The conclusion brings together the themes that have emerged throughout the book, provides comparative perspectives, teases out some of the wider implications for the study of gender and suggests directions for future research. It also comes back to the multitude of animals that have appeared sporadically throughout the different chapters, discussing the role they played in gender construction and the potential of human/animal connections to decentre the man in the process of creating male subjectivities.

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

In his Parekbolai on the Odyssey, the twelfth-century polymath Eustathios of Thessalonike often uses the figure of Odysseus as a starting point to meditate upon crucial themes such as the role of poetry, the duties of the exegete and the qualities of the ideal rhetor. The first part of this chapter focuses on one such passage, where Eustathios analyses the famous ‘linguistic stratagem’ concocted by Odysseus to fool Polyphemus. The sophistic subtlety of Odysseus’ plan leads Eustathios to insert a long excursus on schedography, a rhetorical exercise that was increasingly popular in Komnenian Byzantium. As I argue, in Eustathios’ eyes, the Homeric text is nothing more than a sort of schedographic display ante litteram. More interestingly still, this interpretation provides Eustathios with an ideal pretext for a lesson on rhetorical ‘good taste’. The second part of the chapter examines an extract from John Tzetzes’ Histories in which Odysseus and his adventures again feature as a starting point for reflecting upon contemporary schedography. In this section, I show that, despite some similarities with Eustathios’ ideas, Tzetzes takes a more dogmatic position. As a matter of fact, Tzetzes’ careful depiction of Odysseus might even be interpreted as a subtle criticism of Eustathios’ standpoint.

This chapter opens a perspective onto the more theoretical or conceptual side of humorous discourse in twelfth-century Byzantium by exploring the reflections on ridicule and comedy in Homeric poetry in the commentaries by Eustathios of Thessalonike. Eustathios addresses the social aspects of ridicule, as well as its rhetorical dynamics and its role in narrative. In his view, Homer uses comic elements to counterbalance the gloominess of the Iliad’s war narrative, as a good rhetor should do. Flyting has the same function: even if the addressees in the narrative are stung by such insults, Homer’s primary narratees are expected to be amused by the often humorous verbal abuse. Eustathios repeatedly points to the moral tensions inherent in ridicule and laughter; as the consummate orator, however, Homer always finds a way to keep his dignity intact. Throughout his commentaries, Eustathios offers his target audience of prose writers numerous examples of how to adopt and adapt Homer’s words in order to ridicule certain bodily defects, excessive behaviours or less-than-perfect intellectual skills. Such comments shed light on what was worthy of mockery in the mind of a Byzantine audience and show that it was expected of urbane rhetors to use ridicule in their writings.

The Periegesis or Description of the Known World by Dionysius of Alexandria (second century ad) is the only Greek didactic poem composed to teach the Roman student elementary notions about the inhabited world. Eustathios of Thessalonike, who prior to his nomination for the position of archbishop of Thessalonike in 1175/8 was maistor ton rhetoron, the leading professor of rhetoric in Constantinople, wrote a systematic commentary on the poem in the form of parekbolai, as he had previously done for the Homeric epics. The prefatory letter addressed to John Doukas, the son of Andronikos Kamateros, suggests that the influential Kamateros family was the primary addressee of a work that certainly was also used by Eustathios in his teaching. Eustathios did not seek to correct errors and ambiguities or to question the validity of Dionysius’ vision of the world, even if he did not shrink from pointing out some of the contradictions found throughout the poem. Rather, his aim was to expand the brief information that the poem gives about towns and places, explain the poet’s stylistic decisions and specify the origin and spelling of toponyms and demonyms.

By using a broad selection of ‘commentary discourse’, this chapter looks at the practice of reading, teaching and composing texts whose purpose is (partly) to explain older texts. Such commentaries, which can take various and sometimes unexpected forms, are of paramount importance for understanding the Byzantine intellectual and cultural framework of literary production, not only as a system of ‘authoritative mimesis’ but also as a system of ‘subversive anti-mimesis’. Thus, the chapter examines paraphrases of the Iliad, grammatical exercises such as the schede of Theodore Prodromos, lives of saints with integrated gnomologia, laudatory orations and novels, poetical treatises of political admonition (e.g. the anonymous Spaneas), scholia on ancient authors (like those produced by John Tzetzes on Aristophanes and Lycophron or by Eustathios on the Homeric poems), but also large-scale commentaries on Byzantine hymnongraphy (e.g. by John Zonaras on John of Damascus), philosophical and theological commentaries (Michael of Ephesos on Aristotle or Niketas of Herakleia on the Psalms). These texts represent different and yet interrelated discourses that highlight the key role of ‘commentary’ as a hermeneutic tool of and testimony to a broad spectrum of sociocultural and literary tensions within the longue durée of the Komnenian era.

From Late Antiquity onward many Homeric verses and phrases were considered to have a proverbial value and as such were employed as independent witty sayings. While the use of these Homeric proverbs in Byzantine writings has yet to be thoroughly investigated, in the early sixteenth century these expressions were gathered in paroemiographical collections. These include Erasmus’ Adagia and Arsenios Apostolis’ Violarium, two works which seem to be interdependent in this respect. Apostolis copied many Homeric verses and their accompanying scholia into the margins of Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, gr. 3058, with the intention to add another section to the four existing typologies (proverbs, maxims, apothegms and anecdotes). In doing so, he explored and exploited available sources, such as the Commentaries on Homer by Eustathios of Thessalonike. The criteria according to which Apostolis organized the proverbs, as well as his creation of a separate section on Homeric proverbial verses, were innovations in Greek literature. This chapter explores the textual relationship between Apostolis’ compilation and the long exegetical tradition on Homer. More particularly, it will demonstrate how Eustathios’ works were preserved and adapted to the expectations of a new era.