Plethon's Opuscula de historia Graeca and Bruni's Commentarium rerum Graecarum: Rewriting Greek History Between the Byzantine and the Latin Renaissance

The purpose of the paper is twofold. First, it tries to compare Plethon’s Opuscula de historia Graeca, which consist of two texts in the codex Marcianus Graecus 406 that were edited in 1989 by Enrico V. Maltese, to Bruni’s Commentarium rerum Graecarum (1439), a Latin reworking of Xenophon’s Hellenica, which still lacks a critical edition. In particular, this comparison is possible because the two works complement each other from a chronological point of view and are based on the same methodological core; moreover, both probably originated from the meeting between Bruni and Plethon on the occasion of the Council of Ferrara-Florence. Second, this paper intends to shed light on other little-known historical and geographical excerpts contained in Plethon’s autographs by arguing that among Plethon’s works they bear the closest resemblance to the Opuscula de historia Graeca if we consider the way their sources are abridged and reshaped.