1 “Ολίγοι μόνον έκ τών στίχων του περιεσώθησαν, άλλά εΐναι γραφικοι καί πλήρεις άληθοϋς ποιητικου αίσθήματος’. K.P. Kavafís, Πεζά, παρουσίαση — σχόλια Γιώργου Παπουτσάκη (Athens 1963) 47.

2 Warren Treadgold situates Michael in the context of twelfth-century Byzantine letters in A History of the Byzantine State and Society (Stanford 1997) 694 and notes the bishop, like Theophylact of Ochrid before him, complains about ‘rustication in the provinces’. For more on Theophylact’s treatment of the topic, see Mullet, M., Theophylact of Ochrid: Reading the Letters of a Byzantine Archbishop, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs, vol. 2 (Aldershot 1997) 118, 256-7, 260, 274-6Google Scholar.

3 Trypanis, C. A. (ed.), Medieval and Modern Greek Poetry: An Anthology (Oxford 1951) 56 Google Scholar. The translation given here is my own.

4 Speck, P., ‘Eine byzantinische Darstellung der antiken Stadt Athen’, Έλληνικά 28 (1975) 415-18Google Scholar.

5 Magdalino, P., The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe (London 1992) x Google Scholar.

6 A study tracing the Rome topos back to the sixteenth century can be found in Smith, M., ‘Looking for Rome in Rome: Janus Vitalis and his Disciples’, Revue de littérature comparée 4 (1977) 513 Google Scholar. Smith does not trace the topos back as far as Hildebert’s poem. For the most recent critical edition of the poem see Hildebert, , Archbishop of Tours, Carmina Minora, ed. Scott, A. Brian (Leipzig 1969)Google Scholar.

7 This comparison does not yet seem to have been made. Paul Magdalino has, however, compared Michael’s epigram to Hildebert’s apostrophe to Rome after the city’s sack by Henry IV and Robert Guiscard. See Magdalino, The Perception of the Vast in Twelfth-Century Europe, ix-x, 144. The poem by Hildebert that I discuss in this article is written as Rome’s response to the poem Magdalino has discussed and translated.

8 Quoted in Raby, F.J.E., A History of Christian Latin Poetry from the Beginnings to the Close of the Middle Ages (Oxford 1953) 268 Google Scholar.

9 Ibid.

10 Trypanis, C. (ed.), The Penguin Book of Greek Verse (Harmondsworth 1971) lv Google Scholar.

11

Petrarch, from poem 30 of the Canzoniere, ed. M. Santagata (Milan 1996) 166. The most famous occurrence of this motif in world literature is probably in Romeo and Juliet 2.2.112-114, when Juliet says, ‘Do not swear at all; / Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, / which is the god of my idolatry.’ The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston 1974) 1069.

12 Dronke, P., Medieval Latin and the Rise of European Love-Lyric (Oxford 1968) 4–6 Google Scholar.

13 See Joset, J., Nuevas investigaciones sobre el ‘Libro de buen amor’ (Madrid 1988) 129–147 Google Scholar; also Alvarez, N.E., ‘“Loco amor”, “goliardismo”, “amor cortés” y buen amor. El desenlace amoroso del episodio de doña Garoça en el Libro de buen amor ’, Journal of Hispanic Philology 7 (1983) 107-19Google Scholar; Villanueva, F. Márquez, ‘El buen amor’, in Relecciones de literatura medieval (Seville 1977) 45–73 Google Scholar.

14 ‘He who has dealings with love/ joins his tail to the devil/ he needs no other rod to beat him.’ Gaunt, S., Harvey, R. and Paterson, L. (eds), Marcabru: A Critical Edition (Cambridge 2000) 242 Google Scholar. For the most colourful rendering of the image, I have cited the variant found in the MS Paris, BN f.f. 22543.

15 In his bilingual edition of the Canzoniere (Cambridge 1976) 9, R.M. Durling has tantalizingly listed ‘love as idolatry’ among the many themes Petrarch inherited from a great many poetic sources, but he does not say which source in particular it comes from. I have not found a critical edition of Petrarch that glosses the word idolo in poem 30. The closest I have found to a pre-Petrarchan source for the motif is the Pygmalion episode from the end of the Romance of the Rose, but even there the language linking Eros and idolatry is not nearly as explicit as it is in Petrarch or Michael. In the late thirteenth century, Guido Cavalcanti and Guido Orlandi wrote a poetic exchange on the topic of idolatrous love, initiated by Cavalcanti, but the tone is humorous rather than sombre as it is in Petrarch. See Cavalcanti, Guido, The Complete Poems, ed. and tr. Cirigliano, M. (New York 1992) 124-35, especially 124-7Google Scholar.

16 In A Medieval Humanist: Michael Akominatos (Poughkeepsie 1923), Ida Carlton Thallon points out how greatly references to the pagan classics outnumber references to the fathers in Michael’s work.

17 Complete texts with Italian translations are found in Lana, I. and Garza, A., Il Romanzo Bizantino del XII secolo (Turin 1994)Google Scholar.

18 The term Eros by no means had exclusively sexual connotations in Michael’s time. Church fathers, notably Gregory of Nyssa in his Commentary on the Song of Songs, had equated agape and Eros. ‘Eros’ in an unambiguously sexual sense, however, reasserted itself in the twelfth-century novels.

19 ‘The old man takes his leave, white-haired and pale, / of the sweet place where he filled out his age / and leaves his little family, bewildered / to see its own dear father disappear; / from there, dragging along his ancient limbs / throughout the very last days of his life, / helping himself with good will all he can, / broken by years, and wearied by the road, / he comes to Rome, pursuing his desire, / to look upon the likeness of the One / that he still hopes to see up there in Heaven. / Just so, alas, sometimes I go, my lady, / searching, as much as possible, in others / for your true, your desirable form.’ Text and translation from Petrarch, Canzoniere, ed. with translations by M. Musa (Bloomington 1996) 16-17.

20 Santagata, in Petrarch, Canzoniere, 70.

21 Beaton, R., The Medieval Greek Romance, 2nd edn (New York 1996) 87 Google Scholar.

22 Beckby, H. (ed.), Anthologia Graeca, I (Munich 1957) 240 Google Scholar.

23 Ekphraseis of works of art are common throughout twelfth-century Byzantine literature, particularly in the erotic novels whose themes Michael addresses in the epigram under consideration here. For a discussion of the importance of ekphrasis in Makrembolites (by all accounts an approximate if not direct contemporary of Michael Choniates), see Alexiou, M., After Antiquity: Greek Language, Myth, and Metaphor (Ithaca 2002) 123-7Google Scholar.

24 The emendation to ώς λόγος is found in Lampros, S. (ed.), Michael Choniatou tou Akominatou ta sozomena, II (Athens, 1879-80, repr. Groningen 1968)Google Scholar. Trypanis retains the text as it appears in the manuscript but translates ώς λόγφ as if it were a set phrase, ‘so to speak’, rather than as a dative of means, ώς λόγος is used apparently as a set expression in Theodore Prodromos’s romance Rhodanthes and Dosiclea, v. 26. See Lana and Garza, Il Romanzo Bizantino del XII secolo, 65. The phrase ώς λόγφ does not seem to have been in common usage. This less common usage, supported by manuscript evidence, indicates that the poet was reflecting on the power of words rather than simply filling in the metre meaninglessly as the emendation would lead one to believe.

25 This passage illustrates the Byzantine context of Michael’s poem well, as it contains both the catalogue and the paradox:

The Akathist Hymn, ed. G. Papadeas (Daytona Beach 1997). This passage of the Akathistos hymn expresses an idea similar to Hildebert’s, that the pagan past has been supplanted by the glories of Christendom.