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In the early 1140s, the Bavarian princess Bertha von Sulzbach
arrived in Constantinople to marry the Byzantine emperor Manuel
Komnenos. Wanting to learn more about her new homeland, the future
empress Eirene commissioned the grammarian Ioannes Tzetzes to
compose a version of the Iliad as an introduction to Greek
literature and culture. He drafted a lengthy dodecasyllable poem in
twenty-four books, reflecting the divisions of the Iliad, that
combined summaries of the events of the siege of Troy with
allegorical interpretations. To make the Iliad relevant to his
Christian audience, Tzetzes reinterpreted the pagan gods from
various allegorical perspectives. As historical allegory (or
euhemerism), the gods are simply ancient kings erroneously deified
by the pagan poet; as astrological allegory, they become planets
whose position and movement affect human life; as moral allegory
Athena represents wisdom, Aphrodite desire. As a didactic
explanation of pagan ancient Greek culture to Orthodox Christians,
the work is deeply rooted in the mid-twelfth-century circumstances
of the cosmopolitan Comnenian court. As a critical reworking of the
Iliad, it must also be seen as part of the millennia-long and
increasingly global tradition of Homeric adaptation.
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were central to the educational system of
Byzantium, yet the religion and culture of the Homeric epics-even
the ancient Greek language itself-had become almost unrecognizable
to Byzantine Greek readers coming to the texts nearly two millennia
later. The scholar, poet, and teacher John Tzetzes (ca. 1110-1180)
joined the extensive tradition of interpreting Homer by producing
his Allegories of the Iliad, dedicated to the foreign-born empress
Eirene. Tzetzes later composed the Allegories of the Odyssey, a
more advanced verse commentary, to explain Odysseus's journey and
the pagan gods and marvels he encountered. Through historical
allegory, the gods become ancient kings deified by the pagan poet;
through astrological interpretation, they become planets whose
positions and movements affect human life; through moral allegory
Athena represents wisdom, Aphrodite desire. This edition presents
the first translation of the Allegories of the Odyssey into any
language.
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