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.

The Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai is a dossier of materials composed throughout the eighth century by a variety of authors. These materials are unified by their concern with the statues of Constantinople and the prophecies they are understood to embody. The authors are unified by their claim to descent from old Constantinopolitan families and their xenophobic opposition to arrivistes in the imperial service. Thus the Parastaseis asserts a form of knowledge unique to the well-born and essential to the management of the empire. It is an artefact of aristocratic particularism in reaction to the centralizing efforts of the eighth-century emperors.

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.

In 2005, Tia Kolbaba published an article in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies entitled ‘On the closing of the churches and the rebaptism of Latins: Greek perfidy or Latin slander?’ In it she argued that reports of Greek closure of Latin churches and rebaptism of Latins in the early 1050s were fabricated. This is in line with a strand of scholarship which plays down the provocative aspects of Greek activity in precipitating the crisis of 1054. This paper argues against that strand of scholarship, insisting instead that the sources contain sufficient evidence to indicate that Greek behaviour can indeed be interpreted as provocative.

J. R. Ryder’s analysis of the events of 1054 and of Greek rebaptism of Latins in the Middle Ages makes several points about my article of 2005 in this journal. I am grateful to the editors for this chance to respond. I have chosen to respond to four issues that are crucial to my article and to Ryder’s critique:

1. 1. Ryder maintains that my account of the events of 1053–1054 follows a tradition of playing down ‘the provocative aspects of Greek activity’.

2. 2. Ryder is worried that my arguments might be taken as conclusive in some broad way in spite of my emphasis on limited and specific situations.

3. 3. Ryder emphasizes that the sources surrounding the events of 1054 need more attention – perhaps some re-editing, certainly some re-reading. With regard to my article, this seems primarily to mean that my conclusions are premature, given the state of the evidence.

4. 4. Ryder points out various inconsistencies in my arguments about rebaptism of Latins.

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.

Narratives on the birth of the Ottoman city of Bursa, the first capital of the Ottomans, known to the Byzantines as Prousa, highlight its early Ottoman identity. Although Bursa represents one of the richest legacies of early Ottoman architecture, the city’s urban fabric has suffered from several fires and earthquakes that resulted in heavy restorations and remodellings. The first aim of this paper is to discuss the textual and visual evidence for the built environment in the early fourteenth century and, second, to offer commentary on the Ottoman attitude toward Byzantine architecture in an effort to unearth the Byzantine substrata of Ottoman Bursa. In the service of the latter goal, this article debunks the Ottoman-centric views. With the aid of drawings of Bursa’s upper city that predate the 1855 earthquake we may begin to visualize a city far less uniform in character, in which the Byzantine legacy both endured and informed the construction and urban design practices of the ascendant Ottomans.

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.

In this article, the five poems with the word ‘Μέρες’ in their titles are discussed, and possible explanations for the dates in the titles suggested. The poems were written and revised between 1909 and 1932, but it is argued here that their initial composition dates are closer together than previously thought. The article examines revisions to the five poems; their positions, where applicable, in Cavafy’s thematic collections, and the dates in their titles in relation to events in the poet’s life and other writings from the same period. A history of composition and publication, including an account of all extant published revisions, is provided and the implications of this kind of bibliographical and biographical approach are discussed.

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.

In recent years, the trauma concept has been applied to fiction in several literary studies. This article discusses the narrative mediation of traumatic experiences in selected Civil War novels, using narratological tools and focusing on the complex relationship between trauma, memory and narration. The authors use innovative narrative and representational strategies, such as a disrupted chronological order or intertextual references, to illustrate the paradoxical character of remembering and narrating trauma. These works highlight diverse aspects of the Greek Civil War, depart from conventional narrative modes and share common characteristics with so-called ‘trauma fiction’.

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.