  Pachymeres’ concern with Plato was not coincidental. If the boom in Aristotelian studies in this period was partly a response to the challenge of Western philosophy and theology, it seems reasonable to think that a similar cause may be found for the rising popularity of Plato, who was much less known than Aristotle in the West. Ever since Late Antiquity Aristotelian logic and natural philosophy had been commonly regarded as propaedeutic to Platonic metaphysics, and the hierarchical relation between the two philosophers was now increasingly stressed, sometimes (as in Nikephoros Gregoras’ Phlorentius) in the context of open criticism of the Aristotelian inclinations of Latin philosophy. Platonic metaphysics was, however, a theologically precarious field, and it is hardly surprising if those who plowed it were not at all times equally outspoken about the fruits of their labor. Still, in the 1260s, George Akropolites willingly admitted that his interpretations of Church Fathers were informed by the divinely inspired Plato, Proclus, Iamblichus and Plotinus; and towards the end of our period George Gemistos Plethon went so far as completely to discard Christianity in favor of Neoplatonic polytheism.