On first looking into Chapman's Homer

In recent weeks I have been sorting through Pierre MacKay's boxes and drawers and shelves and desks. The last project so far was the heavy glass-fronted bookcase beside his bed full of, he said, his father's poetry books. Most of these were late 19^th-century and early 20^th-century editions of all the English poets, perhaps not as interesting to me as they should be. One book stood out, and its photograph is above.

There are several thousand books in this house, quite a few of them important. I have rarely been interested in an old book or a first edition. Books to me are primarily tools. I read with a pencil, fold down corners, make notes, break spines (though not intentionally). A beautiful edition is very nice to look at, but otherwise useless. So nothing in my life had prepared me for the thrill of this book. The blackening along the top edge has a very faint charred smell, souvenir of its surviving a fire in Princeton.  This book that touched fire was, is, Chapman's Homer. This is the book Keats wrote about.

When George Chapman began translating Homer, he issued it in installments beginning in 1598.  It was not until 1616 that he issued his complete Homer -- the first complete translation in English -- with copious marginal notes, fulsome dedicatory poems and prefaces, and remarkable etchings.

Wikipedia has an excellent article about Chapman, a prolific playwright, and possible the rival poet mentioned in Shakespeare's Sonnets.  When Chapman was reissued in 1998 and 2001, the London Review of Books published an eloquent discussion of the man and his work. I will not try to repeat them here, but I urge you to read the LRB because it so well explains how magic happens.  Chapman translated the Iliad in iambic heptameter and rhyming couplets.  Take this of Phoenix from Book 9 -- the spelling takes getting used to:

O thou that like the gods art fram'd: fince (deareft to my heart)

I us'de thee fo, though lov'dft none elfe; nor any where wouldft eate,

Till I had crownd my knee with thee, and caru'd thee tendrest meate,

And given thee wine for much, for love, that in thy infancie,

(Which ftill difcretion muft protect, and a continuall eye)

My bofome lovingly fuftain'd; the wine thine could not beare;

Here is a view from the Odyssey, this in iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets, Odysseus speaking to Nausicaa: 

 And here, John Keats describes what happened to him when he read Chapman's Homer, and what happened to me when I found it in that dark corner of the bookcase:

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

   And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

   Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

   That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;

   Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

   When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

   He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—

   Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

                                                           John Keats

Cheilas' Cleofe

Mistra in shrouds. Photo by Stella Chrysochoou.

The monody by Nikiforos Cheilas is the last of the four monodies delivered at the mnemosyne for Cleofe in late May of 1433. I have used them frequently in entries here for information, and have looked individually at those by Plethon, Pepagomenos, and Bessarion. This by Cheilas was the third delivered that day, and the one that probably would have been most remembered by those who heard him. On first reading, it appears to rush from one high point of emotion to the next, at times almost near hysteria, but it is the most literary of the four, and demonstrates the most concern for rhetoric.

Cheilas begins, and ends, with a justification for mourning (and includes a dig at Plethon and Pepagomenos, accusing them of showing off), both times bringing the mourning directly home by listing the mourners: the godly despot, the despots, his relatives, her most dear daughter, the priests, the monastic orders, the senators, the others, and the cities and villages.  These at the beginning are all present at the mnemosyne, while at the conclusion, he gives a shorter and different list, more poetic and more poignant: all kingdoms, groves and meadows, the Graces, widows, orphans, captives, the impoverished, and your subjects.

This identification with the listeners carries throughout as he talks about Cleofe and their grief in ways that they would wish they could have thought of, moving back and forth between factual statements about her life, and then rhapsodical images of what they have lost.  The image of light is preeminent: it is one of the oldest and most persistent of the topoi of Greek mourning. "The land of Hesperia sent her, a light flowing out from a golden race, but she shone back with a radiance that made all the brilliance of that race seem less." "O ornament of queens, or rather, queen among all queens, as you shown out, surpassing them in all your virtues."  (Here he used βασιλὶς βασιλίδων in a graceful recognition of the Palaiologos βασιλεὺς or βασιλέως βασιλεων.) "You, our sun, have set." Then inverting the metaphor he says, "What a change has come to hide away what was sweetest and best, igniting the entire flame of griefs and wretchedness."

Earlier he inverts a metaphor to great effectiveness: "You gave us then a celebration, showing us all something new, a reason to sing sweetly, songs worthy of your goodness and of the good fortune that came to us from you, . . . But now you set us to deep grieving, to uttering long cries of pain, to weaving a tragic song, antiphonal to our former hymns, singing farewell to the hopes we had in better times."

He inverts another metaphor, working with κιβωτὸς, ark: "O, bitter ark, that made away with such beauty. The psalmist of old even danced before the ark, when it was returning whence it came, but before this bitter ark which carries off our great queen to the tomb, it is entirely right for us to stand and wail continuously, and to mourn, and do everything short of trying to exhume her from it."

Cheilas reminds his listeners of Cleofe's intelligence, of her quiet and effective assistance in council, of her diligence in Bible study, and her self-discipline.  He indicates a more intimate knowledge when he tells of her standing in prayer all night, and that she had said quietly to a few that she would not live through this childbirth. He is the source for the information that she died on Good Friday at noon, and was buried almost immediately.  He confirms and supplements information in Pepagomenos and Bessarion.

Towards the end, Cheilas lets loose a cascade of metaphors: "She departed leaving behind amazement . . . O, shell of our common existence, what a change has come to hide away what was sweetest and best . . . O, who was it that did not spare this loveliest and most beautiful eye for us, cutting it out? Who was it that made this loveliest object and image of all the virtues and graces vanish? O, what a thing has been looted from us in her beauty, what loveliness has been destroyed? What light is now hidden under the bushel? O, what a sun has abruptly gone down into the tomb and is now miserably concealed? What a tongue full of grace has been imprisoned in final silence. Where has such loveliness ever before been extinguished? When has a flower so utterly withered, how has that precious gem been shattered?"

His conclusion is quiet, gentle, after the summary of the mourners: "Accept these words offered by us to you, O, in all things for us best and most holy, and most regal lady, they are entirely insufficient, but we could not mourn our loss in silence."

Just before his conclusion, Cheilas said: "Therefore I think that for all time and among all nations, this account, both as a written and as unwritten message will be sent out, and you will be remembered among all men until day and night yield to one another." As far as survivals are concerned, they never mentioned her again.

 

Translation by Pierre A. MacKay.

Evliya's sea battle

The Ottoman Fleet of Tarik-y Bayezid (ink and gold leaf on vellum) 
16th century, which is early for Evliya.

This week, a section from Evliya Çelebi's Setyahatname, about a famous pirate and a battle at sea off Clarentza in 1668. The translation is by Pierre MacKay.  The bolded headings in the   text represent Evliya's red-ink marginal comments on the original manuscript
                                                                        * * * * * *

Departing from [Vostitza], I went for 3 hours southwards to the Kamenítza river, which comes down from the Kalâvryta mountains and flows into the gulf at this spot. It is a small river, and crossing it on horseback, I came to the village of Mustafa Paşa. This is a great bequest trust for the mosque of Mustafa Paşa in Gebze, which is a day's journey away from Üsküdar. The tributary populace is all Albanians. Another 3 hours from there is the

village of Mertéza, which is a zeamet-class fief of the Commander of the Levy for Morea. It tributary populace is all Greeks. This village is at the skirts of the "Black Mountain" of Morea, where all the infidel frigates have little landing places in the forest. They hide here and capture travellers and passers-by, and then sail away. From this village we went into the limitless plain of Gastúni and passed by prosperous villages with mosques,

inns and great houses, and through gardens and orchards like the gardens of Irem, and so came to Glarénza).

Description of the entire castle of Glarénza

It was founded by the Bundukani Venetians. In Greek, Glarénza (Larence) means . . ., and that is the reason for the name.

In the year . . ., it was a conquest of Sultan Beyazid the Saintly, but the conquest was made with great toil and suffering, and since the castle was largely useless he demolished it in several places. Since Patras and Chlemútsi are both close by, he left this castle in ruins although, when it was still standing, the saying goes that on the whole island of Morea there was no stronger nor more thickly populated | fortress. There are huge great pieces of the wall fabric lying about in many places, and it could easily be repaired if there were any occasion for it. It was a stout, five-sided fortress on the seashore with freshwater sources and two harbors where one may lie safe from all eight winds without fear or apprehension. The Algerian privateers, when they are cruising at sea looking for a prey, come in to cast anchor and lie at this harbor of Glarénza whenever they perceive the hill of Chlemútsi.

Witness of a seafight, in a tale worthy of future remembrance

Your poor and humble servant hid my horses away in the hills and came back on foot with two of my servants to Glarénza, where the three of us concealed ourselves in a corner of the great field of ruins, and inspected the island of Cephalonia, out in the gulf, with a telescope.This island is under the domination of the Venetian Franks, and while we were making a survey of all the details that were clearly visible through the telescope--the towers and wallsof the castle, the landing places, and the infidels themselves, both great and small--eight Muslim frigates appeared, flying green standards, with pennants waving in the wind.  
It happened that certain of our warrior heroes from Naupactus, namely Dorak Bey and Mısırlı Oğlu, were bringing their ships back from an expedition when ten frigates emerged from the harbor of the afore-mentioned infidel castle of Cephalonia and fell unexpectedly on Dorak Bey's squadron. The ships of Islam came into close engagement with the infidel frigates all across the face of the sea, and there was a huge battle. Your humble servant could not endure the rain of spent cannon and rifle shot falling in the ruins of Glarénsa castle, and retired to hide in a corner, but certain it is that our brave heroes made a fine, vigorous fight of of it.

Now our ships were returning from an expedition, and all eight of them were crammed full of infidel captives and loaded down with immeasurable amounts of tightly packed booty acquired as the spoils of war. The crews themselves were battle-ready, but the ships were not properly loaded for an engagement. The ten galleys of the enemy, on the other hand, were first-rate ships, fully armed and not loaded down. Moreover they had caiques and rowing boats coming up behind to help. Our ships of the Muslim fleet, therefore, | became apprehensive about the close-packed cargo of infidel prisoners, fearing that they might have a chance to raise their heads against us in the course of the fight. As a result, all eight Muslim frigates broke off from the engagement and as soon as they were free cried, "Full speed ahead!" and pulled on the oars with all their strength, heading in to shut themselves up in the harbor of Glarénza castle, from which we had been watching them.

When they saw my poor self there, the heroes were delighted, and in the twinkling of an eye they had unloaded all the booty, the heavy cargo and the infidel prisoners with their hands bound behind their necks. They turned this all over to me, and I brought down my slaves and my horses, and mounted my own horse to stand guard over the infidel captives while | I sent one of my slaves up to a village in the hills to tell the tributary populace to come down here fully armed. As soon as they arrived, we massed the infidel captives into the middle of our party, loaded them up with all the heavy cargo and marched them up away from the castle ruins and into the hills where we left them safe. 

Meanwhile, Dorak Bey, with his eight frigates now free and unencumbered, selected five hundred of the youngstalwarts who were gathering round from all four sides to look at the battle and tumult, and filled his ships with them. Then he sailed back out of Glarénza harbor again and pulledahead at full speed against the infidels. The noise and tumult of the close-fought melée and the exchange of fire was heard all the way to Patras and Chlemútsi, and young warriors rushed along the roads to get into ships in time to bring aid to the hero, Dorak Bey. He then took up a position in the middle of the ten enemy frigates, and filled the gun-crews tending the infidel cannon with so much lead and cannon-shot that he made prizes of eight of the enemy ships all at once. The other two turned about and ran back into the harbor of Cephalonia.

Glory to God--Dorak Bey had now conquered eight more ships with his eight and had madeprisoners of all their infidel crews, as well as capturing a proportional amount of cargo, weapons and ordnance materiel. He turned back into Glarénza harbor, therefore, and whenhe dropped anchor, I brought back the prisoners and booty that were up in the hills and turned them over once again to Dorak Bey. At this, the hero Dorak Bey, Mısırlı Oğlu, and the other officers and sea-captains gave me three prisoners in payment for my services, along with two European boy-slaves and a purse of silver thalers. Then the whole expedition reboarded the sixteen ships and after turning the crucifix idols upside down on all he eight infidel ships, they fired a joyous salute of cannon and rifle fire, let out their sails and set out straightaway with the day's prizes for the castle of Naupactus.  

So your humble servant was accidentally the witness of such a sea-fight, and God, in His Greatness, presented me with five captives and a purse of silver. For it was God who rewarded me thus, in that I, a traveller by land, was granted a present of booty taken at sea. Actually, I sent the five captives I had been given to accompany the remaining prisoners of Dorak Bey and the other heroes who were going to Naupactus, and directed one of my slaves to send them on from there to Zekeriya Efendi in Corinth, along with a letter telling him to sell them. So they went off to Naupactus and I went on southwards, and in three hours climbed up to Chlemútsi.

Pierre Antony MacKay

Pierre MacKay, my partner and ξυνεργὸς, died quietly on Sunday morning, June 14. Typically for him on Sunday, he was doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, and he went so gently he didn't drop his pencil. Readers of Surprised by Time will be intensely familiar with his work: he is responsible for the wonderful Mistra and Evliya Çelebi translations used here. I am putting a few photographs of him below. His daughters, Camilla and Alexandra, and I are having a gathering here at home on Saturday. We will be using the marvellous Callimachus poem below. It has been very personal to us: every evening for twelve years, when the weather has permitted, we have eaten out under our grape arbor and talked the sun down out of the sky.

Εἰπέ τις, Ἡράκλειτε, τεὸν μόρον ἐς δέ με δάκρυ
    ἤγαγεν ἐμνήσθην δ᾿ ὁσσάκις ἀμφότεροι
ἠέλιον λέσχῃ κατεδύσαμεν. ἀλλὰ σὺ μέν που,
    ξεῖν᾿ Ἁλικαρνησεῦ, τετράπαλαι σποδιή,
αἱ δὲ τεαὶ ζώουσιν ἀηδόνες, ᾗσιν ὁ πάντων
    ἁρπακτὴς Ἀίδης οὐκ ἐπὶ χεῖρα βαλεῖ 

Someone told me of your death, Heraclitus, and it moved me to tears, when I remembered how often the sun set on our talking. And you, my Halicarnassian friend, lie somewhere, gone long long ago to dust; but they live, your Nightingales, on which Hades who siezes all shall not lay his hand.            by W. R. Paton

Two for Cyriaco

Two documents for Cyriaco of Ancona, one new, one ignored, that contribute to his portrait.

* * * * * * * * * *

Cyriaco  is conventionally thought to have died in 1452 or 1555: I find authors fairly evenly divided on that.  I'm quite sure 1452 is wrong, as I have found the document above which certainly has him alive on 8 March 1454 when he was granted Venetian citizenship at the age of 62. This is not a very exciting or important piece of information, but it was a surprise and raises the question of why Venetian citizenship at this point?  He was 63 and had been going to Venice since he was 10.

This document is available on-line at ASV Senato Privilegi 1425-October 1560.

* * * * * * * * * *

In 1431 Francesco Filelfo, a fellow citizen of Ancona, wrote Cyriaco a letter.  Cyriaco had been studying Greek for five years or so -- we don't know what that means -- but apparently Cyriaco had written a letter in Greek to Filelfo who was teaching Greek in Florence.  To my mind, Filelfo was a bit of a charlatan, and this letter demonstrates it.  His quotation of Homer bears no resemblance to anything Homer ever wrote, thought it seems to refer to Aphrodite and Diomedes in Iliad 5.  And his compliments of Cyriaco's Greek make me wonder what the Florentines were paying to learn from him: Cyriaco's Latin was not so good, his Greek was unlikely to have been any better.  Pierre MacKay translated the letter for me.

Francesco Filelfo to Cyriaco, greetings,

I have for a long time admired your capabilities in language, and now I would have no way of doing so adequately; so much has the beauty of your letters written in Greek astonished me; it informs me vividly that you did not learn it in Constantinople but there in Athens. The grace inherent in your composition is from there. I believe that the first of the Muses, if you were to meet her in person, on experiencing and marveling at the charm of your words would utter that Homeric phrase:

Who and from where are you, where is the city that bore you, For I shall tell you that I, most distinguished of goddesses, am envious At being so utterly defeated by a mortal

Be in good health, therefore, so that you may be able to enchant us and all those others who are similarly disposed toward you with your God-given talent from the Muses. I wish for you also that you may reach the age of Nestor, since you yield in wisdom in no way whatsoever not only to our contemporaries, but even to the outstanding figures of those in the past. Stay well, shrine of the Muses, and love your Filelfo as always, who would for your sake and for the sake of all who support you, jump into the fire, metaphorically, with great eagerness.

From Florence, on the nones of March, in the year 1431 from the birth of Christ. 

This letter can be found on-line as #8 in Cent-Dix Lettres Grecques de Francois Filelfe.

The doctor and his patient

Demetrios Pepagomenos was the second of the four speakers at Cleofe's memorial. I have written about these monodies at other times, in detail about those by Bessarion, the last speaker, and George Gemistos Plethon, the first. (The order of the speakers has to be deduced: Plethon was the oldest and certainly of the highest status of the four, Bessarion the youngest and, being a monk, of the lowest status. Cheilas probably has to follow Pepagomenos as he makes a comment about him.)

Pepagomenos was a doctor specializing in gout. We do not have an absolute statement that he was Cleofe's doctor, but there is enough evidence to allow us to deduce it. For example, in his monody he said, “There is need for all of us, and for myself especially, to let our voices loose in the intensity of our suffering.” I read that as a comment on his sense of involvement in, if not responsibility for her death. Later he spoke of “the body of our holy queen, so well-formed, so harmonious as to bring future happiness to the race.” As the daughter of an obstetrician, I read that as saying her body was suited for child-bearing, and so something he would be the only man, other than her husband, in a position to know.

But when Cleofe died at noon on Good Friday, she had been fasting for nearly forty days, and there is strong evidence to suggest that she would have followed the most severe fast. She spent nights standing in prayer. She had, unintentionally, prepared her body for a massive hemorrhage. Pepagomenos called it a cataclysm, a deluge over the whole race – ἄλλον τινὰ καταχλυσμὸν τοῦ γένους παντὸς, and said it had come on suddenly. Bessarion also refers to blood, saying that her husband (like Zeus) had wept tears of blood (and, like Zeus, at the loss of a son in addition to his wife).

I think the dead child was a son, because Pepagomenos said this birth was to have been such an even that “all good and decent things might come to settle not only among us present here but among all the entire race . . . that there might be skipping and dancing . . . the singing of festival chants, the display of general happiness.”

“All the best for us came,” he said to her – sometimes he spoke to the assembled mourners, and sometimes to Cleofe – “with your settling among us. . . . But now everything goes the other way.” He mentions first her husband, “our holy ruler,” and then “her dear daughter . . . all her blood relations, her servants and cities.” Pepagomenos speaks of her daughter three different times, and then again of the loss to her subjects.

He becomes more specific about her subjects: “But the bellies of the poor mourn especially the hands of our queen, which worked as it were to one purpose throughout her life, to nourish those in want, not merely through instruction, and through those of others', as might have been expected of such a queen, but themselves performing the service of cookery, collecting wood from wherever they had to, and lighting the fire, even roasting the food of the poor over it and serving it to them, nourishing them daily, taking no account of the heat of the fire, the intense burden of the smoke, and the inescapable duration of this service. This is an exceptional description. It was conventional for Renaissance and Byzantine ladies of good families to feed the poor, but nowhere, I think, do we learn that they carried firewood and cooked in the smoke.  Though I do wonder where she had learned to cook.  All the speakers spoke of Cleofe's character: Pepagomenos spoke more than the others of what she actually did in her life.

He specified other groups whom she nurtured: “The orphaned children of her household mourn her, who acted as a mother to all, sharing out to each of them what was right, and neglecting nothing of their care; she made it possible for the women to live together with husbands and men with wives, to act openly and to practice another way of life, something that had in many periods over the years been neglected. but was rightly and properly fostered during the reign of our most holy queen, with all attention and concern, as one might say. Widows, too mourn their protector, and strangers the source of consolation from which they often benefited--- all, in short, for whom she offered a respite from loss.”

It is possible that Pepagomenos himself knew the pain of losing a wife. The cleaving of the one flesh that is a marriage was an easy topos for the Byzantines, but he went further: “The cleaving apart of a bodily union brings the unbearable pain of an amputation when a mother dies in childbirth. This, more than anything else makes the pain of the cut intense and presents the suffering as ever new in the eyes of the husband, and becomes an inexhaustible fuel for the fire, always displaying the newness of the loss, and never ceasing. But the severing of spiritual attachment has an intense bite and makes the pain even more unbearable, inasmuch as it is carried on in the the present life, while the former pain, although it is, so to speak, undying, continues to be associated with that material, though now lost, companionship.

He went on to raise topics that might have been considered better unmentioned and, as with Plethon and Bessarion, the frankness of subjects towards their ruler is striking. There were aspects of the earlier relationship between Cleofe and Theodoros that nearly led to his rejection of her, and we might wonder if Theodoros had been repenting to Pepagomenos of his stubborness. “When the time was right, even before your marriage, you lighted the brand of self-mastery with a little spark and disregarding paternal pride, canceling maternal agreements, the petitioning of your sisters, and the native innovations in religion of your homeland, you were pliant in everything to your husband and lord, putting this before all else, to follow his beliefs throughout your life and to practice them as fully as you were able. (Had she confided to Pepagomenos the real facts of her "conversion"?) All of this scorches him the more intensely and causes greater agony as he thinks of what consolation, aid and assistance against this greater and more final loss he has lost.”

Theodoros had apparently insisted that she change her style of dress as well as convert, things directly opposed to the agreements he had made for the marriage. “The wearing of clothes outside our habits of dress, beyond our temperament and sense of what, so to speak, is naturally required, was a matter of her unmaterial and spiritual nature, one unassociated with worldly passion or any kind of bodily necessity, because she aimed, in her unconcern with such matters, at what seemed to her always to be a more perfect order and self-governance. Not that there might ever be perfection more perfect than perfection, or that clothing will change character, but nonetheless, there was some length of time before the end, when, unless she was constrained by official ceremonies, she wore the fashion of those who live monastically, so that what was earlier unappreciated by outsiders, was now obvious to all.”

Toward the end of his monody, Pepagomenos embarked on a series of thirteen “O”s: "O dwelling-place of virtues . . . O all those dreams . . . O charms of that holiest body . . . O lady, death loved you . . . O terrible and lightless day.”  These Os formed a transition from the main body of his monody to his conclusion, addressed directly to her, speaking to her as the representative of all of them there listening: 

“You, most divine, pious and holy queen, who have made this translation only under the instructions of God. . . you have flown from us through the approval of the almighty . . . Do not withdraw into this new world but, even before us, watch over our most holy despot of the Romans, your co-worker utterly cast down by so great strife, and by the onslaught of disasters, brought on him by your death. For you were the best co-worker -- συνεργόν --urging him toward the good, and consoling him for what was incurable, a good counselor, a guide for action, and a harbor for all that is good, and all of this is gone, flown away with you. (Here it is clear that Pepagomenos had read the poem Theodoros had written for her in which he had called her his ξυνεργὸς, his co-worker, though in the poem I have preferred “fellow poet.”)

“This was not a good thing, and not how it should have been. Οὐ καλῶς μὲν οὐδ’ ὡς ἐχρῆν γέγονε δ’ οὖν.

“It would be in your power, either with your prayers to the divine, as you stand immediately beside God, to alleviate the distress of our ruler, and through this the misfortune of the entire Roman people---you can do this, I know, with a mere nod of assent-- δύνασαι γὰρ τοϋτ’, εὖ οἶδα, εἰ κατανεύσειας μόνον -- or to leave us to mourn and lament throughout life, as long as the sun sends its rays over the earth.”

This is astounding: he has put Cleofe in the position of the Panagia, and has given her the nod – and so the authority – of Zeus.

Pierre MacKay made the translation. Greek text available at http://nauplion.net/CL-Pepagomenos (3).pdf

Oh best and wisest of friends, or George and the wolves

The best and wisest of friends, Nikeforos Prinkeps Cheilas, is one of the small group of intellectuals of mid-century Mistra, and probably the most enigmatic. Cheilas first appears in 1433, when he gave a monody at the memnosyne for Cleofe. It is an extraordinary work, highly emotional, and full of powerful metaphors, but it is his only surviving writing.  A number of letters to him have survived, which collectively give a strikingly detailed portrait of a complicated but valued personality. No letters of his survive. As Eugenikos wrote him in 1455:

Your letters are double treasures, O best of men, winged reminders of your dear countenance and our association, among us even when we have received nothing whatsoever.

It seems that Cheilas left Mistra with Theodoros in 1443 when he became Despot at Selymbria. This put Theodoros in Constantinople most of the time where he intended to pick up the throne from John. In the summer of 1448, John, seriously ill,  still had not named an heir. Theodoros had been quarrelling with him over money, and it appears that with the aid of family members and aristocrats in Constantinople, and his entourage, plus the prospects of foreign troops and the promise of a foreign bride, Theodoros was ready to attack Constantinople and seize the throne.  But there was a major epidemic of plague, he delayed his attack, contracted plague and died. His body was taken to Constantinople and buried at night in the Pantokrator. His friends and entourage – including Cheilas – sat by the tomb for seven days and nights in the traditional homage, in terror of what might happen to them.

Nothing happened. Too many important people had been involved, and details were covered over, except that everyone knew about it. Cheilas must have written a mound of mea culpas to everyone he had ever corresponded with. Bessarion received one, and responded with generosity in considering why Cheilas might have decided as he did.

You thought you were doing the right thing in deceiving us, having other considerations, and saying what was not the case, but you did not escape us in your attempt to conceal the truth in your concern for loyalty and good will toward our leader and despot, for his sake keeping his secrets truly secret. . . . It is no ordinary virtue for those who consort with dynasts to understand that they must hide the mysteries of those in power . . .Why would one not speak the truth to you and not praise acts worthy of admiration? Why would he not spare a friend from accusations or not supply the defense of one most dear to him. . . . We clearly do not blame you and we have acquitted you of any crimes already. Do not write your defense to us and give no thought to supplication. . . .

For you should view it as I do, that we were harmed by the loss of a brother and a wise friend, while we hoped that you would fare well, for by doing so you would clear away our dismay and comfort us that you were together with better companions. Or, if you willingly endured because you did not accept a division and separation from your benefactor, and were overwhelmed by love, that in itself was the better, and something for which--if you had not felt it--then you might need an apology, such as is not needed now, since you did feel it.

May you be in the midst of all good things, oh best and wisest of friends, and may you overcome all your griefs and, with the support of God, enjoy all the best of the great city. For the present, we wish you to cheer us with the occasion and beauty of your correspondence, and with better words about yourself. In the future, your brilliance will be seen brightly by us who love you. For they are well whenever and wherever your situation is better and pleasanter.

Scholarios was a man of many faces. Without revealing his support of Theodoros, and using language in keeping with his role as a judge, he wrote Cheilas:

Such is your case. We shall not believe you, and forget the evidence of your actions, and we shall not listen to you belittling your state when we have many fine witnesses who honor it, and justly so.

A good bit of the Scholarios letter to Cheilas comments on letters from him, overwritten and somewhat hysterical as was his style in distress (τοῖς γράμμασιν ἦν μετ´ὑπερβολῆς), but it also dryly indicates that their situations under Constantine had changed from what they previously had been under John:

You are abandoning us who have no wish to show contempt, and who respect the eagerness of a friend . . . Let this suffice us then. We share your happiness in the good will of our best leaders as we ourselves often enjoyed it in splendor, but now let us abandon and be free of it, thinking that we and you together with us are fortunate. We are enjoying this opinion equitably, and taking pleasure in a reputation for virtue in place of our former splendor. For we, along with them, shall celebrate the brother for his praiseworthy clemency -- don't you think? -- for through that all the best will come from both God and men.

Eugenikos wrote:

You are prevented from writing frequently by the crowd of problems that surround you . . . Write, then, whenever you find it easier for you. . . . Write something short: that will be dearer and more precious than the longer effusions of others, and show by this your longing and purest feeling toward us as from the beginning.

Cheilas eventually returned to Mistra where he then became mesazon for Demetrios. In a letter to the Gemistos brothers, when their father died, Bessarion concluded:

Be well, and speak to Nikephoros Prinkeps Cheilas for me, telling him to know that he is loved by me for his goodness more than ever before.

There is much evidence for the emotionality of Cheilas' personality, and when hostile gossip produced hurt feelings , Eugenikos had written:

I learned from one of your countrymen here, a warm supporter of yours, and the good son of one of my associates, that certain ill-wishers here have corrupted the good and wise information that you receive, announcing complete untruths and have claimed that I have condemned you frequently and to many people when, by the grace of God, what I do is just the opposite, fervently and continuously. You are, with the aid of God one of those we praise, and we are not given to slandering.

John Eugenikos left his estate in Cheilas' care during his trip to Trebizond in 1454-55. Then he had a letter from his son George (the deaths of his younger brothers were discussed in the previous entry). Eugenikos wrote Cheilas with such graciousness that it becomes difficult to discover that Cheilas had been negligent.  The wolves are a puzzlement: they are generally taken as raiding neighbors, but a mountain village on the slopes of the Taygetos range is likely to be a sheep-herding village and I suspect these are real wolves.

Not but that if you stood aside for a while from our common understanding and firm resolve for the better, something that happens to people who are distracted by many important things, as nature has it though it may be against their will, nonetheless keeping in mind the letter of warm mutual affection, and those bright hopes of ours for those around you, and what we set up for my son when I left, and you promised, what I begged from you in earlier letters for yourself and those under your care, a grant to us concerning everything where you are and whatever or ours there is. My son George needs help frequently, and the village along with him, which will provide for his and my survival when I, God willing, shall return. The village is frequently besieged, and excavations are dug under the fences by the wolves nearby, and who could be a better manager and a greater assistance for us than you, when you are led by God.  




Again, thanks to Pierre MacKay for his translations.

The Eugenikos sons

Two and a half years ago, I wrote about the time Pepagomenos left his sons with the Eugenikos family in Mistra when he and his wife made a trip to Constantinople. This was probably in 1443. In a letter to him, John Eugenikos compliments the excellence of the two boys, calling them "that pair of ours, and especially Nicholaos." In another letter, Eugenikos describes a group that he had invited to read a letter from Pepagomenos. He included "our good Nicholaos" and his friends in the audience -- it looks as if Nicholaos was the older son. (I think the younger was Giorgos.)  After the formal reading, Nicholaos and his friends took the letter, "treating it lovingly," and tried to work it out for themselves. Their Greek had not yet become Byzantine.

So I was startled and saddened to find an exchange of letters between Bessarion and Eugenikos, written four years earlier, about the deaths of two of Eugenikos' sons. Bessarion was in Florence at the Council of Union. Eugenikos, profoundly opposed to any discussion of Union, had obtained permission to leave the previous September and had finally reached Constantinople in May 1439, nearly drowning in a shipwreck on the way. Eugenikos seems to have gone directly on to Mistra -- did he arrive in Constantinople to find his sons dead? The letters don't say. 

They had learned in Florence that there was plague in Constantinople. Bessarion, concerned about no letters from Eugenikos began to worry, but he could not imagine that his friend's household could be affected by plague. Then he learned from two boys just arrived in Florence from Mistra that the Eugenikos boys had died. The boys must have been travelling with the group from Mistra Eugenikos mentions at the end of his letter.

Here is Bessarion's loving and clumsily-written letter to John Eugenikos. The two men were polar opposites on the topic of Church Union, but they were the closest of friends. The last paragraph of Bessarion's letter indicates that the Council is still voting: given what can be worked out about travel, Bessarion letter must have been written in June of 1439.

* * * * * *

[Bessarion to Eugenikos]

I was believing that your house was safe and not afflicted by the disease, and that in your relief you would be glad to take part in the pleasures of life and so would not overlook what is right for us who left the great city and came here, and who beg for letters from there more than any other gift. When we were unable to discover them—how could we, when they did not exist—for my part I was eaten up at heart, being uneasy about your silence When I asked around, no one had even a suggestion that might dispel my ignorance until I learned directly from fellow townsmen, those who knew you best, and was told that terrible news, that the cause was much worse than anything we might have suspected, that you had lost the companionship of your children, those children whom even someone hostile to you would be ashamed not to mourn, whom an enemy, needing no truce, would have pity for, and about whom anyone seeing it would fall into the same grief as their parent. I shed bitter tears as soon as I heard of it. Those who announced it to me were of the same age, with the same beauty and symmetry of limbs, in the same first flowering of their life that gave witness to me what their condition was to be in future. I write you now with the same tears, aware of the despair that must exist in your soul, and how sharply you grieved as you sent these dear ones to the tomb before you had clearly witnessed their full heritage. And yet you know how to grieve while at the same time praising nature, and you understand philosophy, for you have in all times praised the mean as best, taught that thee fully-matured virtues lead us to the mean, and you walk along the royal road, as it is said, distancing yourself from the evils on either side.

Death, for those in hardship is a release from evils, while for those who have lived virtuously, and for children, in whom there is no villainy to be considered, being not yet aware of the unfulfilled pledges of life, it brings mourning to those left behind, as is right when they are distressed by the separation of bonds. May it be a consolation to you, that medicine of consolation that has often been to many, and in many circumstances. Contrast the life in this world with that one, as being by so much more, blessed. To have been snatched away before time is to escape the griefs of this life, which are the preponderance in it, perhaps even all of it. With not exulting in them because they have gone away despite one's prayers and the hopes that they might too become fathers of children, contrast the absence of grief and affliction of offspring who are unworthy of their parents, for, that may sometimes happen, and if the separation, and your no longer being called their father grieves you, you must remember that you must not grieve more for what you have had taken away from yourself than you must rejoice in the acknowledgement of what God has offered, for He as our Lord has taken his own, not what is ours. How could it not be so, when we have our very life from Him. If God can give us many times over what he takes from us then this is a sufficient comfort to us who remember those who have gone from us neither in a small-spirited way nor as if those departed had ceased to exist.

About you, many good things are are noted by those Peloponnesians who come here and who have voted for what is best with every vote. The law of friendship makes me regard your good reputation no less than my own with pleasure. I greet those about you who have voted with you as still being friends. But if we have lost you, and your true self, to be well-pleased with those, who take pleasure in you but are others, is to pursue the shadow and an image of pleasure, neglecting the true pleasure. Nonetheless, being deprived of this now in the tyranny of the present circumstances, we shall enjoy the second pleasure, that of hearing you well-famed, until we ourselves may more clearly enjoy your goodness. 

* * * * * *

 Bessarion wrote Eugenikos other letters about the deaths that have not survived, and Eugenikos wrote back immediately.  He does not mention the Council or the Act of Union, which had been signed on July 6, but there was a lot going on, with many letters crossing in transit.  In this next letter we learn that Bessarion's letters were carried by Gabriel, and that Eugenikos had written Bessarion (these were the letters that Bessarion was worried about because he had not seen them) letters taken to Florence by the stratopedarchos 
Frangopoulos (this is the man who built the Pantanassa at Mistra) and by Alexios Laskaris (the name shows up in other Moreote documents).  This is new information about Greeks in Florence, and it makes very personal what we already know about the transmission of letters.

* * * * * *

[Eugenikos to Bessarion]

This is clear to me, what is said by the philosophers that pleasures are fixed right next to griefs, in that no part of the present life remains unchanged, for since the joy of good men in infinite future ages will properly be matched by the grief of the unjust. Certainly, it follows that this is true for those allotted life in this uncertain order that will shortly cease to be. Just as many other opposite things occur simultaneously, as, like a wheel, the affairs of men, change and are borne along this way and that, so happiness and grief are to one another. With your good and wise letters, you have filled me with this immeasurable happiness, oh best and thrice desired friend, after I have known many distresses from many sides, and what a fresh sweetness you have poured over my despairing soul, what a medicine of consolation. 

 This is not only because of the great charm, and the longing for me in your soul, your unmixed love, and your recognition of me and disposition toward me evident for a long time before and especially now, to which I add the flowering grace and skill of your writing, but also your advice to me to offer thanks to God even for the loss of my dearest. Your letters have had such power over me that they have been longed for especially, honored when seen, and deeply treasured. It is right, according to the teachings of the church and your counsels, that we should give thanks to God from our souls, both when he gives and when he takes away, as much as it is in us, and we ask for your prayers and for the prayers of those with you who love us or, rather, who love God more than us, that they be safe and be left to us in place of the children and may be increased in accordance with His generosity to us. 

Thus as I said, following the anguish to ourselves, there was also joy for other good things, not the least of them being your wise letters in which while they lacked absolutely nothing of your kindness and honor, I found in addition to these benefits that they came together with the high-minded escort, that best and sweetest, that good and noble Gabriel, who to such an extent filled my ears with frequent praise of you that he made my longing for you, which had already reached a peak, increase and rise to an even higher peak.

So this is my joy over you and yours. 

But there is also with it a grief, and a very immediate one, heavy and great for me, that strengthens my delight in your letters and at the same time troubles and confounds it. This is that you did not receive my letters, a long one sent earlier, and one after that, owing to the indifference of those who took them. The calamity was made so much the worse because of what the most distinguished of our friends, to whom the letters were entrusted, have become. These were the good Frangopoulos, the grand stratopedarch, who took the long one, and after him, Alexios Lascaris, who took along with the one I addressed to you others for the spiritual father Isidore. If there was one more important than the other it is the one that went with the grand stratopedarch which would have been given into your two hands if he had not been indifferent to God and to the happiness of friends. If this is not the case ask him to look into his trunk, or the trunks of his closest associates, and perhaps they will appear somewhere. If not, let that stand as a part of my misfortune and wretchedness.

[The Bessarion letter is found in Mohler 3: #10; the Eugenikos is IN Lampros, Παλαιολόγεια καὶ Πελοποννησιακά, 1: 164-5. Pierre MacKay did the tedious work of translation.]