Orazio Romano’s Porcaria (1453) : humanist epic between classical legacy and contemporary history

This paper analyses one of the most significant examples of epic poetry in Italian humanism: Orazio Romano’s Porcaria, a sophisticated literary transposition of the historical events of Stefano Porcari’s conspiracy against pope Nicholas V (1453). This poem reveals the humanist tension between classical tradition and literary innovation. It is shaped by some typical motifs that marked classical epic and is constructed by the extensive use of classical sources; nevertheless, it displays many innovative elements that place this work in the ‘experimental’ area of humanist literature. In particular, the Porcaria shows distinctive features which can be traced back to the original choice of employing the epic genre to treat the topic of ‘conspiracy.’ The interplay between political matters and poetic patterns results in an original literary work characterized by a totally imaginary setting, a classical underworld, where classical figures are recalled as either positive or negative exemplars. The conflation of historical and fantastic elements, along with the eclectic combination of manifold classical models, constructs the poem’s ideological perspective and conveys the author’s political propapal standpoint in a subtle and effective manner