Roman Humanism and the Study of the Silvae in the Fifteenth Century

Statius' Silvae were discovered by Poggio around 1416, but they were not studied carefully until they were first copied by Pomponio Leto (around 1463) in Rome. Then, Niccolò Perotti first emended and commented on the Silvae (1470), and finally Domizio Calderini lectured on these poems in the classrooms at the university of Rome and first published a printed commentary on the Silvae (1475). After this decade, when the Silvae were intensively studied by these members of the Roman humanism, they occupy a stable position in the curricula of the Italian and European schools until the eighteenth century.