Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) is best known to classicists as the owner of the famous codex Bembinus of Terence and the author of a dialogue dealing with the text of the plays of that author and of the Culex . In Italy, however, his reputation rested primarily on his having played a leading role in promoting and fashioning a form of the Italian language as a worthy medium for serious literature. Still, in his early years it looked as if he were set for a scholarly career in the classical languages, and, like most humanists, he was himself a Latin poet. Most of his poetry dates from his younger years, but he continued to write verse throughout his life. During and immediately after his own lifetime his Latin poems enjoyed a high reputation; in 1548 eleven of them were published in Carmina quinque illustrium poetarum (V. Valgrisius: Venice) and Carminum libellus , devoted solely to Bembo's Latin verse, appeared in 1552 (G. Scottus: Venice). It is gratifying, therefore, that the editorial board of the I Tatti Renaissance Library decided to include in its series a volume containing all of the known poems of Bembo (including some whose attribution to Bembo is not beyond doubt).