Pachymeres’ extensive work came out from his long teaching activity, and his didactic style is present in his scientific works. His acquaintance with many aspects of Greek culture, including sciences, is evident throughout his work; for example, in his History Pachymeres refers to Plato’s Laws and to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics when he exposes his own views on the right government. One of his main concerns was to read, teach, and interpret philosophical texts. For this reason, he copied philosophical texts by Plato and Aristotle as well as commentaries by the Neoplatonists or earlier Byzantine scholars.
His philosophical activity went together with his teaching ofthe sciences. The Quadrivium (c. 1300) written perhaps as notes for Pachymeres’ teaching served as a textbook. It contains sections on mathematics (based on Diophantus and Nicomachus of Gerasa), astronomy (based on many writers from Aratus to Theon), music (based on Claudius Ptolemy), and geometry (based on Euclid). This manual, although not original, was much used (as the number of its manuscripts suggests), contributed to the revival of the study of physics and mathematics, and reflected the interests of the philosophers and scholars of the Early Palaiologan period.
Pachymeres, especially, while commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius, is careful not to adopt Platonic or Aristotelian views that contradict Christian doctrine, like, for instance, the existence of the Platonic ideas or the pre-existence of matter. For him ‘‘philosophy is like a divine gift such that has never been given and will never be given to humans by God’’ (Philosophia, Book 1, f.2r). And it is the occupation with philosophy that permits someone to detach himself from the uncertainty of human life (a reality too familiar to a historian as Pachymeres) and to achieve assimilation to God.
Until recently, Pachymeres has been known as an Aristotelian, in virtue of his Philosophia (last decades of thirteenth century). This much-read work is preserved in 35 manuscripts and consists of 12 books that epitomize the Aristotelian writings with the exception of Poetics, Rhetoric, and History of Animals. As later titles indicate, Philosophia is an Epitome of the entire philosophy of Aristotle. Pachymeres’ concern about Aristotle can also be attested in his running commentaries on the Organon, Physics, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics and in his codices that contain works such as Physics and On the Parts of Animals with Michael of Ephesus’ Commentary.
Pachymeres was familiar with the Platonic Corpus and the Neoplatonists. Two of his codices are important for Late Byzantine Platonic studies, containing many Platonic dialogues and commentaries. The Platonic dialogues that he copied are not identical with the ones that were usually commented on by the Neoplatonists nor their order is the same with the order that was established from fifth century onward. This fact and the references to the Platonic corpus indicate that perhaps he systematically taught Plato’s works. He has also been proved not a mere copyist but he has made critical remarks to certain Platonic texts (Republic, Symposium). He copied three Platonic commentaries that first reappeared in the thirteenth century, namely Proclus’ on Parmenides and on the First Alcibiades and Hermias’ on Phaedrus (we owe to him its first extant manuscript). After copying Proclus’ unfinished Commentary on Parmenides he copied also as a sequel a Commentary that is now attributed to him because of its similarity to his exegetical method. This text is the only extant late Byzantine commentary on Plato.
All these show that Pachymeres was not another Byzantine Aristotelian or interested only in Aristotelian philosophy. Actually, he was one of the main pioneers in reviving the study of the Platonic tradition. Even his commentary on the Coprus areopagiticum cannot be seen separately from his preoccupation with Proclus. Pachymeres, studying an unquestionable Christian authority, concludes accurately that there are affinities, even in the vocabulary, between Pseudo-Dionysius and Proclus (PG 3,116A); but - as he believes that the writer of Corpus was Paul’s pupil - he assured that ‘‘the Athenian
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Philosophers appropriated Dionysius’ treatises and concealed this fact, in order to be considered as the fathers of his divine discourse.’’ Nevertheless, the commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius shows an objective link between the long Platonic tradition and Byzantine, theological and philosophical, thought.
At his introductory letter to the Paraphrase of Corpus dionysiacum Pachymeres defines himself neither as an “interpreter” (exegetes) nor as a ‘‘paraphrasist’’ (paraphrastes) but as a simple ‘‘listener’’ (akroates) to Dionysius’ text (PG 3, 112B), that is, a reader. His extensive paraphrases of the Corpus seem more an adaption of the earlier commentary of Maximus Confessor (seventh century). Pachymeres does not simply paraphrase but he analyzes the obscure points. He makes references to the Bible, to earlier Byzantine writers (mostly Dionysius’ commentators) and to Greek literature, and he adds his personal thoughts.
In Philosophia, Pachymeres does not always use the same method. He selects and copies passages to interpret them, he simplifies the text, he is paraphrasing it, or he interpolates his own statements. Thus, his text is a condensed introductory interpretation of the whole Aristotelian philosophy. In his (mostly unedited) running commentaries, Pachymeres returned to the Late Antiquity tradition of extent commentaries, dividing the text into lemmas and commenting on the entire text.
In his History (about the years 1255-1308) Pachymeres, although involved in public life, succeeds in offering a moderate narration of events that he knew form first hand, adding only few personal comments. The reference to unexplained phenomena that he attributes to divine intervention does not change his rather pessimistic outlook on human and especially Byzantine affairs. His ideas about the proper conduct of rulers are based on Nicomachean Ethics and they are dispersed in the History. For Pachymeres, ‘‘truth is the soul of history and he who prefers lies to the truth is sacrilegious. It is better to be silent than to repeat facts inaccurately” (Histories, I.23).
His rhetorical works were not intended as public orations nor they have to do with his involvement in public affairs. They are connected to rhetorical theory and have their models in Late Antiquity and particularly in the Second Sophistic. Pachymeres went beyond the preparatory phase of progymnasmata and wrote also more demanding rhetorical studies. Few of them, taking Antiquity as their subject, have theoretical/political interest. In the first, Pachymeres makes an encomium of democracy putting it in the mouth of the Athenian statesman Pericles. In the second, the philosopher has persuaded the tyrant to resign and claims for himself the title of “tyrannicide.” The philosopher (and philosophy) proves to be useful to the city, when he uses against political power his own weapons, namely the knowledge of the beings and science!
Pachymeres gained his reputation as a philosopher in virtue of his Philosophia, a work that was imitated by later thinkers as Joseph Rhakendytes or Philosopher in his Encyclopedia (a compilation of Pachymeres’ Philosophia and Nikephoros Blemmydes’ Epitome), and Theodoros Metochites. Philosophia’s rich manuscript tradition shows that it was read and copied until the eighteenth century. The part on music of the Quadrivium influenced Manuel Bryennios in his Harmonica. Pachymeres’ teaching and writings played a significant role during the Early Palaiologan Renaissance and his manuals were used for a long time and, translated into Latin, by Italian humanists.
See also: > Logic, Byzantine > Maximos Planoudes
> Nikephoros Blemmydes > Philosophy, Byzantine
> Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
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