Politian. ANGELO POLIZIANO (Latinised Politianus) was born at Montepulciano in Tuscany, on the 14th July 1454. His real name was Ambrogini, but, in accordance with a common practice at the Renaissance, he early called himself by the Latinised form of his native town, which Italianised into Poliziano is the name by which he is known in his own country. His father, Benedetto Ambrogini, a jurist of some distinction, was assassinated by certain of his fellow-citizens, and left his widow and five children so scantily provided for that, even after Angelo the eldest had given the most signal proofs of his genius, he was on the point of being taken from his studies and put to a trade. At the age of ten he was sent to Florence, then under Lorenzo de' Medici, the brilliant centre of the Italian Renaissance. Here he had as his teachers the most famous scholars of his time, the Greeks Argyropoulos and Kallistos, and the Italians Landino and Ficino. His progress in the ancient languages, the special studies of the period, was extraordinary even in that age of precocious talents. By his sixteenth year he wrote epigrams in Latin and Greek that excited the wonder of his teachers. At seventeen he began the translation of the Iliad into Latin hexameters, a work which it had been the ambition of all the Italian humanists to achieve. The first book had already been translated by another scholar, and Politian at different periods carried on the work to the end of the fifth. By his success with the second book he became known as the 'Homeric youth,' and attracted the attention of the great Lorenzo himself, who now stood his firm friend and patron. Thus secure of a settled position his life was thenceforward devoted to incessant study, and he was soon recognised as the prince of Italian scholars, and the most remarkable literary genius of his time. At the age of thirty he became professor of Greek and Latin in the university of Florence, and the fame of his prelections drew students from every part of Europe, among whom, by reason of their own services to learning, Reuchlin, Grocyn, and Linacre may be specially mentioned. Politian was also entrusted with the education of Lorenzo's sons, Piero and Giovanni (afterwards Leo X.); but their mother Clarice, who had excellent reasons for doubting the great scholar's fitness to be the director of her boys, insisted on his being removed from their immediate superintendence. In such occupation, varied by occasional visits to other towns of Italy, Politian lived at Fiesole in a villa assigned to him by Lorenzo, whose familiar intercourse he daily enjoyed. The death of that prince in 1492 was the most serious trial of his life, and he mourned his death in a Latin elegy, which has been described as unique alike in form and feeling in modern Latin poetry. Two years later he himself died during the tem- porary supremacy of Savonarola, whose religious zeal was directed against every principle of that pagan revival which it had been the life's work of Lorenzo and Politian to forward. Politian's epitaph on his tomb in San Marco, at Florence, is so entirely in the ironical and sceptical spirit of that movement of which he was so brilliant a representative that it fitly closes any account of himself. It is as follows: 'Politian lies in this grave, the angel who had one head and, what is new, three tongues.'
Politian has the double distinction of being both a scholar of the first rank and a poet of high merit alike in Latin and in his mother tongue. Of his industry as a scholar his translations of classical authors (Epictetus, Herodian, Hippocrates, Galen, Plato's Charmides, to mention a few of the long series) are ample evidence, while his edition of the Pandects of Justinian is regarded by modern scholars as excellent even when tried by the latest tests. His original works in Latin fill a thick and closely-printed quarto, half of which is made up of twelve books of letters, and the rest with miscellanies in prose and verse. Among Neo-Latin poets Politian holds perhaps the first place, his peculiar distinction being that, while he is not careful of classical purity, he has charged his verse with his own individual thought and feeling. In Italian literature also he takes a high rank, both in virtue of his own poetic production and as having at a critical period given an impulse to the cultivation of the Italian language. Before him the Italian humanists regarded their native tongue simply as a bastard Latin, which might serve the needs of the people, but was beneath the attention of scholars. The weight of Politian's name and example moved them to think differently, and thenceforward Italian was secure of a place among the other modern literatures. Of his productions in Italian his Orfeo deserves special mention as having been the first secular drama in the language. As to his personal character, Politian had in full measure the two great blemishes of the scholars of the Revival of Letters, and notably those of Italy. He was addicted to the lowest forms of vice, and he knew no bounds to his abuse of those who had the ill-fortune to offend him.
See Opera Ang. Politiani (Florence, 1499); Le Stanze, l'Orfeo e le Rime di Messer Ang. Ambrogini, illustrate da Giosuè Carducci (Florence, 1863). For accounts of Politian, see Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici; J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, vol. ii.; Von Reumont, Lorenzo de' Medici (vol. ii. Eng. trans. 1876).