came professor of Greek and Latin in the
University of Florence, and drew to his feet students from all parts of
Europe. John Reuchlin hastened from Germany, William Grocyn from the
shades of Oxford, and from the same seat of learning the mighty Thomas
Linacre, later to found the Royal College of Physicians. Lorenzo's sons,
Piero and Giovanni, were for a time his pupils, but their mother took
them away. Poliziano was as vicious as the typical men of his time and
the prudent Clarice knew it.

[Footnote 13: John Argyropoulos, who was born at Constantinople in
1416, was one of the first teachers of Greek in Italy, where he
was long a guest of Palla degli Strozzi at Padua. In 1456 he went
to Florence, where Cosimo de Medici's son and grandson were among
his pupils. He spent fifteen years in Florence and thence went to
Rome. To this master, George Gemistos and George Trapezuntios, the
acquisition of Greek knowledge at Florence in the fifteenth
century was chiefly due. It should be particularly noted that all
of them went to Italy before the fall of the Greek empire in 1453.
Andronicus Kallistos was one of the popular lecturers of the time
and one of the first Greeks to visit France. Cristoforo Landino,
one of the famous coterie of intellectual men associated with
Lorenzo de Medici, took the chair of rhetoric and poetry at
Florence in 1454. He paid especial attention in his lectures to
the Italian poets, and in 1481 published an edition of Dante. His
famous "Camaldolese Discussions," modeled in part on Cicero's
"Tusculan Disputations," is well known to students of Italian
literature. Marsilio Ficino was a philosopher, and his chief aim
was a reconciliation of ancient philosophy with Christianity.]

Dwelling in a villa at Fiesole, provided for him by Lorenzo, Poliziano
occupied his life with teaching and writing, occasionally paying visits
to other cities. In 1492 Lorenzo passed away and Poliliziano wrote an
elegy which is to this day regarded as unique in modern Latin verse. In
1494 the famous scholar followed his patron, even while Savonarola was
setting Italy in a ferment of passionate religious reaction against the
poetic and sensuous paganism infused into the thought of their time by
Poliziano and Lorenzo. The scholar was laid in San Marco and they set
upon his tomb this epitaph: "Here lies the angel who had one head, and
what is new, three tongu