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Leonardo Bruni published one of his most widely copied translations, Xenophon's pro-monarchical Hiero, shortly before he penned his more famous original works, his Dialogues and Panegyric to the City of Florence. Scholars have traditionally focused on the political ideas present in these original treatises; yet, despite the centrality of political ideas to the Hiero, its temporal proximity to these works, and its enormous popularity (the work exists in 200 fifteenth-century manuscripts), scholars have neglected to offer a full assessment of Bruni's translation in the context of these works. Bruni's translation of Xenophon's Hiero fit into a debate …

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This fascinating new book, Venice, Cita Excelentissima, contains a series of translated excerpts from the diaries of the Venetian patrician Marin Sanudo (1466-1536). Sanudo wrote his vast diaries between 1496 and 1533. As early as Sanudo's own lifetime, historians used the richness and variety of these diaries as an unparalleled evidentiary source for early modern Venice. The depth of the diaries derives from Sanudo's personal access to govern ment records and, perhaps even more, his attention to detail and the wide range of topics that he deemed worthy of record. The importance of the diaries prompted a group of Italian …