Abstract

By focusing on the known details of Laonikos Chalkokondyles’ biography, on his relation to Byzantine historiographical tradition, by comparing his historical work to that of contemporary intellectuals living under the Ottomans as well as those in the west, examining his portrayal of Mehmed II, his adoption of a Herodotean model, the revival of Herodotus in the Renaissance more generally, and the reception of the ᾿Aπόδειξις in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, I argue that Laonikos was writing for an elite circle of Byzantine émigrés and other intellectuals with access to classical Greek in the west, rather than for the post- Byzantine intellectuals associated with the Ottoman court.