On Powers, an antiquarian treatise with a political agenda by John Lydus, an erudite and imperial official in the late fifth and early sixth century, has been interpreted as either a panegyric to the emperor or as a work that was critical not only of Justinian’s rule but of monarchy in general. By reexamining it within the broader context of Byzantine political philosophy, this article proposes to see On Powers as a display of a traditional meritorious approach to the emperor, who was judged by measuring his personal and political qualities against the ideal image of the ruler.

This article argues that in the last years of his reign Constantine V came to reject the intercession of saints, despite the fact that the Council of Hieria, which he himself had convened only a decade earlier, had explicitly anathematised those who held such a view. Moreover, it makes the case that the emperor participated in a broad religious discourse that began in the sixth century and continued into the ninth century, both among the Chalcedonians of Byzantium and the Levant and among the Nestorians of the East.

This article puts in their context three eleventh-century texts from the famous anthology of poetry in Marcianus Gr. 524. The first is an epigram on the portrait of Monomachos, which was commissioned by the ‘Lombards’. It is suggested here that Argyros Meles is in fact the instigator of the creation of the portrait and its accompanying epigram. The second text is a poem addressed to Michael Keroularios on behalf of the hieromonk Lazaros when he was granted the rank of chartoularios of the Great Church. The meaning of a mysterious reference to ‘Petra’ is discussed in detail. The third text is an epigram on the triklinos of Monomachos at the Mangana complex.

Since its rise in the mid-1990s, ecocriticism, the study of the depiction of the built and natural environments in literature, has been deeply engaged with contemporary political and social issues surrounding anthropogenic ecological degradation and climate change. Such an ideological outlook, however, limits the application of the discourse in the case of medieval literature, which lacks such contemporary resonance. Ecocritical and ecofeminist analyses of the three witches with power over the environment in the Byzantine romances and their western analogues will nevertheless demonstrate the connection between nature control, femininity and patriarchal oppression and, as importantly, offer a theoretical framework for the application of an apolitical ecocriticism to Byzantine (and medieval) literature.

The story that gave the Osmanlis a distant Comnenian origin emerges in sixteenth-century Italian and Greek histories, inspired by the twelfth-century accounts of the renegade prince John Komnenos, as related by Niketas Choniates Its invention and propagation might have served the legitimacy of Ottoman rule, in which case, it was addressed to gulams and converts rather than to the Christian subjects of the sultans. It can also be interpreted as fitting the ideals and the imaginations of highly positioned converts in the Ottoman service, who previously belonged to the Byzantine and Balkan aristocracies.

With their insalubrious social connotations, low-brow content and Ottoman musical features, rebetika songs appear unlikely candidates for connection with the revered culture of ancient Greece. Yet this seemingly sacrilegious nexus has repeatedly been contrived by exponents of the genre and by commentators, unlettered and educated alike. It has also exercised the ingenuity of literati, translators, stage directors and graphic artists. The examples surveyed in this article, whether earnest or whimsical, plausible or manifestly deluded, reflect both evolving perceptions of the genre and broader issues of Greek cultural politics. They further exemplify informal mechanisms for disseminating antiquarian knowledge – and misinformation.

Vasilaros (1899-1979), a moderately educated Greek shadow-theatre puppeteer, adapted popular melodramas and novels with strong bourgeois morality, such as Oι δύο λοχίοα in 1931, H άγνωστος in 1937, At δύο ορφαναί in 1944, and Οι άθλκη in 1955. The adaptations indicate that by the mid-1930s, the borderline between the traditional oral art of shadow theatre and mainstream culture had become considerably blurred. This article explores the convergence of these two cultures in terms of dramatic structure and ideology.

In 1960, following a bitter struggle, the British colonial power, agreed to concede a (qualified) independence to Cyprus. As the price of such independence, however, the UK government insisted on retaining sovereignty in perpetuity over two sovereign base areas, Dhekelia and Akrotiri, the largest Royal Air Force base outside the United Kingdom. These bases cover three per cent of the land area of the island. Such retention of control over part of a former colonial territory is unique in the history of British decolonization and has manifest consequences for the people of Cyprus.