Scanned text contains errors.
1200
Irene Augusta, the wife of Manuel Comnenus, who died a. d. 1158. The father of Joannes Tzetzes was Michael Tzetzes. His mother's name was Eudocia {CM. v. 611). He was himself named after his paternal grandfather, a native of Byzantium, a man of some wealth, who, though not a learned man, showed great respect for scholars (ib. 615). His maternal grandmother was of a Basque or Iberian family. The earlier part of his life he spent with his brother Isaac at home, where they received various wholesome precepts from their father, urging them to prefer learning to riches, power, or precedence. (Chil. iii. 157, iv. 566, &c.) At the age of fifteen he was placed under the instruction of tutors, who not only carried him through the usual routine of study, but taught him Hebrew and Syriac (comp. Chil. vi. 282). His writings bear evident traces of the extent of his acquirements in literature, science, and philosophy, and not less of the inordinate self-conceit with which they had filled him. He boasts of having the best memory of any living man. (Chil. i. 275, 545.) He stvles himself a second Cato or Pala-
s »/
medes (iii. 160); and says that he knows whole books off by heart (x. 681, comp. vi. 407, 475, viii. 182, ix.^752, x%340, 364, xii. 13, 118, Kal ftffa, a\\a €Tepa efleAot tis fJLavQaveiv^ et' airb ffr'fjOovs offiauev hsyeiv 7retpa0-0cw). Another subject on which he glorifies himself is the rapidity with which he could write, comparing it to the speed of lightning (xii. 119, viii. 269, 526, Kal v6ti rb o^vrarov tt)s t^et^ov Siavoias). He talks of Tfer&Kas epew/asr, as models of investigation, eV attfirep r] aArjfleta e« xaoi/s avarpe^t (xii. 75, 126). It is not much to be wondered at that others had not so exalted an opinion of him as he had of himself (xii. 97). The neglect of his fellow-countrymen even excites in him the fear that Constantinople would be given up to the barbarians, and become itself barbarous (xii. 993, &c.). He complains with bitterness that the princes and great men of his age did not appreciate his merits, but left him to get a livelihood by transcribing and selling his writings, of which they nevertheless expected copies to be sent them gratis (v. 941, comp. ix. 369). He speaks of Irene Augusta as the only person of high station from whom he had received any thing (xi. 48), and even in this instance he complains that the sums promised him for his Homeric Allegories were kept back by those who should have paid him (ix. 282, &c.). Further biographical particulars have not come down to us.
A large part of the voluminous writings of Tzetzes is still extant. The following have been published. 1. 'IA.iaKa. This consists properly of three poems, collected in one under the titles T& irpb 'Ojurjpoy, ra 'Ou'fjpov, teal ra p,s& "Ourjpov. The first contains the whole Iliac cyclus, from the birth of Paris to the tenth year of the siege, when the Iliad begins. The second consists of an abridgment of the Ilia4. The third, like the work of Quintus Smyrnaeus,. is devoted to the occurrences which took place between the death of Hector and the return of the Greeks. The whole amounts to 1676 lines, and is written in hexameter metre. It is a very dull composition, all the merits that are to be found in which should be ascribed to the earlier poets from whom Tzetzes derived his materials. Our knowledge of this composition is of comparatively recent date. A fragment of one hun-
dred and forty-eight lines, from the Ante homer lea,
was published by F. Morel, under the title Iliacum
carmen Poetae Graeci cujus nomen ignoratur. A
fragment of twenty lines from the Posthomerica
was published by Dodwell in his Dissertationes de
veteribus Graecis et Romanis Cyclis^ p. 802. In
1770 G. B. von Schirach published from a manu-
script formerly at Augsburg, now at Munich, the
whole of the Antehomerica, with the exception of
about one hundred and seventy lines, a portion of
the Homerica, and the fragment of the Postho-
merica which had been published by Dodwell.
The missing portion of the Antehomerica, together
with the whole of the Posthomerica, was found in
a manuscript at Vienna by T. C. Tychsen, who
sent a copy of it to F. Jacobs. A copy of a manu-
script of the Homerica was obtained from England,
and. a complete edition of the three poems was
published by Jacobs in 1793, with a commentary.
A more correct edition is that of Immanuel Bekker
(Berlin, 1816). 2. Another extensive work of
Tzetzes is that known by the name of Chiliades^
consisting in its present form of 12,661 lines. The
name CMliades was given to it by the first editor,
Nic. Gerbelius, who divided it, without reference
to the contents, into thirteen divisions of 1000
lines, the last being incomplete. Tzetzes himself
called it /8i£Aos IffropcK'fj, and divided it into three
Trij/aK€s, as he termed them ; the first of which
contains one hundred and forty-one narrations, and
ends at Chil. iv. 1. 466. Hereupon follows an
epistle to one Joannes Lachanes, in which the
contents of the first table are repeated and accom-
panied with moral observations. The second
7nVa£ extends from Chil. iv. 1. 781 to Chil. v. 192,
and contains twenty- three narratives. The third
contains four hundred aud ninety-six stories. It
consists of six hundred and sixty chapters or divi-
sions, separated into three masses. Its subject-
matter is of the most miscellaneous kind, but em-
braces chiefly mythological and historical narra-
tives, arranged under separate titles, and without
any further connection. The following are a few
of them, as they occur : Croesus, Midas, Gyges,
Codrus, Alcmaeon, the sons of Boreas, Euphorbus,
Narcissus, Nireus, Hyacinthus, Orpheus, Amphion,
the Sirens, Marsyas, Terpander, Arion, the golden
lamb of Atreus, the bull of Minos, the dog of
Cephalus, Megacles, Cimon, Aristopatira, the
victories of Simonidea, Stesichorus, Tyrtaeus, Han-
nibal, Bucephalus, the clothes of the Sybarite An-
tisthenes, Xerxes, Cleopatra, the Pharos at Alex-
andria, Trajanus and his bridge over the Danube,
Archimedes, Hercules, &c.
It is an uncritical gossiping book, written in bad Greek in that abominable make-believe of a metre, called political verse (fjuaj-evuevoi ffrixoi^ Chil. ix. 283), of which the following is a sample : —
olSas
T6
OVTWS 6TOI/KOS
6/C
Se yap nvijuovetTTCpov tow t^et^ou frebs a\\oir avSpa twv irpiv re Kal t&v vvv e£e</>rj»>ej/ e*> jSi'qu.
(Chil. i. 275.)
It is followed by an appendix, in iambics, and some prose epistles. It contains, however, a great deal of curious and valuable information, though, as Heyne has shown, the bulk of it was obtained by Tzetzes at second hand. Fabricius (Bibl. Grace. xi. p. 243, &c.) has a list of above 400 writer* quoted by Tzetzes in this work. The author ap-
