  In the last years of the Byzantine Empire, philosophical writers tended indeed to identify themselves as either Platonists or Aristotelians, and to emphasize the disagreements existing between the two ancient authorities. This approach was very different from the harmonizing endeavors of the late antique commentators, and it was left as a legacy to Renaissance and early modern Aristotelianism and Platonism. Its roots are to be found in the anti-Aristotelian sentiments of 14th-century authors such as Metochites and Gregoras, but it came into full blossom in the great controversy which started in 1439, when George Gemistos Plethon (c. 1360–1452) published his pamphlet De differentiis, and ground to a halt after the Latin version of Cardinal Bessarion’s (1403–1472) In calumniatorem Platonis was printed thirty years later.