This chapter explores the rationales of the paratexts accompanying John Tzetzes’ commentary on Hermogenes in the bespoke copy contained in the Vossianus Gr. Q1. Besides clarifying the circumstances prompting that specific copy of the commentary, these paratexts scaffold Tzetzes’ authorial agency as well as his social role in a cultural economy based on patronage. The chapter also shows how they speak to the way Tzetzes exploits the inherent ambiguities of language and tradition, by looking at them as examples of enacted ἀμφοτερογλωσσία, resting on dialectic.

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.

This chapter explores the topics and didactic strategies involved in teaching grammar through poetry in twelfth-century Byzantium by taking the prolific grammarian John Tzetzes and his Homerizing Carmina Iliaca as its case study. Tzetzes furnished his poem with numerous explanatory scholia, which give us a glimpse into Tzetzes’ teaching practice and illustrate how works of poetry served as model texts in the classroom of a grammarian. The chapter studies Tzetzes’ scholia against the background of the Art of Grammar by Dionysius Thrax, which was central to the Byzantine study of grammar and as such provides a relevant framework for analysing the grammatical material in Tzetzes’ scholia. By considering Tzetzes’ grammar lessons in the context of the various technical resources at his disposal and placing his scholia into dialogue with the scholarly and didactic works of his contemporaries Eustathios of Thessalonike and Gregory of Corinth, the chapter augments our understanding of Byzantine linguistic and literary thought.

In his Parekbolai on the Odyssey, the twelfth-century polymath Eustathios of Thessalonike often uses the figure of Odysseus as a starting point to meditate upon crucial themes such as the role of poetry, the duties of the exegete and the qualities of the ideal rhetor. The first part of this chapter focuses on one such passage, where Eustathios analyses the famous ‘linguistic stratagem’ concocted by Odysseus to fool Polyphemus. The sophistic subtlety of Odysseus’ plan leads Eustathios to insert a long excursus on schedography, a rhetorical exercise that was increasingly popular in Komnenian Byzantium. As I argue, in Eustathios’ eyes, the Homeric text is nothing more than a sort of schedographic display ante litteram. More interestingly still, this interpretation provides Eustathios with an ideal pretext for a lesson on rhetorical ‘good taste’. The second part of the chapter examines an extract from John Tzetzes’ Histories in which Odysseus and his adventures again feature as a starting point for reflecting upon contemporary schedography. In this section, I show that, despite some similarities with Eustathios’ ideas, Tzetzes takes a more dogmatic position. As a matter of fact, Tzetzes’ careful depiction of Odysseus might even be interpreted as a subtle criticism of Eustathios’ standpoint.

This chapter analyses John Tzetzes’ Theogony, a long poem in political verse that narrates genealogies of mythical gods and heroes following the example of Hesiod. The poem was dedicated to the sebastokratorissa Irene, a powerful patron of the Komnenian aristocracy, and is an important witness to the role of classical learning in twelfth-century Byzantium. The first part of the chapter examines the relation of Tzetzes’ poem to Hesiod’s Theogony, the Homeric epics and the Catalogue of Women, a fragmentary ancient work ascribed to Hesiod. It also provides a list of the main literary sources of the poem, which demonstrates Tzetzes’ dependence on other ancient poets. The second part analyses the narrative voice of Tzetzes, his linguistic style and the didactic character of the poem. The chapter concludes with an examination of the audience of the Theogony and its function as a didactic poem, which reflects patronage relationships in the Komnenian period. The chapter thus sheds light on Tzetzes’ attitude towards the ancient authors by situating the Theogony within his broad activity as a professional poet and commentator of ancient texts.

Taking its cues from John Tzetzes’ commentaries on Aristophanes, this chapter investigates the idea of exegesis as performance. Commenting on texts was far from a disembodied act in Byzantium; on the contrary, it required an effort that was both intellectual and physical. Not unlike today, holding a class was an exercise calling for a series of structured bodily and mental practices to be successful. The first part of this chapter addresses the entanglements between performativity and manuscript production by looking at what Tzetzes’ scholia on Aristophanes tell us about the setting and the execution of the actual exegetical activity. The second part focuses on Commentary on Aristophanes’ Frogs 843a in order to show that appropriation of non-Hellenic traditions played a part in the performative and exegetical engagement with the classics in Constantinople toward the end of the twelfth century.

By using a broad selection of ‘commentary discourse’, this chapter looks at the practice of reading, teaching and composing texts whose purpose is (partly) to explain older texts. Such commentaries, which can take various and sometimes unexpected forms, are of paramount importance for understanding the Byzantine intellectual and cultural framework of literary production, not only as a system of ‘authoritative mimesis’ but also as a system of ‘subversive anti-mimesis’. Thus, the chapter examines paraphrases of the Iliad, grammatical exercises such as the schede of Theodore Prodromos, lives of saints with integrated gnomologia, laudatory orations and novels, poetical treatises of political admonition (e.g. the anonymous Spaneas), scholia on ancient authors (like those produced by John Tzetzes on Aristophanes and Lycophron or by Eustathios on the Homeric poems), but also large-scale commentaries on Byzantine hymnongraphy (e.g. by John Zonaras on John of Damascus), philosophical and theological commentaries (Michael of Ephesos on Aristotle or Niketas of Herakleia on the Psalms). These texts represent different and yet interrelated discourses that highlight the key role of ‘commentary’ as a hermeneutic tool of and testimony to a broad spectrum of sociocultural and literary tensions within the longue durée of the Komnenian era.