Laurentius Abstemius

Who is Laurentius Abstemius?

Laurentius Abstemius was an Italian writer, professor of Belles Lettres at Urbino, and librarian to Duke Guido Ubaldo under Pope Alexander VI. Born at Macerata in Ancona, he distinguished himself, at the time of the revival of letters, as a writer of considerable talents. As librarian at Urbino, he dedicated to Duke Ubaldo a critique upon some difficult passages in ancient authors, under the title of Annotationes Variae.

His principal work is titled Hecatomythium, a collection of a hundred fables written in Latin, several of which are translated from the Greek. Some contemporaries condemned them as ludicrous and took exception to their criticism of the clergy. Other fables relate to Aesop's in various ways, either as variations on his, as in the case of De culice cibum et hospitium ab appetente, which is told of a gnat and a bee but relates to The Ant and the Grasshopper; or in the case of De leone et mure it provides a sequel to The Lion and the Mouse, in which the mouse asks for the lion's daughter as a reward for freeing him from the net and is stepped on accidentally by the bride.