The interpretation of the measurements given in Byzantine military manuals from the sixth to the tenth centuries has been a problematic matter. If the main conclusions of currently accepted scholarship are applied, an appearance is created of equipment much too large to be usable. When the measurements are compared to equipment which practical experience and comparable history show to be functional, it can be seen that as the middle Byzantine period progressed units of measurement were devalued. The sources also reveal the processes whereby military lore was transmitted, including accidental corruption and deliberate revision.

Although one of the founding fathers of Constantinopolitan monasticism, the Syrian ascetic Dius is hardly ever mentioned in secondary literature. The reason for this unfavourable treatment lies in the scarcity of information available for this saint. His Late Antique Life is lost and can only be studied in Middle Byzantine adaptations, three canones, two synaxaria and an unedited encomium. This article offers a discussion of Dius’ biography, the development of his cult and his hagiographical dossier on the basis of the surviving material.

The status of Digenes Akrites as hero needs to be reconsidered. For this purpose, a comparison with his father can serve as a starting-point. Father and son are compared in two contexts: the family and the married couple. The differences between them reveal a hero who is not uncontroversial when it comes to family ties: Digenes isolates himself from his family and fails his wife with regard to faithfulness, trust and inseparability. Consequently, he is punished with childlessness. It is only when the oppositions between father and son are considered to be instances of dramatic irony that their true meaning is revealed.

Byzantine vernacular literature, much of it in verse, has long been seen as material for Quellenforschung into the historical or social conditions of its time. Following the precepts for literary history set down by such pioneers of Byzantine studies as Karl Krumbacher, the study of these texts has concentrated on authors rather than on the texts themselves as autonomous objects of historical study, whose form and content should guide our understanding of their original intention and reception by Byzantine audiences. The ‘Poem from Prison’ by Michael Glykas illustrates both the shortcomings of the focus on authors and the alternative potential for renewed engagement with Byzantine texts as objects of imagination and creativity.

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.

This article argues that Xenopoulos’ first extended novel, Nikolas Sigalos (1890), deserves to be analysed in greater detail than has been the case to date. The basis for this claim is two-fold: against the background of a nuanced vision of the nature of naturalism, Nikolas Sigalos proves to be a genuine offspring of this European literary movement, featuring remarkable similarities with the poetics of Emile Zola, whereas a profound critical analysis using the same literary model points to a number of structural shortcomings which exemplify the author’s subsequent negative stance towards his first-fruits. The methodology for conducting the proper textual analysis consists of such narratological concepts as story-line, description, semantic content, narrator and focalization.