Pompilio Totti

The traveller who leaves Spoleto in a north-easterly direction by the Norcia road soon comes to the village of Cerreto di Spoleto, most renowned as the birthplace of the famous humanist Giovanni Gioviano Pontano in 1429, but also the home of the Totti family for several centuries. The earliest member known to us by name is one Totto Totti, married to a lady named Isolda, whom Pontano addresses in one of his Tumulorum epigrammata , Book II, which was written about 1490 or 1500. Pompilio Totti was born at Cerreto, presumably about 1590, and is in his books always proud to proclaim himself a native of ‘Cerreto nell'Umbria,’ as is also his kinsman Sebastiano. As an Umbrian, Pompilio is given a brief entry in the earliest published Umbrian bibliography, as follows: ‘Pompilius Tottus Ceretanus edidit Ristretto delle grandezze di Roma. Rome an. 1637. apud Vitalem Mascardum, & alia.’ The exact date of his arrival in Rome is unknown, but he makes his first appearance in print in 1622, or possibly 1623, when he writes the preface for an edition of the manual on the nature and care of horses originally written by Agostino Colombre, a native of San Severo, whose book had been first printed in Venice as early as 1536

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