Eustathios of Thessalonike/ Eustathius of Thessalonica

This article discusses the Parekbolai on the Iliad by the twelfth-century Byzantine scholar Eustathius of Thessalonike. It aims to give an impression of the various types of information included in the Parekbolai, for which it takes as its starting point Eustathius’ ‘table of contents’ as listed in the proem. Each of the items on the list is illustrated with examples from the Parekbolai and is interpreted within the context of the twelfth-century intellectual world. The examples demonstrate that Eustathius mainly composed his Parekbolai with writers of rhetorical prose in mind, offering them material for creative reuse in writings of their own and providing much additional information to expand the readers’ learning. Eustathius projects his own didactical program on the poet and shows how Homer teaches the same things as Eustathius intends to do: the poet, too, is a teacher of rhetoric and grammar, and provides information on manifold subjects to bring his audience to great learning. The didactic program of both commentator and poet reflects the way in which Homer was read and used in twelfth-century Byzantium. Moreover, the literary principles that are advocated in the Parekbolai can be helpful in understanding twelfth-century rhetorical writings.

Les commentaires sur le grand Homère sont légion, cependant très inégaux en qualité. Les débordements littéraires et superficiels ont achevé de transformer jusqu’à nos jours sa momie pour en faire le splendide ornement de salon que nous connaissons.

Selon Anatole France, « à l’heure actuelle, nous n’entendons pas un seul vers de l’Iliade [...] dans le sens qui y était attaché primitivement ». Qui se souvient encore de la définition de Rabelais : « Homère, père de toute philosophie » ?

« Il faut donc envisager dans les ouvrages d’Homère [...] un sens hiéroglyphique ou allégorique, qui voile les plus grands secrets de la physique et de la nature. Les seuls philosophes naturalistes, et ceux qui sont au fait de la science hermétique par théorie bien méditée, ou par pratique, sont en état de le comprendre. Ils admirent dans ses ouvrages mille choses qui les frappent et les saisissent d’admiration, pendant que les autres les passent et n’en sont point touchés. » (A.-J. Pernety)

Seul est habilité à commenter valablement le texte d’Homère celui qui a saisi la vérité cachée derrière les dires menteurs de sa mythologie.

« Il s’agit le plus souvent d’un enseignement d’ordre physique, et Proclus, définissant l’interprétation allégorique, déclare que “l’on y fait des phénomènes physiques l’objet dernier des significations cachées dans les mythes”. Mais la théologie y trouve aussi sa place. » (J. Pépin)

Le lecteur trouvera, dans le présent ouvrage, un très large éventail des commentaires les plus intéressants sur l’œuvre d’Homère, principalement orientés vers le sens physique et théologique de ses poèmes.

En empruntant à Porphyre, pour intituler ce florilège, l’expression « questions homériques », nous entendons lui rendre son titre de noblesse. Il ne s’agit pas tant de savoir si l’Iliade et l’Odyssée sont l’œuvre d’un seul poète ou de plusieurs, ni si le nom d’Homère s’applique à un personnage historiquement existant ou non, que de percevoir l’intention de l’auteur dans tel vers ou tel passage.

In this work, I present a collation of several humanistic manuscripts, specially the epistolary preface of Eustathius of Thessalonica’s (XII A.D.) Parekbolai on the Description of the Known World by Dionisius Periegetes (II A.D.). Furthermore, I give a global and shallow vision about both authors' lives and works.

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En este trabajo se realiza la colación de varios manuscritos humanísticos, concretamente del prefacio epistolar de las Parekbolai a la Periégesis de Dionisio Periegeta (siglo II d. C.) compuestas por Eustacio de Tesalónica (siglo XII). Además se aporta una visión global y general de la vida y obra de ambos personajes.

More than 2 millennia of Jewish presence in Thessaloniki have shaped both the city and its Jews.  The Jews of Thessaloniki, in most instances, were subject to the fortunes and misfortunes of their coreligionists in the realms of the Kingdom of Macedonia, the Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire – Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire.  A new and current chapter in their history is the birth of the modern Hellenic state and its foundation on civil rights.  In the second decade of the 20th century the Jews of Thessaloniki finally belong, on equal par with the overwhelming Christian majority, as Hellenes in Greece.  The tumultuous events of the previous century, both worldwide and locally, had profound consequences for Jewish Thessaloniki.  Still the community is in search of its current identity and of a vision for the future.  Our presence here enhances my optimism.

The Byzantine peasantry has been traditionally analyzed through documentary sources and material evidence. This study attempts to complement the existing scholarship on the peasantry by showing how a perception-based, socio-cultural angle can be provided through the utilization of Byzantine narrative sources from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The peasant voice is completely absent from these sources and, therefore, must be reached through deduction, close-reading and literary analysis techniques. In addition to furnishing us with much direct information on the peasants’ lifestyle, their economic and legal interactions with different actors, as well as their utilization and victimization through military matters, these sources also highlight the elite, educated and also quite urban perception of the peasantry. These narratives contain a delicate blend of marginalizing the peasantry, while also praising and defending them due to the acknowledgement that they are vital in the maintenance of the empire. A strong case is made for the collective importance attributed to the peasantry, through their function as a vast manpower pool for the agrarian economy and military machine; yet, as individuals, they remain obscure and invisible. The relative homogeneity among the selected authors’ views concerning the peasantry, which is also mirrored and enforced by military doctrines, legal documents and imperial orders of the time, indicates that their individual views are part of a broader socio-cultural expression.

Επαναφέροντας στη μνήμη ένα χαμένο σήμερα ενεπίγραφο βάθρο της λατρείας των Καβείρων στην Αμφίπολη, μέσα από 3 παλαιές δημοσιεύσεις, ερμηνεύοντας την επιγραφή και αναλύοντας την σχέση της Αθηνάς και του Ηφαίστου, με τους μεταλλοτεχνίτες, την μαντική, τον Διόνυσο και την Δήμητρα.

This paper focuses on mental conflict, i.e. the situation that arises when a person is subject to conflicting motives or impulses to act. The paper focuses on how the Homeric poems represent the process, how that representation has been understood by scholars, how it should be understood, and how it was understood by Eustathius in his Homeric Commentaries. This affords the opportunity to to exploret the phenomenology of experiences such as mental conflict and about the phenomenology of emotion more generally, and in particular about how metaphor is used to capture something of the phenomenology of subjective emotional experience.

Homer the Rhetorician is the first monograph study devoted to the monumental Commentary on the Iliad by Eustathios of Thessalonike, one of the most renowned orators and teachers of the Byzantine twelfth century. Homeric poetry was a fixture in the Byzantine educational curriculum and enjoyed special popularity under the Komnenian emperors. For Eustathios, Homer was the supreme paradigm of eloquence and wisdom. Writing for an audience of aspiring or practising prose writers, he explains in his commentary what it is that makes Homer's composition so successful in rhetorical terms. This study explores the exemplary qualities that Eustathios recognizes in the poet as author and the Iliad as rhetorical masterpiece. In this way, it advances our understanding of the rhetorical thought of a leading intellectual and the role of a cultural authority as respected as Homer in one of the most fertile periods in Byzantine literary history.

A combination of translation and spoliation defines the Homeric commentaries of Eustathios of Thessalonike. Eustathios' rhetorical translation of Homer seeks to assist contemporary rhetors in attaining polymathy, oratorical excellence, and linguistic competence. The first part of this article argues that the display of erudition is a key component of the rhetorical aesthetics appreciated and advocated by Eustathios; the combination of eloquence and erudition is central to both his definition of Homer's exemplarity and his reflections on authorship elsewhere. The second part explores how Eustathios' commentaries help rhetors navigate the differences between Homer's poetic language and the Atticizing Greek of Byzantine prose. The article's third part draws a parallel between Eustathios' use of ancient grammatical, rhetorical, and exegetical traditions in his translation of Homer and the use of ancient material as spolia in medieval architecture.

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This book analyzes Byzantine examples of witness literature, a genre that focuses on eyewitness accounts written by slaves, prisoners, refugees, and other victims of historical atrocity. It focuses on such episodes in three nonfictional texts-John Kaminiates' Capture of Thessaloniki (904), Eustathios of Thessaloniki's Capture of Thessaloniki (1186), and Niketas Choniates' History (ca. 1204-17)and the three extant twelfth-century Komnenian novels to consider how the authors' positions as both eyewitness and victim require an interpretive method that distinguishes witness literature from other kinds of writing about the past. Drawing on theoretical developments in the fields of Holocaust and Genocide Studies (such as Giorgio Agamben's homo sacer and Michel Foucault's biopolitics) and comparisons with modern examples (Elie Wiesel's Night and Primo Levi's If This is a Man), Witness Literature emphasizes the affective, subjective, and experiential in medieval Greek historical writing.

Taking its cue from a biographical anecdote reported by Eustathios of Thessalonike in the introduction to his Commentary on the Odyssey (Homer allegedly found the material for his poems in some book rolls penned by one Lady Phantasia), this paper investigates the entanglements between Eustathios’ exegetical work on Homer and the Byzantine re - vival of fiction in the XIIth century. The first section explores the way in which Eusta - thios presents Homer’s compositional practices, construed as akin to fictional narrative. 286 «MEG» 14, 2014 Abstracts The second section delves into the associations sparkled by mythical female authorial agents. Finally, in the third section, the paper shows how the story selected by Eustathios could easily evoke in the Byzantine reader images related to the writer’s activity and imaginative craftiness – the latter not devoid of risks.

"Since the discovery of Ferdinand de Saussure's anagram research, a whole piece regarding Homeric texts has been left undisclosed. By studying related unpublished manuscripts, the steps of the linguist's quest for a phonic reproduction as the structure for archaic poetic works can be revealed. The aim of this paper is to show that, through his research, Saussure goes back to an ancient tradition of interpreting Homeric poems by emphasizing their plays of tones.

Depuis leur découverte, un pan entier des recherches anagrammatiques de Ferdinand de Saussure demeure méconnu : celles portant sur le texte homérique. L’étude des manuscrits inédits qui y sont consacrés permettra de révéler les modalités de cette quête d’une reproduction phonique, dont le linguiste fait l’hypothèse qu’elle structure la composition poétique archaïque. L’article s’attachera aussi à montrer que, par ses recherches, Saussure renoue avec une tradition ancienne de réception des poèmes homériques attentive aux jeux de sonorité. "

This paper explores the reception of Aristophanes in the scholarly-didactic works of John Tzetzes, Gregory Pardos, and Eustathios of Thessalonike as texts facilitating the literary reception of the comic poet. It studies the reception of Aristophanes as Atticist, playwright, and satirist and argues that the Byzantine reception of Aristophanes goes beyond his usefulness as a model of perfect Attic Greek. Tzetzes, Gregory, and Eustathios attribute an ethical-didactic function to ancient drama, including comedy and its ridicule. In terms of rhetoric, they analyze the figures and strategies underlying Aristophanes’ jests and ridicule in order to provide their readers with methods and techniques to implement in their own writings. The active and multifaceted engagement with Aristophanes in twelfth-century Byzantium is also evident in Tzetzes’ personal engagement with Aristophanes as historical person and his autobiographical remarks throughout the commentaries on Aristophanes’ comedies.

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La paréchèse est une figure assez tardive dans l’histoire de la rhétorique grecque. Elle est mentionnée pour la première fois dans un traité attribué à Hermogène de Tarse, soit pas avant le IIe siècle de notre ère. Définie comme « un embellissement formé de mots semblables qui, tout en étant de signification différente, se répondent par des sons identiques », elle est illustrée par deux exemples homériques, qui seront repris par les nombreux commentateurs d’Hermogène. La théorie des paréchèses issue de cette tradition est ensuite affinée par Eustathe de Thessalonique qui y introduit des subdivisions en tenant compte des changements de prononciation. L’objet de cette étude est de reconstituer l’histoire de cette figure et d’analyser le rôle qu’elle joue dans le commentaire qu’Eustathe fait des poèmes homériques. On montre comment Eustathe, débiteur d’une tradition d’exégèse attentive aux jeux de sonorités, développe, autour de la paréchèse l’une des approches les plus abouties, parmi les commentateurs anciens, des phénomènes d’allitérations et d’échos sonores chez Homère.

A detailed analysis of the scholiastic and Eustathian material concerning the variants δόσκεν / δόσκον / δῶκεν in Il. 14.382 is performed. Examination of the manuscripts and an investigation into the history of the modern studies suggests it is more plausible to conclude that the reading attributed to Aristarchus in the scholia was δόσκον and not δόσκεν. This assessment is congruent with the evidence from Eustathius. The dispute in the critical literature between the evaluation of δῶκεν as a variant or as an explanatory gloss is resolved in favour of the variant, by also considering the recurrent Didymean expression καὶ ἔστιν εὐφραδέστερον.

This article explores the role of the gods in the Iliad as analysed by Eustathius of Thessaloniki in his Commentary on the Iliad. Eustathius aims to identify the principles and techniques that underlie Homer’s successful composition and to reconstruct, as it were, Homer’s composition process. In this way, he intends to familiarise his target audience, twelfth-century authors of rhetorical prose, with Homer’s admirable methods so that they can imitate them in their own writings. Eustathius interprets the gods as devices in the hands of the poet to steer his composition in the desired direction, to imbue it with rhetorical plausibility, and to foreground his skilfulness. Homer uses the gods in four ways: 1) by means of divine interventions, Homer maintains plausibility whenever he takes risks for the sake of rhetorical virtuosity; 2) the poet employs divine plans to motivate the course of events; 3) as allegories of the poet’s intellectual capacities the gods reveal authorial deliberations about the course of the Iliad; 4) the composition of the Iliad is partly determined by the meaning of the gods in terms of natural and ethical allegory. Eustathius thus presents Homer as a self-conscious author and shapes him, we may assume, in the image of the ideal Byzantine author, or perhaps that of himself.

Paper given at the Leeds Medieval Culture and War Conference (University of Leeds, 5th-6th May 2016)

The Norman leaders of the Hauteville family launched overall four campaigns in the Balkans against the Byzantine Empire from 1081 to 1186. All these campaigns were initially successful, but ended up being military failures.
Before three of these four attacks, a man who claimed to be a deposed Byzantine emperor (or a son of his) showed up at the Hauteville court. However, the sources suggest quite clearly that two of these alleged exiles were actually Greek imposters who had nothing to do with any Eastern imperial family, and that the Norman rulers were definitely aware of this.

In this paper I will first analyse in depth these three cases. Then, I will try to explain why the Norman leaders still tried to take advantage of these men for their campaigns. Did the Hautevilles hope that the Southern Italian aristocracy would be more willing to participate in a ‘just war’? Or did they think that the motivation of restoring a deposed emperor would make it more likely for them to obtain western support for their campaigns? Did they hope that the attacked population would recognise the imposter as the legitimate emperor, and therefore back their invasion? And finally, why did Roger II of Sicily still attack the Byzantines in 1147-49 even if at that point no Byzantine ‘pseudo-emperor’ had shown up in Italy?

Review article of: Eustathii Thessalonicensis Exegesis in Canonem Iambicum Pentecostalem, recensuerunt indicibusque instruxerunt Paolo Cesaretti – Silvia Ronchey (Supplementa Byzantina, 10). Berlin-Boston, Walter De Gruyter 2014, in «RFIC» 144 (2016), pp. 156-174.

More than 2 millennia of Jewish presence in Thessaloniki have shaped both the city and its Jews.  The Jews of Thessaloniki, in most instances, were subject to the fortunes and misfortunes of their coreligionists in the realms of the Kingdom of Macedonia, the Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire – Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire.  A new and current chapter in their history is the birth of the modern Hellenic state and its foundation on civil rights.  In the second decade of the 20th century the Jews of Thessaloniki finally belong, on equal par with the overwhelming Christian majority, as Hellenes in Greece.  The tumultuous events of the previous century, both worldwide and locally, had profound consequences for Jewish Thessaloniki.  Still the community is in search of its current identity and of a vision for the future.  Our presence here enhances my optimism.

La profecía de Tiresias anuncia el viaje de Odiseo hacia el interior del continente con la finalidad de congraciarse con Poseidón. Este hecho ocurre en el lugar donde el héroe astuto encuentra un pueblo que ignora el mar. Tucídides y Heródoto describen los pueblos de Etolia, Epiro y Tesprotia como diferentes al resto de la Hélade, puesto que hablan una lengua semibárbara y tienen poco o nulo conocimiento de navegación, coincidiendo así con las características predichas por el adivino tebano. Asimismo, otros testimonios escritos relatan tradiciones locales sobre la presencia de Ulises por estas tierras, la que permite a etolios, epirotas y tesprotos ser incluidos entre las poblaciones citadas en el Ciclo Épico Troyano, insertándose de esta forma en la memoria colectiva de los griegos y retrotrayendo sus orígenes al pasado mítico homérico.

In this paper it is argued that the proem of the Parekbolai on the Iliad by Eustathios of Thessalonike gives a practical example of the use to which the lessons in his work are to be put. It explores how Eustathios advertises himself as a skilful rhetorician and how he perceives the relationship between poet, commentator, and readers by examining four images that embellish the proem: Homeric poetry as the song of the Sirens, Homer as the Ocean and as a host, and the commentator as a cook.

1) In Ar. fr. 938 [dub.] K.–A. κνιστά (like στέμφυλα) is autonomous from λάχανα (also in the lexicographical tradition);
2) there is no reason to consider Ar. fr. 941 [dub.] K.–A. (ἀμφήκη γνάθον) as a misreading or variant of Ar. Nub. 1160 (ἀμφήκει γλώττῃ): it is a further instance of sophistic and/or Euripidean parody;
3) Ar. fr. 900 K.–A. (τετραχίζειν) should be attributed to Aristophanes of Byzantium (or at least be edited among the aristophanic Dubia);
4) in Ar. fr. 969 [dub.] K.–A. (βροτολοιγός) one could read a more pointed (and therefore Aristophanic) βροτολοιχός (the authenticity has not to be questioned: with ὁ κωμικός Eustathius always means Aristophanes).

The history of the Jews of and in Thessaloniki is a vast topic that has been addressed by a number of historians and researchers over the years.  After all, it is inexorably linked with the history of the other people of the geographic area, spanning more than 2000 years, tumultuous historical events and 3 Empires.  Even though the blow that was meted to Jewish Thessaloniki by the German Reich during the Second World War essentially wiped out Judaism in the city, the challenges of the future of the now small, but vibrant, Jewish presence force us to build on our rich and glorious past.

This paper  raises  some  methodological  issues  concerning  the  edition  of  fragments  from  indirect sources, at the same time that it analyses and evaluates the textual variants of Menander’s Carchedonius fr. 2, by studying 1) how the passage appears in the manuscripts of the three indirect sources that transmit it 2) how it has been edited over time in the different editions of both the sources and of Menander himself  and 3) the relationships between the sources, and the importance of those relationships for the reconstruction of the text. Finally, a proposal for the editing of the text is put forward.

Defining epic in Ancient Greece. A contribution to the History of the idea of epic (5th century BC - 12th century AD).

The book studies ancient definitions of epic as a literary genre, from Herodotus to Eustathius. It highlights the ancient ways of thinking the genre, by tracing its origins, by opposing it to other genres, or else by focusing on figures embodying the genre (Homer, Hesiod, "Best" poets, Cyclical poets).