[255] This retinue shows that Filelfo was at least able to support a large household.

[256] The catalogue of his library, communicated by him in a letter to Ambrogio Traversari, shows so clearly what the most indefatigable student and omnivorous reader of the age, to whom all the museums and bookshops of Byzantium must have been open, could then collect, that I will transcribe it:—'Qui mihi nostri in Italiam libri gesti sunt, horum nomina ad te scribo: alios autem nonnullos per primas ex Byzantio Venetorum naves opperior. Hi autem sunt Plotinus, Ælianus, Aristides, Dionysius Halicarnasseus, Strabo Geographus, Hermogenes, Aristotelis Rhetorice, Dionysius Halicarnasseus de Numeris et Characteribus, Herodotus, Dio Chrysostomus, Appollonius Pergæus, Thucydides, Plutarchi Moralia, Proclus in Platonem, Philo Judæus, Ethica Aristotelis, Ejus magna Moralia et Eudemia, et Œconomica et Politica, quædam Theophrasti Opuscula, Homeri Ilias, Odyssea, Philostrati de Vitâ Appollonii, Orationes Libanii, et aliqui Sermones Luciani, Pindarus, Aratus, Euripidis Tragœdiæ Septem, Theocritus, Hesiodus, Suidas, Phalaridis, Hippocratis, Platonis et multorum ex veteribus Philosophis Epistolæ, Demosthenes, Æschinis Orationes et Epistolæ, Pleraque Xenophontis Opera, Una Lysiæ Oratio, Orphei Argonautica et Hymni, Callimachus, Aristoteles de Historiis Animalium, Physica, et Metaphysica, et de Animâ, de Partibus Animalium, et alia quædam, Polybius, Nonnulli Sermones Chrysostomi, Dionysiaca, et alii Poetæ plurimi. Habes qui mihi sint, et his utere æque ac tuis.'

[257] 'Unum Philelphus audet affirmare, vel insaniente Candido, neminem esse hâc tempestate, nec fuisse unquam apud Latinos, quantum constat ex omni hominum memoriâ, qui præter se unum idem unus tenuerit exercuitque et Græcam pariter et Latinam orationem in omni dicendi genere et prosâ et versu. Tu si quidem habeas alterum, memora. Quid taces, homo miserrime?' Letter to Piero Candido Decembrio. Cf. what P.C. Decembrio wrote to Poggio in 1453:—'Dixit (i.e. Philelphus) enim neminem litteras scire præter ipsum, alios semilatinos et semigræcos esse, se autem principatum inter stultos obtinere.' Rosmini, vol. iii. p. 150.

[258]

'Quod si Virgilius superat me carminis ullis
Laudibus, orator ille ego sum melior.
Sin Tulli eloquio præstat facundia nostro,
Versibus ille meis cedit ubique minor.
Adde quod et linguâ possum hæc præstare Pelasgâ
Et Latiâ. Talem quem mihi des alium?'

Lib. ix., De Jocis et Seriis. Elegy to Alessandro Sforza. Reported by Rosmini, vol. iii. p. 149. One specimen of these boasts may stand for thousands.

[259] The invitation came from Niccoli, Lionardo Bruni, Ambrogio Traversari, and Palla Strozzi.

[260] Quoted by Cantù, p. 128.

[261] He stayed there from 1429 till the autumn of 1434.

[262] Engagement renewed October 17, 1431, for two years, with stipend of 350 sequins; again, in 1433, with stipend of 450 sequins.