Leto

LETO. - Humanist, b. in 1428 at Teggiano in the Cilento, d. at Rome in 1497. He is one of the most enigmatic (or indeterminate) figures of Italian Humanism. A fanatic for antiquity, he founded with some friends a Roman Academy: in 1466 he received from Paul II the chair of eloquence in the Studium. Whether he then took part with Platina and others in a conspiracy against Paul II is more than doubtful, if one considers that probably there was not even a conspiracy.

Yet in L.'s work, paganism, Epicureanism, and immorality are simply not to be found. Whatever their faults, those presumed conspirators were soon pardoned and forgotten. L. is perhaps the only humanist of the Renaissance whose love of antiquity resolves itself, more than in moralism, into aestheticism, with a decadent note that calls to mind figures of modern neo-humanism. But his image remains colorless, despite the noble effort made by Zabughin, in a broad and loving work, to give it concreteness and human vividness. Still less could one succeed in placing him among rebels of Catilinarian temper. As a philologist he belongs to the school of Valla, and he worked much in archaeology, epigraphy, criticism and the interpretation of texts. But even of his philological work Sabbadini gave an extremely severe judgment.

Giuseppe Toffanin