FRANCESCO ROBORTELLO. — Humanist, born in Udine on 9 September 1516, died in Padua on 18 March 1567. After studying in Bologna, he held chairs of Greek and Latin eloquence in Lucca, Pisa, Venice, Padua, Bologna, and finally again in Padua from 1561 until his death.
He belongs to that group of scholars who placed the study of the Latin language above the vernacular and who combined a passion for eloquence with a dedication to the critical editing of texts. He produced the first complete commentary on Aristotle’s *Poetics* (Florence 1548), which he regarded as a scientific work intended to uncover the laws of poetry and to reduce the arts—previously treated “confusedly and indeterminately”—to a rigorously rational criterion. Particularly noteworthy are his pages on the function of poetry, which he considered essentially from an aesthetic perspective, on catharsis, and on the relationship between history and poetry. In addition to numerous editions of Greek and Latin classics, he left critical dissertations (*De facultate historica*, 1548; *De vita et victu populi Romani sub imperatoribus Caes. Augustis*, 1559).