On Famous Women

...to take the name of fame claritas original: "claritatis." While "claritas" can mean "clarity" or "brightness," in this context Boccaccio uses it to mean "fame" or "renown." so strictly that it always seems to result in virtue. On the contrary, with the readers' kind permission, I intend to bend it toward a broader sense; and I will understand as famous those women whom I find to be most well-known to the world by common report, regardless of the nature of their deed.

For I remember often reading—among illustrious men like Leonidas, the Scipios, the Catos, and the Fabricii These are archetypes of Roman and Greek virtue: Leonidas of Sparta, Scipio Africanus, Cato the Elder, and Gaius Fabricius.—about the most faithless Gracchi, the treacherous Hannibal, the betrayer Jugurtha, the bloodstained Sulla and Marius (steeped in the blood of civil war), and Crassus, who was as rich as he was greedy, and others of that kind.

Truly, since praising things worthy of memory and sometimes suppressing wicked things with rebukes will not only drive the noble toward glory but might also pull back the cowardly slightly from their ill-fated paths with reins, I have sought to restore that beauty which seems to have been taken away from this little work by the shameful acts of certain individuals. Therefore, I have decided to occasionally insert into these histories some charming allurements to virtue, and to add stings to provoke the flight from and detestation of crimes. And here finishes the preface.