INTRODUCTION

1. The life of Eustathios of Thessaloniki Eustathios of Thessaloniki was not only a prominent metropolitan bishop, but was also the author of philological guides to the Iliad and Odyssey, and lesser works of this kind, of speeches made in honour of the emperor and other dignitaries, an account of the siege of Thessaloniki by the Normans in 1185, and many letters. His life spanned the reigns of the emperors Alexios l Komnenos (1081-1118, although he was probably very young when Alexios died), John II (1118--43), Manuel l (1143-80), Alexios II (1180--3), Andronikos I (1183-5) and Isaac II Angelos (1185-95). He seems to have died in the year that Isaac II was deposed ( 1195). We can surmise that Eustathios was born in about 1115, 1 and that as a boy he received an advanced level of education in rhetoric under the guidance of Nicholas Kataphloron, who was then chief imperial rhetor, or µafoTwp Twv p'flTOpwv. Eustathios may not have been his baptismal name. After showing an aptitude for language and literature as a pupil, he probably began his formal career as a ypaµµanKos, a teacher of language and literature. This type of employment is implied in the obituaries of Euthymios Malakes and Michael Choniates.2 However, he complains of poverty before elevation to the 'sophistic throne',3 which suggests that he was unsalaried, or at least poorly paid. This is what probably stimulated him to seek a career in the Church bureaucracy, which first involved him in taking a humble post as a scribe in the patriarchal chancery, an appointment that he mentions in an address to the patriarch Michael III. To quote Kazhdan and Franklin's translation, 'There was a time when I was numbered among scribes (Ev imoypaEum)and served in the ranks of clerks in this holy chancery (Tfjs Tci~EWSTwv EV To'is iEpo'is TOUTOLS

1 In his monody for Eustathios, Euthymios Malakes claims to be his exact contemporary. 2 See Eu0uµ[ou TOUMaACIKTJ µTJTPOTTOALTOU NE'wv naTpwv ('YTTCITTJS")TU aw(oµEva, ed. K. G. Bones, I (Athens 1937), p. 83 and MLXOTJA'AKoµLvchou Tou XwvLLAoaowv)in 1166, for in an oration to Michael soon after the latter been elevated to patriarch, Eustathios mentions the debt that he owed to Michael for at one stage taking pity on him and bringing him to 'this promised land flowing with milk and honey' (Opera Minora, ed. Wirth, 86/95-6). Eustathios's appointment seems to have preceded the drought experienced in 1168 or 1169, since in the title of the speech made on that occasion he is called the 8L8ciaKaA0S'Twv pT]Topwv. Madariaga has an interesting theory, based on the presence of Eustathios in Thess• aloniki in 1175, the date of the funeral oration for Nicholas Hagiotheodorites. She suggests that he had already assumed his post there. However, the modem consensus of opinion is that his formal acceptance of the appointment did not occur until 1176. Merianos also considers the date of the writing of Eustathios' s philological works. The conventional view is that the Homeric commentaries were written before he de-

4 'Eustathius of : the life and opinions of a twelfth-century Byzantine rhetor', in Stu• dies in of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Cambridge 1984), pp. 115-40. 5 OtKOvoµtKES"t8EES" aTo Bu(civno Tov 120 Atwva. Ot TTEptotKovoµ[as- amx)>ELS"Tou EuaTa0[• ou 8rnaa>..ov[KT]S"(Athens 2008), pp. 27-61. 6 Alternative birth dates have been proposed by P. Wirth, Eustathiana (Amsterdam 1980), pp. 1- 3, and G. Stadtmiiller, Michael Metropo/it von Athen ca. 1138- ca. 1222 (Rome 1934), p. 307. 7 Eustathios von Thessalonike und das Monchtum (Berlin/New York 2006), esp. p. 10, and the work by the same scholar, (Eustathii Thessalonicensis de emendanda vita monachica (CFHB 45), Berlin 2006). 8 Kazhdan and Franklin, Studies; for a survey of other opinions, see Metzler, Monchtum, p. 7.

X