This book is a translation and edition of the work written by Spandounes in 1538 and published and edited by C. N. Sathas in Documents inédits relatifs à l'histoire de la Grèce au moyen âge, vol. IX (Paris, 1890). Theodore Spandounes, or Spandugnino, was probably born in Venice and died after 1538. He was sent when young to his great-aunt Mara, widow of Murad II, who was then living in eastern Macedonia, and seems to have visited Istanbul in 1503. At the end of 1508, he was exiled from Venice as a suspected Francophile and was in France from 1509. By 1516, he had returned to Venice.