376 THE REPUBLIC OF RAGUSA
business. Subsequently he returned home and entered the service of the Republic, and was elected Rector several times. His poems are chiefly love lyrics ; but he also wrote epistles, didactic poems, and idylls in the classical Renaissance manner, as well as translations from Tibullus, Propertius, and Martial.
   Dinko Zlataric (1556-1510), also a noble, studied at Padua, and at the age of twenty-three was appointed Rector of the University gymnasium. Thence he went to Agram, and then home to Ragusa. He translated Tasso’s Aminta under the title of Ljubomir, the Electra of Sophocles, and the episode of Pyramus and Thisbe from Ovid, and is the author of a number of love idylls and didactic poems. With his name is coupled that of Fiona Zuzzeri, a Ragusan lady renowned for her beauty and her virtue, also a poetess of distinction, whom he adored. She had been the centre of a little circle of literary ladies at Ragusa until her father took her to Ancona on business. There she married Bartolommeo Pescioni, a wealthy Florentine, in 1577. She settled in Florence, where she kept a salon frequented by many famous Italian authors and dilettanti, and also by Ragusans, such as the aforesaid Zlataric, Ragnina, and Giovanni Gondola. She wrote sonnets both in Italian and Slavonic, some of which became famous throughout Italy. She died in 1600.
   The most celebrated of all the Ragusan poets is Ivan Gundulic or Giovanni Gondola (1588—1638). Very little is known of his life beyond the fact that he studied the classics, philosophy, and law, and that he was a great admirer of Italian literature. He desired to introduce