Maximus Planudes
Maximus Planudes | |
---|---|
Byzantine Empire Ambassador to the Republic of Venice | |
In office 1295–1296 | |
Personal details | |
Born | 1260 Nicomedia, Bithynia (modern-day İzmit, Kocaeli, Turkey) |
Died | 1305 Constantinople, Byzantine Empire (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey) |
Citizenship | Byzantine Empire |
Occupation | Monk, scholar, anthologist, translator, mathematician, grammarian and theologian |
Profession | Ambassador |
Maximus Planudes (
Biography
Maximus Planudes lived during the reigns of the
Planudes possessed a knowledge of Latin remarkable at a time when Rome and Italy were regarded with some hostility by the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire. To this accomplishment he probably owed his selection as one of the ambassadors sent by emperor Andronikos II in 1295–96 to remonstrate with the Venetians for their attack upon the Genoese settlement in Galata near Constantinople. A more important result was that Planudes, especially by his translations, paved the way for the revival of the study of Greek language and literature in western Europe.
He was the author of numerous works, including: a Greek
His numerous translations from the Latin included
It is, however, for his edition of the Greek Anthology that he is best known. This edition, the Anthology of Planudes or Planudean Anthology, is shorter than the Heidelberg text (the Palatine Anthology), and largely overlaps it, but contains 380 epigrams not present in it, normally published with the others, either as a sixteenth book or as an appendix.[2]
J. W. Mackail in his book Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology, has this to add of him:[9]
- Among his works were translations into Greek of Augustine's City of God and Caesar's Gallic War [sic]. The restored Greek Empire of the Palaeologi was then fast dropping to pieces. The Genoese colony of Pera usurped the trade of Constantinople and acted as an independent state; and it brings us very near the modern world to remember that Planudes was the contemporary of Petrarch.
He is recorded as one of the first people to use the word "million".[10]
Notes
References
- ^ Fisher 1991.
- ^ a b Douglas & Cameron 2009.
- ^ "Maximus Planudes (Byzantine scholar and theologian)". Britannica Encyclopedia. 21 July 1998. Retrieved 13 March 2017.
- ^ British Library. Add. MS 19391, f 19v-20.
- ISBN 978-0670093625.
- ISBN 978-3-11-071192-9, superseding the incomplete edition of C. J. Gerhardt, Halle, 1865.
- ^ Daly, L.W. (1946). "The Greek Version of Caesar's Gallic War". Transactions of the American Philological Association. 77: 78–82.
- ^ Heller, H. (1857). "De graeco metaphraste commentariorum Caesaris". Philologus. 12: 107–149.
- ^ Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology by J. W. Mackail
- ^
ISBN 978-0-486-20430-7.
Sources
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Planudes, Maximus". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 21 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- Editions include: Fabricius, Bibliotheca graeca, ed. Harles, xi. 682; theological writings in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, cxlvii; correspondence, ed. M Treu (1890), with a valuable commentary
- Douglas, A. & Cameron, E. (2009). "Anthology". In S. Hornblower & A. Spawforth (eds.). The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press. (Also Oxford Reference Online.)
- Fisher, E. A. (1991). "Planoudes, Maximos". In A. P. Kazhdan (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford University press. (Also Oxford Reference Online.)
- K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897)
- J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (1906), vol. i
External links
- Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article: Ἀνθολογία διαφόρων ἐπιγραμμάτων
- Planudes from Charles Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1867), v. 3, pp. 384–390
- Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology by J. W. Mackail (Project Gutenberg)
- The Greek Anthology, books 1–6, translated by W. R. Paton, with facing Greek text (Loeb Classical Library, 1916)