Hermoniakos' Iliad

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The Hermoniakos' Iliad (

Byzantine paraphrase of the Iliad composed by Constantine Hermoniakos. The poem was commissioned by the Despot of Epirus, who asked Hermoniakos to write a new version of this epic in the Greek vernacular language.[1]

Background and text

Constantine Hermoniakos was a 14th-century

trochaic octasyllables and is divided into 24 rhapsodies and 142 chapters.[2]

Contents and style

Hermoniakos' Iliad was mainly based on two 12th century works: the Chronike Synopsis of

Olympian gods and to reflect the more familiar circumstances of the late medieval Greek world.[3][4] As for the plot, Hermoniakos deals with both the war itself as well as the events that happened before and after.[3] However he falsifies the events of the Iliad and introduces characters that were alien to the Trojan Cycle, thus giving for example Achilles a regiment of Hungarian and Bulgarian troops.[2]

The poem is written in a vernacular language with a mix of learned and popular idioms.

romance than other works of that era, like the novel Kallimachos and Chrysorrhoe.[6] The work was published by Emile Legrand in 1890.[2]

References

External links