Byzantine Mythography

Abstract

Byzantine education was based on a reading of Homer, and so mythological themes were of perennial interest to the learned society of Byzantium. Byzantine scholars had access to the ancient works of systematic mythography, but they also made their own contributions to the understanding of myth, even if not in a distinct genre of mythography. They had been taught by St. Basil that moral instruction might be found in myth, and by Eusebius of Caesarea that the gods of myth were defunct kings. So, much of the common stock of Byzantine mythographic knowledge was contained in the chronicle tradition, and practically all of it can be traced back to the chronicle of John Malalas. His first five books are preoccupied with what must strike us as odd and idiosyncratic stories of gods and heroes, including a particularly extensive and influential account of the Trojan War, but they were the norm in Byzantine literature. Mythographic material might also be found in lexica and encyclopedias, poetic descriptions of statuary, the lore of Constantinople, and even the Dionysiaca of Nonnus. John Tztetzes and Eustathius, in what amounted to Homeric commentaries, gave a historical background to Homer’s work indebted to Malalas and employed allegory to tease out deeper meanings in the epics. The later Byzantine centuries cultivated a poetic tradition that returned to Homer and Troy—with varying degrees of faithfulness—for its plots, characters, and themes, and even found room for translations of French treatments of the matière de Troie.