The second version, which Petrarch considers “more serious and more credible,” is that of Apuleius, _Florida_, xvi:
For these praiseworthy qualities he (Philemon) was for a long time well known as a writer of comedies. It happened one day that he was giving a public reading of part of a play which he had recently written. When he had reached the third act ... a sudden rainstorm arose ... which compelled the gathering and the reading to be postponed. Upon being urgently pressed by several, Philemon promised that he would finish the reading on the very next day. And so on the following day a large throng of very eager men gathered in the theater.... But when they had sat waiting longer than seemed reasonable, and when Philemon did not put in an appearance, several of the more eager were sent to summon him, and found him dead in his bed.... Returning thence they reported to the expectant audience that the poet Philemon, whom they were so eagerly attending, to hear him complete the reading of his latest play, had already, and at his own home, brought a real drama to a close.
In his manuscript of the _Florida_, Petrarch wrote the following marginal note to this passage: “This version of the death of Philemon is somewhat nobler than the one related by Valerius and, indeed, by myself; for in a certain letter of mine I followed both him and the current opinion.” P. de Nolhac says that he has not been able to find the letter referred to by Petrarch (II, p. 102, and n. 4). The present epistle to Homer was written in 1360; and it may well be that the letter referred to was destroyed in the general holocaust of 1359, when Petrarch sorted his correspondence into the two collections (cf. above, n. [120]). Moreover, it was just like the careful Petrarch to destroy a wrong version when he had once learned the true one.
[126]. On the general similarity between the _Odyssey_ and the _Aeneid_, Petrarch says (_Rer. mem._, III, 3, “De sapienter dictis vel factis,” p. 456):
Homer describes his Ulysses (in whom he means to give the type of a wise and brave man) as wandering over lands and seas, and in his poem makes him encircle nearly the entire world. Our poet has followed this example; he too carries his Aeneas over the different countries of the earth. Both poets have done so designedly; for wisdom can hardly be gained without experience nor can experience be had by one who does not see and observe many things. And, finally, it is hard to understand how one can see many things if he stirs not abroad, but sticks close to one little corner of this earth.