Baukje van den Berg - Homer the Rhetorician: Eustathios of Thessalonike on the Composition of the Iliad

This book is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation written at the University of Amsterdam under the auspices of the Institute for Culture and History (later Amsterdam School of Historical Studies). My doctoral research was funded by the National Research School in Classical Studies in the Netherlands OIKOS, with a grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). During my doctoral studies, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds financially supported a research stay at Uppsala University; the Department of Linguistics and Philology at Uppsala University hosted me twice as a visiting doctoral student (and once again as a guest researcher when I was revising the manuscript for publication); the Gennadius Library and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens made possible my participation in the Byzantine Greek Summer School, where Alexander Alexakis and Stratis Papaioannou taught me much about Medieval Greek and Byzantine literature; a pre-doctoral short-term residency at Dumbarton Oaks allowed me to spend a month in their library during the final stages of writing my dissertation. I worked on the manuscript as a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Studies on the Literature and Reception of Byzantium at the University of Silesia in Katowice and as a guest researcher at the Department of Romance Studies and Classics at Stockholm University. I returned to Dumbarton Oaks as a fellow in the spring of 2020, where I revised the manuscript for publication during the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. I thank the Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University for granting me a leave during the very first year of my employment there to finish the book. CEUs Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies generously offered funding for the books publication. I wish to extend my gratitude to all these institutions, not only for their financial and professional support but also for enabling me to exchange ideas with colleagues and be part of stimulating scholarly environments, which have shaped this book in profound ways.

Credit is due first to Remco Regtuit at the University of Groningen, whose teaching aroused my interest in scholia and literary criticism, and under whose mentorship I ventured to write an MA thesis on Eustathios Commentary on the Iliad. It was Irene de Jong who introduced me to Eustathiosneither of us knew in 2010 that my paper for her course on Homer would be the beginning of a by now more than decade-long interest in Eustathios and his scholarly work. I extend my deepest gratitude to my supervisors at Amsterdam, Irene de Jong and Emilie van Opstall, for their professional guidance, personal advice, and patient feedback during my doctoral research and beyond. I am also greatly indebted to Ingela Nilsson, whose guidance and support continue to be invaluable on both personal and professional levels. I am very grateful for the generous friendship of Adam Goldwyn, who has probably read more of my work than anyone else.

Many others have been involved in the journey from the inception of the project to this published edition. At the risk of forgetting many, I wish to extend immense gratitude to friends and colleagues who read complete or partial drafts of my dissertation and/or its revised version, generously shared their expertise and forthcoming work, and made writing this book possible in many different ways: Panagiotis Agapitos, Dimiter Angelov, Susanne Borowski, Emmanuel Bourbouhakis, Eric Cullhed, Aniek van den Eersten, Casper de Jonge, Anthony Kaldellis, Jacqueline Klooster, Niels Koopman, Tomasz Labuk, Marc Lauxtermann, Valeria Lovato, Divna Manolova, Przemysaw Marciniak, Stratis Papaioannou, Filippomaria Pontani, Andreas Rhoby, David Rockwell, Denis Searby, Courtney Tomaselli, Paul van Uum, Saskia Willigers, and Nikos Zagklas, as well as the members of my doctoral defence committee (Mathieu de Bakker, Gerard Boter, Ingela Nilsson, Remco Regtuit, and Ineke Sluiter) and the Amsterdamse Hellenistenclub. I would also like to thank OUPs anonymous readers for their valuable feedback and the commissioning editor Charlotte Loveridge for shepherding this book through the publication process. The glossary and indices have been prepared by Louise Chapman of Lex Academic. Any remaining mistakes are fully my responsibility.