Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams

• Author-related epigram
• Scribe-related epigram

Poet

John Tzetzes (12th c.) - PBW: Ioannes/459/

• John Tzetzes (12th c.) - PBW: Ioannes/459/
• Thucydides (5th c. BC)

• Address to the author
• Complaint
• Criticism of the author
• Polemic
• Scholium
• Self-presentation

• The people of Attica should have thrown you, Thucydides,
  into a dark pit, along with your book,
  and not merely ostracized you to Thrace.
  For it appears that you have not recounted what happened in the past
  so much as you have hidden what time wrought
  by writing your obscure and wooden prose.
  Indeed, I myself who in person write these things,
  Tzetzes, with my profound knowledge of so many books
  and of all the events that you yourself recount here,
  feel that I have been stripped of my memory of them all,
  as if struck from above and totally stunned
  by your convoluted and twisted prose.
  So what might someone else suffer, who doesn’t know his history?
  Understand the kind of speech that is appropriate for historians:
  clear with grandeur, persuasive, and sweet at the same time,
  dense where necessary, even if drawn out in some places.

  Language

  English

  Source(s)

  A. Kaldellis, 2015, Byzantine Readings of Ancient Historians, Abingdon and New York: 78

• Thucydides, Athens had served you more fit
  If they’d thrown both yourself and your book in the pit,
  Instead of just banishing you into Thrace.
  An historian’s job ’s to recount what took place
  In the passage of time, but you simply daze us
  With wooden constructions and smoke–screen–like phrases.
  For if I, the bold fellow inditing these rhymes,
  I, Tzetzes (who’ve read many books on your times,
  And knew all the matters you try to explain)
  Have found the whole scheme of them lost from my brain
  Thanks to your crooked clauses, you Zeus–stricken dolt,
  You distorted remains of a swift thunderbolt –
  Then what’ll become of one less learned ’s a mystery!
  Now hear the best method of writing a history:
  Be grave and be clear, be persuasive and bland
  Be fierce when it’s needed, and sometimes expand.

  Language

  English

  Source(s)

  W. Stanford 1941, Tzetzes' Farewell to Thucydides, Greece & Rome, 11(31), 40-41: 41

• Gli Attici, o Tucidide, avrebbero dovuto gettare te ed il tuo libro in una prigione sotterranea piuttosto che ostracizzarti ai confini della Tracia! È evidente infatti che tu non racconti quello che è successo nei tempi antichi ma piuttosto nascondi col tuo parlare oscuro e legnoso le testimonianze che il Tempo ha prodotto. Infatti io stesso, proprio io, Tzetzes in persona, che scrivo qui queste cose, pur conoscendo a fondo le testimonianze di tanti libri e tutti gli avvenimenti che tu ora descrivi, tutt' ad un tratto mi son perso la memoria di ogni cosa, fulminato dall’alto e rintronato da codesti discorsi ambigui e contorti che hai scritto. Cosa non succederà ad un altro, ad uno di quelli che non sono preparati? Sappi (o Tucidide) che la prosa, normativamente corretta, di coloro che narrano eventi storici, è chiara con gravitas, persuasiva, dolce nello stesso tempo e densa ove occorra, e sopporta, ma solo in qualche caso, il protrarsi senza sosta.

  Language

  Italian

  Source(s)

  M. Luzzatto, 1999, Tzetzes lettore di Tucidide: note autografe sul Codice Heidelberg Palatino Greco 252, Bari: 135-136

The credits system has been implemented in 2019. Credits from before the new system was in use might be incomplete.