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This is the first volume to explore the commentaries on ancient texts produced and circulating in Byzantium. It adopts a broad chronological perspective (from the twelfth to the fifteenth century) and examines different types of commentaries on ancient poetry and prose within the context of the study and teaching of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and science. By discussing the exegetical literature of the Byzantines as embedded in the socio-cultural context of the Komnenian and Palaiologan periods, the book analyses the frameworks and networks of knowledge transfer, patronage and identity building that motivated the Byzantine engagement with the ancient intellectual and literary tradition.

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.

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Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts, 12th–15th Centuries

The wise Homer and his erudite commentator: Eustathios’ imagery in the proem of the Parekbolai on the Iliad

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Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts, 12th–15th Centuries

The wise Homer and his erudite commentator: Eustathios’ imagery in the proem of the Parekbolai on the Iliad