The tradition of epic poetry in Byzantine literature

Abstract

This chapter gives a selective overview of the reception and appropriation of the ancient Greek epic tradition in the Byzantine period. Epic poetry in its prototypical sense, i.e. heroic and mythological poems in hexameters, is almost absent in Byzantium, except for the classicising poems from the early Byzantine period. Yet, structural elements that go back to ancient epic are to be found in many literary genres and Homer was omnipresent in Byzantine literary culture and education. An introductory section discusses Homeric scholarship and imitation, illustrated primarily by the case of John Tzetzes. The remaining sections are devoted to important (quasi-)epic genres that flourished in the Greek Middle Ages, each time exemplified by iconic authors or texts. Didactic poetry was very popular in Byzantium, and one of its earliest representatives, Gregory of Nazianzus ‘the Theologian’ (4th century AD) continued the ancient tradition of didactic epic in hexameters; this classical link between the genre and the dactylic meter gives way to new conventions in later periods. Encomiastic court poetry was also written throughout the capital- and emperor-centred Byzantine period, as is perhaps best illustrated by the historical, panegyrical epic of the metrical innovator George Pisides (7th century), who explicitly aims at surpassing Homer. Narratives in verse flourished especially during the later so-called Renaissances: the Komnenian and the Palaeologan periods, which produced several verse novels or romances in learned Greek as well as in the vernacular. The anonymous Digenis Akritis (12th century), sometimes called Byzantium’s only epic, raises questions and displays features and story patterns that indeed recall the Homeric epics. The final section of this chapter deals with ekphrasis, an epic structure that has become an autonomous literary genre and was widespread in Byzantium, both in prose and in verse. Two examples are discussed in greater detail: Christodorus of Coptos’ Description of the Statues of Zeuxippus and John of Gaza’s Description of the Cosmic Tableau (both probably early to mid-6th century).

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