The letters of Grigor Magistros Pahlavuni demonstrate the multivalent methods by which Grigor negotiated being an Armenian aristocrat in service to the foreign power of Byzantium. While they display a Hellenic aesthetic and make use of the norms of Byzantine letter-writing culture, they nonetheless show that Grigor Magistros maintained a strong Armenian cultural identity even when holding a Byzantine title.

This paper suggests that Michael Attaleiates, the eleventh-century Byzantine historian, purposefully changed the ethnic label for his contemporary Norman mercenaries from ‘Frank’ to ‘Latin’ in order to portray these figures as ethnically close to the Byzantines of his own day. In addition, it suggests that Attaleiates’ motives for such a portrayal lay in his argument that Norman mercenaries were a potential solution to the empire's challenges with the Seljuks. This article examines the ways in which Attaleiates positively portrayed Norman mercenaries in Byzantium, and how he crafted historical parallels between them and the Latins of Byzantium's Roman past.

The paper provides for the first time a full-fledged analysis of the structure and compositional principles sustaining John Tzetzes’ Chiliades or Historiai. The article is divided into three sections. The first focuses on the developments of commentary literature in late twelfth-century Byzantium, showing how exegesis is used to textualize the authorial self and create autobiographical narratives. The second delves into the purpose of the work and its audience. The final section, focusing on the first part of the work, explores the role of memory in the Historiai and in particular, the interplay between cultural memories and experience in Tzetzes’ self-presentation.

This article focuses on the presence of material from Plutarch's Lives in Byzantine chronicles, particularly that of John Zonaras, the only chronicler to draw heavily on Plutarch's biographies. Zonaras’ strong appreciation of Plutarch is evident when he repeatedly digresses from the main narrative to incorporate Plutarchean material related to secondary topics. His method of selection from Plutarch's Roman Lives is governed by particular principles: Zonaras’ individual literary tastes, as well as those of his contemporary audience, and the adaptation of Plutarch's material to the Byzantine social and cultural context. These considerations reveal Zonaras to be not merely a copyist of earlier writings, but instead a compiler with his own authorial agenda.

In this paper it is argued that the proem of the Parekbolai on the Iliad by Eustathios of Thessalonike gives a practical example of the use to which the lessons in his work are to be put. It explores how Eustathios advertises himself as a skilful rhetorician and how he perceives the relationship between poet, commentator, and readers by examining four images that embellish the proem: Homeric poetry as the song of the Sirens, Homer as the Ocean and as a host, and the commentator as a cook.

This article will attempt to offer the first literary analysis of the Dialogue with a Persian of Manuel II Palaiologos. Despite its rich theological and literary material, this work has largely been neglected by scholars. However, the Dialogue deserves to be studied for its literary merit and not merely as a historical source. After a brief overview of the contents and background of the Dialogue, this study will focus on its literary features, especially on the vivid character portrayal of the Ottomans and the emperor himself.

The following paper analyses Theodore Prodromos’ satire, Against the old man with a long beard. It argues that the text which is heavily based on the ancient tradition of ridiculing philosophers is in fact directed against the twelfth-century fellow teachers of Prodromos.

This article examines the tombstone of Meletios II, a native of Tenedos, who was briefly Ecumenical Patriarch in 1768–9. It also offers an account of his troubled patriarchate and sketches events in the rest of his ecclesiastical career. This hitherto unknown tombstone has rested for an indeterminate number of years in the garden of North Bank, a large Victorian mansion in Pages Lane in the North London suburb of Muswell Hill. It appears to have been in the grounds of North Bank before the house became an annexe of Muswell Hill Methodist Church. It is not known where in the Ottoman Empire Meletios' grave was originally situated, nor has it been possible to establish the circumstances in which the tombstone came to North Bank. On the basis of the inscription on the tombstone it is possible to establish Meletios' previously unknown date of death, 5 January 1780. It appears to be one of the earliest known tombstones of an Ecumenical Patriarch during the period of the Tourkokratia.

The well-known fortified Troupakis-Mourtzinos complex includes a building that has not yet received proper attention. It is a rectangular, vaulted hall measuring 6.22 by 4.04 m., without any special features. However, one may observe a row of quadrilateral holes that pierce the outside of the walls at their mid-height, slightly below the base of the vault. On the basis of this particular detail, the building is identified as a gunpowder storeroom, while its function is examined in the context of the period when it was constructed; finally it is compared to other similar buildings within or outside the confines of Messenia.

The enormous prestige accorded to Byzantine cloisonné enamel seems to have continued into the Palaiologan period, although evidence suggests that its production ceased in the decades after the Fourth Crusade. The medium of the imperial images described by Pseudo-Kodinos as ὑπὸ ὑελίου λεγομένου διαγελάστου, which was worn on the headgear of thirteen ranks of court officials, is here identified as verre églomisé, reverse painting on glass. A reading of Pseudo-Kodinos’ treatise alongside surviving works of art suggests that fourteenth-century Byzantines were consciously using ersatz media in an effort to keep up the appearance of continuity with the empire's more prosperous past.

This article demonstrates the link between Nektarios Terpos and the decorative programme of Ardenica Monastery, Myzeqe, central Albania. An early eighteenth-century preacher against Islam and conversion to Islam, Terpos emphasized the importance of undergoing suffering, and even death by martyrdom, in the conviction that suffering leads to salvation and glorification, while conversion to Islam to damnation. Terpos was abbot of Ardenica Monastery. The analysis of its decorative programme, which emphasizes salvation and glorification through suffering and passion, in conjunction with the writings of Nektarios Terpos, concludes that he must have been the mastermind behind the inception of the decorative programme of the katholikon.

This article presents the letters sent by the late nineteenth-century English writer Elizabeth Mayhew Edmonds to the Greek folklorist Nikolaos G. Politis. While a preoccupation with folklore and ethnology predisposed the Victorian public to take a narrow view of Greek society, Edmonds's interest in both vernacular culture and the literary, social and political life of modern Greece enriched the complex cultural exchange that developed between European (Neo)Hellenists and Greek scholars. This European-wide discourse promoted modern Greece as an autonomous subject of study, worthy of intellectual pursuit.

In 1821, the Greek uprising against Ottoman rule gave rise to a sympathetic movement in Europe: Philhellenism. France decided to remain neutral. Yet when trying to apply this neutrality in practice, the French consuls in the Ottoman Empire encountered several problems, such as the arrival of Philhellenic volunteer fighters. Furthermore, they were torn between their professional obligations and their personal views. In this context, how did the consuls perceive Philhellenism and the Philhellenic volunteers? To what extent were they able to express their Philhellenism or Mishellenism? This study examines consular correspondence of the period in an attempt to answer these questions.

The Greek economic crisis has triggered a self-reflexive process and prompted a re-examination of political and cultural trends in Greece since 1974 in an attempt to rethink earlier cultural approaches and practices. This article argues that a cultural perspective on the crisis can be productive insofar as it revisits key concepts and dominant models of analysis and charts cultural change in Greece from the fall of the military junta in 1974 to the beginning of the crisis in 2009. Just as the fall of the junta encouraged a re-examination of the post-civil-war period, so the current economic crisis has prompted a rethink of the metapolitefsi era. Exploring the cultural developments that have taken place during this period, this article focuses on competing notions of culture and engages with the two dreams of the post-junta period: modernization and consumerism. The aim is not to reaffirm oppositions or reverse hierarchies but to rethink cultural dualisms and explore hybrid tensions within a broader political and cultural context.

Two gospel lectionaries, Gregory-Aland l 367 and l 46, were probably commissioned circa 965–985 by Basil the Parakoimomenos: the former as a gift for the St Basil Monastery that he founded, the latter for his personal use.

Demetrios Capetanakis was one of the first writers to introduce Marcel Proust to the Greek public in the 1930s. His study of Proust's philosophy (hitherto known only in the English and Greek translations of a lecture he delivered in French) survives in manuscript form, both in French and in an earlier German version. An examination of these texts in the context of Proust's early reception allows us to follow Capetanakis’ intellectual trajectory, as well as to sketch his particular joint approach to literature and philosophy, which is largely indebted to the works of Plato and Kierkegaard. Capetanakis seeks Proust's philosophy not in the universal laws put forth in his novel, but in the writer's attempt to conceal behind them the real pain and agony that marked his own life. This leads him to a rather unusual philosophical reading of Proust's novel and, in the process, of Plato's Phaedrus.

The English socio-cultural context was crucial to the dissemination of the work of George Seferis in Europe. Early translations appeared in both French and English, but it was the English versions that propelled Seferis toward international recognition and the Nobel Prize, and gave rise to translations into more peripheral literatures such as Spanish. The wide social circle Seferis enjoyed in the English-speaking world was a key factor in his early success in the United Kingdom. Other determinants were British intellectuals’ empathy for the Greeks during the Colonels’ dictatorship and their liking for modern poetry similar to that of T. S. Eliot.