ABSTRACT
Leon Battista Alberti's interlocutor Cynicus describes himself in terms that fit Leonardo Bruni, and Bracciolini Poggio no doubt conceives of his Cinicus in similar fashion, as an iconoclastic humanist. Lucian's satire of a generalized tyrant becomes in Alberti's Cynicus a series of diatribes against priests, magistrates, philosophers, writers, poets, rhetoricians, and merchants, who are variously judged and transformed into animals. In Alberti's dialogue, Cynicus makes a similar, if more elaborate, denunciation of earthly magistrates: These brazen mockers of the gods destroy sacred objects and burn temples; they revere no deities either in heaven or in hell. In general, Alberti tends to develop themes from classical sources by rhetorical elaboration. Thus, a single short speech in Lucian's Tyrannus inspired a series of elevated orations in Alberti's Cynicus. Alberti's adoption of Lucian as a model initiates the Renaissance tradition of satirical dialogues which was to inspire writers like Giovanni Pontano and Desiderius Erasmus.
