John Tzetzes

Who was John Tzetzes?

John Tzetzes was a Byzantine poet and grammarian, known to have lived at Constantinople during the 12th century.

Tzetzes was Georgian on his mother's side. In his works, Tzetzes states that his grandmother was a relative of the Georgian Bagratid princess Maria of Alania who came to Constantinople with her and later became the second wife of the sebastos Constantine Keroularios, megas droungarios and nephew of the patriarch Michael Keroularios.

Tzetzes was described as vain, seems to have resented any attempt at rivalry, and violently attacked his fellow grammarians. Owing to a lack of written material, he was obliged to trust to his memory; therefore caution has to be exercised in reading his work. However, he was learned, and made a great contribution to the furtherance of the study of ancient Greek literature.

The most important of his many works is considered to be the Book of Histories, usually called Chiliades from the arbitrary division by its first editor into books each containing 1000 lines.