The presentation of portraits of emperors and saints in Byzantine art can be compared to theories of physiognomy and logic put forward by Aristotle and his Byzantine followers. Similar observations have been made about the portal sculptures of High Gothic cathedrals, but although the ordering of images in the two cases reflected similar patterns of thought, the particular forms of the portraits differed in each milieu, responding to a different relationship between images and the faithful in each society.

The monumental rock-cut façades of the tenth to eleventh century-mansions – so-called courtyard complexes – in Cappadocia, central Turkey, are rare examples of secular Byzantine architecture. While these symmetrically designed façades adorned with superimposed arches differ from the simpler ones (both carved and built) in the region, they bear striking similarities to others from the broader Mediterranean basin. This article offers new insights into the discussion on the uniqueness of the rock-cut façades of courtyard complexes and reconsiders the raison d’être of this ‘false’ monumentality in the rural setting of Byzantine Cappadocia.

This article is a first attempt to approach the figure of the storyteller in three types of early Byzantine tale collections (fourth–seventh centuries): collective biography, miracle collection, and collection of edifying tales. Our approach draws significantly on Walter Benjamin's discussion of the storyteller and Monica Fludernik's work on conversational storytelling. Our analysis has a twofold purpose: first, to revise the impression that the storyteller is a canonical force that possesses the same characteristics in every single tale; second, to suggest that the storyteller is an inherent feature of short hagiographical narratives.

This article presents 19 lead seals from the Museum of Bergama (ancient Pergamon), dating from the early eighth to the early twelfth century. We offer a descriptive catalogue of these Middle and Late Byzantine seals preserved in a western Turkish museum. The owners of these seals were primarily ecclesiastical, legal or military dignitaries who were probably active in Pergamon, in southwestern Mysia, Aeolis or Lydia. The catalogue is followed by an appendix on a Byzantine magical amulet.

For Byzantines, catanyctic poetry offered a rich source of models for self-representation. In this paper I analyse the poetic strategies and literary motifs through which Nikephoros Ouranos (tenth–eleventh century) shaped the self in his catanyctic alphabet. In particular, I will focus on the intertextual strategies employed by Ouranos in order to model the catanyctic self, such as the identification with scriptural sinners, and the presence of biblical metaphors.

Many theories have been proposed to explain the success of the Theban silk industry from the twelfth century onward. To contribute to this discussion in the context of recent research developments, this article explores the Theban metropolitan's hypothetical contribution to the industry through the case study of John Kaloktenes, who initiated a series of projects during his tenure (before 1166–c.1190). The analysis of three of these projects suggests that they might have been designed to support the industry. Thus, this article proposes the working hypothesis that Thebes's industrial success might have benefited substantially from the local metropolitan's active promotion.

One of the defining features of the Byzantine historiographical tradition is the dominant narrative roles played by emperors and, in the later period, by Ottoman sultans. This article explores this characteristic feature of the tradition through comparative analysis of the structuring roles occupied by such characters in the fifteenth-century History of Doukas and the protagonistic role of the Florentine people in the contemporary History of the Florentine People by Leonardo Bruni. Transhistorical comparison, organized around two case studies, serves to denaturalize the roles played by emperors and sultans in both Byzantine and modern historiography.

This article assembles the evidence for the presence of Greek refugees in early modern Scotland. These refugees came in two distinct waves: one in the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and another in the seventeenth century. In both periods, inter-regional religious networks brought Greeks to Scotland: in the first phase, these were structured around the church institutions of the Latin West; in the second, they followed ecumenical interest in Protestant Northern Europe. The wanderers were mostly clergymen. This movement of refugees, alongside the capture of Scots by North African corsairs, linked Scotland with the distant Ottoman world.

The article provides a critical edition of a hitherto unedited post-Byzantine prophecy that may be called the Vaticinium de restitutione Constantinopoleos. The text comes down in two recensions, which are contained in twelve manuscripts. The edition is supplemented with an English translation and a commentary that discusses the title, date of composition, content, main sources, and significance of the text. It is argued that the prophecy was originally composed in the early 1570s in response to the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus. Furthermore, it is shown that the motif of a saviour-emperor, which is central to the prophecy, responds to developments in sixteenth-century Mediterranean apocalypticism.

‘His pockets were always full of treasures. What marvellous things you could find in them! Nails, marbles, pebbles, sponges, twine, maybe a chewed piece of gum, and always that crystal triangle piece from the church chandelier that would shine brilliantly when held up to the sun.’ With these words, Penelope Delta, the famous children's writer and sister of Antonis Benakis, painted a portrait of her brother as a child in her much-loved book Trelantonis (Crazy Antonis). In this book, dedicated to the childhood adventures of the Benaki family siblings, and set in the cosmopolitan yet conservative colonial environment of the upper middle-class Greeks of late nineteenth-century Alexandria, Antonis was always the protagonist. (Fig. 1)

This article examines the controversy over Ancient Greek [AG] as a school subject, a controversy that re-emerged in 2016, when SYRIZA was in power. The issue is ideologically charged: classical antiquity has played a fundamental role in shaping modern Greek ethnic identity. The arguments for and against teaching AG as a school subject are analysed and explained in relation to the ideological preferences, strategies and interests of the involved agents. The polarization of the arguments is interpreted within the broader context of the financial crisis, as an attempt by the agents involved to reinforce the left/right divide, which was significantly blurred after the adoption of austerity policies by both the self-proclaimed leftist SYRIZA and the conservative New Democracy parties.

This article explores the movie Τέλος εποχής (End of an Era) by Antonis Kokkinos (1994), a key film in the regeneration of Greek cinema in the mid-late 1990s. The film constitutes a form of public history construing and problematizing relations between the images and the historical past, exploring the dictatorship (1967–74) through the consumer-oriented values of the 1990s. By scrutinizing historical (dis)continuities (similarities, differences, and transformations in consumer politics and sexuality in particular) between the dictatorship and the 1990s, the article argues that, focusing on 1960s youth, End of an Era underplayed the dictatorship's authoritarianism and (re)defined politics through the availability (or not) of consumer choices, expressing the relaxed ideological climate of the 1990s.

This study explores the identity dynamics of the Arabic-speaking Greek Orthodox community of the Hatay province of Turkey. Citizens of Turkey, members of the Greek Orthodox church and Arabic speakers, members of this small but historic community stood at the crossroads of three nationalisms: Greek, Syrian and Turkish. Following the urbanization waves that swept through the Turkish countryside since the 1950s, thousands of Hatay Greek Orthodox moved to Istanbul and were given the chance to integrate with the Greek minority there. The case of the Hatay Greek Orthodox community points to the resilience of millet-based identities, more than a century after the demise of the Ottoman Empire.

Ancient Greek poets such as Alcaeus and Sappho, and later Crinagoras, took on through Elytis’ poetry a new literary significance, thanks to his personal reconstruction of fragments and the epigram respectively.

The technique of reconstruction from fragments or restoring epigrams is not unconnected with the type of so-called ‘prismatic expression’ used by Elytis in the creation of his own poetry: a prism's polyhedral and crystalline form allows for the coexistence of facets significant in themselves, but which, when arranged in a new composition, create a new and harmonious entity.