A form of literature much in vogue at Ragusa was the pastoral play or idyll, based on Italian models. The Slavonic pastoral play is of two types, that of Ragusa, which is comic, and that of Lesina, which is more purely idyllic. The mathematician and astronomer Nikola Nalješković (1510-1587) achieved some poetic fame as a writer of these plays, in which the shepherd falls in love not with the classical nymph, but with the _vila_ of South-Slavonic popular legend. Another writer of plays was Marino Držić, praised by his Italian contemporaries for “il puro vago e dolce canto.” His principal works are _Tirena_,[531] _Dundo Maroje_,[532] and _Novela od Stanca_ (the tale from Stanac). He also wrote sacred poems. Dinko Ranjina or Domenico Ragnina (1536-1607) was the most famous Ragusan poet of the sixteenth century. Born of one of the noblest families in the town, he spent some years in Italy attending to his father’s business. Subsequently he returned home and entered the service of the Republic, and was elected Rector several times. His poems are chiefly love lyrics; but he also wrote epistles, didactic poems, and idylls in the classical Renaissance manner, as well as translations from Tibullus, Propertius, and Martial. Dinko Zlatarić (1556-1510), also a noble, studied at Padua, and at the age of twenty-three was appointed Rector of the University gymnasium. Thence he went to Agram, and then home to Ragusa. He translated Tasso’s _Aminta_ under the title of _Ljubomir_, the _Electra_ of Sophocles, and the episode of Pyramus and Thisbe from Ovid, and is the author of a number of love idylls and didactic poems. With his name is coupled that of Floria Zuzzeri, a Ragusan lady renowned for her beauty and her virtue, also a poetess of distinction, whom he adored. She had been the centre of a little circle of literary ladies at Ragusa until her father took her to Ancona on business. There she married Bartolommeo Pescioni, a wealthy Florentine, in 1577. She settled in Florence, where she kept a _salon_ frequented by many famous Italian authors and dilettanti, and also by Ragusans, such as the aforesaid Zlatarić, Ragnina, and Giovanni Gondola. She wrote sonnets both in Italian and Slavonic, some of which became famous throughout Italy. She died in 1600.