Tomeo, Nicolo Leonico

, a learned Italian scholar, was born at Venice, of an Albanian family, in 1456. He studied Greek at Florence, and made such progress, that be became able to explain Aristotle in the original language. For this purpose he was invited to Padua in 1497. He was brought up to the church, and taught the learned languages at Venice, but in 1520 he returned to Padua, where he gave instructions to cardinal Pole. He was much attached to the Platonic philosophy, and passed his time remote from worldly pursuits, and solely intent upon his studies. Bembo, Jovius, and others, speak of him with great esteem, and Erasmus mentions him with honour, as a man equally respectable for the purity of his morals and the profundity of his erudition. He died in 1531, and was buried in the church of St. Francis, at Padua. He translated several of the works of Aristotle, Proclus’s Commentary on the Timaeus of Plato, and other treatises of the ancient philosophers. He wrote ten dialogues on subjects, philosophical and moral, a work “De Varia Historia,” and some Italian poems. ²