C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Politian (1454–1494)
Politian (Angelo Ambrogini) (pō-lish’an). A celebrated Italian humanist; born at Montepulciano in Tuscany, July 1454; died at Florence, 1494. At fifteen he wrote epigrams in Latin, at seventeen in Greek, and at eighteen published an edition of Catullus. He was professor of Greek and Roman literature at Florence, 1480. His translations from Greek into Latin, especially that of the Iliad, were much admired by his contemporaries. Among the Greek works translated by him were those of Epictetus, Herodian, Hippocrates, and Galen, Plutarch’s ‘Eroticus,’ and Plato’s ‘Charmides.’ Among his original works are: ‘A Brief Account of the Conspiracy of the Pazzi’ (1478); ‘Miscellanea’ (1489), a collection of his essays in philology and criticism; several poems in elegant Latin, among them ‘Manto,’ in praise of Virgil; ‘Ambra,’ an idyllic sketch of Tuscan landscape; ‘The Countryman,’ celebrating the delights of rural life. He wrote in Italian the stanzas called ‘The Joust,’ on Giuliano de’ Medici’s victory in a tournament; and ‘Orpheus,’ a lyric drama.