Then followed a series of smaller writings on separate questions of philosophy, translations connected with them, and a life of Plato. Cosimo de’ Medici wished to see the works of Plotinus translated by Ficino, an undertaking to which the latter only devoted himself long after the death of its originator, and to which he was chiefly encouraged by Pico della Mirandola. According to his own words, he recognised in this new task a leading of Providence. As the Latin nations had learned to know Plato, the collector of the traditions of religious philosophy, so they should also learn to know Plotinus, who first drew forth from darkness the theology of the ancients and searched into its mysteries. This work was finished in 1486, and a detailed commentary on it in the summer of 1491. Lorenzo had undertaken to defray the cost of printing, and promised to do the same for a new edition of Plato’s works, the former one being inadequate. But the printing was only completed a month after the death of the generous patron—‘magnifico sumptu Laurentii patriæ servatoris.’ After this came a translation of the mystic theology of the writer calling himself Dionysius the Areopagite. Lorenzo Valla, who surpassed most of his contemporaries in keenness of criticism and knowledge of antiquity, had already raised a doubt as to its genuineness, as had also other writers. But this work, perhaps that of a Platonist of the fifth century, fitted in with Marsilio’s system too well not to be accepted by him as valid testimony; another example showing how, like the Alexandrian school, these later disciples wandered from their original models without knowing or intending it; with this difference, that the Neoplatonism of old ran in sharp contradiction to Christianity, while that of more modern times aimed at a union with it. The philosophic ‘Macrobioticon,’ an original work, was finished in 1490, and dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici and King Matthias Corvinus. Far more interest attaches to Marsilio’s correspondence, which embraces the twenty years between 1474 and 1494—the only product of his literary activity that has a real value at the present time. In these letters his opinions and motives are mirrored with life-like originality, and they afford much information as to his life, his occupations, his social relations, and his friends. The twelve books (which he, following the example of many contemporaries, arranged himself, because apocryphal writings were in circulation) are all dedicated to men of high position or friends of the author: Giuliano de’ Medici, Federigo of Montefeltro, Matthias Corvinus, Bernardo Bembo, Filippo and Niccolò Valori, and others.