Library › Latin: Lyric & Elegy › Epigrammata Varia
These short poems by Leonardo Dati, the Florentine humanist who served at the papal curia and later became bishop of Massa, open with an iambic petition to the pope. Dati complains that the pontiff praises him before pious men and pities his fortune, yet forgets him whenever a church benefice falls vacant; after so many years of faithful service in the papal halls he is left cold and hungry. He begs the shepherd to feed his anxious sheep and promises, if helped, to sing the pope’s praises on a grander lyre. Further epigrams are addressed to friends, among them a Mauritius who wrote verse.
The petition is a frank document of the precarious life of humanists at the papal court, who depended on benefices and favour for their living. Its wit and directness make it an interesting example of the poetry of patronage. Dati was a versatile writer, author also of a Latin tragedy and of vernacular verse, and these poems show his talent for occasional pieces. The text follows F. Flamini’s 1890 edition.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Musisque Deoque and its collection Poeti d’Italia in lingua latina (edition: F. Flamini, 1890, Musisque Deoque 2007), through Corpus Corporum (University of Zurich). Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.