Abstract

In 1461 the refugee Byzantine scholar Michael Apostolius, who since the fall of Constantinople had resided chiefly in Crete, paid a visit to his native city. There he copied a MS of Thucydides and brought the copy back with him to Crete, whither two other MSS of that author had already been taken. These few facts underlie and explain the complex relationships of at least ten extant MSS of Thucydides, which were written during the following generation by Apostolius and other scholars in Crete for their private use or more often for sale to their Venetian masters. All are descendants of one of those three original arrivals, or, by contamination, of more than one of them.