Juan de Mena’s El Laberinto de Fortuna, Petrarch’s Africa, the Scipcio/Caesar Controversy

Juan de Mena is widely regarded as one of the poets responsible for introducing the Italian Renaissance to Castilian writers.¹ Nevertheless, as most critics have remarked, Mena only partially assimilates the Renaissance aesthetic, making him, at most, its harbinger. While basically agreeing with this assessment, this paper posits closer ties between Mena and the work of humanists in Florence and Ferrara by examining El Laberinto de Fortuna (1454), Mena’s famous allegorical epic poem, for traces of one of the greatest controversies of its time: whether one should emulate Scipio or Caesar.²

Juan de Mena begins El Laberinto de Fortuna, with three stanzas: A brief dedication to the King, Juan II (stanza 1: “Al muy prepotente don Juan el segundo”), a general complaint about the fate of men (stanza 2: “Tus casos fallaces, Fortuna, cantamos,”),³ and an appeal to the muse of epic poetry for inspiration (stanza 3: “Tú, Callíope, me sey favorable”). It is only in the fourth stanza that he introduces one of the major themes of the poem, when he asks why the Cid and the “agenores” are regarded differently in spite of their comparable achievements:⁴

Las Trezientas 4

¶ Como no creo que fueffen menoresque los africanos los hechos del cid.ny que ferozes menos enla lidentraffen los nueftros que los agenores.Las grandes hazañas de nueftros mayores,la mucha conftancia de quien los mas amayaze en tinieblas dormida fu fama,dañada de oluido por falta de auctores.⁵

Mena’s comparisons, as usual, are intentionally unclear. While “africanos” seems to be a common adjective that designates descent from a region, who are the “agenores”? The late fifteenth-century editor of Las Trezientas, Hernán Núñez, wondered whether the word really meant “ajenos,” because he considered that it might be a case of epenthesis (i.e. an addition to a word) to fulfill the requirements of meter.⁶ But Mena, who often plays with the ambiguity occasioned by sound, does not need to do so in this case. As both ancient and modern editors of El Laberinto have observed, “agenores” means “the Thebans,” because Thebes was founded by Cadmus, the son of King Agenor of Phoenicia, an “Agenorides”.⁷ The word therefore means the people of the ancient kingdom of Thebes and, metaphorically, all of the people of North Africa.⁸ But is this what Mena is saying?

Núñez himself answers the question by stating in a later gloss to the stanza: “Puéde fe entender que no fueron menores los hechos del cid ruydiaz que los de Annibal africano, … o …, que no fueron menores que los hechos de los dos Scipiones africanos, delos quales el primero venció en africa a Anníbal, et hizo tributaria alos romanos la ciudad de Carthago, y el fegundo, nieto del primero por adopción, la deftruyó del todo” (Las Trezientas 1499, 4b).⁹

Verses 4a-4c therefore compare the deeds of the Cid to the deeds of the Scipiones—who received the agnomen “africanos” by right of conquest but were not really Africans—while “los agenores” are the foes of “los nuestros” and refers to the African origins of the enemies of both men. The verses claim that the reputation of Roman Scipiones, who defeated African Carthage, is greater than the reputation of the Cid, who vanquished an equally dangerous and equally African invader during the Reconquest. The reason for the comparison, however, is to ask an implied question: Why this difference? Mena’s answer is immediate: Although the Cid’s deeds are known—because Mena was able to refer to them—El Cid has not been memorialized by writers worthy of being called “auctores”. As a result, his fame lies “en tinieblas”.¹⁰

The stanza comments on the ability of writers, in particular epic poets, to confer fame on heroes like the Scipios. Because Spain has not had such...