Planudes, Maximus

, a Greek monk of Constantinople, who lived at the end of the thirteenth, and the beginning of the fourteenth century, is the author of a “Life of Æsop,” full of anachronisms, absurdities, and falsehoods and of 149 “Fables;” which, though he published them as Æsop’s, have been suspected to be his own. There is also a collection of Greek epigrams, under the title of “Anthologia,” made by this monk and it is but just to allow him the merit of having preserved many valuable compositions which otherwise would have been lost. His “Anthologia” was published at Florence, 1494, a very rare edition, reprinted in 1600. No particulars are known of Planudes, except that he suffered some persecution on account of his zeal for the Latin church, and, although he wrote a recantation, Bessarion thinks he was not sincere. ²