Erasto (Es)

Erasto, or I compassionevoli avvenimenti di Erasto, was first published in 1542, and went through more than 31 editions before the end of the century. Its enormous popularity led to translations into French, Spanish, English, and Hebrew.

The Erasto text derives from the fifteenth- or early-sixteeenth-century L'Amabile di Continentia (Em) manuscrupt tradition - hence their shared siglum E, differentiated by the 'm' for manuscript, and 's' for stampata (or print). As in L'Amabile, the stepmother in Erasto is named Afrodisia, while the sages are given names designed to sound Greek: Euprosigoro, Dimurgo, Terno, Enoscopo, Filando, Agato, and Leuco (Cesari,1896, and D'Ancona, 1864).The two texts follow the same narrative pattern, beginning with the usual story order found in all the Version I (Versio Italico) texts, then diverging from the seventh story. They lose several of the expected Version I embedded stories (Vidua, Puteus, Avis), usually told by the sages. In their place, these narratives add several new tales: Corpus Delicti (a faithful dog reveals his master's murder), Zelus (a husband believes slander about his innocent wife and murders her), and Caepulla (a father learns his son's fatal illness could have cured by a specific food). Additionally, unlike the 'rama italico antico' texts, in L'Amabile and Erasto, the stepmother has a seventh story again, a new narrative titled Puer Adoptatus; this brings the narrative total back to fifteen. Of these four new texts, none are found elsewhere in the Seven Sages tradition, with the exception of Caepulla, which also appears in the Forty Viziers: Ḥikāyet-i Ḳırḳ Vezīr. Another distinguishing element is the fact that, rather than facing public execution, the empress kills herself in prison in at the end of the narrative.

Unlike most of theVersio Italico narratives, and indeed most Seven Sages texts, the Erasto narrative dramatically priviledges the frame story, devoting approximately fifty per cent of the textual space to the frame (Wikeley, p. 14).

At the time of its first publication in 1542, the Italian Erasto included a 'tavola delle cose degne di memoria' - a 'table of things worthy of memory' (Wikeley (1983), p. 11). This index suggests that, from the outset, Erasto was designed to be used as a 'reference tool, a repository of commonplaces, proverbs, and other expressions of popular (especially antifeminist) wisdom' (ibid.).

Wikeley traces the success of the narrative through its multilingual early modern transmission, noting the early translation into French in 1564, then Pedro Hurtado de la Vera's 1573 Spanish edition. The English edition, produced by Francis Kirkman in 1674, was later followed by yet another translation into French - this time, however, from the Spanish version by Hurtado de la Vera, in 1709 (Wikeley, pp. 10-11). The Italian tradition was also dynamic - the prose Erasto was also reworked into a nine-canto poem in ottava rima by Mario Teluccini in 1566.

Tradition & Lineage

Branch of the tradition

Seven Sages of Rome

Adapted from (version)

L'Amabile di Continentia (Em)

Recorded Secondary Versions

I (Versio Italico)

Language & Composition

Language of version

Italian

Translated into (languages)

English, French, Old Spanish, Spanish

Place of composition

Northern Italy

Date of Composition

1542

Source for date of composition

Wikeley (1983)

Modern Scholarship & Editions

Modern research literature

Cappelli (1865), Lalomia (2019), D'Agostino (2022), Wikeley (1983), Runte, Wikeley, Farrell (1984), Eichel-Lojkine (2014)

Modern Editions

Teluccini, Erasto, ed. by Lalomia (2019)

Pattern of Embedded Stories in This Version

Has Short Title	Has Sequence Number	Has Narrator
Canis – The Faithful Dog	1	Euprosigoro
Arbor – The Tree	2	Empress
Medicus – The Doctor	3	Dimurgo
Aper – The Boar and the Fruit	4	Empress
Tentamina – The Test	5	Terno
Sapientes – The Wise Men	6	Empress
Zelus – Zeal	7	Enoscopo
Gaza – The Treasure	8	Empress
Inclusa – The Imprisoned Wife	9	Filandro
Roma – Rome Besieged	10	Empress
Corpus Delicti – The Discovered Corpse	11	Agato
Virgilius – Virgil's Marvels	12	Empress
Caepulla	13	Leuco
Puer Adoptatus – The Adopted Son	14	Empress