Demetrios Chalkokondyles was born in Athens in 1423 to one of the noblest Athenian families and was the cousin of the chronicler of the fall of Constantinople, Laonicus Chalcocondyles. He soon moved to the Peloponnese, with his Athenian family who had migrated after its persecution by the Florentinedukes. He migrated to Italy in 1447 and arrived at Rome in 1449 where Cardinal Bessarion became his patron. He became the student of Theodorus Gaza and later gained the patronage of Lorenzo de Medici, serving as a tutor to his sons. Afterwards Chalkokondyles lived the rest of his life in Italy, as a teacher of Greek and philosophy. One of Chalkokondyles' Italian pupils described his lectures at Perugia, where he taught in 1450: Among his pupils were Janus Lascaris, Poliziano, Leo X, Castiglione, Giglio Gregorio Giraldi, Stefano Negri, and Giovanni Maria Cattaneo. In 1463 Chalkokondyles was made professor at Padua, and later, at Francesco Philelpho's suggestion, in 1479 he took over the place of Ioannis Argyropoulos, as the head of the Greek Literature department and was summoned by Lorenzo de Medici to Florence. Chalkokondyles composed several orations and treatises calling for the liberation of his homelandGreece from what he called “the abominable, monstrous, and impious barbarian Turks.” In 1463 Chalkokondyles called on Venice and "all of the Latins" to aid the Greeks against the Ottomans, he identified this as an overdue debt and reminded the Latins how the Byzantine Greeks once came to Italy’s aid against the Goths in the Gothic Wars : It was during his tenure at the Studium in Florence that Chalkokondyles edited Homer for publication, which, dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici, is his major accomplishment. He assisted Marsilio Ficino with his Latin translation of Plato. During his tenure at Florence, the German classical scholarJohannes Reuchlin was one of his pupils. Chalkokondyles married in 1484 at the age of sixty-one and fathered ten children. Finally, invited by Ludovico Sforza, he moved to Milan, where he taught until he died.
Work
He wrote in Ancient Greek the grammar handbook "Summarized Questions on the EightParts of Speech With Some Rules". He translated Galen's Anatomy into Latin. As a scholar, Chalkokondyles published the editio princeps of Homer, Isocrates and the ByzantineSuda lexicon.
, 1488, editio princeps of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, edited by Bernardus Nerlius and Chalkokondyles, appeared in Florence, not before 13 January 1489, in two folio volumes. It was the first Greek book to be printed in Florence. The Greek type used to print the 1488–1489 Homer is believed to have been cast by the CretanDemetrius Damilas from the type that he had used to print Constantine Lascaris’ Erotemata, the first book to be printed entirely in Greek, based upon the hand of Damilas’s fellow scribe Michael Apostolis.
