withdraw, and whether the "contado" was that of Florence or that of Naples
is a matter of no considerable importance. (1) It is probable that
Boccaccio's father was one of the victims of the pestilence; for he was dead
in 1350, when his son returned to Florence to live thenceforth on the modest
patrimony which he inherited. It must have been about this time that he
formed an intimacy with Petrarch, which, notwithstanding marked diversity
of temperament, character and pursuits, was destined to be broken only by
death. Despite his complaints of the malevolence of his critics in the Proem
to the Fourth Day of the Decameron, he had no lack of appreciation on the
part of his fellow-citizens, and was employed by the Republic on several
missions; to Bologna, probably with the view of averting the submission of
that city to the Visconti in 1350; to Petrarch at Padua in March 1351, with
a letter from the Priors announcing his restitution to citizenship, and
inviting him to return to Florence, and assume the rectorship of the newly
founded university; to Ludwig of Brandenburg with overtures for an alliance
against the Visconti in December of the same year; and in the spring of 1354
to Pope Innocent VI. at Avignon in reference to the approaching visit of the
Emperor Charles IV. to Italy. About this time, 1354-5, he threw off, in
striking contrast to his earlier works, an invective against women, entitled
Laberinto d'Amore, otherwise Corbaccio, a coarse performance occasioned by
resentment at what he deemed capricious treatment by a lady to whom he had
made advances. To the same period, though the date cannot be precisely fixed,
belongs his Life of Dante, a work of but mediocre merit. Somewhat later, it
would seem, he began the study of Greek under one Leontius Pilatus, a
Calabrian, who possessed some knowledge of that language, and sought to pass
himself off as a Greek by birth.

Leontius was of coarse manners and uncertain temper, but Boccaccio was his
host and pupil for some years, and eventually procured him the chair of
Greek in the university of Florence. How much Greek Boccaccio learned from