Robortello, Francis

, a celebrated critic in the sixteenth century, was born at Udina in 1516. After being educated at Bologna, he taught rhetoric and moral philosophy with reputation at Lucca, Pisa, Venice, Bologna, and Padua, in which last city he died, March 18, 1567, aged fifty-one. He has left a treatise “On History,” 1543, 8vo, which is of little value; commentaries on several Greek and Latin poets; “De Vita et victu populi Romani sub Imperatoribus,” 1551', folio, and other works on Roman antiquities, in which he frequently discovers a degree of asperity unworthy of a liberal mind. His contentious disposition had at one time nearly proved fatal, as he received a wound from the sword of Baptist Egnacius, and for some time his life was thought to be in danger. He had also some fierce literary contests with Alciatus and Sigonius. ²