Chiliades

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Chiliades (more properly, the Book of Histories) is a work of the 12th century by John Tzetzes, a Byzantine grammarian.

The Chiliades is based upon a collection of Letters (ed. T Pressel, 1851), which has been called an index to the larger work, itself described as a versified commentary on the letters. These letters (107 in number) are addressed partly to fictitious personages, and partly to the great men and women of the writer's time. They contain a considerable amount of biographical details. The Iliaca, an abridgment of and supplement to the Iliad, is divided into three parts Ante-homerica, Homerica, Post-homerica containing the narrative from the birth of Paris to the return of the Greeks after the fall of Troy, in 1676 hexameters (ed. Karl Lehrs and F Dübner, 1868, in the Didot series, with Hesiod, etc.)