Linguistic Correctness between Grammar and Style in Byzantine Scholarship: Eustathios in Context

This chapter explores the tensions between linguistic correctness and stylistic virtuosity in Eustathios’ commentaries on the Iliad and the Odyssey within the broader contexts of twelfth-century scholarship and the centuries-long grammatical and literary critical traditions. The wealth of grammatical material in Eustathios’ Homeric commentaries serves to equip readers with the tools needed to compose texts that display their linguistic skill and verbal artistry. More than correct Greek, Eustathios’ ambition is to teach good style: rather than strictly adhering to grammatical rules, rhetors should choose the right words in the right context, using the full matrix of the Ancient Greek language and its innovative possibilities. The chapter’s first part explores Eustathios’ general ideas on the different variants of the Greek language and examines how he navigates the linguistic tensions between Homeric poetry and contemporary prose. The chapter’s second and third parts focus on faulty syntax and the semantic misuse of words, respectively, in order to identify norms of linguistic correctness as well as the fault lines between good and bad style. It turns out that the distinction is not always clear-cut and that, sometimes, rules are powerless in the face of literary artistry.