Behind You! Tzetzes on Lycophron

 John Tzetzes or  Ἰωάννης Τζέτζης was a Byzantine scholar and poet who lived and worked in Constantinople in the 12th century AD.  While modern scholars occasionally have harsh words for the pedant and poetaster Tzetzes, his activity as a grammarian and poet has preserved valuable fragments of ancient poetry, even if he has often been accused of inaccuracy in his quotations. One author for whom Tzetzes is particularly important is Hipponax. Tzetzes seems to have had access to some portion of Hipponax's poetry (his first book of iambics whatever that means), and he clearly knew more of Hipponax than he did of Archilochus (whom he very rarely quotes). He quotes Hipponax frequently in various works, but especially in his commentary on (Pseudo)-Lycophron's Alexandra with which his brother Isaac apparently assisted him.  

In the Alexandra, Cassandra prophesies Menelaus coming among the Iapyges in a journey which mirrors the itinerary of the Argonauts. The geography is muddled and the Tzetzes brothers are not particularly helpful, we could be anywhere from Sicily, to Calabria, to Apulia. We are in the bootheel of Italy for sure anyway. There he will dedicate a mixing bowl from Tamassus, a wild bull hide shield, and a pair of Helen's shoes to Athena Skuletria or Athena Despoiler. Helen's shoes are ἀσκέρας εὐμαρίδας (v. 855) or fur-lined Persian slippers. Alone ἀσκέρα and εὔμαρις refer to two different kinds of shoe: a winter boot with fur or felt and a shoe or slipper of deerskin worn by barbarians (sc. Persians). Lycophron is obviously showing off his knowledge of shoe terminology, no trifling matter. But the pedantic Brothers Tzetzes were not about to let Lycophron away with this one!

Commenting on this line, Tzetzes (I think it is John's voice!) makes clear that askerai are felt boots or artaria (not that that's that helpful!). He proceeds to apostrophize Lycophron and accuses him of stealing words from Aeschylus and Hipponax, and even worse he's stolen them all wrong!

Now the next bit, I have no idea if it's meant to be funny or Tzetzes Bros. are deadly serious here, but I think it's hilarious:

ἀλλ’ ἀναμνήσω τοῦτον ἐγὼ τὸν σοφὸν ποιητήν. οὐκ οἶσθα, ὦ Λύκοφρον, ὅτι, ὅτε σὺ τὴν Ἱππώνακτος κατεῖχες βίβλον, κατόπιν σου ἑστηκὼς ἐγὼ ἑώρων σε τὰς αὐτοῦ λέξεις ἀναλεγόμενον καὶ τὸ ἀσκέρας δὲ ἐκεῖσε εὕρηκας καὶ οὕτω τέθεικας μὴ προσχὼν μηδ’ εἰς νοῦν ἔχων τὰ ῥήματα.

But I will remind the clever poet of this. You did not know, Lycophron, that, when you were holding the book of Hipponax, I was stood behind you watching when you read his words and you found the ἀσκέρας there and so you wrote it down neither paying attention nor keeping in mind the meaning. 

Libro de Los Juegos, 1283. Alfonso X de León y Castilla

There is something funny about the idea of Tzetzes creeping up on Lycophron and watching him at work, I like to imagine the scene which Tzetzes crafts here happening in a mediaeval scriptorium. But it is Tzetzes who is presenting himself as a sort of time-traveller, someone with a unique and personal insight into the workings of poets from the classical past. It's a pity that John ruins the image a little by really belabouring the point in the lines that follow, it is a very long scholion. But it is nonetheless a very vivid and amusing digression and it breaks up what can be quite heavy bedtime reading. For all Tzetzes' self-aggrandizing and schoolmasterly pedantry - I caught out the great and learned Lycophron (did he really?) - the vignette captures the ability which scholarship has to collapse the distance of a thousand years, from Tzetzes back to Lycophron and from us looking back on Tzetzes. Wouldn't we much rather stand behind the giants (not so big after all) than on their shoulders? 

Time to write some gotcha-articles on the solecisms of Homer!

Panyassis was a pain in the ass-is

 

 No one ever wished it longer than it is

Samuel Johnson on Milton's Paradise Lost  

I was tracking down a hapax in Panyassis the other day and stumbled across a hilarious gem in the testimonia. Testimonia are ancient sources which mention or comment on the poet or his works but do not quote from them. They are usually included at the start of a modern edition of an ancient author, especially in editions of fragments. Panyassis of Halicarnassus, apparently a relative of Herodotus, was an epic poet active in the 5th century BC. He is said to have written a Heraclea in 14 Books narrating the deeds of Heracles, as the title suggests.

Miguel Hermoso Cuesta, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Included in the testimonia is an inscription, apparently made on the back of a bust which is now identified as Panyassis himself.  

The inscription reads: Πανύασσις ὁ ποιητὴς λυπηρότατός ἐστι or 'Panyassis the poet is the most painful'. The bust was found in Herculaneum and now resides in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. I will be going to verify the inscription when all this is over!

It has been supposed, rightly I think, that the perpetrator of this graffito was a bored and frustrated student. To think, Donald Sutherland as the professor in Animal House couldn't even grab his students' attentions by admitting that he also finds Milton boring. 

For someone who spends so much time reading bits and pieces of ancient comedy and digging for humour in other texts, it's a rare pleasure to get some inkling of the everyday banter and student satire of the ancient world. I think it's clear enough that λυπηρότατός means that Panyassis is the most pain-inducing because of his dry and dusty poetry. At any rate a fragment of Cratinus gives us ἄνθρωπος λυπησίλογος 'a man who causes pain by talking'. 

Unlike Milton, and unfortunately for Panyassis too little of his poetry survives for us to know how well-founded the graffiti critic's judgement was. Certainly other ancient sources do not necessarily take a dim view of him, though recommendation by Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Quintilian might point exactly to why students might have been sick of him. 

There's something tragicomic about poor Panyassis now being remembered like this because of one disgruntled pupil of rhetoric. They could at least change the picture on his Wikipedia article... But there's also a lesson to be learned here about literary history and how easy it is to construct narratives or to reduce a poet's whole work to a joke or a pithy quote. I only hope the graffiti I used to read in cubicles won't survive for the literary historians of the future.

 Anyway, I'm off to scratch some biting comments about Milton into the local statuary!