ESTAÇO, ACHILLES. - Portuguese humanist, b.
at Vidigueira (Evora) in 1524, d. at Rome in Sept.
1581. He studied philology and theology at Coimbra, Pa-
ris, and Louvain. Having probably become a professor
at the Roman Studium, he entered the service of Portu-
guese diplomacy at the Holy See.
A scholar of European renown, he took an active part in
the work of critically restoring classical texts. He com-
posed original Latin poems, translations from Callimachus, a
short poem on the Portuguese national coat of arms and the bat-
tle of Ourique, commentaries on Horace’s Poetics, on Ca-
tullus, Suetonius, and various works of Cicero, the Obser-
natiores aliquot locorum Graeco-latinorum, orations, epi-
stles, and religious poems. Among his contemporaries he was
known by the Latinized surname Stazio. A considerable num-
ber of his manuscripts is preserved in the Vallicellana in Rome,
which owes to him its first substantial bibliographical collection.