Byzantine News

THIS INVESTIGATION is an attempt to substantiate a flash of recognition between a passage in Xenophon’s Hellenica and a corresponding passage in Procopius of Caesarea’s Wars—a place where one ought not to expect it. Although Procopius has long been acknowledged to have been a reader and imitator of Thucydides and Herodotus, among other canonical authors, so far as the works of Xenophon are concerned he has been believed until recently to have used only the Cyropaedia.It comes as a bolt from the blue, therefore, to be reading the Hellenica and to be reminded of the Wars. Yet recovery of the intertextual dimension of Procopius’ work in this instance is vital because it enables that historian to speak, in a work intended for public consumption at a time when the principals were still alive and therefore in a manner that is necessarily oblique, to the allegiances and motivations of a prominent person at a moment of high political intrigue. Read the rest here.

An article by Ioli Kalavrezou: Ioli Kalavrezou-Maxeiner, Byzantine Icons in Steatite, I-II, Revue des etudes byzantines, 1986.  Click here to read it online.

From the New York Times And another article on the same exhibition.

Parekbolai, the Online Journal of Byzantine Studies announces the publication of two more articles: A. Riehle: Epistolography as Autobiography: Remarks on the Letter-Collections of Nikephoros Choumnos Abstract: This article highlights challenges involved in understanding and interpreting Byzantine epistolary literature, and suggests that we pay closer attention to the transmission of letters and its hermeneutic ramifications. The letters penned by the late Byzantine court official Nikephoros Choumnos are a case in point. The author assembled, revised and arranged his letters, which were originally composed and dispatched mostly for pragmatic purposes (e.g., letters of request). By embedding these missives into the framework of a collection, he created an autobiographical narrative that was to promote and perpetuate his multi-faceted persona. I. Polemes: Φιλολογικές παρατηρήσεις σε ένα ανώνυμο υπόμνημα στις Κατηγορίες του Αριστοτέλη Some emendations to the text of the rec...