Giovanni Gioviano Pontano (1429-1503) was an important humanist and scholar of Renaissance Italy, the presiding spirit of the Accademia Pontaniana, and chief minister and tutor to the Aragonese Kings of Naples. He was also the most innovative and versatile Latin poet of Quattrocento Italy. His Two Books of Hendecasyllables, given the subtitle Baiae by their first editor Pietro Summonte, experiment brilliantly with the metrical form associated principally with the ancient Latin poet Catullus. The poems are the elegant offspring of Pontano's leisure, written to celebrate love, good wine, friendship, nature, and all the pleasures of life to be found at the seaside resort of Baiae on the Bay of Naples. They are translated here for the first time into English.

Rodney G. Dennis is the retired Curator of Manuscripts at Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library.

Read More by Rodney G. Dennis:

• The Marks in the Fields: Essays on the Uses of Manuscripts