c. 1331/1332
My epistle greets you, Enea... How can I cry and sigh when my Fatherland deserves ruin? O, if all my members could speak, the world could feel my sorrows!
We are oppressed by tyrannical empires. It is a shame that Fortune would allow Italy—at one time the queen and ruler of the world—to be a slave to a people like the French, whose rivers were often stained with Gallic blood thanks to the work of Caesar. Indeed, Roman glory called to witness not only the Nymphs and the Fauns, but Nero himself crossed the sea and gave a miserable death to those swarthy Britons. And who can forget Torquatus, Camillus and Marcellus. Meanwhile the rustic Gaius Marius, who was reared in agriculture, laid waste to the barbarians as soon as he raised his sword!
Now the servant rises against his master, like the bull who escapes the plow and lurks in the dark, waiting for the moment to strike the plowman. The order of the world will be disturbed if the slave throws off his chains and turns against his master.
[...]
And we [Italians], who have become unhappily weakened due to fratricidal wars, are now sitting ducks waiting to be trampled upon by barbarians. Our division makes our enemies much stronger; already the wrecked ship is tossed left and right, already a fatal disease infects the body of Italy and will inject poison into our hearts and will darken the sun... The enemy looks menacingly upon the Alps, fascinated by the beauty of our land, which causes him to burn with jealousy, and under the pretext of bringing peace an angry wolf descends upon us in order to enlarge his own domains. He who now invades Lucca will not stop there.
But there is still hope for salvation: this Italy is still richly armed with the examples of our ancestors. What stops us from taking up arms, entering the field and putting ships into the sea?
[...]
There will come a better day when we will see Latin arms triumph over the Germans and the Gauls... but as I sit here on the banks of the Rhone, I look desperately upon what is happening in my native land, it is like looking at a pilotless ship being tossed to and fro by the waves. And I do not know whether to laugh or to cry, so many omens torment my soul.
Goodbye for now, Enea...
