Symonds thinks it very doubtful whether the Italians would have undertaken the labour of recovering the Greek classics if no Petrarch had preached the attractiveness of liberal studies, and if no school of disciples had been formed by him in Florence. Of these disciples, by far the most distinguished was Boccaccio. His actual work in furthering the study of Greek was more important than that of the friend to whom (although there was a difference of but nine years in their ages) he gave the title of “master.” Boccaccio, taking up the study of Greek (at Petrarch’s instance) in middle life, secured a sufficient mastery of the language to be able to render into Latin the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. This work, completed in 1362, was the first translation of Homer for modern readers. He had for his instructor and assistant an Italian named Leontius Pilatus, who had sojourned some years at Byzantium, but whose knowledge of classic Greek was said to have been very limited. Boccaccio secured for Pilatus an appointment as Greek professor in the University of Florence, the first professorship of Greek instituted in Europe. The work by which Boccaccio is best known, the _Decameron_ or the _Ten Nights’ Entertainment_, was published in 1353, a few years before the completion by Chaucer of the _Canterbury Tales_. It is described as one of the purest specimens of Italian prose and as an inexhaustible repository of wit, beauty, and eloquence; and notwithstanding the fact that the stories are representative of the low standard of moral tone which characterised Italian society of the fourteenth century, the book is one which the world will not willingly let die. It is probably to-day in more continued demand than any book of its century, with the possible exception of the _Divine Comedy_. The earliest printed edition was that of Valdarfer, issued in Florence in 1471. This was three years before the beginning of Caxton’s work as a printer in Bruges. The _Decameron_ has since been published in innumerable editions and in every language of Europe.