Eustathius or Eumathius , surnamed Macrembolites , a medieval revivalist of the Greek

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 romance, flourished in the second half of the 12th century CE

Common Era

Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...

.

His title Protonobilissimus shows him to have been a person of distinction and, if he is also correctly described in the manuscripts as chief keeper of the ecclesiastical archives, he must have been a Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

. He was the author of a Byzantine novel

Byzantine novel

The Byzantine novel represents a revival of the ancient Greek romance of Roman times. Works in this category were written by Byzantine Greeks of the Eastern Roman Empire during the 12th century.-History:...

, The Story of Hysmine and Hysminias, in eleven books. Although he borrowed from Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

 and other Attic

Attic Greek

Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek". It is sometimes included in Ionic.- Origin and range...

 poets, the chief source of his phraseology was the rhetorician Choricius of Gaza

Choricius of Gaza

Choricius, of Gaza , Greek sophist and rhetorician, flourished in the time of Anastasius I .He was the pupil of Procopius of Gaza, who must be distinguished from Procopius of Caesarea, the historian. A number of his declamations and descriptive treatises have been preserved...

. The style is remarkable for the absence of hiatus and a laboured use of antithesis

Antithesis

Antithesis is a counter-proposition and denotes a direct contrast to the original proposition...

. The digressions on works of art, apparently the result of personal observation, are considered the best part of the work. The novel enjoyed a later influence in connection with the story tradition of Apollonius of Tyre

Apollonius of Tyre

Apollonius of Tyre is the subject of an ancient short novella, popular during medieval times. Existing in numerous forms in many languages, the text is thought to be translated from an ancient Greek manuscript, now lost.-Plot summary:...

—Eustathius' scene of the storm at sea and the heroine offered as a sacrifice being adapted in Book 8 of the Confessio Amantis

Confessio Amantis

Confessio Amantis is a 33,000-line Middle English poem by John Gower, which uses the confession made by an ageing lover to the chaplain of Venus as a frame story for a collection of shorter narrative poems. According to its prologue, it was composed at the request of Richard II...

 of John Gower

John Gower

John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which...

 and, by way of that, forming a portion of the plot of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

's Pericles, Prince of Tyre

Pericles, Prince of Tyre

Pericles, Prince of Tyre is a Jacobean play written at least in part by William Shakespeare and included in modern editions of his collected works despite questions over its authorship, as it was not included in the First Folio...

(particularly in Act III).

A collection of eleven Riddles, of which solutions were written by the grammarian Manuel Holobolos, is also attributed to Eustathius.

Read more: Ismene — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/brewers/ismene.html#ixzz1B1CI0Z8U