Caboto, Giovanni (John Cabot)
(ca. 1450–ca. 1498)
Italian explorer known in English as John
Cabot, born in either Gaeta or Genoa,
Italy. The son of a merchant, he moved at
a young age to Venice, where he married,
raised a family of three sons, and lived off
the Asian spice trade. In 1490, Caboto
moved to Spain, where he became ac-
quainted with Christopher Columbus and
sought patronage from the monarchs of
Spain and Portugal for a new voyage of
discovery to the Spice Islands. Failing in
this endeavor, he moved to England, where
he settled in the port of Bristol and began
petitioning King Henry VII for support of
an expedition westward across the Atlantic
Ocean. Caboto believed a more northerly
route would prove shorter than those pio-
neered by the Portuguese around Africa,
or the southerly route taken by Columbus,
who mistakenly believed he had reached
the East Indies in 1492. In 1496, Henry of-
ficially authorized the voyage with letters
patent, while several merchants of Bristol
agreed to sponsor it. Caboto set out that
year but turned back after experiencing
bad weather and conflict with his crew. In
1497, on his second expedition, he reached
some unknown point on the eastern coast
of North America, declaring it “New
Found Land,” then proceeded 900 miles
(1448km) down the coast. He returned to
Europe on a more southerly route, touch-
ing land again in Brittany. In 1498 Caboto
set out with a larger fleet of five ships, with
the intention of reaching Japan and China.
This expedition disappeared with all
hands, and no clue to its fate has yet been
found.SEEALSO: Columbus, ChristopherCallimachus ......................................
(ca. 280B.C.–245B.C.)
An ancient Greek scholar and librarian,
Callimachus was known in the Renaissance
for his poetry and for a lost work known
as thePinakes, or Lists, a guide to the col-
lection of the Library of Alexandria. Born
in North Africa, Callimachus may have be-
longed to a noble family, although histori-
ans know few details of his life. He was
well educated as a youth and eventually
made his home in Alexandria, a city on
the Mediterranean coast of Egypt estab-
lished by Alexander the Great, and which
became the center of Greek scholarship,
science, and philosophy. Callimachus
joined the court of Ptolemy II, the king of
Egypt, and also became a member of the
Museum, the Alexandrian school of phi-
losophy and science that was built by
Ptolemy I, founder of Egypt’s Ptolemaic
dynasty.
The hundreds of thousands of scrolls
at the Alexandrian Library had been gath-
ered from all corners of the Greek world
and were meant to include every impor-
tant literary, historical, philosophical, and
scientific work in the world. Callimachus
organized the collection and compiled the
Lists to include the names of the books
and some information about the lives of