Politianus

, the Latinized name of Angelo de' Ambrogini, of Monte Puliciano, usually known in English as Politian, a distinguished Italian humanist of the fifteenth century. He was born at Monte Puliciano, in Tuscany, July 14, 1454, the son of a well-known jurist. At the age of ten he was sent to Florence, at that time the centre of the Renaissance movement, and pursued his studies under some of the most famous scholars of the day, among them the Greeks Argyropoulos and Callistus and the two great Italian teachers Landino and Ficino. As a student, Politianus evinced powers of an uncommon nature, especially in the classic languages. His brilliant epigrams in Greek and Latin, written in his sixteenth year, were universally admired and wondered at. When seventeen, he began the translation into Latin hexameters of the Iliad, carrying it as far as the fifth book, the first book having been already translated by another scholar. So great was his success in this rather audacious attempt that he won the notice and the favour of Lorenzo de' Medici, then supreme at Florence, who became the patron of the precocious boy then popularly known as “the Homeric youth.” Aided alike by the patronage of Lorenzo and his own genius, he soon attained to the first place among the scholars of Italy. In 1484 he was made Professor of Greek and Latin in the University of Florence, whither his increasing fame drew students from all parts of Europe, among them Grocyn, Reuchlin, and Linacre, to whom England and Germany are so greatly indebted. Politian died in 1494, two years after the death of his patron, and during the temporary supremacy of Savonarola. He is buried in the Church of San Marco, Florence, and an inscription on his tomb styles him “an angel with one head and three tongues.”

The original works of Politian in Latin fill a closely printed quarto, and consist of letters and miscellaneous papers in both prose and verse. His Latin style, while not of classical purity, is intensely individual, and shows that he used the language not as an imitator, but as a master. He likewise deserves an honourable distinction for the service rendered to his mother tongue, in which he wrote the first secular drama (Orfeo) that Italian literature has to show. Besides his translations of Homer mentioned above, he also made versions of Epictetus, Galen, Hippocrates, Herodian, of Plato's Charmides, and especially of Callimachus, besides editing the Pandecta of Justinian with such acuteness as to impress even modern students of the Roman law. His praefationes to Homer, Quintilian, Suetonius, and to the Silvae of Statius, as well as his Praelectio in Persium, also deserve mention.

The complete works of Politian were published at Florence in 1499, and at Lyons, 3 vols. (1536-46). On his personality, see Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici (1796); Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy, vol. ii. pp. 345-355 (1877); Von Reumont, Lorenzo de' Medici, vol. ii. (Eng. trans. 1876); and Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des klass. Alterthums, vol. i. p. 371, vol. ii. p. 199 (Berlin, 1881).