 George of Trebizond’s resentment towards Bessarion was one of the driving forces behind the Comparatio philosophorum Platonis et Aristotelis (around 1458), in which George bitterly attacked Plato, a philosopher for whom the Cardinal’s preference was notorious. In three books George attacked Plato as ignorant, impious and vicious, while celebrating the perfect wisdom, piety and virtue of Aristotle. This kind of work, a comparison of the respective merits of Plato and Aristotle, especially in religious matters, was not uncommon in the Byzantine milieu, and Gemistus Pletho had composed his own comparatio at the time of the Council of Florence: Pletho’s booklet, written in Greek and therefore little read, celebrated the piety of Platonic philosophy in an attempt to expose the frail Aristotelian foundation of Scholasticism. George’s comparatio was by contrast intended to reinforce the role of Aristotle as authority of reference for Christian theology, to the extent of making the Stagirite aware of dogmas such as Trinity and occasionally placing him above even Thomas Aquinas. George’s comparatio had an apocalyptic subtext, made explicit in the final pages of the work, in which the coming of a fourth Plato—the second and the third were respectively Epicurus and Mohammed—is connected to the fall of the Byzantine empire, and characterized as a threat to the Latin West. The unnamed fourth Plato was possibly either Pletho or Bessarion himself.