Civilization: The Italian Renaissance

A scholar of the Italian Renaissance, J.H. Plumb, describes the renaissance as the rediscovery of the Greek and Roman classics, pushed by the printing press to reach 100s of thousands of people to an extent not nearly reached by the 11th century rediscovery of Aristotle, the prime non-Christian thinker since the fall of Rome.1
The rediscovery of these classics was a result of translation from the Greek, Hebrew and Latin. These translations overcame the language barrier between early Greece and Rome and today.