The Latinist Antonio La Penna has died

Antonio La Penna, one of the most illustrious Latinists, full professor of Latin literature from 1956 to 2000 at the University of the Tuscan capital, has died in his home in Florence and expresses its condolences for his passing.
Born in 1925 in Bisaccia, in the province of Avellino, La Penna was a pupil of Giorgio Pasquali and later became the teacher of generations of students, who from him, the Florentine University recalls, learned «not only notions but more generally the love for culture and for the work carried out with seriousness and dedication, and who saw in him an outstanding paradigm of civil commitment”. In 1987 he was awarded the Feltrinelli prize for the history and criticism of literature, and in 2002 he was appointed national member of the Accademia dei Lincei. He was the author of fundamental critical editions (that of the fables of Babrio, which he exemplarily edited in collaboration with MJ Luzzatto, and that of Ovid’s Ibis and related scholia), epochal essays on Latin poets and prose writers (Sallustius, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, Phaedrus, and countless other authors), as well as highly learned studies on the fortunes of Ancient times and on the history of philology, and acute and often prophetic reflections on schools and universities.
«With La Penna – the words of the rector of the University of Florence Alessandra Petrucci – Italy loses one of its most prestigious and refined intellectuals, and the international community of scholars of the ancient world one of its most illustrious exponents».