Arcangeli, Giuseppe

ARCANGELI, GIUSEPPE. - Born at S. Marcello Pistoiese on 13 Dec. 1807, died at Florence on 17 Sept. 1855; he studied at the Seminary of Pistoia and was ordained a priest in 1831. He was a professor of Latin and Greek and rector of the Cicognini College of Prato, where, together with Atto Vannucci and Enrico Bindi, he started a collection of annotated Latin classics for use in schools, which produced excellent results. A fluent and elegant writer, he contributed to newspapers and journals of Florence, such as L'Alba, Lo Spettatore, La Rivista, showing himself, in politics, a moderate liberal. In 1848 he was admitted to the Accademia della Crusca and later became its secretary. There he took part in the compilation of the celebrated vocabulary and read reports, discourses and lectures, written in an easy and spontaneous style, devoid of rhetorical flourishes. He was also a member of the Florentine academies, the Ateneo Italiano and the Colombaria. In his last years he translated the Hymns of Callimachus, the Iliad and, in Alfierian verse, the pseudoclassical tragedy of Ponsard, Lucrezia.

Italo Borzi