LETO. GIULIO POMPONIO. - Humanist, b. in 1428 at Teggiano in Cilento, d. at Rome in 1497. He is one of the most enigmatic (or indeterminate) figures of Italian Humanism. A fanatic of antiquity, he founded a Roman Academy with several friends: in 1466 Paolo II gave him the chair of eloquence at the Studium. That he later took part with the Platina and others in a conspiracy against Paolo II is more than doubtful, considering that probably there was not even any conspiracy.
Yet in L.'s work paganism, Epicureanism, and immorality are simply not to be found. Whatever their faults may have been, those alleged conspirators were soon forgiven and forgotten. L. is perhaps the only humanist of the Renaissance whose love of antiquity resulted, rather than in moralism, in aestheticism, with a decadent note suggestive of figures of modern Neo-Humanism. But his image remains pale, despite the noble effort made by Zabughin, in an extensive and affectionate work, to give it concreteness and human distinctness. Still less could he be placed among rebels of Catilinarian temper. As a philologist he belongs to the school of Valla, and he worked extensively in archaeology, epigraphy, textual criticism, and interpretation. But Sabbadini also passed an extremely severe judgment on his philological work.