For it happened that
they fell into a conversation, deeper and more intimate than men usually
fall into at first sight. During this conversation Ficino formed the
design of devoting his remaining years to the translation of Plotinus,
that new Plato, in whom the mystical element in the Platonic philosophy
had been worked out to the utmost limit of vision and ecstasy; and it is
in dedicating this translation to Lorenzo de' Medici that Ficino has
recorded these incidents.
It was after many wanderings, wanderings of the intellect as well as
physical journeys, that Pico came to rest at Florence. He was then about
twenty years old, having been born in 1463. He was called Giovanni at
baptism; Pico, like all his ancestors, from Picus, nephew of the Emperor
Constantine, from whom they claimed to be descended; and Mirandola, from
the place of his birth, a little town afterwards part of the duchy of
Modena, of which small territory his family had long been the feudal
lords. Pico was the youngest of the family, and his mother, delighting
in his wonderful memory, sent him at the age of fourteen to the famous
school of law at Bologna.
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