Planudes

(Πλανούδης), surnamed Maximus, was one of the most learned of the Constantinopolitan monks of the last age of the Greek empire, and was greatly distinguished as a theologian, grammarian, and rhetorician; but his name is now chiefly interesting as that of the compiler of the latest of those collections of minor Greek poems, which were known by the names of Garlands or Anthologies (Στέφανοι, Ἀνθολογίαι). Planudes flourished at Constantinople in the first half of the fourteenth century, under the emperors Andronicus II. and III. Palaeologi. In A. D. 1327 he was sent by Andronicus II. as ambassador to Venice. Nothing more is known of his life with any certainty, except that he was somewhat disposed to the tenets of the Roman Church, which, however, a short imprisonment seems to have induced him to renounce. (See Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. xi. p. 682, and the authorities quoted in Harles's note.) Works Planudes' own compositions

Planudes' works, of which several only exist in MS., are not of sufficient importance to be enumerated individually. They consist of orations and homilies; translations from Latin into Greek of Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, Caesar de Bello Gallico, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Cato's Disticha Moralia, Boethius de Consolatione, St. Augustin de Trinitate and de Civitate Dei, and Donatus's Grammatica Parva ; two grammatical works ; a collection of Aesop's Fables, with a worthless Lift of Aesop ; some arithmetical works, especially Scholia, of no great value, on the first two books of the Arithmetic of Diophantus; a few works on natural history; Commestaries on the Rhetoric of Hermogenes, and on other Greek writers; a poem in forty-seven hexameters, on Claudius Ptolemaeus, and a few other poems; and his Anthology. Further Information

See Fabric. l.c. pp. 682-693, vol. i. p. 641, vol. vi. p. 348; Hoffmann, Lexicon Bibliographicum Script. Graec. s. v.