Book I, discussing epic, includes the _Divina Commedia_ and

Petrarch’s _Trionfi_, and insists that the lack of unity in Ariosto’s _Orlando_ is a cardinal fault. If the teaching of the ancients “and the example of Homer’s poetry is true, I do not see how another, different from that, is admissible; for truth is one. Therefore the variation of later times will not suffice as a warrant for letting a poem treat more than one action, entire and of just compass, to which everything else should be contributory” (35). What offends Minturno especially is Ariosto’s interruption and resumption.