NICCOLÒ LEONICO TOMEO. — Humanist, son of a Greek from Epirus, born in Venice on 19 February 1456, died there on 28 March 1531. He studied in Padua and Florence under D. Calcondila. From April 1497 he taught in Padua and later for some time also in Venice. He was renowned for his philological skill in reading Greek philosophers in the original text, and his learning endeared him to Bembo, Sadoleto, Pole, Tunstall, and Latymer. Erasmus praised him highly and in his Colloquia imitated one of his dialogues (the *Samnutus sive de ludo talarico*).
For the Giuntina edition of 1527 he edited the Greek text of Aristotle and that of Theophrastus. Besides drawing on Ptolemy (*Inerrantium stellarum significationes*, in the Aldine edition of Ovid, 1516) and Proclus (in the *Opuscula*, Venice 1525), he translated Aristotle’s *Parva naturalia* (Venice 1523) and the *Mechanical Questions* (in the cited *Opuscula*). A version of *On the Parts of Animals* appeared posthumously (Venice 1540). His most widely circulated work was the *De varia historia* (Lyon 1532; Italian trans. Venice 1544); his most significant work a collection of ten dialogues dedicated to Pole (Venice 1523). Among them is the *Bembus, sive de animorum immortalitate*, in which, taking a stand in Pomponazzi (v.), he argues that the soul, as a “self-moving” and “separate” substance, as both Plato and Aristotle hold, cannot die.