Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) was an influential humanist philosopher of the early Italian Renaissance, an astrologer and a reviver of Neoplatonism. A prolific letter writer he was in touch with every major academic thinker and writer of his day. The first translator of Plato's complete exisitng works into Latin. The De vita libri tres or Three Books on Life were written in the years 1480-1489 in which he espoused his views on philosophy, medicine, astrology and "natural magic".