From the objection put into the mouth of the young man and directed against Landino’s own teaching, as well as from the praises bestowed on Lorenzo’s conduct, it is clear that the date of the conversation is shortly before the death of Piero de’ Medici, when the Pitti transactions had given evidence of the prudence and talents of his son. The visit to Camaldoli may have taken place earlier, but the ‘disputations,’ which are the actual conversations expanded and embellished, were certainly not composed before 1470. In the discourses of the three following days Alberti again took the lead, and expounded the connection of the ‘Æneid’ with Platonic philosophy. What is here said of the character of Virgil’s poetry, of the ancient wisdom therein, which has become common property, of the poet’s knowledge and reverence for antiquity, of the relation between the poetical garniture and the more solid contents of the work, was probably drawn from Landino’s own Virgilian studies, for the author of the book speaks through the mouths of those to whom he attributes the conversations held in the woods of Camaldoli. He dedicated his work to Federigo of Montefeltro. If, as it seems, this dedication to the valiant and accomplished prince of Urbino was made in 1472, the book has a certain connection with the sad occurrences at Volterra, in which Lorenzo de’ Medici’s action belied only too strongly the Platonic theory of wisdom.[11] If Cristoforo Landino is ever mentioned nowadays, it is only on account of his studies of Dante, which constitute his only value in the eyes of posterity. The study of the ‘Divine Comedy’ went through the most varied phases in Florence as elsewhere. On the petition of divers citizens (see above, vol. i. p. 80) in 1373, fifty-two years after Dante’s death, the Republic decreed the establishment of public lectures on his great poem.[12] On Sunday, October 3, in the church of Sto. Stefano, Giovanni Boccaccio began the lectures, the interruption of which by his death shortly after was lamented by Francesco Sacchetti. Messer Antonio, priest of Vado, and Filippo Villani succeeded him. A mass of commentaries were composed almost immediately after the poet’s own time, partly by his own friends. Numerous copies of the poem were in circulation; that which was formerly in the library of the convent of Sta. Croce, and is now in the Laurentiana, was attributed to Filippo Villani. Most of these copies were faulty. ‘I am trying,’ wrote Coluccio Salutati to Niccolò of Todi, at the beginning of the fifteenth century,[13] ‘to get a correct copy of the work of our divine Dante. Believe me, we possess nothing more sublime than these three poems, nothing more richly adorned, nothing more carefully worked out, nothing which penetrates further into the depths of knowledge. What only comes to others in part this one man has mastered as a whole. His moral precepts are sublime; he throws light on natural history and