Homer the Rhetorician: Eustathios of Thessalonike on the Composition of the Iliad

This book 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 book explores the exemplary qualities that Eustathios recognizes in the poet as author and the Iliad as rhetorical masterpiece. Moreover, by placing Eustathios’ reading of the Iliad in the long traditions of earlier literary criticism, rhetorical thought, and Homeric exegesis, it sheds light on the conceptual framework governing Eustathios’ analysis of Homeric poetry and reassesses his contribution to the history of both rhetoric and the reception of Homer. With chapters on Eustathios’ hermeneutic programme as well as his views on the poet’s rhetorical virtuosity, the poem’s rhetorical plausibility, and the different functions of the Homeric gods, the book charts Eustathios’ literary criticism of the Iliad. 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.