Early Renaissance humanists discovered the culture of ancient
Greece and Rome mostly through the study of classical manuscripts.
Cyriac of Ancona (Ciriaco de' Pizzecolli, 1391-1452), a merchant
and diplomat as well as a scholar, was among the first to study the
physical remains of the ancient world in person and for that reason
is sometimes regarded as the father of classical archaeology. His
travel diaries and letters are filled with descriptions of
classical sites, drawings of buildings and statues, and copies of
hundreds of Latin and Greek inscriptions. Cyriac came to see it as
his calling to record the current state of the remains of antiquity
and to lobby with local authorities for their preservation,
recognizing that archaeological evidence was an irreplaceable
complement to the written record.
This volume presents letters and diaries from 1443 to 1449, the
period of his final voyages, which took him from Italy to the
eastern shore of the Adriatic, the Greek mainland, the Aegean
islands, Anatolia and Thrace, Mount Athos, Constantinople, the
Cyclades, and Crete. Cyriac's accounts of his travels, with their
commentary reflecting his wide-ranging antiquarian, political,
religious, and commercial interests, provide a fascinating record
of the encounter of the Renaissance world with the legacy of
classical antiquity. The Latin texts assembled for this edition
have been newly edited and most of them appear here for the first
time in English. The edition is enhanced with reproductions of
Cyriac's sketches and a map of his travels.
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