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Byzantine literature

Byzantine literature is the Greek literature of the Middle Ages, whether written in the Byzantine Empire or outside its borders. It was marked by a linguistic diglossy; two distinct forms of Byzantine Greek were used, a scholarly dialect based on Attic Greek, and a vernacular based on Koine Greek. Most scholars consider 'literature' to include all medieval Greek texts, but some define it with specific constraints. Byzantine literature is the successor to Ancient Greek literature and forms the basis of Modern Greek literature, although it overlaps with both periods.

The tradition saw the competing influences of Hellenism, Christianity, and earlier in the empire's history, Paganism. There was a general flourishing of gnomai, hagiography, sermons, and particularly historiography, which became less individual-focused. Poetry was often limited to musical hymnal forms, or the more niche epigram tradition, while ancient dramas and epics became obsolete. The influential romantic epic Digenes Akritas is a major exception.

Until recent scholarship from Alexander Kazhdan, Simon Franklin and others, Byzantine literature was held in low regard by academia. It was previously considered either an inferior variant of Ancient Greek or biblical literature, or only important for its contributions to Modern Greek literature.

Characteristics
Many of the classical Greek genres, such as drama and choral lyric poetry, had been obsolete by late antiquity, and all medieval literature in the Greek language was written in an archaizing style, which imitated the writers of ancient Greece. This practice was perpetuated by a long-established system of Greek education where rhetoric was a leading subject. A typical product of this Byzantine education was the Greek Church Fathers, who shared the literary values of their pagan contemporaries. Consequently, the vast Christian literature of the 3rd to 6th centuries established a synthesis of Hellenic and Christian thought. As a result, Byzantine literature was largely written in a style of Atticistic Greek, far removed from the popular Medieval Greek that was spoken by all classes of Byzantine society in their everyday lives. In addition, this literary style was also removed from the Koine Greek language of the New Testament, reaching back to Homer and the writers of ancient Athens.

In this manner, the culture of the Byzantine Empire was marked for over 1000 years by a diglossy between two different forms of the same language, which were used for different purposes. However, the relations between the "high" and "low" forms of Greek changed over the centuries. The prestige of the Attic literature remained undiminished until the 7th century AD, but in the following two centuries when the existence of the Byzantine Empire was threatened, city life and education declined, and along with them the use of the classicizing language and style. The political recovery of the 9th century instigated a literary revival, in which a conscious attempt was made to recreate the Hellenic-Christian literary culture of late antiquity. Simple or popular Greek was avoided in literary use and many of the early saints' lives were rewritten in an archaizing style. By the 12th century the cultural confidence of the Byzantine Greeks led them to develop new literary genres, such as romantic fiction, in which adventure and love are the main elements. Satire made occasional use of elements from spoken Greek. The period from the Fourth Crusade to the Fall of Constantinople saw a vigorous revival of imitative classicizing literature, as the Greeks sought to assert their cultural superiority over the militarily more powerful West. At the same time there was the beginning of a flourishing literature in an approximation to the vernacular Modern Greek. However the vernacular literature was limited to poetic romances and popular devotional writing. All serious literature continued to make use of the archaizing language of learned Greek tradition.

Byzantine literature has two sources: Classical Greek and Orthodox Christian tradition. Each of those sources provided a series of models and references for the Byzantine writer and his readers. In occasion, both sources were referred to side by side, for example when emperor Alexius Comnenus justified his actions of seizing church property to pay his soldiers by referring to the earlier examples of Pericles and the biblical king David.

Greek
The oldest of these three civilizations is the Greek, centered not in Athens but in Alexandria and Hellenistic civilization. Alexandria through this period is the center of both Atticizing scholarship and of Graeco-Judaic social life, looking towards Athens as well as towards Jerusalem. This intellectual dualism between the culture of scholars and that of the people permeates the Byzantine period. Even Hellenistic literature exhibits two distinct tendencies, one rationalistic and scholarly, the other romantic and popular: the former originated in the schools of the Alexandrian sophists and culminated in the rhetorical romance, the latter rooted in the idyllic tendency of Theocritus and culminated in the idyllic novel. Both tendencies persisted in Byzantium, but the first, as the one officially recognized, retained predominance and was not driven from the field until the fall of the empire. The reactionary linguistic movement known as Atticism supported and enforced this scholarly tendency. Atticism prevailed from the 2nd century BC onward, controlling all subsequent Greek culture, so that the living form of the Greek language was obscured and only occasionally found expression in private documents and popular literature.

Roman
Alexandria, the intellectual center, is balanced by Rome, the center of government. When the unified Roman Empire split into West and East, it was in the latter half, where the Byzantine state entered history; its citizens were still known as Romans (Rhomaioi), its capital, Constantinople, as New Rome. Its laws were Roman; so were its government, its army, and its official class, and at first also its language and its private and public life. The organization of the state was very similar to that of the Roman imperial period, including its hierarchy and bureaucratic elite.

Christian
It was in Alexandria that Graeco-Oriental Christianity had its birth. There the Septuagint translation had been made; there that that fusion of Greek philosophy and Jewish religion took place which culminated in Philo; there flourished the mystic speculative Neoplatonism associated with Plotinus and Porphyry. At Alexandria the great Greek ecclesiastical writers worked alongside pagan rhetoricians and philosophers; several were born here, e.g. Origen, Athanasius, and his opponent Arius, also Cyril and Synesius. On Egyptian soil monasticism began and thrived. After Alexandria, Antioch held great prestige, where a school of Christian commentators flourished under St. John Chrysostom and where later arose the Christian universal chronicles. In surrounding Syria, we find the germs of Greek ecclesiastical poetry, while from neighboring Palestine came St. John of Damascus, one of the Greek Fathers.

Oriental
Greek Christianity had of necessity a pronounced Oriental character; Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria are the real birthplaces of the Graeco-Oriental church and Byzantine civilization in general. Egypt and Syria, with Asia Minor, became for the autochthonous Greek civilization a place where hundreds of flourishing cities sprang into existence, where energies confined or crippled in the impoverished homeland found release; not only did these cities surpass in material wealth the mother country, but soon also cultivated the highest goods of the intellect (Krumbacher). Under such circumstances it is not strange that about nine-tenths of all the Byzantine authors of the first eight centuries were natives of Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor.

Genres
The following account classifies Byzantine literature into five groups. The first three include representatives of those kinds of literature which continued the ancient traditions: historians and chroniclers, encyclopedists and essayists, and writers of secular poetry. The other two include new literary genres, ecclesiastical and theological literature, and popular poetry.

Historians and annalists
The two groups of secular prose literature show clearly the dual character of Byzantine intellectual life in its social, religious, and linguistic aspects. From this point of view historical and annalistic literature supplement each other; the former is aristocratic and secular, the latter ecclesiastical and monastic; the former is classical, the latter popular. The works of the historians belong to scholarly literature, those of the annalists (or chroniclers) to the literature of the people. The former are carefully elaborated, the latter give only raw material, the former confine themselves to the description of the present and the most recent past, and thus have rather the character of contemporary records; the latter cover the whole history of the world as known to the Middle Ages. The former are therefore the more valuable for political history; the latter for the history of civilization.

Historians
Classical literary tradition set the standard for Byzantine historians in their grasp of the aims of history, the manner of handling their subjects, and in style of composition. Their works are thoroughly concrete and objective in character, without passion, and even without enthusiasm. Ardent patriotism and personal convictions are rarely evident. They are diplomatic historians, expert in the use of historical sources and in the polished tact called for by their social position; they are not cIoset-scholars, ignorant of the world, but men who stood out in public life: jurists like Procopius, Agathias, Evagrius, Michael Attaliates, statesmen like Joannes Cinnamus, Nicetas Acominatus, Georgius Pachymeres, Laonicus Chalcondyles; generals and diplomats like Nicephorus Bryennius the Younger, George Acropolites, Georgius Phrantzes; and even crowned heads, like Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Anna Comnena, John VI Cantacuzene, and others. The Byzantine historians thus represent not only the social but also the intellectual flower of their time, resembling in this their Greek predecessors, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius, who became their guides and models. Sometimes a Byzantine chooses a classic writer to imitate in method and style. The majority, however, took as models several authors, a custom which gave rise to a peculiar mosaic style, quite characteristic of the Byzantines. While often the result of a real community of feeling, it effectively prevented development of an individual style.

The Atticist influence on Byzantine literature continued through later centuries. Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger and Joannes Cinnamus, in the 11th and 12th centuries, show the influence of Xenophon in their writing; 13th-century Nicephorus Gregoras took Plato as his model; and Leo Diaconus and Georgius Pachymeres emulated Homer.

While Byzantine historians were mostly dependent on foreign models, and seem to form a continuous series in which each succeeds the last, they do not blend into a uniform whole. Most of the historians come in either the period embracing the 6th and 7th centuries during the reigns of the East-Roman emperors, or that extending from the 11th to the 15th century under the Comneni and the Palaeologi. At its zenith under the Macedonian dynasty (the 9th and 10th centuries) the Byzantine world produced great heroes, but no great historians, excepting the solitary figure of the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus.

The first period is dominated by Procopius because of his subject matter and his literary importance. Typically Byzantine, his Anekdota depreciates Emperor Justinian I as emphatically as his Peri Ktismaton apotheosizes him. In literature and history though, he follows classical models, as is evident in the precision and lucidity of his narrative acquired from Thucydides, and in the reliability of his information, qualities of special merit in the historian. Procopius and to a great degree his successor Agathias remain the models of descriptive style as late as the 11th century. Procopius is the first representative of the ornate Byzantine style in literature and in this is surpassed only by Theophylaktos Simokattes in the 7th century. Despite their unclassical form, however, they approach the ancients in their freedom from ecclesiastical and dogmatic tendencies.

Between the historical writings of the first period and those of the second, there is an isolated series of works which in matter and form offer a strong contrast to both the aforesaid groups. These are the works under the name of the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (10th century), dealing respectively with the administration of the empire, its political division, and the ceremonies of the Byzantine Court. They treat of the internal conditions of the empire, and the first and third are distinguished by their use of a popular tongue. The first is an important source of ethnological information, while the last is an interesting contribution to the history of civilization.

The second group of historians present a classical eclecticism veiling an unclassical partisanship and theological fanaticism. Revelling in classical forms, the historians of the period of the Comneni and Palaeologi were devoid of the classical spirit. While many had stronger, more sympathetic personalities than the school of Procopius, the very vigor of these individuals and their close ties to the imperial government served to hamper their objectivity, producing subjective, partisan works. Thus the "Alexiad", the pedantic work of Princess Anna Comnena, glorifies her father Alexius and the imperial reorganization he began; the historical work of her husband, Nicephorus Bryennius, describes the internal conflicts that accompanied the rise of the Comneni in the form of a family chronicle (late 11th century); John VI Cantacuzene self-complacently narrates his own achievements (14th century). This group exhibits striking antitheses both personal and objective. Beside Cinnamus, who honestly hated everything Western, stand the broad-minded Nicetas Acominatus (12th century) and the conciliatory but dignified Georgius Acropolites (13th century); beside the theological polemicist Pachymeres (13th century), stands the man of the world, Nicephorus Gregoras (14th century), well versed in philosophy and the classics. Though subjective in matters of internal Byzantine history, these and others of this period are trustworthy in their accounts of external events, and especially valuable as sources for the first appearance of the Slavs and Turks.

Chroniclers
Unlike the historical works, Byzantine chronicles were intended for the general public; hence the difference in their origin, development, and diffusion, as well as in their character, method, and style. While the roots of the chronicle have not yet been satisfactorily traced, their comparatively late appearance (6th century) and total remove from Hellenistic tradition places their origins as fairly recent. The chronicle literature is originally foreign to Greek civilization, the first of which was composed by uneducated Syrians. Its presumable prototype, the "Chronography" of Sextus Julius Africanus, points to an Oriental Christian source. Unconnected with persons of distinction and out of touch with the great world, it follows models bound within its own narrow sphere. The 9th century saw the zenith of the Byzantine chronicle, during the nadir of historical literature. Afterwards it declines abruptly; the lesser chroniclers, seen as late as the 12th century, draw partly from contemporary and partly, though rarely, from earlier historians. In the Palaeologi period no chroniclers of note appear.

Not only important sources for the history of Byzantine civilization, the chronicles themselves contributed to the spread of civilization, passing Byzantine culture to the arriving Slavic, Magyar, and Turkic peoples. Depicting as they did what lay within the popular consciousness—events wonderful and dreadful painted in glaring colours and interpreted in a Christian sense—their influence was considerable. The method of handling materials is primitive—beneath each section lies some older source only slightly modified, so that the whole resembles a patchwork of materials rather than the ingenious mosaic of the historians. They are a rich store for comparative linguistics, as their diction is purely the popular tongue, bespeaking the poor education of author and audience.

Representative Byzantine chronicles are the three of Joannes Malalas, Theophanes Confessor, and Joannes Zonaras, respectively. The first is the earliest Christian Byzantine monastic chronicle, composed in the Antioch in the 6th century by a hellenized Syrian and Monophysite theologian. Originally a city chronicle, it was expanded into a world-chronicle. It is a popular historical work, full of historical and chronological errors, and the first monument of a purely popular Hellenistic civilization. The chief source for most of the later chroniclers as well as for a few church historians, it is also the earliest popular history translated into Old Church Slavonic (c. early 10th century). Superior in substance and form, and more properly historical, is the Chronicle of Theophanes, a 9th-century monk of Asia Minor, and in its turn a model for later chronicles. It contains much valuable information from lost sources, and its importance for the Western world is due to the fact that by the end of the 9th century it had to be translated into Latin. A third guide-post in the history of Byzantine chronicles is the 12th-century Universal Chronicle of Zonaras. It reflects somewhat the atmosphere of the Comneni renaissance; not only is the narrative better than that of Theophanes, but many passages from ancient writers are worked into the text. It was translated not only into Slavic and Latin, but into Italian and French as well (16th century).

Encyclopedists and essayists
The spirit of antiquarian scholarship awoke in Byzantium earlier than in the West, but begun by lay theologians, not laymen. For this reason it always had a scholastic flavor; the Byzantine humanistic spirit savored of antiquity and the Middle Ages in equal proportion. Primarily directed to the systematic collection and sifting of manuscripts, a pronounced interest in the literature of Greek antiquity first manifested at Constantinople in the late 9th century. With the 12th century begins the period of original works imitating antique models, a revival of the Alexandrian essay and rhetorical literature, a number of writers showing vigorous originality. Quite isolated between the two periods stands Michael Psellus (11th century), a universal genius who bridges the periods. While the humanism of the 9th and 10th centuries retained a theological coloring and a hostile attitude towards the West, the 12th to the 14th century saw several writers seeking to break away from orthodox classicism to attain a true humanism, becoming the forerunners of the Italian Renaissance.

The new spirit first found expression in an academy founded for classical studies at Constantinople in 863. About the same time the broadly trained and energetic Photius, patriarch of the city and the greatest statesman of the Greek Church (820–897), enthusiastically collected forgotten manuscripts, revived forgotten works of antiquity, and re-discovered lost works; his attention was chiefly directed to prose works, indicative of his pragmatism. Photius made selections or excerpts from all the works he discovered, forming the beginning of his celebrated Bibliotheca ("Library"), which while dry and schematic remains the most valuable literary compendium of the Middle Ages, containing trustworthy summaries of many ancient works now lost, together with good characterizations and analyses such as those of Lucian and Heliodorus. This encyclopedic activity was more assiduously pursued in the 10th century, particularly in the systematic collecting of materials associated with Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. Scholars also formed great compilations, arranged by subject, on the basis of older sources. Among these was a now-fragmentary encyclopedia of political science containing extracts from the classical, Alexandrian, and Roman Byzantine periods. These, with the collection of ancient epigrams known as the Anthologia Palatina and the scientific dictionary known as the Suda, make the 10th century that of the encyclopedias.

A typical representative of the period appears in the following century in the person of the greatest encyclopedist of Byzantine literature, Michael Psellus. Standing between the Middle Ages and modern times, he is a jurist and a man of the world with a mind both receptive and productive. Unlike Photius, who was more concerned with individual philosophic arguments, Psellus does not undervalue the old philosophers, and is himself of a philosophic temperament. He was the first of his intellectual circle to raise the philosophy of Plato above that of Aristotle and to teach philosophy as a professor. Surpassing Photius in intellect and wit, he lacks that scholar's dignity and solidity of character. A restless brilliance characterized his life and literary activity. At first a lawyer, then a professor; now a monk, now a court official; he ended his career the prime minister. He was equally adroit and many-sided in his literary work; in harmony with the polished, pliant nature of the courtier is his elegant Platonic style of his letters and speeches. His extensive correspondence furnishes endless material illustrating his personal and literary character. The ennobling influence of his Attic models mark his speeches and especially his funerary orations; that delivered on the death of his mother shows deep sensibility. Psellus had more of a poetic temperament than Photius, as several of his poems show, though they owe more to satirical fancy and occasion than to deep poetic feeling. Though Psellus exhibits more formal skill than creativity, his endowments shone forth in a time particularly backward in aesthetic culture. The intellectual freedom of the great scholars (polyhistores), both ecclesiastical and secular, of the following centuries would be inconceivable without the triumph of Psellus over Byzantine scholasticism. While among his successors—such as Nicephorus Blemmydes and Hyrtakenos—are natures as corrupt as Psellus' own, the majority are marked by their rectitude of intention, sincerity of feeling, and their beneficently broad culture. Among these great intellects and strong characters of the 12th century several theologians are especially conspicuous, for example Eustathius of Thessalonica, Michael Italicus, and Michael Acominatus; in the 13th and 14th centuries several secular scholars, like Maximus Planudes, Theodorus Metochites, and above all, Nicephorus Gregoras.

The three theologians may best be judged by their letters and minor occasional writings. Eustathius seems to be the most important, writing learned commentary on Homer and Pindar alongside original works that are candid, courageous, and controversial, intent upon the correction of every evil. In one of his works he attacks the corruption and intellectual stagnation of the monastic life of that day; in another polemic, he assails the hypocrisy and sham holiness of his time; in a third he denounces the conceit and arrogance of the Byzantine priests.

The rhetorician Michael Italicus, later a bishop, attacks the chief weakness of Byzantine literature, external imitation; this he did on receiving a work by a patriarch, which was simply a disorderly collection of fragments from other writers, so poorly put together that the sources were immediately recognizable.

The pupil and friend of Eustathius, Michael Acominatus (12th and 13th centuries) Archbishop of Athens and brother of the historian Nicetas Acominatus. His inaugural address, delivered on the Acropolis, exhibits both profound classical scholarship and high enthusiasm despite the material and spiritual decay of his times. These pitiful conditions moved him to compose an elegy, famous because unique, on the decay of Athens, a sort of poetical and antiquarian apostrophe to fallen greatness. Gregorovius compared the inaugural address with Gregory the Great's to the Romans, and this with the lament of Bishop Hildebert of Tours on the demolition of Rome by the Normans (1106). His funeral orations over Eustathius (1195) and his brother Nicetas, though wordier and rhetorical, still evinced a noble disposition and deep feeling. Michael, like his brother, remained a fanatical opponent of the Latins. They had driven him into exile at Ceos, whence he addressed many letters to his friends illustrating his character. Stylistically influenced by Eustathius, his otherwise classical diction sounded an ecclesiastical note.

With Theodore Metochites and Maximos Planoudes we come to the universal scholars (polyhistores) of the time of the Palaeologi. The former displays his humanism in his use of hexameter, the latter in his knowledge of the Latin; both of which are otherwise unknown in Byzantium, and foreboding a broader grasp of antiquity. Both men show a fine sense of poetry, especially of nature poetry. Metochites composed meditations on the beauty of the sea; Planudes was the author of a long poetic idyll, a genre uncultivated by Byzantine scholars. While Metochites was a thinker and poet, Planudes was chiefly an imitator and compiler. Metochites was more speculative, as his collection of philosophical and historical miscellanies show; Planudes was more precise, as his preference for mathematics proves. Contemporary progress in philosophy was at a point where Metochites could openly attack Aristotle. He deals more frankly with political questions, such as his comparison of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. While his breadth of interest was large, Metochites's culture rests wholly on a Greek basis, though Planudes, by his translations from the Latin (Cato, Ovid, Cicero, Caesar, and Boethius), vastly enlarged the Eastern intellectual horizon.

This inclination toward the West is most noticeable in Nicephorus Gregoras, the great pupil of Metochites. His project for a reform of the calendar ranks him among the modern intellects of his time, as will be proven if ever his numerous works in every domain of intellectual activity are brought to light. His letters, especially, promise a rich harvest. His method of exposition is based on that of Plato, whom he also imitated in his ecclesiastico-political discussions, e.g. in his dialogue "Florentius, or Concerning Wisdom." These disputations with Barlaam dealt with the question of church union, in which Gregoras took the Unionist part. This brought him bitter hostility and the loss of his teaching living; he had been occupied chiefly with the exact sciences, whereby he had already earned the hatred of orthodox Byzantines.

While the Byzantine essayists and encyclopedists stood wholly under the influence of ancient rhetoric, still they embodied in the traditional forms their own characteristic knowledge, and thereby lent it a new charm.

Secular poetry
Poetry likewise had its prototypes, each genre tracing its origins to an ancient progenitor. Unlike the prose, these new genres do not follow from the classical Attic period, for the Byzantines wrote neither Iyrics nor dramas, imitating neither Pindar nor Sophocles. Imitating the literature of the Alexandrian period, they wrote romances, panegyrics, epigrams, satires, and didactic and hortatory poetry, following the models of Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, Asclepiades and Posidippus, Lucian and Longus. Didactic poetry looks to an earlier prototype by Isocrates' Ad Demonicum. The poetic temperament of the Byzantines is thus akin to that of the Alexandrian writers. Only one new type evolved independently by the Byzantines—the begging-poem. The six genres are not contemporaneous: the epigram and the panegyric developed first (6th and 7th centuries), then, at long intervals, satire, next didactic and begging poetry, finally the romance. Only after the 12th century, the period of decay, do they appear side by side. The epigram was the only form of secular poetry that had an independent revival in Byzantine literature, and this at the very time when ecclesiastical poetry also reached its highest perfection, in the 6th and 7th centuries. This age is therefore the most flourishing period of Byzantine scholarly poetry; its decline in the 12th century is contemporary with the rise of popular poetry. The chief kinds of poetry during the period of the decline (11th to 13th century) were satire and parody, didactic and hortatory poetry, the begging-poem, and the erotic romance. In form this literature is characterized by its extensive use of the popular forms of speech and verse, the latter being the "political" verse (Greek ἡμαξευμένοι στίχοι, called "that abominable make-believe of a metre" by Charles Peter Mason in William Smith's Dictionary), an iambic verse of fifteen syllables, still the standard verse of modern Greek popular poetry. In content, however, all this literature continues to bear the imprint of Byzantine erudition.

Epigram
The epigram suited the Byzantine taste for the ornamental and for intellectual ingenuity. It corresponded exactly to the concept of the minor arts that attained high development in the Byzantine period. Making no lofty demands on the imagination of the author, its chief difficulty lay rather in technique and the attainment of the utmost possible pregnancy of phrase. Two groups may be distinguished among the Byzantine epigrammatists: one pagan and humanistic, the other Christian. The former is represented chiefly by Agathias (6th century) and Christophorus of Mitylene (11th century), the latter by the ecclesiastics Georgius Pisides (7th century) and Theodorus Studites (9th century). Between the two groups, in point of time as well as in character, stands Joannes Geometres (10th century).

The chief phases in the development of the Byzantine epigram are most evident in the works of these three. Agathias, who has already been mentioned among the historians, as an epigrammatist, has the peculiarities of the school of the semi-Byzantine Egyptian Nonnus (about AD 400). He wrote in an affected and turgid style, in the classical form of the hexameter; he abounds, however, in brilliant ideas, and in his skillful imitation of the ancients, particularly in his erotic pieces, he surpasses most of the epigrammatists of the imperial period. Agathias also prepared a collection of epigrams, partly his own and partly by other writers, some of which afterwards passed into the Anthologia Palatina and have thus been preserved. The abbot Theodorus Studites is in every respect the opposite of Agathias, a pious man of deep earnestness, with a fine power of observation in nature and life, full of sentiment, warmth, and simplicity of expression, free from servile imitation of the ancients, though influenced by Nonnus. While touching on the most varied things and situations, his epigrams on the life and personnel of his monastery offer special interest for the history of civilization. Joannes Geometres combines aspects of the previous two. During the course of his life he filled both secular and ecclesiastical offices and his poetry had a universal character; of a deeply religious temper, still he appreciated the greatness of the ancient Greeks. Alongside epigrams on ancient poets, philosophers, rhetoricians, and historians stand others on famous Church Fathers, poets, and saints. Poetically, the epigrams on contemporary and secular topics are superior to those on religious and classic subjects. His best works depict historical events and situations he himself experienced, and reflect his own spiritual moods (Krumbacher).

Panegyrics
Even the best writers often could not escape composing the official panegyrics on emperors and their achievements. Typical of this kind of literature are the commemorative poem of Paulus Silentiarius on the dedication of the church of St. Sophia, and that of Georgius Pisides on the glory of the prince. Unfavorable conclusions must not be drawn as to the character of these poets, for such eulogies were composed by not only courtiers like Psellus and Manuel Holobolos (13th century), but also by independent characters like Eustathius and Michael Acominatus. It had become traditional, and so handed down from imperial Rome to Byzantium as a part of ancient rhetoric with all the extravagance of a thoroughly decadent literature (F. Gregorovius). It was a sort of necessary concession to despotism; popular taste was not in general offended by it.

Satires
The father of Byzantine satire is Lucian. His celebrated "Dialogues of the Dead" furnished the model for two works, one of which, the "Timarion" (12th century) is marked by more rude humour, the other, "Mazaris" (15th century), by keen satire. Each describes a journey to the underworld and conversations with dead contemporaries; in the former their defects are lashed with good-natured raillery; in the latter, under the masks of dead men, living persons and contemporary conditions, especially at the Byzantine Court, are sharply stigmatized. The former is more a literary satire, the latter a political pamphlet, with keen personal thrusts and without literary value, but with all the greater interest for the history of civilization; the former is in a genuinely popular tone, the latter in vulgar and crude [Cf. Tozer in The Journal of Hellenic Studies (1881), II.233-270; Krumbacher, op. cit., 198–211.]

Two popular offshoots of the "Timarion", the "Apokopos" and the "Piccatoros" are discussed below. Another group of satires takes the form of dialogues between animals, manifestly a development from the Christian popular book known as the Physiologus. Such satires describe assemblages of quadrupeds, birds, and fishes, and recite their lampooning remarks upon the clergy, the bureaucracy, the foreign nations in the Byzantine Empire, etc. See also An Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds

Here belong also the parodies in the form of church poems, and in which the clergy themselves took part, e.g. Bishop Nicetas of Serræ (11th century). One example of this sacrilegious literature, though not fully understood, is the "Mockery of a Beardless Man," in the form of an obscene liturgy (14th century).

Didactic
Didactic poetry found its model in the "To Demonikos" ascribed to Isocrates. The greatest example of this type of literature in Byzantium is the "Spaneas" (12th century), a hortatory poem addressed by an emperor to his nephew, a sort of "Mirror for Princes". Some few offshoots from this are found in the popular literature of Crete in the 15th and 16th centuries, handed down under the names of Sahlikis and Depharanus. Here also belong the ranting theological exhortations resembling those of the Capuchin in Schiller's "Wallenstein". Such, for instance, are that of Geogillas after the great plague of Rhodes (1498) and the oracular prophecies on the end of the Byzantine empire current under the name of Emperor Leo (886–911). (Krumbacher, 332, 336, 343, 352, 366.)

Begging-poem
A late Byzantine variety of the laudatory poem is the begging-poem, the poetical lament of hungry authors and the parasites of the court. Its chief representatives are Theodorus Prodromus and the grossly flattering Manuel Philes, the former of whom lived under the Comneni (12th century), the latter under the Palaeologi (13th century). For historians such poetical wails of distress as Prodromus addressed to the emperor are of value because they give interesting pictures of street and business life in the capital. (Cf. Krumbacher, 324, 333.)

Romance novel
The ancient Greek novel was imitated by four writers of the 12th century: Eustathios Makrembolites, Theodore Prodromos, Niketas Eugenianos, and Constantine Manasses.

Ecclesiastical and theological literature
The first flowering of ecclesiastical literature of Byzantium is Hellenistic in form and Oriental in spirit. This period falls in the 4th century and is closely associated with the names of the Greek Fathers of Alexandria, Palestine, Jerusalem, Cyrene, and Cappadocia. Their works, which cover the whole field of ecclesiastical prose literature—dogma, exegesis, and homiletics—became canonical for the whole Byzantine period; the last important work is the ecclesiastical history of Evagrius. Beyond controversial writings against sectarians and the Iconoclasts, later works consist merely of compilations and commentaries, in the form of the so-called Catenae; even the Fountain of Knowledge of John of Damascus (8th century), the fundamental manual of Greek theology, though systematically worked out by a learned and keen intellect, is merely a gigantic collection of materials. Even the homily clings to a pseudo-classical, rhetorical foundation, and tends more to external breadth, not to inwardness and depth.

Only three kinds of ecclesiastical literature, which were as yet undeveloped in the 4th century, exhibit later an independent growth. These were the ecclesiastical poetry of the 6th century, popular lives of the saints of the 7th, and the mystic writings of the 11th and 12th centuries. The Catholic Encyclopedia suggests that classical forms were insufficient to express Christian thought to best effect: in several collections of early Christian correspondence it is not the rhythmic laws of Greek rhetorical style which govern the composition, but those of Semitic and Syriac prose. Cardinal Pitra hypothesizes that the rhythmic poetry of the Byzantines originates in the Jewish Psalms of the Septuagint. This rhythmic principle accords with the linguistic character of the later Greek, which used a stress accent as it had already been developed in Syriac poetry rather than the classical tonal accent.

Romanos the Melodist was the first great ecclesiastical poet of the Greeks to fully embrace the stress accent as a rhythmic principle. A contemporary and countryman of the chronicler Malalas, also a reformer of the Greek literary language, Romanos was a Syrian of Jewish descent, Christianized at an early age. What Malalas is to prose, Romanos is to the Christian poetry of the Greek Middle Ages. Though he did not go so far as Malalas, he released poetry from meters based on quantitative and tonal scansion; he brought it into harmony with the latest poetics prevailing in Syria as well as with the evolving character of the Greek language. Romanos soon went to Constantinople, where he became a deacon of the Hagia Sophia, and where he is said to have first developed his gift for hymn-writing.

Romanos borrowed the form of his poems, the material, and many of their themes partly from the Bible and partly from the (metrical) homilies of the Syrian Father Ephrem (4th century). He wrote hymns on the Passion of the Lord, on the betrayal by Judas, Peter's denial, Mary before the Cross, the Ascension, the Ten Virgins, and the Last Judgment, while his Old Testament themes mention the history of Joseph and the three young men in the fiery furnace. He is said to have composed about a thousand hymns, of which only eighty have survived, evidently because in the 9th century the so-called canones, linguistically and metrically more artistic in form, replaced much of his work in the Greek Liturgy. Thenceforth his hymns held their own in only a few of the remoter monasteries. Characteristic of his technique is the great length of his hymns, which are regularly composed of from twenty to thirty stanzas (τροπαρια) of from twelve to twenty-one verses each, very finely wrought and varied in metrical structure, and in construction transparent and diverse. They do not resemble contemporary Latin hymns so much as the oratorios of the early 20th century, also using antiphonal rendering by alternative choirs. This also explains the dramatic character of many hymns, with their inserted dialogues and choric songs, as in "Peter's Denial", a little drama of human boastfulness and weakness, and the last part of the "History of Joseph", the "Psalm of the Apostles", and the "Birth of Jesus". Other pieces, like the hymn on the Last Judgment, are purely descriptive in character, though even in them the rhetorical and dogmatic elements seriously impair the artistic effect.

Some, like Bouvy and Krumbacher, place him among the greatest hymn-writers of all times; others, like Cardinal Pitra, are more conservative. For a final judgment a complete edition of the hymns is needed. Compared to Latin church poets such as Ambrose and Prudentius, his surviving works tend towards a more rhetorically flowery, digressive, and dogmatic verse. He is fond of symbolic pictures and figures of speech, antitheses, assonances, especially witty jeux d'esprit, which contrast with his characteristic simplicity of diction and construction. These embellishments interrupt the smooth flow of his lines, and often the sequence of thought in his hymns is clouded by the dragging in of dogmatic questions—in the celebrated Christmas hymn the question of the miraculous birth of Jesus is discussed four times, with a comfortable amplitude that betrays the theologian thrusting the poet aside. The theologian is also too evident in his allusions to the Old Testament when dealing with New Testament incidents; Mary at the birth of Jesus compares her destiny to that of Sarah, the Magi liken the star that went before the Israelites in the wilderness, and so on. The frequent citation of passages from the prophets seem more like unimpassioned paraphrases than like inspired poetry. In fact Romanos does not possess the abundant and highly coloured imagery of the earliest Greek church poets, nor their fine grasp of nature. The reader also gathers the impression that the height of the poet's imagination is not in proportion with the depth of his piety—there often appears in him something naive, almost homely, as when Mary expresses her pleasure in the Magi and calls attention to their utility for the impending Flight into Egypt. There are passages, however, in which devout fervor carries the imagination along with it and elevates the poetic tone, as in the jubilant invitation to the dance (in the Easter-song), in which thoughts of spring and of the Resurrection are harmoniously blended:

 * Why thus faint-hearted?
 * Why veil ye your faces?
 * Lift up your hearts!
 * Christ is arisen!
 * Join in the dances,
 * And with us proclaim it:
 * The Lord is ascended,
 * Gleaming and gloried,
 * He who was born
 * Of the giver of light.
 * Cease then your mourning,
 * Rejoice in blessedness:
 * Springtime has come.
 * So bloom now, ye lilies,
 * Bloom and be fruitful!
 * Naught bringeth destruction.
 * Clap we our hands
 * And shout: Risen is He
 * Who helpeth the fallen ones
 * To rise again.

Ecclesiastical poetry did not long remain on the high level to which Romanos had raised it. The "Hymnus Acathistus" (of unknown authorship) of the 7th century, a sort of Te Deum in praise of the Mother of God, is the last great monument of Greek church poetry, comparable to the hymns of Romanos, which it has even outlived in fame. It has had numerous imitators and as late as the 17th century was translated into Latin.

The rapid decline of Greek hymnology begins as early as the 7th century, the period of Andrew of Crete. Religious sentiments in hymns were choked by a classical formalism which stifled all vitality. The overvaluation of technique in details destroyed the sense of proportion in the whole. This seems to be the only explanation for the so-called canones first found in the collection of Andrew of Crete. While a canon is a combination of a number of hymns or chants (generally nine) of three or four strophes each, the "Great Canon" of Andrew actually numbers 250 strophes, a "single idea is spun out into serpentine arabesques".

Pseudo-classical artificiality found an even more advanced representative in John of Damascus, in the opinion of the Byzantines the foremost writer of canones, who took as a model Gregory of Nazianzus, even reintroducing the principle of quantity into ecclesiastical poetry. Religious poetry was in this way reduced to mere trifling, for in the 11th century, which witnessed the decline of Greek hymnology and the revival of pagan humanism, Michael Psellus began parodying church hymns, a practice that took root in popular culture. Didactic poems took this form without being regarded as blasphemous.

Religious drama did not thrive in the Byzantine era. The only example is the Suffering of Christ (Christus Patiens, Χριστὸς пάσχων ), written in the 11th or 12th century; of its 2,640 verses, about one-third are borrowed from ancient dramas, chiefly from those of Euripides, and Mary, the chief character, sometimes recites verses from the "Medea" of Euripides, again from the "Electra" of Sophocles, or the "Prometheus" of Aeschylus. The composition is evidently the production of a theologian trained in the classics, but without the slightest idea of dramatic art. It is made up chiefly of lamentations and reports of messengers. Even the most effective scenes, those which precede the Crucifixion, are described by messengers; almost two-thirds of the text are given to the descent from the Cross, the lament of Mary, and the apparition of Christ. (Cf. Van Cleef, "The Pseudo-Gregorian Drama Christos paschon in its relation to the text of Euripides" in Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, VIII, 363–378; Krumbacher, 312.)

Between ecclesiastical poetry and ecclesiastical prose stands the theologico-didactic poem, a favorite species of ancient Christian literature. One of its best examples is the "Hexaemeron" of Georgius Pisides, a spirited hymn on the universe and its marvels, i.e. all living creatures. Taken as a whole, it is somewhat conventional; only the description of the minor forms of life, especially of the animals, reveals the skill of the epigrammatist and nature-lover's gift of affectionate observation.

Besides sacred poetry, hagiography flourished from the 6th to the 11th century. This species of literature developed from the old martyrologies, and became the favorite form of popular literature. It flourished from the 8th to the 11th century, and was concerned principally with monastic life. Unfortunately, the rhetorical language was in violent contrast with the simple nature of the contents, so that the chief value of this literature is historical.

More popular in style are the biographers of saints of the 6th and 7th centuries. The oldest and most important of them is Cyril of Scythopolis (in Palestine), whose biographies of saints and monks are distinguished for the reliability of their facts and dates. Of great interest also for their contributions to the history of culture and of ethics and for their genuinely popular language are the writings of Leontius, Archbishop of Cyprus (7th century), especially his life of the Patriarch John (surnamed The Merciful), Eleemosynarius of Alexandria. (Cf. Heinrich Gelzer, Kleine Schriften, Leipzig, 1907.) This life describes for us a man who in spite of his peculiarities honestly tried "to realize a pure Biblical Christianity of self-sacrificing love", and whose life brings before us the customs and ideas of the lower classes of the people of Alexandria.

The romance of Balaam and Joasaph (also Barlaam and Josaphat) was another popular work of Byzantine origin now elevated to universal literature. It is the "Song of Songs" of Christian asceticism, illustrated by the experience of the Indian prince Joasaph, who is led by the hermit Barlaam to abandon the joys of life, and as a true Christian to renounce the world. The material of the story is originally Indian, indeed Buddhistic, for the origin of Joasaph was Buddha. The Greek version originated in the Sabbas monastery in Palestine about the middle of the 7th century. It did not circulate widely until the 11th century, when it became known to all Western Europe through the medium of a Latin translation [Cf. F. C. Conybeare, "The Barlaam and Josaphat legend," in Folk-lore (1896), VII, 101 sqq.]

The ascetic conception of life was embedded in the Byzantine character and was strengthened by the high development of monastic institutions. The latter in turn brought forth a broad ascetic literature, though it does not further deepen the asceticism of its great exponent, St. Basil of Caesarea.

Less extensively cultivated, but excelling in quality, are Byzantine mystical writings. The true founder of a distinctively Byzantine mysticism was Maximus the Confessor (7th century), who deepened the tradition of Christian Neoplatonism, as found in the Pseudo-Dionysius, with the resources of Orthodox Christology. No other writer in Eastern Christian tradition surpasses Maximus in speculative range and originality. Later representatives of this mystical tradition were Symeon the New Theologian and Nicetas Stethatos in the 11th, and Nikolaos Kavasilas in the 14th century. The Byzantine mystical writers differ from those of Western Europe chiefly in their attitude to ecclesiastical ceremonies, to which they adhered implicitly, seeing in it a profound symbol of the spiritual life of the church, where Occidentals see an attempt to displace the inner life with external pomp. Accordingly, Symeon strictly observed the ceremonial rules of the church, regarding them, however, only as a means to the attainment of ethical perfection. His principal work (published only in Latin) is a collection of prose pieces and hymns on communion with God. He is akin to the chief German mystics in his tendency towards pantheism. Of Symeon's equally distinguished pupil, Nicetas Stethatos, we need only say that he cast off his teacher's pantheistic tendencies. The last great mystic Kavasilas, Archbishop of Saloniki, revived the teaching of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, but in the plan of his principal work, "Life in Christ", exhibits a complete independence of all other worlds and is without a parallel in Byzantine asceticism.

Popular poetry
The capture of Constantinople and establishment of the Latin kingdoms in the year 1204 displaced or supplanted aristocratic and ecclesiastic controls on literary taste and style. In response to new influences from the Latin West, Byzantine popular literature moved in different directions. Whereas literary poetry springs from the rationalistic, classical atmosphere of the Hellenistic period, popular poetry, or folk-song, is an outgrowth of the idyllic, romantic literature of the same period. As the literary works had their prototypes in Lucian, Heliodorus, Achilles Tatius, and Nonnus, the popular works imitated Apollonius of Rhodes, Callimachus, Theocritus, and Musaeus.

The chief characteristic of folk-song throughout the Greek Middle Ages is its lyric note, which constantly finds expression in emotional turns. In Byzantine literature, on the other hand, the refinement of erotic poetry was due to the influence of the love-poetry of chivalry introduced by Frankish knights in the 13th century and later. The Byzantines imitated and adapted the romantic and legendary materials these westerners brought. Italian influences led to the revival of the drama. That celebration of the achievements of Greek heroes in popular literature was the result of the conflicts which the Greeks sustained during the Middle Ages with the border nations to the east of the empire. Popular books relating the deeds of ancient heroes had long-standing and widespread currency throughout the East; these too revived heroic poetry, though imparted with a deep romantic tinge. The result was a complete upheaval of popular ideals and a broadening of the popular horizon as Atticist tendencies were gradually eroded.

There was, consequently, a complete reconstruction of the literary types of Byzantium. Of all the varieties of artistic poetry there survived only the romance, though this became more serious in its aims, and its province expanded. Of metrical forms there remained only the political (fifteen-syllable) verse. From these simple materials there sprang forth an abundance of new poetic types. Alongside of the narrative romance of heroism and love there sprang up popular love lyrics, and even the beginnings of the modern drama. The only genuine heroic epic of the Byzantines is the Digenis Akritas, a popular poetic crystallization of the 10th- and 11th-century conflicts between the Byzantine wardens of the marches (ακρίτης, akrites) and the Saracens in Eastern Asia Minor. The nucleus of this epic goes back to the 12th or 13th century, its final literary form to the 15th. Though the schoolmen edited the original poems beyond recognition, an approximate idea of the original poem may be gathered from the numerous echoes of it extant in popular poetry. The existing versions exhibit a blending of several cycles, modeled after the Homeric poems. Its principal subjects are love, adventures, battles, and a patriarchal, idyllic enjoyment of life; it is a mixture of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the majority of the material being drawn from the latter, suffused with a Christian atmosphere. Genuine piety and a strong family feeling combine with an intimate sympathy with nature. Artistically, the work lacks the dramatic quality and diverse characters of the Germanic and classical Greek epics; it must be compared with the Slavic and Oriental heroic songs, among which it properly belongs.

The love-romance of the Greek Middle Ages is the result of the fusion of the sophistical Alexandro-Byzantine romance and the medieval French popular romance, on the basis of a Hellenistic view of life and nature. This is proved by its three chief creations, composed in the 13th and 14th centuries. Kallimachos and Chrysorrhoe, Belthandros and Chrysantza, Lybistros and Rhodamne. While the first and the last of these are markedly influenced by Byzantine romance in thought and manner of treatment, the second begins to show the aesthetic and ethical influence of the Old-French romance; indeed, its story often recalls the Tristan legend. The style is clearer and more transparent, the action more dramatic, than in the extant versions of the Digenis legend. The ethical idea is the romantic idea of knighthood—the winning of the loved one by valour and daring, not by blind chance as in the Byzantine literary romances. Along with these independent adaptations of French material, are direct translations from "Flore et Blanchefleur", "Pierre et Maguelonne", and others, which have passed into the domain of universal literature.

To the period of Frankish conquest belongs also the metrical Chronicle of the Morea (14th century). It was composed by a Frank brought up in Greece, though a foe of the Greeks. Its object was, amid the constantly progressing hellenization of the Western conquerors, to remind them of the spirit of their ancestors. Therefore, it is only Greek in language; in literary form and spirit it is wholly Frankish. The author "describes minutely the feudal customs which had been transplanted to the soil of Greece, and this perhaps is his chief merit; the deliberations of the High Court are given with the greatest accuracy, and he is quite familiar with the practice of feudal law" (J. Schmitt). As early as the 14th century the Chronicle was translated into Spanish and in the 15th into French and Italian.

About the same time and in the same locality the small islands off the coast of Asia Minor, appeared the earliest collection of neo-Greek love songs, known as the "Rhodian Love-Songs". Besides songs of various sorts and origins, they contain a complete romance, told in the form of a play on numbers, a youth being obliged to compose a hundred verses in honor of the maiden whom he worships before she returns his love, each verse corresponding to the numbers one to one hundred.

Between the days of the French influence in the 13th and 14th centuries and those of Italian in the 16th and 17th, there was a short romantic and popular revival of the ancient legendary material. There was neither much need nor much appreciation for this revival, and few of the ancient heroes and their heroic deeds are adequately treated. The best of these works is the Alexander Romance, based on the story of Alexander the Great, a revised version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes of the Ptolemaic period, which is also the source of the western versions of the Alexander Romance. The Achilleis, on the other hand, though written in the popular verse and not without taste, is wholly devoid of antique local colour, and is rather a romance of French chivalry than a history of Achilles. Lastly, of two compositions on the Trojan War, one is wholly crude and barbarous, the other, though better, is a literal translation of the old French poem of Benoît de Sainte-More.

To these products of the 14th century may be added two of the 16th, both describing a descent into the lower world, evidently popular offshoots of the Timarion and Mazaris already mentioned. To the former corresponds the Apokopos, a satire of the dead on the living; to the latter the Piccatores, a metrical piece decidedly lengthy but rather unpoetic, while the former has many poetical passages (e.g. the procession of the dead) and betrays the influence of Italian literature. In fact Italian literature impressed its popular character on the Greek popular poetry of the 16th and 17th centuries, as French literature had done in the 13th and 14th.

Cretan popular poetry
As a rich popular poetry sprang up during the last-mentioned period on the islands off the coast of Asia Minor, so now a similar literature developed on the island of Crete. Its most important creations are the romantic epic Erotokritos and the dramas Erophile and The Sacrifice of Abraham with a few minor pictures of customs and manners. These works fall chronologically outside the limits of Byzantine literature; nevertheless, as a necessary complement and continuation of the preceding period, they should be discussed here.

The Erotokritos is a long romantic poem of chivalry, lyric in characters and didactic in purpose, the work of Vitsentzos Kornaros, a hellenized Venetian of the 16th century. It abounds in themes and ideas drawn from the folk-poetry of the time. In the story of Erotokritos and Arethusa the poet glorifies love and friendship, chivalric courage, constancy, and self-sacrifice. Although foreign influences do not obtrude themselves, and the poem, as a whole, has a national Greek flavour, it reveals the various cultural elements, Byzantine, Romance, and Oriental, without giving, however, the character of a composite.

The lyrical love tragedy Erophile is more of a mosaic, being a combination of two Italian tragedies, with the addition of lyrical intermezzos from Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, and choral songs from his Aminta. Nevertheless, the materials are handled with independence, and more harmoniously arranged than in the original; the father who has killed his daughter's lover is slain not by his daughter's hand, but by the women of his palace. Owing to the lyric undertone of the works some parts of it have survived in popular tradition until the present time.

The mystery play of The Sacrifice of Abraham is apparently an independent work. The familiar and trite Biblical incidents are reset in the patriarchal environment of Greek family life. The poet emphasizes the mental struggles of Sarah, the resignation of Abraham to the Divine will, the anxious forebodings of Isaac, and the affectionate sympathy of the servants, in other words, a psychological analysis of the characters. The mainspring of the action is Sarah's fore-knowledge of what is to happen, evidently the invention of the poet to display the power of maternal love. The diction is distinguished by high poetic beauty and by a thorough mastery of versification.

Other products of Cretan literature are a few adaptations of Italian pastorals, a few erotic and idyllic poems, like the so-called "Seduction Tale" (an echo of the Rhodian Love-Songs), and the lovely, but ultra-sentimental, pastoral idyll of the Beautiful Shepherdess.

Legacy
The Roman supremacy in governmental life did not disappear. The subjection of the Church to the power of the State led to a governmental ecclesiasticism, causing friction with Roman Catholic Church, which had remained relatively independent.

Greek eventually overtook Latin as the official language of the government, the "Novellae" of Justinian I being the last Latin monument. As early as the 7th century Greek language had made great progress, and by the 11th Greek was supreme, though it never supplanted the numerous other languages of the empire.

The Eastern Roman Empire divided European civilization into two parts: one Romance and Germanic, the other Greek and Slavic. These cultures differed ethnographically, linguistically, ecclesiastically, and historically. Imperial Russia, the Balkans, and Ottoman Empire were the direct heirs of Byzantine civilization; the first two particularly in ecclesiastical, political, and cultural respects (through the translation and adaptation of sacred, historical, and popular literature); the third in respect to civil government.

Indirectly, the Empire protected western Europe for centuries from war, fighting off various invaders and migratory populations. Byzantium was also a treasury of ancient Greek literature. During the Middle Ages, until the capture of the Constantinople, the West was acquainted only with Roman literature. Greek antiquity was first carried to Italy by the treasures brought by fugitive Greek humanists, many of whom were delegates at the Council of Florence from 1431 to 1449.

Byzantine culture had a direct influence upon southern and central Europe in church music and church poetry, though this was only in the very early period (until the 7th century).

Digenes Akritas (Διγενῆς Ἀκρίτας) is the most famous of the Acritic songs and is often regarded as the only surviving epic poem from the Byzantine Empire. It is considered by some to signal the beginnings of modern Greek literature.

Byzantine culture had a definite impact upon the Near East, especially upon the Persians, and the Arabs.

title: Byzantine literature


text:
Talk:Maytag

Owned Brands Section
Every bullet in this section is linked to articles that are related in name-only. It's really annoying. If it's going to be a link, then link to a page about the brand. An article that's subject-related rather than just name-related. If there's going to be a link at all, then make it to a dedicated wiki page about that business brand. But until those pages exist (or even if they don't get large enough to justify not getting merged into this article 5 years down the line), then don't link anything. tldr remove the links, and just leave a simple straitforward text-only list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.127.213.188 (talk) 20:58, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Problems with this article

 * There are many spelling and grammatical errors.
 * The history section is a company timeline pulled from the company's website. (at least we know it's accurate)
 * The section on Maytag's mascot, "Ol' Lonely", is copied from the company's website. (at least we know it's accurate)
 * The article is very biased towards the company.
 * The article does not mention the Maytag Neptune or the widely-publicised problems with it which lead to a class-action lawsuit. Andrew pmk 00:23, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Actor Hardy Rawls who played the second "Ol' Lonley" did not die on 9/22/2003 as stated in the article. As of 12/02/06 he is alive, and living in the State of Florida.
 * Description of GFCI, given to customers to resolve safety issues with a leaky system, is technically inaccurate, and should probably give a link to RCD. (the general name for a GFCI, and the name of the wiki page for that device.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.57.3.195 (talk) 20:39, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

RESPONSE: As far as I can tell, these problems have ALL been fully resolved in the rewrites done since the author's unsigned comment in October 2007. Dellant (talk) 21:26, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Recently Added
Retail partners, seetlements and recalls
 * The recalls section needs to be removed, it's too "point in time" oriented and makes little sense in an encyclopedic context. Eli lilly 20:38, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Got rid of the recalls section
Though Maytag had product recalls which affected many, and were publicized, it does not seem to be encyclopedic. Take as an example, Ford Motor Company recalls millions of vehicles a year, but their Wiki article does not mention this. It's a slippery slope; if we're going to start devoting sections to every product recall a company carries out, we're going to end up with a lot of very bloated articles. If there is a product recall which is significant enough, it may warrant its own article, i.e. Ford/Firestone, Hydroxycut. But for now, these are gone. I figure it's been a long time coming. CharCoal (talk) 21:26, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Maytag logo.png
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Neptune issues are complex
Various quality issues, poor PR, recalls, internal financial problems and external competition, etc, all added up to giving up on their own assembly line and having the Neptune name put on Samsung machines. In a sense, this was Maytag throwing in the towel on Neptune, while still profiting from whatever remaining value the brand had. The Neptune brand was retired when Whirlpool purchased the company. Maytag machines made by Whirlpool use the brand name Epic. Nospamtodd (talk) 04:47, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Chronology Addition
2014: The Maytag Repairman is replaced by the new Maytag Man, who is the human embodiment of a machine and portrays various Maytag appliances. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/09/business/media/maytag-repairmans-new-job-keeps-him-busy.html

Ol' Lonely
Propose title be renamed "Maytag Repairman" with the following copy at the bottom.
 * In January 2014, the character was changed to have a new attitude, function, and name as the human embodiment of Maytag appliances.

New Logo
Here is an official link to the new corporate logo that replaces the one currently on the page http://access.whirlpool.com/wdl/image/09001a50801849b2/view.do?format=preview — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.181.111.102 (talk) 15:54, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Repairman
In 2014 Maytag replaced the "old, bored" repairman with a younger, "can-do, more macho repairman, according to the article. But the "new" repairman was actually much older - the actor is older than the man who had had the role for seven years.119.224.13.116 (talk) 03:32, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Damenlou Hotel

Damenlou Hotel (Chinese: 大门楼旅店) was a small hotel located at Ann Siang Road, in Chinatown, within the Central Area of Singapore.

Damenlou Hotel's origins can be traced to the creation of the dish of fishhead mifen (rice vermicelli), which was invented by Tang Kwong Swee in the 1920s. The hotel had a famous restaurant, named Swee Kee.

By mid-2007, Damenlou Hotel had ceased operations. Its premises have been taken over by the Screening Room, a dining and entertainment venue with bistro, movie theatre and rooftop bar. Accompanying this change, the hotel facade and interior have been heavily renovated.

title: Damenlou Hotel


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Nicholas of Autrecourt

Nicholas of Autrecourt (French: Nicholas d'Autrécourt; Latin: Nicolaus de Autricuria or Nicolaus de Ultricuria; c. 1299, Autrecourt – 16 or 17 July 1369, Metz) was a French medieval philosopher and Scholastic theologian.

Life and thought
Born in Autrecourt, near Verdun, he was educated at Paris and earned bachelor's degrees in theology and law and a master's degree in arts. Nicholas is known principally for developing skepticism to extreme logical conclusions. He is sometimes considered the sole genuinely skeptic philosopher of medieval times. Nicholas founded his skeptical position on arguments that knowledge claims were not "reducible to the first principle," that is, that it was not contradictory to deny them. His views have been compared to those of David Hume, but it has been suggested that the similarities are superficial, and there is no evidence Nicholas influenced Hume, or other modern philosophers such as René Descartes. Whether Nicholas was committed to skepticism is unclear, but on 19 May 1346 his views were condemned by Pope Clement VI as heretical. Nicholas was sentenced to burn his books publicly and recant, which he did in Paris in 1347.

In the 14th century, Nicholas of Autrecourt considered that matter, space, and time were all made up of indivisible atoms, points, and instants and that all generation and corruption took place by the rearrangement of material atoms. The similarities of his ideas with those of al-Ghazali suggest that Nicholas was familiar with the work of al-Ghazali, who was known as "Algazel" in Europe, either directly or indirectly through Averroes.

Much of the extant knowledge of Nicholas of Autrecourt's epistemology derives from one letter written by magister Egidius (master Giles) to Nicholas and an excerpt from his letter in reply to Egidius and from nine letters written by Nicholas to the Franciscan theologian Bernardus Aretinus (Bernard of Arezzo); however, only two of the nine letters survive. Some fragments of the lost letters are quoted in the records of the condemnatory proceedings against Nicholas. Almost nothing is known about these two correspondents.

English translations

 * L. A. Kennedy, R. E. Arnold, A. E. Millward, The universal treatise, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1971 (English translation of Exigit ordo executionis).
 * L. M. De Rijk, Nicholas of Autrecourt. His correspondence with Master Giles and Bernard d’Arezzo, Leiden: Brill, 1994.

Studies

 * Stefano Caroti, Christophe Grellard (eds.), Nicolas d'Autrécourt et la faculté des arts de Paris (1317-1340), Cesena, Stilgraf Editrice, 2006.
 * Dutton, B.D., “Nicholas of Autrecourt and William of Ockham on Atomism, Nominalism, and the Ontology of Motion,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 5 (1996), 63-85.
 * Christophe Greillard, Croire et savoir: les principes de la connaissance selon Nicolas d'Autrécourt, Parigi, Vrin, 2005.
 * Christophe Greillard, Nicholas of Autrecourt, in Henrtik Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy, Dordrecht: Springer, 2011, pp. 876–878.
 * Zénon Kaluza, Nicolas d‘Autrecourt. Ami de la vérité, in: Histoire littéraire de la France, vol. 42, fasc. 1. Paris, 1995, pp. 1–233.
 * Hastings Rashdall, Nicholas de Ultracuria: a medieval Hume, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society N.S. 7 (1906-7), 1-27.
 * T. K. Scott, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Buridan, and Ockhamism, Journal of the History of Philosophy 9 (1971), 15-41.
 * J.M.M.H. Thijssen, The ‘Semantic Articles’ of Autrecourt's Condemnation, Archives d‘histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, 65 (1990), 155-175.

title: Nicholas of Autrecourt


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Sagamu

Sagamu or Ishagamu is an agglomeration of thirteen towns in southwestern Nigeria. It is located in Ogun State along the Ibu River and Eruwuru Stream between Lagos and Ibadan. It was founded in the mid 19th century by members of the Remo branch of the Yoruba people. The 13 towns are: Makun, Offin, Sonyindo, Epe, Ibido, Igbepa, Ado, Oko, Ipoji, Batoro, Ijoku, Ijagba and Latawa. It is the capital of Remo Kingdom, and the paramount ruler of the kingdom, the Akarigbo of Remo, has his palace is in the town of Offin.

The Sagamu region is underlain by major deposits of limestone, which is used in the city's major industry, the production of cement. Agricultural products of the region include cocoa and kola nuts. Sagamu is the largest kola nut collecting center in the country. The kola nut industry supports several secondary industries such as basket and rope manufacturing, which are used to store the kola nuts.

The city was founded in the mid-19th century when several small towns united for purpose of defense during the wars brought about by the fall of the Oyo Empire. Sagamu controlled the trade routes between the ports in the Niger Delta and the Yoruba mainland until the British occupied the city at the end of the 19th century. Sagamu has experienced both population and economic growth since the 1950s, due to its position between the cities of Ibadan and Lagos. The population in 1995 was 114,300 but 2007 estimates placed it as high as 228,382. The Olabisi Onabanjo University's college of medicine is located in Sagamu.

Sagamu (Offin - Ile) is the new seat of the Akarigbo of Remo ("King" or "Lord" of Remo), the traditional ruler of the Remo Kingdom. The former seat was located in a farther area of Offin. Four ruling families are eligible to wear the beaded crown of the Akarigbo, all descending from the first Oba, Akarigbo, a prince of the house of Oduduwa. The current Akarigbo was installed and crowned as King in 2017. Notable areas within Sagamu include Offin, Itunshokun, Sabo, Makun, Ajaka, Makun Station, Isale-oko, Isote, Epe, Soyindo, Surulere, Ijagba, Ewu-Oluwo, Ogijo, Simawa, GRA, Ijokun, Batoro. Ijebu language, a dialect of the Yoruba language, is spoken in Sagamu.

Administration
The old Sagamu Local Government has been divided into Three(3) Local Council Development Areas namely Sagamu West LCDA, Sagamu Central LCDA and Sagamu South LCDA.

For Administrative convenience, Sagamu Local Government is divided into (15) Fifteen Political Wards, namely.

 * 1) Ward 1 – Oko, Epe & Itunla 1
 * 2) Ward 2 – Oko, Epe Itunla II
 * 3) Ward 3 – AiyegbamijIjoku
 * 4) Ward 4 – Sabo 1
 * 5) Ward 5 – Sabo II
 * 6) Ward 6 – Itunsokun Oyebajo
 * 7) Ward 7 – Ijagba
 * 8) Ward 8 – Latawa
 * 9) Ward 9 – Ode-lemo
 * 10) Ward 10 – OgijojIkosi
 * 11) Ward 11 – Surulere
 * 12) Ward 12 – Isote
 * 13) Ward 13 – Simawa
 * 14) Ward 14 – Agbowa
 * 15) Ward 15 – Ibidojitun Alara

Notable people

 * Adebayo Ogunlesi, a businessman
 * Anthony Joshua, a sportsperson
 * Gbenga Daniel, a politician.
 * Babatunde Adewale Ajayi, the current Sagamu king

title: Sagamu


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/koumpare

 This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Delete. --Ryan Delaney talk 15:28, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Koumpare
Submission from anon editor almost a year after its previous appearance in Wikipedia's pages. I'd be far less likely to dismiss this as a vulgar practical joke if another article linked to it. (Old discussion here.) llywrch 00:24, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. On the verge of patent nonsense. -- BD2412 talk 01:10, August 24, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete— --Tysto 06:43, 2005 August 24 (UTC)
 * Delete. Borderline nonsense. --GraemeL (talk) 10:38, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.


text: User talk:67.122.75.222

title: User talk:67.122.75.222


text:
Talk:XFAT

This article should be merged with File allocation table and X-Box. Has nothing to do alone.

title: Talk:XFAT


text: Category:Armenian painters

title: Category:Armenian painters


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Curt Carlson

Curtis Leroy Carlson (July 9, 1914 – February 19, 1999) was an American businessman and founder of Carlson and Radisson Hotel Group. Carlson developed a popular trading stamp consumer loyalty program for grocery stores in the United States.

Early life and education
Carlson was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Charles and Leatha Carlson. Charles Carlson was a Swedish-American immigrant who arrived as a child in Minnesota; Leatha Carlson was born in Downing, Wisconsin of a Danish father and Swedish mother. Curt Carlson began a career with Procter and Gamble after earning a BA in Economics in 1937 from the University of Minnesota where he was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity.

Career
Carlson began working for Procter & Gamble and then founded the Gold Bond Stamp Company in 1938. Carlson used "Gold Bond Stamps", a consumer loyalty program based on trading stamps, to provide consumer incentive for grocery stores. Carlson was the first entrepreneur to develop a loyalty program for a grocery chain through the issuance of trading stamps.

Carlson expanded his offerings by purchasing the downtown Minneapolis Radisson Hotel in 1960 and building it into a national chain. He also acquired TGI Fridays, Carlson Leisure Group and hundreds of other hospitality businesses.

The Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota is named for him, in recognition of his $25 million gift, the largest single donation to a public university at that time. Curt Carlson created an estate in Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin which was later converted to a business resort for corporations.

Awards

 * Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Linnean Medal presented by H.M. Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden
 * Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, 1977
 * Horatio Alger Award; the Swedish-American of the Year Award, Stockholm, Sweden in 1981
 * Town and Country magazine Philanthropist of the Year Award, 1987–1988
 * International Citizen of the Year Award from the City of Minneapolis
 * 1989 Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame inductee
 * 1995 DeMolay International Hall of Fame

title: Curt Carlson


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Delphic Hymns

The Delphic Hymns are two musical compositions from Ancient Greece, which survive in substantial fragments. They were long regarded as being dated c. 138 BC and 128 BC, respectively, but recent scholarship has shown it likely they were both written for performance at the Athenian Pythaids in 128 BC. If indeed it dates from ten years before the second, the First Delphic Hymn is the earliest unambiguous surviving example of notated music from anywhere in the western world whose composer is known by name. Inscriptions indicate that the First Delphic Hymn was written by Athenaeus, son of Athenaeus, while Limenius is credited the Second Delphic Hymn's composer.

History
Both Delphic Hymns were addressed to Apollo, and were found inscribed on stone fragments from the south outer wall of the Athenian Treasury at Delphi in 1893 by French archaeologist Théophile Homolle, while Henri Weil restored the Greek text and Théodore Reinach transcribed the music to modern notation.) Reconstruction of the fragments was facilitated by the fact that the First Hymn uses vocal notation, and the second one employs instrumental notation. It was long believed that all that could be told of the composer of the First Hymn is that it was written by an Athenian, around 138 BC, since the heading of the inscription giving the name of the composer is damaged and difficult to read. However, careful reading of this inscription shows that it cannot be the ethnic "Athenaîos" (from Athens), but rather names "Athēnaios Athēnaiou" (Athénaios son of Athénaios) as the composer. The Second Delphic hymn has been dated to precisely 128 BC; evidently it was first performed in the same year. The name of the composer has also survived, both in the heading of the hymn and in a separate inscription: Limēnios, son of Thoinos, an Athenian. The occasion of the performance of both hymns was a Pythaid, a special religious procession of the Athenians towards Delphi held on specific occasions, usually after certain omens.

First Delphic Hymn
Both hymns are monophonic (consisting of a single melodic line), but are differentiated by their notation. The First Hymn is in so-called vocal notation and it is in the cretic (quintuple) meter throughout.

The First Delphic Hymn falls into two large parts, a Paean (lines 1–27), in three verses, and what might have been called a Hyporchema or dance (lines 27–34). However, almost all of the last part is lost.

First verse
The image below shows the first verse of the hymn in conventional transcription. The letters above the words represent the notes of music. Various modern recordings of the music can be found in External links (see below).

In this verse the singers call on the Muses (goddesses of music and dance) to leave their home on Mount Helicon and to join in the song in honour of Apollo. This part has been translated by Armand d'Angour as follows:

"Hark, you whose domain is deep-forested Helicon, loud-thundering Zeus’ fair-armed daughters: come with songs to celebrate your brother Phoebus of the golden hair, who over the twin peaks of this mountain, Parnassus, accompanied by the far-famed Delphic maidens, comes to the streams of the flowing Castalian spring as he visits his mountain oracle."

Ten different notes in all are used in this first verse. The fourth note from the bottom, written $Μ$ (Mu in the Greek alphabet, or the note C in the conventional modern transcription) is the so-called mesē, or central note, to which the music most often returns. Music with this mese was said to be in the (Greek) Phrygian mode (modern Dorian mode). There are more notes above the mese than below it. F and B♭ below the mese are not used, and the lowest note, here E♭, is used only in the first section of the hymn. The note immediately above the mese D♭ (written $Λ$ Lambda in Greek) occurs only in one place in section one, in bar 24, but is much more extensively used in verse 2.

According to Pöhlmann and West, an archaic pentatonic effect is produced in the lowest tetrachords by avoiding the lichanos, while above the mese there is modulation between a conjunct chromatic tetrachord (C D♭ D F) and a disjunct diatonic one (D E♭ F G), extended by two more chromatic notes, A♭ and A. (A tetrachord is a series of four consecutive notes covering the interval of a fourth, e.g. C, B♭, A♭, G; the lichanos ("forefinger string") was the second note of a tetrachord going down; the "conjunct tetrachord" is the tetrachord whose lowest note is the mese; and the "disjunct tetrachord" is the one whose lowest note is the string above the mese).

Second verse
The second verse describes the presence of the delegation from Attica and the sacrifice of Arabian incense and young bulls that they are making. It also mentions the sound of the pipes (auloi) and the kithara (lyre) accompanying the sacrifice.

The text reads:

"Behold, Attica with its great city is at prayer, dwellers on the unconquered land of the armed Tritonian goddess ; and on the holy altars Hephaistos consumes the thighs of bull-calves; and together with the smoke, Arabian incense rises to the heavens. And the shrill, blaring aulos weaves a melody with fluttering notes, and the golden, sweet-voiced kithara blends with the song of praise."

In this verse there is a change of key; according to Pöhlmann and West it changes from the (Greek) Phrygian mode to the Hyperphrygian. There is extensive use of the notes (D♭ and D) immediately above the mese, and there is also repeated use of the note B♮ (written with the letter $Ο$ Omicron in Greek notation) immediately below the mese. The strings Greek kithara (lyre) were not tuned in exactly the same way as those of a modern piano, and the intervals from C to D♭ and from D♭ to D were probably less than a modern semitone. Therefore, in this section the music wanders around a small group of closely spaced notes. The technical term for a group of closely spaced notes like this is a pyknon.

The photograph below shows part of verse 2 and the beginning of verse 3 on the inscription, starting from the word $φερόπλοιο$ "carrying arms" and ending at $φερόπλοιο$  "Attica".

Third verse
The third verse is rather fragmentary, with several gaps in the words and music, but enough survives to make sense of it. In this verse the singers address Apollo directly, and describe how he took over the prophetic tripod at Delphi after killing the snake that guarded it, and how once he thwarted an army of invading Gauls (see: Brennus (3rd century BC)).

This verse returns to the same key as the first. As in the first verse, the small intervals above and below the mese are once again not used. There are some octave leaps, and "the tone is bright and clear".

Second Delphic Hymn
The Second Hymn is headed Paean and Prosodion to the God and is described as having been composed by Limēnios son of Thoinos, an Athenian. It consists of ten sections in all, the first nine in cretic metre constituting the paean, while the tenth in aeolic rhythms (glyconics and choriambic dimeters) is the prosodion. Slightly more lines of the music have survived than in the first hymn, but there are also numerous gaps where the stone has been broken. The style and subject matter of the second hymn is similar to the first, but the musical notation is different. In this hymn the notes are written with the symbols used by instrumental players (see below).

Pöhlmann and West divide the hymn up into ten short sections, with frequent changes of key. As in the First Delphic Hymn, the song opens by calling on the Muses to come to Delphi to join in the song in honour of Apollo:

The first verse has been translated by J.G. Landels as follows:

"Come ye to this twin-peaked slope of Parnassos with distant views, [where dancers are welcome], and [lead me in my songs], Pierian Goddesses who dwell on the snow-swept crags of Helikon. Sing in honour of Pythian Phoebus, golden-haired, skilled archer and musician, whom blessed Leto bore beside the celebrated marsh, grasping with her hands a sturdy branch of the grey-green olive tree in her time of travail."

The hymn goes on to describe how the sky and sea rejoiced at Apollo's birth on the island of Delos, and how Apollo, after his birth, visited Attica; ever since which time the people of Attica have addressed Apollo as "Paian" (healer) (sections 2–5).

Just as in the first hymn, the singers then address Apollo directly calling on him to come, and remind him how he killed the Python which formerly guarded the Delphic tripod and how he once defeated an army of marauding Gauls with a snowstorm (sections 6–9).

The final part of the work is the prosodion, or processional hymn, with the metre changing from cretic (— ᴗ —, with variants ᴗᴗ ᴗ — and — ᴗ ᴗᴗ) to glyconic (×× — ᴗᴗ — ᴗ —, with variant ×× — ᴗ — ᴗᴗ —). (The symbol ᴗ stands for a short syllable, — for a long one, equal in length to ᴗᴗ, and ×× for variable long-long, long-short, or short-long). In this part, the singers beg Apollo and his sister Artemis ("mistress of Cretan bows") to protect Athens as well as Delphi, and they close with a prayer for the continued dominion of the victorious Roman empire.

The Second Hymn is composed in a different key from the First Hymn. The central note (mese) of the first section is D (in conventional notation), rather than C, making it the (Greek) Lydian mode. Below the mese are the notes A and B♭, and above it are E, E♭, F, and G.

The notes used in the second section are different from the first section. B♭ is replaced by B♮; E♭ and the top G are not used, and a bottom E and a top A are added, so the range of notes is wider. One way of interpreting this is to assume that the music has moved into the Hypolydian mode. Mostly the melody moves up and down in small steps but there are some big jumps occasionally down to the bottom E.

According to Pöhlmann and West, the modes of the different sections as follows:
 * 1) Lydian
 * 2) Hypolydian
 * 3) Hypolydian
 * 4) Chromatic Lydian
 * 5) Hypolydian
 * 6) Hypolydian
 * 7) Chromatic Lydian
 * 8) Hypolydian
 * 9) Lydian
 * 10) Lydian

Musical notation
The musical symbols used for the hymns can be interpreted thanks to a treatise by Alypius, a musicographer of late antiquity (3rd century AD).

Two different notations of music were used: One notation was simply the 24 letters of the Ionian alphabet, one for each tone (including sharps and half-sharps). The other system was a complicated mix of special symbols, including ordinary letters, upside-down or backwards letters, letters from archaic alphabets, and broken, half-letters; with symbols for more notes it had a much wider tonal range. The first hymn uses the simple letter system; the Second Hymn uses the complicated special symbols. It was normal to use both systems in the same piece of music, both written in separate lines above the lyrics; when both were used, the special symbols were for the instrumental accompaniment, and the plain Ionic alphabet for the vocal part.

A suggested reason for the difference in notation in the two hymns is that the author of the first, Athenaios, is listed as a singer, while the author of the second, Limenios, was a kithara-player. One difference between the two notations is that the symbols in the first hymn are placed above the vowels, while those in the Second Hymn are mostly placed above the consonants which begin the syllables.

Aftermath
These hymns were thoroughly examined by musicologists and there have been many efforts to perform them with replicas of ancient musical instruments. The first modern public performance of the First Hymn was in June 1894, only one year after its discovery, during the international athletic convention in the Sorbonne University in Paris for the establishment of the modern Olympic Games.

Recordings

 * Arda Mandikian recorded these fragments at Delphi in 1950
 * Both hymns are performed: The first is sung by baritone Jan Jeroen Bredewold, with tympanist Annie Bélis; the second by bass-baritone Frédéric Albou, with kitharode Benoît Tessé and aulete Nathalie Berland.
 * Both hymns are performed: The first is sung by baritone Jan Jeroen Bredewold, with tympanist Annie Bélis; the second by bass-baritone Frédéric Albou, with kitharode Benoît Tessé and aulete Nathalie Berland.
 * Both hymns are performed: The first is sung by baritone Jan Jeroen Bredewold, with tympanist Annie Bélis; the second by bass-baritone Frédéric Albou, with kitharode Benoît Tessé and aulete Nathalie Berland.

title: Delphic Hymns


text:
Annelies Bredael

Annelies Bredael (born 15 June 1965 in Willebroek, Antwerp) is a Belgian rower. She participated in 3 consecutive Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, Barcelona and Atlanta In 1992, she won the silver medal in rowing, single scull at the Summer Olympics in Barcelona.

title: Annelies Bredael


text:
S. Sterling Munro Jr.

Sanford Sterling Munro Jr. (2 March 1932 – 9 March 1992) was an aide of former Washington Senator Henry M. Jackson best known for being one of the members of Richard Nixon's Enemies List.

Life and career
He was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of the zoologist, Sanford Sterling Munro FRSE (1908–1971) and his wife, Dorthea Irene Spears. In 1944, the family moved to Bellingham, Washington, and Sterling attended High School here. After graduating High School he went to Washington, D.C. to attend evening classes at the university, whilst in the day taking on various Capitol Hill jobs, including aiding Congressman Jackson.

His career was interrupted when he was drafted to serve in the Korean War from 1951 to 1953. Upon discharge, he returned to Washington to join the legislative staff of Senator Henry Jackson.

Munro received a bachelor's degree in political science and journalism from George Washington University in 1957. In 1961, he became administrative assistant to Senator Jackson, at that time the youngest AA in the Senate.

During his career in politics, he was also administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration.

He retired from Washington in 1976 and moved to Wenatchee to work as a consultant.

Munro died in Seattle, Washington, of a heart attack.

title: S. Sterling Munro Jr.


text:
Minification

Minification may refer to:

 * Magnification, by a factor of less than one, producing a smaller image
 * Minification (programming), a software coding technique
 * Minimisation (psychology), a form of cognitive distortion

title: Minification


text:
The Gift of Stones

The Gift of Stones is a 1988 novel by British author Jim Crace. The novel, written in poetic language, takes place at the end of the Neolithic period, as the introduction of bronze tools disrupt the established order. It is narrated by the village storyteller and his "daughter".

Plot summary
As a boy, the storyteller lost an arm and became an outcast to the villagers who rely heavily on their stonemasonry skills. The boy leaves the confines of the village, in order to seek a role for himself, and discovers his adeptness at telling stories.

The storyteller returns to the village, but most of his time is spent acting as a protector for a widow and her child who had also been forced out of the village, and live two days' walk away. Periodically, he returns to the village charged with new stories to tell.

He based an amputation scene on his father's experience with osteomyelitis—"his left arm was withered between his elbow and his shoulder. It was pitted with holes, and weeping with pus for most of my childhood," Crace stated in an interview with The Paris Review.

Themes
The novel deals with the nature of truth and fiction and storytelling. The reader is often presented with variations of the narrative and invited to judge which, if any, to accept as reality. Like other novels by Crace, it also deals with social change and the effects of revolutionary new technology and as such could be seen as sympathising with the victims of our modern post-industrial age.

Crace has said that the novel acts as a metaphor for "Thatcherite Britain".

title: The Gift of Stones