In obedience to Petrarch's advice, Boccaccio in middle life applied himself to learning Greek. Petrarch had never acquired a real knowledge of the language, though he received a few lessons at Avignon from Barlaam, a Calabrian, who had settled in Byzantium, and who sought to advance his fortunes in Italy and Greece by alternate acts of apostasy, and afterwards at Venice from Leontius Pilatus.[48] The opportunities of Greek study enjoyed by Boccaccio were also very meagre, and his mastery of the idiom was superficial. Yet he advanced considerably beyond the point reached by any of his predecessors, so that he deserves to be named as the first Grecian of the modern world. Leontius Pilatus, a Southern Italian and a pupil of Barlaam, who, like his teacher, had removed to Byzantium and renounced the Latin faith, arrived at Venice on his way to Avignon in 1360. Boccaccio induced him to visit Florence, received him into his own house, and caused him to be appointed Greek Professor in the University. Then he set himself to work in earnest on the text of Homer. The ignorance of the teacher was, however, scarcely less than that of his pupil. While Leontius possessed a fair knowledge of Byzantine Greek, his command of Latin was very limited, and his natural stupidity was only equalled by his impudent pretensions. Of classical usages he seems to have known nothing. The imbecility of his master could scarcely have escaped the notice of Boccaccio. Indeed, both he and Petrarch have described Leontius as a sordid cynic with a filthy beard and tangled hair, morose in his temper and disgusting in his personal habits, who concealed a bovine ignorance beneath a lion's hide of ostentation. It was, however, necessary to make the best of him; for Greek in Northern Italy could nowhere else be gained, and Boccaccio had not thought, it seems, of journeying to Byzantium in search of what he wanted.[49] Boccaccio, accordingly, drank the muddy stream of pseudo-learning and lies that flowed from this man's lips, with insatiable avidity. The nonsense administered to him by way of satisfying his thirst for knowledge may best be understood from the following etymologies. [Greek: Achilleus] was derived from [Greek: a] and [Greek: chilos], 'without fodder.'[50] The names of the Muses gave rise to these extraordinary explanations:[51]--Melpomene is derived from _Melempio comene_, which signifies _facente stare la meditazione_; Thalia is the same as _Tithonlia_ or _pognente cosa che germini_; Polyhymnia, through _Polium neemen_, is the same as _cosa che faccia molta memoria_; Erato becomes _Euruncomenon_ or _trovatore del simile_, and Terpsichore is described as _dilettante ammaestramento_. [Footnote 48: _Epist. Rer. Sen._, lib. xi. 9, p. 887; lib. vi. 1, p. 806; lib. v. 4, p. 801.]