Ioannis Tzetzes, Histories or Chiliades

§ 13.54 ( TE2.462 ) THE PROVERB SAYING “I PROVED NO BETTER THAN PETER,...

§ 13.62 ( TE2.463 ) CONCERNING “YOU MAN OF LITTLE FAITH,...

§ 13.79 ( TE2.464 ) THE SAYING ABOUT “NO HUMAN HEAD EMERGES ABOVE THE LIMBS” Empedocles...

§ 13.85 ( TE2.465 ) CONCERNING THE ABDERITES' LOVE FOR DEMOCRITUS Democritus...

§ 13.90 ( TE2.466 ) CONCERNING THE SALTED FISH OF THE OXIAN RIVER Oxian fish to me means salted,...

§ 13.95 ( TE2.467 ) CONCERNING THE WORDS XERXES SAID ABOUT ARTEMISIA,...

§ 13.100 ( TE2.468 ) CONCERNING NEILEUS AND A FIELD-DWELLER FROM MILETUS Codrus...

§ 13.110 He consults again the Carian...

§ 13.125 ( TE2.469 ) CONCERNING “FOR ONE HOUR YOU COULD NOT WATCH OVER WITH ME” Around the time of the crucifixion and the Saviour...

§ 13.131 ( TE2.470 ) CONCERNING HOW AMASTRIS GOT ITS NAME The place that in Homer...

§ 13.137 ( TE2.471 ) THE STORY ABOUT WHO DIONYSIUS AND PHALARIS WERE Two tyrants have ruled Sicily...

§ 13.151 ( TE2.472 ) CONCERNING THE TRAGIC AND THE MATTER The paper showed the drama by the means of its words Describing grievous disasters and sorrows But it really shows these by its very fate Because it fell in the waters of the river Thressa and being soaked The littlest fraction of it could be read....

§ 13.156 ( TE2.473 ) THE STORY ABOUT THE FEMALE RIVER THRESSA BEING REALLY BARBARIC Thressa is a river in the land of Thracians...

§ 13.168 ( TE2.474 ) SAYING ABOUT EASTERN BIRDS OF PREY....

§ 13.180 Thus, if the birds were “right”, coming from the east And emitting mixed and distinguished voices They predicted that the outcome would be good....

§ 13.190 They gave them barley to eat, and observed Whether they would eat them with ease,...

§ 13.200 Then they studied, for instance in case of war Whether Greeks will prevail or some barbarian breed,...

§ 13.210 These are omens in the strict sense Hence all types of divination also,...

§ 13.220 “O Brother of me that am a dog...

§ 13.226 ( TE2.475 ) CONCERNING COLLECTORS Some people are called collectors,...

§ 13.240 One or the other in the crowd would offer them something,...

§ 13.250 With songs, refrains and laudatory speeches And really deceitful but suitable causes All these may be called literally minagyrtai You will mostly come across flag-bearers of this type And on the first of months,...

§ 13.260 Rigged a statuette of their goddess Rhea...

§ 13.270 Who will not be the first to bring pulse and grain To offer to the holy drum of Rhea...

§ 13.274 ( TE2.476 ) CONCERNING CHORDEVEIN,...

§ 13.280 Bones and something else, like slaughter-house blood....

§ 13.283 ( TE2.477 ) CONCERNING THERAMENES' APTITUDE AND ARCHIMEDES' MACHINES The story of Theramenes...

§ 13.287 ( TE2.478 ) SAYING HOW TO MAKE OUR OWN,...

§ 13.295 ( TE2.479 ) CONCERNING TRISALITROS,...

§ 13.310 Thus for Dioscorides...

§ 13.317 ( TE2.480 ) CONCERNING ATTACKING THE HONOURS,...

§ 13.330 Hence any food loaded with dressings and sauces Had the fortune of bearing the name of karyke....

§ 13.339 ( TE2.481 ) CONCERNING CATHARMA,...

§ 13.344 ( TE2.482 ) SAYING ABOUT THE CHAIN OF EXCELLENT PETER,...

§ 13.350 ( TE2.483 ) CONCERNING HOW THEY HAD NOT LIKE SPEECH NOR ONE LANGUAGE BUT THEIR TONGUES WERE MINGLED AND THEY WERE A FOLK SUMMONED FROM MANY THIEVES These are patches from Homer...

§ 13.360 But their tongues were mingled and they were a folk summoned from many thieves The residents of the royal city of Constantine...

§ 13.370 ( TE2.484 ) PROVERB SAYING “COME INDEED,...

§ 13.380 He threw it in the fire and told it: “Twelve Labours you accomplished,...

§ 13.387 ( TE2.485 ) CONCERNING WHAT HAPPENED TO HIERO'S WIFE Hiero...

§ 13.395 ( TE2.486 ) PROVERB,...

§ 13.400 But Thessaly...

§ 13.410 Cut up his meat with his own hand Just as Homer...

§ 13.413 ( TE2.487 ) CONCERNING “BE APT WITH A SIEVE AND CLEANSE THE DIRTY GRAIN AT THE CHURCH”....

§ 13.420 Ethmos, sakelisterion, trygoipos, ulister Are common instruments to cleanse the impurity of wines But also used figuratively,...

§ 13.430 Sakellisai can be safely used to mean both Purifying yourself and cleansing the wine And is also used for emphasis and as a rhetoric figure,...

§ 13.436 ( TE2.488 ) PROVERB,...

§ 13.441 ( TE2.489 ) CONCERNING OSTRACISM AND FAMOSA Now learn from me how ostracism took its name And with it,...

§ 13.460 Some illiterate brute, to whom he had done no harm,...

§ 13.470 A bystanders nodded and signalled him That Aristides...

§ 13.480 And did everything else just as I said about ostraka But they did not cast them in Kynosarges...

§ 13.487 Famousa, I think, means for the law-writers The leaflets denouncing prominent people,...

§ 13.492 ( TE2.490 ) PROVERB ABOUT NOT BEING STARTLED BY A MOUSE AND DIVERTING THE ONSLAUGHT In Aesop...

§ 13.497 ( TE2.491 ) PROVERB SAYING “IF THEY DARE TO DO THESE ON DRY WOOD” Whether the wood is dry or green The strength of my word is just the same,...

§ 13.510 And the dry wood stands for us all. And thus this does not clarify the writ at all Because it means that to whom there is not a trace of accusations That is to those refraining from acting foolishly He will do something with wet wood,...

§ 13.522 ( TE2.492 ) HISTORICAL WORD,...

§ 13.530 ( TE2.493 ) CONCERNING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OLOPHYRSIS AND OLOLYGMOS Olophyrmos is lamentation,...

§ 13.550 And wrote manifest instead of most unseen,...

§ 13.561 ABOUT IOULOS (AND ALL IT MEANS. AND ABOUT OULOS (494) Ioulos is a fish,...

§ 13.572 ( TE2.495 E107 ) PROVERB,...

§ 13.580 A goodly sapling and a fair-growing;...

§ 13.586 ( TE2.496 E107 ) HISTORICAL WORD,...

§ 13.600 the son of Terpsichore...

§ 13.614 [postscript, having reached the end of the list of requested glosses] Now you have your debt paid off completely Because we recounted all the stories in the lists Even if I composed them excessively briefly, through fear There wouldn't be space to include them in the book. Since I have written them and there is still room on the paper I should stand up an icon of my benefactors in words So all those debts should appear as paid off, Be it on some axones or kyrbeis.

§ 13.620 [LIFE OF HOMER] The Homeric lineage I will post up here, But very briefly, and only for this reason, That you know who Homer's wife and children were. Because the rest of it I have already written in the Empress' book The key points of which I will set down here. The all-wise Homer, the sea of logoi Except being full of nectar rather than salt water, Is said to have seven disputed homelands, To be the scion of seven fathers, likewise disputed.

§ 13.630 Know you that Homer was a Smyrnaean Son of Meles and Critheis And leave aside the mythology about his birth. Know Pornapides as Homer's teacher His bedmate was called Eurydice, The daughter of Pastor or Gnostor the Cymaean. Seriphon and Theolaos were Homer's sons His daughter was Arsiphone, who married Stasinus, Stasinus who composed the Cypria, Which some say was Homer's own work,

§ 13.640 Given to Stasinus as a dowry along with money. Arctinus from Miletus was Homer's student, And the poet also had a slave called Byccon, Whom Tzetzes punning calls bikon and phlaskon (jar and flask) Homer's books number thirteen. His era coincides with two military campaigns The Theban and Trojan, according to many others. But Apollodorus the chronicler writes That his time was eighty years after the Trojan War. Hesiod was at his prime, as I have found in other authors, During the eleventh Olympiad.

§ 13.650 Homer's end occurred in this way: It was prophesied that he would die on being asked A riddle he was unable to solve. The man was poor, and blind due to old age, (What sensible person would write that fictional nonsense) He travelled the whole country of Greece Reciting his poems, to an honorable welcome. While being hosted in Arcadia under Creophilus He went for a walk on the shore.

§ 13.660 He said, “O Arcadian fishermen, what have we here?” And they answered him, talking about lice, What they caught they did not have, while what they had they had not caught. He turned away distraught, not having gotten the joke. He slipped on some clay and hit on a rock, Breaking his right-hand ribs, and died on the third day. Here you have, narrowly: the sea of nectar; Wise Helicon, indeed the Muses themselves; Apollo himself, moreover, the leader of the Muses; The one above all else, great Homer,

§ 13.670 Whence he sprouted, and who he was, whom he brought forth, His slave, his teacher, his student His date and his books and where and how he died. So let us now put a stop with this, make him the seal, The seal and conclusion of this book of ours. End of Ioannes Tzetzes' book of history, in political meter, called Alpha, the number of lines being 12759.