Computational Detection of Implicit Philosophical Authority in Eustratius of Nicaea: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Abstract: Byzantine engagement with ancient philosophical sources is well documented in cases of explicit citations, but implicit borrowing—unmarked by citation—has so far not seen a systematic study. This paper presents a computational pipeline for detecting such implicit authority and applies it to Eustratius of Nicaea, a twelfth-century commentator on Aristotle. FLAME, a fuzzy character-level matching engine built for morphologically rich, orthographically unstable Byzantine Greek, makes manifest candidate textual parallels across a 29-work pilot corpus; a filtering architecture, the Topos Exclusion Matrix, then separates genuine transfer from shared reliance on common ancient sources. Two case studies follow: Eustratius' unmarked dependence on Proclus' Republic Commentary in his Nicomachean Ethics commentary, and his adoption of Michael Psellos' use of an anti-Eunomian argumentative frame in his logical commentary—neither previously identified in the scholarship. The results imply that philosophical authority for Byzantines—like Eustratius—obtains without the explicit attributions usually taken to constitute it, and that the pilot's method scales to the fuller Byzantine corpus. Currently under review with Digital Classics Online (DCO); submitted September 8, 2026.