For humanists everywhere elegant Latin stretched from before Cicero and Seneca right up to Jerome in the fourth century (and even, exceptionally, to Bernard of Clairvaux in the twelfth). As for the study of Greek, it included almost everything written in that fluent tongue: Plato of course; Aristotle too, but also Aristophanes and Lucian amongst the laughers, the medical authorities Hippocrates and Galen, Plutarch the moralist, the New Testament and all the Greek theologians (including many disliked by Rome). Several humanists aspired to learn Hebrew, often very successfully. (Rabelais knew at
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