y is hardly appropriate.
The work incidentally gives a quaint and interesting sketch of the
manners and civilization of England, France and Germany, whose
assistance the Greeks sought to obtain against the Turks. Like that of
other Byzantine writers, Chalcondyles' chronology is defective, and his
adherence to the old Greek geographical nomenclature is a source of
confusion. For his account of earlier events he was able to obtain
information from his father, who was one of the most prominent men in
Athens during the struggles between the Greek and Frankish nobles. His
model is Thucydides (according to Bekker, Herodotus); his language is
tolerably pure and correct, his style simple and clear. The text,
however, is in a very corrupt state.

_Editio princeps_, ed. J.B. Baumbach (1615); in Bonn _Corpus
Scriptorum Hist. Byz._ ed. I. Bekker (1843); Migne, _Patrologia
Graeca_, clix. There is a French translation by Blaise de Vigenere
(1577, later ed. by Artus Thomas with valuable illustrations on
Turkish matters); see also F. Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Athen
im Mittelalter_, ii. (1889); Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, ch. 66; C.
Krumbacher, _Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur_ (1897). There
is a biographical sketch of Laonicus and his brother in Greek by
Antonius Calosynas, a physician of Toledo, who lived in the latter
part of the 16th century (see C. Hopf, _Chroniques greco-romanes_,
1873).

His brother, DEMETRIUS CHALCONDYLES (1424-1511), was born in Athens. In
1447 he migrated to Italy, where Cardinal Bessarion gave him his
patronage. He became famous as a teacher of Greek letters and the
Platonic philosophy; in 1463 he was made professor at Padua, and in 1479
he was summoned by Lorenzo de' Medici to Florence to fill the
professorship vacated by John Argyropoulos. In 1492 he removed to Milan,
where he died in 1511. He was associated with Marsilius Ficinus, Angelus
Politianus, and Theodorus Gaza, in the revival of letters in the western
world. One of his pupils at Florence was the famous John Reuchlin.
Demetrius Chalcondyles published the editio princeps of Homer,
Isocrates, and Suidas, and a Greek grammar (_Erotemata_) in the form of
question and answer.

See H. Hody, _De Graecis illustribus_ (1742); C. Hopf, _Chroniques
greco-romanes_ (1873); E. Legrand, _Bibliographic hellenique_, i.
(1885).

FOOTNOTE:

[1] A shortened form of Chalcocondyles, from [Greek: chalkos],
cop