Eustathios macrembolites

Eustathios Makrembolites , also: Eumathios Makrembolites ( Greek : Εὐστάθιος Μακρεμβολίτης, also: Εὐμάθιος Μακρεμβολίτης) is a Byzantine novelist of the 12th century .

Story of Hysmine and Hysminias

Eustathios is the - otherwise unknown - author of a romance novel in eleven books with the title Τὰ καθ 'Ὑσμίνην καì Ὑσμινίαν, German: The story of Hysmine and Hysminias , whose protagonists are Hysmine, the young woman, and Hysminias, the young man. Like the three other Byzantine authors of the 12th century Konstantinos Manasses , Theodoros Prodromos and Niketas Eugenianos , he takes up the ancient genre of the romance novel, but in contrast to their works is written in prose, instead of the aithiopica of Heliodorus, predominantly imitates the novel of Achilles Tatios follows and weaves extensive ecphrases of works of art. The places mentioned in the text are fictional and possibly allegorical . With the figure of King Eros , the Ἔρως βασιλεύς, who appears not as a small child but as a despotic ruler over lovers, the novel introduces a new motif that is adopted from the late Byzantine verse novels and possibly the origin of Dieu d'amour forms in later French novels such as the Rosenroman . The style is characterized by avoidance of hiatal and excessive use of the antithesis .

The plot of the novel is as follows: The young Hysminias is sent from Eurykomis to Aulikomis as herald of the festival of Zeus. Hysmine, the daughter of his hosts, falls in love with him, but he refuses to admit it. Hysminias sees Eros with his court in a painting, who then appears to him in a dream and submits to him. Now Hysminias is in love too. He goes back to Eurykomis with his hosts. When Hysmine is about to be married off by her parents, the lovers flee. Hysmine is thrown from the ship into the sea in a storm, Hysminias is abandoned on land, captured by barbaric pirates and forced to row. Greeks attack the pirates and take their captives from them, Hysminias is sold as a slave to Daphnepolis and taken by his new masters to another Zeus festival, the Diasia, to Artykomis. Meanwhile, Hysmine is there as a slave, she and Hysminias pretend to be siblings. Back in Daphnepolis, they meet their parents who are there looking for their children. An oracle in the Apollo Shrine gives them freedom and declares them to be the bride and groom. You identify yourself and return to Aulikomis, where the wedding takes place.

The novel was widely read in Byzantine times and was translated into Latin, Italian, French and German as early as the 16th century.

Others

Eustathios is also assigned the authorship of a collection of eleven riddles, to which the grammarian Manuel Holobolos wrote down solutions.

Works

• Eustathius Macrembolites, De Hysmines et Hysminiae Amoribus Libri XI . Ed. Miroslav Marcovich . Munich and Leipzig: KG Saur 2001. ISBN 3-598-71232-4 . Review by Ingela Nilsson, in: Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2001.08.35 [1]
• Eustathios Macrembolites : Hysmine and Hysminias . Introduced, translated and explained by Karl Plepelits . Stuttgart: Hiersemann 1989, ISBN 3-7772-8929-9 (Library of Greek Literature, Vol. 29)
• Eustathii Macrembolitae quae feruntur aenigmata . 1893 ( digitized version )
• Eusthatii Macrembolitæ Protonobilissimi de Hysmines et Hysminiæ Amoribus Libri xi . Ed. Isidor Hilberg , Vienna 1876 (novel and riddle)

literature

• Erwin Rohde , The Greek Roman (1900)
• Karl Krumbacher , History of Byzantine Literature (1897)
• Ingela Nilsson, Erotic pathos, rhetorical pleasure. Narrative technique and mimesis in Eumathios Makrembolites' Hysmine & Hysminias (2001)