Engaging Antiquity in John Tzetzes: Two Case Studies

This paper examines how John Tzetzes engages with classical antiquity in his Poem on Metres through two complementary case studies. Although the work is a technical didactic poem on Greek metrical forms, its proem unexpectedly opens with a lament for his brother Isaac, introducing a personal and emotional dimension. This opening is not merely spontaneous but shaped by literary models, particularly Euripides. A second passage illustrates a different mode of engagement, in which antiquity functions as a grammatical and exegetical archive. In discussing the cretic foot, Tzetzes employs compounds such as καλλίπαις and the rare αἰσχρόπαις. The latter, scarcely attested, also appears in a scholion to the Phoenissae, raising questions about textual transmission and scholarly practice. This parallel suggests that both Tzetzes and later scholiasts may draw on a shared grammatical tradition, possibly rooted in Byzantine educational contexts. These case studies highlight the dual nature of Tzetzes’ relationship with antiquity: as a source of literary inspiration and as a repository of scholarly material. More broadly, the paper raises a methodological question central to Byzantine studies: whether the reuse of classical elements reflects direct engagement with ancient texts or mediation through inherited exegetical traditions, and how one may distinguish between conscious intertextuality and the use of a conventionalised classical idiom.