They were held in the most absolute
sense to be the springs of all knowledge. The literary conditions of
that age of great discoveries have often been set forth; no more can
here be attempted than to point out a few less-known features of the
picture.
Great as was the influence of the old writers on the Italian mind in
the fourteenth century and before, yet that influence was due rather to
the wide diffusion of what bad long been known than to the discovery of
much that was new. The most popular latin poets, historians, orators
and letter-writers, to- gether with a number of Latin translations of
single works of Aristotle, Plutarch, and a few other Greek authors,
constituted the treasure from which a few favored individuals in the
time of Petrarch and Boccaccio drew their inspiration. The former, as
is well known, owned and kept with religious care a Greek Homer, which
he was unable to read. A complete Latin translation of the Iliad and
Odyssey, though a very bad one, vas made at Petrarch's suggestion, and
with Boccaccio's help, by a Calabrian Greek, Leonzio Pilato. But with
the fifteenth century began the long list of new discoveries, the
systematic creation of libraries by means of copies, and the rapid
multiplication of translations from the Greek.
Had it not been for the enthusiasm of a few collectors of that age, who
shrank from no effort or privation in their researches, we should
certainly possess only a small part of the literature, especially that
of the Greeks, which is now in our hands.
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