The context of composition of the new cycle of verse scholia

Our presentation of the cycle of epigrams in Laur. Plut. 70.6 and its apographa has pinpointed instances of dialogue of the verse scholia with the main text and its author as well as with the reader and contemporary issues. The comparison with other cycles of epigrams on ancient historians has also shown that our cycle shares some interests with the one attributed to Niketas Choniates, but no connection at all with the erudite ostentations and the didactic purposes of Tzetzes. Our poems seem to react in a rather spontaneous and emotional way to Herodotus’ text instead. However, spontaneous does not mean extemporaneous. These more or less refined divertissements betray, in fact, an obvious educated background, as the political and theological overtones reveal.

Once we have dispelled the confusion of the author of the cycle in Laur. Plut. 70.6 with Tzetzes, it may be possible to better delimit the circumstances of production of these verse scholia. The time of composition follows the capture of Constantinople in 1204, if we take into account the nature of the events depicted in poem 2. We have also observed that the historical facts are referred to as if they belong to a recent past. Linguistic and stylistic features, such as the aforementioned loci similes et paralleli, point to the same period (see e.g. the epitaph by Ps. George Akropolites quoted above).⁵³ Niketas Choniates offers the most interesting similarities in the treatment of the corruption that motivated the Fourth Crusade and the decay of Constantinople thereafter (see poems 2 and 9).

However, some of these parallels (e.g. the comparison of the city with a wrinkled old woman and the contempt for greedy people) are standardized motifs that do not belong to a given author, but rather to the subject to which they refer.

The terminus ante quem of our poems is 1318, that is, the date of Laur. Plut. 70.6, the earliest manuscript that contains them. As stated before, the poems are written by the same hand responsible for the main text, the scribe Nicholas Triklines. In the following section, we will establish that every other manuscript that transmits our epigrams is ultimately a copy of Laur. Plut. 70.6. The question is, thus, whether the epigrams are autograph and were composed by Nicholas Triklines as he was copying the Histories, or if they belong to an earlier author and were just copied together with Herodotus’ text.

Autography represents an important issue both for the Tzetzean verse scholia and for the ones attributed to Niketas Choniates. Both Luzzatto and Mazzucchi comment on the textual marks that betray the process of composition of these verse scholia. Erasures,

53 Ed. Heisenberg and Wirth (1978) and Hörandner (1972). This poem also expresses a yearning for Constantinople in vv. 65-75 redolent of our poem 2.

corrections, rewritings and empty spaces would reveal that the epigrams were jotted down while the poet was reading the main text.⁵⁴ These kinds of traces can be useful to determine whether or not the poems in Laur. Plut. 70.6 are autograph.

Now, there is no palaeographic evidence indicating that the reading of Herodotus inspired Nicholas Triklines to compose the verse scholia while he was copying Laur. Plut.

70.6. At first sight, the fact that the same hand copied also Herodotus’ text and other marginalia already conspires against this idea. Note that the other cycles of verse scholia discussed in this paper were all added in an ancient manuscript by a manus posterior. But, even if no erasure or correction is to be found in the epigrams, a major question is posed by the already mentioned lacuna in poem 9. Triklines’ awareness of the versified nature of these scholia is expressed visually, as every verse is written in two lines when the poems occur in the external margin.⁵⁵ In the sixth verse of poem 9 a space is left blank at the beginning of the second hemistich, where three more syllables are needed to complete the dodecasyllable (see Figure 2). The phenomenon can be simply understood as a case of the scribe not being able to read the passage in the manuscript from which he copied the poem. However, if we want to regard the scribe as the author of these epigrams, the particular layout of this verse may also be explained as follows: Triklines left an empty space until he could find a proper set of words that fit metre and meaning.

In the meantime, he had already decided the ending of the verse, recurrent in our cycle.⁵⁶ In general, the signals point to a date of composition earlier than 1318, but it should be remembered that Nicholas Triklines’ milieu may have also been favourable to the production of such verse scholia. To my knowledge, no scholium is ascribed to Nicholas himself. His labour, however, was more than that of a mere copyist, insofar as it shows philological training and practice. In addition, his reputed brother Demetrios Triklinios

54 See e.g. Luzzatto (1999: 51 n. 26), Mazzucchi (1995: 236, 244, 255 n. 296) and the critical apparatus of poems III, VIII, X, XIII, XIV and XV. Besides, both Luzzatto and Mazzucchi adduce the meticulous use of punctuation, accentuation and, in the case of Tzetzes, the indications of the length of the dichrona over the line to support the authography (see below Part 2). Luzzatto’s identification of the hand that annotates the Thucydides of Heidelberg (Pal. gr. 252) with Tzetzes seems now to be confirmed by Pizzone (2020). Note that Tzetzes’ poems in Laur. Plut. 70.3, on the other hand, are copied by a later hand.

55 Similarly, a space is left blank between verses when they are written in the lower margin (poems 5 and 10).

Note that the partition of the verses in two lines does not necessarily coincide with the caesura. In Laur. Plut.

70.6 all the epigrams are preceded by a lemma, the abbreviation for στίχ(οι)/(-ος), except for poem 8. One may wonder whether this omission corresponds to the author, or rather to an error of the copyist.

56 See 5.2, 6.1, 9.3, 9.6. Of course, this could have already happened in the model of Laur. 70.6: the author left the empty space and Triklines copied the verse as he found it (see a similar case in Pizzone 2020: 679 n. 87). Note that some apographa (e.g. Ambr. L 115 sup., Marc. gr. 364) leave the blank space too, whereas other show various solutions to emend the lacuna (see below).

is known to have undertaken a huge editorial enterprise and produced a varied corpus of scholia that mainly deals with poetry.⁵⁷

Without ruling out the possibility of Triklines’ authorship, I am inclined to think that the poems were copied in the manuscript that served as model for Laur. Plut. 70.6 at some point between the years 1204-1318. In Laur. Plut. 70.6, Triklines copied Herodotus’

Histories and all the marginalia with the same script and colour, thus erasing the visibly different layers of marginal interventions in the model. Even if some epigrams show meaningful concepts and wording in common with Niketas Choniates, there are not enough elements to claim that Niketas is the author of these verse scholia. The author seems to be at least familiar with Niketas Choniates’ account of the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and its aftermath, which is not unlikely considering the wide readership of Niketas in Byzantium.⁵⁸ The author, however, does not seem to have experienced the tragedy of the Latin occupation only through books. The incident seems to be fresh in the author’s memory, if not still part of his reality. I am alluding here to the possibility that our verse scholia were written before 1261, when Michael VIII Palaiologos recaptured Constantinople. It sounds indeed more reasonable to admit that the reader of Herodotus would refer to the disaster of the Fourth Crusade when the wound was still open. Be that as it may, the span of a bit more of a hundred years (1204-1318) seems safe enough to date the composition of the cycle.

57 Bianconi (2005: 130-136) gives an outline of the philological activity of Nicholas Triklines. He seems to have copied more prose (including some folios of Herodotus in his restauration of Angel. gr. 83), whereas he collaborated with Demetrios Triklinios for poetry. See Smith (1993: 188-189), Pérez Martín (2000: 317-318), Bianconi (2005: 128), Pontani (2015: 427) and, especially, Turyn (1957: 232-233) on Nicholas’ metrical training.

For the figure of Demetrios Triklinios, see e.g. Mergiali (1996: 54-57), Fryde (2000: 268-294), Bianconi (2005: 91-118) and Pontani (2015: 424-428).

58 See below Part 2.

Figure 2 Laur. Plut. 70.6,f. 96v