Nicholas Kalliakis


Nicholas Kalliakis was a Cretan scholar and philosopher who flourished in Italy in the 17th century. He was appointed doctor of philosophy and theology in Rome, university professor of Greek and Latin and Aristotelian philosophy at Venice in 1666 and professor of belles-lettres and rhetoric at Padua in 1667.

Biography

Nicholas Kalliakis was born of Greek ancestry in Candia, Crete which was under control of Venice in 1645. He migrated to Rome where he stayed for ten years, becoming one of the outstanding teachers of Greek and Latin, he was ultimately made doctor of philosophy and theology. He moved to Venice in 1666 where he was appointed professor of Aristotelian philosophy and of the Greek and Latin languages. He was appointed Director of the Greek college in Venice from 1665 to 1676. In 1677 Nicholas Kalliakis was invited to Padua and took the chair of professor of the belles-lettres and of philosophy and rhetoric. He wrote treatises on the antiquities of Greece and Rome and studied the dance in classical antiquity, his principal work is the De ludis scenicis mimorum et pantomimorum syntagma. He remained in Padua until 1707 where he died.