This paper contains a discussion of religious experience from the perspective of sociological and psychoanalytic theory by applying it to a selection of Late Antique texts. Inscriptions and certain hagiographic texts that contain personal statements are particularly important, because they show less redactional and stylistic manipulation than theologically inspired works like Augustine’s Confessions and Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History. The most common types of religious experience were dream- and waking-visions of divine and daemonic beings, Christian martyrs and recently deceased family members. The paper concludes that there is a clear correspondence between the descriptions given in Late Antique texts and the types of phenomena addressed in psychoanalytic theory and practice, and that this discipline can add a new dimension to our understanding of religious behaviour.

Several Byzantine sources describe the emperor Zeno as suffering from epilepsy, which, although assigned to natural causes in Greek humoral medicine, was more widely explained in terms of demonic possession. The charge of epilepsy originated with the north Syrian historian Eustathius and comprised an extremist Chalcedonian attempt to discredit the ruler, probably for promulgation of the Henoticon in 482. It is ignored or contradicted by other Chalcedonian writers and by all Monophysite sources. The origins and growth of the legend affirm once again the great influence of confessional discord on historical perceptions; they also illustrate how a single author’s baseless polemic can eventually assume the form of an apparently secure and widely attested affirmation of simple fact, and highlight the crucial role of north Syria in producing the literature upon which modern scholarship on late antiquity must rely.

Ignatios, though well known as an author, has remained a mysterious figure in Byzantine history whose details of life have only sporadically emerged from the ‘Dark Age’. On the basis of recent prosopographical research, the article tries to slightly rearrange the pieces of information and arrives at the following career of Ignatios: born 785-790, disciple at the patriarchal school, member of the patriarchal clergy, kept his post in 815, skeuophylax of the Hagia Sophia, metropolitan bishop of Nicaea, deposed in 843, repentant cleric, writer, teacher and private scholar with still considerable influence, died in 847 or shortly after. This reconstruction may not solve the problem beyond any reasonable doubt, but it prepares the ground for further investigation.

This article surveys the reputation of the emperor Basil II as the Bulgar-slayer from the twentieth to the eleventh century. Basil featured in a number of historical and literary works at the time of the ‘Macedonian Struggle’ (1904-8). In the nineteenth century Basil was considered a key historical figure by those seeking to establish hellenic continuity: he had a particular connection with both Athens and Constantinople, the two poles of hellenism. Basil was largely ignored during the Tourkokratia, but for four centuries before 1453 he was considered an exemplary ruler. Stories of Basil’s martial prowess, particularly against the Bulgarians, circulated widely after his death in 1025. However, he was not called Voulgaroktonos until Byzantine struggles with Bulgaria recommenced, more than 150 years later.

The following article discusses the rhetoric of Michael Psellos in light of his construction of a rhetorical gender. Focusing on one of his letters (to Ioannes Doukas, Sathas 72) where Psellos declares that he is female, the article proceeds to identify his textual source as Synesios of Kyrene (ca. 370-413). The comparison of text and intertext shows that, while Synesios uses femininity as a rhetorical motif, Psellos elevates it to a tool of a rhetorical self-identification defined by the specific social context of the eleventh century.

This paper discusses the historical significance of goblets, here identified as chalices, which were found in late Byzantine graves. Comparable goblets are known from other Byzantine burials, but they are absent from the funerary record prior to the thirteenth century. The practice of placing chalices in graves is found in the Latin West, however, where it was restricted to clergy. This paper proposes that the custom of funerary chalices was adopted by Byzantine clergy in emulation of their Latin counterparts, but that it was assimilated into existing Orthodox practice to meet specific hierarchical and eschatological needs.

This article will argue that far from being an inveterate appeaser, Henderson showed in Constantinople that he could be an advocate of tough measures. And that in Cairo, contrary to his reputation, he was a Foreign Office loyalist while his superior, George Lloyd, was critical of official policy. Nevertheless, Henderson’s early career does offer useful insights into why, once posted to Germany in 1937, he became an advocate of accommodation. In Yugoslavia, in particular, he showed a willingness to work with authoritarian leaders and a sympathy for them, which helped him to secure the Berlin appointment.

The sources of inspiration concerning the poems of C.P. Cavafy are not known in their whole scope. In the following pages some eight poems of the Alexandrian poet are discussed, the sources of which were either completely unknown or only partly recognized. The cases in question do not exhaust this topic.

The publication of an English translation of the 7th-century Miracles of St. Artemios, with facing Greek text and accompanying commentary, is most welcome, and will undoubtedly invite further discussion of the various points of interest raised by this text. Here I wish to focus on the physical appearance of St. Artemios, in particular his alleged appearance as a deacon in miracle 32. In this miracle, a friend tells a certain Menas how St. Artemius had appeared to him as he slept in the Church of St. John the Baptist and had cured his hernia. The text, and recent translation, run:

The first sentence of Bitter Lemons, Lawrence Durrell’s book about Cyprus, has always intrigued me for the multi-layered contradictions that it contains. There is the internal contradiction within the sentence itself — how can a work which claims to be a ‘study of the moods and atmospheres of Cyprus during the troubled years of 1953-6’ not be a ‘political book’? Don’t we immediately think of political troubles when we read ‘the troubled years 1953-6,’ after all, what else makes those years troubled? There is the contradiction between the first sentence and the rest of the book, for a major part of Bitter Lemons, indeed the final third, directly addresses the political situation on Cyprus.

The purpose of this note is to address some of the criticisms made by Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Dionysis Goutsos in their review of our Greek: a comprehensive grammar of the modern language in BMGS 23 (1999), pp. 337-40. We consider it necessary to clarify a number of issues because some of the points raised in the review are either unsubstantiated or inappropriate, stemming as they apparently do from the reviewers’ misunderstanding of our aims. We will examine the larger issues first.

In mid July 541 a plague epidemic broke out in the small city of Pelusium at the mouth of the Nile and was subsequently disseminated to the entire Mediterranean basin and even as far as Yemen in the South and Finland in the North. It constitutes the first historically recorded certain appearance of true plague. Contemporary populations witnessed what was to be the beginning of a series of outbreaks that ravaged the Mediterranean world until 750. This cycle of epidemics has been conventionally termed Justinianic Plague. In this study the most important works devoted to this series of events will be critically surveyed with the goal of establishing the status of research on this topic so far, and the possible questions that need to be addressed in the future.