 The fourth book deals with the problem of the virtue of Plato. Relying on Ps.-Dionysius, Bessarion offers a spiritual interpretation of love—as described in the Symposium and in the Phaedrus—in radical contrast with the sexual one postulated by George. In a different section Bessarion employs Herodotus’s comparative method to justify the common use of women advocated by Plato in the Republic. Additionally, Bessarion defuses George’s millenarian prophecy about the fourth Plato by arguing that the fall of the Greek Empire was due to an unescapable cyclical decline that the adoption of Plato’s doctrines would have forestalled. In the final chapter of the book, Bessarion rebukes George for his hypocrisy, since he praised Plato when he translated the Parmenides and the Laws.