Les poèmes-scholies de Nicétas Chôniatès: les masques de l’auteur
Nicétas Chôniatès' poems-scholia: the author's masks

Summary/Abstract: The literary aspects of poems found in the margins of a manuscript of Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheca and attributed to the Byzantine historian and high-ranking official Niketas Choniates have so far not received any scholarly attention. Composed as reflections about power, justice and human nature during the events of the first capture of Constantinople by the armies of the Fourth Crusade in 1203, they intertwine elegy, satire, politics and history in a strikingly personal way which could be identified as ‘iambic poetry’. But who is the ‘I’ who speaks in these poems? Is it a personal poetry or does the speaker wear a mask?

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