The influx of Greek scholars into Italy began some years before the fall of Constantinople. Some of these scholars came from towns in Asia Minor, which had fallen under the rule of the Turks before the capture of Constantinople. When the Turkish armies crossed the Bosphorus, a number of the Greeks seem to have lost hope at a comparatively early date of being able to defend the Byzantine territory, and had betaken themselves with such property as they could save to various places of refuge in the south of Europe, and particularly in Italy. As described in other chapters, many of these exiles brought with them Greek manuscripts, and in some cases these codices were not only important as being the first copies of the texts brought to the knowledge of European scholars, but were of distinctive interest and value as being the oldest examples of such texts in existence. The larger number of the exiles who selected Italy as their place of refuge found homes and in many cases scholarly occupation, not in the university towns so much as in the great commercial centres, such as Venice and Florence. Many of these Greeks were accepted as instructors in the families of nobles or of wealthy merchants, while others made use of their manuscripts either through direct sale, through making transcripts for sale, or through the loan of the originals to the manuscript-dealers. A little later these manuscripts served as material and as “copy” for the editions of the Greek classics issued by Aldus and his associates, the first thoroughly edited and carefully printed Greek books that the world had known. It was partly as a cause and partly as an effect of the presence of so many scholarly Greeks, that the study of Greek language, literature, and philosophy became fashionable among the so-called higher circles of Italian society during the last half of the fifteenth century. The interest in Greek literature had, however, as pointed out, begun nearly twenty-five years earlier. As there came to be some knowledge of the extent of the literary treasures of classic Greece which had been preserved in the Byzantine cities, not a few of the more enterprising dealers in manuscripts, and many also of the wealthier and more enterprising of the scholarly noblemen and merchants, themselves sent emissaries to search the monasteries and cities of the East for further manuscripts which could be purchased.