of Plato. The academy was founded, and, in the age
of Lorenzo, Plato and Plotinus were translated into Latin by Marsilio
Ficino (d. 1499). The _Apology_ and _Crito_, the _Phaedo, Phaedrus_ and
_Gorgias_ of Plato, as well as speeches of Demosthenes and Aeschines,
with the _Oeconomics, Ethics_ and _Politics_ of Aristotle, had already
been translated by Leonardo Bruni (d. 1444); the _Rhetoric_ by Filelfo
(1430), and Plato's _Republic_ by Decembrio (1439). A comprehensive
scheme for translating the principal Greek prose authors into Latin was
carried out at Rome by the founder of the manuscript collections of the
Vatican, Nicholas V. (1447-1455), who had belonged to the literary
circle of Cosimo at Florence. The translation of Aristotle was entrusted
to three of the learned Greeks who had already arrived in Italy,
Trapezuntius, Gaza and Bessarion, while other authors were undertaken by
Italian scholars such as Guarino, Valla, Decembrio and Perotti. Among
the scholars of Italian birth, probably the only one in this age who
rivalled the Greeks as a public expositor of their own literature was
Politian (1454-1494), who lectured on Homer and Aristotle in Florence,
translated Herodian, and was specially interested in the Latin authors
of the Silver Age and in the text of the _Pandects_ of Justinian. It
will be observed that the study of Greek had been resumed in Florence
half a century before the fall of Constantinople, and that the principal
writers of Greek prose had been translated into Latin before that event.

Meanwhile, the quest of MSS. of the Latin classics had been actively
pursued. Petrarch had discovered Cicero's Speech _pro Archia_ at Liege
(1333) and the _Letters to Atticus_ and _Quintus_ at Verona (1345).
Boccaccio had discovered Martial and Ausonius, and had been the first of
the humanists to be familiar with Varro and Tacitus, while Salutati had
recovered Cicero's letters _Ad Familiares_ (1389). During the council of
Constance, Poggio, the papal secretary, spent in the quest of MSS. the
interval between May 1415 and November 1417, during which he was left at
leisure by the vacancy in the apostolic see.

Thirteen of Cicero's speeches were found by him at Cluny and Langres,
and elsewhere in France or Germany; the commentary of Asconius, a
complete Quintilian, and a large part of Valerius Flaccus were
discovered at St Gallen. A second expedition to that monastery and to
others in the neighbourhood led to the recover