Butrint, on the southwest coast of Albania, has been subject to excavation since 1928, initiated and carried out by the Italian Archaeological Mission until 1940, and then from the late 1950s by the Albanian Institute of Archaeology. In the last fifteen years, under the direction of the Butrint Foundation, the Albanian Institute of Archaeology and the University of East Anglia, extensive excavations have taken place in the site. Recent excavations in the western stretch of the circuit wall in the Lower City of Butrint, known as the Western Defences, have revealed new and important evidence especially for early–mid Byzantine Butrint. These excavations are the focus of this paper which aims to cast more light on the chronology and history of the Western Defences in particular and that of Butrint in general. The first part of the paper discusses the evidence concerning the Western Defences’ late antique construction and its occupation up to the seventh century. The second part deals in turn with succeeding phases of occupation (from eighth to fifteenth century) and offers a new interpretation related to mid Byzantine Butrint.

In a letter to his friend lasites (Sathas 171), Michael Psellos proposes to give the letter itself in exchange for a horse. Exploiting the polysemy of alogon and logos in Greek, Psellos is able to frame this playful representation of a gift exchange in a philosophical opposition between materiality and reason. This allows him to present his intellectual competences as an exclusive kind of cultural capital that deserves material support from other members of society.

An important aspect of the social and administrative transformations resulting from the establishment of Western feudal lordships and colonial regimes in Byzantium and the Eastern Mediterranean was the emergence of a multilingual literacy in the contact zones between foreign elites and the native population. This article examines these phenomena with respect to the royal chancery of the Lusignan kingdom of Cyprus from the late twelfth until the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is argued that the Frankish ruling class of the island opted for a parallel use of Latin and Byzantine chancery practices without fusing them into hybrid mixtures. The Lusignan lords adopted Byzantine titles, symbols of authority and modes of expression for legal transactions with Greek subjects and the local tax system. Another area in which the heritage of the imperial chancery helped express new forms of hegemonial self-representation was the kingdom’s diplomatic relations with non-Frankish rulers.

The reception of the Corona Preciosa (Venice 1527), the first dictionary of vernacularGreek, by Western European scholars (16th–18th centuries) is described. The role of Stefano da Sabbio, Pietro Borrani and Dimitrios Zinos in the production of the Corona is investigated.

A reconstruction of the long journey to the Glykys printing house in Venice undertaken by the Greek translations of two works by Paolo Segneri shows that these translations were part of one of the largest such translation projects on Ottoman territory. Our research investigates the factors which led to and influenced these translations of Roman Catholic works on the remote island of Patmos as well as their later publication, and demonstrates the major role of nexuses between St John’s monastery and the Vatican on the one hand, and with certain Ottoman dignitaries of Greek nationality and Wallachian princes on the other.

An analysis of Georgios Vizyenos’ story ‘The Consequences of the Old Story’ reveals considerable influences from the work of Plato, especially from the Phaedrus. These pertain both to some basic motifs governing its plot and to some structural aspects of the work. The central theme of the three types of madness (erotic, divinatory and poetic) pervades both works, but there are also questions concerning the characteristics of writing and the role of authorial presence (and absence), which seem to establish a significant relation between them.

During the German occupation (1941–4), the once multicultural city of Thessaloniki underwent an unprecedented decline in population, at the same time experiencing a degradation of its morals and pre-war social values with the flourishing of brothels supplying sexual services to the occupying forces. Post-war Thessaloniki, however, presented a totally different picture. Within the framework of improving the quality of society, prostitution came to be regarded as a leftover from past barbarian times that not only threatened the moral and ethical standards of society but even put the very existence of the Greek race in jeopardy. A campaign of moral cleansing was introduced, which was based on repressive measures rather than on any meaningful societal reform. Hence, the ‘priestesses of love’ became scapegoats for those in power who envisaged the creation of a modern, virtuous city by closing down its brothels; a city that wanted to sever all ties with its past merely by eradicating rather than by solving its problems and ethical dilemmas.