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A Socratic dialogue set in the court of King Mattias Corvinus of Hungary (ca. 1490), Republics and Kingdoms Compared depicts a debate between the king and a Florentine merchant at his court on the relative merits of republics and kingdoms. This is the first critical edition and the first translation into any language.

Filelfo (1398-1481), one of the great scholar-poets of the Italian Renaissance, was the principal humanist working in Lombardy in the middle of the Quattrocento and served as court poet to the Visconti and Sforza dukes of Milan. His Odes constitute the first complete cycle of Horatian odes since classical antiquity.

Marco Girolamo Vida (1485-1566), humanist and bishop, came to prominence as a Latin poet in the Rome of Leo X and Clement VII. Leo commissioned this famous epic, a retelling of the life of Christ in the style of Vergil, which was published in 1535. This translation, accompanied by extensive notes, is based on a new edition of the Latin text.

Sannazaro (1456-1530) is most famous for having written the first pastoral romance in European literature, the Arcadia (1504). But after this work, he devoted himself entirely to Latin poetry modeled on his beloved Virgil. In addition to his epic The Virgin Birth (1526), he also composed Piscatory Eclogues, an adaption of the eclogue form.

Cristoforo Landino (1424-1498) was one of the great scholar-poets of the Renaissance. His most substantial work of poetry was his Three Books on Xandra. Also included in this volume is the Carmina Varia, a collection whose centerpiece is a group of elegies directed to the Venetian humanist Bernardo Bembo.

Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus, was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. This volume contains Ficino's extended analysis and commentary on the Phaedrus.

Imprisoned for conspiring against Pope Paul II, Platina (1421-1481) returned to favor under Pope Sixtus IV, and composed this biographical compendium of the Roman popes, which became the standard reference on papal history for early modern Europe. This first complete translation into English is accompanied by an improved Latin text.

Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), a student of canon law who became a Catholic cardinal, was widely considered the most important original philosopher of the Renaissance. He wrote principally on theology, philosophy, and church politics. This volume makes most of Nicholas's other writings on Church and reform available in English for the first time.

The main literary dispute of the Renaissance pitted those Neo-Latin writers favoring Cicero alone as the apotheosis of Latin prose against those following an eclectic array of literary models. This Ciceronian controversy pervades the texts and letters collected for the first time in this volume.

Pontano was the most innovative, versatile Latin poet of Quattrocento Italy. His Two Books of Hendecasyllables, subtitled Baiae, are the elegant offspring of Pontano's leisure, written to celebrate love, good wine, friendship, nature, and all the pleasures of life to be found at the seaside resort of Baiae on the Bay of Naples.

Poliziano was one of the great scholar-poets of the Italian Renaissance. This volume illuminates his close friendship with Pico della Mirandola and includes much of the correspondence about the composition and reception of his Miscellanies, a revolutionary work of philology. It also includes his famous letter on the death of Lorenzo de' Medici.

Humanist Tragedies offers a sampling of Latin drama from the Tre- and Quattrocento. These five tragedies-Ecerinis, Achilleis, Progne, Hyempsal, and Fernandus servatus-were nourished by a potent amalgam of classical, medieval, and pre-humanist sources. Humanist tragedy testifies to momentous changes in literary conventions during the Renaissance.