 Laura, left behind in France, is his better part; even at a great distance she commands his heart and voice.Indeed, in making it impossible for him to be silent, she is his Muse; Petrarch turns out to be the historical link between the newer meaning of Ovid's theory of his “better half” and its original one.In the speech that Petrarch gives when he receives the laurel crown on the Capitoline Hill he invokes the conclusion to the Metamorphoses straightforwardly as a proof for his thesis about the nobility of poetic fame, and taken together the two citations define one of the most innovative and influential twists that he gives to the tradition of fin’ amors