ABSTRACT
George of Trebizond wrote the Protectio Problematum Aristotelis, his critique of Theodore Gaza’s translation of the Aristotelian Problemata, in Rome in 1456. George’s Protectio was unquestionably a polemical work, meant to discredit Gaza, who was his rival at the papal court, and to condemn his oppressors, most especially Cardinal Bessarion. The Protectio is also an extraordinarily interesting work of scholarship and theorizing on the art of translation. George had one more related general point to make before getting to particular instances of Gaza’s translation. Gaza frequently put into the subjunctive the main verb of the opening question of each problem. George of Trebizond was a Greek emigrant who greatly admired medieval scholasticism. It is not adequately appreciated that up to the mid-Quattrocento his attitude was the common one among Greek intellectuals who had become familiar with Latin culture.
