Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Introduction: Poetry in Byzantine Literature and Society (1081–1204)
- Part I Poetry and Twelfth-Century Literary Culture
- Part II Poetry and the School
- Part III Poetry, Patronage and Power
- Part IV New Texts, New Interpretations
- 12 Manganeios Prodromos: His Life and Writings
- 13 An Unedited Cycle of Byzantine Verse Scholia on Herodotus in the Light of Twelfth-Century Verse Scholia on Ancient Historians
- 14 Constantine Manasses’ Astrological Poem: Editorial Problems, Quellenforschung and Cultural Context
- 15 The Learned Bishop and the Unicorn: Michael Choniates, Poem 5 Lampros
- Index
13 - An Unedited Cycle of Byzantine Verse Scholia on Herodotus in the Light of Twelfth-Century Verse Scholia on Ancient Historians
from Part IV - New Texts, New Interpretations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 October 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Introduction: Poetry in Byzantine Literature and Society (1081–1204)
- Part I Poetry and Twelfth-Century Literary Culture
- Part II Poetry and the School
- Part III Poetry, Patronage and Power
- Part IV New Texts, New Interpretations
- 12 Manganeios Prodromos: His Life and Writings
- 13 An Unedited Cycle of Byzantine Verse Scholia on Herodotus in the Light of Twelfth-Century Verse Scholia on Ancient Historians
- 14 Constantine Manasses’ Astrological Poem: Editorial Problems, Quellenforschung and Cultural Context
- 15 The Learned Bishop and the Unicorn: Michael Choniates, Poem 5 Lampros
- Index
Summary
This chapter presents eleven epigrams (forty-nine dodecasyllables) copied in the margins of a number of manuscripts of Herodotus’ Histories, the most important being Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 70.6. The epigrams comment on the text of Herodotus next to which they appear, and thus can be characterized as verse scholia. These poems, which the author of this chapter has critically edited in a recent article, were known to scholars, but they had been misattributed to John Tzetzes. In fact, Tzetzes’ verse scholia on Herodotus survive in another manuscript (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 70.3), whereas our poems have more in common with the verse scholia on Diodorus Siculus in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, gr. 130. The authorial voice of Tzetzes and the attribution of the poems in Vat. gr. 130 to Niketas Choniates are investigated to help determine the context of composition of our verse scholia on Herodotus. On the basis of this comparison and other internal evidence, this chapter concludes that our eleven epigrams were first copied in the model of Laur. Plut. 70.6 at some point between 1204 and 1318, and probably before 1261.
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- Poetry in Byzantine Literature and Society (1081-1204)New Texts, New Approaches, pp. 339 - 365Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024