LASCARIS, Andreas Joannes, a learned Greek, of the same family with the preceding, and surnamed Rhynadaceus, because he was born on the banks of the Rhynadus, in Bithynia. On the Turkish conquest of Constantinople, he took refuge at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, who sent him to Greece to collect valuable MSS. in that country. Lascaris returned with a large number, and a few years afterwards, made a second voyage to Greece for the same purpose. Before his return, Lorenzo died, and Lascaris, on the invitation of Charles VIII., removed in 1495 to Paris, and began to teach Greek publicly. Among his pupils were Budaeus and Danes. In 1503, and again in 1505, Louis XII. appointed him to the embassy of Venice; and at a later period Leo X. invited him to Rome, to take charge of the Greek college newly founded there. In 1515 the pope sent him on a mission to Francis I.; and this prince,
Las Palmas sensible of his merits, endeavoured to retain him in France. Lasaris, however, returned to Rome the same year; but he revisited Paris in 1518, and, along with Budæus, was employed to form the Royal Library of Fontainebleau. Francis I. then appointed Lasaris his ambassador to Venice, as his predecessor had done; and he remained in that city until Pope Paul III. urgently pressed him to settle at Rome. Though suffering seriously from bad health and the infirmities of old age, he immediately set out; but he only survived his arrival at Rome for a few months, dying in 1535, at the age of nearly ninety.
The principal works edited by Lasaris are—Anthologia Epigrammatum Græcorum, libri vii., Grace, Florence, 1494, in 4to; Callimachi Hymni Gr. cum scholiis Græcis, ibid. in 4to, the editio princeps; Scholæ Græcæ in Hicadæm, in integrum restituta, Rome, 1517, in folio, a very rare edition; Homericarum Questionum liber, et de Nympharum antro in Odyssea opusculum, ibid. 1518, in small 4to, the editio princeps; Commentarii [Græci] in septem Tragedias Sophoclis, ibid. 1518, in small 4to. He also translated into Latin some treatises of Polybius on the military art. The following smaller works are also ascribed to him—Epigrammata Græca et Latina, Paris, 1527, in 8vo, and 1544, in 4to; De veris Græcarum Litterarum formis ac causis opus Antiquos, Paris, 1536, in 8vo; Orationes, Francfort, 1575. The Nuova Scelta di Lettere, by Bernardo Pino, contains one of Lasaris. (J.B.—E.)