Manuel Philes (; –1345)
was a
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...
poet from
Ephesus
Ephesus (; ; ; may ultimately derive from ) was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia, in present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of Apasa, the former Arzawan capital ...
. He was "the most prolific author of the late Byzantine period".
Biography
At an early age, he moved to
Constantinople
Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...
, where he was the pupil of
George Pachymeres, in whose honour he composed a memorial poem. Philes appears to have travelled extensively, and his writings contain much information concerning the imperial court and distinguished Byzantines. He participated in an embassy to the "Tauroscythians" (
Tatars
Tatars ( )[Tatar]
in the Collins English Dictionary are a group of Turkic peoples across Eas ...
) in 1293 to arrange the marriage of Maria, daughter of
Andronikos II Palaiologos
Andronikos II Palaiologos (; 25 March 1259 – 13 February 1332), Latinization of names, Latinized as Andronicus II Palaeologus, reigned as Byzantine emperor from 1282 to 1328. His reign marked the beginning of the recently restored em ...
, to
Toqta, the khan of the
Golden Horde
The Golden Horde, self-designated as ''Ulug Ulus'' ( in Turkic) was originally a Mongols, Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the division of ...
. He then was on a mission to recruit
Georgian archers in 1305 and 1306.
Having offended one of the emperors, probably Andronikos II, by indiscreet remarks published in a chronography, he was briefly thrown into prison and only released after an abject apology.
Philes is the counterpart of
Theodorus Prodromus in the time of the
Komnenoi; his character, as shown in his poems, is that of a begging poet, always pleading poverty, and ready to descend to the grossest flattery to obtain the favorable notice of the great. With one unimportant exception, his productions are in verse, the greater part in dodecasyllabic iambic trimeters, the remainder in the fifteen-syllable "political" measure.
Philes was the author of poems on a great variety of subjects: on the characteristics of animals, chiefly based upon
Aelian and
Oppian, a didactic poem of some 2000 lines, dedicated to
Michael IX Palaiologos; on the elephant; on plants; a necrological poem, probably written on the death of one of the sons of the imperial house; a
panegyric on
John VI Kantakouzenos, in the form of a dialogue; a conversation between a man and his soul; on ecclesiastical subjects, such as church festivals, Christian beliefs, the saints and fathers of the church; on works of art, perhaps the most valuable of all his pieces for their bearing on Byzantine iconography, since the writer had before him the works he describes, and also the most successful from a literary point of view;
occasional poems, many of which are simply begging letters in verse.
References
Citations
Attribution:
* , Endnotes
:* —See the natural history poems
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:*
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Sources
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Philes, Manuel
1270s births
1345 deaths
Byzantine poets
14th-century Byzantine writers
Manuel
Ephesus
14th-century Greek poets
Occasional poets