The Byzantine writer Laonicus Chalcocondyles (c.1430 90) has been described as 'the last Athenian historian'. From a noble Athenian family, he moved to the court of Mistra in the Peloponnese, then ruled by Constantine XI Palaiologos (later the last emperor of Byzantium), and may have been a pupil of Gemistos Plethon. Laonicus' most important work was this 'Apodeixis' or 'setting forth' of the history of the period from 1298 to 1463, during which the Byzantine Empire came under increasing pressure from, and eventually succumbed to, the Ottoman Turks. Laonicus uses the Ancient Greek historians,...