Donald Nicol, Founding Editor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, retires from his distinguished tenure of the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King’s College London this year. May his successor, Roddy Beaton, have many years. The change of Koraës professors and widespread concern for the future of the Bywater and Sotheby Chair of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature at Oxford, from which Cyril Mango retires in 1995, have aroused discussion of what Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies are, which touch the identity of this journal.

My concern is with the change in style in the visual arts which occurred with the emergence of Late Antiquity. The discussion is intended to fall into three parts; in the first part I review how art historians have approached Late Antique art and examine some of the theoretical positions that have arisen through attempts to explain style in art; in the second part I shall endeavour to formulate my own theoretical explanation and I shall go on, in the third part, using some examples, to consider how this theoretical formulation is particularly valuable in the analysis of the art of the Late Antique period.

The written or spoken word can contribute to the appreciation of a work of art in three distinct, though by no means mutually exclusive, ways. First, it can comment directly on the artefact. Second, it can fulfil a parallel function, by conveying a similar message or using broadly comparable techniques. Third, words can physically accompany the artist’s work, either in the form of an inscription, or in the form of a recitation. We are so used to taking, and dealing with, the first of these approaches, that of commentary, that we have been slow to develop proper criteria for evaluating the other two. This has led, in the past, to some imaginative theorising about Byzantine aesthetics and, in reaction, some deflationary statements about the quality of Byzantine aesthetic criticism. There is now, however, a growing, if still implicit, recognition that the relationship of the verbal and the visual in Byzantine, society was not primarily one of commentary, but one of parallel function and physical accompaniment. Byzantine literary responses to art pointed in the same direction as art; they did not confront it, or cut into it in order to lay bare its anatomy.

Liutprand of Cremona’s description of Nikephoros Phokas was probably conditioned more by the wounds to his amour propre inflicted by Byzantine court officials than by any disinterested analysis of the emperor’s character, but it is a judgement which has influenced much of the subsequent writing on Nikephoros’ reign.

Of the two great sixth-century inauguration anthems on churches dedicated to “Holy Wisdom” it is, oddly enough, that from the Mesopotamian city of Edessa, not its Constantinopolitan equivalent on the Great Church of the metropolis, which has been translated and retranslated, re-edited and revisited by historians of architecture and of theological symbolism and by students of its wider context in the epoch of Justinian. This is partly because excellence shines more brightly in the relative isolation of the province, partly because of the architectural and symbolic detail which distinguishes the Syriac poem. The last article devoted to it, The Domed Church as Microcosm by Kathleen McVey, is an outstanding treatment of the symbolic thought of the poet in its historical context. Her edition, however, is poorly presented and imperfectly collated, and both her historical introduction and her literary analysis miss some cardinal points. Again, in order to improve on Schneider’s and Grabar’s attempts to reconstruct the architecture of the church, which was destroyed before the later twelfth century, a more accurate translation is needed. McVey’s translation does justice neither to the beauty, nor to the coherence of the original. Her commentary contains much that is useful, but does not discover the key to the poem’s unity, which lies in the dedication of the church. This interpretation can be substantiated by comparing the Syriac anthem with a kontakion written for the second inauguration of Justinian’s Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, after the dome had been rebuilt, in A.D. 562. The comparison also provides an opportunity to rescue the latter masterpiece from an undeserved neglect.

This article’s title is a sweeping one, but this is in fact a discussion of just two poems by Cavafy — and both of those on mythological subjects. The aim is, in a small way, to bridge the gap between myth and history in Cavafy’s poetry; the title hints that this is by way of a respectful response to D.N. Maronitis’ valuable survey, ‘C.P. Cavafy: a poet-reader’ (Maronitis 1983a). It is also, of course, an adaptation of the term which Cavafy is said to have used of himself, . As a recent discussion has pointed out, this could mean ‘poet-historian’ or ‘historical poet’ (Beaton 1983); here I shall be mining the term with this particular emphasis: that Cavafy was a reader of history as well as of poetry, and that his poems bear the traces of historical texts. This may sound like news from nowhere; but I believe that I have something new to say about these two poems, which one has grown used to categorizing automatically as ‘mythological’. They are Amoxia (1901) and ‘Amoxia (1904) (Cavafy 1981: 1. 102, 109-110).

To his father, Robert Guiscard, Bohemond appeared larger than life even in boyhood. Partly from real feats of war and conquest and partly from adroit self-advertisement, he became a legend in his own lifetime, and even in death he continues to draw the attention of art historians to his mausoleum, which is juxtaposed to the south transept of the cathedral at Canosa, Apulia. The mausoleum’s ‘Oriental’ or ‘Byzantine’ features mark it out from other buildings in the region, while the date and design of the cathedral itself evoke controversy. My aim here is neither to attempt a general assessment of Bohemond’s career nor to offer a survey of Alexius I Comnenus’ handling of the First Crusade. I shall merely focus on Alexius’ dealings with Bohemond during the earlier stages of the Crusade, and argue that Anna Comnena offers a rather misleading picture of their relationship. Far from Alexius being wise to Bohemond’s every trick, with Bohemond ‘playing the Cretan with the Cretan’, Alexius was in my opinion led to suppose that he had bought Bohemond, at least for the duration of the Franks’ expedition to the East, a supposition that was ill-founded.

At 7. 85 in the Grottaferrata version, having described the biblical mosaics in the palace, the poet proceeds to juxtapose pictorial episodes from pagan poetry and history. The first line about Achilles’ campaigns causes no trouble, but the second and third, have provoked much scholarly consternation and conflict.

In my limited study of the Greek and Serbian Churches in the nineteenth century, I had found numerous cases of Greek meddling in Serbian affairs, but never a reverse case. Then I came across a passing reference in Gavrilović’s fine biography of Prince MiloS Obrenovic of Serbia (who ruled from 1815 to 1839) to Miloš’ playing a major part in ousting a Patriarch of Constantinople. Following up Gavrilović’s citation led me to the following letter written by Prince Miloš during his triumphal visit to Constantinople in 1835. It was written (and it should be noted this means dictated since MiloS was illiterate) to his wife Ljubica on 28 September 1835. Since I have never come across any reference to the events Miloš describes in any work I have made use of on the patriarchate in the 19th century, I have taken the liberty of translating the letter from Miloš’ Serbian both to call attention to it and to make the text available to a wider range of scholars. The original text is to be found in Mita Petrović, Financije i Ustanove obnovljene Srbije do 1842, Beograd, 1901, pp. 336–37.

Leo Sgurus, archon and ‘tyrant’ of Argolis and Corinthia from c.1200 with an impressive career in the period until c.1208, succeeded in establishing an extensive albeit short-lived Territorialstaat in the NE Peloponnesus following the Latin capture of Constantinople on 12/13 April 1204 and the subsequent Latin onslaught in Greek territories. Truly among the most outstanding figures of the late Byzantine era, Sgurus has been characterized by Dionysios A. Zakythenos as one of the last ‘defenders of Greek independence’ following the Frankish conquest of 1204, 2 for this local archon seems to have constituted the sole realistic hope of the mainland Greece populations for an effective stance against the marching crusaders of Boniface of Montferrat, though, as the late George Kolias observed thirty years ago, he unwisely directed his activities rather against his compatriots than against the Latin invader. Yet, it has recently been said by Michael J. Angold that Sgurus ‘almost certainly enjoyed local backing in his expeditions’.

It is the purpose of this note to point out a few aspects in which Byzantine legal literature differs from its Western medieval counterpart. It is tempting to make such a comparison, as both East and West started with the same body of material, namely the Justinian legislation comprising the Institutes, Digest, Code and Novels. I realize that in doing so, I am implicitly restricting myself to civil law to the exclusion of canon law; but in fact I wish to narrow the field even further, and consider only civil legal literature in the strict sense, that is, legislation and legal scholarship. Furthermore, I realize that the Western tradition, based on the Justinian legislation, only begins in the eleventh century — coinciding with a revival in Byzantium. Nevertheless, I think the comparison is relevant, if only because it is a useful starting point for reflections on the role of law in Byzantine society.

The following is a continuation of the task set out in my Note in BMGS 10 (1986) 211-22. Working towards a Bibliography, I have tried to bring together, in a corpus, Ottoman Turkish works of some importance dealing with Roman and Byzantine history (including historical topography) which appeared as books, or part of books, between c. 1870 and 1920. A particular aim has been to illustrate the development of this corpus in relationship with ‘westernising’ trends in the historiography of the Ottoman empire over the same period.

‘“Myth and reality”’, as Professor Gombrich has reminded us in an historical context apparently far removed from that of Ottoman studies, are, as he has defined the phrase, perhaps only ‘a more genteel formulation for the blunter title of “lies and truth” ’.