Florent Chrestien

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Florent Chrestien (January 26, 1541 - October 3, 1596) was a French satirist and Latin poet.

Chrestien was the son of Guillaume Chrestien, an eminent French physician and writer on physiology, was born at Orleans. A pupil of Henri Estienne, the Hellenist, at an early age he was appointed tutor to Henry of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV, who made him his librarian. Brought up as a Calvinist, he became a convert to Catholicism. He was the author of many good translations from the Greek into Latin verse,amongst others, of versions of the Hero and Learner attributed to Musaeus, and of many epigrams from the Anthology. In his translations into French, among which are remarked those of Buchanans Jephth (1567), and of Oppian De Venatione (1575), he is not so happy, being rather to be praised for fidelity to his original than for excellence of style. His principal claim to a place among memorable satirists is as one of the authors of the Satire Ménippée, the famous pasquinade in the interest of his old pupil, Henry IV., in which the harangue put into the mouth of cardinal de Pelv is usually attributed to him.

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