‘Classical Scholarship in Twelfth-Century Byzantium,’ in C. Barber and D. Jenkins, eds.,...

2008116. Barber/Jenkins 01_Kaldellis. proef 1a. 28-11-2008:15.14, page 1.

CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP INTWELFTH-CENTURY BYZANTIUM

Anthony Kaldellis*

This chapter aims to survey what may justly be called classical schol-arship in twelfth-century Byzantium, especially the commentaries onancient texts. By discussing the different methods, goals, audiences, andideological parameters of these largely neglected works, I intend to sit-uate the commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics into a vibrantculture of scholarly production and consumption. But the very notionof classical scholarship in Byzantium calls for explanation and requiresan ideological accounting.

1. Byzantium vs. the Classics

Byzantine “classicism,” both creative and scholarly, has received amostly negative press in modern discussions. It has been denied itsrightful place in the history of classical scholarship largely because itsstrengths and contributions have been taken for granted by those whohave delighted in highlighting its shortcomings. This calls for a swingin the opposite direction. But the ideological obstacles are formidable,especially the notion that has been widely disseminated in the Westregarding the position of Byzantium in our “system of civilizations.”This notion is fatally entangled in the ideological construction of theenlightened West itself and its leading nations in opposition to des-ignated Others. The effect can be observed in popular perceptions,where Byzantium stands in conceptual opposition to the classical (boththe ancient and its modern “rightful” heirs), and in specialized liter-ature on the history of classical scholarship, which practices a specialform of forgetfulness. The two volumes of R. Pfeiffer’s History of Classi-

cal Scholarship cover antiquity to the end of the Hellenistic Age and thenthe years 1300–1850 (of course, in the West). The entries on “schol-

* The author thanks Niels Gaul for his valuable comments an earlier draft of thisstudy.

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arship” in the Oxford Classical Dictionary reflect this division while theOxford Dictionary of Byzantium has no entries on scholarship. Studies ofthe “transmission” of ancient texts overwhelmingly favor the Hellenis-tic and modern periods, limiting discussion of the Byzantine period—which was as long as the other two put together and just as crucial ifnot more so for the formation of the classical “canon”—to just a fewpages.1 N.G. Wilson’s Scholars of Byzantium, the only study devoted to theissue, is useful and immensely learned but also condescending: virtuallyevery page contains derogatory comments and unnecessary adjectives.One can stand in awe of its erudition yet find it an unpleasant readdelivering an unfair verdict. Wilson takes the Byzantines’ groundbreak-ing contributions for granted and focuses on their failings. I will do theopposite.

In modern scholarship, Byzantium as a cultural system has rarelybeen studied on its own terms, free of comparison, that is, with itsneighbors and antecedents. I will concentrate here on the most influen-tial of these comparisons, the one with classical antiquity. Byzantine lit-erature, philosophy, and society have until recently been measured andbasically defined against the yardstick of their classical antecedents—and found wanting. Theology is the one exception among textual gen-res, though normally the modern scholar has to be a believer for thebalance to tilt in its favor. Byzantine art and architecture have estab-lished themselves on their own terms. But when it comes to intellectualhistory and literary culture, antiquity stands for reason, originality, and“literature” while Byzantium is associated with “rhetoric,” imitation,and superstition. Countless quotations can be given to this effect fromboth Byzantinists and non-specialists. There are historical and disci-plinary reasons why this culture has been so closely linked to anotherand defined in relation to it. Many Byzantinists were and often still aretrained in Classics before moving to “later” material. Byzantine history,including the state, society, and language, emerges gradually during thecourse of late antiquity, allowing for the transference of scholarly skillsfrom one culture to the other, a temptation that occludes many pit-falls. As their written languages were virtually identical, classical Athens

1 E.g., Sandys (1921) devotes 37 pages (out of 1700 in the three volume set) toByzantium (namely v. 1, 387–424); Groningen (1963) almost none. Reynolds and Wilson(1991) offer 26 pages (48–54, 58–78) out of 240, which is an improvement. Dickey (2007),a major new resource, appeared after this chapter was finished; only targeted citationsto it could be included.

classical scholarship in twelfth-century byzantium 3


and Byzantium are superficially easy to compare despite being sepa-rated by 1.500 years. In part, the Byzantines brought this on them-selves by admiring and preserving ancient literature and thought. Theydrew attention to the inferiority, belatedness, and derivativeness thatthey often felt in the presence of their classical models. In some respectstheir cultural practices were fundamentally defined in relation to antiq-uity.

As a result, Byzantium has been dealt with unfairly, especially whenit is approached by observers whose expertise and commitments lieelsewhere, and it was precisely such scholars who constructed the fieldin the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and who fashioned therepresentations of it that hold sway in the general culture. Classically-oriented scholars were predisposed, even trained, to view it unfavorablyin comparison to Greece. Moreover, Byzantium generally gained theattention of Medievalists in the context of its shameful defeats, bothmilitary and ideological, to the Crusaders. One such defeat was theinsistence of the medieval West that the Byzantines were not trueRomans as they claimed but merely degraded Greeks—Greeklings—to be conquered as the ancient Greeks were conquered by the ancientRomans. This suppression of the Roman identity of Byzantium infavor of a model of Greek “degeneration” (whether ethnic, cultural,or linguistic) fundamentally shaped the field and still holds sway.2

Finally, as a culture with a modern progeny, Byzantium was observedindirectly by European travelers to the Ottoman empire, who as ethno-graphers were prejudiced against Orthodox society in its oppressed anddegraded state. They naturally viewed Europe as the legitimate heir ofGreece, not Byzantium, which they blamed even for the effects of cen-turies of Turkish rule. Western travelers sought a genuine encounterwith classical Greece, and imagined it by suppressing all that they asso-ciated, rightly or wrongly, with the post-classical culture that had sosullied and degraded it.3 For these reasons, and others that have to dowith the discipline of philology, Byzantium has been unable to escapefrom the shadow of ancient Greece.

The damage done to our view of Byzantium may prove to be per-manent unless a serious concerted effort is mounted. Yet we need not

2 Cf. Kaldellis (2007) c. 2 for a rehabilitation of Byzantium as Romania; c. 6 for thepolemic with the medieval West.

3 The contribution of this group to the making of modern notions about Byzantiumhas been insufficiently appreciated. A good place to start is Augustinos (1994).

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engage in a form of scholarly cultural wars, taking on the values thathave created and sustained our basic perceptions of ourselves and oth-ers. At this preliminary stage, we are not dealing with irreconcilabledifferences in “values” but with politically motivated misrepresentationsand double-standards, lies, and ignorance. It will suffice for now to statesome basic facts and establish a sense of proportion.

My topic is classical scholarship. Here too Byzantium has been putdown, although in a special way. The problem is this: the Greek classicsdid not fall out of the sky into the waiting hands of modern Europeans.There was a long process of transmission and a thousand years of itpassed directly (and even exclusively) through Byzantium. The Byzan-tines are occasionally praised for preserving what otherwise might havebeen lost, but this praise is double-edged for it implies that they havedone us a service, not that they were doing anything for themselves,at least not anything that was significant to them (because conceptu-ally Byzantium and the classics are opposites). So they are thanked forserving as a conduit, for inexplicably and against their own values andtastes preserving Greek literature in order that Europe could one dayrevive the true spirit of antiquity, however that revival is imagined (asthe Renaissance; Enlightenment; science; or critical scholarship). In thisschema, then, Byzantium is only a vessel, one moreover that is imag-ined as so well insulated as to leave no permanent mark on its preciouscontents. “It is as if the classical scholar thinks of our cherished texts ashaving survived in cold storage for the thousand years between the endof antiquity and the beginning of the Renaissance”;4 or “as if culturalgoods existed in a sort of strong box, separated from the process bywhich one appropriates them.”5 The opposite is in fact true: the Byzan-tines not only established the canon of what we today regard as theclassics but they also set down some of the basic modes and orders ofclassical scholarship as we practice it today.

Many will be surprised by this statement. Yet when we look at theLoeb Classical Library (the green shelves), or the orange Teubners, orthe blue OCTs, what we are seeing is basically a Byzantine classicallibrary, that 10% of ancient Greek literature that the Byzantines choseto keep. For many of the authors in that library, including all thosewhom we regard as most important today, the choice was a meaningfulone, that is they were deemed worth preserving by most educated

4 Smith (1996) 395.5 Brague (2002) 150.



Byzantines. Others survive due to the decisions and efforts of smallergroups (reflecting an interest in a specialized field or the eccentricities ofpersonal taste), and a few due to chance. Also, there are more survivingancient authors than are found in the standard collections namedabove. All in all, the preservation of ancient texts was a massive culturaland economic enterprise, larger than is usually imagined. Moreover,this was a distinctly Byzantine cultural enterprise (there is a strikingdescription of its early phase in one of Themistios’ orations).6 Ourclassical library is a Byzantine classical library.

This is not the only way in which we should gaze upon this cor-pus, but it is one with which every Hellenist should be familiar, thoughtoday most are not. Ancient Greek texts are reconstructed entirelyfrom Byzantine manuscripts with the exception of a small numberfound on papyri, stone inscriptions, and gold tablets. Yet classiciststend to take the composition of this corpus for granted, as though (torepeat the metaphor) it fell from the sky and was not fundamentallyshaped by Byzantine choices. Astonishingly, there has been no con-certed effort to determine why the Greek corpus is what it is, an effortthat would require long-term and far-reaching collaboration betweenclassicists and Byzantinists. I know of only scattered, partial, and briefinquiries, usually by Byzantinists and a few paleographers.7 The mostdetailed studies focus on the incidence, the material mechanisms, andthe strictly circumscribed contexts of transmission and do not oftenpose the matter of Byzantine classical scholarship as a cultural prob-lem in its own right. Besides, we are too used to defining the Byzantineson the basis of what they said they believed rather than on what they did

(consider, by contrast, how differently we come to terms with ancientGreek culture). This too serves to limit the Byzantines to a separate

6 Themistios, Oration 4 To Constantius 59d–60c; cf. Lemerle (1971) 56–57.7 Cavallo (2002) 31–175 is excellent for late antiquity but does not reach far into

Byzantium; 206–233 briefly surveys the Byzantine period; also Treadgold (1984) for theperiod 600–900 and the Byzantine preference for later Greek literature; Dain (1954)for the period 850–950; Lemerle (1971) c. 8 for Arethas’ contribution, and 280–300for tenth-century encyclopedism; Easterling (2003) for Sophokles; Easterling (1995) andBlanchard (1997) for the comedian Menandros; Brunt (1980) 477–478 and Treadgold(2007) c. 1 for historians and tragedians; Browning (1964) 12 for Marcus Aurelius’Meditations; Cavallo (2002) 186–194 for Dioskorides; Wilson (1983a) 19–20 on the roleof the curriculum, and 41–42 for Epiktetos; Fowden (1986) 8–10 for the Hermetica; Jones(2001) 13 for the loss of ancient local antiquarianism. For transmission as a culturalproblem, see Brague (2002) c. 4, who largely omits Byzantium.

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sphere (defined theologically) and eliminate them as active participantsfrom a different process that has been claimed by others.

Among classicists, on the other hand, aloofness and utility tend toprevail: antiquity is surgically extracted from the mechanisms of Byzan-tine transmission and then treated as a self-standing corpus whose formand content require no explanation. Fragments are cut out from theauthors who quote them, and it is assumed that students of pre-Socraticphilosophy need not study Simplikios or know his name, and that stu-dents of Polybios need not know who Constantine VII Porphyrogen-netos was and what his circle did to the History. Moreover, few edi-tors of ancient texts recognize those Byzantines who prepared our bestmanuscripts as professional counterparts. Most postulate a direct rela-tionship between themselves and ancient authors that is illusory, if notmisleading. Not all “scribes” were mere “copyists” who mindlessly pre-served (and invariably corrupted) texts that were effectively meaninglessto them (see below), for some were diligent scholars.8 In the case of onemodern editor of Aristophanes, Victor Coulon, it has even been sug-gested that “one consequence of his procedure was concealment of thefact that some good emendations attributed by him to editors of themodern era were actually made by Byzantine scholars before 1350, andwhen the attributions have been corrected we get a much better idea ofByzantine scholarship.”9

2. The Concept of Classical Culture

Byzantium was not merely a conduit for classical literature that we candiscard given that we have received its contents. Its scribes, scholars,and even the complex ideology of its intellectual culture played acrucial role in the formation of the very notion of classical scholarshipand devised many of its basic tools that we take for granted today.

8 E.g., Lemerle (1971) 167–171 and c. 8; Markopoulos (1982); Hunger (1989) 65–69,132–133; Wilson (1983a) 193–194, 201–202; Reynolds and Wilson (1991) 60–61, 76–77;and Gaul (2007), for various figures of the middle and later period; Cavallo (2006) 71–73for ecclesiastical texts. The survival in greater numbers of later manuscripts tilts thebalance of interest toward the Palaiologan period, as do Demetrios Triklinios’ metricaldiscoveries. The basic studies of the manuscript traditions of ancient authors are listedby Friis-Jensen et al. (1997) 199–205, but I know of no sustained inquiry into Byzantinetextual-critical practices of the middle period.

9 Dover (1994) 77.



These tools were both practical and ideological. I will briefly discussthe latter first.

Modern classical scholarship studies ancient Greece at a huge his-torical remove. Most of us are not Greeks, we do not believe in thegods of the Greeks, and, despite our interest in or enthusiasm for Greekthings, we also feel the pull of modern systems of society, technology,and knowledge. The Byzantines were in fact the first culture to con-sume classical literature from such a detached albeit respectful perspec-tive. They did not see themselves as Greeks but as Romans and Chris-tians. They did not believe in the gods who figure so prominently inmuch Greek literature, as Julian had awkwardly pointed out; and theywere loyal to different social and political systems, which they did nottrace back to the ancient Greeks. Byzantine classical scholarship was,therefore, the study of an admired but foreign society. In the polarities of“inside” vs. “outside,” Greek vs. Christian, “ours” vs. “theirs,” Greecewas almost always the Other, and could destabilize Byzantine assump-tions if it were not kept carefully in check; this threatening aspect hasbeen a feature of modern classicism too.10

The taming, domestication, and transformation of ancient Greecefrom a living culture into a discipline of scholarship was a Byzan-tine achievement, and could in fact only have been accomplished byGreek-speaking Christians, “inside outsiders.” We take it for grantedthat Homer can be appreciated by those who do not believe in hisgods, but this assumption is itself a product of Byzantine technologiesof scholarship. It was not held by Julian, or the Neoplatonists, or, forthat matter, most ancient readers. For instance, one commonly findsmodern summaries of the plot of the Iliad that, like many Byzantineparaphrases of the poems, omit the role of the gods, despite the factthat Homer signals the crucial importance of Zeus in the first verses.11

As we will see, Byzantine summaries of the Trojan War also tended toomit the gods, because one could not regard as literature a text that wasreligious. But when did it become “literature?” And when did ancientart—largely statues of gods and temples—become “art”? To be sure,such approaches can be traced in antiquity. Julian was wrong thatThucydides was inspired by the Muses, and the aesthetic appreciationof religious art can be documented for most periods of antiquity.12 But

10 See Goldhill (2002) for some moments; Kaldellis (2007) for Byzantium.11 E.g., Alden (2000) 13.12 Bounia (2004).

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these were not the dominant modes of perception in antiquity and,more importantly, they never coalesced into a discipline with interpre-tive authority over the cultural productions of “the Greeks” defined asan ancient and foreign people. That was a Byzantine moment. We canobserve its emergence in the fourth century, for instance in Basil ofCaesarea’s Address to young men on how they might profit from Greek literature

(ca. 370), which became a standard discussion of the problem in Byzan-tium and early modern Europe. We also observe the transformation ofstatues and architecture into “art” in the edicts and practices of the firstChristian emperors, who legislated against its religious use and for itspreservation on aesthetic grounds, and who put it on display in theircapital.13

In short, the idea of classical scholarship (as “outside paideia”) waslargely created by the Byzantines. It would be nice to say that this factis obvious, but the reality is that it their role in this story has beenobscured. The Byzantines receive credit for preserving some things butnothing more, and prejudice has managed to drain even that of value.Consider Nigel Spivey on the assemblage of ancient statuary in Con-stantinople: “beyond whatever good intentions . . . they were, we mightsay, simply knocking around: components of an urban pastiche whichwas effectively meaningless.”14 Many statements to the same effect canbe adduced regarding the Byzantine attitude toward ancient litera-ture in particular (they are known and need not be rehearsed here).To support this preposterous conclusion Spivey notes that the Byzan-tines did not try to imitate ancient sculptural art. That they went toall the trouble to gather it from the provinces and transport it tothe capital; established special collections; wrote poems and antiquar-ian works about it; incorporated its architectural elements into theirchurches; and lamented its destruction by the Crusaders; is all, appar-ently, “meaningless” by comparison to the absence of imitation. Butthis is a dubious criterion, perhaps one designed to result in this preciseconclusion. And the Byzantines cannot win this fight, for even imita-tion can easily be turned around and presented negatively as sterility, ashappens in the case of their (often very successful) attempts to imitateancient literature.

13 For Julian, Basileios, and the contest over ancient literature, see Kaldellis (2007)c. 3; for statues and temples, see Bassett (2004).

14 Spivey (1996) 11.



What is going on here? The ideological imperative has again pre-vailed according to which Byzantium is—and must be upheld as—theantithesis of all that “we” stand for, e.g., classical antiquity, the Renais-sance, Enlightenment, science, scholarship, etc. They had no right toit and their labor of preservation has no claim on us; we may freelyplunder what they saved, because we cannot “effectively” steal fromone who has no conception of the worth of what is stolen. It was inthis way that the conquering West, more broadly, conceived its relationto the New World (to look in one direction) and the Orient (to lookin the other). To ameliorate the debt (or deny it), it has become almostmandatory in the case of Byzantium to cite palimpsests where a work ofancient literature was erased to make room for a monastic or liturgicaltext. The problem is not that this did not happen (though cases wherethe opposite happened are less frequently noted),15 but rather with theideological work that this evidence is supposed to do.

A critical evaluation of the polarity Classics-Byzantium is long over-due, for in addition to making “antiquity” possible in the first place theByzantines devised or perfected many of the practical tools of the disci-pline which “we” took—and still take for granted. In this chapter, I willsurvey, first, the basic tools of classical scholarship in Byzantium andthen highlight the specific forms that they took in the twelfth century.The rich and vibrant picture that emerges from this survey should layto rest the idea that the classics were “effectively meaningless” for theByzantines, that they “made no contribution to progress,” or that they“never comprehended the spirit of the pagan classics.”16 It will also, aspromised, provide a broader context against which the commentarieson Aristotle can be appreciated more fully.

3. Tools of the Trade

Basic things are most easily taken for granted. In the ninth century, thebook took on the form that it basically still bears today, namely boundhard-cover pages with margins around a text in minuscule script. Thecodex had finally replaced the roll during late antiquity, while theminuscule bookscript became established ca. 800ad. Gradually, sur-viving texts were recopied (“transliterated”)—at least, all that were

15 Cf. Hunger (1989) 20.16 Treadgold (1984) 95 citing P. Lemerle, I. Sevcenko, and C. Mango.

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deemed worthy of passing to this next phase of transmission. We knowsome of the scholars who were involved in this unprecedented project,for example Leo the Philosopher and Arethas of Caesarea in the ninthcentury. The physical aspects of the learned professions were hence-forth unlike those of antiquity, which relied on papyrus rolls inscribed incapital letters. Each ancient roll individually contained only a fractionof what a book could hold, and many were collected together in boxes,taking up much more space and being less easy of access and reference.Minuscule economized on both material and time.17 In this sense, thephysical appearance of the edition of classical texts has changed littlesince the ninth century, certainly in comparison with the changes thatwere introduced then. Printing has, of course, made crucial changes,among which are cheap mass production, standardization, and conven-tional numbering systems such as page and line numbers (although thepages of some manuscripts were numbered).18 But otherwise the basicformat remains the same.

Many of the non-Semitic vowel names (epsilon, omikron, omega,ypsilon) were of Byzantine origin and made possible only by the con-flation of sounds in the Byzantine pronunciation: e-psilon had to be dif-ferentiated from ai; o-mikron from o-mega; and y-psilon from oi. The iotasubscript and regular use of breathing marks and accents were alsofeatures of what specialists on Greek scripts name “the Byzantine sys-tem.”19 The Byzantines were aware of the Phoenician origin (via Kad-mos) of the alphabet, a point on which many ancient Greek, Jewish,and Christian writers had insisted. It is worth noting in this connec-tion a daring hypothesis that was made by the twelfth-century scholarJohn Tzetzes. In a chapter of his Histories (to be discussed below), Tzet-zes reviews many theories about the invention of the alphabet, chieflythose which ascribed it to Kadmos or Palamedes. He claims that theyare false. Seizing on Homer, Iliad 6.167–170, the verses on the “banefulsigns on a tablet” given to Bellerophontes, and calculating the date ofthat hero to before both Kadmos or Palamedes, Tzetzes arrived at thecorrect conclusion that the Greeks had a script before the Trojan War.It would be too much to expect him to know about Linear B, though

17 Basic surveys of these developments are Hunger (1961) and (1989); Lemerle (1971)109–122; Roberts and Skeat (1983); Wilson (1983a) 63–68; Ronconi (2003).

18 Hunger (1989) 25.19 E.g., Allen (1987) 20, 41, 69, 84, 125, 130, 173; Powell (1991) 10, 43–44, 123 n. 15.

See Mazzucchi (1979); Hunger (1989) 128–129.



some historians of the Greek Bronze Age take this passage of the Iliad,the only one in Homer in which writing is indicated, as reflecting amemory of the more ancient system. What is important is that Tzet-zes was eager and able to propound a new theory about an importantphilological matter—he called such theories his “Tzetzian inquires”—and that did so successfully on the basis of his detailed knowledge ofHomer.20

Next to the ancient texts on our scholar’s desk lay dictionaries.Glancing there, we plunge into the tangled jungle of Byzantine lexi-cography. Given the near total loss of Hellenistic and Roman-perioddictionaries, the partial state of publication of their Byzantine descen-dants, and the largely unexplored history of this tradition, it would beprudent to avoid discussing its development and focus instead on whatwas available in the twelfth century. The outline of some high impe-rial works of Attic lexicography have been reconstructed from the mid-dle Byzantine compilations, for instance Ailios Dionysios and Pausa-nias from the evidence of Eustathios of Thessalonike’s Commentaries onHomer (see below) and from some of the lexika.21 But the completion ofthis major labor, which is now in suspension, must await the publicationof the Byzantine dictionaries themselves, for which the outlook is bleak:such an effort would require teams of philologists, funding, and canprobably not be carried out in the US, given the structure of academiccareers.

The Lexikon of the patriarch Photios (ninth century) included some8,000 brief entries. A complete manuscript was discovered in Greecein 1959, but the whole has still not been published. The Lexikon ofZonaras was larger—19,000 entries—and proved to be more popular,supplanting its competitors. Over 100 manuscripts survive, which is inpart why we have no comprehensive edition. This massive work datesto the twelfth or the thirteenth century; its ascription to the twelfth-century historian and canonist John Zonaras still finds defenders. Theselexika were used for both reading and composition, as a comparison ofrare words in Anna Komnene’s Alexiad and the Lexikon of Zonaras hasdemonstrated; conversely, the latter cites usages from John Tzetzes andseems to have culled entries from his commentary on Aristophanes.

20 John Tzetzes, Histories 12.29–118 (pp. 469–472). For hints in the classical periodregarding a pre-Phoenician script, see Pfeiffer (1968) 21.

21 Erbse (1950). For Byzantine lexicography, the basic survey is Hunger (1978) v. 2,33–50.



This dictionary, then, has been described as “the product of a seriousand industrious effort to present a source of reference which combinesa wealth of entries with brevity and comprehensiveness of expression.”22

It was popular with scholars and put to good practical use.Another class of Byzantine dictionaries were the so-called Etymolo-

gika. There is no reason to go into their messy textual and editorialhistories.23 The only ones that have been published (both in the nine-teenth century) are the Etymologicum Gudianum of the ninth century andthe Etymologicum Magnum of the twelfth; we still await the full publi-cation of their ninth-century prototype, the Etymologicum Genuinum (i.e.,Magnum). The published Magnum is a massive volume, the size of theLSJ, but with a larger font. It has 2,306 columns of text on 14-inchpages, though about half of each page consists of modern commentary.Each section begins with an entry on the letter itself. Most entries are3–4 lines long, though sometimes longer. Focusing on etymology, theyalso offer basic and variant meanings, occasionally synonyms and cross-references to other entries, and quotations illustrating the word. Thereare also entries on rare names and places. We do not know who theeditors of the Etymologicum Magnum were, but their work was used byEustathios, a contemporary, for one.

These dictionaries are a major source of ancient poetic fragmentsand continue to yield new words and verses.24 But this “treasure-trove”approach minimizes their importance for the history of scholarship.It was based on these works, brought to the West in the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries by Byzantine scholars, that all modern lexika ofGreek are ultimately based, given that their ancient sources were longlost by that time. The genealogy of the LSJ, in other words, goes backthrough Henri Estienne’s (a.k.a. Henricus Stephanus, 1531–1598) greatThesaurus graecae linguae (1572) to the dictionaries that sat on the desksof the scholars who wrote the commentaries discussed in this volume,and were among the first Greek books to be printed (the Etymologicum

Magnum in Venice as early as 1499).25

22 Grigoriadis (1998) 183–208, quotation from 208. For the manuscript tradition, seeAlpers (1981) 22–35.

23 The key study is Reizenstein (1897), and is not likely to be superseded soon; for asummary, see Hunger (1978) v. 2, 45–47; see now Dickey (2007) 87–92, 99–103. For theconcept of etymology, see Robins (1993) 21, 47.

24 E.g., Tsantsanoglou (1984).25 Hunger (1989) 137.



Byzantine scholars had more specialized dictionaries and referenceworks as well, for instance of Attic or legal words. In the eleventhcentury, for example, Michael Psellos had drawn up a list of Athe-nian place-names (with commentary) from Strabo; an explanation ofAthenian legal terminology; and a list of Roman legal doctrines andRepublican leges by name. I note them because Psellos was revered bythe twelfth-century humanists.26 There were encyclopedias too. Theepitome of Stephen of Byzantion’s Ethnika (sixth century), originallyin fifty-five books, provided an exhaustive list of places, peoples, andethnonyms, along with grammatical instructions on how to use them.Better known is the Souda, a tenth-century encyclopedia with 30,000entries on prosopography, places, rare words, sayings, and other infor-mation that help one understand ancient texts (in all, then, an Oxford

Classical Dictionary of sorts). This too was very widely used in the twelfthcentury.27

Lexicography in motion requires grammar and leads to rhetoric.Scholars were well equipped with ancient and late antique treatisesand manuals, which they relied on heavily in their own studies, forteaching, and for writing more commentaries. Some of the scholia andprolegomena to Hermogenes in Walz’s Rhetores Graeci may date fromthe twelfth century.28 I consider here the works of two early twelfth-century scholars, both of whom become bishops, Niketas of Herakleiaand Gregory Pardos of Corinth. But before looking at these figureswe must outline the social background of scholarship in this period.Both men began their careers as professors of rhetoric, possibly affil-iated with the sequence of “chairs” established in Constantinople forteaching rhetoric and Scriptural exegesis, which has become known asthe “Patriarchal Academy.”29 Holding these posts they were as likely toproduce handbooks of classical rhetoric, for lecturing perhaps, as theywere to write scholia on the Church Fathers or compile commentarieson the Gospels. Like so many professors, orators, and scholars of the

26 Michael Psellos, On Athenian Place-Names; To his students, on trial terminology; On NewDoctrines and Definitions of Roman Legal Terms; see Rhoby (2001) for the first; for Psellos inthe twelfth century, see Kaldellis (2007) 225–228.

27 For the genesis and purpose of these works, see Lemerle (1971) 297–299; Hunger(1978) v. 2, 36–37, 40–41; Wilson (1983a) 145–147.

28 For grammatical and rhetorical theory in Byzantium, see Hunger (1978) v. 2,10–18 and v. 1, 75–91 respectively; Robins (1993) and Schneider (1999) for aspects ofgrammar, and Kustas (1973) for rhetoric; Conley (1986) focuses on teaching.

29 Browning (1962–1963) esp. 15–17, 19–20; further studies cited in Kaldellis (2005a)143–144.



Komnenian age (e.g., Eustathios), they were subsequently appointedbishops in provincial cities, where many felt they had basically beenexiled to uncultured backwaters. Still, there is reason to think that theymay have continued teaching there. Eustathios’ student in the capital,Michael Choniates, who was appointed to Athens, instructed a local,George Bardanes, who went on to become an important bishop ofKerkyra in the early thirteenth century. So we cannot draw a firm dis-tinction between secular and ecclesiastical careers, authors, or differentcareer “phases,” in this period. To be sure, some men were occupiedexclusively or mostly with secular studies and literature (e.g., John Tzet-zes, Theodore Prodromos) and others only with theological or liturgicalworks, but most of the men whom we may call classical scholars fellsomewhere in between.30

Niketas of Herakleia, for instance, wrote scholia on orations of Gre-gory of Nazianzos and a series of catenae on books of the Bible (thesewere excerpted quotations from different commentaries, arranged inthe order of the original text so that one could handily consult every-thing that had been written on, say, John 18.38). He was also involvedin the condemnation of Eustratios of Nicaea in 1117, another bishop-scholar and the author of commentaries on Aristotle (whom we willdiscuss below).31 Niketas wrote mnemonic-didactic poems on grammat-ical-lexicographical subjects, for the benefit of students mastering Atticcomposition. One is fascinating, being a list of the epithets used foreach of the twelve gods of Olympos, only set to the “tune” of vari-ous hymns of the Orthodox Church, for mnemonic reasons most likely.This is a strange mixture of the most pagan and the most Christian ele-ments of Byzantine civilization.32 A set of orthographical poems werealso modeled on liturgical kanons.33

Another of Niketas’ works is a synopsis of grammar and syntax in1,087 verses addressed “to a noble and decent young man,” but thisneed not refer to a particular student. Niketas claims that he wroteit in one night (v. 5). Most of the material is taken from DionysiosThrax’s Grammatical Art (of the second century bc), the standard workon grammar and syntax used throughout the Byzantine period. Niketas

30 In general, see Kaldellis (2007) c. 5.31 Niketas of Herakleia, Apologia; with Joannou (1954).32 Niketas of Herakleia, Verses on the Epithets of the Twelve Gods; cf. the ancient treatise

of Apollodoros on the gods’ names: Pfeiffer (1968) 261–262.33 See Antonopoulou (2003), citing the latest bibliography on Niketas.



refers students to Dionysios for further elaboration on certain topics(vv. 29–30) and lifts examples from him, such as citing “the son ofPeleus” as the aristos among heroes, Homer as the “wisest” amongpoets, and Zeus as the “greatest” among gods, all under the categoryof superlatives (vv. 41–43). There is no overt Christian editorializing incalling Zeus the greatest among the gods, even if only as an illustrationin a grammatical work, except perhaps in the subtle intrusion of theclause “according to Homer.” A few verses later he cites under activenouns the “Judge of the living and the dead, the Maker of all, andCreator and Demiurge, God, He Who was before the Ages” (vv. 50–51).We thus observe the classical (even the pagan) and the Christian sittingside-by-side, a recurring feature of the poem (cf. Saul and Dareios invv. 156–157) and typical of twelfth-century scholarship.34

Gregory Pardos wrote ecclesiastical works and liturgical commen-taries, but much of his scholarly activity focused on language, primarilyrhetorical composition. First, let us note a singular treatise that fell fromhis hand, On the Dialects (of Greek), the most important surviving exam-ple of its kind. By printing between 0 and 5 lines of this text per pageand filling the rest with his comments, the modern editor (in 1811) man-aged to extend this treatise to 624 pages! A new edition is desired. Gre-gory acknowledges as his main authorities Tryphon (late first centurybc) and John Philoponos (sixth century ad), then surveys the featuresof Attic, Doric, Ionian, and Aiolic. He cites authors for each dialect,whom he knew at first-hand (even Synesios of Cyrene is cited forDoric), and uses their scholia as well (except for Aiolic, which sectionis oddly truncated).35 The treatise was possibly used by Eustathios forthe Homeric Commentaries, showing again how interconnected scholarlyactivity was during this period.36 It also provided the basis for the mod-ern study of the dialects: a Latin paraphrase was appended by HenriEstienne to his Thesaurus graecae linguae, and Gregory even today pro-vides a springboard for the study of the Greek dialects.37

34 Niketas of Herakleia, Verses on Grammar; for the attribution and discussion, Tovar(1969).

35 For Gregory Pardos in general, see Kominis (1960) esp. 61–73 for On the Dialects;also Bolognesi (1953), a positive verdict; Hunger (1978) v. 2, 29–33; Wilson (1983a) 187–190 (typically negative); Dickey (2007) 82–83. It is preposterous to judge this work bythe critical standards of modern linguistics and peer-reviewed publication (though thisis frequently done for the purpose of putting down Byzantine scholarship).

36 Kominis (1960) 20 n. 2.37 E.g., Davies (2002).



Gregory’s main rhetorical commentary was on Hermogenes’ Περ�με �δ�υ δειν�τητ�ς (On Method of Forceful Style). The original treatise isnot considered an authentic work of Hermogenes, and Gregory wasof course following previous Byzantine scholars in compiling his com-mentary, but it is worth outlining the nature and goals of this work asit throws light on the practices of commentary-writing in this period.Hermogenes’ work is 43 pages long (in the Walz edition); Gregory’sis 262 (in the same edition). Hermogenes has 37 categories of forcefulstyle, to each of which he devotes roughly a page. Gregory has the same37 types, but each of his entries is longer by far. His entries are dividedinto smaller sections that correspond to specific words in the originaltreatise: these lemmata enabled Gregory to comment on the examples,historical episodes, and texts used by Hermogenes while expanding,elaborating on, and illustrating the main points. The commentary isthus philological, historical, and theoretical-rhetorical. Gregory addsexamples and case-studies of his own, many from Scripture, therebyagain mixing classical and Christian elements. This is a book for use byscholars, not beginners. The contemporary context of learned debateis again present: Gregory twice cites Tzetzes’ Epitome of Hermogenes’

Rhetoric. On the first occasion he comments derisively (but fairly) onTzetzes’ “garrulous little verses” (�λυαρ�στι��δια); the second mentionis on the distinction between a hetaira and a pornê. Gregory also quotessome of Tzetzes’ iambic verses on the establishment of public funeralsin Athens.38 (It has been suggested that these references are later inter-polations, as the chronology of Gregory’s life and the authenticity ofthe works ascribed to him are still not secure.)

Before we discuss Byzantine scholars’ critical engagement with theancient poets and philosophers, we should note one aspect of thisculture that can easily be overlooked because it does not loom as largein modern scholarship, namely imitation. The Byzantines had a farcloser and natural relation to the language of ancient Greek literaturethan we can ever hope to achieve and their scholars were trained toimitate it both in writing and in performance. In his History of Classical

Scholarship, 1300–1850, Pfeiffer says this about Henri Estienne: he “was

38 Gregory Pardos, Commentary on Hermogenes’ On Method of Forceful Style, esp.pp. 1098–1099, 1186, and 1157–1158 for Tzetzes. For this work, see Kominis (1960) 73–77. For the tradition of rhetorical commentaries in Byzantium, Conley (1986) esp. 344–345 on Gregory’s borrowing from Demetrios’ On Style and 365–366 for some of therhetorical-theoretical matters he treated.



imbued with the deepest love for the Greek language and becameincredibly familiar with its idiom. He really thought in Greek and couldspeak it; to him it was simply not a foreign language at all.”39 The prideof modernity in such scholars must be tempered by the realization thatByzantine intellectual life consisted entirely of such people, who tookthe qualities that are here ascribed to Estienne to a level that few orno Europeans have ever attained. This is not the place to discuss thetheory and practice of mimesis in Byzantium or counter the polemicaladjectives attached to it (e.g., “sterile,” “artificial”). What is importantis that we not forget the practical dimension of the study of ancientliterature in Byzantium: it provided models in the sense that they weresupposed to be imitated, not only appreciated and studied. Gregorydid not write commentaries on Hermogenes merely to make readingHermogenes easier but so that the dozens of orators at the court andtheatra of the capital could better put his prescriptions into effect (on anethical level, the same may be said of the commentaries on Aristotle’sEthics; see below). Byzantium under the Komnenoi was one of the greatages of Greek rhetoric, and this was a rhetoric rooted in scholarship.The principles of Hermogenic style have accordingly been detectedin Eustathios’ panegyrics, as consciously followed and cleverly adaptedguidelines.40 “Students were trained to master the classical language fortheir own use, not just to be able to read and appreciate the great worksof the past.”41 Their level of attainment and command of the languagefar surpassed our “Greek prose comp.”

In a separate brief treatise on style, Gregory Pardos recommendedfour speeches as models for imitation: Demosthenes’ On the Crown,Ailios Aristeides’ Panathenaïkos, Gregory of Nazianzos’ Funeral Oration for

Basil of Caesarea, and Michael Psellos’ Encomium for his Mother, striking,again, a typical balance between Greeks and Christians.42 He goeson to cite various ancient authors as exemplars of “flowery grace,”“sober grace,” “solemnity,” and so on. Many of these same aesthetic-stylistic categories are employed by Photios in his reviews of ancient

39 Pfeiffer (1976) 109.40 Stone (2001). For the apogee of rhetoric in this period, see Magdalino (1993) c. 5;

Kaldellis (2007) c. 5.41 Webb (1994) 84.42 Gregory Pardos, [On Composition] 31–33, 36, 38 (pp. 320–322); see Kominis (1960)

80–89, 127–129; Donnet (1967) 110–111; Wilson (1983a) 185–187; for the theoretical-grammatical aspect of this work, see Robins (1993) c. 9.



literature in his Bibliotheke.43 These categories remind us that in at leastthis one respect, that is, in having a feel for the style of the language,Byzantine readers had a definite advantage over us. Our appreciationof Greek is almost one-dimensional by comparison, based on readingrather than on hearing and on content rather than on composition.We can instantly and perhaps instinctively tell the difference in stylebetween, say, Francis Bacon, Edward Gibbon, and A.H.M. Jones, but itis unlikely that we could do the same with Demosthenes, Gregory, andPsellos, or with different orations of Libanios, if we were given a blindtest.

4. Scholia and Commentaries: An Introduction

Equipped, then, with their editions of the texts, lexika, etymologika, gram-matical and rhetorical manuals, encyclopedias such as the Souda, andprosopographical guides to the main ancient writers (typically ascribedto Hesychios of Miletos),44 Byzantines scholars were well prepared for ascholarly engagement with classical literature, chiefly with the ancientpoets and philosophers. (I draw a distinction between scholarly and cre-

ative engagement with the classics; the latter also calls for fundamentalrehabilitation, and is receiving it now on many sides.)

First, a word on “scholia,” a tool that lies somewhere between lexika

and interpretive commentaries. There were, of course, specialized lexi-

ka, keyed to individual authors or genres (e.g., for Plato or the Atticorators), but these were self-standing texts of their own. Most scholiain Byzantium were not. The history of their transmission was roughlyas follows. Though ancient papyrus rolls could have short commentson the verso, in the margins, in indented block sections, or interlin-eally, ancient commentaries were generally written on separate rollsand keyed to the text through lemmata. With the adoption of thecodex, scholia and longer commentaries were gradually copied intothe margins of new editions (or even interlineally) and could be writ-ten in a different “font” or color ink. Toward the end of the eleventhcentury, scribes found a way of breaking the original text into sectionsand adding the commentary in the bottom half of the page, which cre-

43 Cf. Wilson (1983a) 103–109; Efthymiades (2000) 34–39. The best place to start withthis vocabulary is rhetorical theory: Kustas (1973).

44 See Kaldellis (2006).



ated a format similar to our own. Sometimes the commentary took upthe bulk of the page, engulfing the few lines of primary text, and oftendifferent commentaries were amalgamated in the preparation of a newedition (resulting in brief catenae on a single page). This transfer to themargins was effected partly in late antiquity and partly after the ninthcentury (one of its casualties were the names of the authors of the now-excerpted ancient commentaries themselves).45

For the most part, then, Byzantine scholia contained carefully ex-cerpted ancient material, going in some cases as far back as the thirdcentury bc, though some scholia on individual words were copiedfrom their etymologika entries and some scholars added original com-ments of their own, especially after the twelfth century. It was notuntil the eighteenth century that modern philologists began to system-atically reassemble the scholia, most importantly of Homer, into sep-arate editions that we have today (though their state of publicationstill leaves much to be desired in some cases).46 This procedure hadByzantine precedent. To give one example, in the fourteenth centuryDemetrios Triklinios collected the scholia on Hesiod’s Works and Days,Aristophanes, and the tragedians.47 For the most part, however, whena Byzantine approached a well-prepared edition of a classical text, itsappearance must have made ours seem stripped naked by comparison.There was no apparatus criticus, but the commentary, being on thesame page, was more user-friendly in some respects.

Scholia clarified various aspects of the text, ranging from the gram-matical to the lexicographical and even the historical background oftopics mentioned in the primary text (which is why scholia are cited sofrequently in discussions of Greek religion). They were typically goodfor classroom use, or rather for the instructor’s preparation for theclassroom, but also facilitated individual study of the text.48 What isdistinctive, then, about the twelfth century, is the sudden and unprece-

45 Wilson (1967); (1983a) 33–36, 136–142; (1984); Irigoin (1984) esp. 99, with a galleryof illustrative plates; additional studies cited by Budelmann (2002) 143–144; Dickey(2007) 11–17. For a list of published scholia, see Friis-Jensen et al. (1997) 215–226; fora study of ancient literary theories in the scholia, Meijering (1987). Wilson (1983b) is anindispensible survey of the ancient scholia; for the scholia, old and new, in Byzantium,Smith (1996).

46 Smith (1996) 395–399.47 Budelmann (2002) 146.48 For late Byzantine grammatical scholia on Philostratos and their use, see Webb

(1997), an excellent study marred by one instance of prejudice on 16: “an educationsystem whose final aim was the active use of the classical language, rather than the



dented production of independent commentaries on so many ancientauthors, including Homer, Pindar, Hesiod, Aristophanes, Lykophron,Aristotle, and others, by scholars such as Eustratios of Nicaea, Michaelof Ephesus, John Tzetzes, Eustathios of Thessalonike, John Galenos,and others who remained anonymous. This movement represented anew direction in classical scholarship whose importance and originalityhas not been recognized. It was not, however, as coherent as it mightappear at first sight: the commentaries on Aristotle were part of a dif-ferent tradition than those which were now written on the poets, andaimed at different audiences. These differences can partly explain thevariety of their forms and methods.

Self-standing interpretive commentaries had been the rule since an-tiquity for philosophical, scientific, rhetorical, and theological works (aswe saw in the case of Gregory Pardos’ commentary on Hermogenes).A huge corpus of them had been produced in late antiquity and copiedin Byzantium. Scholia were not unknown for thinkers such as Platowho were also regarded as model authors and whose works could betaught to less philosophically advanced students, but they tended tocluster mostly around poets and orators. However, the revival of philo-sophical commentaries was not an innovation of the twelfth century.It was the original intention of Michael Psellos in the eleventh cen-tury to bring Greek philosophy back up from the depths in which hebelieved it had been buried. He studied Plato, Aristotle, and the Neo-platonists, and infused their thought into the lectures that he deliveredon every conceivable topic. Psellos’ authority among contemporariesand succeeding generations was immense, stemming from his awesomepolymathy, eloquence, and patronage (as Consul of the Philosophershe was in charge of higher education in the capital, though his dutiesand powers remain unclear). Psellos’ engagement with ancient thinkers,however, was more philosophical then scholarly: he was more interestedin promoting philosophical ways of thinking among his students thanin merely “commenting” on ancient thought. His lectures and treatisesconstitute a training in looking at every aspect of the world philosoph-ically. But he did write paraphrases and scholia on some of Aristotle’sworks.49

interpretation of classical texts,” i.e., Byzantine classicism was purely linguistic and hadno “meaning.”

49 For Psellos and philosophy, see Hunger (1978) v. 1, 20–22, 32–33 for a summary;



Psellos was the progenitor of much of the philosophical, humanistic,and literary interests of the twelfth century. There was nothing quitelike him in the Byzantine past and he was admired by the twelfth-century humanists. I do not wish to imply that the twelfth-century com-mentaries on Aristotle were part of some self-conscious Psellian pro-gram, only that Psellos’ attempt to restore Greek philosophy as a viablesystem of thought spurred later works and was perhaps a necessary pre-condition for them. Anna Komnene idolized Psellos for “attaining thepeak of all knowledge” and for “becoming famous for his wisdom.”Not only did she in some way sponsor the production of at least someof the philosophical commentaries of the twelfth century (see below),she herself wanted to be known for her exact knowledge of Plato andAristotle, boasting of it in the preface of the Alexiad.50 Moreover, one ofthe luminaries of her circle, Eustratios of Nicaea, was a student of JohnItalos, who was in turn Psellos’ famous and controversial student andsuccessor as Consul of the Philosophers. Eustratios was old enough tohave known Psellos as a student himself. In short, whatever they owedto the circumstances of the early twelfth century, the Aristotelian com-mentaries also constituted a revival and extension of a genre that waswell represented in the scholarly world since antiquity and had its rootsin the revolutionary project of a unique man who tried to resuscitateancient Greek thought in eleventh-century Byzantium. They were writ-ten by and for students of philosophy, and aimed to revive the methodand style of the philosophical commentaries of late antiquity.

By contrast, the commentaries on the poets were the products ofdifferent needs, circumstances, and ideological currents.51 Interest inthe Iliad, on the one hand, was deepened by the new Komnenianaristocracy’s need for heroic models that Scripture and the saints couldnot provide. The Alexiad was a prose Iliad for Anna’s father (therebymaking her a rare nexus of the philosophical and literary-Homericcurrents of the time). Theodoros Prodromos wrote panegyrical poemsfor emperors in heroic hexameter verse; in one he declared that Homerwould have to be resurrected from the dead and given ten mouths in

and Duffy (2002) and Kaldellis (2007) c. 4 for more interpretive approaches; for para-phrasis, Ierodiakonou (2002).

50 Anna Komnene, Alexiad 5.8.3 on Psellos; for her “circle,” see Browning (1962);Magdalino (1993) 332; and below.

51 For a fuller study of the context, albeit with different emphases, see Kaldellis(2007) c. 5.



order to praise the emperor John II Komnenos. Such praise was notlimited to the emperors and the aristocracy. Michael Choniates, thestudent of Eustathios and later bishop of Athens, was compared afterhis death by a nephew to the ancient heroes: “whole new Iliads” wouldnot suffice for him.52 Homer was in the air, fueling a shift in valuesamong rulers and writers. Quite possibly, this warrior-aristocracy knewmore about the “spirit” of Homer than do modern philologists in theirstudies. Their zest for war, sex, the hunt, and exquisite artwork wasalso reflected in a new form of quasi-vernacular heroic poetry thatcentered on the frontiersman Digenes Akrites and explicitly tried torival Homer’s fame.53 Nor was Homer less alive in the imagination ofthe sophists. In the hands of politically active scholar-bishops such asEustathios, Homer’s language became a skilful instrument, as praiseand blame sat on a razor’s edge of subtle irony.54 The accusation, then,that the classics were “effectively meaningless” in this society, a mereinstrument of grammar, is false.

On the other hand, the twelfth century witnessed a vast multipli-cation of the occasions that called for the composition of celebratoryorations. The number of orations and honorands swelled out of pro-portion to precedent in Byzantium. More works survive and more per-formers can be named for this period than for any other in the historyof Greek rhetoric (before the nineteenth century, that is). But the aris-tocracy was not so boorish as to patronize only its own praises. Thesophists indulged in original compositions, such as the romance nov-els, another genre that was revived toward mid-century, mostly in verse.References abound to the so-called theatra, a word that signified thevenues for the performance of new works, whether they were physi-cal assemblies or the collective opinion of the educated class.55 All this,required more teachers—who themselves became the objects of praiseby their students—and more textbooks and scholia. In fact, many ofthe commentaries on the poets that survive from this period had theirorigin and fulfilled their purpose in the classroom.

52 For Theodore Prodromos’ life and the imperial Poems, see Hörandner’s editionand introduction (here citing Poem 4.251–257; cf. 11.18–19); Choniates: Anonymous,Monodia for Michael Choniates 2 (p. 237). For the “Homeric” twelfth-century in general,see Basilikopoulou-Ioannidou (1971–1972); for Homer in Byzantium in general, seeBrowning (1975a); Pontani (2005) 137–340.

53 Lasithiotakes (2005).54 E.g., Sarris (1995–1997).55 Mullett (1984).



So both the aristocracy and the class of teachers and orators grewin size and became more self-conscious of their place in society. Thesophists depended on the princes for patronage (though exact proso-pographical ties cannot easily be worked out today), while the latterdepended on the former for the glorification and culture that onlyGreek paideia could offer. From this mutual, albeit uneven, dependency,sprung a new type of commentary, “Classics for Dummies.” Let usthen begin with these and work up to the more technical scholarlyproductions, before situating the Aristotelian commentaries against thisbroader background.

5. Classics Made Easy

Michael and Elizabeth Jeffreys have identified the sebastokratorissa

Eirene—the wife of the sebastokrator Andronikos, the second son of theemperor John II—as the patroness of a large number of contempo-rary poems. What these works have in common is that they are writ-ten in relatively easy Greek, have a simple structure and patronizingdidactic tone, and rehearse information that would have been famil-iar to any educated Byzantine (e.g., a list of the gods and heroes inHomer or, as in Constantine Manasses’ Historical Synopsis, a survey ofworld history). It is likely that the writers of these works were work-ing on commission and needed the money (they are sometimes frankabout that); on the other hand, Eirene was likely a foreign lady, possiblyNorman, married into the Byzantine imperial family. Her native lan-guage was not Greek and so works such as these would have helped herto catch up with her peers, though certainly not to the level of some-one like Anna Komnene. This reconstruction illuminates the nature ofsome of the surviving works by reference to the specific forms of patron-age that produced them. Eirene, after all, was not alone. Other foreignbrides also required primers, for example Bertha-Eirene, first wife ofthe emperor Manuel, commissioned an introduction to Homer fromTzetzes.56 And beyond this class of patrons, there were probably manyin twelfth-century Byzantium, both men and women, native and for-eign, who required elementary instruction and had the coin to procureit.

56 Jeffreys and Jeffreys (1994); for “struggling poets,” see Beaton (1987); Magdalino(1993) 340–343.



This explanation allows us to dispense altogether with the contemptthat has often been directed against these works. We can now see themin a new light, as classics-cribs for an audience of non-scholars. Thefirst author whom we can discuss here was a member of the Komnenosfamily, a born-in-the-purple prince named Isaac, a son of Alexios I.He wrote two brief introductions to Homer for general audiences,though for different personal motives, certainly, than did commissionedwriters like Tzetzes. As we saw with Anna, some of the princes wanted

to be praised by the sophists for their paideia, as Isaac was in fact byProdromos.57 The Preface to Homer, only 190 lines of text, summarizesthe poet’s life, the history of the Trojan War—though carefully excisingthe gods from the narrative of the Iliad—and the fates of Agamemnonand Odysseus. The second text (30 pages long) consists of two parts:first, a narrative summary of The Events Homer Left Out, mostly thefall of Troy to Herakles and then the later one to the Greeks; and,second, The Physical Properties and Moral Qualities of the Greeks and Trojans,a prosopography of names followed mostly by adjectives—Patroklos,it seems, was fat and had a thick beard. The prose is uncomplicatedand Isaac calls his own style “simple and lucid.” It has recently beenargued that these brief treatises originally accompanied Isaac’s editionand commentary on the Iliad, the first of its kind by a Byzantine scholar,which survives in a single manuscript and is not yet fully published.58

In compiling his summaries, Isaac followed ancient sources, espe-cially Diktys of Crete, whom he cites at the end apparently acceptingthe fiction that he was a follower of Idomeneus (the story of the TrojanWar ascribed to this man posed as a translation for the emperor Neroof some “Phoenician” tablets found by some shepherds in the ruinsof Knossos, the only reference to Linear B tablets found in antiquity).Isaac claims to have consulted other authorities too. He calls Homer“wise” and does not editorialize from a Christian standpoint when talk-ing about the gods.

The last question requires further attention, and will recur in thissurvey. The gods were one of the main stumbling blocks in acceptingGreek literature in Byzantium, and the matter had certainly not beencleared up in any decisive way by Isaac’ss

double s?time. In fact, his own father

57 Theodore Prodromos, Oration for Isaac Komnenos; for Isaac in general, see Kind-strand’s introduction to the Preface; also Hunger (1978) v. 2, 58.

58 Pontani (2007).



Alexios I Komnenos had enforced hard-line Christian strictures againstGreek philosophy, taking down Psellos’ student John Italos in a riggedshow-trial and adding the famous condemnations of autonomous phi-losophy to the Synodikon of Orthodoxy. Alexios may have been promptedmore by cynical policy than conviction, but the chilling effect was thesame. According to the eulogist of his daughter, Alexios had prohibitedhis own children from having too much to do with Hellenic studies,especially poetry. Tornikios says that Alexios and his wife Eirene

believed that grammar, based as it is on poetry, is characterized bypolytheism, or rather atheism; by the qualities of myths, which tell of thelove-affairs of infatuated gods; the rape of maidens; and the abductionsof boys; and contain other such splendid things that are indecent in bothword and speech. All this they deemed dangerous enough for men, butfor women and maidens they rightly deemed it utterly pernicious.59

The imperial couple obviously failed to instill this dread in their chil-dren, who included two among the leading scholars of the first halfof the twelfth century. Isaac wrote prefaces and summaries of Homerwhile Anna learned all about the myths too (secretly, according toTornikios), though armored by her faith. Was it subtle revenge on herpart to compare her parents throughout the Alexiad to Greek gods andheroes? Certainly, she revered her parents’ memory. In the Preface toher Diataxis, she claims that they did not hinder her from learning, butthis statement is oddly defensive, and Anna is an untrustworthy witnesswhen it comes to her family.60

As for Isaac, he may also be the author of some short summaries ofthe Neoplatonist Proklos, the philosopher who had inspired Psellos andled Italos on the path to condemnation. Even after the stern warningsin the Synodikon, a son of the imperial family was dealing in Proklos.It should be noted that the author of these summaries carefully omitsmuch that was offensive to Christians and somewhat distorts Proklos’thought to make it more acceptable. Still, the desire to Christianizesuch a pagan thinker ran counter to the later effort of Nicholas, thebishop of Methone, who, in the spirit of Alexios and the Synodikon,wrote a long refutation of Proklos from an explicitly Christian pointof view. There was a debate going on behind the scenes of our texts on

59 George Tornikios, Funeral Oration for Anna Komnene (pp. 243–245). See also Jeffreys(1984) 205 for the monk Iakobos; for the period in general, Reinsch (2000) 87; for thetrial of Italos, Clucas (1981); for repression, see Browning (1975b); Magdalino (1991).

60 Anna Komnene, Preface to the Diataxis 16 (p. 99); for the authorship, see Buckler(1929) 9–10.



this matter that we cannot see. In any case, the evidence for the study ofProklos and the brazen promotion of Platonic philosophy in the spiritof Psellos is scant for the later twelfth century, when scholarly attentionturned to the poets and orators.61

The most prolific popularizing classicist in this period was undoubt-edly John Tzetzes, whose output was so vast and its publication in mod-ern times still so disordered that we can only discuss a small part of ithere. Consider, for example, three short poems: the Events before Homer

(406 vv.); the Events in Homer (490 vv.); and the Events after Homer (780vv.). These summarize the events of the Trojan War, framing the Iliad.They are written in hexameters, which vary from Homeric to modernGreek in vocabulary and style. But Tzetzes’ aim here was not to imitateHomeric morphology, vocabulary, and meter with scholarly precision(which he probably could do). It was, rather, to provide an introductionto the world of the Iliad in verses that could be read by a beginner.Tzetzes tells events from his own point of view and in his own chattypoetic voice, and even adds material to the Homeric section that is notin the Iliad. In the Events after Homer, he often cites Koïntos, i.e., Quin-tus of Smyrna (ca. third century ad), whose fourteen books of versePosthomerica survive. His physical descriptions of the heroes are adaptedfrom those in Isaac Porphyrogennetos’ short treatise or, more probably,from a common source.

Curiously, Tzetzes wages in these poems a personal polemic againstan Isaac, who appears to have been the governor of the city of Berroiaand had employed Tzetzes, probably as a secretary. In various places inthe poems, the poet alludes to a scandalous episode involving himselfand the governor’s wife, as a result of which Isaac had ordered Tzetzesto leave the city on foot. These bitter digressions, dubiously linkedto the Trojan War, illustrate Tzetzes’ inability to keep his troublesand comically annoying personality out of his scholarship. It is notknown who this Isaac was; it is too premature to identify him withthe Porphyrogennetos scholar. An Isaac Komnenos is the addressee ofTzetzes’ unfriendly Letter 6, though it is not clear that this was actuallysent (see below); the recipient of the letter (in which Tzetzes mentionsDiktys of Crete among other ancient figures) was variously identified

61 Cf. Nicholas of Methone, Refutation of Proclus’ Elements of Theology (and Ange-lou’s discussion in the introduction of philosophy in the twelfth century) with Isaac,On the Hypostasis of Evil (for Christian editing, see Rizzo’s introduction, iii–xxiv; forauthorship, Kindstrand’s introduction to Isaac’s Preface to Homer, 18–20).



with the Porphyrogennetos, the governor of Berroia, or both, but arecent study dissociates them all.62

Tzetzes does not suppress the gods in his summaries, but he does notmake them the central characters that they are in the Iliad either. Inone place he alludes to his favored allegorical-Euhemeristic interpreta-tions, here regarding Zeus.63 He does not, on the other hand, intrudeChristian material. Tzetzes idolized Homer, believing him to have beenperfect in all ways, yet he sang the poet’s praises to a Christian society.This meant that he had to make some sense of the gods, who couldnot be presented at face value. In other poems, he categorically deniesthat Homer actually believed in the “demons,” arguing that the godsin poetry are in fact a concession to the entertainment young readersrequire; or he Euhemerizes them; or he allegorizes them, as natural ele-ments, physic properties, stars, or whatever.64 Tzetzes promoted theseapproaches in exegetical poems addressed to Komnenian patrons, forinstance in his Allegories on the Iliad and Allegories on the Odyssey, writ-ten for Manuel I’s foreign wife Bertha-Eirene. The latter work, forinstance, is a book-by-book explanation of the gods and monsters in thepoem, with between 100 and 200 verses devoted to each book (the Iliad

commentaries are typically longer, with between 200 and 400 verses).65

Tzetzes postures here as an expert interpreter of Homer’s wisdom, butallegory was for him not part of a consistent philosophical approach.When he had to—perhaps, in this case, when he was specifically askedto do so—he faced the problem of the gods head-on with much alle-gory and little apology, but on other occasions he tended to avoid thetopic. This is not surprising, given the condemnation that they elicitedin some quarters. Still, the court of Manuel was unlike that of Alex-ios.

Moreover, Bertha wanted or needed to know who all these heroes,gods, and goddesses were who were constantly being mentioned in all

62 John Tzetzes, Events in Homer 142ff.; Events after Homer 284–290, 620–624, 701, 753–758; Letter 6. Various opinions have been expressed regarding the identity of these men:Wendel (1948) 1961 (still the only survey of Tzetzes’ life) identifies the governor withAlexios’ son; Magdalino (1993) 348–350 implies that identification, but is more cautious;Barzos (1984) v. 1, 286 n. 56 and Grünbart (1996) identify the addressee of the letter withthe son of Constantine Komnenos (the son of Alexios’ brother Isaac).

63 John Tzetzes, Events before Homer 102–106.64 Cesaretti (1991) pt. 2 is the most extensive treatment; more briefly: Hunger (1954)

46–52; Wilson (1983a) 193; Kazhdan and Epstein (1985) 134–135; Budelmann (2002)156–157; Roilos (2005) 124–127; Kaldellis (2007) 301–307.

65 See also John Tzetzes, Allegories from the Verse-Chronicle.



the orations that she had to endure for so many long hours. Havinga riposte handy for the sophists when they made an allusion would nodoubt improve her standing in their eyes; an allegorical comment mighteven earn her praise for wisdom. An anecdote in Psellos’ Chronographia

(6.61) illustrates the scholarly demands that were sometimes placed onimperial women. “A subtle flatterer,” whom Psellos does not name,whispered the following half-verse from Homer to Constantine IXMonomachos’ concubine Maria Skleraina as she passed by: “Surelythere is no blame. . .” She then had to ask him to complete the tag: “ . . .on Trojans and strong-greaved Achaians if for long time they sufferhardship for a woman like this one” (Iliad 3.156–157; tr. R. Lattimore).Note that Psellos does not quote the end of the verse in his account,assuming that we, his readers, will recognize it, as Skleraina apparentlycould not.66

There is no reason to list all the poems and short commentarieswritten in the twelfth-century for the benefit of lay patrons. One lastwork of Tzetzes must, however, be mentioned, because it has not yetbeen studied in detail and is odd enough to warrant comment. Thisis in fact his longest and most cited work, the so-called Histories orChiliades (Thousands, i.e., of verses). It consists of over 12,000 fifteen-syllable (“political”) verses divided into 660 sections, each coveringsome item from ancient history and literature, including people, events,texts, sayings, facts and words of many kinds, so a chrestomathia ofsorts (assemblage of useful knowledge). The Histories remains to thisday a major source for fragments of lost authors and otherwise lostantiquarian knowledge (but mythology is mostly absent, conforming toTzetzes’ habit of either confronting it head-on or largely leaving it out).The style is easy, fluid, and bouncy, and Tzetzes intrudes himself andhis name often, posing, arguing, showing off, and pouting. He knewhow to write in a lively way. I suppose one could read through theHistories as they are and learn (or review) much about ancient history.But that is not how this huge text was meant to be used. The Histories

is in fact a running commentary on Tzetzes’ own 107 Letters, whichare crammed with classical allusions and require all this antiquarianlore to be understood.67 The Letters are written in a more elevated

66 For the training and duties of imperial princesses, see Connor (2004) c. 10.67 The commentary on the Letters proper begins at Histories 4.780; the entries before

that are a running commentary on the “letter” to a grammarian that is included inHistories 4.471–779. In general, see Wendel (1948) 1992–2000.



Attic style, which suggests an interesting textual relationship. Tzetzesused his own letters, which are brief but dense, to teach Attic prose;he then supplemented linguistic instruction with the content of themore colloquial Histories, which supplied background in an easy formatto students struggling with the Attic style of the letters. These works,then, are more “textbooks” than “sources,” and provide a pedagogy ingrammar, composition, and classical knowledge. (Tzetzes outdid himselfhere, adding additional scholia to both the Letters and the Histories!)Based on this relationship, we may speculate that the Letters, or someof them at least, were not real; they may have been epistolary exercisesposing as letters but in reality designed to include as many launching-points for classical instruction as could be crammed into them (this mayexplain the lists of ancient figures that they sometimes include). Notthat they altogether lack contemporary information—they are, afterall, posing as real letters—but perhaps some were not delivered, e.g.,the angry Letter 6 to the sebastos Isaac. There are indications, however,that the collection did circulate in Tzetzes’ time. This is a problem thathistorians may have to examine in detail.

6. Scholarly Commentaries on the Poets

It is time to turn to professional scholarship, that which was meant foruse by teachers at the higher levels of instruction and by those whowished to deepen their understanding of ancient poetry and thought.Admittedly, it is not always possible to draw a fine line between thisgroup of commentaries and the one that we discussed above, but inmost cases a distinction can be made between texts addressed to laypatrons who wanted summaries and texts meant to be used by pro-fessional classicists. Eirene sebastokratorissa and Bertha-Eirene were notlikely to peruse a commentary on Lykophron’s Alexandra or on Aristo-tle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

The twelfth century witnessed the writing of original commentarieson the poets by known Byzantine scholars; in some cases, these wereself-standing texts. This innovation in scholarly practice has not beenrecognized. A list of the most well-known works should give an im-pression of the extent of this labor. Tzetzes wrote his idiosyncraticcommentaries and scholia on the Iliad, Hesiod, tragedy, Aristophanes,Lykophron’s Alexandra, Oppian’s Halieutika, on two poems of Nikander,and others (for example, the scholia on his own letters). Eustathios



wrote massive commentaries on the Iliad and Odyssey, Pindar, andDionysios Periegetes. A deacon named John Galenos, who has not beenfirmly dated, wrote a commentary on Hesiod’s Theogony. Then we alsohave the commentaries on Aristotle by Michael of Ephesus, Eustratiosof Nicaea, Stephanos (possibly Stephanos Skylitzes), and Anonymous.68

The study of their works is still in its infancy, so we can ask onlypreliminary questions here, some of which have been laid out in FelixBudelmann’s useful study of Tzetzes’ scholia on the Iliad.69 What is therelation between the text and the commentary, and how personal is thecommentator’s voice? Is the commentary a single text, i.e., can it beread by itself ? How was it or how could it have been used?

The original scholarship of the twelfth century does not follow anyone rule in regard to these issues. It includes marginal scholia andcommentaries; self-standing commentaries keyed to the original textthrough lemmata (such as the commentaries on Aristotle); and sep-arate works, such as Eustathios’ Homeric Commentaries. The propor-tion of comment to text also varies. For example, the Hellenistic poetLykophron’s Alexandra has 1,474 verses and would, if printed withoutapparatus, take up 40 pages, while the scholia that Tzetzes compiled(citing over 50 authorities) take up almost 400 pages in the modern edi-tion.70 Tzetzes, moreover, prefaced his scholia with a discussion of thedifferent kinds of poetry, listing the famous ancient poets and the con-texts of their works; he then comments on the life of Lykophron, hisworks, and his Alexandrian context; and gives the background to theplot of the Alexandra. The scholia then go through the text verse-by-verse, giving vast amounts of grammatical, lexicographical, dialectical,rhetorical, mythological, and historical information, in addition to lit-erary parallels and illustrations. Some are small treatises in their ownright, e.g., on Pegasos and Bellerophontes in v. 17. What we need is anexplanation for why all this information is here, an explanation thatattempts to work through the pedagogical and scholarly uses of thesecommentaries, which are not well understood. Grammatical scholiamake sense for the classroom, but all this?71 Granted, Lykophron had

68 In general, see Hunger (1978) v. 1, 34–35, and v. 2, 58–67; Wilson (1983a) c. 9.69 Budelmann (2002); see also Smith (1996).70 The manuscripts attribute the work to John’ brother Isaac, but Tzetzes claims it as

his own in Letter 21, explaining that he had only dedicated it to his brother; see Hunger(1978) v. 2, 62–63; in general, Wendel (1948) 1978–1982.

71 Cf. Webb (1997) for teaching grammar from scholia; Budelmann (2002) 158–161for Tzetzes on the Iliad.



composed a deliberately antiquarian poem that begged for commen-tary, as the Tzetzian poem at the end of the scholia admits; it baitedscholars to show off their knowledge. In his scholion on Aristophanes,Frogs 897, Tzetzes tells a story which implies that text and scholia wereread aloud by him to an audience of either students or colleagues, some(or all) of whom had their own copies of the text, and that correc-tions were made. We need a closer analysis of his account and a betterunderstanding of how all this unsynthesized and unfocused knowledgewas used in practice, given that it often goes beyond what is neededto simply understand the text.72 (We will return to this question below,when we look at Eustathios’ Homeric Commentaries.)

Questions of scholarly form, moreover, or “format,” are as impor-tant as those of content. What we observe emerging in this period areuseful scholarly “editions” of the poets that anticipate ours in having ascholarly introduction that discusses the varieties of ancient poetry, thelife of the poet, and the style of his work; followed by the text with mas-sive scholia compiled by a “modern” scholar such as Tzetzes who hada distinctive personal voice (today we would put the commentary at theback).73 I gather that nothing like this had existed in antiquity. Even ifmuch of the “content” on which these Byzantine editions was basedwas culled from ancient sources, the synthesis was original, as was thedecision to place all this material together and its precise arrangement.So, for example, we have, besides the preface to Lykophron, Tzetzes’prolegomena to Hesiod’s Works and Days, which begin with an attack onProklos’ exegesis, then list the kinds of poetry, and end with a brief lifeof the poet (focusing on the relation between him and Homer), all inTzetzes’ typical style and voice; also, Eustathios’ prologue to the Com-

mentary on Pindar, focusing on topics of literary appreciation, especiallyPindar’s notorious obscurity (asapheia), and concluding with a summaryof what is known about his life; and the preface to Eustathios’ Commen-

tary on the Iliad, which defends the study of the poem against Chris-tian objections (ironically, I believe, as Eustathios considered Homer tobe sublime and the objections are rendered irrelevant anyway by themass of commentary that follows them); he outlines all the benefits con-

72 John Tzetztes, Scholion on Aristophanes’ Frogs 897 (pp. 951–955). The story is dis-cussed by Wilson (1975) 6 and (1983a) 192–193, but its dynamics elude me, and I thinkthat Wilson has also not entirely understood what happened. For scholarly gatheringsin the twelfth century, see also Cavallo (2006) 75–76.

73 Budelmann (2002) 145 for such an edition of Hesiod.



ferred by Homer; explains his own methods; and ends by summarizingHomer’s life and works.74

These works will hopefully soon be studied in their own right. Usu-ally they are mined for fragments of ancient authors and for infor-mation from or about antiquity, and what remains is then discardedas Byzantine. But it should be apparent that no rigid separation canbe enforced between Byzantium and antiquity in these works. For onething, we have to acknowledge the variety of methods followed by theByzantine scholars, in other words, their scholarly decisions that gaveform to everything that they “preserved.” Tzetzes, for his part, madeevery effort to instill his voice and persona in his commentaries. It hasbeen suggested that he did so to escape the oblivion of anonymity andto prevent plagiarism. The history of the scholia, as he knew, had oblit-erated their authors’ names, and he was determined not to let thishappen to him; moreover, he had experience of students taking notesduring his lectures and then publishing them without permission. Thatis one reason why he keeps sticking his name into his writings, a the-sis that improves upon the superficial accusations of vanity and conceitthat have prevailed so far.75 These scholars were people, not anonymous“vessels” for the preservation of ancient “content.”

So the commentaries differed in voice, scope, approach, and pagelayout. Whereas Tzetzes’ were attached to the original text, Eustathios’commentaries on Homer and Dionysios were self-standing continuousprose texts. In fact, he even suggested that one could read his Iliad

commentary straight through.76 In contrast to Tzetzes, however, it ismore difficult to identify Eustathian elements in Eustathios. But thereare some common themes that run through their works, chief amongthem the imperative to protect the poets from Christian odium. Wehave seen Tzetzes’ passionate defense of Homer against the charge ofbelieving literally in the pagan gods. Eustathios marshals the same alle-gorical techniques to defend him, indeed these were a major aspect ofhis approach and he devotes a section of his preface to the Commen-

tary on the Iliad to the problem of reading the myths against the more

74 For the texts, see the bibliography. For Tzetzes’ Hesiod, see Colonna (1953); forEustathios’ Pindar, Kambylis (1991); Negri (2000); Hamilton (2003) 132, 176–177; for hisHomer, Dickey (2007) 23–24.

75 Budelmann (2002) 150–152.76 Eustathios of Thessalonike, Com. ad Hom. Il., preface 2.40–42 (v. 1, 3).



“historical” aspects of the poem.77 On the other hand, he ironically dis-missed the idea that Christians should abstain from the pagan wisdomof the ancient poets.78 In the biographical section of his Prologue to the

Commentary on Pindar, he reports on Pindar’s (pagan) piety as though itwere a virtue; Eustathios and his student Michael Choniates were will-ing to view pagan piety as praiseworthy and undeserving of Christiancondemnation.79 This was genuine humanism.

One more scholar should be mentioned in this connection, a deaconnamed John Galenos, who wrote an allegorical commentary on Hes-iod’s Theogony that runs to 70 pages. It is addressed to young studentsof Hesiod rather than to the non-academic laity, and its chief concernis to protect their piety from the pagan nonsense of the Greeks. Inhis preface, he praises Plotinos and Sokrates, despite the fact that theywere pagans ( �ρα εν), for encouraging their listeners to look beyondthe literal sense of things and on to higher realities, and that is whathe does in his commentary, namely to uncover what he calls the “hid-den truths” of the Theogony. In fact, he adds, the poem should not havebeen called that in the first place, but rather the Physiogonia. The pref-ace is only a page long; the commentary is keyed by lemmata, thoughthere are occasionally large gaps between the verses discussed. This isa problem of the lemma format, but can partly be explained in thiscase by the fact that Galenos was not writing a thorough study of thepoem, but was interested only in ameliorating one aspect of it from aChristian point of view. His Christianization of the Theogony is bold, insome cases turning the gods into Christian figures and concepts, forexample Zeus is God, the Titans evil, Herakles Jesus. Anything will dohere (Pythagorean number theory, physics, astronomy, psychology) if itsaves appearances. He even praises Hesiod for being grateful to theMuses, despite their being goddesses; the virtue of piety again overridesits pagan context. Galenos’ intention, as he puts it, is to “transubstanti-ate” myth “into a more divine form,” to beautify “the ugliness of Greekmyths” by making it look more like “our Truth.” He concludes with aninvocation of “Christ the King.”80

77 Eustathios of Thessalonike, Com. ad Hom. Il., preface 3.10ff. (v. 1, 4); see Cesaretti(1991) pt. 3 for an extensive discussion.

78 Cf. Kaldellis (2007) 314 on Eustathios and Basil of Caesarea.79 Eustathios of Thessalonike, Prologue to the Commentary on Pindar 27.80 John Galenos, Allegories on Hesiod’s Theogony pp. 295–296, 336, 365; see Roilos

(2005) 128–130.



I conclude this section by looking more closely at the most impres-sive scholarly labor of this period, Eustathios’ Homeric commentaries,but these are so vast and have received so little attention in their ownright that I must restrict the discussion to a few general comments ontheir nature and purpose, especially to define their place in the com-plex world of twelfth-century scholarship. They have been criticizedfor being enormous, confusing, unwieldy, and unenjoyable for the stu-dent.81 The Iliad has 15,600 verses; Eustathios’ Commentary on the Iliad(of which an autograph copy survives) has 3,575 pages in the modernedition: this works out to an average of four and a half verses per page,though some verses receive longer treatment (Iliad 1.1 receives elevenpages) while others are clustered together for collective comment. Afterwriting the first draft, Eustathios added further scholia in the marginsand then “on little slips of paper pasted into his copy.”82 But before wegroan at the weight of them, let us not forget that the Iliad is in fact along poem, one of the longest. Four verses discussed per page is reallyrather dense. Eustathios could have written an even longer commen-tary.

In his comments Eustathios tries to cover, well, everything: etymol-ogy, grammar, syntax, meter, dialect, rhetorical theory (largely basedon Hermogenic categories), and mythology, the allegorization of whichwas a chief concern; also the poet’s meanings; the ethical and liter-ary aspects of the plot and characters; the cultural and historical back-ground of words, phrases, and actions; as well as contemporary Byzan-tine sayings and customs that illustrate the ancient text, all the whileciting ancient authorities at first or second hand.83 What purpose couldsuch a work have served? Eustathios provides some hints in the preface,but this must be read carefully.

Eustathios claims that he was not instigated to write the Commentary

by powerful men but rather by friends (πρ�ς ��λων �μιλιτ�ν), which areambiguous words (note that his commentary on Dionysios Periegeteswas dedicated to a certain John Doukas). He then modestly (and, Ibelieve, ironically) states that the work will benefit not the learned, whowill not be unaware of anything in it (!) but rather young men who arestudying as well as those who have studied but need to be reminded

81 E.g., by Browning (1964) 16; Reynolds and Wilson (1991) 70–71.82 Wilson (1984) 110; in general, Hunger (1978) v. 2, 64–66.83 For a sample of Eustathios’ literary reading of Iliad, book I, see Lindberg (1985);

for the contemporary folkloric aspect, see Koukoules (1950).



of certain things—thereby negating his first claim that the learned willnot need it! He goes on to say that he has included only necessaryand not superfluous things, which perhaps we can take at face value,at least at first. Eustathios then lists the categories of analysis for eachverse and explains who will benefit from them, adding that he has alsoincluded “ten thousand more things that are useful for life, and notbriefly either, but rather in a rich variety”—so again undercutting hisinitial disclaimer. When he proceeds to talk about how young studentsshould use the book, we need not believe that they were the onlyreaders he had in mind. There is often irony in Eustathios’ style, inthis as well as in his other works.84 The Commentary can be used in twoways, he says: one can read through it as a work in itself or read it toelucidate specific passages of the Iliad.85

In the preface, then, Eustathios says much about his methods andintents, but he does not always say exactly what he thinks or all of whathe means. We are left with conflicting impressions about the work’sintended audience and use: Is it for those who are now studying orwho have already studied? Is it to be read straight through or con-sulted selectively for individual verses? Eustathios seems to be keepinghis options open, presenting the Commentary safely as a work for teach-ing but implying that it has many more uses as well. After all, on thefirst page of the preface he makes it clear (at length) that Homer hassomething good to offer all people, whether they are thinkers or writ-ers or more active in life. He casts his net widely. This, along withthe nature of the book itself, suggests to me that we should not see itexclusively or primarily as a teaching textbook. Though its compilationmust have been linked to or grown out of Eustathios’ lectures in Con-stantinople, the finished product was probably not read out to studentsjust as it is (far less “assigned,” given the cost) no more than our ownmulti-volume commentaries on the Iliad are meant to be read aloudto students. Sections of it may have been recited just as they are, butthe Commentaries overall were more of a repertoire of material for teach-ers to consult before class on any passage of the text or even to haveat hand for reference and student questions. But Eustathios may havehad something even more ambitious in mind, something that extendedbeyond the classroom.

84 Cf. Sarris (1995–1997).85 Eustathios of Thessalonike, Com. ad Hom. Il., preface 2.17–46 (v. 1, 3).



What we are dealing with here is more a labor of encyclopedismthan of pedagogy, though it certainly had pedagogical uses. This isnothing less than an Encyclopedia Homerica in commentary form for allfuture generations to use, as each has, in its own way. The problemwith the modern disdain for the work is that, again, we take the bene-fits conferred by Byzantine scholarship for granted and then criticize itfor flaws that appear only after we have built our own edifices uponits foundations. Let us consider what was involved. Eustathios musthave collected, sorted through, excerpted, summarized, compiled, andsmoothed out vast amounts of knowledge, not merely scholia, epimeris-

moi, and more philosophical commentaries on Homer, but also textsand information from other authors who, he believed, had somethingto say that was relevant to the Iliad. Moreover, he made the end prod-uct readable by smoothing out the prose into his own Attic standard, sothat modern scholars cannot easily tell where the “fragments” begin orend. The list of his sources is long.86 For all we know, the basic build-ing blocks of his Commentaries were inaccessible or in a wretched statein his time. Who had access or leisure to consult them all, and why gothrough dozens of works to find what could be made available in one?This was basically a work of preservation, compilation, and collation;it was probably intended as a standard reference work. And Homerwas not just any poet; we have seen his importance for many classes ofKomnenian society. Teachers, orators, scholars, historians, scribes, bish-ops, philosophers, and government officials would have benefited fromsuch a reference work. Who of them didn’t have something to lookup in Homer? A few copies of the Commentaries would have served theneeds of the entire capital. And what a delicious rhetorical coup it wasfor one professor to cast, in his preface, all these people as his youngpups!

7. The Commentaries on Aristotle

Let us then turn, finally, to the original commentaries on Aristotle’sNicomachean Ethics.87 They fit well into the patterns of scholarly activ-ity in the twelfth century, despite being slightly earlier in date than the

86 Cf. van der Valk’s introduction, v. 1, lix–cxix.87 See, in general, Mercken (1973) c. 1 and (1990); Wilson (1983a) 182–184; for all

Aristotelian commentaries in Byzantium, Benakis (2002).



poetic commentaries, addressing a more specialized audience, and self-consciously imitating an ancient tradition of philosophical scholarship.They are scholarly works, rather than philosophical, in three importantsenses. First, in attempting to fill the gap left by the late-antique com-mentators, Eustratios, Michael, and the rest were subordinating them-selves to a larger ongoing project of textual elucidation and clarifica-tion; it was this project that defined what and how they wrote.

Second, it was a collaborative project, something for which we havelittle evidence in Byzantium since the days of Constantine VII Porphy-rogennetos’ team that produced the Excerpta and other encyclopedicworks.88 In a brief section of his long funeral oration for Anna, GeorgeTornikios says that it was she who had commissioned these works. Theorator adds that he had personally heard Michael of Ephesus complainthat the all-night labor involved had ruined his eyes.89 And in the pref-ace to his commentary on book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics, Eustratioshails and praises his learned royal patron—a woman, though he doesnot name her—in terms that are very reminiscent of Tornikios’ ora-tion; he says that it was she also who had previously asked him to writethe commentary on book I. Anna, in turn, praised Eustratios for hiswisdom, “both divine and external ( �ρα εν),” in the Alexiad (14.8.9).

Third, as a collaborative project the commentaries theoretically (butnot fully in practice) subsumed the individuality of the contributors;they were assigned books of the Ethics in a way that made them seeminterchangeable as scholars. It is fitting from this point of view thatsome of the contributors remain anonymous.

The new commentaries were placed in manuscripts along with theold, in the order of the Ethics’ books. They were more self-standing textsthan the scholia on the poets, but less so than Eustathios’ Commentary on

the Iliad, being keyed to the original text through lemmata and notcovering every single line of Aristotle. We saw above that John Galenos’commentary on the Theogony jumped across long sections of the poem.What is the extent of the coverage in the Aristotelian commentaries?Predictably, they vary. Books I and II of the Ethics are roughly as long(about 20 OCT pages), but Eustratios’ commentary on book I has 121pages in the CAG edition with almost 200 lemmata, while the scholiaon book II have 18 pages with 27 lemmata; only the length of theaverage entry remains the same, at about two-thirds of a page. Michael,

88 Cf. Lemerle (1971) 280–300; Sevcenko (1992).89 George Tornikios, Funeral Oration for Anna Komnene (p. 283).



on the other hand, tended to write longer entries for each lemma,twice as long in fact. For example, his commentary on book IX is68 pages long with only 50 lemmata, thus half in length compared toEustratios on book I but with only one-fourth the number of lemmata.In other words, Eustratios goes through the text of book I very closely,leaving few lines without comment, whereas Michael makes longerjumps from lemma to lemma. This impression, however, is in partdeceptive, because each of Michael’s entries actually goes on to discusslater portions of the text than that quoted at the head. We are dealingwith different ways of organizing the material and of breaking theoriginal text into sections.

Michael is a lucid writer of philosophical Attic Greek. He prefersshort and concise sentences, illustrates the basic points with appropriateand vivid examples, and is a very competent scholar.90 He stays closeto the text, avoiding digressions and editorials. Moreover, he sticks toAristotle’s ideas and eschews grammatical and historical commentary.The standards of relevance in these commentaries are much higherthan what we find in, say, Tzetzes: the works are for those who want tounderstand the ideas of Aristotle’s philosophy. Whether what Michaelwrote is useful or not will depend, as always, on who reads him andwhy. Throughout he maintains a sense that Aristotle is immediatelyrelevant to “us,” creating a textual space in which the moral worldof the Ethics and of twelfth-century Constantinople do not differ intheir essentials, which is possible to believe on the assumption that inAristotle we find discussions of perennial problems of human nature.On occasion, Michael makes this relevance direct, as when he refersto “those thrice-damned loan-sharks we have (κα ’ �μ ς)” to illustratea point about contracts (IX; 469.35–36); or when he notes that theeducation of children in Constantinople is handled haphazardly, byeach man as he sees fit, like Homer’s Cyclopes (X; 610.11–16).

On the other hand, he does not allow Christian values to interferewith his explication of Aristotle’s virtues and vices, staying close to thephilosopher’s spirit and to his text. He sometimes uses Byzantine morallanguage—e.g., �!τ�ι δ" ε#σιν �$ α%ματα &δελ��ν κα' συγγεν�ν )κ�"�ν-τες κα' $ερ* συλ�ντες, & "σμ��ς τε γ�μ�υς γαμ�+ντες κα' �δ�να,ς &λλ�-κ.τ�ις κα' α#σ��τ�ταις /αυτ�0ς καταρρυπα�ν�ντες (IX; 484.18–20)—butthere is nothing here that an ancient thinker would take issue with. At

90 For a discussion of Michael’s commentaries on the Politics, see Triantari-Mara(2002) c. 3.



one point, Michael even mentions the rewards given by “our” God—� &π� τ�+ δημι�υργ�+ �μ�ν ε�+ &μ�ι2�—to support an Aristotelianposition (IX; 506.31–32). He uses Greek exempla for illustration, exceptwhen he cites Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzos as an exam-ple of perfect friendship (IX; 462.19–20, 479.5–6; the Christian traditionwas wrong about their relationship, but Michael could not have knownthat). His comments are sometimes opaque. In discussing unequal rela-tionships, he has this to say: “but the friendship of the father for theson or of the son for the father are not simply of the same kind orequal, given that the father is not equal to the son—but consider thisin relation to our beliefs ()�’ �μ�ν)—and vice versa” (IX; 462.21–24).What exactly does he want us to “consider”? It may have been some-thing that he could not have said openly in a period when intellectualswere in danger of being tried precisely for “considering” such problemsagain.91

One final passage from Michael illustrates the verbal skill of thesescholars who had to weave together the classical and Christian tradi-tions. Commenting on the phrase that “one does not sacrifice every-thing to Zeus,” Michael notes that “there were things that the Greekswere not permitted to sacrifice to Zeus . . . who was the father, accord-ing to the Greeks (κα ’ 3Ελληνας), of both men and gods; likewise, wedo not owe everything to our fathers, for we will not obey if they shouldcall on us to turn away from the living God (τ�+ ��ντ�ς ε�+) or betrayour fatherland” (IX; 473.7–13). The paradox of a father forcing his sonto betray his fatherland is nice, but note also that, having used a famousHomeric verse for Zeus, Michael appropriately then quotes a Biblicalexpression for the God of his Byzantine readers.

In turning from Michael to Eustratios, I want to conclude with a dif-ferent point about the purpose of the commentaries, one partly linkedto this constant juxtaposition of Greek and Christian texts, exempla, andideas. Eustratios, as is well known, had close personal experience of the-ological repression. His teacher Italos was condemned in 1082 and hehimself in 1117. He probably wrote the commentaries after that; at anyrate, in the preface to the commentary on Ethics VI he refers to old ageand illness. His condemnation in 1117 involved the charge of employingGreek philosophy to clarify the faith and lapsing into heresy. This is

91 Browning (1975b); Clucas (1981) 3–8, 67–73. For Father-Son rhetoric and theKappadokian Fathers, see Van Dam (2003).



not the place to ascertain the truth behind this or to follow Eustratios’subtle negotiation of (Greek) philosophy and (Christian) theology in hisvarious works. In any case, the accusation of philosophizing accordingto the Greeks was very unfair in that it was difficult if not impossi-ble to rebut, as the entire intellectual and ecclesiastical class of Byzan-tium was acquainted with and relied on Greek thought to some degree.For example, in a doctrinal letter against the Armenian Monophysites,Eustratios had cited as his theological sources “the wise thinkers amongthe Greeks” and “those who dogmatize about God on our side.”92 But,as we have seen, this juxtaposition was common among the scholars,philosophers, churchmen, and humanists of the twelfth century. Con-sider two of Eustratios’ own enemies within the Church, from differ-ent periods. Leo of Chalcedon, a stiff-necked hardliner on the matterof icons and opposed by Eustratios on the emperor Alexios’ behalf inthe 1080s, cited the legal status of temples in antiquity in his defenseof ecclesiastical property; for his part, Alexios had cited Perikles’ useof the treasury of Athena to justify his confiscations (at least so saysAnna).93 And Niketas of Herakleia, one of Eustratios’ chief accusers in1117, wrote, as we have seen, poems on the epithets of the gods in theform of liturgical hymns. It was not possible to avoid doing such thingsin an intellectual culture whose roots were so diverse and so tangled.

We noted above the same juxtaposition of passages from both paganand Christian authors in Gregory Pardos’ commentary on Hermogenesas well as in his prescriptions for what authors one should imitate. Thestudy of rhetoric, as we saw, was not entirely theoretical, as it is withus, but was supposed to help Byzantine orators imitate the classics: itwas practical. So too ethics. The twelfth-century philosophical com-mentators hoped and expected that their texts would help readers notmerely to understand Aristotle better but also to become better peopleby applying his Ethics to their lives. Eustratios is explicit about this inthe preface to his commentary on book I (2.1ff.). “Ethics is a branchof practical philosophy” and can morally benefit individuals, cities, oreven whole nations. “And one may find many exempla in books, bothours (κα ’ �μ ς) and those that are outside ( �ρα εν). For many good

92 Eustratios of Nicaea, Refutation (pp. 163–164); for his condemnation, see Joannou(1954); for Christian and Platonic passages in the Ethics commentaries, see Mercken(1973) 12*–13*.

93 Glavinas (1972) 110–111; cf. Alexios in Anna Komnene, Alex. 6.3.3 (this may be anelaboration or addition to the speech by Anna herself).



men lived well among both the barbarians and the Greeks.” He goeson to name Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job, Moses, Jesus the son of Nun,“and, if you want, Solon among the Greeks. But enough about them”(I; 3.26–4.8).

8. Conclusions

Classical scholarship flourished in twelfth-century Byzantium; it hada diverse and extensive social background; its constituent branches—grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, manuscript editions, etc.—were inter-connected at all levels; and it was pursued by serious and intelligentscholars who had a sound knowledge of Greek history and literature.Byzantine scholars, in short, were not interested only in the “preser-vation” of ancient texts but they wanted to understand them, to cometo terms with their otherness, to find a way to integrate their virtuesinto their Christian society. They were willing to consider a wide rangeof strategies to make that possible. As a result, one can actually learn

much about antiquity by studying the works of these scholars in a waythat would not have been possible in the West for many centuries. Thiswas because it was during the middle and late period of Byzantiumthat the basis for all subsequent Classical Studies was established. Muchhas been written about how methodologies, critical tools, and scholarlyhabits were transported from Byzantium to Italy in the Renaissance,“active” skills to complement “inert” manuscripts, the “form” to goalong with the “matter.” I will mention here only Robert Grosseteste,a scholar of a slightly earlier period (the thirteenth century), who trans-lated the new commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and otherGreek works into Latin using, among other aids, the Souda and the Ety-

mologicum Genuinum.94

More importantly, in ways both ideological and practical the Byzan-tines basically invented what we recognize today as Classical Studies.Whether we like it or not, it was they who made most of the keydecisions, and their choices about what to keep and what not wereessentially “what ours would have been.”95 In part, that is because we

94 Mercken (1973) c. 2; Dionisotti (1988). For the Byzantine scholars’ role in theRenaissance, see the studies by D.J. Geanakoplos, N.G. Wilson, J. Monfasani, andothers.

95 Littlewood (2004) 19.



are their heirs; as classicists we are all Byzantines. This is difficult toaccept if we subscribe to the polarity of Classical vs. Byzantine, but thatpolarity is not legitimate; it was devised for polemical ideological pur-poses. Certainly, there were some in Byzantium who were fundamen-tally opposed to all that the ancient Greek world stood for (or at leastwhat they thought it stood for), but that was precisely how the idea ofclassical culture as something foreign yet compelling at the same timeoriginated in the first place. Moreover, hard-line elements were neverdominant in Byzantium and could be mocked or ignored by scholars.Besides, modernity has likewise defined itself in fundamental ways inopposition to antiquity,96 but most of its scholars have not on that countgiven up in their endeavor to access or even revive the “spirit” of theancient world.

The implications of this must be as practical for us as scholars as theyare challenging ideologically. For example, it is being recognized that“fragments” of ancient authors can no longer be so neatly extractedfrom the later sources that quote them. We must look more closely atthe authorial practices and literary contexts of those sources.97 As hasbeen said about a comparable art-historical topic, “the taste of a laterage is as much a part of an ivory’s ‘biography’ as its production andpurpose, even if this truth inordinately complicates the job of those whoseek to write its history.”98

There are hopeful signs of progress. “Late” antiquity is graduallybeing reintegrated into the study of antiquity, so that one day we mayagain enjoy the holistic view that the Byzantines took for granted.99

Diachronic studies of the Greek tradition are also picking up, in differ-ent disciplines, which now recognize that the philosophical and schol-arly reception of the classics did not jump from antiquity to the Renais-sance (the standard western view, with brief nods to the Arabic andByzantine contributions). But serious obstacles must be overcome be-fore Byzantium can be restored to its rightful place in this history.100

There is a widespread reluctance to engage with untranslated texts,

96 Philosophers such as Nietzsche and others forcefully argued that modern scholar-ship makes a travesty of classical Greece precisely because it is entangled in the ideo-logical imperatives of modernity.

97 E.g., Flintoff (1976) 365; Brunt (1980); Pelling (2000). Many classicists who rely oncollections of fragments are unaware of these problems.

98 Culter (1994) 141.99 Cf. Treadgold (1984).

100 And the dangers pointed out by Brague (2002) 138 should be carefully avoided.



especially when they come from a foreign and forbidding culture. Onthe other hand, there is also too much ignorance about Byzantiumamong classicists, the very ones who have the linguistic skills with whichto approach it. This ignorance is not merely of the esoteric aspects thatI have surveyed, but of its basic history and society.

In this respect we are now worse off than in the nineteenth cen-tury, when modern Altertumswissenschaft was created. The pioneers ofthat discipline—and not only the likes of Mommsen and Bury—wereessentially Byzantinists in that they were conversant with the material,were not afraid of it, and recognized its worth.101 That many of themdid not call themselves Byzantinists is an ideological question. Classi-cists who now work with the basic tools crafted in the nineteenth cen-tury, have largely forgotten where it all came from. I will close with astory told about Arnaldo Momigliano by Peter Brown, both rare birdsin this respect:

He was as active in the early Byzantine period as ever Baynes and Joneshad been. . . To a suggestion that the library might cancel its subscriptionto the Byzantinische Zeitschrift, on the grounds that it was unlikely to befrequently consulted, he replied that he himself consulted it regularly andthat, in any case, if this should ever be so, the problem would not be whatto do with the Byzantinische Zeitschrift, but what to do with a professorof ancient history who remained ignorant of such a periodical.102

101 See the portraits in Momigliano (1994).102 Brown (1988) 423.

2008116. Barber/Jenkins 02_Frankopan. proef 1a. 28-11-2008:15.14, page 44.

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