Photius at Work: Evidence from the Text of the "Bibliotheca" HÃ#GG, TOMAS Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Summer 1973; 14, 2; ProQuest pg. 213

Photius at Work: Evidence 
from the Text of the Bibliotheca 

Tomas Hiigg 

SEVERAL PROBLEMS are connected with the genesis of photius' 
Bibliotheca. In particular, the date and place of composition have 
been much discussed, and the main object of that discussion has 

been to identify the diplomatic mission to the Arabs in which Photius 
took part. According to what he himself states in the letter of dedica­
tion to his brother Tarasius which precedes the text of the Bibliotheca, 
his setting out on that mission was the chief stimulus for the composi­
tion of this huge work. But Photius' own words in the same letter 
have been the starting point also for the discussion of another ques­
tion, which will be the subject of the present article: did Photius, as 
he himself alleges, compose from memory ? 

In this journal, Nigel G. Wilson recently published a judicious 
examination of the different theories regarding the external circum­
stances of composition.1 When he arrives at the composition proper 
("the author's method"), he deliberately takes up a somewhat provo­
cative position: HIt is not usual to take seriously his [seil. Photius'] 
assertion that he worked from memory. Instead, the Bibliotheea is 
thought to be the revised and expanded version of notes made during 
many years of reading. Doubtless he did have notes of this kind, but I 
think his claim may be substantially true; in other words, I would 
suppose that his notes were very brief and he relied on his memory 
for the most part." 

In support of this view, Wilson adduces other instances of astonish­
ing feats of memory, from Eustathius to Lord Macaulay.2 Now, my 
intention is neither to discuss whether the alleged analogies are rele­
vant at all to a work of this particular kind (a learned compilation of 
about 270 different works of literature), nor to give voice only to a 

1 GRBS 9 (1968) 451-55. The standard treatment of the subject is by K. Ziegler in RE 20 
(1941) 667-737, esp. 684ff. See also P. Lemerle, Le premier humanisme byzantin (Paris 1971) 
37-42 and 189-96. Quotations of the text of the Bibliotheca in the present article are from the 
edition by R. Henry (Paris 1959-). 

2 Wilson, op.cit. (supra n.l) 454-55, supplemented in GRBS 12 (1971) 559-60. 

213 



214 PHOTIUS AT WORK: EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLIOTHECA 

general feeling of scepticism, founded on the quantity of the material 
reproduced, partly literally, in the Bibliotheca (the text would amount 
to about 1,500 printed pages of normal size). This would mean just 
repeating what has long been a fairly common opinion, and Wilson's 
remarks should at least make us avoid sweeping statements, imply­
ing that our own poorer powers of memory are the standard for all 
individuals and all times. 

To arrive at a more satisfactory answer to the question, I think it is 
necessary to leave behind the undifferentiated manifestations of dis­
belief or beliefs in Photius' words in the dedication and instead to 
turn to the text of the Bibliotheca itself. First, there is need for a more 
concrete confrontation of the proposed ways of composition with 
the various kinds of material which make up the Bibliotheca: what is 
really to be expected from someone composing from memory or 
from notes or with the original books before his eyes, and what is it 
we have? Are not different methods to be assumed for the composi­
tion of the different types of sections or 'codices'? Secondly, it should 
reasonably be possible to detect small traces of the method left in the 
text, tool marks, so to say, if only we inspect it closely enough. A suit­
able basis for such an inspection should be the many, often neglected 
sections dealing with works that have been transmitted to us also in 
their original versions, where we may compare Photius' product with 
the raw material. 

The present attempt is based on the examination of a very small 
fraction of the entire text, namely, the two 'codices' 44 and 241, in 
which Photius treats of Philo stratus' Vita Apollonii.4 The object is not 
to give an exhaustive documentation of the material but just to point 
out the different kinds of evidence available, to see what conclusions 
can be drawn from them and thus to invite further discussion along 
more specific lines than hitherto. 

As is well known, the Bibliotheca is not a homogeneous work. For 

a I take Wilson's words about Photius' claim being "substantially" or "largely" true as a 
concession to the possible existence of brief notes, not as suggesting a differentiation between 
summaries, excerpts, etc. 

e The material made use of in this article was collected during my work on an investiga­
tion with a wider scope, concerning Photius' methods of compilation in general and con­
ducted with the generous support of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. Fuller docu­
mentation-and the justification for some statements made just in passing here (for 
instance, concerning the nature of the VA manuscript used by Photius)-will be provided 
in a forthcoming account of this investigation. 



TOMAS HAGG 215 

some of the books he has read, Photius is content to give just the title 
and perhaps a short personal opinion of the contents; from others he 
makes extracts of dozens of pages. The Vita Apollonii is first summar­
ized in a couple of pages (cod. 44), and later on nearly 30 pages are 
extracted from it (cod. 241). The extracts are in two series, the first 
one consisting of fairly long coherent pieces, obviously quoted be­
cause Photius was interested in the subject matter, and the second 
one consisting of about 120 shorter examples of Philostratus' style. Of 
primary importance to the present discussion is the order of the ex­
cerpts. A comparison with the preserved original work shows that 
nearly all are reproduced exactly in their original sequence within 
each series. As regards the first series, this is perhaps not so remark­
able, since many of the excerpts (though not all) are connected by 
subject matter. A reader of the biography, equipped with a good 
memory, might be able to attach most of them to the various stages 
of Apollonius' long journeys (though it seems odd that he should care 
to commit to memory also which book contained which material 
within the continuous story).5 

But what about the 120 stylistic samples? Some of them consist of 
just a word or two, others of half a sentence torn from its context, yet 
others of several sentences belonging together. What are we to think 
of a man who, in giving from memory a fair number of examples of an 
author's phraseology, produces the samples in their original order and 
with a tolerably even distribution all through the work in question 
(in this case, a text of about 350 pages)? The only possibility, as far as 
I can see, is that he revived in his memory the text of the whole work 
once more, only to stop at every third 'page' (on the average) to dic­
tate (or write down) a quotation. This is, of course, absurd; the order 
of the samples, if taken from memory, would be mainly associative, 
and since the associations would be based on elements of vocabulary 
and phraseology, not subject matter, in the case of these small scraps, 
the resulting sequence could never be identical with the original one. 
No doubt the arrangement which we find in cod. 241 is the typical 
result of someone turning over once more from the beginning the 
leaves of a book which he has just read, his eyes falling on a peculiar 
word or phrase here and there. This picture is not contradicted-it is 
rather confirmed-by the four excerpts out of 120 that are <mis-

~ Cf Bib!. 328a18-20 and 331all-24. 



216 PHOTIUS AT WORK: EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLIOTHECA 

placed':6 none of these has been 'moved' more than one step, each 
being so near to the excerpt which has usurped its place in the sequence 
that the same page in the manuscript which Photius was reading could 
very well have contained them both. 

Now if Photius had the original in front of him when he was sup­
plementing his main series of excerpts with these stylistic samples, 
what would make us think that he had a moment earlier drawn from 
memory those extensive verbatim extracts from the very same work? 
We may also note in passing that there is no fundamental difference 
between the two series of excerpts as regards their literalness. It is 
true that the number of summarizing transitional passages is much 
greater in the first series than in the second. But also among the 
stylistic excerpts we find whole sentences of Photius' own making, 
numerous explanatory additions7 and so on, and when it comes to the 
pure extracts, the instances of omission or substitution of separate 
words or variations in word order are largely of the same character in 
both series. A good illustration of the fact that a stylistic excerpt need 
not be truer to the original than one in which the emphasis is on the 
subject matter is provided when Photius happens to quote the same 
passage from VA 2.6 in both series: in the stylistic sample (Bibl. 332a22), 
he substitutes av(Jpcfmotc for Philo stratus' avop&cw, whereas his earlier 
quotation of the phrase (Bibl. 324b23) exactly reproduces the original 
wording. In other cases, the relationship is the reverse. Evidently, the 
method of reproduction was the same in both kinds of excerpts. 

The next type of argument has to do precisely with the pheno­
menon of literal quotation. It is more ambiguous than the argument 
from order. As the alleged analogies adduced by Wilson show, literal­
ness in itself is not decisive, nor, for that matter, are occasional devia­
tions from literalness into freer paraphrase. Both phenomena can be 
used to support composition from memory as well as dictation 
directly from the manuscript of the original. But I should like to call 
attention to a special feature of Photius' literal quotation which I 
think largely escapes this ambiguity. 

It is possible to demonstrate from a number of common readings 
that photius must have used a manuscript of the Vita Apollonii which 

• Bibl. 33lb6-7, 33lb28-29, 332a36-b2 and 334b23-24. 
7 Cf. Bib!. 332a28-29, 332a36-b2 and 33lbll, 20, 29, etc. Instances like these disprove the 

suggestion of Lemerle, op.cit. (supra n.l) 193, that the second series could be "la transcrip­
tion, faite par un secretaire, de passages remarquables notes par Photius au cours de sa 
lecture." 



TOMAS HAGG 217 

belonged to the branch nowadays labelled the deterior familia. s Most 
variants taken over by Photius from this source are unobtrusive and 
are of no interest in the present context. But the special feature re­
ferred to above is the occasional transmission of textual errors from the 
copy of the Vita Apollonii which Photius happened to read into the 
text of the Bibliotheca. 

When, for instance, Photius makes an extract from VA 5.5, he 
passes on to his readers, among other things, the following descrip­
tion of objects which Apollonius and his followers saw in the Herak­
leion of Gadeira (Bibl. 328b37-40): ~ IIvyp.aAtwvoc OE €Aala ~ xpvciJ ••• 
&gla p.lv, we cpaeL, Kat TOV OaMov Oavp.a~€LV cp eiKaeTaL, Oavp.a~€COaL O' 
av E7T/. Tefl Kap7Tc'jJ piiMol'" {3PV€L yap aUT6v cp.apay8ov AlOov. This is exactly 
the text which most manuscripts of the Vita Apollonii offer. But the 
best one, 7T, reads {3pV€LV, which is clearly required by grammar: 
aUTav, referring to "the fruit" (which "teemed with emeralds"), is 
left in the air without the infinitive {3PV€LV, the accusative-and-infini­
tive construction being due to the implied report by Apollonius and 
his followers. That Photius himself was acquainted with the verb and 
its construction is shown, by the way, in Bibl. 9b23, where he uses it to 
characterize philostratus' style: {3pvwv yAvKv'T7}Toe. 

For the proper evaluation of such a feature it is necessary to recall 
briefly Photius' special qualifications and the character of his work. 
He was well educated, and he was widely read in Greek literature of 
all periods. There can be no doubt that he could produce a gramma­
tically correct text in Greek (1 leave apart Atticist peculiarities and the 
like).9 Both the Bibliotheca and his Lexicon testify to his philological in­
terests. As regards the Bibliotheca, he chose for reproduction passages 
which particularly attracted his attention because of their contents or 
style, and the literal quotations are freely mixed with sentences of 
more or less his own making, serving as connecting links. The omis­
sions he makes generally do not seriously disturb the coherence of the 
extract-they would mostly pass unnoticed by a reader who had no 
access to the original. There is, as a rule, nothing mechanical about his 

8 Cf supra n.4. For the classification of the MSS of the Vita Apollonii, see the editions by 
c. L. Kayser (Zurich 1844 and Leipzig 1870). 

9 In his review of Henry's edition (supra n.1), vol.5, in]HS 90 (1970) 227, K. Tsantsanoglou 
expresses some doubts concerning Photius' "grammatical efficiency," as it is reflected in 
his Lexicon. But the main charge seems to be that Photius took over errors from his prede­
cessors; the one example given ofPhotius' "own" mistakes (from the Amphilochia) has noth­
ing to do with grammar. 



218 PHOTIUS AT WORK: EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLlOTHECA 

work; it is not the work of a scribe who copies mechanically from the 
text in front of him. 

How, then, should we explain an occasional slip like {Jpv££, instead 
of {JPVf",V ? If the mistake appeared for the first time in the text of the 
Bibliotheca, it would be no problem: it would be a lapsus calami or 
linguae, possibly committed by Photius himself, or perhaps rather to 
be dismissed as a later error of transcription due to some scribe. But 
now we have to do with the mechanical transmission of an elemen­
tary blunder from the original. As far as I can see, this could hardly 
have happened if Photius had been reviving from memory a text 
which he had read on some earlier occasion, a text, nota bene, in his 
own language, a text which he understood and in which he now and 
then made skilful manipulations in order to choose the essential and 
skip the padding. The obvious explanation is that he had, in fact, the 
original text before him at the moment of dictation; only under such 
circumstances would it be psychologically understandable that his 
attention could slacken for a moment, so that his verbatim reproduc­
tion came to include also the obvious mistakes in the original. The 
one conceivable alternative, however improbable, would be that he 
was endowed with a very special kind of eidetic memory, which per­
mitted him to 'read' anew from memory with no greater mental 
effort than if he were reading from a book. We shall presently see 
whether there are any traces of such a capacity elsewhere in the 
Bibliotheca. 

It is time to turn to a fundamentally distinct kind of reproduction, 
namely, the resume, as exemplified by cod. 44. Here, too, the whole 
of the Vita Apollonii is covered, but now the arrangement is not 
chronological but thematic. Within one of the thematic groups, the 
separate episodes referred to are given, at least partly, in the same 
order as in the original work,lo but generally the subjects follow each 
other quite freely, apparently just as they presented themselves to the 
mind of Photius after he had read the book. No one would deny that 
this is a summary made from memory (with or without the help of 
notes made during the reading). We may even, by a closer examina­
tion of the summary, get some hints as to the qualities of the memory 
at work in this process. 

The circumstance that the original sequence of the events is gener­
ally not adhered to is, of course, not an indication of a specially bad 

10 Bibl. lOa5-18. 



TOMAS HAcc 219 

memory; the summarizer simply had no intention of being true to 

the original in this respect. The factual information given in the sum­
mary is, on the whole, quite accurate. There are, however, one or two 
misrepresentations of the facts. The most obvious one concerns 
Philostratus' story of Apollonius meeting a tame lion in Egypt (VA 
5.42). As Photius correctly observes (Bibl. lOa6-9), Apollonius discerns 
the soul of King Amasis in the lion, but the explanation added-that 
this is the penalty for the king's deeds during his lifetime-has no 
foundation in Philostratus' account (where the point is that a lion is a 
most appropriate place for a king's soul). There is nothing in the for­
mulation itself or in the context to indicate that Photius was aware of 
his addition. To all appearances, we have to do with a slip of the 
memory: Photius recalled the main facts of the incident, but he did 
not have a clear enough remembrance of the details to prevent a 
confusion with similar episodes which he had read or heard elsewhere. 

On another occasion, Photius picks out, in order to illustrate the 
superstition conveyed by Philostratus in the biography, the descrip­
tion of some Indian means of influencing the weather (Bibl. 10a26-29): 

'0 \ 'A \' "R '" ~'" , , , 7Tt OVC yap aVTOtC 7T1\T)P€tC OfLf"PWV Kat aV€fLWV DOVC V€W TT)V xwpav avofL-

R" , 'c I Y 'I' '" R ..., 'D 
f"ptac €7T€XOVCT)C €<:,tKfLa~€w T€ av KaTapPT)YVVfL€VWV OfLf"PWV TatC €K 7TWWV 

" I , " '0 A d h I: I· I: ava fL€POC xopTJYLatC KVpLOVC €Ka £c€ • •• s regar s t e lactua Inlorma-
tion, this summary is quite true to the original (VA 3.14), but the 
wording is to a large extent new. This is not to be explained, as in 
many other cases, as the natural consequence of the compression of a 
detailed episode into a short summary nor as a simplification of a 
complicated text. Of course more details are given in the original, but 
several words or phrases could have been taken over directly by 
Photius without making his version longer than it is. Compare, for 
instance, the following counterparts to Photius' formulations: Kat 

'" ,. '-l.' '0 \ '0 " " R ' " " • O£TTW €WpaK€Vat 'raCL 7Tt W I\t OV fL€l\avoc OfLf"PWV T€ Kat aV€fLWV OVT€. 0 

, '" , - "R "- • '[ "" '1 ' 0 ' -l. " ' fL€V oTJ TWV OfLfJPWV, €£ aVXfLcp TJ VDtKTJ 7TL€",OLTO, aVOLX €LC V€'r€l\ac ava-
, ,. I , - - ,"',., R' A" " 

7T€fL7T€L Kat vypaLV€L TT)V YTJV 7Tacav, €£ O€ OfLfJpOL 7T1\€OV€KTOt€V, LCX€£ aVTOVC 

gVYK'\€LOfL€VOC ••• The words for 'jar', 'rain' and 'wind' are identical, 
but that is all: avofLfJpla is used by Photius instead of aVXfLoc, V€LV in­
stead of -Dypa{v€w, xdJpa instead of yij, and so on. 

Two possible explanations present themselves. Either photius 
made a point of not reproducing the original wording, i.e. he sought 
variatio, or he remembered the facts quite well but did not have the 
actual wording ringing in his ears (or lingering before his eyes). My 



220 PHOTIUS AT WORK: EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLIOTHECi1 

reasons for preferring the latter explanation are the following. First, 
variatio would be quite pointless in this connection, since the reader 
of the Bibliotheca is not supposed to have read the original nor to have 
a copy of it at hand. Secondly, Photius both in cod. 44 and in cod. 241 
expresses his high opinion of Philo stratus' style and in giving examples 
of the work in cod. 241 he never hesitates at complicated syntactic 
structures or obsolete words. Why should he deliberately avoid 
Philostratus' phraseology here? Thirdly, and most important, we 
have in cod. 241, interspersed among the literal excerpts, some sec­
tions of summary which show Photius' method when he really re­
membered the wording of the original or even had the text before 
his eyes when summarizing. For instance, he describes the habitation 
of the naked sages in Ethiopia in the following way (Bibl. 330al4-17): 

• ~!>" 'T1 'f ()' -'-' 'f' ~, ~,~., OtK€W o€ Tove .l vp..vove V7Tat ptove 'f'7]CL Kat V7TO Tep ovpavep aVTep, €7TL Ttvoe 

S~ YTJ,\oc/Jov gVp..jLlTPOV, p..tKPOV a1TO Tfje 0X(}7]e TOV N€l'\ov. The constituent 
parts of this description are fetched from different parts of V A 6.6: 

, !>" T1 , , , ~ , " '\'-'- -'-' c ' Tove O€ .l vp..vove TOVTove OtK€W p..EV E1Tt Ttvoe O'f'OV, 'f'aCL, SVp..p..ETpOV 

p..LKPOV a1To Tfje 0X(}7]e TOV N€{,\ov, and, ten lines further on: ... ~clwrEe 
V7Ta{(}pWL Kat. tJ1TO Tip ovpavip aVTip. The compound y~'\oc/Joe, finally, is 
used by Philo stratus in another sentence between the two passages 
just quoted. No striving for variatio can be discerned. 

The faculty of memory displayed by Photius in cod. 44 is, then, of 
an ordinary and far from superhuman kind. Having read a book, he 
was able to give a fairly accurate account of the things in it that inter­
ested him, but he does not seem to have remembered the exact 
words of the author. The special kind of memory needed for the 
literal reproduction of large quantities of text, as in cod. 241, he shows 
no signs of possessing. 

Some intricate problems, however, remain unsolved. There are 
other codices in which the intermingling of summary and word-for­
word quotation is more complicated than in those treated here. Only 
a minute analysis and comparison with the originals, if preserved, 
could trace the role of memory in their composition. Furthermore, 
the important question is left, whether those summaries which are 
wholly-or largely (the notes !)-the products of memory, like cod. 
44, were written down or dictated separately, only a comparatively 
short time after the reading, or all at the same time, when Photius was 
about to set out on his mission. If the latter was the case, the composi­
tion was, after all, a remarkable feat of memory, measured by our 



TOMAS HAGG 221 

standards, in spite of the exception we have to make as regards the 
great mass of literal excerpts. 

Perhaps the answer to this question might be given by a stylistic 
analysis of the summaries. If, as has sometimes been argued,n Photius 
unconsciously adopted certain traits of the style of the original work 
also in summarizing its contents in his own words, this is hardly ex­
plicable in any other way-provided that the above characterization 
of his memory holds good also when confronted with materials from 
other codices-than as the result of an immediate writing do\vn of his 
summary when the text was still fresh in his memory and the im­
pression of the style not muddled by the reading of other works. 
There is a long way to go, however, before the characteristics of 
Photius' own style or styles are so distinctly worked out that they may 
be profitably contrasted with the small modifications in style that 
were possibly due to his momentary reading. 

Let us, finally, return to Photius' own words in the dedication and 
the postscript of the Bibliotheca12 and compare them with the out­
come of the present examination. First, we may note that in referring 
to the constituents of his own work Photius only uses the term tJ1TO­

(UC€£C. It seems reasonable to believe that in doing so he was thinking, 
in the first place, of the summaries proper (even though he makes no 
explicit exception of the codices consisting of excerpts). As we have 
seen, for their composition he undeniably had to rely on his memory. 
Only his claim to have made several of the summaries on a single 
occasion, after the lapse of some time, is perhaps open to doubt. 
Secondly, and regardless of the proposed restrictive sense of the term 
tJ1T60ECLC, we have to consider the function of Photius' references to his 
memory. They are not, as seems to be taken for granted in much of 
the discussion of the problem, to be regarded as a boast, empty or 
not, of his enormous powers of memory (nor, of course, as a scholarly 
declaration of all the stages of his work). The insistence on composi-

11 See, for instance, Philostorgius, Kirchengeschichte, ed. J. Bidez (Leipzig 1913) xv f, R. 
Henry in RBPhil 13 (1934) 615-27, and Lemerle, op.cit. (supra n.l) 193 ("par un curieux 
mimetisme ... "). 

12 Letter to Tarasius, line 2 Bekker ... Ttle lnro(J£CEtC EKdl'wl' TWI' fNJMwv, ole p.~ 7Tap£­
TVXE"C al'ayLvwCKOjL£I'Otc, line 7 ocae c<lhwl' 1] jLlI1/jL'Y) Sdcw{E", and esp. lines 12-16 ElSi eOl7TOT€ 

Kf'/.T· aUTtl y£lJOp.£I'CP Ttl TE"VX'Y) Kat q,LA07TOVOUjL£I'CP TLl'tl imo(J£c€wl' EAAL7Twe ~ OUK €lc TO aKpt{Jtc 
SO~OUC£I' a:7TOjL€jLl'T)jLOI'€Vc(Jat, jLT)SEI' (JaujLaCTJe. Mlal' JLEI' yap iKaCTTJV {JlfJAol' eXl'aAfYOjL£I'CP T~V 
imo(Jfetl' eVAAafJ€LV KCXL jLvoJjLTJ KCXL ypcxcPfi 7Tcxpcx8ovvaL a~L<)AoyOV ~P'Yov ECTL TiP {JOVAOjL£VCP· OjLOV 

8t 7TAnovwv, KaL TOT€ XPOVOV jL€Ta~iJ 8tappV£VTOC, €lc avajLl'T)etv jLfTtl TOV aKpt{JovC EcPtK£c8aL 
QUK olp.at M8wI' €lvaL. The postscript, p.545,13 Bekker, see \Vilson, op.cit. (supra n.l) 452. 



222 PHOTIUS AT WORK: EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLIOTHECA 

tion from memory is no more than a formula expressing modesty 
and intended to forestall possible criticism for mistakes or super­
ficiality13-a criticism which could, of course, be directed primarily at 
the summaries, where photius' personal contribution was more im­
portant than in the case of the excerpts. Considered in this light, 
Photius' words are not incompatible with a more differentiated view 
of the composition, which attributes to his memory a restricted but 
not unimportant role in the heterogeneous working process behind 
the Bibliotheca. 

UPPSALA UNIVERSITY 

February, 1973 

13 See O. Immisch in RhM 78 (1929) 113-23.