[2] Poverty plagued these early years, even though Anguillara won intermittent support from two powerful cardinals, Alessandro Farnese and Cristoforo Madruzzo.

[3] Anguillara's hopes for French royal patronage evaporated with the death of Henry II, and he (probably) completed his Metamorphoses at Lyon in 1560 with the support of Matteo Balbani of Lucca.

An habitual gamester, he was reduced before his death to beggary; and having sold his books to save himself from starving, he died in a wretched tavern in one of the meanest quarters of Rome.

These writers agree in ranking the work highest among all Italian translations from Ovid; and Crescimbeni puts it on the same level with Annibale Caro’s famous version of the Aeneid.

Thus, the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, told by the Latin poet in little more than a hundred lines, requires, in the hands of Anguillara, about as many octave stanzas; and this elongation is made, not only by the introduction of much that is original in sentiment and imagery, but by incidents entirely novel.