?
Moreover in most cases myths are “unbelievable,” utterly fantastic. The task
of a mythographer, as Boccaccio sees it, is not to collect myths, but to enlighten
their contexts, because only then may we appreciate them not just as beautiful
stories but as a chorus of voices from a remote and primordial past, when people
spoke a different language and filtered the world through a different mentality.
But how can we understand that language and that mentality, since we do not
have documents besides the myths themselves? We do it through interpretation
and by organizing the mythological material into a system in which one myth
explains the nature of another. These interpretations reconstruct a language that
was a way of understanding the world, and the resulting linguistic system reconstructs
the history in which that language existed.
First, let us examine the interpretations. The process of reconstructing something
through its effects is quite unusual, but not inconceivable. It depends upon
what we intend to reconstruct. If we want to reconstruct the “fabula,” or the plot
of a given myth, the problem is fairly simple, and any philologist or comparatist
can identify the original tale, its variations, and even the stages through which
it traveled and eras in which it appeared. But the problem becomes much harder
if we try to reconstruct its meaning. Often this difficulty is dictated by the fantastic
nature of the story and its characters; we tend to assume they must have a
hidden meaning. The interpretations flourish and multiply, and the “meaning” as
a single result vanishes. Boccaccio reports as many interpretations as he is able
to find, even adding his own, to prove the only truth that can possibly be found:
that myths are told by a language that personifies things and gives them a soul, a
language that represents reality in symbolic terms. It is a language very similar to
that of poetry, which conveys truth by disguising it in fantastic clothes.
Such a language, so distant from our normal process of denotation, is by
nature polysemic. No interpretation is definitive, all are relative; but taken
together they are a testimony to the poetical nature of the language of the myth.
This is, I believe, the great novelty offered by the Genealogie: the rapport between
context and interpretation, a virtual circle in which the two feed each other. We
should not see this rapport as dialectical, but rather as a relationship in which
both elements work simultaneously. As the interpretations multiply, the nature
of their object becomes clearer: a semantic field of inexhaustible potential. This
is the secret of myths’s longevity in the memory of mankind.
The systematic arrangement of this immense collection of stories is the other
strategy that helps us understand the nature of myths; this is another of the great
 The Inventors of Things in Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium   251
innovations offered by the Genealogie. One single myth does not offer sufficient
elements to apprehend its “nature,” the particular way in which it combines language
and meaning. A system, on the other hand, can give insight into mythical
patterns and, at the same time, provide an overview of the culture in which myths
were the only method of explaining the world. Thus interpretation and system
work together to make myths understandable.
The system devised by Boccaccio is structured around the notion of “genealogy.”
The idea of “genealogies of gods” was not an original one: Boccaccio could
have drawn it from the Mythographus Vaticanus II or from Paolo da Perugia,
whom he met in Naples and who authored a dry Genealogia deorum.7
However, no
antecedent can explain the complexity of the system built by Boccaccio because
the “genealogy” structure carries a meaning and a thesis hitherto unknown. We
know that it was a useful tool for organizing the immense amount of mythological
materials. However, it was not completely successful since Boccaccio had to
find several Jupiters and Junos in order to create “genealogical families” capable
of hosting the innumerable characters of the work. He did not make up these
family trees; many mythographers provided information about kinships, and in
spite of the inevitable gaps and holes he did not hesitate to use them. He could
not do without them once he understood what great potential they brought into
his plan: the idea of a genealogy developed the notions of society and history, the
two bases upon which his grandiose project found its cornerstone. These notions
created a chronology resembling that of any society where real men live, procreate,
think, and speak.
Of course, when a character in the Genealogie offers genealogical data about
him or herself, it is limited to indications of the closest relatives (mother, father,
children) and not of a complete genealogical tree. Boccaccio reconstructs these
familial ties, collecting the data from other mythographers who supposedly
had access to oral sources or to documents that are lost to us. The genealogical
thread gives an aura of realism to the lives of the characters, locating them in
space and time. But it has a further function. All myths are presented as a complete
body, which in its wholeness gives the picture of a society with its own
language patterns.
We can understand the value of this genealogical grouping if we compare
the Genealogie with the fragmentary system adopted by previous mythographers
or with the large contemporary mythographic collections known as the Ovidius
moralizatus by Pierre Bersuire, or Bercorius. Clearly, Boccaccio departs from
7 On Paolo da Perugia’s model, see Manlio Pastore Stocchi: La ‘Genealogia deorum gentilium’:
una novita bibliografica, p. 230–232.
252   Paolo Cherchi
the myth-by-myth analysis adopted by his predecessors and inaugurates an “all
myths” panorama, considering a culture as a whole that unifies all myths; within
that union one finds the key to reading each individual myth. In other words, the
genealogies are maps that offer the coordinates to locate and interpret any single
myth, as in the Decameron, where the single novelle would be devoid of any justification
if they did not relate to the “cornice,” which not only unifies them all, but
also explains each one’s role in the work as a whole.
The notion of a genealogy implies the chronology that is the skeleton of
history. Although he never states it explicitly, Boccaccio confines the world of
myths to the period of the common language found in the myths themselves: a
language capable of transforming real events into fabulous stories, a language
that mixes realistic and unrealistic elements, that blurs space and time, that
personifies abstract concepts and gives physical bodies to natural forces, that
records historical information through metaphors, a language in which fantastic
elements take the places of logical ones. It is the language of a civilization circumscribed
to a remote past, at the origins of time.
Boccaccio marks the beginning of this civilization at the dawn of the world of
men – which are not those indicated by the Bible with Adam and Eve – commencing
with the disaster of the Tower of Babel, when men, deprived of their “original”
language, began to group into nations, cultivate land, and build houses; that is,
he begins when civilization began to take shape, when large communities started
to embrace common living patterns and share the same beliefs. Boccaccio traces
the end of this civilization to the time of the Trojan War.
We must remember that the Genealogie’s chronology can occasionally be
compared with the Chronologia of Eusebius/Hieronimus, the standard medieval
chronology wherein biblical events are set down in chronological order, and each
one is dated by the year. But in order to put their time into a world perspective,
the Biblical chronology is set side by side with the heathen chronology. So, for
example, in the Genealogie we see that Abraham’s days were the same as those in
which the Theban wars took place, (Prohemium I 10, p. 50). Boccaccio encloses
the civilization of myths within that indefinite space and time, and he does not
include any myths of a more recent period. He explicitly refuses to incorporate
in his work the myth of the divine births of Alexander the Great and Scipio the
African, since they bear no mark of authenticity and are purely encomiastic
(Genealogie XII 71). With the mention of these two inauthentic myths Boccaccio
closes his genealogies; here is a clear sign that the modern age has begun and the
old mythical one is over and already remote in time. In general, Boccaccio avoids
being precise as far as historical coordinates go, not for lack of documentation
but because vagueness helps to create the aura of remoteness and enchantment
that surrounds the world of myths.
 The Inventors of Things in Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium   253
Identifying a civilization of myths is indispensable for understanding the
nature of these marvelous stories; the myths are more intelligible if seen within an
epistemic system, a cognitive system, a communication system (David Lummus
calls it “poetic anthropology”) that narrates its own world through metaphors,
fables, and other semantic methods that create the mythical language.
But settling these questions of civilization, language, and chronology is
just the beginning of our inquest. Other questions remain, and two of them are
crucial: First, how do we know that Boccaccio really envisioned a world with a
particular language and epistemic system? Second, how do myths relate to some
truth, to some real event?
The first question is foundational, and we can answer it in several ways. Boccaccio
says in the prefaces and in the concluding books of the Genealogie that
myths are like poetry and have a language unlike the usual one based on denotation;
the wealth of myths and their anonymity is a clear indication that once upon
a time this was the spoken language – a sign of a different mentality.
Another proof of Boccaccio’s idea of a separate epistemic system is the use of
genealogies of gods rather than ordinary genealogies. The genealogy structures
a world and shapes it into a form of history where families are the nuclei of a
society. When these genealogies cease to produce any more branches and fruits,
then it means that their world is finished and a new world has come to take its
place – the mythical world is over and the historical world has begun. The choice
of the gods for the genealogy was in part inevitable: mythology has an abundance
of gods and their offspring. But this was not the only reason. Mythology
is also filled with heroes, supermen fighting the forces of fate and vengeful gods;
besides, the mythical world was originally populated by individuals born of gods.
The presence of gods in the genealogy makes it clear that mythology belongs to
the pagan world, so there is therefore no danger of contaminating the Christian
faith. Furthermore, myths could not exist without a superior system of powers to
move the world, to make its rivers run and its heavens go in circles. The mythical
world’s people must be responsible to a superior will: the divine is an indispensable
element of the mythical mentality.
The second question is much more difficult. The relationship of myths to
truth was a crucial one in the culture of Boccaccio’s day, and indeed throughout
much of the Middle Ages. Myths are fiction, and fiction is mendacious. So was
poetry, which tells lies in the same way that myths do; their language and content
are fictional, metaphorical, fantastical. Medieval theologians regarded poetry
as dangerous because its seductive language was a deceptive representation of
the real world. Boccaccio and the so-called “proto-humanists” led a memorable
battle to defend the value of poetry, to redeem it from accusations of deception, to
prove its moral value and its truthful depiction of history and of reality in general.
254   Paolo Cherchi
In fact, in the last two books of the Genealogie, Boccaccio defends poetry by
defending myth. He does not defend any specific myths, however, but rather the
fantastic language that is the language of both poetry and myth. In these books
the defense is articulated in a sort of theoretical treatise, but there are other
defenses to be found in the main body of work. One defense, the most pervasive,
is represented by the myths themselves, or at least the major ones.
Our traditional view of the Genealogie as a summa has caused us to neglect
the work as a narrative jewel. Among the hundreds of myths collected in this vast
work, a large number of them could be collected as a book of short stories, a book
that would be among the best produced in the fourteenth century. Some myths
read as beautiful novelle or pithy exempla, wholly worthy of Boccaccio the great
writer. It does not matter that he rewrites well known stories; the way he does so
puts him far above mythographers who retell the same myths. We cannot dwell
on this neglected aspect of the Genealogie, but if scholars chose to analyze it as a
literary work, chances are they would enlist it as a new masterpiece.
However the Genealogie’s beauty seems to play into the hands of the
enemies of poetry, as seductive fiction with no truth to show. It may appear
as such, but Boccaccio brings forth a host of respected scholars who attempt
to grasp the inner meanings of these beautiful stories, and they cannot be all
wrong. Their authority and number carry the weight of the work, for in medieval
times the auctoritas held the value that scientific proof would possess in
modern times. They may disagree on the meanings, but they are convinced
that some truth exists within the myths; the languages they read and the ways
in which the stories are constructed lead them to believe it must be so. The
process of interpreting begins when we do not understand something, and
myths and poetry use language and imagery that solicit interpretation. The
principal difference may be that myths “spontaneously” create their fantastic
language, whereas poetry builds its own language with the purpose of communicating
in a highly artful form. The difficulty in finding a meaning or interpretation
upon which everyone agrees depends precisely on the polysemic nature
of that language.
Boccaccio demonstrates that myths are close to reality in a way that is more
direct than the ones just mentioned, and this demonstration is provided by the
“inventors of things.” So, after a long detour, we come to our main theme, and
what we have heretofore seen will now acquire a fuller sense.
When we gather the dates that concern our inventors, perhaps we feel slightly
disappointed by the scarcity of our findings; we might expect a richer harvest,
considering that the Genealogie deals with the founders of large families, and
therefore the notion of a “first” is central, as it is in heurematic literature where
 The Inventors of Things in Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium   255
anyinventorisbydefinitiona“first.”Hereisthelistofinventors;theyarearranged
in the order in which they are found in the work, as indicated by the book and
chapter listing. Whenever possible we have added in square brackets the possible
source for Boccaccio’s data, indicating them as Myth for the Mythographi Vaticani
with their respective number,8
and as Pl for Pliny’s Naturalis historia, precisely to
Bk. XXXVII, ch. 56, as previously mentioned.
I, 4: the Arcadians invented music; I, 12: Tagetis taught haruspicy; II, 2: the
first Jupiter (in fact, a certain Lisania) was the first to give laws, civic institutions,
and marriage to the Attics; II, 3: Minerva was the inventor of numbers, of spinning,
of weaving, and of many other arts; II, 55: Phoenix was the first to give
alphabet letters to the Phoenicians; he also invented the vermillion or Phoenician
color, called also punic (scarlet); II, 63: Cadmus was the inventor of marble
quarries, and he was able to melt gold and other metals; III, 19: Chiron was the
first to recognize the virtues of herbs and medications [Pl quoted as a source];
III, 25: Tossius invented mud bricks [Pl]; IV, 31: Atlas was the inventor of astrology
[Pl, quoted as a source together with Lactantius and Augustine]; IV, 42: Epimetheus,
who was the first to build a mud statue; IV, 44: Prometheus created the
human body [Myth II]; Apollo was the first to recognize medicinal herbs [Myth
III]; Orpheus invented the cither [Myth II], but the same invention is attributed
to Apollo, and some attribute it to Amphion or to Linus; V, 21: Asclepius was the
inventor of medicine; V, 23: Arabe revealed medicine to the Babylonians; V, 25:
Bacchus or Liberus was the first to plant the grapevine; VII, 23: Phoroneus was
the first to sacrifice to Juno [Pl and Myth II]; VII, 26: Phegoo invented the shrine
to the gods and taught primitive men how to divide time by months and years;
VII, 35: Daphnis was the first shepherd in the woods; VIII, 2: Mercury invented
measurements and weights for the merchants; he was called by the Gauls the
inventor of many arts and a guide of routes and travels; VIII, 2: Mercury and Isis
taught the alphabet letters [Myth III]; the Athenian Buzige found the oxen and
the plow [Pl]; VIII, 8: Chiron invented surgery [Pl, and Myth I; according to the
latter he invented also the irrigation of orchards]; VIII, 10: Pico found the way to
fertilize the fields with animal dung [see his relation to Stercutio/Saturn. According
to Pliny he invented the playing ball]; IX, 41: Romulus was the first to divide
the year into twelve months; XII, 30: Amphitrio was the first to interpret prodigies
and dreams [Pl, quoted as the source]; XII, 35: the Achemenides invented
the sacrifices to Apollo; XII, 40: Perses was the first to invent arrows [Pl]; XIII,
45: Amphiaraus was the first to invent pyromancy, the art of divining through fire
8 The Mythographi Vaticani are quoted from the Scriptores rerum mythicarum latini tres. Edited
by Georg Heinrich Bode. Cellis: Schulz 1834.
256   Paolo Cherchi
(but Boccaccio doubts Pliny’s testimony because he recalls having read about the
same art from the Chaldeans, as brought to them by Nembrot).
This list elicits some considerations. Leaving aside the reduced number of
“inventors” – though it is a feature that begs explanation – we notice that the
names are for the most part fairly well known. Boccaccio does not want to surprise
us with rare data because his novelty lies somewhere else. It is noteworthy
that the dependence on Pliny and on the Vatican mythographers is sporadic
and not systematic. We quote these two sources to show that Boccaccio’s philology
was not limited to the authority of Pliny, the most important source for
a Pastrengo, and also to show that mythographers were not particularly interested
in inventors. Boccaccio’s philology had an unusual range; indeed, it was
unique among his contemporaries. Furthermore as we have seen, philology,
understood primarily as exegetical tradition, plays a fundamental role in the
Genealogie.
The inventors are mostly men, though some gods like Bacchus and Minerva
keep their title of inventor, as established by long tradition. The inventors are
more frequent in the central books, and they are practically absent from the first
and last two books: the first is of “cosmogonic” nature, and the human presence
is rare (the myth of Pan we will see is “cosmogonic” in nature); the last two books
deal with “literary theory.”
The “inventors” are distributed throughout the other books, covering a period
that extends from the origins of time down to the beginning of historical time.
There is no demonstrable sequence in the inventors’ history, but it is plausible to
infer a sequence from the narrative of the work, which lists music as the earliest
invention and arrows as the last invention. This beginning holds a metaphysical
aura, while the end evokes an image of war, announcing, as it were, the beginning
of the Iron Age that succeeded the golden civilization of myths. Boccaccio
focuses on what modern mythographers call “the age of gods and men,” an age
where gods mixed with humans and mortals were heroes.
The most interesting element in our list is the nature of the inventions themselves.
Essentially they consist of music, the wool arts, architecture (the invention
of the brick), medicine, writing, the division of time, agriculture, religious
cults, and finally weapons for war. It would seem, therefore, that Boccaccio was
interested only in the foundational inventions of human civilization, inventions
that mark the greatest leaps forward in the history of mankind, wherein mankind
moved from the caves and woods into societies capable of building houses,
working the fields, and using herbs to cure physical problems. The attention to
these culture-changing events explains why Boccaccio remembers only a reduced
number of inventors. These inventors disappeared – they likely never existed –
but their inventions survived and were still present in Boccaccio’s day, as they are
 The Inventors of Things in Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium   257
in ours. Thus we can assume those myths refer to something real; consequently
they are in essence truthful. Myths are not the truths they carry, but the way in
which they tell those truths.
To see how these truths grow into a fiction or how a fiction envelops a real
event, let us take two myths, the first and last of those gathered in the Genealogie.
The first, quite long, appears in the first book and takes up the entire chapter 4:
De Pane secundo Demogorgonis filio.- Pana Demogorgonis fuisse filium iam satis supra
monstratum est. De quo talem Theodontius recitat fabulam. Dicit enim eum verbis irritasse
Cupidinem et inito cum eo certamine superatum, et victoris iussu Syringam nynpham
arcadem adamasse, que cum satyros ante lusisset, eius etiam sprevit coniugium. Pan autem
cum illam urgente Amore fugiente sequeretur, contigit ut ipsa a Ladone fluvio impedita
consisteret et nynpharum auxilium precibus imploraret, quarum opere factum est ut in
palustres calamos verteretur. Quos cum Pan motu ventorum sensisset, dum invicem colliderentur,
esse canoros, tam affectione puelle a se dilecte quam delectatione soni permotus,
calamos libens assumpsit, et ex eis septem disparibus factis, fistulam, ut aiunt,
compsuit, eaque primus cecinit, ut etiam testari Virgilius: «Pan primus calamos cera coniungere
plures Instituit, etc.». Huius preterea poete et alii insignes viri mirabilem descripsere
figuram. Nam, ut Rabanus in libro De origine rerum ait: «Is ante alia fronti habet infixa
cornua in celum tendentia, barbam prolixam et in pectus pendulam, et loco pallii pellem
distinctam maculis, quam nebridem vocavere prisci, sic et manu virgam atque septem calamorum
fistolam». Preterea inferioribus membris hirsutum atque hispidum dicit, et pedes
habere capreos et, ut addit Virgilius, purpuream faciem. Hunc unum et idem cum Silvano
arbitrabatur Rabanus, sed diversos esse describit Virgilius dicens: «Venit et agresti capitis
Silvanus honore, Florentes ferulas et grandia lilia quassans». Et illico sequitur: «Pan deus
Arcadie venit». Et alibi: «Panaque Silvanumque senem nymphasque sororores» etc.
His igitur premissis, ad intrinseca veniendum est. Et quoniam supra Pana naturam naturatam
esse dictum est, quid sibi voluerint fingentes eum a Cupidine superatum, facile reor
videri potest. Nam quam cito ab ipso Creatore natura producta est, evestigio cepit operari, et
suo delectata opere, illud cepit amare, et sic a delectatione irritata amori succubuit. Syringa
autem, quam aiunt a Pane dilectam, ut dicebat Leontius, dicitur a syren grece, quod latine
sonat deo cantans et sic poterimus dicere Syringam esse celorum seu sperarum melodiam,
que, ut Pictagore placuit, ex variis inter se motibus circulorum sperarum conficiebatur, seu
conficitur; et per consequens tanquam deo et Nature gratissimum, a natura conficiente diligitur.
Seu volumus potius Syringam esse circa nos agentibus super celestibus corporibus
Naturae opus tanto organizatum ordine, ut dum in certum et determinatum finem continuo
deducitur tractu, non aliter quam faciant rite canentes armoniam facere, quod Deo gratissimum
fore credendum est. Cur autem hanc nynpham arcadem fuisse dixerint et in calamos
versam, ideo dictum puto quia, ut placet Theodontio Arcades primi fuere, qui, excogitato
cantu, emictentes, per calamos longos et breves, spiritum, quattuor vocum invenere discrimina,
et demum addidere tria, et ad postremum quod permultos faciebant calamos,
in unam contraxere fistulam, foraminibus oriflantis proximis et remotioribus excogitatis.
Macrobius vero hoc repertum dicit Pictagore, ad ictus malleorum gravium atque levium.
Iosephus vero in libro Antiquitatis Iudaice dicit longe vetustius Iubal inventum fuisse ad
tinnitum malleorurm Tubalcayn fratris sui, qui ferrarius faber fuit. Verum quoniam fingentibus
verius visum est Arcades invenisse, eo quod illo forsan evo ceteros excderent fistula,
258   Paolo Cherchi
arcadem nynpham fuisse voluere. Syringam autem lusisse satyros et Pana fugientem, atque
a Ladone moratam et nynpharum suffragio in calamum versam, circa nostros cantus iudicio
meo aliquid bone considerationis abscondit. Hec enim spretis satyris, it est ingeniis rubdibus,
fugit Pana, id est hominem natura aptum natum ad musicalia, nec equidem actu fugit,
se existimatione cupientis, cui in dilatione videtur cessari quod optat. Hec tunc a Ladone
sistitur donec instrumentum ad emictendam meditationem perficitur. Est enim Ladon
fluvius in ripa nutriens calamos, in quos versam Syringam aiunt, ex quibus postmodum
confectam fistulam novimus; ex quo sumere debemus, uti calamorum radix terre infixa est,
sic et meditatio musice artis et compertus exinde cantus tam diu latet in pectore inventoris,
donec emictendi prstetur organum, quod ex calamis suffragio humiditatis a radice emissis
conficitur, quo confecto , sonus premeditatus emictitur suffragio humiditatis spiritus
emictentis. Nam si siccus esset, nulla sonoritatis dulcedo, sed mugitus potius sequeretur,
ut vidimus ex igne per fistulas emisso contingere; et sic in calamos versa videtur Syringa, eo
quod per calamos resonet. Possibile preterea fuit a compertore fistule calamos ad hoc primo
fuisse compertos Ladonem sucus, et sic a Ladone detenta. (I 4, §§ 1–9, pp. 88–92)
[We have already shown that Pan was the son of Demogorgon. Theodontius tells a fable
about him. He says that Pan irritated Cupid with words, and he lost a contest that had been
started by Cupid; Pan was ordered by the winner to love Syrinx, an Arcadian nymph, who
used to play with the satyrs but had rejected Pan’s company. Pan, however, urged by love,
pursued the fleeting nymph, who came to a halt, impeded by the river Ladon. She implored
the aid of the nymphs, who turned her into a swamp of reeds. When Pan noticed that the
wind caused those reeds to produce a sound while colliding with one another and made
melodious sounds, he was moved both by the love for the girl and by the delight of the
sounds. He gathered the reeds and, as it is said, out of them he made a pipe of seven different
lengths. He was the first to sing, as Vergil also testifies: “Pan was the first to show how
to join several reeds with wax.” In addition, poets and other celebrated men described his
remarkable figure. As a matter of fact, Rabanus in his On the Nature of Things said: “Most
remarkable were his upwardly bent horns, set on his forehead, his long beard reaching all
the way down to his chest, and instead of a cloak he wore a pelt marked with spots which
the ancients called nebris, and also as a wand in his hand and the seven-reed pipe.” He
added that his lower limbs were hairy and shaggy, and his feet were goat-like, and his face,
as Vergil added, was purple. Rabanus thought that this was one and the same as Silvanus,
but Vergil described them as being different: “And Silvanus came with a rustic honor on his
head, shaking flowering fennel plants and tall lilies.” It goes on, saying: “Pan, the Arcadian
god, came.” And elsewhere: “Both Pan and the old Silvanus and their sister nymphs.” Given
these preliminary facts, we must now move on to the innermost part. Because it was said
above that Pan was natura naturata, I think that we can easily understand what the ancients
meant when they imagined that he was conquered by Cupid. Indeed, as soon as Nature was
created, she immediately began to work, and being delighted by her work, she fell in love
with it. According to Leontius, Syrinx, whom Pan is said to love, takes her name from the
Greek syren which means “singing to the gods,” so we can say that Syrinx is the melody
of the heavens and spheres, which, according to Pythagoras, is generated by the various
interrelated motions of the orbits of spheres. Because this motion is so pleasing to God and
nature, it is loved by Nature that forms it. Or we could rather say that Syrinx, because of
the effect of the bodies circling around us, is a work of Nature organized in such an order
that while it is forced to go into a certain and predetermined end, produces harmony not
 The Inventors of Things in Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium   259
differently from those who sing according to roles. And one has to believe that this was
pleasing to God. The reason why we said that this nymph was Arcadian, I think, is due to
the fact that – as Theodontius likes to say – Arcadians were the first ones who, once they
found a melody, discovered four distinct tones by blowing into pipes long and short, and
then added three more; finally they contracted into a single pipe all that was previously
done by many reeds, placing newly created holes closer and further from the blower’s
mouth. Macrobius instead says that this an invention by Pythagoras, obtained through
the percussion of heavy and light hummers. Then Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities claims
that it was an earlier discovery made by Iubal, while hearing the pings of hammers of his
brother Tubalcain, who was a blacksmith. Yet, since some more truthful poets believed
that the inventors were the Arcadians, perhaps because they excelled in pipe playing, they
decided that the nymph was an Arcadian. Concerning Syrinx and her playing with satyrs
and running away from the desiring Pan, and being turned into a reed with the approval
of the nymphs, in my opinion this hides some useful things regarding our songs. Syrinx,
spurning the satyrs, that is, the unruly passions, flees Pan, that is, the man who is by
nature fit for music. In reality she flees only in the opinion of he who desires her, but he
sees in the delay of reaching her the vanishing of what he ardently desires. She is stopped
by Ladon, until she becomes the instrument that produces the sound she has imagined. As
a matter of fact Ladon is a river that on its banks grows the reeds into which it is said Syrinx
was transformed, and out them was formed the pipe that we know. From this we could
deduce that, as the reed’s root is fixed into the earth, in the same way the conception of the
art of music and the ensuing songs remained hidden in the heart of its inventor until the
instrument for emitting it was ready. This emission is done by reeds, which sprung from the
roots with the help of moisture, and as the instrument was formed, the sound earlier imagined
was released through the humidity of the breath that emits it. If the breath were dry
it would come out not a sounding sweetness but a noise similar to that of fire released by
a reed. So Syrinx seems to have been transformed into reeds because she produces sound
through reeds. Moreover it is possible that the pipe’s reeds were found by the inventor
for the first time near the Ladon river; and this is why it said that Syrinx was detained by
the Ladon.]
Before analyzing this myth, let us transcribe the story of Perses, the last inventor
of the Genealogie. In fact the last inventor should have been Amphiaraus, but
Boccaccio seems to have doubts about his story because the testimony of Pliny is
disproved by the Bible; consequently we have not included it in our list – biblical
inventors are not taken into account by Boccaccio.
De Perse, Persei filio: Persem filium fuisse Persei in libro Naturali hystorie testatur Plinius,
de quo nil aliud comperi, preter quod idem Plinius asserit, eum scilicet primum sagittarum
repertorem fuisse, quod forsan apud suos verum est, cum apud alias nationes illas longe
antiquiores legerimus. (XII 40, p. 1202)
[Of Perses, Perseus’ son: Pliny testifies that Perses was the son of Perseus. I know nothing of
him except what Pliny himself says, that is that Perses was the first inventor of the arrows.
This is perhaps true according to his people, but we have read that, according to other
people, arrows were invented earlier.]
260   Paolo Cherchi
The differences between the two myths are obvious, beginning with the dimensions
of the stories and the number of auctoritates that dealt with them: Pan’s
fable is a compilation of different testimonies, whereas Perses’s story is found
only in one source, and it is a rather unreliable one at that. The major difference,
however, is that no story is told about Perses and consequently there can be no
interpretation as in other myths; thus it is left to us to understand what justifies
the presence of this inventor and his invention among so many other myths in the
Genealogie.
A few explanations come readily to mind. One may be the position Perses’s
story has in the work; being placed toward the end makes it a supreme relic of a
vanishing world, a borderline story, as it were, between the world of myths and
the world of history. Another explanation may simply be that no ancient mythographers
or poets known to Boccaccio told any story about Perses, not even Pliny,
and Boccaccio never invents a mythological fable because it would go against
his own idea of myths as spontaneous creations of a specific age in the history
of mankind. Both explanations may be correct, but they are perhaps not necessary.
The only certainty we have is that Perses’s story is in the Genealogie, and
the family or linkage structure that organizes the work is sufficient to justify it;
with its bareness, Perses’s story highlights the function of the “genealogy.” In any
case, this bare-bones story juxtaposed with that of Pan, so sophisticated, tells us
a good deal about the wealth and variety of materials contained in this encyclopedia
of sorts.
Boccaccio’s analysis of Pan’s myth sets up a pattern that he almost always
repeats: he begins by presenting the “literature” on the subject, and then he presents
his own reading. The literature offers two kinds of information: one, we may
say, is iconographic in nature – the pictorial representation of Pan, his “concrete”
physical appearance – the other is exegetical insofar as it attempts to explain
“allegorically” or symbolically some points of the story. Boccaccio accepts them
all because together they prove the vitality of the myth, its capacity to stimulate
the imagination and to challenge the ingenuity of the interpreter to find its inner
meaning. He does not take a position against or in favor of any of them, but he
seems to go alongside them, adding to them without imposing his own thesis.
Yet, in spite of this modest presentation, it is clear that his interpretation,
questionable as it may be, is different in its approach. For one thing, it is holistic
in the sense that it does not dwell on details as other interpreters do, but instead
envisions the whole story in order to understand better its particulars. This
approach delves not so much into the meaning of the story but rather into the
psychology of the story’s maker.
In other words, Boccaccio tries to understand and describe the mechanism
by which a certain type of mind sees and understands events or facts, a mind that
 The Inventors of Things in Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium   261
functions in a cognitive way and may be called pre-logical or fantastical. It is a
mind that needs personifications to explain concepts, concrete figures to explain
abstract facts. Thus in studying myths the first step is not to look for their meanings,
but instead to hunt for a system of communication that bears no resemblance
to our “logical” language. It is a language that we can call mythopoetic
because it creates fictions, characters, and stories not intending to mean something
different but rather to mean exactly what they say. We allegorize myths in
order to legitimate them as truthful, but they were not conceived in any allegorical
fashion, for they were meant to be “true” stories in their own right. Boccaccio
enters into this creative mechanism, which is very similar to the poetic one. This
language is born in the same way the pipes and the melodies were: first it was
“contemplated” in our souls, and then it burst out in the form of a harmony, a
representation of what was inside of us. This is one of the reasons Boccaccio takes
the “psychological” approach previously mentioned, shunning rationalistic and
euhemeristic explanations.
In this respect, the myth of Pan and Syrinx is particularly instructive; not
only is it the first, or one of the first, of the Genealogie, but it also deals both with
an inventor and an invention. It is also a good example of that “natural theology”
described by Varro: a fabulation of a natural phenomenon. The advantages
it offers are multiple. First, we can be sure that this myth contains a truth, which
we do not have to guess: music exists today, as it must have existed in the mythological
civilization. Thus Boccaccio, contrary to other students of myths, can start
from a fact and see how it was perceived, rather than starting from the myth and
figuring out what it means. That perception coincides perfectly with the myth it
creates, because the perceiving does not occur through words or conventional
signs, as later cultures would know them, but rather through a process that imagines
any object perceived as a living thing that is better understood by knowing
what produces it and what it produces.
For example, wind is understood through its maker: behind the wind there
must be an agent that causes the air to move and to make a sound. Once an agent
is invented a story must go with it, imagining the reason for the action. If one
perceives feelings or passions, the same process gives them a face and a story, creating
a fictio in its original meaning of a “personification.” In other words the creators
of myths have an animistic conception of the world, a primitive mind that
creates religions, superstitions, and magic. In this creative process myths must be
understood as a language, a body, and a system of signs rather than the creations
of a wild and baseless imagination or, equally wrong, a device used to disguise
profound truths. Myths are both: they are an imaginative creation, but they are
not “baseless,” or devoid of any connection to the real world; they contain some
truth, but they were not purposefully created to disguise it.
262   Paolo Cherchi
We must decode this special language, as we must with all ancient languages,
especially if they use a different system of representation (hieroglyphics,
for example); but we should not assume that the language of myths was “in
code” just to enclose some higher meaning; that is, we should not confuse our
reading or interpreting process with the creative one. Myths have an immediacy
of communication that allegorical fables do not have, and even though they can
be read allegorically they are not created by a mind that says one thing in order
to mean something else. They are “spontaneous” creations without interference
from the intellectual faculties. Myths, like all fables, can be read allegorically;
however, the purpose of such a reading is not to bring to light the truth they hide,
but instead to see how those truths are transformed into stories, into images. We
must justify our interest in myths because of their beauty and not because of the
“truthfulness” of their content. We must read them as we read poetry, appreciating
their beauty and knowing that they contain a truth. We may disagree on
what that truth may be (a good part of the Genealogie is devoted to these different
interpretations), but this only proves that basic similarity between poetry and
myth, insofar as both convey a plurality of meanings due to the nature of their
non-logical languages.
To appreciate Boccaccio’s new way of looking at mythological fables we can
compare his readings of Orpheus and Eurydice’s story to that of his contemporary
Bercorius. The myth is well known, so it is not necessary to quote the long text
from the Genealogie. Boccaccio bases his reading on Ovid’s version of the myth.
Orpheus’ persuasive voice means that the character was a great orator; his lyre
represents his oratorical skills. The bushes and the plants that he moves with
his eloquence indicate the persuasiveness of his speech, which eradicates passions
and tames the fiercest beasts. Eurydice culling flowers represents her concupiscence,
therefore she runs away from Aristaeus, who represents virtue and
courts her. While fleeing she is bitten by a snake, which represents the temptation
hidden among temporal things. When Eurydice (concupiscence) falls into Hell,
man with his oratory skills demonstrates his appeal of goodness and tries to bring
her up to the highest reality. On his way upwards man should not turn back to
look at her – that is, at his sexual desire – because if he does so it may mean that
he is still tempted by earthly and perishable things.
If we remove the integumentum it appears that the story deals with the power
of the word over human appetites: abstract notions like oratory skillfulness are
personified by the music-like voice of a man, concupiscence is personified by
a woman, and liberation is represented by the upward journey. Around these
elements the myth builds an enchanting story that is truthful in the sense that
it dramatizes real and universal feelings concerning the fascination men have
for words and their weakness for sexual passion. Yet this understanding of the
 The Inventors of Things in Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium   263
story takes nothing away from its beauty – the powerful tale of a singer who stills
all passions around him, who causes trees to dance with the spell of his voice,
and who finally is won over by the love of lady who embodies grace and physical
beauty. If anything, the interpretation makes one appreciate even more the
myth’s value because it is not “pure” invention but fictionalizes very beautifully
a drama that every man lives in his soul. It is a combination also found in great
poetry.
And as happens with poetry, Boccaccio’s interpretation of Orpheus and Eurydice’s
myth is not the only possible one. Around the same time Pierre Bersuire, or
Bercorius, read the same myth from a totally different perspective. In his Ovidius
moralizatus Bercorius sees the myth in a Christian key.9
Orpheus is the son of the
Sun as Christ is the son of God; he makes a covenant with Eurydice as God does
with the human soul; the snake that bites Eurydice is the devil, and he bites her
while she culls flowers, which are the desire of the forbidden fruit; the snake
kills her and sends her down to Hell. When Orpheus sees, as Christ did, the soul
in Hell he goes in person to rescue her. Christ rescued mankind from the hellish
darkness, but Orpheus cannot rescue Eurydice because he contravenes the agreement
not to look back to see whether she is following him. Bersuire’s interpretation
is a “typological” one, namely one that sees in an ancient story as a precursor
to a Christian one.10
Boccaccio would not dispute the plausibility of this kind of
interpretation, yet he would miss in it the lack of attention to the beauty of the
story and the neglect of the myth’s “origin.” For Bersuire the truth of the myth
lies in its fulfillment outside of the myth itself, in another story, in the same way
that the “figural” interpretation of history appreciates events only in light of what
they have prefigured, typically a Biblical event and its fulfillment in the world of
Revelation.
Boccaccio’s approach is just the opposite. He looks ad intrinseca at what
causes a myth to be born, at the ways it goes about shaping itself into a “complete”
form of knowledge, that is, into a story or a character that “narrates”
reality. Bercorius looks ad extrinseca, verifying the truthfulness of myths on the
bases of “revealed” truth, indeed the very word of God. This does not mean that
Boccaccio was insensitive to the problem of truth. Quite the contrary. After all,
one of the basic premises of the Genealogie was that of dispelling the notion that
myths are frivolous and mendacious fables. But Boccaccio has in mind a different
9 Bersuire’s text can be seen in Metamorphosis ovidiana moraliter explanata, wrongly attributed
to Thomas Walley, first published Paris: Badius 1509, where Orpheus story is at fols. 58r–59r. This
edition is reprinted by Stephen Orgel: New York: Garland 1979.
10 For a comparative analysis of Orpheus’ myth in Boccaccio and in Bersuire, see Bodo
Guthmüller: Il mito tra teologia e poetica, p. 224–226.
264   Paolo Cherchi
kind of truth: neither that of philosophers nor of theologians, but rather that of
poets, a truth that must be unchanging, expressed in a language of its own.
Of course it is very difficult, if not impossible, to “verify” the truthfulness
of myths if we understand “truth” to be a faithful retelling of specific “historical”
facts. The best proof we can offer is to see myths as poetry, that is, they
have coherence as stories at the literary level (sensus historialis) and a credible
meaning in their content. As for the latter point, experience offers the best
testing ground: an interpreter who relies as much as possible on psychological
and natural observations has a better chance of being convincing, because his
arguments are of a universal nature. Myths, like poetry, transform particulars into
universals, and Boccaccio seems to stick as much as possible to these guidelines
of interpretation. For those who demand “evidence” of such truthfulness, the
mythical “inventors” offer the best evidence with their historically “verifiable”
inventions.
Boccaccio was not a heurematologist in the way Pastrengo was, and he would
not be seen as such even if we took into account the few additional inventors
mentioned in the De mulieribus.11
It was not his intention to be one. Yet the few
instances where he happened to touch on the subject are of the highest cultural
significance. Boccaccio presented a new way of looking at myths, and in that new
way he taught generations to come how “inventors were invented,” that is, how
a past culture was able to make sense of itself by creating heroes and a universe
and telling about them in an imaginative language that later generations called
“mythological.”
Like many masterpieces, the Genealogie had a profound impact but not an
immediate one; its innovative weight had to be absorbed. Its first immediate
impact is visible in De laboribus Herculis (1406) by Coluccio Salutati, who is considered
to be a close “student” of Boccaccio’s, indeed we know for sure that he
owned a copy of Genealogie.12
Like his master, Salutati defended poetry, paying
close attention to the exegetical tradition that guaranteed not only the vitality
of myths but also their inexhaustible meanings. He saw each of the labors of
Hercules as marking the phases of civilization; thus he gave a “cultural” interpretation
to the myth, just as Boccaccio had done. The Quattrocento made
ample use of ancient mythology in different ways, ranging from the satyr of
11 De mulieribus claris. Edited by Vittorio Zaccaria. Milano: Mondadori 1967, chapter 27, §§ 12–13
where we find Carmenta as the inventor of the letters of the alphabet, and chapter 44, § 3, where
we find the inventor of spinning.
12 See Ernest Hatch Wilkins: The University of Chicago Manuscript of ‘De genealogia Deorum
Gentilium’ of Boccaccio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1927.
 The Inventors of Things in Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium   265
Leon Battista Alberti’s Momus to the dramatic use in Politianus’s Orfeo; but it did
not have the ample resonance it had in the Cinquecento.13
The sixteenth century was the most glorious for the triumph of the Genealogie.
It featured several imitations: De deis gentium varia et multiplex historia by
Lelio Gregorio Giraldi (1548), the Immagini colla sposizione degli dei antichi by
Vincenzo Cartari (1556), and the Mythologiae, sive explicationum fabularum libri X
by Natale Conti (1568). Furthermore, the following century saw Spain’s Teatro de
los dioses gentiles by Baltasar de Victoria (1646), to cite some of the most famous
imitations. And when the interest in ancient mythology abated by the end of the
seventeenth century, the Genealogie survived long into Neoclassical art thanks to
iconographic masterworks like the Iconologia by Cesare Ripa, published in 1598
and reprinted in many editions up to 1786, a work that looted the Genealogie in
the Italian translation of Betussi (1547). But of course, it was an imitation of a different
nature; limited to single episodes, the iconographic imitation lost the sense
of “genealogy” that Renaissance imitators had preserved with some variations.14
This genealogical notion was more than a device to organize the luxuriant
world of myths. Boccaccio himself was not fully aware of the consequences it
would have. The “genealogy” was a physical chain that bound the divinities to
men, and it was not always a chain pointing upwards to the gods. In general we
assume that ancient divinities were men divinized because of their great deeds,
but in Boccaccio this kind of “euhemerism” is not a central thesis of the work,
and certainly not when it comes to the “inventors,” the “great benefactors” of
mankind. In the Genealogie inventors are gods as well as men. Not any men,
of course, but those that belong to the lineage of the gods. The last “inventor”
on our list, Perses, was neither a god nor even a semi-god, but nonetheless he
belonged in a lineage of gods, and this was sufficient reason to include him in
the Genealogie.
This link between gods and men is an important point because it opened the
way for the Hermetic traditions, which flourished by the end of the Quattrocento.
One of the mythological heroes who became the symbol of that movement was
Prometheus, the son of Japetus, a descendent of Titanus. The Prometheus who
13 On this aspect, some data in Susanna Gambino Longo: La fortuna delle ‘Genealogie Deorum
Gentilium’ nel ’500 italiano da Marsilio Ficino a Giorgio Vasari’. In: Cahiers d’études italiennes 8
(2008), p. 115–130.
14 It is interesting to notice that when the Inquisitions raised concern about the “pagan” mythology,
the works censured were the ones that interpreted the myths in a typological way (Bersuire’s
is an example), and not the Genealogie. The explanation is that Boccaccio never saw the myths as
forerunners of a Christian message. Indeed in the Genealogie Boccaccio limits his interpretation
to the literal and allegorical senses, and almost never uses the moral and anagogic ones.
266   Paolo Cherchi
creates a mud statue of man and gives him a rational soul, the Prometheus who
steals fire from the gods and gives it to man, is a hero who embodies the “renaissance
man,” the maker, the godlike man who builds his own world into which he
brings the “creative” powers he takes or inherits from the gods. Boccaccio gave
ample space to Prometheus (Genealogie IV 44–47), but he did not foresee the symbolic
or emblematic value that Prometheus would attain. Boccaccio, however,
was aware of the fact that the idea of “genealogy” would ultimately show the
presence of the divine in man, it would “transfer” the divine powers into man’s
ability to create a world in his own likeness, even creating a language in which
naming things meant creating them, as in the age of myths when creation was
an anthropomorphic process by which the entire universe took on a human face
or could be explained in human terms. This “transferring” of the divine to man
was an epochal event, even if it was only implied in the Genealogie. The man who
understood those implications was Coluccio Salutati, whose Hercules got from
his divine parents those superhuman powers that he used to civilize the world.
The most influential aspect of Boccaccio’s lesson was more explicit, namely
that of contextualizing myths, seeing them as part of a culture, “historicizing”
them; this, Boccaccio’s epoch-making approach, was favored by Petrarch’s new
understanding of history and culture. The combination of these factors brought
the Humanists to emphasize the “dignity of man,” a confidence that provided
the background for the celebration of man as an “inventor.” The heurematic literature
received a great impulse from this combination. Some of this literature
followed the “archeological” path of the Pastrengo (Marcantonio Sabellico, De
rerum inventoribus), and some followed the Biblical line (most famously Polydorus
Virgilius, De rerum inventoribus, 1499), but others can be seen in Boccaccio’s
line (Giovanni Tortelli, De orthographia, [1471] specifically in the article
“Horologium”, and Guido Ponciroli, De rerum memorabilium libri duo, quorum
prior deperditarum posterior noviter inventarum est [1599]), who in general
examine the “new inventors,” that is the inventors of the compass, printing,
gunpowder and such, “modern” inventions that were by necessity “inventions
in their history.” But Boccaccio’s lesson was most unquestionably vital to the
Renaissance mythographers, who understood that inventors were invented, as
Boccaccio had pointed out, and through them (especially Natale Conti) Boccaccio’s
lesson reached Vico.15
However, by this time the mythographers were not
interested in proving the veracity of myths so much as in confirming Boccaccio’s
thesis, namely that myths were the language spoken at a time when language was
not regulated by a grammar based on logical categories.
15 Vico mentions the Genealogia in his Scienza nuova, paragraph 586 in the edition by Fausto
Nicolini, Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi 1953, p. 229.
 The Inventors of Things in Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium   267
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