Joannes Lascaris

Background

Janus Lascaris was born in Constantinople.

Education

After the fall of Constantinople he was taken to the Peloponnese, thence to Crete, and ultimately found refuge in Florence at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, whose intermediary he was with the sultan Bayezid II in the purchase of Greek MSS. for the Medicean library.

Career

After the fall of Constantinople he was taken to the Peloponnese, thence to Crete, and ultimately found refuge in Florence at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, whose intermediary he was with the sultan Bayezid II in the purchase of Greek MSS.

By Louis XII he was several times employed on public missions, amongst others to Venice (1503 - 1508), and in 1515 he appears to have accepted the invitation of Leo X to take charge of the Greek college he had founded at Rome.

Among his pupils was Musurus. Amongst other works, Lascaris edited or wrote: Anthologia epigrammatum Graecorum (1494), in which he ascribed the collection of the Anthology to Agathias, not to Planudes; Didymi Alexandrini scholia in Iliadem (1517); Porphyrius of Tyre's Homericarum quaestionum liber (1518); De veris Graecarum litterarum formis ac causis apud antiques (Paris, 1556).

Achievements

• We owe to him a number of editiones principes, among them the Anthologia Graeca (1494), four plays of Euripides, Callimachus (about 1495), Apollonius Rhodius, Lucian (1496), printed in Florence in Greek capitals with accents, the scholia of Didymas (Rome 1517) and of Porphyrius (1518) on Homer (Rome 1518), and the scholia vetera on Sophocles (Rome 1518).

Connections

Brother:

Constantine Lascaris

Janus Lascaris is probably the younger brother of Constantine Lascaris.

References

• Greek Emigres in the West 1400-1500