Portus, Francis

, a learnedwriter of the sixteenth century, was a native of Candia, where he was born in 1511, but was brought up at the court of Renee of France, daughter of Louis XII. and consort of Hercules II. duke of Ferrara, and afterwards taught Greek in that city. There also an acquaintance with Calvin induced him to embrace the reformed religion, for the quiet enjoyment of which he went to Geneva in 1561, and was appointed Greek professor, an office which he appears to have held until his death in 1581. He published commentaries and annotations upon Pindar, Sophocles, some of the works of Xenophon, Thucydides, Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Longinus, and some other writers, a Latin version of the Psalms, and the Hymns of Synesius, an improved edition of Constantine’s Greek Lexicon, a reply to Peter Charpentier’s defence of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and other pieces. ²