Chronicles and historiography: the interrelationship of fact and fiction

Notwithstanding the great progress in medieval historiography during the last century, a conceptual and methodological basis in regard to the analysis of narrative sources is still missing. This paper indicates some of the challenges posed by fourteenth-century chronicles while focusing on contemporary testimonies about Clement V, pope between 1305 and 1314. Discussion of the different testimonies allows drawing some conclusions and paves the way for a new approach to medieval narrative sources.     

Crossing the rubicon: fact or fiction in Roman re-enactment

Abstract

This paper discusses the role and use of Roman re-enactment as a means of engaging with, visualizing and interpreting Roman material culture, and how this is translated into presentation material for public display. The paper raises several issues on the use of re-enactors to interpret a specific period from the past, and reflects on why people actively participate in re-enactment, with an emphasis on accuracy and authenticity.     

Orality and the reception of late Byzantine vernacular literature

Abstract

The starting point for this paper is the belief that orality has to be understood in a wider sense than is given to the term by the oral-formulaic theory of Milman Parry and Albert Lord. This is the more important when the field of study is medieval or modern Greece, societies far removed from what Walter Ong (1982: 31–75) has termed the ‘primary orality’ of a culture from which writing is absent. The oral formulaic theory, although excellent as a tool for the analysis of materials actually transcribed from oral performance, has come to be seen in the last fifteen years or so as an unwieldy and often unreliable yardstick for assessing the interaction of oral and written types of discourse. The insistence of the theory that for a text to be considered oral, the three processes of composition, performance and transmission should be simultaneous, imposes a definition of orality which is unjustifiably restrictive, and despite the well-intentioned efforts of Albert Lord and others to address the problem of the ‘transitional’ text, the method of analysis developed through close study of one particular oral tradition in Yugoslavia has proved disappointingly inflexible in its attempt to account for texts which are neither, according to its own definitions, truly oral nor fully literary (cf. Beaton 1987).     

HIV/AIDS and security: fact, fiction and evidence—a report to UNAIDS

The link between HIV/AIDS and 'security' is said by many to be well understood, particularly that between the movement and activities of uniformed services and the epidemic. There are strong opinions widely asserted. But recent research undertaken for UNAIDS by LSEAIDS (which brings together leading social scientists at the LSE to confront the social and economic implications of HIV/AIDS), reveals that this is not at all the case. The evidence base is patchy—strikingly so. It has been over-interpreted and even misinterpreted in the rush to respond to a perceived threat by asserting generalizations that do not stand up. In this article the arguments and some of the evidence are reviewed, as are the forces advocating a precipitate response based on poor evidence. The article describes the principles that should underlie an empirically more robust approach.     

In enemy hands: the Byzantine experience of captivity between the seventh and tenth centuries

The present paper deals with forced migration experienced by subjects of the Byzantine Empire captured by foreign enemies in the context of warfare between the seventh and the tenth centuries. The focus of the first part is on the scenarios faced by individuals and groups when an enemy had taken control of a settlement or a larger territory. The second part discusses aspects of the role social status and gender played in the process of being taken over and then (possibly but not necessarily) held in captivity. Although one can trace similarities in the way captors treated their captives on different occasions, an overgeneralizing approach can prove misleading, distracting us from the dynamics of the consequences that war and abduction had on both the agency of the victor and the fate of the loser in the early Middle Ages.     

古诗、乐府考辨

诗、乐同源,合而不同;诗与乐府,并存不悖。汉乐府曲辞分为二途,一者采诗被乐,率多闾巷风谣;一者文人之辞,其中郊庙之辞,大半《诗》颂四言,故称诗而已矣。而文人五言虽杂乐府之中,然与民谣殊类,又异郊庙之辞,后世遂称古诗,姑且以为分别;魏晋以下文士所拟,大率其辞之流,于是概称古诗,且与乐府对举,以专后者之名,竟以汉世为宗。究之古诗、乐府,初则其义相即,并无截然分界,唯以后人所见,方有判然之别,而其对举互异,要归民间采诗与文人所作,二者分途,卒成两体。     

Nunc autem a Gothis subversa: the province of Alicante and the Spanish Mediterranean towns between the Byzantine and Visigothic periods

The transition between the sixth and the seventh centuries in the towns of Iberia has been a matter of much discussion, leading to the development of the ‘urban renewal’ model, by which the Visigothic process of state formation generated a new urban munificence. A similar process can be seen in the towns of the Byzantine area, and our aim is to discuss the evolution of the urban settlements of the modern province of Alicante, reassessing the available evidence and comparing it with the models proposed for the Byzantine and Visigothic areas.     

Memoirs,confessions and apologies: the last chapter of Byzantine autobiography

Abstract

Two issues are addressed here: the status of Byzantine autobiography and the state of Byzantine literary culture in its last years. Autobiographical information was mostly a device used at all levels of Byzantine literature for immediacy, emphasis and to suggest personal involvement. It continued to function in this way in the last years of Byzantium, but there was also a degree of experimentation, as it extended its range into satire and comedy and, in the hands of Theodore Agallianos evolved from the rhetoric of apologia into fully-fledged autobiography.     

A Byzantine hagiographical parody: Life of Mary the Younger

Abstract

In this paper, it is argued that The Life of Mary the Younger, an anonymous Byzantine text of the eleventh century, has a conscious intertextual dialogue with the oldest Byzantine Life venerating a holy woman, the Life of Macrina written by her brother, Gregory of Nyssa, between 380 and 383. The intertextual relation between these two female Lives takes the form of parody. Following Linda Hutcheon's theory of parody, this article shows how the anonymous hagiographer of Mary reworks Gregory's authoritative text to create a new work, a parody in terms of postmodern literary criticism, whose aim was to criticise old and contemporary customs, conventions and ideologies. In other words, the present article approaches and decodes the literariness, the function and ideology of Mary's Life in the light of Macrina's Life.     

Symbolic engravings on Byzantine sounding leads from the Carmel coast of Israel

Two Byzantine sounding leads recovered from a shipwreck off the Israeli coast were identified and dated by associated coins and artefacts to the 5th–6th centuries AD. The leads are similarly shaped. A cross and a sign like a capital'P' mark both. They may be from a set including an inshore and a deep-sea lead. A depiction of the stellar constellation Cassiopeia is seen on top of the lug of the small lead. Interpretation of the sign is supported by the navigational role of the constellation as well as by a classical tradition associating it with Jaffa and by its symbolic, anti-storm role.     

Some Aspects of Byzantine Military Technology from the Sixth to the Tenth Centuries

Abstract

Byzantine military technology remains to be examined thoroughly, despite its importance in demonstrating the Byzantines' ability to absorb ideas and practices from areas outside the Empire as well as developing their own traditions. This article examines arms and armour from the mid-sixth century to the end of the tenth century and puts the military panoply into a wider context, that of the development of offensive and defensive military equipment in Europe and the lands to the north and east of the Empire. Finally, it examines the relationship between military affairs and the economic and political situation of the Empire and attempts to account for the use of particular weapons and methods of equipping the soldiers at particular times.     

The Byzantine wall paintings from the Protaton Church on Mount Athos,Greece: tradition and science

The present work is a study of the wall painting complex in the Protaton Church (1295) on Mount Athos, Greece. These paintings, high in artistic value, are themselves a monument—representative of the Macedonian iconographic style. What follows is historic data set against the results of analytical investigations: the fruit of extensive research aimed at determining precise details about the applied painting techniques for the wall paintings. Hitherto it has been held that what was traditionally defined as “Byzantine fresco” was executed only on wet plaster with limewater as the sole binding medium. Now, however, through the application of instrumental analytical investigations, it is possible to demonstrate that a mixed technique involving both al fresco and al secco was employed. Furthermore, it was determined, on the basis of results from gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC/MS), that egg together with a modest amount of animal glue were the organic binding media used for the Protaton art work. It is certain that the scenes were initially begun on wet plaster. During or even after drying the painting was completed using the aforementioned protein binding media, thanks to which a more resistant cohesion to the painted layers was secured.     

Byzantine historiography and modern Greek oral poetry: the case of Rapsomatis

Abstract

In the ninth book of the Alexiad, Anna Comnene tells the story of the simultaneous revolts against her father Alexios which broke out in Crete and Cyprus in the year 1093. The rising in Crete was shortlived, as the Cretans changed their minds and murdered their leader on hearing the news that the emperor's fleet was approaching. Of the Cypriot revolt, however, Anna has the following tale to tell: The Cypriots, under their leader Rapsomatis, at first refused to fight after the emperor's forces landed in Cyprus, apparently expecting to talk their way out of a conflict. Rapsomatis, a complete novice in the arts of war, had embarked on the revolt more as a game than in earnest; and was easily defeated by Manuel Voutoumitis, captured and sent to the emperor's brother-in-law John Doukas who was in charge of the campaign.     

Houses,streets and shops in Byzantine Constantinople from the fifth to the twelfth centuries

This paper presents an analysis and reinterpretation of current evidence for houses, streets and shops in fifth- to twelfth-century Byzantine Constantinople, focussing on archaeological evidence. Previously unidentified townhouses and residential blocks are located. These show greater similarities to Roman-period domestic architecture than might be expected. Changes in the architectural style may be related to social change in the seventh century. Berger’s reconstruction of the early Byzantine street plan is shown to be archaeologically untenable. This has implications for the identification of formal planning and the boundaries of urban districts in the Byzantine capital. The limited archaeological evidence for streets and shops is also discussed.