The essay focuses on the revival of the Latin and chivalrous tradition in Italia liberata da' Gotthi by Giovan Giorgio Trissino, a poem modeled on the Homeric Iliad. A comparison with the sources highlights the complex transformations to which the Renaissance subjected the Homeric poem in order to bring it in line with the modern courtly and Catholic society of the 16th century. This complex process of readjustment, in fact, is not just a literary game, but a privileged observation point through which one can clearly read the troubled relationship between the sixteenth century and classical and medieval culture on the one hand, and, on the other, the different heroic ideal, both behavioural and religious, that distinguishes modernity and which will end up influencing, through the indications of Trissino, also the Tassian epic poetry.
