Things Left Unsaid

Abstract

PROBABLY NOTHING ANGELO POLIZIANO WROTE has more often been quoted than this: “Non exprimis, inquit aliquis, Ciceronem. Quid tum? Non enim sum Cicero! Me tamen (ut opinor) exprimo” (Someone says to me, “You don’t express Cicero.” So what? I’m not Cicero! All the same, as I see it, I express myself ). These sixteen words comprise roughly one-half hundredth of a percent of Poliziano’s published Latin and Greek works, and one suspects that their author would be dismayed to find his vast, rich oeuvre—and his brief but extraordinary life—so often reduced to a single epigram. And yet, there it is: abrupt, arresting, remarkable. One way or another, one cannot really reckon with Poliziano without reckoning with his most famous dictum, and this is especially true for the reader