Paolo Marsi Explained

Paolo Marsi or Paolo Marso, in Latin Paulus Marsus or Paulus Marsus Piscinas (1440–1484^[1]) was an Italian humanist and poet known primarily for his commentary on the Fasti of Ovid.

Marsi was born at Pescina, and was the brother of the Pietro Marsi^[2] who was an acquaintance of Erasmus.^[3] He was a student of Pomponio Leto, and became a professor of rhetoric.^[4] He was a friend of Lodovico Lazzarelli,^[5] and a member of the Roman Academy who participated in antiquarian activities such as celebrating the founding of Rome.^[6] In the 1460s, several of the sodality's members, including the Marsi brothers, were imprisoned for fomenting "republicanism, paganism, and conspiracy".^[7] Marsi was among the poets who addressed homoerotic praise in the manner of Martial to Lucio Fazini, a handsome young scholar who was also incarcerated and tortured for pursuing classical studies.^[8]

Marsi died in 1484, shortly after he delivered the funeral oration for Andrea Brenta.^[9]

Marsi's commentary had a "supplemental influence" on The Rape of Lucrece by Shakespeare, who drew primarily on Ovid's account in the Fasti.^[10]

External links

• Fastorum Libri, edition of Ovid's Fasti with a frontispiece depicting Paulus Marsus

Notes and References

1. Entry on "Marso, Paolo (1440 - 1484)," CERL Thesaurus.
2. Entry on "Marso, Paolo (1440 - 1484)," CERL Thesaurus.
3. Peter Gerard Bietenholz and Thomas Brian Deutscher, Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation (University of Toronto Press, 1985), p. 394.
4. Angela Fritsen, "Ludovico Lazzarelli's Fasti Christianae religionis: Recipient and Context of an Ovidian Poem," in Myricae: Essays on Neo-Latin Literature in Memory of Jozef Ijsewijn (Leuven University Press, 2000), p. 123, note 5.
5. [Eugenio Garin]
6. Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes, From the Close of the Middle Ages (Kegan Paul, 1906, 3rd ed.), vol. 4, p. 446.
7. Fritsen, "Ludovico Lazzarelli's Fasti Christianae religionis," pp. 121–122; Anthony F. D'Elia, A Sudden Terror: The Plot to Murder the Pope in Renaissance Rome (Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 38.
8. D'Elia, A Sudden Terror, pp. 96–97.
9. Fritsen, "Ludovico Lazzarelli's Fasti Christianae religionis," p. 127, citing, De hominibus doctis dialogus, 1973 edition of M.T. Graziosi, p. 66.
10. Richard Hillman, "Gower's Lucrece: A New Old Source for The Rape of Lucrece," The Chaucer Review 24.3 (1990), p. 263, citing T.W. Baldwin.