consolatio works are united by their treatment of bereavement, by unique rhetorical structure and topoi, and by their use of universal themes to offer solace.
[3] All consolatio works draw from a relatively narrow range of arguments aimed at offering solace, to allay the distress caused by the death of a loved one, a matter of ill fortuna.
[4] Only fragments of early consolatio works survive, and it is not until Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, Seneca's Ad Marciam, and Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy that a unified character appears.
[3] Other notable examples of the consolatio tradition from Antiquity: Pontus 4.11 in Ovid's Letters from the Black Sea, Statius’ poem consoling Abascantus on his wife’s death, Apollonius of Tyana, the Emperor Julian, and Libanius.
[2] In the Middle Ages Christian ideology taught that the distress, and death itself, were punishments for Adam's fall, while conceding that the tribulations of life could be vehicles of divine correction.
[6] A return to the ancient view commenced with Petrarch, though the Quattrocento humanist Coluccio Salutati could only offer the solace of friendships and a sense of duty.
Among them Gianozzo Manetti's "bitter dialogue" Antonini, dilectissimi filii sui, morte consolatorius (1438) took the new intimate view of grieving, and Francesco Filelfo offered an extensive compendium of Christian and Classical consolations in his consolatory oration for Antonio Marcello on the death of his son (1461).
Marilyn Aronberg Lavin reads Piero della Francesca's gnomic Flagellation of Christ (c 1455–60) as a consolatio of two friends (portrayed) who had each recently lost a son.