LEONICO TOMEO, NICCOLÒ. - Humanist, son of a Greek from Epirus, b. in Venice on 1 Feb. 1456, d. there on 28 March 1531. He studied at Padua and Florence under D. Calcondila. From Apr. 1497 he taught at Padua and then, for some time, also at Venice. He was famous for the philological skill with which he read the Greek philosophers in the original text, and because of his learning he was esteemed by Bembo, Sadoleto, Pole, Tunstall, and Latymer. Erasmus praised him highly and, in the Colloquia, imitated one of his dialogues (the Samnutus sive de ludo talarico).
For the Giuntina edition of 1527 he prepared the Greek text of Aristotle and that of Theophrastus. Besides translating from Ptolemy (Inerrantium stellarum significationes, in the Aldine edition of Ovid of 1516) and Proclus (in the Opuscula, Venice 1525), he translated Aristotle’s Parva naturalia (there 1523)
and the Quaestiones mechanicae (in the cited Opuscula). A version of the De partibus animalium appeared posthumously (Venice 1540). His most widely circulated work was the De varia historia (Lyons 1532; Italian trans. Venice 1544); his most significant was a collection of ten Dialogi dedicated to Pole (there 1523). Among them is the Bembus, sive de animorum immortalitate, in which, taking a position in Pomponazzi (v.), he maintains that the soul, a “self-moving” and “separate” substance as both Plato and Aristotle hold, cannot die.