Janus Parrhasius

Who was Janus Parrhasius?

Aulus Janus Parrhasius was a leading humanist scholar and grammarian in Italy. He was from Cosenza in Calabria. He was known therefore as Cosentius. He also went by the Italian name Aulo Giano Parrasio. He was the founder of the Cosentian Academy in 1511.

He was resident in Milan in the first years of the sixteenth century, and was noted as a teacher. He married a daughter of Demetrius Chalcondyles.

He is known for his commentary on the De Raptu Proserpinae of Claudian. Some letters of his on philology were later published, in 1567, as Liber De rebus epistolam quaesitis.

From an online review of a recent scholarly volume on him:

Parrasio is an important figure on a number of counts, but chiefly for his famous library, his early use of the manuscripts discovered at Bobbio in 1493, and his connections both intellectual and personal with his fellow humanists in Naples, Milan, and Rome — men like Pontano, Barzizza, Cortesi, Valeriano, Inghirami, and the Greek émigrés Janus Lascaris and Demetrius Chalcondyles. His personal life, like that of many humanists, was as interesting as his intellectual accomplishments.