Introduction: A buffalo's-eye view

EIKASMOS Quaderni Bolognesi di Filologia Classica ! Studi Online 4 !"#!"$%&$ #'#()&$ a cura di / edited by ENRICO EMANUELE PRODI P!TRON EDITORE Bologna 2022 Copyright: © i rispettivi autori 2022 Curatela e materiali introduttivi: © Enrico Emanuele Prodi 2022 CC-BY-NC-ND. I diritti di traduzione e adattamento, totale o parziale, con qualsiasi mezzo, sono riservati per tutti i Paesi. Prima edizione, marzo 2022 Il convegno da cui ha tratto origine il presente volume ! stato finanziato dal programma di ricerca e innovazione dellíUnione Europea ìHorizon 2020î tramite una borsa Marie Skłodowska-Curie (progetto ìASAGIPî, Grant Agreement n° 708556). P"TRON Editore Via Badini, 12 Quarto Inferiore 40057 Granarolo dellíEmilia (BO) Tel. (+39) 051.767003 Fax (+39) 051.768252 E-mail: [email protected] Sito: http://www.patroneditore.com Il catalogo generale ! visibile nel sito web. Sono possibili ricerche per autore, titolo, materia e collana. Per ogni volume ! presente il sommario, per le novit# la copertina dellíopera e una breve descrizione del contenuto. ISBN: 978-88-555-8001-4. Frontespizio: Licofrone e ëIsaccoí Tzetze, da un manoscritto del commento allíAlessandra, Universit$tsbibliothek Heidelberg, Palatinus Graecus 18, f. 96v. Immagine di dominio pubblico da https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpgraec18_v2/0196 %&'( &)*+,)Ú- ›- &./.*'0- .Ã1'0- 2.Ú 1)34'5678'*-, 'Ã9:/;- <=>6)?4>+. 1.0- @A)1A*2.0- <6)?4.*-, <4 .µ+&)6 B C/D,)*. <2 37'(- C4.16E3)*. C//F <4 <6)?4.*- @A)1A*2.0- 1'G1' 1.4G4 9)*21E'4Ö (Hist. XII 398, 65-68) Table of contents Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Introduction: A buffaloís-eye view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix TOMMASO BRACCINI ñ A neglected manuscript of Tzetzesí Allegories from the Verse-chronicle: First remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 AGLAE PIZZONE ñ Tzetzes and the prokatastasis: A tale of people, manuscripts, and performances . . 19 NUNZIO BIANCHI ñ Il figlio di capro e il libro sfregiato. Versi inediti di Tzetzes (Laur. Conv. soppr. 627, ff. 20v-21r) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 YULIA MANTOVA ñ Tzetzesí scholia to the Histories as a source on the socio-cultural use of invective in Byzantium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 MARC LAUXTERMANN ñ Buffaloes and bastards: Tzetzes on metre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 GIULIA GERBI ñ Epistulae ad exercitationem accommodatae: Notes on some fictional epistles by John Tzetzes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 JES!S MU"OZ MURCILLO ñ John Tzetzes on ekphrasis and the art of knowledge transfer . . . . . . . . . 157 VALERIA F. LOVATO ñ From contentious hero to bone of contention: The reception of Thersites by John Tzetzes and Eustathios of Thessaloniki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 CORINNE JOUANNO ñ LíAlexandre de Tzetz!s : entre culture savante et culture populaire . . . . . . . . 211 UGO MONDINI ñ John of all trades: The "#$%&'()*+, -+#*. and Tzetzesí ëdidacticí programme . . 237 ALBERTO RAVANI ñ «And wishes also a paraphrase of Homerís verses»: Structure and composition of the Prolegomena to the Allegories of the Iliad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 FREDERICK LAURITZEN ñ Metapoiesis versus allegory: Psellos and Tzetzes on Iliad IV 1-4 . . . . . . . 291 ANNA NOVOKHATKO ñ /0%Ï 123 1(44*%53 1&6153 4&723: myth and criticism in Tzetzes . . . . . 303 JACOPO CAVARZERAN ñ 8+90%(: ;Ã%#/<=,.: Tzetze commenta Euripide? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 JULI#N B$RTOLA ñ Tzetzesí verse scholia on Thucydides and Herodotus: A survey with new evidence from Laur. Plut. 70,3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 THOMAS R.P. COWARD ñ Towards a new edition of Tzetzesí Commentary on Lycophron . . . . . . . . 359 CHIARA DíAGOSTINI ñ Borders to cross the bounds: John Tzetzes and Ptolemyís Geography in twelfthcentury Byzantium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 PHILIP RANCE ñ Tzetzes and the mechanographoi: The reception of Late Antique scientific texts in Byzantium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 Abbreviations Abbreviations of journal titles follow «LíAnn>e Philologique». Those of the names of ancient authors and the titles of their works follow LSJ9, with such exceptions as «Eikasmos» house style dictates; any such exceptions ought to be self-explanatory. Tzetzesí writings are abbreviated as follows: Alleg. Il. schol. Alleg. Il. Allegories of the Iliad: J.-Fr. Boissonade, Tzetzae Allegoriae Iliadis. Accedunt Pselli allegoriae, Lutetiae 1851 P. Matranga, Anecdota Graeca e mss. bibliothecis Vaticana, Angelica, Barberiniana, Vallicelliana, Medicea, Vindobonensi deprompta, II, Romae 1850, 599618, 749 Alleg. Od. Allegories of the Odyssey: H. Hunger, Johannes Tzetzes, Allegorien zur Odyssee, Buch 1-12, «ByzZ» XLIX (1956) 249-310; Id., Johannes Tzetzes, Allegorien zur Odyssee, Buch 13-24, «ByzZ» XLVIII (1955) 4-48. Carm. Il. Little-Big Iliad (Carmina Iliaca): P.A.M. Leone, Ioannis Tzetzae Carmina Iliaca, Catania 1995 schol. Carm. Il. ibid. 102-243 De metr. On Metres: J.A. Cramer, Anecdota Graeca e codd. manuscriptis Bibliothecarum Oxoniensium, III, Oxford 1836, 302-333 Diff. poet. On the Differences between Poets: W.J.W. Koster, Scholia in Aristophanem, IA: Prolegomena de comoedia, Groningen 1975, 84-94 Ep. Letters: P.A.M. Leone, Ioannis Tzetzae Epistulae, Leipzig 1972 schol. Ep. Exeg. Il. schol. Exeg. Il. Hist. schol. Hist. ibid. 158-174 Exegesis of the Iliad: M. Papathomopoulos, ?@A),4#. -5*33&9 B%0''01#$&C 1&C DEF1E&9 (G. 1H3 I'A%&9 -+#*=0, JKL30# 2007 ibid. 417-460 Histories (Chiliads): P.A.M. Leone, Ioannis Tzetzae Historiae, Galatina 20072 ibid. 529-569 Iamb. Iambs: P.L.M. Leone, Ioannis Tzetzae iambi, «RSBN» n.s. VI-VII (1969-1970) 127-156 Prol. com. Introduction to Comedy: W.J.W. Koster, Scholia in Aristophanem, IA: Prolegomena de comoedia, Groningen 1975, 22-38 viii S. Lucia Life of St. Lucy: G. Sola, Ioannis Tzetzis hypomnema et S. Methodii patriarchae canon in S. Luciam (2), «Roma e líOriente» XV (1918) 48-53; (3), XVI (1918) 106115; (4), XVII (1919) 90-105 schol. Ar. Nub. Scholia to Aristophanesí Clouds: D. Holwerda, Jo. Tzetzae commentarii in Aristophanem, II: Commentarium in Nubes, Groningen-Amsterdam 1960 schol. Ar. Plut. Scholia to Aristophanesí Plutus: L. Massa Positano, Jo. Tzetzae commentarii in Aristophanem, fasc. I: Prolegomena et commentarium in Plutum, Groningen 1960 schol. Ar. Ran. Scholia to Aristophanesí Frogs: W.J.W. Koster, Jo. Tzetzae commentarii in Aristophanem, III: Commentarium in Ranas et in Aves, argumentum Equitum, Groningen 1962 schol. Hermog. Scholia to Hermogenes: J.A. Cramer, Anecdota Graeca e codd. manuscriptis Bibliothecarum Oxoniensium, IV, Oxford 1837, 1-148 schol. Hes. Op. Scholia to Hesiodís Works and Days: Th. Gaisford, Poetae Graeci minores, III: Scholia ad Hesiodum, Oxonii 1820 schol. Lyc. Scholia to Lycophron: E. Scheer, Lycophronis Alexandra, II: Scholia, Berolini 1908 schol. Opp. Scholia to Oppian: U. Cats Bussemaker, Scholia et paraphrases in Nicandrum et Oppianum, Paris 1849, 260-375 Theog. Theogony: P.A.M. Leone, Ioannis Tzetzae Theogonia, Lecce 2019 Trag. poes. On Tragic Poetry: G. Pace, Giovanni Tzetzes. La poesia tragica, Napoli 20112 For a complete list of Tzetzesí works and their respective editions see I.C. Nesseris, M /0#=(<0 41,3 N5341031#3&6/&+, $01* 1&3 12& 0#O30, diss. Ioannina 2014, II, 515-540. Introduction: A buffaloís-eye view «Tzetzes, Ioannes: classical scholar in twelfth-century Constantinople, known for his acerbic wit and propensity for vulgar insults. He wrote commentaries on many ancient texts, as well as letters and allegorical works. He tried hard to make himself seem like a thoroughly unpleasant person, and succeeded»1. For most Byzantinists and Classicists outside a handful of Tzetzes groupies2, this tongue-in-cheek glossary entry in Antony Kaldellisí Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities more or less sums up the received wisdom about John Tzetzes (early 1110safter 1180)3. If anything, it errs ñ ironically ñ on the side of seriousness: it leaves out the ridicule. «That lovable buffoon John Tzetzes»4 easily ends up being the butt of every joke. Standard reference works on Byzantine scholarship ñ and the undergraduates who dutifully learn them for their exams ñ relate his claim to be naturally fragrant in spite of ìnot even taking baths except perhaps two or three times a yearî (schol. Hes. Op. 412 Gaisford)5, or to have extended a scholion ìso as to fill the re1 A. Kaldellis, A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from Historyís Most Orthodox Empire, Oxford 2017, 227. 2 I borrow the phrase from Aglae Pizzone. I appreciate that serious Tzetzes scholars may not identify with this label; I am no serious Tzetzes scholar myself, so I shall use it nonetheless. 3 The standard treatments of Tzetzesí life remain G. Hart, De Tzetzarum nomine vitis scriptis, Lipsiae 1880; H. Giske, De Ioannis Tzetzae scriptis ac vita, Rostochii 1881; C. Wendel, Tzetzes. 1) Johannes, in RE VIIA/2 (1948) 1959-2010. New evidence confirming the received wisdom that he died around 1180 is published by A. Pizzone, Saturno contro sul Mare di Ismaro. Una nuova fonte per lí(auto)biografia di Tzetze, in A. Capra-S. Martinelli Tempesta-C. Nobili (edd.), Philoxenia. Viaggi e viaggiatori nella Grecia di ieri e di oggi, Milano-Udine 2020, 75-94 (ìyouthfulî verses concerning an event that occurred on 8th November 1131, and two autograph notes in which he relates being in his seventieth year). For an assessment of Tzetzesí works and their importance, after Wendel, o.c. see H. Hunger, Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner, II, M!nchen 1978, 59-63; N.G. Wilson, Scholars of Byzantium, London 19962, 190-196; F. Pontani, Scholarship in the Byzantine Empire (529-1453), in F. Montanari (ed.), History of Ancient Greek Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Byzantine Age, Leiden-Boston 2020, 373-529: 452-459 (revised ed. of F. Montanari-S. Matthaios-A. Rengakos (edd.), Brillís Companion to Ancient Greek Scholarship, I, Brill 2015, 298-455: 378-385); more extensively, I.C. Nesseris, " #$%&'($ )*+, -.,)*$,*%,/0#/1+ 2$*3 */, 12/ $%4,$, diss. Ioannina 2014, I, 158-197 (discussion) and II, 515-540 (complete list of his works, with references). 4 M.L. West, Hesiod. Works & Days, Oxford 1978, 69. 5 Th. Gaisford, Poetae Graeci minores, III: Scholia ad Hesiodum, Oxonii 1820, 220: û,%/% &Ó 2$Ú 56.73*., 82 *9, ).73*., ¿)7:, 5#/#,;/<)%,, ·)#'6 ¡ ='>?6$)*/@ A1;B$,&6/, x PRODI maining unwritten paper of this pageî (schol. Ar. Plut. 677b Massa Positano)6. One scholar might casually mention unam ex eis prolixis querelis, quae ei propriae sunt [Ö] in qua varias res, quae eius bilem moverunt, amplectitur7, another will call him «pi! rissoso che polemico»8; his most prolific twentieth-century editor evokes «quella sicurezza mista a vuota iattanza, prerogativa del sempre accigliato e scontroso Tzetzes»9. Even a sympathetic discussion will nod to his oversized authorial persona: «Tzetzes is not a commentator who believes in keeping a low profile»10 ñ to the extent that the lack of such an oversized authorial persona can be taken to speak against Tzetzesí authorship of a text11. While recognizing some of his merits, one influential reference work speaks of his «limited talents and unattractive personality» and «an extremely fluent pen and no desire to hide his cantankerous nature behind a wall of reserve»; «vain, loquacious and quarrelsome [Ö] he was far from being the expert scholar whose contributions to his subject excuse personal foibles»12. 1;C'% *Ù, D$2'&>,$E 2$Ú F7G, &Ó #/1132%@ *%@ &%+#()*+)',, ›@ /Ã 2'H6+7;,/%@ 5647$)% 2$Ú #'6%H6(/<)% *Ï 8,*>@, 2$( */% C' 7+&Ó 1/<*6/G@ 2'H6+7;,/%@, 'I 7J #/< 2$*K 8,%$<*Ù, 2$Ú LM 2$Ú CM. See West, l.c. (though he mistranslates &%+#()*+)',); Wilson, o.c. 191. One might compare Alleg. Il. prol. 729; Hist. III 70, 182-184. 6 L. Massa Positano, Jo. Tzetzae commentarii in Aristophanem, I: Prolegomena et commentarium in Plutum, Groningen 1960, 156: µ,$ *Ù, Õ#/1'%#>7',/, 5C6$?N H36*+, *N@ *O&' )'1(&/@ 5,$#1+64)$%7',. He was a serial offender, cf. schol. Ar. Plut. 833b /Ã2 P, &Ó /Ã *$Q*$ ,Q, #$6',;C6$?/,, 'I 7: R46., SC6$?/, 2%,&<,'0/,*$ *Ù, H36*+, 5#/1'%?TN,$% &%Ï *Ù 7: &'G)T$% *Ù *O&' H.6(/, )H/1(.,, ìI would not add this did I not see that the page risks being left blank since this passage does not require scholiaî; also Hist. XIII 496, 611-668, filled in with a biography of Homer because ìthere is room on the pageî, *>#/@ 8)*Ú H36*/< (v. 611; but see p. xxiii and n. 77 below). In his defence, he may have been paid by the page, cf. Hist. IX 264, 271-290 with A. Rhoby, Ioannes Tzetzes als Auftragsdichter, «GLB» XV (2010) 155-170: 163-165 on the composition of the Allegories of the Iliad. Elsewhere he complains of a lack of paper (schol. Ar. Ran. 843a Koster; cf. the end of Ep. 6, which however is surely ironical, as remarked by I. Grigoriadis, U.3,,+@ VW;*W+@. X#%)*/1$(, ATJ,$ 2011, 275 n. 48), or he notes the need to economise on it and be more concise (e.g. Hist. V 28, 824-825; VI 50, 382-393; 79, 798-799; X 332, 450-457). 7 W.J.W. Koster, Jo. Tzetzae commentarii in Aristophanem, III: Commentarium in Ranas et in Aves, argumentum Equitum, Groningen-Amsterdam 1962, 934. 8 P. Cesaretti, Allegoristi di Omero a Bisanzio. Ricerche ermeneutiche (XI-XII secolo), Milano 1991, 132. 9 P.L.M. Leone, Significato e limiti della revisione delle Historiae di Giovanni Tzetzes, «Aevum» XXXVII (1963) 239-248: 239. 10 F. Budelmann, Classical commentary in Byzantium: John Tzetzes on ancient Greek literature, in R.K. Gibson-Chr. Shuttleworth Kraus (edd.), The Classical Commentary: History, Practices, Theory, Leiden-Boston-KYln 2002, 141-169: 143. 11 The Timarion: «I doubt that vain man could have hidden his light under the bushel of anonymity», B. Baldwin, Timarion, Detroit 1984, 36. 12 Wilson, o.c. 190-191. Introduction xi «Vain» as he was, Tzetzes had a higher opinion of himself. Time and again he explicitly ascribes to his works a slew of positive qualities, and opposite, negative qualities to those of his competitors13. He boasts of his prodigious memory, which deputizes for a library when he is without books (Alleg. Il. XV 87-89: "#$Ú %&%'&$()*+ ,-. / *01-'2 34,5670&), and of his equally prodigious speed and accuracy when writing from memory, which allows him to write as quickly as lightning, more quickly than if he were copying someone elseís book (Hist. VIII 176, 173-181; X 329, 357-361; XII 397, 3-6)14. In the Allegories of the Iliad (prol. 480-487) he claims that his poem can stand in for Homer, Stesichorus, Euripides, Lycophron, Colluthus, Lesches, Dictys, Triphiodorus, and Quintus of Smyrna in one go and still provide as much detail as them in a conveniently compact format, ìso that everyone who wishes, with minimum effort, / may seem to the masses to have read whole librariesî15. In the Theogony he only provides a pr8cis of divine genealogies, but he informs his patron that, if she wanted a more comprehensive work, he could make a superlative job of it (vv. 27-33)16: *$#96:; 3$'#+.<30.$7 *-Ú '=,; 9-..+>?@ ›A $ÃBí C7 D>-7 E*-3Ù7 À#+.$& *-Ú F$4>-G$&, H.1=0A *-Ú I>?$B$&, J73?#-5$& *-Ú KG7$& I boast very intrepidly and frankly I declare that even if there were a hundred Homers and Musaeuses, Orpheuses and Antimachuses, Linuses and Hesiods, See M. Savio, Screditare per valorizzare. Giovanni Tzetze, le sue fonti, i committenti e la concorrenza, Roma 2020, whose monograph draws its title from this recurrent practice. For examples of Tzetzes «discrediting» competitors see the papers by Aglae Pizzone and Frederick Lauritzen in this volume; on the positive qualities which he sees in his own work, that by Ugo Mondini. 14 On the importance of memory to Tzetzesí work, with an emphasis on the Chiliads, see A. Pizzone, The Historiai of John Tzetzes: A Byzantine ëbook of memoryí?, «BMGS» XLI (2017) 182207, esp. 190-200. 15 Alleg. Il. prol. 485-486: Z#.@ #[@ ¡ L/<1>7',/@ 8, #>,\ L6$H<*3*\ / 5,'C,.2;,$% */G@ #/11/G@ &/2O L%L1%/TJ2$@, transl. A.J. Goldwyn-D. Kokkini, John Tzetzes. Allegories of the Iliad, Cambridge MA-London 2015, 37 (adapted). On the prolegomena to the Allegories, see the chapter by Alberto Ravani in this volume. Needless to say, by Tzetzesí time Leschesí Little Iliad and the poems of Stesichorus had been lost for the best part of a millennium, but he had limited access through the indirect tradition, and he incorporated fr. 9 Bernab] of the Little Iliad in the Little-Big Iliad, twice (III 720 = 773, cf. schol. 720, p. 242 Leone). 16 On this and the previous passage see Savio, o.c. 25-28, 123-125, and Anna Novokhatkoís contribution to this volume, pp. 312-313. On the dynamics of patronage in the Theogony see Rhoby, Auftragsdichter cit. 166-169. 13 xii PRODI *-Ú 96730A L''$& 9$&+3-Ú *-Ú (0$,$7$,.61$&, *.0G33$7 C7 M,.-N-7 "#$O 3Ï 90.Ú 3$P3;7 9673-. Q''í $ÃBí C7 D>-7 $R (0$Ú *-Ú •.;0A "*0G7$&, 3Ù ,=7$A S>54>-7 -Õ3T7 ·>90. ",U B&B6V-&. 30 and every other poet and composer of theogonies, they wouldnít have written better than me all about these matters; not even if those very gods and heroes were to hand could they instruct you on their genealogies like I. In the passage of the Histories that gives the present volume its title, he extols ìthe Tzetzean researches, in which the truth comes running out of chaosî (Hist. XII 398, 66-67). More precisely, that entire Historia (XII 398, 29-118) acknowledges and corrects a past mistake committed when he had trusted a consensus instead of researching the matter himself, as he has now done. In presenting the situation in this way, Tzetzes dilutes the blame for his mistake, which was caused by others and was shared with everyone (3$GA 9W>&, v. 29), and associates himself instead with finding out the truth in his own unique way, with ìTzetzean researchesî (66, 68) and ìinescapable audits in the Tzetzean mannerî ("7 Q'-()3$&A '$,&>#$GA *-Ú X:03:&*T& 3T& 3.<9;&, 118). He deploys a similar strategy of turning a past liability into a present asset when he deplores his youthful penchant for ëuntechnicalí iambs, i.e. the Byzantine dodecasyllable which treats the vowels - & 4 as indifferently long or short (B?5.$7$&), contrary to the norms of classical verse17. The forthright denunciation of his former error serves to distance the present Tzetzes from his past ignorance and high-light his acquisition of the correct knowledge, in contrast not only to his younger self but also to virtually all his contemporaries. It also underscores his parrhesia, from whose scourge he does not exempt even himself18. Another noteworthy trait of the Historia just cited is the insistent self-naming (XII 398, tit. and vv. 66, 68, 88, 94, 118). In fact, Tzetzesí name, like his «cantankerous nature», is almost a watermark that shows through every page of his úuvre. In the works that have been incorporated into the TLG (and many have not), his name occurs 256 times, not counting the adjective 3:03:&*<A (5) with the adverb 3:03:&*TA (1) and the comparative 3:03:&*Y30.$7 (4). Nowhere is this more evident than in the Histories, where he names himself 105 times in the verses, five in the titles, See the chapter by Marc Lauxtermann in this volume, with references. On Tzetzean parrhesia see Savio, o.c. 35-38; also ibid. 47-49, on Tzetzesí emphatic correction of another previous howler in the second redaction of the Introduction to Comedy (W.J.W. Koster, Scholia in Aristophanem IA: Prolegomena de comoedia, Groningen 1975, 33-34). 17 18 Introduction xiii and 28 in the scholia19. Active as he was on a free market of education, without stable patronage or the income granted by an established post, he had to engage in selfpromotion on an industrial scale20 ñ whence the distaste he elicited from nineteenthand twentieth-century Northern European gentlemen-scholars with their very different notions of academic decorum. What he asserts with self-praise or through contrast with scholarly competitors (ancient or modern), he also sometimes underscores through comparison with great men of the past, especially poets. In the opening section of the Exegesis of the Iliad he construes a pointedly Tzetzes-like Homer: a poverty-stricken but determined educator who had to keep his poems on loose sheets of paper, in a transparent strategy of alignment between the Poet and himself (Exeg. Il. pp. 56, 68-69 Papathomopoulos)21. In the Allegories of the Iliad and in the Histories he claims a detailed physical resemblance with the hero Palamedes and with Cato the Elder ñ although he has to admit to not sharing their peaceable character (Alleg. Il. prol. 724-739; Hist. III 70, 173-191). The comparison with Palamedes aligns him with a supremely clever hero ñ the alleged inventor of the alphabet22 ñ who was put to death on false pretexts by an envious schemer23. In the Z=7$A J.&>3$167$4A that accompanies the second redaction of the Commentary to Aristophanes, he alleges a chronological connexion: See P.A.M. Leone, Ioannis Tzetzae Historiae, Galatina 20072, 590. I only count occurrences of Tzetzesí name, not self-references which omit the name; some are included (between brackets) in Leone, l.c. On Tzetzesí self-naming see also Budelmann, o.c. 150-151; Savio, o.c. 81-86. 20 On the socio-economical aspect of Tzetzesí self-promotion (which earlier scholarship had tended rather to view through a psychological, not to say psychiatric, lens) see P.A. Agapitos, John Tzetzes and the blemish examiners: A Byzantine teacher on schedography, everyday language and writerly disposition, «MEG» XVII (2017) 1-57; Savio, o.c. 1-86; and already Budelmann, o.c. 164-167. On Tzetzes as a teacher see Nesseris, o.c. I, 165-197; on the other side of his activity, the «professional poet», see Rhoby, Auftragsdichter cit. 21 Cf. Alleg. Il. XVI 2-6, where Tzetzes compares his new patron Constantine Kotertzes to Pisistratus, who had funded the publication of Homerís poems (Exeg. Il. pp. 68-69 Papathomopoulos). See E. Cullhed, The blind bard and ëIí: Homeric biography and authorial personas in the twelfth century, «BMGS» XXXVIII (2014) 49-67: 58-67; Savio, o.c. 30-33; from a different point of view, see T. Braccini, Riscrivere líepica: Giovanni Tzetze di fronte al ciclo troiano, «CentoPagine» V (2011) 4357: 45-47; C. DíAgostini-A. Pizzone, Clawing rhetoric back: Humor and polemic in Tzetzesí hexameters on the Historiai, «Parekbolai» XI (2021) 123-158: 133-135. Hist. XIII 496, 611-668 is relevant, too: see A. Pizzone, The autobiographical subject in Tzetzesí Chiliades: An analysis of its components, in C. Messis-M. Mullett-I. Nilsson (edd.), Storytelling in Byzantium: Narratological Approaches to Byzantine Texts and Images, Uppsala 2018, 287-304: 290-291. 22 So people said, at least; but subsequent ìTzetzean researchesî proved otherwise. See Hist. XII 398, 29-118 just discussed on p. xii. 23 See V.F. Lovato, Portrait de h!ros, portrait dí!rudit : Jean Tzetz"s et la tradition des eikonismoi, «MEG» XVII (2017) 137-153, esp. 147-148. 19 xiv PRODI like Aristophanes and like Heracles, he is ìborn on the fourthî, and accordingly ìnot only toiling for others, but for many, and thanklesslyî (Prol. com. XXXIb)24. In each of these cases, Tzetzes sets up an implicit comparison between himself and a great intellectual of the past, playing on one facet or another of the complex identity he takes on: typically two such facets together, one illustrating his merits, the other his material hardship or lack of recognition25. Nor was his claim to an epic status of sorts limited to his exegetical works, or to extrinsic similarities like physical appearance or date of birth. An example are his misadventures with that latter-day Potiphar the doux Isaac, eparch of Beroia, and his wife, which he repeatedly inscribes into the Little-Big Iliad (II 137-162; III 284-290, 620-625, 702, 753-758)26. There, too, he is arguably less becoming side-tracked by an obsessive grievance than giving heroic status ñ qua matter worthy of a Homeric parekbasis ñ to a defining moment in his life27. In the hexameter preface of the Commentary to Hermogenes he even imagines a Hesiod-like Dichterweihe, with the Muse of Helicon instructing him qua her interpreter (F$&>6;7 Õ9$1[3$.) to quit the lofty peaks of epic exegesis for the grassy vales of a prose author28. Koster, Prolegomena cit. 145: &%Ù )24#*/,*'@ $Ã*Ù, A6%)*4,<7>@ *' 2$Ú A7'%^($@ _1'C/, $Ã*Ù, [scil. Aristophanes] 2$*Ï *:, #$6/%7($, C',,+TN,$% *'*63&% 2$Ú S11/%@ #/,'G,, ›@ 82'G,/@ ¡ `6$21N@ 2$Ú ¡ VW;*W+@, 7Ï *:, 51JT'%$,, *'*63&% C',,+T;,*'@ 2$Ú S11/%@ /Ã 7>,/, #/,/Q,*'@, 511Ï #/11/G@ 2$Ú 5H$6%)*/07',/%. The life of toil of those born on the fourth of the month, like Heracles, is proverbial (Zenob. VI 7 Schneidewin-van Leutsch, Hesych. * 613 HansenCunningham, Phot. * 190 Theodoridis, etc.). Tzetzes also styles himself as ìborn on the fourthî in Ep. 87 (*'*63&% &Ó, ›@ _/%2', C',,+T'Ú@ S11/%@ #/,9) with Hist. XII 417, 503-507: see B. van den Berg, Playwright, satirist, Atticist: The reception of Aristophanes in 12th-century Byzantium, in P. MarciniakI. Nilsson (edd.), Satire in the Middle Byzantine Period: The Golden Age of Laughter?, Leiden 2021, 227-253: 248; DíAgostini-Pizzone, o.c. 147-148; and Aglae Pizzoneís chapter in this volume, p. 24. 25 On Tzetzesí «rhetoric of poverty» see Cullhed, Blind cit. 57-61 (borrowing the label from R. Beaton, The rhetoric of poverty: the lives and opinions of Theodore Prodromos, «BMGS» XI (1987) 1-28), with the important qualifications made by Savio, o.c. 32-38, 58-66. 26 For the story cf. also schol. Exeg. Il. 5,20 p. 421 Papathomopoulos; schol. Carm. Il. III 284, p. 224 Leone; and the not-yet-fully-edited Commentary to Porphyryís Isagoge (the relevant passage is published by E. Cullhed, Diving for pearls and Tzetzesí death, «ByzZ» CVIII (2015) 53-62: 57-58). See T. Braccini, Erudita invenzione: riflessioni sulla Piccola Grande Iliade di Giovanni Tzetze, «IFilol Class» IX (2009-2010) 153-173: 168-169. 27 See schol. Carm. Il. II 137, p. 178 Leone *Ù )HN7$ 8#'%)/&%$2>,, a 2$Ú #$6;2L$)%@ 2$Ú 8#;,T')%@ 2$1'G*$% 2$Ú 5#/)*6/?J. Characteristically, the first of these digressions is explicitly introduced as paradigmatic (the second may be the finest piece of humour in the entire Tzetzic corpus). It need not be a coincidence ñ although Tzetzes does not explicitly make the connexion ñ that one of the most illustrious Iliadic models for such digressions is Glaucusí tale about Bellerophon (VI 152202), who is also the mythical paradigm for the events Tzetzes claims to have experienced. 28 The text is preserved by Voss. gr. Q1, f. 211v, ed. pr. K.A. de Meyier, Codices Vossiani Graeci, Lugduni Batavorum 1955, 93; an improved text and an English translation in A. Pizzone, Self24 Introduction xv But Tzetzes was not Tzetzesí only admirer. Think of that treasure trove of Greek poetry and scholarship, Ambr. C 222 inf. The manuscript, copied shortly after Tzetzesí death, «overflows with Tzetzean material»; the exemplar must have been Tzetzesí autograph or a very faithful copy of it, and the manuscriptís first owner was clearly fond of him: #-*-.?- / ¿B<A >$4 X:=3:+ (f. 70r), #-*-.?- / ¡B<A >$4 *-'Ó X:=3:+ (f. 78r)29. Tzetzes was not widely acknowledged by his more notable contemporaries: the only mentions known to the TLG are in Gregory of Corinthís commentary to Hermogenes30, which first references the ìsilly little versesî of Tzetzesí commentary (1'4-.$>3&5&B?$&A : I 3, p. 1098 Walz) but then quotes it three times without opprobrium, including an extensive historia in dodecasyllables (V 46, p. 1186 Walz)31. Xhat philological dreadnought Eustathios of Thessalonike was not above pinching material from him without attribution32. Tzetzes himself complained about plagiarism on several occasions33, and he has been vindicated by the discovery in Laur. Plut. 32,3, dating to the mid- or late twelfth century, of uncredited extracts from the Exegesis of the Iliad, which was written in or not long after 1138 ñ at most a few decades earlier34. authorization and strategies of autography in John Tzetzes: The Logismoi rediscovered, «GRBS» LX (2020) 650-688: 657-658. The model is Hes. Th. 22-34; I wonder whether the exegeteís shift from epic to a rhetorical manual in prose may be construed as mirroring Hesiodís own shift from the heights of the Theogony to the (notionally) practical agricultural instruction of the Works and Days. 29 For all these see C.M. Mazzucchi, Ambrosianus C 222 inf. (Graecus 886): Il codice e il suo autore, II: Líautore, «Aevum» LXXVIII (2004) 411-440: 420. 30 Here cited from Chr. Walz, Rhetores Graeci, VII/2, Stutgartiae-Tubingae 1834. Gregoryís citations of Tzetzes are listed and discussed in A. Kominis, Gregorio Pardos metropolita di Corinto e la sua opera, Roma-Atene 1960, 29-30. 31 Tzetzesí original is in J.A. Cramer, Anecdota Graeca e codd. manuscriptis bibliothecarum Oxoniensium, IV, Oxonii 1837, 133; see Kominis, o.c. 30. 32 Examples in Th.M. Conley, Byzantine criticism and the uses of literature, in A. Minnis-I. Johnson (edd.), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, II, Cambridge 2005, 669-692: 684; Cullhed, Blind cit. 58; Id., Diving cit. (reversing the intertextual link suggested by N. Agiotis, Tzetzes on Psellos revisited, «ByzZ» CVI/1 (2013) 1-8); Id., Eustathios of Thessalonike. Commentary on Homerís Odyssey, I, Uppsala 2016, 20*-21*. On Eustathiusí equally covert criticisms of Tzetzes, see D. Holwerda, De Tzetza in Eustathii reprehensiones incurrenti, «Mnemosyne» s. IV, XII (1960) 323326; M.J. Jeffreys, The nature and origins of the political verse, «DOP» XXVIII (1974) 141-195: 150. 33 Exeg. Il. p. 8 with schol. ad loc. p. 423 Papathomopoulos; Ep. 42 (with Hist. VIII 204, 479492), 56, 78, 79; schol. Ar. Ran. 897a Koster. 34 F. Montana, The oldest textual witness to John Tzetzesí Exegesis of the Iliad, in M. Ercoles et al. (edd.), Approaches to Greek Poetry, Berlin-Boston 2018, 107-131 (first noticed by C. Wachsmuth, Ueber die Zeichen und einige andere Eigenth#mlichkeiten des codex Venetus der Ilias, «RhM» n.F. XVIII (1863) 178-188: 187, to little avail). The terminus post and ante quem of the Exegesis are 1138 (death of Johnís brother Isaac, mentioned at p. 170 Papathomopoulos) and January 1144 (wedding of Manuel I and Irene-Bertha of Sulzbach, mentioned in schol. Alleg. Il. IV 67, p. 609 Matranga, but not xvi PRODI His contemporaries Gregory and Eustathios are the inevitable terms of comparison, and the comparison does not tend to be flattering to Tzetzes35. Yet it is not altogether fair to pitch «a layman having no direct professional links with the ecclesiastical or the imperial milieu» against two archbishops, one of whom a saint36. In an oft-repeated phrase, Tzetzes was «one of the first men in European society to live by his pen»37; in his own words, he was a 7o$,6>3;., someone who earns his sustenance through his intellectual labour (Ep. 75)38. While the other two men held the coveted chair of rhetoric (#-\>3;. 3T7 ]+3<.;7) before ascending to the highest levels of the Church39, Tzetzes was intermittently Church- and power-adjacent, but he was never elevated into the tenured empireum, and he had to make a living by teaching and writing: academic precariat, if you will, Byzantine-style. He was well aware of this imbalance, and he resented it to no end. Beside his trademark invectives against ignorant rivals (%$P%-'$& he calls them, ìbuffaloesî) and three exuberant in the relevant place in our text, as an example of a successful prediction by Tzetzes): see Hart, o.c. 1112; Giske, o.c. 48-49, who inclines towards a date near the later end of the interval. Yet we can be more precise. As Wendel had realised (o.c. 1961-1962), Exeg. Il. p. 22 Papathomopoulos (it is ìthe seventh year, and soon will be the eighthî since he had to sell his library) and schol. Exeg. Il. 5,20, p. 421 Papathomopoulos (he was in his twenty-first year at the time) combine to fix the composition of the text when Tzetzes was 26 or 27 (with some uncertainty due to the ëinclusiveí reckoning). If he was born in the early 1110s, then, the date of the Exegesis must be not long after the terminus post quem of the summer of 1138; if the incident on 8th November 1131 caught him when he was still in the service of the eparch of Beroia (so plausibly Pizzone, Saturno cit. 88), he was no older than 20 at the time, cf. schol. Exeg. Il. 5,20, p. 421 Papathomopoulos just cited. The date of the Exegesis may have to be pushed slightly forward (to 1140 or so?) if M. Cardin, Teaching Homer through (annotated) poetry: John Tzetzesí Carmina Iliaca, in R. Simms (ed.), Brillís Companion to Prequels, Sequels, and Retellings of Classical Epic, Leiden-Boston 2018, 90-114: 94 n. 11, is right that the Little-Big Iliad (cited at Exeg. Il. p. 67 Papathomopoulos, and therefore older) was written after the poem On Metres, which in turn was written after Isaac Tzetzesí death in 1138; but it is uncertain whether the scholia to the Little-Big Iliad (which probably cite On Metres at II 312, p. 201 Leone) were written at the same time as the text, and if they were not (as Philip Rance warns in this volume, p. 435 and n. 23), the argument falls. 35 Wilsonís none-too-high esteem of Tzetzes has already been illustrated, but even the noticeably more sympathetic Pontani calls Gregory «perhaps the most distinguished grammarian of this age» and Eustathius «perhaps the most learned man of the Byzantine millennium» (o.c. 447, 460). 36 Quotation from Pontani, o.c. 452. For Tzetzesí «middle class» status and how it informed his scholarly practices vis-b-vis his more established colleagues see Agapitos, Blemish cit. (comparison with Eustathios on pp. 7-8). 37 R. Browning, Homer in Byzantium, «Viator» VIII (1975) 15-33: 26. 38 On this passage see Savio, o.c. 35-38; V.F. Lovato, Living by his wit: Tzetzesí Aristophanic variations on the conundrums of a ëprofessional writerí, «BMGS» XLV (2021) 42-58. 39 Such, at least, is the vulgate; yet there is no explicit evidence that Gregory was an official professor of rhetoric beside the didactic character of his works and his interest in Hermogenes. One might have drawn the same conclusion about Tzetzes, did he not so emphatically tell us otherwise. Introduction xvii broadsides against one such buffalo who was given a cushy post in his place (Hist. XI 369, esp. 210-224; Iamb. III, IV)40, he speaks of his critics as a >$12 *$4>3;B?-, a ìclever posseî41: not just a clique of intellectuals, but one with clear overtones of hostility and gatekeeping. Witness also his repeated references to a life ìin the cornersîñ as we would say, ëon the marginsí ñ of academic spaces42. One remarkable thing about Tzetzes in his twelfth-century context is his utter lack of interest in theological matters. Gregory of Corinth and Eustathios of Thessalonike were both churchmen, and both are known for theological as well as scholarly works; the other noteworthy poet of that age, Theodore Prodromos, whose pauperly persona is sometimes compared to Tzetzesí, wrote commentaries to the liturgical canons by Cosmas of Jerusalem and John Damascene, like the two archbishops43, The latter are published separately by P.A.M. Leone, Ioannis Tzetzae iambi, «RSBN» n.s. VI-VII (1969-1970) 127-156: 144-146. Yet the Iambs ñ which include a poem in hexameters (III) ñ constitute a single editorial project with the second redaction of the Histories, which they conclude: see Leone ibid. 127. It is often repeated that the Iambs are three, of which the hexameter poem is the second. In fact they are five (I: vv. 1-22, tit. U.3,,/< */Q VW;*W/< )*(H/% I$7L%2/( ; II: 23-292, tit. c$(&., 5C.C: )<,*'1:@ *d ,Q, L(\ ; III: 293-309, tit. V/Q $Ã*/Q )*(H/% F6.e2/( ; IV: 310-355, tit. f*(H/% I$7L%2/Ú */Q $Ã*/Q 57$T/Q@ 2$Ú 566+*/6'0*/<, ·)#'6 ?$)Ú, /g T'%3W/,*'@, /h$ iJ*/6$@ /µ/<@ `6>&/*/@ 1;C'% L$6L$6/&')*;6/<@ _T,'., j#3,*., ; V: 356-360, untitled but clearly demarcated in the mss., as Aglae Pizzone has kindly verified for me), and this is the numeration I use here. On the tirade against the buffalo in Hist. XI 369 and in the Iambs see Aglae Pizzoneís contribution to this volume. On the passage in Hist. XI 369 see also P.A. Agapitos, Grammar, genre and patronage in the twelfth century: A scientific paradigm and its implications, «JkByz» LXIV (2014) 1-22: 13; Id., Blemish cit. 22-27. On Iamb. III see DíAgostini-Pizzone, o.c. 41 Schol. Thuc. I 123,1 v. 6 in Pal. gr. 252, f. 45r (M.J. Luzzatto, Tzetzes lettore di Tucidide. Note autografe sul Codice Heidelberg Palatino Greco 252, Bari 1999, 50) and two new occurrences in the passages of the Allegories from the Verse-Chronicle and Logismoi published by Tommaso Braccini and Aglae Pizzone in this volume (pp. 15 and 62 respectively). A 2/<)*.&($ of malicious rivals is also mentioned ñ twice ñ in schol. Ar. Ran. 507a Koster. See Jeffreys, o.c. 150, Luzzatto, o.c. 54-55; on Tzetzesí frequent sarcastic use of )/?>@ and compounds see Savio, o.c. 43-47. 42 The recurrent words are 8CC4,%/@ and 8CC.,%3W. / 8CC.,%3. : Exeg. Il. p. 22 Papathomopoulos, schol. 5,20 p. 421 Papathomopoulos; Ep. 39 (L(/, *Ù, #',%H6Ù, 2$Ú 8CC4,%/,), 46 (/I2/<6Ù@ 8Cl 2$Ú 8CC4,%/@), 58 (8CC.,%3W'%, CÏ6 'I.T4@), and the alternative title of the satirical poem edited by S. P]tridms, Vers in!dits de Jean Tzetzes, «ByzZ» XII (1903) 568-570 in Vind. phil. gr. 321 (f*(H/% 2$*Ï &%$L/1;., *%,9, &%$)<6>,*., $Ã*Ù, 2$(#'6 8CC.,%9,*$) as reported by Agapitos, Blemish cit. 16 n. 84; cf. Hist. I 11, 286 (*Ù, ?%1/C4,%/, Ö L(/,). 43 Prodromos: partly published by H.M. Stevenson, Theodori Prodromi commentarios in carmina sacra melodorum Cosmae Hierosolymitani et Ioannis Damasceni ad fidem codicum &c., Romae 1888; for the rest see Nesseris, o.c. II, 439-443. Eustathios: P. Cesaretti-S. Ronchey, Eustathii Thessalonicensis exegesis in canonem iambicum pentecostalem, Berlin-M!nchen-Boston 2014. Gregory: F. Montana, Gregorio di Corinto. Esegesi al canone giambico per la Pentecoste attribuito a Giovanni Damasceno, Pisa 1995; the commentaries to the other canons are still unpublished, see Kominis, o.c. 91-97; F. Montana, I canoni giambici di Giovanni Damasceno per le feste di Natale, Teofania e Pente40 xviii PRODI not to mention a number of devotional poems. Tzetzes knew the Scriptures well and could quote them fluently for very secular purposes (cf. e.g. Ep. 57); (0$'$,?-A BÓ ›A Q*-3-')93$4 9673^ Q90?503$, as he says of Socrates (arg. I Ar. Ran., p. 692 Koster)44. _is nearest approach to St John Damascene is the parodic Canon of the Seven Idiots which he wrote to the tune of the saintís canon on the Dormition of the Virgin, J7$?V; 3Ù >3<#- #$4 (schol. Ar. Ran. 990(b) Koster)45. One wonders if this lack of theological !lan was another reason for his lack of preferment in official academe, whose revolving doors with the Church were in frantic activity. His only incursion into religious literature is a hypomnema in praise of St Lucy (BHG 996)46. Probably commissioned in 1154 by an embassy of Sicilian bishops47, this text gives us a valuable glimpse of Tzetzes the prose narrator, complementing coste nelle esegesi di Gregorio di Corinto, «Koinonia» XIII (1989) 31-49. Under this aspect, Tzetzesí profile is more similar to that of Constantine Manasses, whose ëacademicí activity, however, is of a very different kind and extent; see I. Nilsson, Writer and Occasion in Twelfth-Century Byzantium: The Authorial Voice of Constantine Manasses, Cambridge 2021 (113-141 on Constantine as grammatikos). On the possible relationship between Tzetzes and Manasses, revolving around the sebastokratotrissa Eirene, see Rhoby, Auftragsdichter cit. 167-168. 44 ìHowever, he held off from theology altogether as something incomprehensibleî; cf. schol. Carm. Il. I 124, p. 129 Leone, where he boasts that ìNo-one of my own age in this time has read more books [than I] ñ except theological onesî (#1:, 7;,*/% *9, T'%/*;6.,). On Tzetzesí refusal to impose Christian readings onto his sources cf. his insistent rejection of Michael Psellosí Christianizing allegory of the opening of Iliad IV (schol. Carm. Il. II 27a, 34, pp. 160, 162-163 Leone; Exeg. Il. p. 5 with schol. ad loc. p. 420 Papathomopoulos; Alleg. Il. IV 47-53), see Frederick Lauritzenís chapter in this volume; cf. also the opening scholion to the Little-Big Iliad (p. 101 Leone), where ìwhile being most Christianî (H6%)*%$,%24*$*/@ ‡,) he dismisses the notion that Homerís gods are glorified demons. On his disinterest for Christian perspectives more generally see A. Kaldellis, Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition, Cambridge 2007, 306307 (citing the emphatically pagan focus of the consolatio in Ep. 38). 45 Koster, Commentarium cit. 989-991; see Pizzone, The Historiai cit. 185 and n. 17. This text is a list of seven famously stupid people, subverting the well-known canons of the Seven Sages (Koster, l.c.). The play on the liturgical and the literary-critical sense of the word ëcanoní is very clever, but the composition may not have endeared its author to his most orthodox readers. 46 Ed. pr. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Varia Graeca sacra. Сборникъ греческихъ неизданныхъ богословскихъ текстовъ IV-XV вҍковъ, С.-Петербургъ 1909, 80-97; see now G. Sola, Ioannis Tzetzis hypomnema et S. Methodii patriarchae canon in S. Luciam (2), «Roma e líOriente» XV (1918) 48-53; (3), XVI (1918) 106-115; (4), XVII (1919) 90-105. Tzetzean authorship is conclusively defended by P.L.M. Leone, SullíHypomnema in S. Luciam di Giovanni Tzetzes, «Rivista di bizantinistica» I/2 (1991) 17-21: 17-18. The text comes with scholia (Papadopoulos-Kerameus, o.c. 97-101), which show none of the usual Tzetzean fingerprints but could still originate from him (so, it seems, Nesseris, o.c. II, 526); their main sources are Stephanus of Byzantium, the Suda, and the Etymologica. 47 See G. Sola, Ioannis Tzetzis hypomnema et S. Methodii patriarchae canon in S. Luciam (1), «Roma e líOriente» XIV (1917) 42-50: 45-46; Leone, SullíHypomnema cit. 19-21. Introduction xix the «lively and artful prose»48 of the Letters. It stands out for a rhetorically crafted proem in praise of Sicily, replete with learned references to geography, mythology, and history (§1-3), and for St Lucyís quirky comparison of herself to ìmy ancestor Archimedesî and his machines (§11-12)49. Like other Tzetzean works, the hypomnema is peppered with hexameters, some Homeric, some custom-made50; the authorís characteristic erudition is on display also in St Lucyís anecdote about Archimedesí death, where the inventorís last words are recast into their Doric ëoriginalí (§12)51. Tzetzesí true object of interest were the classics. Homer first of all: beside the «edutainment»52 of the Little-Big Iliad, Allegories of the Iliad and of the Odyssey, and Theogony (which includes a catalogue of the best warriors of the Trojan War), there is the ponderous Exegesis of the Iliad, consisting of an introduction to Homer and an equally fulsome commentary to the first book of the epic. He wrote commentaries to Hesiodís Works and Days and the pseudo-Hesiodic Shield of Heracles53, to several plays of Aristophanes (Clouds, Frogs, Plutus ñ the ëByzantine triadí ñ and Birds, plus a general introduction to comedy and a plot summary of Knights), and to Lycophronís Alexandra54; an introduction to bucolic poetry and to Theocritusí first Idyll, the so-called Anecdoton Estense (it is not known if he also produced a commentary)55; annotations, whether direct or taken down from lectures, on Pindar, some Agapitos, Blemish cit. 6 n. 27; contrast Sola, Hypomnema (1) cit. 49. See Kaldellis, Hellenism cit. 305, and Philip Ranceís chapter in this volume (pp. 457-458). 50 On Tzetzesí «metrical bricolage» see N. Zagklas, Metrical polyeideia and generic innovation in the twelfth century: The multimetric cycles of occasional poetry, in A. Rhoby-N. Zagklas (edd.), Middle and Late Byzantine Poetry: Texts and Contexts, Turnhout 2018, 43-70: 46-47. On his use of hexameters as a closural device (cf. S. Lucia §13) see also Agapitos, Blemish cit. 26 n. 134, with an important qualification in DíAgostini-Pizzone, o.c. 129-130. 51 For a similar act cf. Ep. 11, discussed by Giulia Gerbi on pp. 142-145 below. 52 Cullhed, Eustathios cit. 11*; or, as Kaldellis puts it, «classics for dummies» (Hellenism cit. 301). See all of Hellenism cit. 301-307 on Tzetzes as a «Hellenist». On the Little-Big Iliad, often referred to as Carmina Iliaca, see P.A.M. Leone, I ìCarmina Iliacaî di Giovanni Tzetzes, «QC» VI/12 (1984) 377-405; Braccini, Erudita cit.; Cardin, Teaching cit.; U. Mondini, Composing the D%26/7'C31+ U1%3@. Macro- and microstructure of a Byzantine Homeric poem, «ByzZ» CXIV (2021) 325354. On his Homeric «rewritings» see Braccini, Riscrivere cit. 53 Gaisford, o.c. 499-654 (but see Nesseris, o.c. II, 516); A. Martano, Scolii e glosse allo Scudo di Eracle dal manoscritto Ambrosiano C 222 inf., «Aevum» LXXVI (2002) 151-200. On Tzetzes and his praxis as a commentator see Budelmann, o.c. esp. 154-161. A list of his scholarly works can be found in Nesseris, o.c. II, 515-519 (commentaries), 523 (didactic poems). 54 E. Scheer, Lycophronis Alexandra, II, Berolini 1908 (together with the scholia vetera). See also Wendel, o.c. 1978-1981, and Thomas Cowardís contribution to this volume. 55 I. Kayser, De veterum arte poetica quaestiones selectae, Lipsiae 1906, 54-97; C. Wendel, Scholia in Theocritum vetera, Lipsiae 1914, 7-13 (including the final part, which Kayser had omitted). See also Id., $berlieferung und Entstehung der Theokrit-Scholien, Berlin 1920, 9-17. 48 49 xx PRODI plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, Nicanderís Theriaka and Alexipharmaka, and Oppianís Halieutika56; and, in the realm of prose, commentaries on Hermogenes57, Aphthonios58, and Porphyryís Eisagoge59, as well as annotations on two manuscripts of Herodotus and Thucydides, of the latter of which the autograph survives (Pal. gr. 252)60. Beside these, he wrote three didactic poems on ancient poetry ñ On the Differences between Poets, On Tragic Poetry, On Comic Poetry61 ñ and one On Metres which he dedicated to his brother Isaac, who had also written a metrical treatise before dying an early death62. Tzetzesí verse metaphrasis of Ptolemyís Geography does not seem to have survived beside the lines he quotes in Hist. XI 396, 890-99763; the epitome of Apollodorusí Library in Vat. gr. 950, which some have ascribed to him, is not his after all64. See Wendel, Tzetzes cit. 1972; Nesseris, o.c. II, 516-517. Pindar: one note in dodecasyllables in Vat. gr. 1312 is ascribed to Tzetzes (schol. Pind. Isth. I 51d Drachmann), and it is unclear whether he did more work on him; see Wendel, Tzetzes cit. 1971/1972. Keep in mind that the most authoritative manuscript of Pindarís Olympians with scholia, Ambr. C 222 inf., was copied by a student of Tzetzesí and contains plenty of Tzetzean material, see p. xv above. Aeschylus: S. Allegrini, Note di Giovanni Tzetzes ad Eschilo, «AFLPer» IX (1971/1972) 219-233; O.L. Smith, The A commentary on Aeschylus: author and date, «GRBS» XXI (1980) 395-399. Sophocles: F. Bevilacqua, Il commento di Giovanni Tzetzes a Sofocle, «AFLPer(class)» XI (1973/1974) 559-570. Euripides: D.J. Mastronarde, Preliminary Studies on the Scholia to Euripides, Berkeley 2017, 80-89, and Jacopo Cavarzeranís contribution in this volume. Nicander and Oppian: U. Cats Bussemaker, Scholia et paraphrases in Nicandrum et Oppianum, Paris 1849; M. Geymonat, Scholia in Nicandri Alexipharmaca cum glossis, Milano 1974; F. Napolitano, Esegesi bizantina degli ìHalieuticaî di Oppiano, «RAAN» XLVIII (1973) 237-254. 57 Cramer, o.c. 1-138. See now Pizzone, Self-authorization cit. 58 See Nesseris, o.c. II, 518. 59 Only partly published by Chr. Harder, Johannes Tzetzesí Kommentar zu Porphyrius #'6Ú #Ô,*' ?.,9,, «ByzZ» IV (1895) 314-318. 60 Herodotus: M.J. Luzzatto, Note inedite di Giovanni Tzetzes e restauro di antichi codici alla fine del XIII secolo: Il problema del Laur. 70, 3 di Erodoto, in G. Prato (ed.), I manoscritti greci tra riflessione e dibattito. «Atti del V colloquio internazionale di paleografi greca (Cremona 4-10 ottobre 1998)», Firenze 2000, 633-654. Thucydides: Ead., Tzetzes lettore cit. See also J. B]rtola, Using Poetry to Read the Past: Unedited Byzantine Verse Scholia on Historians in the Margins of Medieval Manuscripts, diss. Gent 2021, 11-31, and his contribution to the present volume. 61 Koster, Prolegomena cit. 79-109. The one On Tragedy is re-edited with commentary by G. Pace, Giovanni Tzetzes. La poesia tragica, Napoli 20112. 62 J.A. Cramer, Anecdota Graeca e codd. manuscriptis bibliothecarum Oxoniensium, III, Oxonii 1836, 302-333. Like many other works of Tzetzesí, this poem is badly in need of a new edition. 63 See Chiara DíAgostiniís chapter in this volume, pp. 410-414. 64 J. Michels, Tzetzes epitomator et epitomatus? Excerpts from ps.-Apollodorusí Bibliotheca, John Tzetzesí Lycophron commentary and Chiliades in Vaticanus gr. 950, «Byzantion» XC (2020) 115132. The ascription was first proposed by Richard Wagner (no, not that one) in the addenda to his editio princeps of the epitome: Epitoma Vaticana ex Apollodori Bibliotheca, Lipsiae 1891, xvi. 56 Introduction xxi Not all his commentaries are equally well explored. Several still await a truly critical edition; some, indeed, await any edition at all. They portray a scholar with ecumenical interests, ranging across genres and periods of both poetry and prose (but with a clear focus on technical handbooks in the case of the latter65). Especially with regard to poetry, his breadth of coverage is notable, as is his determination to put it on display. In the prolegomena of the Commentary to Hesiodís Works and Days he chastises the earlier commentator Proclus for (among other failings) not following the proper order of an introduction: ìFirst of all he ought to have stated the division of poets (sc. into genres) and what are their characteristics, and who are the most famous of them; then to tell the life of the one which he had appointed for exegesis, and whose contemporary he was, and how many books he wroteÖî (prol. p. 10 Gaisford)66. He then proceeds to do just that, as he had done ñ he reminds us ñ in the poem `0.Ú B&-1$.WA 9$&+3T7 and in the Commentary to Lycophron, here still attributed to his brother (p. 11)67. He offers similar overviews in the Anecdoton Estense on bucolic poetry, in the didactic poems `0.Ú 3.-,&*[A 9$&)>0;A and `0.Ú *;#&*[A 9$&)>0;A, and more than anywhere in the Prolegomena de comoedia68. In the latter work he sets Aristophanesí poetry against the background of Old Comedy with its history and characteristics, and en passant he produces the nearest pre-modern equivalent to a History of Classical Scholarship in Antiquity, from the Pisistratean recension of Homer to the Library of Alexandria, for which he is a crucial source69. Not all the material he proffers there is equally reliable70, but the cumulative effect He was clearly aware of the downward shift in subject-matter represented by the commentary to Hermogenes, witness the hexameter paratext in Voss. gr. Q1 mentioned above (xiv and n. 28). 66 On Proclus see also Cesaretti, o.c. 162-163, highlighting the «Proclomania of learned Constantinopolitans» (so called by A. Angelou, Nicholas of Methone: the life and works of a twelfth-century bishop, in M. Mullett-R. Scott (edd.), Byzantium and the Classical Tradition. «University of Birmingham Thirteenth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies 1979», Birmingham 1981, 143-148: 144). One of its standard-bearers was Michael Psellos, another of Tzetzesí polemical targets (Exeg. Il. p. 5 with schol. ad loc. p. 420 Papathomopoulos, Alleg. Il. IV 47-52, cf. Alleg. Od. prol. 36, 50-40; see Cesaretti, o.c. 129-140, and Frederick Lauritzenís contribution to this volume). 67 Tzetzes had also done something similar, but without the first, ëgeneralí part, in the Exegesis of the Iliad. An analysis of the prolegomena of the Exegesis is in Cesaretti, o.c. 146-151, who remarks the novelty of Tzetzesí «individuazione filologica» of Homer in contrast to Psellosí «decontestualizzazione filosofica»: «Tzetze vuole collocare Omero nel punto e nel posto che gli compete» (p. 146). On the prolegomena of Exeg. Il. see also Alberto Ravaniís chapter in this volume, pp. 262-264. 68 Koster, Prolegomena cit. 22-38. 69 See R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age, Oxford 1968, 100-102, 127-128; P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, Oxford 1972, I, 321-323 with II, 474 n. 198 and 488-489 n. 193; L. Canfora, La biblioteca scomparsa, Palermo 19885, 193-196; Wilson, o.c. 194-195. 70 For discussion of one detail see the chapter by Anna Novokhatko in this volume. 65 xxii PRODI remains: the authorial figure that emerges from these works is not a mere exegete of an individual text, but an expert on all of ancient Greek poetry with its history and contexts, who simply serves the reader one slice at a time from a Lucullan banquet of knowledge. For all his «professional classicism»71, Tzetzes devoted a commentary of sorts to one post-classical author: himself. The Chiliads, or more properly Histories72, are ostensibly a commentary on Tzetzesí letters, although both their contents and their presentation in the manuscripts leave room for doubt on which of the two texts, the Letters or the Histories, is the ëprimaryí one73. It is probably the most notorious of Tzetzesí works: he was just the sort of person to write a 12,668-line exposition in political verse on his own collected letters ñ and then add scholia to it74. He regarded it as his chef díúuvre, / %?%'$A ê'1- 3:03:&*T7 9$7+#63;7 (Iamb. 1)75. Yet this ìBook I of the Tzetzean toilsî is among the least studied, and least well understood, Kaldellis, Hellenism cit. 301. Tzetzesí title is π)*/6($% ; the now common appellation Chiliads derives from the editio princeps (N. Gerbel, U.3,,/< */Q VW;*W/< L%L1(/, g)*/6%2Ù,, *Ù &%Ï )*(H., #/1%*%29,, ê1?$ 2$1/07',/,, „, )*(H., *Ù #/)Ù, 7<6%Ï@ 7($ 2$Ú &</H(1%/% R#*$2>)%/% #',*+2/,*$',,;$. Ioannis Tzetzae variarum historiarum liber versibus politicis ab eodem Graece conscriptus et Pauli Lacisii Veronensis opera ad verbum Latine conversus, nuncque primum in luce editus, &c., Basileae 1546), which segmented the text into sections of a thousand verses each ñ the ëchiliadsí of the title. Whence the reference system currently in use, consisting of the number of the chiliad; the sequential number of the historia in the relevant pinax, which bears no relation to the sequence of the chiliads; and the number of the verse(s) within the relevant chiliad. So «Hist. VII 140, 433-437» = the 140th historia (of the third pinax, in this case), corresponding to vv. 433-437 of the seventh chiliad, i.e. 6,433-6,437 of the entire poem. Whoever next edits the Chiliads should consider adopting a more rational system, modelled on the authorís own: pinax, historia, verse (see p. xxiii and n. 77). 73 So Kaldellis, Hellenism cit. 302. The arrangement in the manuscripts differs between the two recensions of the text, A and B, both of which go back to the author. In recension A the order is as follows: i. commentary to the Letter to Lachanas (141 historiai, Hist. I 1-IV 470); ii. Letter to Lachanas (Hist. IV 471-779); iii. Ep. 1; iv. commentary to Ep. 1 (23 historiai, Hist. IV 780-V 201); v. Ep. 2-107; vi. commentary to Ep. 2-107 (496 historiai, Hist. V 202-XII 668). In recension B the Chiliads are written sequentially, without the Letters interspersed, but in the same order, with the same internal partitions, and with the Iambs added by way of conclusion. See Leone, Historiae cit. xiv-liv; Pizzone, The Historiai cit. 184-186. 74 Leone, Historiae cit. 529-569. Most of them are authorial, but not all: Leone, ibid. lvi. Remember that the Letters have scholia of their own (Leone, Epistulae cit. 158-174). Much like those of the Chiliads (Leone, Historiae cit. liv-lvi), they often concern the vicissitudes of the text itself: see Pizzone, The Historiai cit. 188-189; Ead., Self-authorization cit. 674-676; and pp. xxviiiñxxx below. 75 «His flagship work», Pizzone, The Historiai cit. 183; also, concretely, «das erste der in der vorliegenden Sammlung enthaltenen Werke des T[zetzes]», Wendel, Tzetzes cit. 1994 ñ presumably qua his flagship work. On Tzetzesí possible reasons for his choice of the stichos politikos see Jeffreys, o.c. 150-157; Agapitos, Blemish cit. 48-54. 71 72 Introduction xxiii components of his corpus76. On its face, it is an omnium gatherum of erudite facts, mostly to do with ancient literature, mythology, and history, purporting to elucidate the classical allusions in the letters. The 23 historiai of the second pinax, for instance (Hist. IV 780-V 201), deal with the grape "9&14''?A ; the rare words %0*0>='+7$A and %'&3$#6##-A ; Melitides and other proverbial #;.$? ; the word #-##6*4($A (a synonym of %'&3$#6##-A); silly Makko, with a real-life counterpart; the multiple senses of the word ,.O (all of the above come chiefly from Aristophanes); the friendship of Peirithoos and Theseus; that of Anacharsis and Solon (both from Plutarch); the ass of Cuma; the Aesopic monkey who tried to pass for a man (both from Lucian); Parisí bowshot in Il. XI 369-395; [Eur.] Rh. 510-511; Il. XVII 175; Aesch. Sept. 592; Achilles in Skyros; the contrast of Trojans and Greeks in Il. III 2-9; Il. XX 196-197; Il. VI 127; the Molionidai of Il. XI 750; the monster Cacus (from Cassius Dio and Dionysius of Halicarnassus); the centaur Asbolos (from Apollodorus); and a verse by the tyrant Dionysios (TrGF 76 F 11, again from Lucian) ñ all of which are alluded to in Ep. 1. But the work is a carefully planned whole. Each of the three sections in which the Histories are divided has a pinax, a table of contents; as he tells us himself, Tzetzes first formulated the three pinakes, determining which allusions in the Letters needed to be explained and allocating space accordingly, then he proceeded to write the respective historiai 77. For all his boasting about his ease of improvisation and speed of writing78, his insistence on this point brings home for the reader how much thought and care he devoted to the poem. Like a good many modern commentaries, the Chiliads show off simultaneously how sophisticated the commented text is, and how learned the commentator. With both hats on at once, Tzetzes construes for himself an authority both as a classical commentator and as a classic. So the label ëpost-classicalí which I used in the previ76 The only recent attempts to investigate the Chiliads from a viewpoint other than text-critical are those by Aglae Pizzone: The Historiai cit. and Autobiographical cit. Earlier see Giske, o.c. 12-40 (who first realized that the Histories are a commentary on the Letters: p, 22); H. Spelthahn, Studien zu den Chiliaden des Johannes Tzetzes, M!nchen 1904; Wendel, Tzetzes cit. 1993-1999. Some more attention has been devoted to Tzetzesí sources: M. Carvalho Abrantes, Explicit Sources of Tzetzesí Chiliads, s.l. 20172 (non vidi), and already Chr. Harder, De Ioannis Tzetzae historiarum fontibus quaestiones selectae, Killiae 1886, not to mention the apparatus of sources in Leoneís edition. 77 There is plenty of cross-references within the Chiliads, indicating the pinax and the historia where a certain piece of information is to be found (e.g. VI 62, 587-589, including a reference to the heading of the historia; VII 120, 198; 137, 377-378). There is also an outline of the general structure of the work (V 23, 186-201) and a few other references to the pinax, which make it clear that it existed before (the final version of) the individual historiai: VI 50, 382-393; VII 144, 744-750; X 332, 455457. See Giske, o.c. 15, 22-27; Pizzone, The Historiai cit. 187-189. Unfortunately, modern editors omit the pinakes, as if they were supposititious material rather than the very framework of the book. 78 See Jeffreys, o.c. 148-149. xxiv PRODI ous paragraph is true only in a chronological sense. Leave aside that an author is ipso facto construed as a classic ñ as an auctor ñ when he becomes an object of commentary; the focus of the Histories is itself relentlessly classical. In this way the Histories classicize the Letters too. If the Letters «were designed to contain as many exempla and references as could be crammed into them for the purposes of pedagogy»79, these are ñ precisely ñ references: they enrich the ostensible message of the respective letter, but they are not, at least in theory, the whole point of it. The Histories upend this ëoriginalí perspective to put the classical elements centre stage. They elide the subject-matter, the purpose, the concrete communicative situation of each letter ñ real or fictional as they may have been80ñ to lift the text onto the plane of the classical past, Greek or (less often) Roman81. The Histories atomize and filter the Letters to make of them something quite different from what they are on their own82. The title of the work points us in the right direction too. This is no run-of-themill Commentary to the Letters, a genre with which the Histories do not fully align83. These are histories, in a different sense from the one familiar to us. «In the usage of scholiasts and grammarians, a R>3$.?- was (1) any subject matter in a classical text that required elucidation, and then (2) the elucidation itself»84. And this is precisely what the Histories are and do85. Their focus is not on the letter collection as a text, but on one particular aspect of its content, one possessed of autonomous educational Kaldellis, Hellenism cit. 302, cf. Leone, Epistulae cit. xviii-xix. It is clear that some of the Letters relate to fictional situations and are designed «als Muster f!r stylistische obungen» (Wendel, Tzetzes cit. 1992), and others, too, are likely to have been reworked for publication as well as from the first recension of the collected Letters to the second (Leone, Epistulae cit. ix, xiii-xiv). See the chapter by Giulia Gerbi in this volume. 81 On the balance of Greek and Roman elements and the general absence of a deep Christian element see Kaldellis, Hellenism 303-307; on the Letters specifically, Nesseris, o.c. I, 164. On the Roman element see also S. Xenophontos, ëA living portrait of Catoí: self-fashioning and the classical past in John Tzetzesí Chiliads, «EBiz» II (2014) 187-204; V.F. Lovato, Hellenising Cato? A short survey of the concepts of Greekness, Romanity and barbarity in John Tzetzesí work and thought, in K. Stewart-J. M. Wakeley (edd.), Cross Cultural Exchange in the Byzantine World, c. 300-1500 A.D., Oxford-New York 2016, 143-157. 82 See Pizzone, The Historiai cit. 190, on the Chiliads «tearing Tzetzesí letter collection out of historical contingency»; Grigoriadis, o.c. 28. On atomization in Tzetzesí commentaries see Budelmann, o.c. 153-157; also his observations on the self-sufficiency of Tzetzean commentary, «discussions that can be read, perhaps even are best read, without the ancient text in mind» (ibid. 157-161). 83 Witness, for instance, the lack of any prefatory material: see above, p. xxi and n. 67. 84 A. Cameron, Greek Mythography in the Roman World, New York 2004, 90-93 (quotation from p. 91). 85 With aptly Tzetzic allusiveness, there is also a nod to the more common sense of the word g)*/6($, specifically as the title of Herodotusí work: Tzetzesí Histories (I prol. 1-3 and 1, 4-105), like Herodotusí (I 6,1), begin with Croesus. 79 80 Introduction xxv value and which accordingly both required and deserved explanation. In so doing, the Histories display the impressive range of both Tzetzes the letter-writer and Tzetzes the scholar, the latter regaling his readers with detailed access to the concealed treasures of the former through his great learning and didactic impetus86. One last work of ìTzetzic researchesî remains to be mentioned. Until recently, the K$,&>#$? (something like ëAuditsí) were thought to be lost. All that was known about them was what Tzetzes himself said elsewhere, especially in a note to Aristophanesí Frogs (v. 1328 Koster): in that book, he relates, he «audit[ed] the work of several wise men, fifty-two plays by Euripides, and one hundred nineteen books of wise men from all fields. One book of mine contains the audits of all of them, mostly in iambic metre, but a few also in other metres; and there are other books too containing in a scattered way my audits of other wise men»87. Yet it turns out that some extracts on rhetorical topics do survive in a manuscript in Leiden, Voss. gr. Q188; what is more, the codex (which also contains the Commentary to Hermogenes) is annotated in Tzetzesí own hand89, only the second set of autograph annotations known to have survived90. It seems that this work was a miscellany of adversaria critica, perhaps originally existing as loose sheets to which Tzetzes kept adding throughout his life and from which relevant sections could be copied into manuscripts according Let us not forget that the Histories, while extraordinary in the proportion of ëcommentaryí to text (as in many other respects), are not the only instance of Tzetzean self-scholarship. Among his other works, at least the Carmina Iliaca, the Exegesis of the Iliad, the Allegories of the Iliad and of the Odyssey, the poem c'6Ú &%$?/6[@ #/%+*9,, and quite possibly the Life of St Lucy (see n. 46 above) come with authorial scholia. Those of the Exegesis are often autobiographical or reflect explicitly on the authorís thought processes (see e.g. those discussed at p. xxviii and nn. 34, 44); those of the Carmina have a more detached air, as is apparent from the very beginning of the first scholion (p #$6l, #/%+*J@, p. 101 Leone), though they are not free from autobiographical obtrusions (e.g. schol. III 284, pp. 223-224 Leone). The scholia to the Exegesis reflect its status as a work in progress and often contain additions or updates to the main text; those to the Little-Big Iliad ñ by far the bulkiest corpus of Tzetzean self-scholarship after the Chiliads themselves ñ are the scholarly apparatus that accompanies a finished work of high poetry, and more often than not they strike an appropriate tone for epic commentary (and for classroom use). See F. Conca, Líesegesi di Tzetzes ai Carmina Iliaca, fra tradizione e innovazione, «Koinonia» XLII (2018) 75-99; Cardin, Teaching cit. 104-105 and passim; Mondini, Composing cit. 330-331 and passim; and his chapter in this volume. 87 Koster, Commentarium cit. 1079; transl. Pizzone, Self-authorization cit. 663, lightly adapted. On the connotations of the word 1/C%)7/( and of Tzetzesí self-assumed title of 1/C%)*J@ (a nod to the title of 7;C$@ 1/C$6%$)*J@ in the Imperial administration) see ibid. 670-688. 88 Meyier, o.c. 93; this fact was pointed out with reference to Tzetzes by Nesseris, o.c. I, 187188 and II, 525, and again by Aglae Pizzone, who is now preparing an edition of the text. 89 Pizzone, Self-authorization cit. 653-654. 90 The other set is to be found in Pal. gr. 252, a ninth-century codex of Thucydides: Luzzatto, Tzetzes lettore cit. 9-42. 86 xxvi PRODI to need ñ as happened with the rhetorical material in Voss. gr. Q191. Once again the breadth of Tzetzesí coverage is evident (and duly aggrandized by him)92. Much like some of his modern scholars, Tzetzes was not above excoriating the object of his efforts. Take for example the book epigram that concludes the Commentary to Lycophron (and which, in the version transmitted by Pal. gr. 18, f. 96v, graces the frontispiece of this volume)93: K<,$4A Q30.90GA 9$''Ï #$5()>-A ,.610&A Q7&>3$.)3;A %6.%-.- 9'=V-A M9+a ì,;'0&6î, ì,.Y7-Aî, ì$“>-î *-Ú ì34*?>#-3-î >ˆ7 ìH.(-,bî 30 ì*.?#7-î *-Ú ì'4*$N?-î, #<7$7 7=$&A RB.T3-, #;.Ó K4*<1.$7a $ÃBÓ7 ,Ï. L''$ 9'27 7$c ').;7 '<,$&. Joyless discourses with much toil you write weaving barbaric words ñ those hapaxes94! goleia (v. 376), gronas (20), ousa (20), and tykismata (349) with Orthage (538), krimna (607), and lykopsia (1432): theyíre only sweat for schoolboys, stupid Lycophron! Nothing but humbug for the mind95, your words. 91 For an overview of the Logismoi and their textual history see Pizzone, Self-authorization cit. (loose sheets: 663-665; work in progress: 666-667). 92 The claim that he wrote about 52 plays by Euripides stretches credibility. It is unlikely in the extreme that 33 of the lost plays still survived in the twelfth century, and his other works only show little evidence of genuine access to them; contrast Hipponax (p. xxvii below). On his vaunted reading of satyr drama (schol. Diff. Poet. 113, p. 90 Koster) see L. Carrara, Giovanni Tzetze, il dramma satiresco ed il Fortleben di Euripide a Bisanzio: Nuove letture di vecchi testimoni, «MEG» XXI (2021) 171-214. 93 Scheer, o.c. 398. On this epigram (DBBE Type 3725) see C. De Stefani-E. Magnelli, Lycophron in Byzantine poetry (and prose), in Chr. Cusset-q. Prioux (edd.), Lycophron: !clats díobscurit!, Saint-qtienne 2009, 593-620: 615-616; on its occurrence in Pal. gr. 18, see A. Rhoby, Ausgew%hlte byzantinische Epigramme in illuminierten Handschriften, Wien 2018: 115-118. 94 5,%)*/6J*.@ ñ a reference to otherwise ìunattestedî words ñ humorously reverses the first line of the Alexandra, r;B. *Ï #3,*$ ,+*6'29@ s 7K g)*/6'G@ : A. Berra and A. Loojenga ap. De Stefani-Magnelli, o.c. 616 n. 82. 95 For the sake of consistency I translate the Palatinusí ,/t, understood as the dative singular of ,/Q@, as in the Pauline Epistles and in Exeg. Il. p. 251 Papathomopoulos and Ep. 72. Scheer prints a metrically suspect /Ã&Ó, S11/ #1:, ¢ 2',/Ú 1J6., 1>C/%, with no variants noted in the apparatus. Rhoby, Epigramme cit. 116 prints a more plausible /Ã&Ó, CÏ6 S11/ #1:, <2'>,/Ú 1J6., 1>C/%, ìNothing but the empty speeches of humbug-talkersî. Introduction xxvii Earlier in the Commentary to Lycophron he had thunderously exposed the poet for ìstealingî words from the iambographer Hipponax and getting the sense wrong to boot (Q>*=.-, schol. Lyc. 855 Scheer): ìHe is wrong to call sandals Q>*=.-& [Ö] O Lycophron, be aware that you steal words from Aeschylus, but from Hipponax even more; and either from forgetfulness or ignorance you mix up their meanings. But I will remind this clever poet myself! Donít you know, O Lycophron, that when you were hogging Hipponaxís book, I was standing behind you and watched you read his words? You found Q>*=.-A there and you took it in that sense, without paying attention nor having the words in mind. But hear what Hipponax says, and learn that Q>*=.-& are not sandals, but felt bootsÖî, and so forth96. The margins of Pal. gr. 252 testify to considerable impatience towards Thucydides97. For Tzetzes, learning meant books 98 . Anything worth learning is found in books: either directly, or through book-derived products such as Tzetzes prodigious memory, which deputizes for a library when he is Q%?%'+A, ëbooklessí (Alleg. Il. XV 87-89; Hist. VIII 176, 173-181). His typical line of attack against schedographers is that they are ignorant because they do not read books, and that they damage their studentsí education because their pointless schede divert them from reading books99. By contrast, books are where his own, true knowledge originates. Instead of claiming some great man of letters in his scholarly genealogy, he states that his only teacher 96 Scheer, o.c. 277: /”*/@ 5)2;6$@ *Ï Õ#/&J7$*$ 2$29@ 1;C'% [Ö] ‚ r02/?6/,, C(,.)2' Z*% *Ï@ 7Ó, 1;B'%@ 5#Ù uI)H01/< 21;#*'%@, 8B π##4,$2*/@ &Ó #1;/,v 8#%1J)7., &Ó w, ¢ 7: ,/9, *$0*$@ S11+, S11.@ *(T+)%,. 511í 5,$7,J). */Q*/, 8Cl *Ù, )/?Ù, #/%+*J,. /Ã2 /x)T$, ‚ r02/?6/,, Z*%, Z*' )ˆ *:, π##4,$2*/@ 2$*'GH'@ L(L1/,, 2$*>#%, )/< R)*+2l@ 8Cl R46., )' *Ï@ $Ã*/Q 1;B'%@ 5,$1'C>7',/, 2$Ú *Ù 5)2;6$@ &Ó 82'G)' '—6+2$@ 2$Ú /—*. *;T'%2$@ 7: #6/)Hl, 7+&í 'I@ ,/Q, _H., *Ï iJ7$*$. 511í S2/<', #9@ ?+)%, π##4,$B, 2$Ú 73T' Z*% 5)2;6$% /Ã *Ï Õ#/&J7$*$, 511Ï #%1($, 2*1. See E. Degani, Studi su Ipponatte, Bari 1984, 80-81. Tzetzes must have read at least Book I of Hipponaxís Iambs at first hand, see O. Masson, Les fragments du po"te Hipponax, Paris 1962, 42-51. He is the most important source for Hipponaxís text beside the papyri, and one or more of his quotations have turned up in every papyrus of Book I published to date. Hipponax is not the only otherwise lost author whom Tzetzes read and quoted (see Wilson, o.c. 196), but his reuse of Hipponax is remarkable in both scale and duration. He may have been aware of the rarity of this text in his time and displayed his acquaintance with it as a mark of erudition; there is also an element of self-identification, see Valeria F. Lovatoís chapter in this volume, pp. 202-206. 97 See Luzzatto, Tzetzes lettore cit., e.g. 31-38, and Juliyn B]rtola in this volume, pp. 341-346. Cf. the criticisms of Aristophanes in schol. Ar. Ran. 25a, 358a, 422, 1144a Koster (Wilson, o.c. 194) and of Homer and others in the Carmina Iliaca (Braccini, Riscrivere cit. 47-50, and Valeria F. Lovatoís contribution to this volume, pp. 190-201). 98 Savio, o.c. 52-53, 58. 99 E.g. schol. Ar. Plut. 9 Massa Positano; schol. Ar. Ran. 1160a Koster; Hist. VII 143, 500; IX 280, 703-704; XII 399, 225 and 238. See Agapitos, Blemish cit. 15, 17-20; Savio, o.c. 52-56. xxviii PRODI was his father (Hist. III 70, 159-172; IV Ep. ad Lach. 562-598)100; as for the rest ñ he assures us with typical humblebrag ñ he is an autodidact, ìnot having been taught anything by anyone, rather being naturally clever and self-taught, having learnt everything from the reading of booksî (schol. Exeg. Il. 5,20 p. 421 Papathomopoulos)101. There is more to this than self-distancing from what we might call ëconventional academiaí. Tzetzesí rejection of new, skills-based teaching methods is the flip side to his embracing of a book-centred classical education where praxis is nourished by a deep engagement with the ancient texts. The fundamental role of books in his educational project is as apparent from his choice of subject-matter as from his explicit statements in his works, and it is baked into his very biography. Physical ëbooksí, not only disembodied ëtextsí102. Tzetzes makes much of his limited access to books in certain moments of his life, such as the financial disgrace that followed his falling out with the eparch of Beroia: the reader needs to pity him for having to work without books, excuse the defects caused by this lack of resources, and (implicitly) admire what he is capable of doing nonetheless103. Although his skills as a textual critic were not of the first order, he knew how liable manuscripts are to error, and what a difference an ìoldî book can make to establishing a reliable These two touching descriptions of his fatherís wide-ranging instruction are complemented by the more concise statement in Hist. V 17, 615-616, which also gives us his fatherís name: Michael. That entire Historia (V 17, 585-630) is devoted to Tzetzesí ancestry. His aristocratic maternal family originated in Iberia (todayís Georgia) and was related to two empresses, Maria of Alania and Eudocia Makrembolitissa; his paternal family was much humbler, but Tzetzesí grandfather ñ another John ñ had been a generous host to men of learning in spite of being totally illiterate himself. On Tzetzesí family see P. Gautier, La curieuse ascendance de Jean Tzetz"s, «REByz» XXVIII (1970) 207-220; for an analysis of the two autobiographical passages from the Chiliads and their implication for Tzetzesí selfpresentation see Xenophontos, o.c.; Pizzone, Autobiographical cit. 294-303. 101 Papathomopoulos, o.c. 421: 2$(*/% C' 7+&Ó, #$6Ï 7+&',Ù@ F67+,'<7;,\ ¢ T<7/)>?.@ 2$Ú $Ã*/7$T9@ 8B 5,$C,4)'.@ L%L1(., #3,*$ 7$T>,*% 7/%. For context see Cullhed, Blind cit. 59. 102 Compare what Paolo Cesaretti says about Eustathios in Cesaretti-Ronchey, o.c. 29*-30*. 103 See e.g. Exeg. Il. pp. 21-23 Papathomopoulos (cannot guarantee the verbatim accuracy of a quotation because he is almost wholly bookless), ibid. 252 7J*' L%L1%>T' *% L1'#>,*., 2$Ú C6$?>,*., #1:, 7>,/< */Q 2'%7;,/< *N@ L(L1/< *N@ p7+6'($@ 2$Ú *$0*+@ /Ã2 'I@ ¿1(C$ #$6'?T/6<($@, ìnor am I looking and writing from a book except for the text of Homerís volume, and it too is damaged in not a few placesî; also Alleg. Il. XV 85-89 (cannot check the author of a verse), Hist. VIII 176, 170-181 (cannot tell whether an expression comes from the Iliad or the Odyssey). This last remark devolves into a boast of his prodigious writing speed, even without books: see Pizzone, The Historiai cit. 190-192. Note her remark on Tzetzesí defiant pose as «a self-sufficient and self-contained literary archive» who does not need constant access to books because his memory makes up for it (ibid. 197198). On the topos of booklessness and its implications see especially Savio, o.c. 58-65; on the sale of Tzetzesí books after the events in Beroia see also Philip Ranceís chapter in this volume, pp. 427-430. 100 Introduction xxix text104. In part, no doubt, this awareness came from his own bitter experience. The scholia to the Histories and the newly discovered autograph annotations to the Commentary to Hermogenes in Voss. gr. Q1 are peppered with insults addressed to the respective scribes because of their bad copying105. Tzetzes was remarkably ñ and remarkably explicitly ñ concerned with the materiality of his works qua written artefacts106. He often references the textual state of his writings before they became the manuscript the reader holds in their hands107, or the damage which they suffered in some earlier iteration108. In one particularly interesting case (schol. Ep. 1, p. 159 Leone) he expostulates at length about a scribe, a 5$&.&B?$4 4R<A who had failed to follow instructions and copied the text straight from the 9.;3<349$7 ñ a rough draft, written 345-?;A *-Ú -Ã3$>50B?;A [Ö] Q36*3;A *-Ú 9014.#=7;A ìas it happened, impromptu [Ö] without order and mixed upî ñ unlike the other copyists, Wilson, o.c. 193-194. Chiliads: e.g. schol. Hist. I 19 tit.; V 23, 201; VII 149, 831 and 845 (with a request to copy from the #6.*>C6$?/, rather than from the corrupt copy he is annotating); VIII 161, 35 (ditto); 171, 136; XI 396, schol. ad schol. 902; XII 399, 226; 404, 332; XIII 496, 620b, pp. 534, 549-550, 558-559, 564, 565, 569 Leone; see E. Trapp, Tzetzes und sein Schreiber Dionysios, «Diptycha» II (1980/1981) 18-22; Agapitos, Blemish cit. 20 n. 106; and Yulia Mantovaís chapter in this volume. Commentary on Hermogenes: two examples are published by A. Pizzone, John Tzetzes in the margins of the Voss. gr. Q1: discovering autograph notes of a Byzantine scholar, https://cml.sdu.dk/blog/john-tzetzes-in-themargins-of-the-voss-gr-q1-discovering-autograph-notes-of-a-byzantine-scholar (4th February 2020). Compare the barbs he directs at the scribe of the Heidelberg Thucydides, Pal. gr. 252: Luzzatto, Tzetzes lettore cit., e.g. 26, 30, 38. 106 See A. Pizzone, Cultural appropriation and the performance of exegesis in John Tzetzesí scholia on Aristophanes, in D. Manolova-P. Marciniak-B. van der Berg (edd.), Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts, 12th-15th Centuries, Cambridge, forthcoming. 107 E.g. Ep. 10 (verse letter to his dead brother ìcrossed outî because of an excess of grief and dichronoi); schol. Hist. IV ep. ad Lach. 779, p. 548 Leone (humorous verses not copied from the #6.*>C6$?/@ H36*+@ into the fair copy); schol. Ar. Ran. 843b Koster (text of schol. 834a first written on a loose sheet attached to the #6.*>*<#/@ *'*63&%/@, then fitted into the page by writing smaller and tighter). Other references to drafts on loose sheets ()H'&($, )H'&36%$) abound in the Tzetzean corpus, often with an emphasis on the authorís ease of improvisation: cf. e.g. Exeg. Il. p. 252 Papathomopoulos; Alleg. Od. V 103-104; schol. Ar. Ran. 843a Koster; Hist. VIII 176, 173 and 178. See Leone, Historiae cit. liv-lv; Pizzone, The Historiai cit. 190-192. 108 See e.g. the verses in Laur. Conv. Soppr. 627 edited by Nunzio Bianchi in this volume, but also Hist. V 23, 200-201, VI 63 tit. and vv. 597-600 with schol. IV 141, 469b p. 547 Leone (missing pages stolen by some soldiers, with a prayer to the reader to buy them back and copy them in if they can) and the heading of the second collection of the Letters that precedes Ep. 70 (somebody took both the )H'&($ and the fair copy of the first collection, destroying the former and corrupting and jumbling the latter), cf. the headnote to Ep. 76 (texts brought back together from the )H'&36%$ ìas we happened to find them and as we were able to read themî). See Pizzone, The Historiai cit. 188-190, highlighting how Tzetzes uses references to the history of the text to «build a sort of stratigraphy, a ëbiographicalí outline which applies to both the collection and its author» (190). 104 105 xxx PRODI who complied with Tzetzesí directions and wrote everything in order, including the two tables of contents (9?7-*0A)109. As that very comment proves, Tzetzes inspected the manuscript after copying and warned the future reader about the flaw ñ while pointing out that the blame did not rest with him. Recent studies have stressed the role of autography in Tzetzesí self-portrayal, a strategy which makes his writings visually recognisable and construes him as an official whose signature is vested with authority110. Another important aspect of this practice is what we may call a poetics of quality control. Tzetzes is not content with sending forth his writings into the world; he takes care that they circulate in a correct form according to his intention. With the authorís obtrusive presence in the margins of the manuscript and his performative vituperation of delinquent copyists, the reader is both alerted to what could go wrong and reassured that it has been exactingly put right111. At the same time as he seeks to control the dissemination (and reception) of his work, Tzetzes inscribes himself into the process of revision, joining it with the other aspects of his authorial self112. This is part and parcel of his posture as '$,&>32A 3T7 9-'-&T7 *-Ú 7=;7, «auditor of the ancients and moderns» (Iamb. 360)113. He scrutinizes and chastises all alike: rogue scribes, incompetent colleagues, misguided poets, and not least himself, with his youthful errors and precarious circumstances. The result ñ we are led to understand ñ is unique, and uniquely valuable114. Tzetzesí «cantankerous nature» is part of his authorial persona just as much as his vast erudition and his educational ardour. It is a seal of authenticity ñ with the The passage is discussed by Pizzone, Self-authorization cit. 674-676. See Pizzone, Self-authorization cit. 670-688; Ead., Bureaucratic discourse, signature and authorship in John Tzetzes: A comparative perspective, «ACME» LXXIII (2020) 43-66. 111 See especially schol. Hist. V 23, post 201, where the work of ìcleaning upî the ìsmelly filth of this crappigrapher (for so he should be called, rather than calligrapher)î is explicitly said to be undertaken for his patron Constantine Kotertzes. Leone, Historiae cit. 549 prints 2/#6/?3C/< at v. 3, with no variant noted in the apparatus, but the manuscripts whose digital reproductions are accessible to me (Par. gr. 2644, f. 111v; Vat. gr. 1369, f. 115v) read 2/#6/C63?/<, and I am in no doubt that Tzetzes wrote thus: he does use coprophagy as a term of abuse elsewhere (Hist. XII 399, 233), but the opposition with 2$11%C63?/, and the sense of the passage both require 2/#6/C63?/<. Cf. the other Tzetzean coinage inverting 2$11%C63?/@, viz. ?$<1/C63?/@, used with reference to himself (note to the hypothesis of Ar. Plut. in Ambr. C 222 inf. f. 144v ap. Massa Positano, o.c. xcii; schol. Ar. Plut. 733 Massa Positano; note to schol. Hermog. in Voss. gr. Q1 f. 115v ap. Pizzone, Self-authorization cit. 678); see Luzzatto, Tzetzes lettore cit. 143-144; Pizzone, Self-authorization cit. 676-678. 112 On the secretarial and «bureaucratic» aspects of Tzetzesí self-presentation see Pizzone, The Historiai cit. 192-195; Ead., Self-authorization cit. 673-676; Ead., Bureaucratic cit. 51-53. 113 Transl. Pizzone, Self-authorization cit. 680. 114 Tzetzesí «retorica dellíeccellenza e dellíunicitb» is well brought out by Savio, o.c.: e.g. 18, 22-23, 54, 122-123 (quotation from p. 22). 109 110 xxxi Introduction noun to be understood both as true authorship and as unfiltered frankness. It was also a marketing ploy. Look again closely at the drawing from Pal. gr. 18 in the frontispiece of this volume. While the scroll in Lycophronís hand bears the opening line of the Alexandra, the one in Tzetzesí does not contain the epigram that opens the commentary115, as one might have expected, but the closing one: not the presentation of Lycophron and of Tzetzesí own work on him, but the tirade against the poet which we examined a few pages ago. While this thirteenth-century manuscript was, obviously, not produced under Tzetzesí supervision, the artistís choice illuminates the authorial persona that was still felt to emerge from the commentary. In other words: Tzetzes tried hard to make himself seem like a thoroughly unpleasant person, and that shrewd self-advertising campaign very much succeeded. * * * Studia Tzetziana nostris temporibus neglecta fere iacere quis est, quin sciat?, asked Heinrich Giske in the very first sentence of his 1881 dissertation116. Ironically, in the months between his writing that sentence and its publication, another dissertation on a near-identical subject had come out117. And Tzetzean studies ñ X:03:&*-Ú M.047-&, we should call them (Hist. dee 398, 66 and 68) ñ have not been neglected since then. The second half of the twentieth century has brought a great deal of text-critical work, with previously unpublished texts coming to their editio princeps and others, published in unreliable or insufficiently critical editions, redone in line with modern editorial technique. Two names stand out: Herbert Hunger and, especially, Pietro Luigi M. Leone118. The turn of the century brought one of the most exciting discoveries on a Tzetzic subject: Maria Jagoda Luzzattoís realization that the bilious scholia to Thucydidesí text in Pal. gr. 252 were in Tzetzesí own hand119, of which we thus gained the first specimen. The new millennium has brought the first translations Scheer, o.c. 1. H. Giske, De Ioannis Tzetzae scriptis ac vita, Rostochii 1881, 1. 117 G. Hart, De Tzetzarum nomine vitis scriptis, Lipsiae 1880. 118 H. Hunger, Johannes Tzetzes. Die Allegorien aus der Verschronik. Kommentierte Textausgabe, «JkByz» IV (1955) 13-49; Id., Johannes Tzetzes, Allegorien zur Odyssee, Buch 13-24, «ByzZ» XLVIII (1955) 4-48; Id., Johannes Tzetzes, Allegorien zur Odyssee, Buch 1-12, «ByzZ» XLIX (1956) 249-310. P.L.M. Leone, Ioannis Tzetzae iambi, «RSBN» n.s. VI-VII (1969-1970) 127-156; Id., Ioannis Tzetzae Epistulae, Leipzig 1972; Id., Ioannis Tzetzae Carmina Iliaca, Catania 1995; Id., Ioannis Tzetzae Historiae, Galatina 20072 (Napoli 19681); Id., Ioannis Tzetzae Theogonia, Lecce 2019. 119 M.J. Luzzatto, Tzetzes lettore di Tucidide. Note autografe sul Codice Heidelberg Palatino Greco 252, Bari 1999, esp. 9-42. 115 116 xxxii PRODI of Tzetzes into modern languages120, an impressive number of articles and chapters elucidating his works and his place in the thriving learned culture of Comnenian Byzantium121, and the first book-length non-text-critical monograph on Tzetzes since the two of 1881122. Discoveries have continued, too: two excerpts on rhetorical topics ñ one in political verse, one in trimeters ñ published by Carlo Maria Mazzucchi from Ambr. M 66 sup.123; a large chunk from the Accounts (K$,&>#$?), retrieved by Aglae Pizzone in Voss. gr. Q1 together with the Commentary to Hermogenes, again graced by Tzetzesí characteristically cantankerous autograph marginalia124; most recently, again thanks to Aglae Pizzone, the verse epistle that closes Tzetzesí Letters, previously ignored by Leone125. 120 Little-Big Iliad: P.L.M. Leone, Giovanni Tzetzes. La leggenda troiana (Carmina iliaca), Lecce 2015 (Italian); C.A. Messuti, Tzetzes. La guerra de Troya, tambi!n conocida como Carmina Iliaca o como Peque&a Gran Il'ada, s.l. 2020 (Spanish, unfortunately based on Lehrsí edition of 1840). On Tragic Poetry: G. Pace, Giovanni Tzetzes. La poesia tragica, Napoli 20112 (20071; Italian). Allegories of the Iliad and of the Odyssey: A.J. Goldwyn-D. Kokkini, John Tzetzes. Allegories of the Iliad, Cambridge MA-London 2015; Eid., John Tzetzes. Allegories of the Odyssey, Cambridge MALondon 2019 (both English). On these last two see the issues raised by D.J. Mastronarde, «BMCRev» 2015.09.45 (https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2015/2015.09.45/) and by J. Haubold, «BMCRev» 2020.03.07 (https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2020/2020.03.07/). There exists a multi-authored English translation of the Chiliads on the Theoi website (https://www.theoi.com/Text/TzetzesChiliades1.html); I mention it for the sake of completeness, but it relies on an outdated text (Kiesslingís of 1826) and it is so full of errors that it should be used with the greatest caution, if at all. Two further English translations are in progress: a selection of literary-critical works (the preface to the Exegesis of the Iliad, the verse treatises On the Differences between Poets, On Tragedy, and On Comedy, the prose Prolegomena to Comedy, and the Life of Aristophanes) by Baukje van den Berg for the «Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library», and the Little-Big Iliad by Silvio Bzr and Valeria F. Lovato for the «Translated Texts for Byzantinists» series. There are two old translations into Latin: one of the Chiliads by Paulus Lacisius in the editio princeps, N. Gerbel, Ioannis Tzetzae variarum historiarum liber versibus politicis ab eodem Graece conscriptus et Pauli Lacisii Veronensis opera ad verbum Latine conversus, &c., Basileae 1546, and one of the Little-Big Iliad in F.S. Lehrs, Hesiodi carmina, Apollonii Argonautica, Musaei carmen de Herone et Leandro, Coluthi Raptus Helenae, Quinti Post-Homerica, &c., Parisiis 1840, 4-34. 121 I shall not attempt to list them, partly because the list would far exceed the bounds of acceptability for one footnote, partly in order not to rouse ?T>,/@ (or accusations of buffalo-hood) in those whom I might inadvertently omit. The footnotes of the chapters included in this volume will provide a reasonably complete overview of recent as well as less recent scholarship. 122 M. Savio, Screditare per valorizzare. Giovanni Tzetze, le sue fonti, i committenti e la concorrenza, Roma 2020. 123 C.M. Mazzucchi, Líex libris di Giovanni Camatero e versi inediti di Tzetzes nel codice ambrosiano M 66 sup., «Aevum» XCIII (2019) 441-447. 124 A. Pizzone, Self-authorization and strategies of autography in John Tzetzes: The Logismoi rediscovered, «GRBS» LX (2020) 650-688 ñ with more to come. 125 A. Pizzone, Christmas presents for John Tzetzes: a new verse epistle from the letter collection, «ByzZ» CXIV (2021) 1305-1322. Introduction xxxiii This surge of interest was well under way when John Tzetzes: An International Conference took place in Venice in September 2018. Twenty-three scholars from all over Europe gathered for two and a half days to discuss Tzetzesí writings and their significance for both Classical and Byzantine Studies. With the inevitable defections and changes of plans and a few, fortunate additions, the present volume represents the outcome of those discussions. We are proud to publish in Open Access, however belatedly, the first collection of essays dedicated entirely to Tzetzes. We begin with three anecdota. Tommaso Braccini reports a manuscript from the Patriarchal library of Alexandria containing what seems to be the entire allegorical preamble to Tzetzesí F03.&*2 5.$7&*), including its previously unknown final section (vv. 528-633), which he kindly allows to appear here for the first time. Aglae Pizzone regales us with more of the K$,&>#$? which she has uncovered in the biliously annotated Vossianus: a detailed treatment of an obscure but apparently crucial part of good oratory, the 9.$*-36>3->&A (and the endless polemics that surrounded it, "a va sans dire). Both of these texts were in fact recorded in the published catalogues of the respective libraries, yet they had escaped the notice of Tzetzic scholars until now. Conversely, the verses against the vandalic ìson of a goatî in ms. Laur. conv. soppr. 627 were well known, but they had not been published except for a few verses; Nunzio Bianchi finally gives them the full edition they deserve. The typical Tzetzean polemic which we have seen surface in the final part of the Allegories from the Verse-Chronicle and reach a paroxysm in the verses against the 3.6,$4 ,<7$A is also the subject of Yulia Mantovaís article: a taxonomy of the terms of obloquy used by Tzetzes in the scholia to the Histories. The polemical verve does not abate in the metrical diatribes explored by Marc Lauxtermann as he untangles the ìmethod in the madnessî of Tzetzesí use of the ìcommon syllableî ñ which, mind, is not the same as the B?5.$7$& the buffaloes dabble in! This section, concerned with topics of a general import in Tzetzesí úuvre, continues with Giulia Gerbiís study of fictional or semi-fictional letters in the Epistles, which often embed a clear pragmatic setting but do not name an addressee or are not written in persona Tzetzae. In the concluding chapter, Jesfs Mugoz Morcillo investigates Tzetzesí sophisticated use of ekphrasis and its influence on Renaissance artistic theory. The short third section comprises two papers about Tzetzesí reception of two major figures, one mythological (Thersites, by Valeria Flavia Lovato) and one historical (Alexander the Great, by Corinne Jouanno). References to Alexander abound in the corpus, mixing references to learned sources and to the «popular culture» represented by the Alexander Romance. Thersites, on the other hand ñ like his poetic analogue, Hipponax ñ can be read as an in-text avatar of Tzetzesí self-definition, in opposition to Eustathius of Thessalonike and his fondness for Odysseus. xxxiv PRODI The rest of the volume is devoted to Tzetzesí multi-faceted reception of ancient texts, from Homer to Late Antiquity, in chronological order. Rite coepturi ab Homero, as Quintilian would say (I 10,46), we begin with a diptych of chapters on two of Tzetzesí Iliadic works: the F&*.$#0,6'+ h'&6A and the Allegories of the Iliad. Ugo Mondini examines the Little-Big Iliad and their authorial scholia as a piece of didactic literature responding to contemporary concerns about presenting useful information in a synoptic and concise way; Alberto Ravani analyses the prolegomena to the Allegories in comparison with the introduction to the Exegesis of the Iliad and teases out the ways in which Tzetzes displays not only his skill as an allegorist, but also his knowledge of myth and his talent as a narrator. Frederick Lauritzenís contribution, on the other hand, is squarely allegorical, focussing on a long-distance polemic between Tzetzes and Michael Psellos and its cultural context. Anna Novokhatko rounds off the Homeric material with a discussion of the mysterious Panel of Four which (as Tzetzes claims in the Introduction to Comedy) edited the Homeric poems at Peisistratosí behest. Jacopo Cavarzeran examines the evidence for Tzetzesí exegetical activity on Euripides as attested by Vat. gr. 909, where annotations going back to Tzetzesí likely commentary are augmented by material drawn from other works of his. The chapter by Juliin B8rtola looks at authorial and didactic strategies in Tzetzesí verse scholia on codices of Thucydides and Herodotus (Pal. gr. 252 and Laur. Plut. 70,3), further proposing Tzetzean authorship for some unattributed material in the Laurentianus. While the book epigrams on the fifth-century historians have been edited or re-edited recently, the large commentary to Lycophron which John Tzetzes ascribed to his late brother Isaac (cf. Ep. 21) has not been revised in over a century; Thomas Coward offers a sample of what a new edition should look like. The last two chapters explore Tzetzesí reception of technical texts, which literature-focussed Classicist and Byzantinists alike are liable to overlook. With Chiara DíAgostini we dive into Tzetzesí reception of Ptolemyís Geography in the context of twelfth-century geographical discourse and (again) a polemic with Eustathios of Thessalonike. Philip Rance investigates the ìmechanographersî with whom Tzetzes would, or could, not part even in poverty: the final pages of the volume brim with Anthemios and Pappos, geometry and optics, Archimedes and burning-mirrors, and Tzetzesí real or purported sources. * * * The conference that gave rise to the present volume was made possible by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Fellowship under the European Unionís Horizon Introduction xxxv 2020 research and innovation programme (MSCA-IF-EF-2015, grant agreement no. 708556). As well as hosting the Fellowship itself, Caí Foscari University of Venice provided magnificent hospitality for the conference in the scenic Aula Baratto. The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies generously granted funding toward student bursaries. I am grateful to the then director of the Humanities Department, Giovannella Cresci, who inaugurated the conference; to Federica Benuzzi, Caterina Carpinato, Ettore Cingano, and Filippomaria Pontani, who chaired sessions; to Ambra Agnoletto, who supported the conference, and the entire project, on the administrative side; and to Elena Bonollo, Caterina Franchi, Giulia Gerbi, Chiara Morelli, Alberto Ravani, and (again) Federica Benuzzi for their assistance before and during the conference. Some of the original speakers at the conference could not include their contributions in the volume in the end, and I acknowledge them here in gratitude for their participation: Minerva Alganza Roldin, Baukje van den Berg, Alessandra Bucossi, Ettore Cingano, Caterina Franchi, Enrico Magnelli, Johanna Michels, and Vlada Stanković. I am very thankful to the board of «Eikasmos» for welcoming the volume in their free online Open Access series and for two sharp extra pairs of eyes at proofreading stage. During the preparation of the volume I had the support of many. I single out three people on whom I relied extensively for (among other things) wise advice, bibliographical assistance, and cat photos: Thomas Coward, Ugo Mondini, and most of all Tzetzesí groupie-in-chief, Aglae Pizzone. The quality of the finished product, and my own sanity while producing it, owe them a great deal. I accept responsibility for any remaining failures of editorship; I mention especially the lack of indexes, which (buffalo that I am!) an excess of other workload has prevented me from compiling. I hope their absence, in an electronic publication, may be somewhat mitigated by the word search function. ENRICO EMANUELE PRODI [email protected]