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Antique nation? ‘Hellenes’ on the eve of Greek independence and in twelfth-century Byzantium*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Roderick Beaton
Roderick Beaton*
Affiliation:
King’s College, London
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Abstract

The Hellenic nation, as constituted in the early nineteenth century, is a recent construct; its name and the traditions to which it lays claim are ancient. In the context of modern debates about the antiquity of nations, and particularly the work of Anthony D. Smith, this paper sets out to make a comparative examination of the contexts and semantic field(s) in which the term ‘Hellene’ came to be revived by Greek-speakers, as a term of communal self-designation, at two widely separated turning-points in their history. All Greek quoted in the main text is also given in my own translation.

Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , 2007 , pp. 76 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 2007

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Footnotes

*

This paper arose out of an invitation by Tom Brown to contribute to a conference held at the University of Edinburgh in June 2005 to mark the retirement of Professor Michael Angold, with the title Ethnonemesis: The Creation and Disappearance of Ethnic Identities in the Medieval East and West. To Dimitris Papanikolaou I owe the opportunity to develop my ideas and present them in fuller form before the Modern Greek Seminar at the University of Oxford in October of the same year; that paper was also given, with a slightly changed title, at the Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies seminar of the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London, in January 2006. I am grateful to the organizers of these events, to those who participated in discussion, to the two editors of BMGS, and to an anonymous peer reviewer, for many insights that I hope have now been accommodated into the paper in its finished form.

References

1 The locus classicus for what has become an orthodoxy of modern political theory is Kedourie, E., Nationalism (London 1960) 1 Google Scholar, which describes its subject as ‘a doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century’. See also, indicatively, Gellner, E., Nations and Nationalism (Oxford 1983) 48 Google Scholar: ‘Nationalism is not the awakening of an old, latent, dormant force, though that is how it does indeed present itself. It is in reality the consequence of a new form of social organization, based on deeply internalized, education-dependent high cultures, each protected by its own state’, as well as the theoretical perspectives discussed below.

2 N. Vayenas, ‘Oi περιπέτειες τής έλληνικής συνείδησης’, To Βήμα, Νέες Έποχές (23 January 2005) Α36-7; A. Liakos, ‘Μυθολογίες καί οίγιογραφιες’, To Βημα, Νέες Έποχές (6 February 2005) A39-41; N. Vayenas, “H παραμόρφωση τοϋ Σβορώνου’, To Βημα, Νέες Έποχες (20 February 2005) A48; A. Liakos, ‘H άνακαίνιση τής έθνικής ταυτότητας’, To Βήμα, Νέες Έποχες (6 March 2005) A45-6; N. Vayenas, ‘Ένας φαντασιακος όρισμός’, To Βημα, ΝέεςΈποχές (6 March 2005) A50; N. Vayenas, ‘Θεωριοκρατία καί θεωριολαγνεία”, TÒ Βήμα, Νέες Έποχες (13 March 2005) A38; N. Vayenas, ‘Ό Σβορώνος καΐή διαμόρφωση του έλληνικοδζθνους’, H Κυριακάτικη Αύγή (27 March 2005) 26-8. The apple of discord was the posthumous publication of the book by Svoronos, Nikos, To ‘ελλψικο εθνος: Γενεση км διαμόρφωση τοο νέοο Έλληνισμοο (Athens 2004)Google Scholar, written in the mid-1960s. For Vayenas, Svoronos’ book ‘foreshadows ethno-symbolist [approaches]’ (προοικονομεΐ τίς έθνοσυμβολικες [προσεγγίσεις]) (‘Oí περιπετειες’, Α36), while Liakos saw in it a perpetuation of Hellenic particularism going back to Paparrigopoulos in the 19th century.

3 ‘[...] ή ποψη τής λανθάνουσας πολιτισμικής συνεχειας καί τής διαμόρφωσης τοδ έλληνικοϋ έθνους πριν άπο τον 18ο αΐώνα’, this view being attributed by Vayenas to Svoronos in the book under discussion (Vayenas, Ό Σβορώνος’, 28, col. 3).

4 ‘[...] χρειάζετοα và έξοικειωθοϋμε μέ όρισμένες λειτουργικές άρχες τής σύγχρονης σκέψης τών ίστορικων. Πρώτο, την έννοια τής άσυνεχειας καί τής άσυμβατότητας διαφορετικών έποχικών τρόπων σκέψης (άντί τής συνεχειας καί τής γραμμικότητας)’ (Liakos, ‘Μυθολογιες’, A41, col. 2).

5 Anderson, B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revd edn (London 1991) 6 Google Scholar.

6 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6.

7 It in this spirit that I understand the characterization of Papparigopoulos’ History of the Greek Nation (1860-74) by Paschalis Kitromilides: ‘without serious risk of exaggeration as the most important intellectual achievement of nineteenth-century Greece’ ( Kitromilides, P., ‘On the intellectual content of Greek nationalism: Paparrigopoulos, Byzantium and the Great Idea’, in Ricks, D. and Magdalino, P. [ed.], Byzantium and the Modern Creek Identity [Aldershot 1998] 25–33, see p. 28)Google Scholar.

8 Smith, A.D., The Antiquity of Nations (Cambridge 2004)Google Scholar.

9 See indicatively, but not exhaustively: Smith, A.D., The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford 1986)Google Scholar; National Identity (Harmondsworth 1991); Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford 1999); Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History (Cambridge 2001); Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity (Oxford 2003); Hutchinson, J., The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State (London 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Modem Nationalism (London 1994). For a recent overview see Guibernau, M. and Hutchinson, J. (ed.), History and National Identity: Ethnosymbolism and its Critics (Oxford 2004)Google Scholar.

10 Armstrong, J., Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill, NC 1982)Google Scholar; Hastings, A., The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scales, L. and Zimmer, O. (ed.), Power and the Nation in European History (Cambridge 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Smith, Nationalism, 58, 83, 84, original emphases. In reality, apparent ‘continuity of names’ in Greek masks the even more significant, from an ‘ethno-symbolist’ perspective, practice of deliberate revival, well attested for personal and baptismal names in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and for toponyms, at different periods, in areas newly brought under the jurisdiction of the Greek state.

12 See, for example, Smith, Nationalism, 84, 104-6; Chosen Peoples, 199-204.

13 As this paper emphasizes, the earliest documented instances of such a revival go back as far as the twelfth century; not discussed here, but of considerable importance for the historical usage of the term are the more extended usages associated with the thirteenth-century Byzantine empire in exile in Nicaea and of fifteenth-century humanists such as George Gemistos Plethon. For relevant bibliography see n. 31.

14 Droulia, L., ‘Towards Modern Greek consciousness’, The Historical ReviewlLa Revue Historique (Institute for Neohellenic Research, Athens) 1 (2004) 51–67 Google Scholar (p. 51 cited). Droulia also quotes and translates the relevant article:

Όσοι αύτόχθονες κάτοικοι τηςέπικροιτείας της Έλλάδος πιστεύουσιν είς Χριστόν, είσίν “Ελληνες, καί άπολαμβάνουσιν άνευ τινος διαφορας δλων τών πολιτικών δικαιωμάτων. (All indigenous inhabitants of the Land of Greece (Hellas) believing in Christ are Hellenes and are entitled to an equal enjoyment of every right.)

15 Politis, A., ‘From Christian Roman emperors to the glorious Greek ancestors’, in Ricks, and Magdalino, (ed.), Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity, 1-14 (p. 8 cited)Google Scholar.

16 Byron, Lord, Poetical Works, ed. McGann, J.J., I (Oxford 1980) 330-2Google Scholar; for Greek text and discussion of its authorship see Daskalakis, A., Та έθνεγερτικά τραγοόδια. τοο Ρήγα Βελεστινλή (Athens 1977) 72–103 Google Scholar.

17 Katartzis, D., Γά εύρισκόμενα , ed. Dimaras, K. Th. (Athens 1970) 104 Google Scholar; cf. Politis, ‘From Christian Roman emperors’, 7.

18 Katartzis, εορισκόμενα, 10 (my emphasis).

19 Korais, A., Άπαντα τά πρωτότοπα εργα, ed. Valetas, G., I (Athens 1964) 67, 70Google Scholar.

20 Sofianopoulos, P., in the newspaper Σωκράτης (6 August 1839), cited in Valetas, G., Της Ρωμιοσόνης: Αοκίμια (Athens 1976) 12–13 Google Scholar:

Είς τάς Πάτρας, περΐ το 1814 έδημιουργήσαμεν ήμεΐς πρώτην φοράν είς μίαν μας προκηρυξιν τήν λέξιν «Νεοελληνακή» (γλώσσα, έθνότητα, ίστορία), άντίθετον είς την τοΰ σοφου Κοραη «Γραικικήν». Την λεξιν ταυτην άποσκυβαλισθείσαν παρά του Κοραή, διεδεχθη [Valetas: υίοθετησε] ó «Λόγιος Ερμής» έν Βιεννη ... Ή νεοελληνικη λεξις [Valetas: δηλαδη ό ορος «νεοελληνικός»], έδημιουργήθη τότε είς Πάτρας παρ’ ήμών με σκοπον μεγα: ώς σόνθημα,ώς σύμβολον ίχνακαινίσεως κοά μεταμορφώσεως φυλής παλαιας, στασίμου καί βεβαρβαρωμενης, εΐςεθνος νεον, πολιτισμένον και προοδευτικόν (original emphases).

21 Velestinlis, Rigas, ‘Νέα πολιτικη διοίκησις των κατοίκων τής Ρούμελης, τής Μικρας Άσίας, των Μεσογείων Νήσων καί της Βλαχομπογδανίας’, in Άπαντα τά σωζόμενα, ed. Kitromilides, P., V (Athens 2000) 30–77 Google Scholar, Article 1 (p. 45 cited). For an English translation of this document see Clogg, R. (ed. and trans.), The Movement for Greek Independence 1770-1821 (London 1976) 157-63CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Rigas’ use of the revolutionary French constitution of 1793, see ‘Απαντα τυ σωζόμενα V, 119-35, where the editor reprints the full French text, and Villalba, M. López, ‘Balkanizing the French Revolution: Rhigas’ New Political Constitution ’, in Tziovas, D. (ed.), Greece and the Balkans: Identities, Perceptions and Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment (Aldershot 2003) 141-54Google Scholar. The significance of this document, and of its accompanying map, is reassessed from a postmodernist viewpoint in Calotychos, V., Modern Greece: A Cultural Poetics (Oxford and New York 2003) 23–60 Google Scholar.

22 Rigas, ‘Νέα πολιτική διοίκησις’, Article 7, p. 48; cf. Article 2, p. 45. On the ethnic/linguistic diversity of exponents of the ‘Greek Enlightenment’, see Mackridge, P., ‘The Greek intelligentsia 1780-1830: A Balkan perspective’, in Clogg, R. (ed.), Balkan Society in the Age of Greek Independence (London 1981) 63–84 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Rigas, ‘Νέα πολιτικη διοίκησις’, Article 4, pp. 46-7.

24 Rigas, ‘Νέα πολιτική διοίκησις’, Annexe, p. 70.

25 Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood, 13.

26 Solomos, D., “Ύμνος είς τήν Έλευθερίαν’, in Ποιήματα καί πεζά, ed. Alexiou, S. (Athens 1994) 93 Google Scholar.

27 Ritsos, G., ‘Ρωμιοσύνη’, inΠοιημαχΆ, II (Athens 1989-90) 59–72 Google Scholar (seepp. 61, 62); Elytis, O., Το’ΑξιονΈστί (Athens 1959) 27-8Google Scholar.

28 Solomos, “Ύμνος’, 95.

29 Kalvos, A., Έϊς Δόξαν’, in Ώδαί, ed. Pontani, F.M. (Athens 1988) 39 Google Scholar (original emphasis).

30 Cf.Coray, A. [= Korais], Mémoire sur l’état actuel de la civilisation dans la Grèce, lu à la Société des Observateurs de l’homme, le 16 Nivôse, an XI (6 Janvier 1803) (Paris 1803) 60 Google Scholar:

La nation contemple pour la première fois le spectacle hideux de son ignorance, et frémit en portant ses regards sur l’espace immense qui la sépare de la gloire de ses ancêtres. Cependant cette douloureuse découverte ne jette point les Grecs dans le désespoir; Nous descendons des Grecs, se sont-ils dit tacitement, il faut tâcher de redevenir dignes de ce nom, ou ne plus le porter.

Because it was written in French, this is the only one of Korais’ writings to have gained a place among the standard texts available to current students of nationalism, ever since it was anthologized, in English translation, in Kedourie, E. (ed.), Nationalism in Asia and Africa (London 1971) 153-88Google Scholar.

31 See, indicatively, Ahrweiler, H., L’Idéologie politique de l’Empire byzantine (Paris 1975) 60-4Google Scholar; Jouanno, C., ‘Les Barbares dans le roman byzantin du XIIe siècle. Fonction d’un topos’, B 62 (1992) 264–300 Google Scholar; Magdalino, P., ‘Hellenism and nationalism in Byzantium’, in Tradition and Transformation in Byzantium (Aldershot 1992), no. 14, 1–29 Google Scholar; idem, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143-1180 (Cambridge 1993) 106, 400-1; idem, ‘The pen of the aunt: Echoes of the mid-twelfth century in the Alexiad ’, in Gouma-Peterson, Thalia (ed.), Anna Komnene and her Times (New York 2000) 15–43 Google Scholar; Reinsch, R., ‘Ausländer und Byzantiner im Werk der Anna Komnene’, Rechtshistorisches Journal 8 (1989) 257-74Google Scholar.

32 Magdalino, ‘Hellenism’, 10.

33 Beaton, R., The Medieval Greek Romance (2nd edn, London 1996, 10 Google Scholar) (1st edn, Cambridge 1989, 8); cited, apparently with approval, in P. Magdalino, The Empire, 401.

34 Magdalino, ‘Hellenism’, 18.

35 Comnène, Anna, Alexiade XIII.10.4, ed. Leib, B., III (Paris 1937-45) 122 Google Scholar; The Alexiad of Anna Comnena, trans. cf.Sewter, E.R.A. (Harmondsworth 1969) 422 Google Scholar.

36 The same hierarchy of terms had appeared earlier in Anna’s text, again with regard to Bohemond (Alexiad XI.12.3, ed. Leib, III 51; cf. Sewter 367). This time, however, it is not specified that the ‘Hellene’ is to be understood as contemporary: the juxtaposition ‘Hellene/barbarian’ implicitly appeals to history, all the way back to Herodotos.

37 Alexiad XV.7.9, ed. Leib, III 218; cf. Sewter 495.

38 Komnene, Anna, Alexias, ed. and trans. Reinsch, R. (Cologne 1996) 538 Google Scholar.

39 Cf. the uncertainty shown by the editor of Timarion faced with a similar usage there (see n. 53 below). Psellos, on the other hand, in those few passages that have been cited as evidence for an even more tenuous proto-nationalist consciousness in the late eleventh century, does use ‘Hellas’, in a contemporary context and in a geographical sense, that can presumably be identified with the Helladic theme. See Psellus, Oratoria minora, ed. Littlewood, A.R. (Leipzig 1985) 63 Google Scholar, 70-1, and comments by Ahrweiler (L’Idéologie, 61) and Magdalino (‘Hellenism’, 24 n. 47).

40 Ptochoprodromos, ed. Eideneier, H. (Cologne 1991) 140 Google Scholar (Poem IV, l. 25) = Poèmes prodromiques en grec vulgaire, ed. Hesseling, D.C. and Pernot, H. (Amsterdam 1910) 49 Google Scholar (Poem III, l. 20); cf.Beaton, R., ‘Πτωχοπροδρομικά V: ήήθοποιΐα τοΰ άτακτου μοναχοϋ’, in Μνη’μη Σνχμάτη Καρατζά (Thessaloniki 1990) 101-8Google Scholar (pp. 105-6).

41 The same two passages are cited and briefly discussed by de Boel, G., ‘L’identité “romaine” dans le roman Digénis Akritis ’, in Constructions of Greek Past: Identity and Historical Consciousness from Antiquity to the Present, ed. Hokwerda, H. (Groningen 2003) 157-83Google Scholar, see p. 173. The context, however, is a discussion of developing terminology in the thirteenth century, for which the passages from the Alexiad are proposed as the earliest precursors.

42 Georges et Demetrios Tornikès, Lettres et discours, ed. Darrouzès, J. (Paris 1970) 129 Google Scholar (letter 10).

43 Gautier, P., ‘La curieuse ascendance de Jean Tzetzès’, REB 28 (1970) 207-20CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 209).

44 Cf. Magdalino, ‘Hellenism’, 8; idem, The Empire, 180-201.

45 Ioannis Tzetzae Epistulae, ed. Leone, P.A.M. (Leipzig 1972) 10 Google Scholar (letter 6).

46 Tzetzes, Chiliads, ll. 615-18; 622; 627-30; cited with French trans, and commentary in Gautier, ‘La curieuse ascendance’.

47 See Chiliads, l. 622 (θρέμμα τής Βυζαντίδος) quoted above. Tzetzes’ grandfather is also described as πολίτης (ll. 625, 626), the term glossed by the editor: ‘C’est à dire “le constantinopolitain”, par ignorance de son patronyme’ (Gautier, ‘La curieuse ascendance’, 211).

48 From this condition Tzetzes himself was saved by the strict regime of learning imposed on him by his father, reminiscent of that ruefully recalled by the semi-fictionalized narrator of the vernacular Poems of Poor Prodromos (Chiliads, ll. 616-17, in Gautier, ‘La curieuse ascendance’, 210-11; cf. 219).

49 Proposed, on different grounds, by Tsolakis, E., ‘Τιμαρίων, μιά νέα άνάγνωση’, in Μνήμη Σταμάτη Καρατζά (Thessaloniki 1990) 109-18Google Scholar, and Beaton, R., ‘Cappadocians at court: Digenes and Timarion’, in Mullett, M. and Smythe, D. (ed.), Alexios I Komnenos I (Belfast 1996) 329-38Google Scholar; but see contra, and in favour of the traditional dating to the 1140s, Alexiou, M., After Antiquity: Greek Language, Myth, and Metaphor (Ithaca and London 2002) 104-5Google Scholar.

50 Timartone, ed. Romano, R. (Naples 1972), ch. 5, ll. 116-20Google Scholar. For a translation of this work see Timarion, trans. Baldwin, B. (Detroit 1984)Google Scholar.

51 Timarione, ch. 5, l. 124.

52 Timarione, ch. 6, ll. 150-2 (Baldwin translates: ‘from Italy and Greece’, which would be easier to understand, but is not in the text.)

53 Timarione, ch. 27, l. 681.

54 Timarione, ch. 28, ll. 705-6 and editor’s note, which also identifies the difficulty of determining whether the two geographical terms are to be taken as synonymous or contrastive; cf. n. 39 above.

55 Instances are noted and discussed in Beaton, Mediaeval Greek Romance, respectively for Theodore Prodromos, Rodanthe and Dosikles, p. 73, and for Eustathios [= Eumathios] Makrembolites, Hysmine and Hysminias, p. 80. See also Jouanno, ‘Les Barbares’, and ‘A Byzantine novelist staging the ancient Greek world: Presence, form, and function of antiquity in Makrembolites’ Hysmine and Hysminias’, in Kaklamanis, S. and Paschalis, M. (ed.), Ή πρόσληψη της άρχαιότηνχς στο βυζαντινο καί νεοελλψικο μοθιστόρημα (Athens 2005) 17–29 Google Scholar.

56 For instance, in the fragmentary Aristandros and Kallithea, by Manasses, we find φιλελληνες equated with virtue, and opposed to θυμοβάρβαρον. See Mazal, O., Der Roman des Konstantinos Manasses. Überlieferung, Rekonstruktion, Textausgabe der Fragmente (Vienna 1967)Google Scholar, Fr. 30.11; cf. the passage from Tornikes cited above.

57 Magdalino, ‘Hellenism’, 18.