Olympia Morata deserves, for her own sake, more than a passing mention. She was by no means a simple receptacle of heterogeneous knowledge, but a woman as noted for feminine virtues and strength of character as for the brilliancy of her intellect. Her father was a distinguished professor in the University of Ferrara, and his gifted daughter was fed from infancy on the classics. At six she was taught by a learned canon who advised her parents to put a pen in her hand instead of a needle. At twelve she was well versed in Greek, Latin, and the sciences of the day, petted and flattered by scholars old and young, compared to the Muses and to all the feminine stars of antiquity, and in the way of being altogether spoiled. In the midst of this chorus of praise she donned the habit of a professor at sixteen, wrote dialogues in the language of Vergil and Plato, a Greek essay on the Stoics, and many poems. She also lectured without notes at the academy, before the court and the university dons, on such themes as the paradoxes of Cicero, speaking in Latin, and improvising at pleasure with perfect ease. The great Roman orator was her model of style, and in a preface to one of her lectures she says: “I come to my task as an unskilled artist who can make nothing of a coarse-grained marble. But if you offer a block of Parian to his chisel, he will no longer deem his work useless. The beauty of the material will give value to his production. Perhaps it will be so with mine. There are some tunes so full of melody that they retain their sweetness even when played upon a poor instrument. Such are the words of my author. In passing through my lips they will lose nothing of their grace and majesty.” This brilliant and classical maiden passed eight or ten years of her youth at the court of Ferrara in intimate companionship with Anna d’Este and her mother, the “wise, witty, and virtuous” Duchess Renée. These were the days when the latter had Bernardo Tasso, a fashionable poet who was eclipsed by his greater son, for her private secretary, and delighted to fill her apartments with men of learning. The little Anna, too, a child of ten, had been brought up on the classics, and the two girls, who studied Greek together, liked to talk of Plato, Apollo, and the Muses much better than to gossip about dress and society, or the gallants of the court. Even their diversions had a pagan flavor. When Paul III came on a visit, the royal children played a comedy of Terence to entertain his eighteen cardinals and forty bishops, with all the magnates and great ladies that usually grace such festivities. It is quite probable that the clever Olympia had much to do in directing it.