Maxime Planude , in Latin Maximus Planudes (born towards 1260 in Nicomédie - 1330), grammairien and Byzantine theologist , lived under the reigns of Michel VIII and Andronic II. Hellénophone of birth, Planude had a knowledge of the Latin remarkable at one time when the Byzantines considered Rome and the Italy with contempt. It is probably for this reason that Andronic II required of him into 1327 to present the remonstrances of the Byzantine Empire to the Vénitiens to have attacked the counter génois of Pera.

Works

By its cross translations of the Greek to Latin and Latin to the Greek, the work of Planude was to play a key part in the transmission of the old languages at the end of the Moyen-âge and to the Renaissance.

Of the Greek to Latin

Among its works, it is advisable to mention:

• a Greek Grammar in the didactic form of dialog (question and answer), on the model of the Epurlluara of Moschopoulos, with an appendix on the “worms policy”;
• a treaty of Syntax;
• a biography of Ésope with a translation in Prose of its Fable S;
• of the annotations ( Scholia ) on certain Greek authors, including the first two books of the “Arithmetic ” of Diophante;
• two poems in Hexameter S: a praise of the astronomer of Ptolémée — of which it redécouvrit in particular the Geography , and a poem on the metamorphosis of a Bull in Mouse;
• a treaty on “Indian calculation” (rééd. by C.J. Gerhardt, Market, 1865).

Of Latin to the Greek

Planude translated into Greek the following works:

• the Dream of Scipion of Cicéron with the comments of Macrobe
• the War of Gaules of Jules César;
• Héroïdes and the Metamorphoses of Ovide;
• the Consolations of philosophy of Boèce,
• and the Of trinitate of Holy Augustin.

These translations, which were useful for the training of the Greek, were very known with the Moyen-âge. However, Planude owes especially its celebrity with the ''''' Greek Anthologie '''''.

The Project Gutenberg E-book of the Public domain '' Choix of Epigrams drawn from the Greek Anthology of John William Mackail, gives on Planude this complementary indication:

Its work includes/understands the translation in Greek of “ the City of God ” of Saint Augustin and the Guerre of Gaules of Jules César. It was in the time when the empire hellenistic, restored by the dynasty of the Paleologists, started to crumble. The colony gênoise of Pera diverted the trade of Constantinople and started to behave like an independent state; for little which one remembers that Planude was a contemporary of Pétrarque, one was at the dawn of modern times.

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