TZETZES

Form: Ioannes.

A Greek grammarian and poet of the second half of the 12th century A.D. He lived in Constantinople, and though for his time he may be called learned, he was a most conceited and superficial personage, as is amply proved by his numerous writings. Besides commentaries on Homer, Hesiod, Aristophanes, Lycophron, and other writers, which are valuable for the authorities quoted in them, he composed, in 1,665 wretched hexameters, an epic poem entitled Iliaca, containing the legend of Troy from the birth of Paris till the opening of the Iliad, the incidents of the Iliad in detail, and the further course of the war up to the return of the Greeks. Besides this he wrote a book of histories of 12,661 "political verses." These are commonly but wrongly called chiliads, from an arbitrary division of the work into books of 1,000 lines each. He is also the author of a collection of stories partly mythical, partly historical, worthless in themselves, but valuable as including numerous items of information which would otherwise have been unknown to us.