Apostolo Zeno (11 December 1668 in Venice – 11 November 1750 in Venice) was a Venetian poet, librettist, journalist, and man of letters. Early life Apostolo Zeno was born in Venice to a colonial branch of the Zeno family, an ancient Venetian patrician family. His family had been transplanted from Venice to the Kingdom of Candia in the 13th century in order to maintain Venetian order and suppress any rebellious subjects. Following the assault on the island by the Ottoman Empire, the remaining members of his family returned to Venice. Upon return they were not readmitted to the patrician class, but were only able to obtain status as ordinary citizens. His father was Pietro Zeno, a doctor of medicine, and his mother, Caterina Sevasto, belonged to an illustrious and powerful family from Candia, Crete. Having lost his father at an early age, he was left to the care of his mother, who remarried to Venetian senator Pier Antonio Cornaro. His education was entrusted to the Somaschi Fathers. He was in 1691 among the founders of the Accademia degli Animosi. In 1695, he composed his first libretto, Gli inganni felici, which obtained great success, making him a fashionable librettist. From 1705, he worked with Pietro Pariati, keeping the theatrical scenes for himself and leaving to Pariati the composition of the libretti. Works He began work as a literary journalist for the Galleria di Minerva, also taking upon executive responsibilities, but distanced himself when he realized that he had not succeeded in making the impact upon the publication that he intended. In the end he described it as an idiocy. In 1700 Zeno provided a translation of Pierre Le Lorrain de Vallemont's Les éléments de l'histoire (1696) for the benefit of Italians. In the preface of his translation he called for a returmn to the historiographical models that had been authoritative during the Renaissance: namely, Machiavelli and Guicciardini. In 1702 Zeno found the perfect opportunity to put his theories into practice. The Mappamondo istorico or universal history of Jesuit rhetorician and historian Antonio Foresti had been left unfinished at its author's death in 1692. One of the most thorough works of its kind, it had already run into 6 volumes, covering ancient Greece, Rome, Persia, the popes and the Holy Roman Empire. That made it far more comprehensive than such recent one-volume essays in the genre as Walter Raleigh's History of the