34 Part One: Texts and Contexts
poetry book is neatly divided into epigrams and poems: the former are to be
found at the beginning, the latter at the end of the collection. In his epitaph to
Prodromos, Niketas Eugenianos praises the writings of his beloved master.
Celebrating the poetic skills of his predecessor, he singles out two kinds of
poetry in which Prodromos especially excelled: hexametric panegyrics, and
epigrams inscribed either on works of art or tombs. He says that the former
appeal to the ear and the latter to the eye. Both kinds of poetry are equally
beautiful; but whereas the panegyrics please the eagerly listening audience, the
epitaphs and epigrams carry a special cachet as splendid adornments of the
tombs and icons on which they are inscribed^41. Following the lead of these two
Byzantine poets, Pisides and Eugenianos, who both differentiate between
epigrams and poems, I believe this to be a fundamental distinction that may
help us in sorting out the manuscript material.
**
*
Poets and Patrons
When we think of medieval poets, there is one figure that immediately
springs to mind: the begging poet – a composite of various romantic types: poor
Homer and other blind bards^42 , the wandering poets of the Carmina Burana,
the minstrels in the medieval West, and the archetypal Ptochoprodromos in
Byzantium. In fact, there is even some truth to the romantic idea of the poor
poet eating the crumbs of the rich man’s dinner, at which he performs his tricks
and delivers flattering poems to the host. It cannot be denied that Manuel
Philes and other Palaeologan poets, in a time when there were too many
intellectuals and too few posts in the imperial and patriarchal bureaucracies,
repeatedly begged for some reward. And even in the twelfth century, when
there were certainly more opportunities to climb up the social ladder, shocking-
ly explicit requests for remuneration, either financial or in the form of regular
appointments, can be found time and again in the literary works of Byzantine
authors^43. However, before the Comnenian age, such straightforward requests
for money or lucrative posts in the administration are rarely encountered. In
(^41) Ed. C. GALLAVOTTI, SBN 4 (1935) 225–226 (vv. 135–159).
(^42) See, for instance, CL. FAURIEL’s introduction to the Chants populaires de la Grèce moderne
(Paris 1824–25). Having never visited Greece, Fauriel imagined that all the singers of
dhmotik1 trago7dia, quite like mythical Homer, had to be blind bards.
(^43) See P. MAGDALINO, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143–1180. Cambridge 1993,
346–352.