57/116 The references are to ed. Napoli, Boutteaux, 1861.] But how, it may be asked, was it possible to expand the story of Venus and Adonis into an epic of 45,000 lines? Marini does not, however, deserve so many pages in a work devoted to the close of the Italian Renaissance. It will suffice to say that the slender narrative of the amour of Venus and her boyish idol, his coronation as king of Cyprus, and his death by the boar's tusk, is ingeniously interwoven with a great variety of episodes. |