solitude of the villa is not conducive to knowledge of the world, with a logical proof that solitude is necessary for contemplation, which in turn leads to something far greater than knowledge of the world: knowledge of the truth.
Vitauro’s thesis, that villa life is naturally more agreeable to gentlemen than city life, consists of three points. The first point, that city life is not the way of life originally intended for humankind, is supported with refences to Latin sources, specifically Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the De architectura of Vitruvius. In making his second point, that life in the country is more pleasant than life in the city, Vitauro cites Virgil and Horace, and he misquotes Plato. Finally, Vitauro argues that country life is nobler than city life by enumerating the ancient kings and heroes who farmed.
In the middle of the dialogue, Partenio cites Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque Fortune and Virgil’s Georgics in an attempt to convince Vitauro that farming is not a suitable occupation for a scholar. In his rebuttal, Vitauro cites the same passage of the Georgics to prove that Partenio is misinterpreting Virgil. Then Partenio concedes the nobility of farming, and he refrains from citing literary sources for the remainder of the conversation. Vitauro makes more than fifteen references to literary sources as he argues that farming is a noble, useful, and necessary occupation, and that the villa accommodates philosophical studies more easily than the city. He cites a few lines each of Virgil’s Georgics, Varro’s Rerum rusticarum, and Petrarch’s Rime sparse, and he alludes briefly to Cato’s De agri cultura, where these sources concur in asserting that farming is the most honest way to earn a living. At greater length, he paraphrases the passage from Cicero’s dialogue De senectute, where Cato is depicted rejoicing in the delightfulness and usefulness of agriculture, and excerpts from Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, in which Cyrus, king of Persia, is portrayed saying he was as concerned about cultivating the land as he was about defending it. To illustrate his point that philosophical studies are more easily accommodated in the villa than in the city, Vitauro alludes to Pliny the Younger’s letter “To Minicius Fundanus,” in which he described the secluson he enjoyed at his villa in Laurentum. Vitauro also quotes two poems from Petrarch’s Rime Sparse and three stanzas from book 1 of Poliziano’s Stanze, in which those poets described the sweetness of their scholarly seclusion in villa.
At the end of the dialogue, Partenio’s role as Vitauro’s opponent is diminished. The dialectical character of the conversation is preserved only where Partenio argues, unconvincingly and without citing authorities, that the products of culture are no less delightful than the effects of nature. Vitauro, citing Virgil in praise of rugged mountains and uncultivated fields, persuades Partenio that nature is more delightful than art because the thing imitated is superior to the imitation. Vitauro deduces from this that villa gardens are more delightful than gardens in the city because they are closer to, and offer views of, wild countryside, which, he implies, is what gardens imitate.
The bulk of Vitauro’s increasingly monological discourse toward the end of La Villa is given over to an elaboration of one of the points he made earlier, that life in villa is more pleasant than city life. Vitauro begins to develop this theme by describing a variety of sensual pleasures that arise from being in the country: seeing animals, hearing waterfalls and birds, and smelling flowers. The country he describes is neither wilderness nor agricultural land but something in between; something more like paradise. It is shaped, at least in part, by human hands. There are trees in groves, water is in fountains, and grapevines are “married to the elms.” Its fauna includes domesticated as well as wild animals, and it is a country inhabited by people. Among its pleasures are the sight of rugged peasants and the sounds of villagers singing and shepherds playing pipes. The verses of the Georgics paraphrased to complement this description express Virgil’s delight in the regimented orderliness of a regularly planted vineyard. Vitauro continues to argue for the pleasantness of country life by retelling the tale of “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse,” in which the advantages of city life over country life (symbolized by better food) are outweighed by its greater dangers. In the satire in which Horace originally set the story, excellent food and elevated conversation over dinner in a villa are presented as antidotes to the anxiety that comes from working in the city. Vitauro juxtaposes this tale with a story about a horse and a stag, which teaches that freedom is better than plenty, from one of Horace’s Epistles that also recommends the country as a site for a house. Although Taegio made no references to the original contexts of these stories beyond mentioning the author’s name, he might have expected an educated reader in the sixteenth-century to have been able to recall them. Taegio concluded his argument for the comparative pleasantness of country life by having Vitauro tell Partenio that what delights him most when he is in villa is catching birds, and by quoting Sannazaro’s Arcadia where that rural pastime, which had been a favorite of leisured aristocrats in Italy since the time of the Roman Empire, is described in detail.220
With the conclusion of the conversation about the respective pleasures of the city and the country, La Villa assumes the character of a monological treatise, as Vitauro alone continues to cite literary sources—Virgil’s Georgics, Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia, and Xenophon’s Oeconomicus—to particularize the kinds of pleasure offered by life in villa. Vitauro speaks of three kinds of pleasure: sensual, intellectual, and aesthetic. He cites Virgil on speculating about natural causes, as he theorizes about what is the highest pleasure. He paraphrases Virgil and Pliny on reading the signs of the heavens, as he demonstrates the delightfulness and the usefulness of the kind of knowledge peasants possess. This beautiful and practical knowledge includes horticulture, which Vitauro discusses, and agriculture, which he declines to treat. In its final section, which is based on a conversation between Socrates and Ischomachus on the training of a villa steward in Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, La Villa, having succeeded only partially as an imitation of a live conversation, becomes little more than an imitation of one of the literary dialogues that served as its models.
Taegio interpreted portions of the Oeconomicus, as well as Horace’s Epodes and Satires, to serve the purposes of his argument. In several instances Taegio used the word “villa” in his paraphrases where terms that cannot be translated literally as “villa” appeared in the classical texts he was citing. For example, where Vitauro paraphrases Horace’s Epodes 2.1–38, the Latin phrase “paterna rura” (ancestral farm) is interpreted as “villa.” Similarly, Vitauro uses the expression “topo del la villa” (mouse of the villa) in place of “rusticus mus” (country mouse) in his paraphrase of the tale of the country mouse and the city mouse from Horace’s Satires 2.6.78–117. Where he paraphrases Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, Vitauro calls the “work of supervision” the “cose della villa” (affairs of the villa), and he uses “villa” in place of both “kepos” (farm) and “ktema” (piece of property). Taegio also exercised freedom of interpretation where he paraphrased the description of agriculture in Oeconomicus 19.17. The practice that Xenophon called “philanthropos” (humane) becomes, in Vitauro’s words, a “scienza magnanima e generosa” (magnanimous and generous science); in effect, Taegio elevated what is essentially a humble activity to fit his argument that farming is a suitable occupation for an aristocrat.
The Origins of “Third Nature”
E i frutti sono tutti qui più saporiti che altrove, e tutte le cose che nascono dalla terra migliori. Per li giardini che qui sono e quei delle Esperide e quelli d’Alcinoo e d’Adoni, la industria de’ paesani ha fatto tanto, che la natura incorporata con l’arte è fatta artifice, e connaturale de l’arte, e d’amendue è fatta una terza natura, a cui non sarei dar nome.
(And the fruits are more flavorful here than elsewhere, and all things born of the earth are better. As for the gardens that are in this region, and those of the Hesperides and those of Alcinoüs and Adonis, the industry of the peasants has been such that nature incorporated with art is made an artificer, and the connatural of art; and from both of them is made a third nature, which I would not know how to name.)
—JACOPO
