TheHermoniakos' Iliad (Greek:Ἰλιάς Κωνσταντίνου Ἑρμονιακοῦ) is a 14th-centuryByzantineparaphrase of theIliad composed by Constantine Hermoniakos. The poem was commissioned by theDespot of Epirus, who asked Hermoniakos to write a new version of thisepic in theGreekvernacular language.[1]
Constantine Hermoniakos was a 14th-centuryByzantine scholar and poet. Little is known about him, except that he lived in the courtly circles ofArta, the capital of theDespotate of Epirus, a successor state of theByzantine Empire. After being commissioned by the DespotJohn II Orsini (1323–1335) and his wife Anna Palaiologina, ca. 1330, he composed hisparaphrase ofHomer's epicIliad.[2][3] The poem consists of 8,799 unrhymedtrochaic octasyllables and is divided into 24 rhapsodies and 142 chapters.[2]
Hermoniakos' Iliad was mainly based on two 12th century works: theChronike Synopsis ofConstantine Manasses andJohn Tzetzes'Allegories of the Iliad.[2] His intention was to make Homer easy to comprehend for his contemporaries, so while some sections are copied verbatim, others are considerably altered to remove "pagan" references to theOlympian 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 theTrojan Cycle, thus giving for exampleAchilles a regiment of Hungarian and Bulgarian troops.[2]
The poem is written in a vernacular language with a mix of learned and popular idioms.[2][5] Moreover, it has been argued that Hermoniakos' work was an example of Byzantine pedantry and shows considerably less exposure to western courtlyromance than other works of that era, like the novelKallimachos and Chrysorrhoe.[6] The work was published by Emile Legrand in 1890.[2]
