SOURCE: Weiss, Bruno, and Louis C. Pérez. “Introduction: Polydore's Life and Works.” In Beginnings and Discoveries: Polydore Vergil's De Inventoribus rerum, pp. 5-25. Nieuwkoop, Netherlands: De Graaf Publishers, 1997.

In the excerpt below, Weiss and Pérez discuss the diversity of topics found in De inventoribus rerum, which for many years had been considered Vergil's greatest achievement.

Polydore Vergil was born around 1470, most likely in the Castle of Fermignano where his father owned land and property. Fermignano was located near the city of Urbino with which the Vergili family had a long connection. We come to the conclusion that 1470 was the year of his birth from Polydore's preface to his 1496 critical edition of Nicolò Perotti's Cornucopiae in which he is identified as a priest: at the time, one could not become a priest before age 25, hence he must have been born by 1470. His grandfather Antonio, very learned in...