, and at Heidelberg was lucky enough to
find a generous patron in Johann von Dalberg and a teacher in Agricola.
After the death of the latter (1485) Celtes led the wandering life of a
scholar of the Renaissance, visiting most of the countries of the
continent, teaching in various universities, and everywhere establishing
learned societies on the model of the academy of Pomponius Laetus at
Rome. Among these was the _Sodalitas litteraria Rhenana_ or _Celtica_ at
Mainz (1491). In 1486 he published his first book, _Ars versificandi et
carminum_, which created an immense sensation and gained him the honour
of being crowned as the first poet laureate of Germany, the ceremony
being performed by the emperor Frederick III. at the diet of Nuremberg
in 1487. In 1497 he was appointed by the emperor Maximilian I. professor
of poetry and rhetoric at Vienna, and in 1502 was made head of the new
Collegium Poetarum et Mathematicorum, with the right of conferring the
laureateship. He did much to introduce system into the methods of
teaching, to purify the Latin of learned intercourse, and to further the
study of the classics, especially the Greek. But he was more than a mere
classicist of the Renaissance. He was keenly interested in history and
topography, especially in that of his native country. It was he who
first unearthed (in the convent of St Emmeran at Regensburg) the
remarkable Latin poems of the nun Hrosvitha of Gandersheim, of which he
published an edition (Nuremberg, 1501), the historical poem _Ligurinus
sive de rebus gestis Frederici primi imperatoris libri x._ (Augsburg,
1507), and the celebrated map of the Roman empire known as the _Tabula
Peutingeriana_ (after Konrad Peutinger, to whom he left it). He
projected a great work on Germany; but of this only the _Germania
generalis_ and an historical work in prose, _De origine, situ, moribus
et institutis Nurimbergae libettus_, saw the light. As a writer of Latin
verse Celtes far surpassed any of his predecessors. He composed odes,
elegies, epigrams, dramatic pieces and an unfinished epic, the
_Theodoriceis_. His epigrams, edited by Hartfelder, were published at
Berlin in 1881. His editions of the classics are now, of course, out of
date. He died at Vienna on the 4th of February 1508.

For a full list of Celtes's works see Engelbert Klupfel, _De vita et
scriptis Conradi Celtis_ (2 vols., Freiburg, 1827); also Johann
Aschbach, _Die fruheren Wanderjahre des Conrad Celtes_ (Vi