The prince and the wise man in Poggio’s “De infelicitate principum”

Abstract

This paper seeks to consider and analyze the concepts of “prince” and “wise” in the dialog De infelicitate principum composed by Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459). Our hypothesis is that two different conceptions of “life” and “happiness” are opposed in the text: one understood as «prevailing” and “a favorable course of Fortune” and the other as “tranquility of the soul” and a “peaceful, free and undisturbed soul”. We argue that this dialog, according to the Ciceronian model of the disputatio in utramque partem, leaves the problem unresolved without a final thesis. Thus, what remains is mainly the question that gives rise to the text, its interlocutors and opinions; a question that together with the other texts of the author creates a constellation from which emerges a general inquiry into the human being and culture during those years of the Italian Quattrocento