Thomas Elyot's
Image of Governance
is an English-language version of the matter of Thomas More's
Utopia
: a tract
de optimo statu reipublicae
, likewise replete with imagined 'dialogues of counsel'; but in an anti-utopian, monarchist perspective, calculated to appeal to Henry VIII. Moreover,
is not imaginary but historical, translated from the late antique Latin
Historia augusta
.
The present book provides critical editions of Elyot's political writings other than the
Governour
, all of which are or incorporate extensive translations of ancient Greek and Latin writings, like the
. In these related 'Dialogues of Counsel', Elyot takes ancient historical cases — Plato's sale into slavery by Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse, for example; or the life of the West Asian emperor Zenobia, a woman under patriarchy; or the advice of the Attic orator Isocrates to King Nicocles of Salamis; or the failed but ambitious late Roman imperiate of Alexander Severus; et cetera — and dramatises them, by means of the sort of Lucianic dialogue that Erasmus had used for the
Praise of Folly
(More too), except in the vernacular, for a relatively broader, more popular English audience.