ote: Reappearance of Platonism in Italy.] He was the
representative of Platonism, which for so many centuries had been hidden
from the sight of men in Eastern monasteries since its overthrow in
Alexandria, and which was now emerging into existence in the favouring
atmosphere of Italy. His school looked back with delight, and even with
devotion, to the illustrious pagan times, commemorating by a symposium
on November 13th the birthday of Plato. The Academy of Athens was
revived in the Medicean gardens of Florence. Not that Ficinus is to be
regarded as a servile follower of the great philosopher. [Sidenote:
Doctrines of Marsilius Ficinus.] He alloyed the doctrines of Plato with
others derived from a more sinister source--the theory of the Mohammedan
Averroes, of which it was an essential condition that there is a soul of
humanity, through their relations with which individual souls are
capable of forming universal ideas, for such, Averroes asserted, is the
necessary consequence of the emanation theory.

[Sidenote: Revival of Greek learning in Italy.] Under such auspices, and
at this critical moment, occurred the revival of Greek literature in
Italy. It had been neglected for more than seven hundred years. In the
solitary instances of individuals to whom here and there a knowledge of
that language was imputed, there seem satisfactory reasons for supposing
that their requirements amounted to little more than the ability of
translating some "petty patristic treatise." The first glimmerings of
this revival appear in the thirteenth century; they are somewhat more
distinct in the fourteenth. The capture of Constantinople by the Latin
Crusaders had done little more than diffuse a few manuscripts and works
of art along with the more highly prized monkish relics in the West. It
was the Turkish pressure, which all reflecting Greeks foresaw could have
no other result than the fall of the Byzantine power, that induced some
persons of literary tastes to seek a livelihood and safety in Italy.

[Sidenote: Gradual progress of the Restoration.] In the time of
Petrarch, 1304-1374, the improvement did not amount to much. That
illustrious poet says that there were not more than ten persons in Italy
who could appreciate Homer. Both Petrarch and Boccacio spared no pains
to acquaint themselves with the lost tongue. The latter had succeeded in
obtaining for Leontius Pilatus, the Calabrian, a Greek professorship at
Florence. He describes this Gre