Eustathios of Thessalonike

   Scholar, writer, teacher, archbishop of Thessalonike (qq.v.), and the most celebrated teacher of the 12th century. For a while he taught rhetoric, grammar, and philosophy at the Patriarchal School (q.v.). His extensive and detailed commentaries on the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer (q.v.), on Aristophanes, Pindar, and John of Damascus (qq.v.), illustrates how 12th-century scholars were assimilating and reflecting on classical literature. However, it is his descriptions of contemporary life that modern historians find most useful, and a sheer delight to read. His style is naturalistic, immediate, like that of his predecessors Michael Psellos and Anna Komnene (qq.v.). His gripping account of the Norman (q.v.) siege and occupation of Thessalonike in 1185 is perhaps the best eyewitness account in Byzantine literature. His treatise on monasticism (q.v.) is scathing in its criticism of contemporary monks who swore, fornicated, engaged in trade, and acted no different from laymen. He also wrote panegyrics to Manuel I Komnenos (q.v.) and letters that include an enormous amount of useful details about 12th-century agriculture (q.v.). When he died in 1196 Byzantium (q.v.) lost an intellect and writer the likes of which had not been seen since Psellos (q.v.).