cean novelty to Rome, where
he formed a notable circle, in which the flower of Hellenic and Latin
culture was represented. Besides this group, characterised by a
theological tincture alien to the neo-pagan spirit in flimsily
disguised revolt against Christian dogma and morality, Pomponius Laetus
and Platina founded the Roman Academy--an institution destined to
world-wide celebrity. Pomponius Laetus, an unrecognised bastard of the
noble house of Sanseverini, was professor of eloquence in Rome. Great
amongst the humanists, in him the very spirit of ancient Hellas seemed
revived. What to many was but the fad or fashionable craze of the
hour, was to him the all-important and absorbing purpose of living. He
dwelt aloof in poverty; shunning the ante-chambers and tables of the
great, he and kindred souls communed with their disciples in the
shades of his grove of classic laurels. He was indifferent alike to
princely and to popular favour, passionately consecrating his efforts
to the revival and preservation of such classics as had survived the
destructive era known as the Dark Ages. Denied a name of his own,
he adopted a Latin one to his liking, thus from necessity setting a
fashion his imitators followed from affectation. When approached in
the days of his fame by the Sanseverini with proposals to recognise
him as a kinsman, he answered with a proud and laconic refusal.[5] The
Academy, formed of super-men infected with pagan ideals, contemptuous
of scholastic learning and impatient of the restraints of Christian
morality, did not long escape the suspicions of the orthodox;
suspicions only too well warranted and inevitably productive of
antagonism ending in condemnation.[6]

[Note 5: His refusal was in the following curt form: _Pomponius
Laetus cognatis et propinquis suis, salutem. Quod petitis fieri non
potest.--Valete_. Consult Tiraboschi, _Storia della Letteratura
Italiana_, vol. vii., cap. v.; Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom
in Mittelalter_; Burkhardt, _Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien_,
and Voigt in his _Wiederlebung des Klassischen Alterthums_.]

[Note 6: Sabellicus, in a letter to Antonio Morosini (_Liber
Epistolarum_, xi., p. 459) wrote thus of Pomponius Laetus: ..._fuit
ab initio contemptor religionis, sed ingravesciente aetate coepit res
ipsa, ut mibi dicitur curae esse. In Crispo et Livio reposint quaedam;
et si nemo religiosius timidiusques tractavit veterum scripta ...
Graeca ... vix attingit_. While