Pompeo Colonna was an Italian noble, condottiero, politician, and cardinal. At the culmination of his career he was Viceroy of the Kingdom of Naples (1530–1532) for the Emperor Charles V. Born in Rome, he was the son of Girolamo Colonna, whose father Antonio was second Prince of Salerno; and Vittoria Conti, of the Conti de Poli. His family belonged to the highest rank of nobility both of the City of Rome and of the Kingdom of Naples. Pompeo and his family were hereditary supporters of the Holy Roman Empire (Ghibbelines), and they spent their careers fighting their hereditary enemies, the Orsini family, and defending and expanding their family territories and interests. He played a significant, if sometimes disruptive, role in the Conclaves of 1521 and 1523 on behalf of the Imperial interest. His family commitments and his conclave activities brought Pompeo into conflict with the second Medici pope, Clement VII, whose election he vigorously opposed, and made him a leading figure in the attempted overthrow of Pope Clement and the Sack of Rome in 1527.
Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest known Roman geographer. He was born in Tingentera and died c. AD 45. His short work remained in use nearly to the year 1500. It occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print, and is described by the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) as "dry in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity, and occasionally relieved by pleasing word-pictures." Except for the geographical parts of Pliny's Historia naturalis, the De situ orbis is the only formal treatise on the subject in Classical Latin.
Poolla Tirupati Raju was an Indian writer, philosopher, academic and a former professor of Jaswant College, Jodhpur (present day Jai Narain Vyas University. He was the author of several books, both in English and Telugu, on Indian philosophy and literature. His publications include Structural Depths of Indian Thought Telugu Literature, The Philosophical Traditions of India Introduction to Comparative Philosophy and Idealistic Thought of India. He was the editor of The Concept of Man: A Study in Comparative Philosophy, written by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 1958, for his contributions to Literature and education.
Pope Benedict XVI was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 19 April 2005 until his resignation on 28 February 2013. Benedict's election as pope occurred in the 2005 papal conclave that followed the death of Pope John Paul II. Benedict chose to be known as "Pope emeritus" upon his resignation, and he retained this title until his death in December 2022.
Pope Gregory I, commonly known as Saint Gregory the Great, was the bishop of Rome from 3 September 590 to his death. He is known for instituting the first recorded large-scale mission from Rome, the Gregorian mission, to convert the then largely pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Gregory is also well known for his writings, which were more prolific than those of any of his predecessors as pope. The epithet Saint Gregory the Dialogist has been attached to him in Eastern Christianity because of his Dialogues. English translations of Eastern texts sometimes list him as Gregory "Dialogos", or the Anglo-Latinate equivalent "Dialogus".
William Joseph Martin, formerly Poppy Z. Brite, is an American author. He initially achieved fame in the gothic horror genre of literature in the early 1990s by publishing a string of successful novels and short story collections. He is best known for his novels Lost Souls (1992), Drawing Blood (1993), and Exquisite Corpse (1996). His later work moved into the genre of dark comedy, with many stories set in the New Orleans restaurant world. Martin's novels are typically standalone books but may feature recurring characters from previous novels and short stories. Much of his work features openly bisexual and gay characters.
Porcius Licinus was an ancient Roman poet, whom Aulus Gellius places between Valerius Aedituus and Q. Lutatius Catulus, consul in BC 102 or 104, and who, therefore, probably lived in the latter part of the second century BC. Gellius quotes an epigram of Licinus, which seems to be taken from the Greek, and likewise cites the commencement of a poem of his on the history of Roman poetry, written in trochaic tetrameters. He seems to be the same as the Porcius mentioned in the life of Terence, ascribed to Suetonius, but must not be confounded, as he has been by some modern writers, with the consul of this name.
