Theodore Gaza, one of those learned Greeks who contributed to the revival of letters in Italy, born in Thessalonica about 1400, died in Abruzzo in 1478. After the capture of his native town by the Turks in 1430 he fled to Italy, where he introduced a more exact knowledge than had before existed of the two principal philosophers of antiquity. He was a Peripatetic, and devoted himself to translating from the works of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Hippocrates into Latin, and from those of Cicero into Greek, and was also the author of a treatise on the Attic months, of a book on the origin of the Turks, and of a Greek grammar, which was published at Venice and often reprinted. After assisting at the council of Florence in 1439, he taught Greek at Ferrara by the invitation of the duke, and founded there an academy. In 1450 he was called by Pope Nicholas V. to Rome. He afterward lived at Naples under the patronage of Alfonso the Magnanimous, and at Rome under that of Cardinal Bessarion.