John Tzetzes
John Tzetzes was born around 1110 in Constantinople and died there in 1180, spending virtually his entire life in the same city. He was a Byzantine poet and grammarian who worked in the 12th century, at a time when the intellectual world of Constantinople was rich with learned debate. His most famous work runs to 12,674 lines of verse, divided into 660 separate topics, and it preserves fragments from more than 200 ancient authors, many of whose original works have since been lost to history.
How does a man who described himself as vain, who violently attacked his fellow scholars, and who had to rely on memory because he lacked sufficient written materials, end up becoming one of the most important bridges between the ancient Greek world and the Renaissance? That is the question this documentary sets out to answer.
Tzetzes described himself as pure Greek on his father's side and part Iberian, meaning Georgian, on his mother's side. He recorded in his own writings that his grandmother was a relative of the Georgian Bagratid princess Maria of Alania, who came to Constantinople and later became the second wife of a man named Constantine Keroularios. Keroularios held the title of sebastos and megas droungarios, and was the nephew of the patriarch Michael Keroularios.
This lineage gave Tzetzes a sense of distinguished connection to the court circles of Constantinople. Yet in practical terms, he worked as a secretary to a provincial governor before turning to teaching and writing as his main livelihood. Those who described him noted vanity and a ferocious resentment toward any scholar who might be seen as a rival. He attacked fellow grammarians with what sources describe as violence of expression, suggesting a competitive streak that shaped both his reputation and his output.
His memory was his most essential tool, because a lack of written material meant he could not always verify what he recalled. Readers of his work are cautioned, even by those who admire him, to treat his citations carefully for exactly this reason.
Tzetzes published a collection of 107 letters addressed to a range of recipients, some of them real figures of influence in his day, others fictitious or unidentified. These letters contain biographical information about his own life and social observations about the Constantinople he inhabited. They are also packed with allusions to history, rhetoric, and mythology.
The first 141 histories in his major work serve as poetic footnotes to a single verse letter he addressed to a man named John Lachanas, an official in Constantinople. Each topic in the larger work expands on a learned reference buried in one of those published letters, making the letters both the seed and the anchor of everything that followed.
Those letters became the springboard for what grew into the Book of Histories, sometimes called by its Greek name Chiliades, meaning thousands. The name itself did not come from Tzetzes but from the arbitrary decision of its first editor, a man identified as N. Gerbel, who divided the work in 1546 into books each containing a thousand lines.
The Chiliades runs to 12,674 lines of political verse. Its 660 topics range across literary, historical, theological, and antiquarian subjects, making it a document that defies easy classification. Scholars value it as a snapshot of what educated people in mid-12th-century Constantinople knew, debated, and considered worth preserving.
What makes the work irreplaceable is that it quotes and paraphrases from more than 200 ancient authors, including writers whose texts no longer exist in any other form. Without the Chiliades, knowledge of those works would simply be absent from the record. A revised edition with marginal notes in prose and verse was published by T. Kiessling in 1826, and research into its sources was taken up by C. Harder in a dissertation published in Kiel in 1886.
Because Tzetzes relied so heavily on memory when composing these commentaries, the work must be read with care. A fact he recalled imprecisely could be transmitted incorrectly into the record. Yet the sheer scale of what he preserved, and the uniqueness of much of it, means that scholars continue to depend on the Chiliades as a source they cannot ignore.
Tzetzes undertook a massive engagement with Homer that went well beyond commentary. He wrote a work that begins with the birth of Paris and continues the Trojan story all the way to the Achaeans' return home, supplementing the Iliad at both ends.
The Antehomerica covers events before the Iliad begins. The Homerica covers the events of the Iliad itself. The Posthomerica fills in the gap between the Iliad and the Odyssey. All three are now available in English translations.
Separately, his Homeric Allegories are two long didactic poems, one based on the Iliad and one on the Odyssey. These were dedicated initially to the German-born empress Irene and then to a man named Constantine Cotertzes. The poems explain Homeric theology through three distinct types of allegory: the euhemeristic, the anagogic, and the physical, using the Greek terms prakte, psychike, and stoicheiaike respectively. Both works were translated into English in 2015 and 2019 by Adam J. Goldwyn and Dimitra Kokkini.
Among Tzetzes's commentaries on individual Greek authors, the most significant is his treatment of the Alexandra, also called the Cassandra, a notoriously difficult poem by the Hellenistic poet Lycophron. This commentary, usually referred to simply as "On Lycophron," was edited by K.O. Muller in 1811, and his brother Isaac is generally associated with him in its production.
Tzetzes also wrote a dramatic sketch in iambic verse describing the caprices of fortune and the difficult lives of the learned. He wrote an iambic poem on the death of the emperor Manuel I Komnenos that is notable for a formal device: each line begins with the last word of the line before it. Both of those pieces were published in Pietro Matranga's Anecdota Graeca in 1850.
These smaller works show a writer who was not content to operate only in one mode. The poem for Manuel I Komnenos, with its interlocking lines, points to a writer interested in formal experiment even late in a career already defined by sheer volume of output.
Common questions
Who was John Tzetzes and why is he important?
John Tzetzes was a Byzantine poet and grammarian who lived in Constantinople from around 1110 to 1180. He is important primarily because his major work, the Book of Histories, preserves fragments from more than 200 ancient Greek authors, including many whose original works have otherwise been lost.
What is the Book of Histories by John Tzetzes?
The Book of Histories, also called the Chiliades, is a long poem of 12,674 lines of political verse divided into 660 topics. Each topic is a commentary on a learned reference from Tzetzes's own published letters. Its first editor, N. Gerbel, gave it the name Chiliades when he divided it into books of a thousand lines each in 1546.
What ancient authors did John Tzetzes preserve in his writings?
The Chiliades preserves fragments from more than 200 ancient authors, including many whose works have been lost entirely. The work is considered an important source for knowledge that is unavailable anywhere else.
What did John Tzetzes write about Homer?
Tzetzes wrote several works engaging with Homer. The Antehomerica, Homerica, and Posthomerica together cover the events before, during, and between Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. He also wrote the Homeric Allegories, two didactic poems interpreting Homeric theology through euhemeristic, anagogic, and physical allegory, translated into English in 2015 and 2019 by Adam J. Goldwyn and Dimitra Kokkini.
What was John Tzetzes's family background?
Tzetzes described himself as pure Greek on his father's side and part Georgian on his mother's side. He recorded that his grandmother was a relative of the Georgian Bagratid princess Maria of Alania, and that she later became the second wife of Constantine Keroularios, the nephew of the patriarch Michael Keroularios.
What is the commentary on Lycophron by John Tzetzes?
Tzetzes wrote a commentary on the Alexandra, or Cassandra, a difficult poem by the Hellenistic poet Lycophron. Known as "On Lycophron," it was edited by K.O. Muller in 1811 and is considered the most important of Tzetzes's commentaries on individual Greek authors. His brother Isaac is generally associated with him in its production.
All sources
2 references cited across the entry
- 1John Tzetzes – Byzantine scholar12 April 2024
- 2BookIndividualism and Conformity in Classical IslamAmin Banani — Otto Harrassowitz — 1977