Antonio Rocco was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 priest and philosophy teacher (he graduated under Cesare Cremonini

Cesare Cremonini (philosopher)

Cesare Cremonini, sometimes Cesare Cremonino , was an Italian professor of natural philosophy, working rationalism and Aristotelian materialism inside scholasticism...

), and a writer. Ever since 1888 when he was identified as its anonymous author, he is best known for his satirical homosexual text, L'Alcibiade, fanciullo a scola

Alcibiades the Schoolboy

Alcibiades the Schoolboy , an Italian dialogue published anonymously in 1652, is a defense of homosexual sodomy loosely styled after Platonic dialogue...

, written in 1630 and published in 1652.

The work was immediately suppressed, and only ten copies survived the attempts to destroy the whole print run. The survival of the work led to, in 1862, to its translation and publishing in Italian. Again the work elicited immediate condemnation. It was denounced by the police as a liber spurcissimus (a most filthy book) and largely destroyed.