A pupil of Nicholas Kataphloron, Eustathius was appointed to the offices of superintendent of petitions, professor of rhetoric, and was ordained a deacon in Constantinople. He was ordained bishop of Myra. Around the year 1178, he was appointed to the archbishopric of Thessalonica, where he remained until his death around 1195/1196. Accounts of his life and work are given in the funeral orations by Euthymius and Michael Choniates. Niketas Choniates praised him as the most learned man of his age, a judgment which is difficult to dispute. He wrote commentaries on ancient Greek poets, theological treatises, addresses, letters, and an important account of the sack of Thessalonica by William II of Sicily in 1185. Of his works, his commentaries on Homer are the most widely referred to: they display an extensive knowledge of Greek literature from the earliest to the latest times. Other works exhibit impressive character, and oratorical power, which earned him the esteem of the Komnenoi emperors. Politically, Eustathios was a supporter of emperor Manuel I. An original thinker, Eustathios sometimes praised such secular values as military prowess. He decried slavery, and believed in the concept of historical progress of civilization from a primitive to a more advanced state.
Works
His most important works are the following:
On the Capture of Thessalonica, an eye-witness account of the siege of 1185 and subsequent sufferings of the people of Thessalonica. In early sections of this memoir Eustathios describes also political events at Constantinople from the death of emperor Manuel I through the short reign of Alexios II to the usurpation of Andronikos I, with sharp comments on the activities of all involved. The Greek text was edited by Kyriakidis, with an Italian translation by V. Rotolo; there is an English translation by J. Melville-Jones, and a German translation by H. Hunger.
A number of orations, some of which have been edited by P. Wirth. In 2013 a translation of six of the earliest of these speeches was published with a commentary by Andrew F. Stone.
Commentaries on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. These address questions of grammar, etymology, mythology, history and geography. They are not so much original commentaries as extracts from earlier commentators - there are many correspondences with Homeric scholia. Drawing on numerous extensive works of Alexandrian grammarians and critics and later commentators, they are a very important contribution to Homeric scholarship, not least because some of the works from which Eustathios made extracts are lost.
A commentary on Dionysius Periegetes. This is as diffuse as the commentary on Homer, but includes numerous valuable extracts from earlier writers. , and later in that of H. Stephens, in Hudson's Geograph. Minor, vol. iv., and lastly, in Bernhardy's edition of Dionysius
A commentary on Pindar. No manuscript of this has come to light; but the introduction survives., from which it was reprinted separately by Schneidewin, Eustathii prooemium commentariorum Pindaricorum.
Other published works. Some were first published by Tafel in the 1832Opuscula just mentioned, some appeared later, as by P. Wirth for the Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae series.
Unpublished works. These include theological writings and commemorative speeches. Several of the latter are important historical sources.
