Acciaiuoli, Donato, 1429-1478

"Donato Acciaioli (1429 - August 28, 1478) was an Italian scholar. He was born in Florence, Italy. He was famous for his learning, especially in Greek and mathematics, and for his services to his native state. Having previously been entrusted with several important embassies, in 1473 he became Gonfalonier of Florence, one of the nine citizens selected by drawing lots every two months, who formed the government. He died at Milan in 1478, when on his way to Paris to ask the aid of Louis XI on behalf of the Florentines against Pope Sixtus IV. His body was taken back to Florence, and buried in the church of the Carthusian order at the public expense, and his daughters were endowed by his fellow-citizens, the fortune he left being, owing to his probity and disinterestedness, very small. He wrote Latin translations of some of Plutarch's Lives (Florence, 1478); Commentaries on Aristotle's Ethics and Politics; the lives of Hannibal, Scipio and Charlemagne as well as the biography of the grand seneschal of the Kingdom of Naples, Niccolò Acciaioli by Matteo Palmieri. In the work on Aristotle he had the co-operation of his master John Argyropulus."