This chapter explores the topics and didactic strategies involved in teaching grammar through poetry in twelfth-century Byzantium by taking the prolific grammarian John Tzetzes and his Homerizing Carmina Iliaca as its case study. Tzetzes furnished his poem with numerous explanatory scholia, which give us a glimpse into Tzetzes’ teaching practice and illustrate how works of poetry served as model texts in the classroom of a grammarian. The chapter studies Tzetzes’ scholia against the background of the Art of Grammar by Dionysius Thrax, which was central to the Byzantine study of grammar and as such provides a relevant framework for analysing the grammatical material in Tzetzes’ scholia. By considering Tzetzes’ grammar lessons in the context of the various technical resources at his disposal and placing his scholia into dialogue with the scholarly and didactic works of his contemporaries Eustathios of Thessalonike and Gregory of Corinth, the chapter augments our understanding of Byzantine linguistic and literary thought.

This chapter discusses responses to Thucydides’ History in the thousand-year period between the foundation of Constantinople in 330 CE and the appearance of the first translations of Thucydides in the late 14th century. The chapter describes the processes by which the text was preserved and transmitted and how it was read and understood in this period. It also explores the question of why the Byzantines were interested in Thucydides and the creative ways in which some Byzantine authors adapted or redeployed Thucydides’ work in their own writing.

The chapter sets out to query ancient scholars’ awareness of politeness phenomena as reflected in language and the metalinguistic tools they used to describe them. Particular attention is devoted to the terms charientismos and astimos, as well as to some specific acceptations of reticentia and expressions like grave or durum dictu.

Even if as a general rule ancient grammarians and commentators did not analyse the ordinary spoken language, since they mostly focused on poetry and the more exalted prose genres, it can be argued that all commentators of literary texts pay some considerable attention to ordinary language in interaction, and some attempt is made by them at identifying and labelling what they correctly see as speakers’ rhetorical strategies to reach a pragmatic goal while avoiding conflicts with an interlocutor or giving offence. These writers also make interesting deductions about the social and educational implications of the correct use of politeness etiquette and ritualization.

The Moschopoulean comments on Sophocles are among the many materials for the teaching of high-register Medieval Greek that emerged from the well-regarded school of Maximos Planoudes and Manuel Moschopoulos in Constantinople between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries. The aim of this contribution is to explore this complex material, examining what its focus was and what this can tell us about Medieval Greek education in the late Middle Ages. This chapter takes as a case study the Moschopoulean scholia on Sophocles’ Electra. Previously unpublished passages from its prologue are here edited and discussed.

This paper considers the use which both Celsus and Origen made of the Homeric poems and of the prior tradition of interpretative and grammatical exegesis of those poems. The paper sets the exploitation of Homer by Celsus and Origen against the background of the leading role which Homer played in the culture of the so-called Second Sophistic.

This essay treats the relationship of Vergil in the Aeneid to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, focusing on Vergil’s imitative rivalry with his Greek predecessor.

In this chapter, the author briefly recounts the history of the study of metaphor when it comes to Homer; he begins with the ancient discussions, moving from Aristotle through to Porphyry; these authors considered metaphor primarily a matter of intentional diction that added nobility and vigor to the style of the epics. He then moves on to modern discussions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, arguing that metaphor was somewhat disregarded in favor of Homeric simile. Finally, he demonstrates how recent studies of Homer have become receptive to the new definition of metaphor that has emerged in cognitive linguistics.