ESTAÇO, ACHILLES. - Portuguese humanist, born at Vidigueira (Evora) in 1524, died at Rome in September 1581. He studied philology and theology at Coimbra, Paris, and Louvain. Having probably become a professor at the Roman Studium, he entered the service of Portuguese diplomacy at the Holy See.
A scholar of European renown, he took an active part in the critical reconstruction of classical texts. Among his works are original Latin compositions, translations from Callimachus, a short poem on the Portuguese national coat of arms and the battle of Quirique, commentaries on Horace’s Poetics, on Catullus, Suetonius, and various works of Cicero, the *Observationes aliquot locorum Graeco-latinorum*, orations, letters, and religious poems. Among his contemporaries he was known by the Latinized surname of Statius. A good number of his manuscripts are preserved in the Vallicelliana Library in Rome, which owes to him its first considerable bibliographical collection.