Musurus’ Homeric Ode to Plato and his Requests to Pope Leo X

Abstract

This article provides the first philological analysis and interpretation of the ode to Plato written by Marcus Musurus in 1513 in Venice and published as a dedicatory poem in the editio princeps of the works of Plato. Musurus asks pope Leo X to found a Greek academy in Rome and start a crusade against the Ottoman empire to liberate Greece. The article includes the first modern translation of the entire poem since Roscoe (1805).