Proclus' <i>Grammatical Chrestomathy</i> (Phot. <i>Bibl.</i>239) (A Translation and Notes)
The publication presents a commented Russian translation of Proclus' Abridged Grammatical Chrestomathy (Πρόκλου χρηστομαθείας γραμματικῆς ἐκλογαί), which has been preserved as an epitome in the Bibliotheca of Patriarch Photius (c. 810/820-893). Given its content, nowadays this work would have been titled something like a Short Course in Literary Criticism. We find here an index and brief specifications of various poetical genres, along with the listings of authors and works representing them. However, we won't get here a historical slice of an actual state of ancient Greek literature, only an idealized, archaistically presented description thereof, which fact seriously impedes the dating and attribution of the work. In the past, it was ascribed to the renowned Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus Lycius (412-485), known not only by his commentaries on several of Plato's dialogues, but by his purely philological works as well, for example his scholia to Hesiod's Opera et dies, not to mention his own poetical compositions, the philosophically biased mythological hymns. Even today, a number of scholars are still inclined to support this attribution, though it appears that it was most likely written by an otherwise unknown philosopher's namesake, to wit a grammarian from the Alexandrian school, who lived in the first half of the 2th century AD. The same person has obviously produced another seven fragments, not included in Photius' Bibliotheca, which contain a Vita Homeri along with six summaries of the poems included in the so-called Epic Cycle. Proclus' Chrestomathy provides considerable interest not only with its literary classifications, which are mostly clichéd, but also with a number of accounts that are ignored elsewhere in extant ancient texts.