Marc-Antoine de Muret
born April 12, 1526, Muret, near
Limoges, France
died June 4, 1585, Rome [Italy]
French humanist and classical
scholar, celebrated for the elegance of
his Latin prose style.
From age 18 Muret taught classics at
various schools; Michel de Montaigne was
among his pupils. During the 1540s his
play Julius Caesar, written in Latin,
was performed; it is the first tragedy
on a secular theme known to have been
written in France. In the early 1550s he
lectured on philosophy and civil law in
Paris. He became intimate with the poets
of La Pléiade, and in 1553 he published
a commentary on Pierre de Ronsard’s Les
Amours. Juvenilia, a collection of
Muret’s own poems, many of them on
erotic themes, was published at about
the same time. In 1554, after being
condemned for sodomy and heresy, Muret
fled to Italy, settling in Rome in 1563.
His lectures at the University of Rome
earned him a European reputation. He
entered holy orders in 1576.
Muret was a good textual critic; his
Variae lectiones contains annotations
and expositions of many passages from
ancient authors. He also wrote
commentaries on works by Cicero,
Catullus, Tacitus, Plato, and Aristotle.
