de Navarre also wrote a number of plays close to the traditional mystery and morality play. As early as 1503 however, original language versions of Sophocles, Seneca, Euripides, Aristophanes, Terence and Plautus were all available in Europe and the next forty years would see humanists and poets both translating these classics and adapting them. In the 1540s, the French university setting (and especially — from 1553 on — the Jesuit colleges) became host to a Neo-Latin theatre (in Latin) written by professors such as George Buchanan and Marc Antoine Muret which would leave a profound mark on the members of La Pléiade. From 1550 on, one finds humanist theatre written in French. Prominent figures such as Catherine de' Medici provided financial support for many humanist plays; in 1554, for example, she commissioned a translation of Gian Giorgio Trissino’s La Sofonisba, which was the first tragedy to appear in the French language. The influence of Seneca was particularly strong in humanist tragedy. His plays — which were essentially chamber plays meant to be read for their lyrical passages and rhetorical oratory — brought to many humanist tragedies a concentration on rhetoric and language over dramatic action. Humanist tragedy took two distinct directions: Biblical tragedy: plots taken from the bible — although close in inspiration to the medieval mystery plays, the humanist biblical tragedy reconceived the biblical characters along classical lines, suppressing both comic elements and the presence of God on the stage. The plots often had clear parallels to contemporary political and religious matters and one finds both Protestant and Catholic playwrights. Ancient tragedy: plots taken from mythology or history — they often had clear parallels to contemporary political and religious matters During the height of the civil wars (1570–1580), a third category of militant theatre appeared: Contemporary tragedy: plots taken from recent events Along with their work as translators and adaptors of plays, the humanists also investigated classical theories of dramatic structure, plot, and characterization. Horace was translated in the 1540s, but had been available throughout the Middle Ages. A complete version of Aristotle's Poetics appeared later (first in 1570 in an Italian version), but his ideas had circulated (in an extremely truncated form) as early as the 13th century in Hermann the German's Latin translation of Averroes' Arabic gloss, and other translations of the Poetics had appeared in the first half of the 16th century; also of importance were