The Road Not Taken. The Influence of Augustine's De civitate Dei on Salutati's De laboribus Herculis

It has sometimes been suggested that Florentine chancellor Coluccio Salutati, like Hercules in the well-known Xenophon passage, is a figure in bivio - in this case, confronted with the diverging roads of 'humanistic' virtue and Christian morality. The present article aims to reconsider this characterisation through the study of Salutati's De laboribus Herculis, a lengthy treatise on the allegorical interpretation of Seneca's Hercules plays, especially in light of the seldom recognised presence of Saint Augustine. By identifying Augustine's De civitate Dei as a primary source - based on references, marginal notes, and other intertextual elements -, one can subsequently see how Salutati's conception of the theologia poetarum as a bridge between the pagan and the Christian world was fundamentally inspired by his reading of the City of God.