Notes on a Technē: Psellus’ Poem 6 W

Abstract

The second part of Psellus’ poem on grammar is a glossary compiled from rare words (270–490), where the lines are ordered and linked according to the Greek alphabet. The first part (1–269) is not – as it might be expected of a didactic poem – a systematic descriptive Greek grammar, but rather a loose collection of teacher’s comments lacking a definite logical structure. The didactic comments set in verse are organised to some extent by words (e.g. ἔγκλισις, μεσότης) that refer to several different grammatical phenomena functioning as cues and thus connecting the subsequent sections. At the time the novelty of this otherwise ordinary poem might have been that Greek grammar was set in political verse (versus politicus) in order to make it easy to memorise and the fact that it discusses Psellus’ views on koine.