In this mood the main works 'On Fate,' or whatever name
they bear, are written. They tell of the turning of the wheel of
Fortune, and of the instability of earthly, especially political,
things. Providence is only brought in because the writers would still
be ashamed of undisguised fatalism, of the avowal of their ignorance,
or of useless complaints. Gioviano Pontano ingeniously illustrates the
nature of that mysterious something which men call Fortune by a hundred
incidents, most of which belonged to his own experience. The subject is
treated more humorously by Aeneas Sylvius, in the form of a vision seen
in a dream. The aim of Poggio, on the other hand, in a work written in
his old age, is to represent the world as a vale of tears, and to fix
the happiness of various classes as low as possible. This tone became
in future the prevalent one. Distinguished men drew up a debit and
credit of the happiness and unhappiness of their lives, and generally
found that the latter outweighed the former. The fate of Italy and the
Italians, so far as it could be told in the year 1510, has been
described with dignity and almost elegiac pathos by Tristan Caracciolo.
Applying this general tone of feeling to the humanists themselves,
Pierio Valeriano afterwards composed his famous treatise. Some of these
themes, such as the fortunes of Leo X, were most suggestive.
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