TZETZES, JOHN, Byzantine poet and grammarian, flour ished at Constantinople during the 12th century A.D. Tzetzes has been described as a perfect specimen of the Byzantine pedant. Excessively vain, he resented any attempt at rivalry, and violently attacked his fellow grammarians. Owing to want of books, he was obliged to trust to his memory; hence he is to be used with caution. But he was a learned man, and deserves gratitude for his efforts to keep up the study of ancient Greek literature. Of his numerous works the most important is the Book of Histories, usually called Chiliades ("thousands") from the arbitrary division by its first editor (N. Gerbel, 1546) into books each containing i,000 lines (it actually consists of 12,674 lines in "political" verse). It is a collection of literary, historical, theological and antiquarian mis cellanies, subsequently re-edited by the author with marginal notes. The Chiliades is based upon a collection of letters (107 in number) which are addressed partly to fictitious personages, and partly to the great men and women of the writer's time. They contain a considerable amount of biographical details. He is the author of the Iliaca, an abridgment of and supplement to the Iliad in 1676 hexameters, and the Homeric Allegories, dedicated to the empress Irene, two didactic poems in which Homer and the Homeric theology are explained on euphemistic principles. Tzetzes
also wrote commentaries on Greek authors, for instance, on the Cassandra or Alexandra of Lycophron (ed. C. G. Muller, 1811), in which his brother Isaac probably helped him. He is our earliest authority (chil. 3, 88, for the story of the beggary of Belisarius. Mention may also be made of a dramatic sketch in iambic verse in which he describes the wretched lot of the learned.
Editions:—Chiliades: Corp. Poet. Graec. (Lyons, 1612) ; ed. Kiess ling (1826). Iliaca: ed. Lehrs & Dfibner (Paris, 1868). Allegories in Matranga, Anecdota Graeca, vol. i. (185o) ; Scholia to Lycophron, ed. Muller (/811).
For the other works of Tzetzes see J. A. Fabricius, Bibliotheca graeca (ed. Harles), xi. 228, and C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byz. Lit. (2nd ed., 1897) ; monograph by G. Hart, "De Tzetzarum nomine, vitis, scriptis," in Jahn's Jahrbicher fur cassische Philologie. Supplementband xii. (Leipzig, 1881).