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Photius and Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Barry Baldwin
Barry Baldwin*
Affiliation:
University of Calgary, Canada
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Extract

‘No art or science, except poetry, was foreign to this universal scholar’. Thus Edward Gibbon. It has long been notorious that poets are excluded from the Bibliotheca. Why? The question persists. Hence the present paper.

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 4: Essays Presented to Sir Steven Runciman , 1978 , pp. 9 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1978

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References

1. It is not tackled in two important articles, hereinafter referred to by authors’ names: Hook, La Rue Van, ‘The Literary Criticism in the Bibliotheca of Photius’, Classical Philogy, IV (1909), 178–89 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kustas, G. L., ‘The Literary Criticism of Photius’, Hellenika, XVII (1962), 132–69.Google Scholar

2. For Anna and Psellus in this Homeric context, see Buckler, G., Anna Comnena (Oxford, 1929), pp. 197–202.Google Scholar

3. See, e.g., Sandys, J. E., A History of Classical Scholarship, I (Cambridge, 1903), pp. 402–3 Google Scholar. The present paper hopes to be a little more ambitious than Sandys whose explanation of the problem in cause consisted of the sentence ‘Possibly the learned author was more partial to prose’.

4. For this, and for many odier related matters, see the valuable paper of Wilson, N. G., ‘The Church and Classical Studies in Byzantium’, Antike und Abendland, XVI (1970), 68–77.Google Scholar

5. It may or may not be signal that one of the very few other sources to cite the Lamia was also a Christian, specifically Lactantius, Inst. 1. 6. 8; Nauck’s, cf. Tragicorum graecorum fragmenta (1964 edition, revised by Snell), pp. 506–7.Google Scholar

6. On this, see Dover, K. J., Aristophanic Comedy (London, 1972), p. 226.Google Scholar

7. Apart from the Introduction to Henry’s Budé edition, pp. xix-xx, see Hemmerdinger’s, B. two articles in BZ, LXIV (1971), 37, and REG, LXIX (1956), 101–3.Google Scholar

8. See, e.g., Wilson, N. G., ‘The composition of Photius’ Bibliotheca’, GRBS, IX (1968), 451–4 Google Scholar; Hagg, cf. T., ‘Photius at Work: Evidence from the Text of the Bibliotheca’, GRBS, XIV (1973), 213–22.Google Scholar

9. On the existence of the club, see Wilson’s article in the above note; Bury, cf. J. B., History of the Eastern Roman Empire (London, 1912), pp. 446–7 Google Scholar. It could, however, be maintained that Photius’Greek, assuming use of the royal plural, is referring to readings widi Tarasius alone.

10. A point made clear by Van Hook, and (with fuller documentation) Kustas; Orth, cf. E., Photiana (Leipzig, 1929), pp. 94–8.Google Scholar

11. See, e.g., cod. 7s on Herodotean divagations; cf. Van Hook, 179.

12. See Wilson, 71 (article cited in n. 4 above).

13. Alexiad, praef. 1; cf. Buckler, op. cit., p. 202.

14. Wilson (see n. 12) perhaps does not sufficiently distinguish between attitudes to Plato and to Neoplatonism.

15. The Photian debt to Hermogenes is fully demonstrated by Kustas.

16. Notably towards Lucian (of all people), cod. 128, whose Dialogues of the Courtesans are approved; however, the Asinus is denounced for its obscenity (cod. 129).

17. Codd. 87 (Achilles Tatius), 94 (Iamblichus).

18. There are scattered allusions (they can be pieced together from Henry’s Budé or the Index in MPG, CIV, 1461–1516), but they are usually in quotations. It is, however, to be observed that Photius did study critical surveys of at least some poets; see cod. 158 (Phrynichus), cod. 239 (the Chrestomathia of Proclus).

19. One has to bear in mind that Bibliotheca is not the original title, and that it would therefore be improper to expect of Photius a complete survey of literature. See Henry’s Introduction, p. xx, n. 2; Diller, cf. A., ‘Photius’Bibliotheca in Byzantine Literature’, DOP, XVI (1962), 389–96.Google Scholar