A new history of Byzantium reveals the inner workings of a late antique empire
Isn’t it wild that the Roman Empire lasted until the 1400s, only to finally fall to the Ottoman Empire?But as the Empire fell, a large set of manuscripts were brought by the great Plethon to Cosimo d’Medici. Marsilio Ficino’s translation of Greek classics into Latin—like the complete works of Plato and the Hermetica—helped kindle the European Renaissance as we know it.