agents he employed travelled
through Italy, Greece, Europe, and the East--Hieronymo Donato, Ermolao
Barbaro, and Paolo Cortesi being the names of some of his most trusted
"commissioners." But the coadjutor whose aid he principally relied on, to
whom he committed the care and arrangement of his vast museum and great
library, was Poliziano, who himself made frequent excursions throughout
Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa to discover and purchase such remains
of antiquity as suited the purposes of his patron. Another successful
agent, though at a later date, was Giovanni Lascaris, who twice journeyed
into the East in search of manuscripts and curios. In the second of these
he brought back upward of two hundred copies of valuable codices from the
monasteries on Mount Athos.

To still another service rendered by Lorenzo to the cause of the
Renaissance attention must be called--the founding of the Florentine
Academy for the study of Greek. This institution, distinct, be it
remembered, from the _Uffiziali dello Studio_ (or high-school),
exercised a marvellous influence on the progress of the "New Learning."
Accordingly, as Roscoe says, succeeding scholars have been profuse in
their acknowledgments to Lorenzo, who first formed the establishment from
which, to use their own classical figure, as from the Trojan horse,
so many illustrious champions have sprung, and by means of which the
knowledge of the Greek tongue was extended not only throughout Italy,
but throughout Europe as well, from all the countries of which numerous
pupils flocked to Florence--pupils who afterward carried the learning
they had received to their native lands.

Of this institution the first public professor was Joannes Argyropoulos,
who, having enjoyed the patronage of Cosmo and Piero, and directed the
education of Lorenzo, was selected by the latter as the fittest person to
be the earliest occupant of the chair. During his tenure of it he sent
out such pupils as Poliziano, Donato Acciaiuoli, Janus Pannonius, and
the famous German humanist Reuchlin. Argyropoulos did not hold the
appointment long. His death took place at Rome in 1471, and he was
succeeded first by Theodore of Gaza, and then by Chalcondylas. Poliziano
certainly discharged the duties of the office frequently, but at first
only as _locum tenens_. He was then almost incessantly engaged in
travelling for his patron in Greece and Asia Minor, and was too valuable
a coadjutor to be tied down to th