Aelius Lampridius Cervinus

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Aelius Lampridius Cervinus (Croatian: Ilija Crijević, Italian: Elio Lampridio Cerva) was a Ragusan poet, born in Dubrovnik c. 1460.

The life of Cervinus, one of the more scholarly poets of his time, was stormy and restless. It was marked by a strong intolerance to the barbarism around him. Linguisticly, he was closer to Latin than to Slavic (Croatian). This torment found ventilation in his nostalgia for the times when which no language other than Latin had been officially used in Ragusa (Dubrovnik).

He spent 13 years in Rome to succeed his uncle Stefano, ambassador to Pope Sixtus IV. Here, in the circle of Pomponio Leto, his poetic talent awoke. He studied ancient drama and made a study of the comedies of Plautus. It was in this period that he produced Lexicon (1480), an encyclopedic dictionary in Latin, 429 pages long and in large format (33 x 23 cm).

He returned to Ragusa in 1490 a “creature of Rome”. He was spokesman for the Republic of Ragusa. Finally, perhaps pushed by the circumstances in which he lived, Cervinus decided to withdraw to the island of Ombla, where he remained until his death in 1521.

Although called a poet, Cervinus only published only four short components (all in Latin) during his life. His main work, De Epidauro, was a draft of an epic poem, about the Turkish invasions of Ragusan territory.

Despite being one of the greatest Ragusans, whose literary work exceeds that of his contemporaries and fellow citiziens by far, today the works of Cervinus are published abroad more often than in Croatia.