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He is just as Collenuccio wrote to Ercole d'Este "great of spirit and of ambition, athirst for eminence and fame."
Ercole thought that it would be more to his own advantage for Cæsar to hold the Romagna than to have it fall into the hands of Venice. He, therefore, sent Pandolfo Collenuccio thither to urge the people to remain true to their lord. To his ambassador in Rome he confided his joy that Cæsar was on the road to recovery.
Several years before he had commissioned the poets at his court to translate some of the plays of Plautus and Terence into terza rima, and had produced them. Guarino, Berardo, Collenuccio, and even Bojordo had been employed in this work by him. As early as 1486 an Italian version of the Menæchmi, the favorite play of Plautus, had been produced in Ferrara.
Collenuccio gave the duke a report of his mission, October 29th, in the following remarkable letter: MY ILLUSTRIOUS MASTER: Having left your Excellency, I reached Pesaro two and a half days ago, arriving there Thursday at the twenty-fourth hour. At exactly the same time the Duke of Valentino made his entry.
Another scholar, however, no less famous, Pandolfo Collenuccio, a poet, orator, and philologist, best known by his history of Naples, had left Pesaro before Lucretia took up her abode there.
From the battlements of the castle of the Sforza twelve trumpeters sounded the glad tidings, and the heralds saluted Cæsar as Lord of Pesaro. October 29th he set out for the castle of Gradara. Among those who witnessed his entry into Pesaro was Pandolfo Collenuccio.
Carlo Canale, Vannozza's consort, must also have lent valuable assistance, for he had been familiar with the stage in Mantua; and no less important was the aid of Pandolfo Collenuccio, who had repeatedly been Ferrara's ambassador in Rome, where he enjoyed daily intercourse with the Borgias.
He had served the house of Sforza as secretary and in a diplomatic capacity, and to his eloquence Lucretia's husband, Costanzo's bastard, owed his investiture of the fief of Pesaro by Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII. Collenuccio, however, fell under his displeasure and was cast into prison in 1488 and subsequently banished, when he went to Ferrara, where he devoted his services to the reigning family.
Even Collenuccio, who had placed himself under the protection of Lucretia and the duke, in Ferrara, was soon to fall into his hands. With flattering promises Giovanni induced him to come to Pesaro, and then on the ground of the complaint he had addressed to Cæsar Borgia, which Sforza claimed he had only just discovered, he cast him into prison.
Collenuccio was reinstated by Cesare in the possessions of which Giovanni had stripped him, a matter which so excited the resentment of the latter that, when ultimately he returned to his dominions, one of his first acts was to avenge it. Collenuccio, fearing that he might not stand well with the tyrant, had withdrawn from Pesaro.
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