[161] Agnolo Poliziano, born in 1454, was the son of Benedetto de’ Cini, commonly called Ambrogini, a lawyer. He dropped his family name and took that of Poliziano from his native town Montepulciano (Mons Politianus). His father was murdered when he was a child of eight and he was sent to Florence to live with an uncle, Cino di Mattei, a poor man who lived near Piazza S. Spirito in Via Saturno. Poliziano studied rhetoric under Cristofero, Landino, and Andronico, philosophy under Argyropoulos and Marsilio Ficino, in the Florentine Studio from his fifteenth to his twentieth year. Lorenzo de’ Medici, after reading his translation of Homer, provided for his education, and he became one of Lorenzo’s most intimate friends, tutor to his children and his librarian. Poliziano took his degree as Doctor of Law, and entering the Church was made a Canon of the cathedral of Florence. He wrote scholia and notes to Ovid, Catullus, Statius, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and the _Historicæ Augustæ_; translated the History of Herodian, the Manuel of Epictetus, the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, some Dialogues of Plato, and other works from Greek into Latin. His _Miscellanea_, published in Florence in 1489, were arranged for the press at Lorenzo’s request. Poliziano’s Italian poetry, particularly the _Stanze per la Giostra_, or Tournament, of Giuliano de’ Medici is beautiful, and his _Sylvæ_, odes, epigrams, and other short Latin poems are celebrated. He also wrote _Panepistemon_, a category of the various branches of knowledge, and when quite a lad the _Orfeo_, one of the earliest Italian operas. So popular was the _Orfeo_ that it was printed either separately or with the _Stanze_ twenty times between 1494 and 1541, and thirteen times between 1541 and 1565. For the use of the common people a redaction in octave stanzas was published in Florence in 1558 called _La Historia e Favola d’Orfeo alla dolce lira_. The last reprint was in 1860. [162] Horses Lorenzo may have seen when he was at Naples in 1468. [163] Bernardo and Luca were brothers of Luigi Pulci. [164] Brother-in-law of Lorenzo de’ Medici. [165] _Lettere di Luigi Pulci_, op. cit. 47. [166] _Donne Medicee_, op. cit. [167] A castle and townlet belonging to the Orsini. [168] Directors of feasts. _Festaiuoli_ still go about in the villages in Tuscany to collect money for processions and church festivals. [169] _Laurentii Medicis Vita_, &c., _op. cit._ ii. 27. [170] This and the letters from the Cardinal of Pavia (pp. 167-171) relate to Lorenzo’s desire that his brother Giuliano should be created a cardinal in order to have a voice in the Consistory. What he was unable to achieve for his brother he afterwards obtained for his son Giovanni. [171] _Laurentii Medicis Vita_, op. cit. ii. 62.