Maximus Planudes

To this accomplishment he probably owed his selection as one of the ambassadors sent by emperor Andronikos II in 1295–96 to remonstrate with the Venetians for their attack upon the Genoese settlement in Galata near Constantinople.

He was the author of numerous works, including: a Greek grammar in the form of question and answer, like the Erotemata of Manuel Moschopulus, with an appendix on the so-called "Political verse"; a treatise on syntax; a biography of Aesop and a prose version of the fables; scholia on certain Greek authors; two hexameter poems, one a eulogy of Claudius Ptolemaeus— whose Geography was rediscovered by Planudes,[5] who translated it into Latin— the other an account of the sudden change of an ox into a mouse; a treatise on the method of calculating in use amongst the Indians;[6] and scholia to the first two books of the Arithmetic of Diophantus.

Regarding Planudes' work in rediscovering the Geography, an hexameter poem survives titled: "ου σοφωτάτου κυρου Μαξίμου μονάχου του Πλανούδου στίχοι ηρωικοί εις τήν Γεωγραφίαν Πτολεμαίου χρόνοις πολ λοίς άφανισιΜσαν, είτα δέ παρ' αύτοΰ πόνοις πολλοίς εύρεύεΐσαν.

"[14] The summary of the poem by Berggen & Jones (2010) is as follows:"What a great wonder, the way that Ptolemy has brought the whole world into view, just like someone making a map showing just a little city.

But the emperor Andronikos exhorted the bishop of Alexandria, who took great troubles that a certain free-spirited friend of the Byzantines should restore a likeness of the picture worthy of a king."