1. Hesseling, D.C. and Pernot, H., Poèmes prodromiques en grec vulgaire (Amsterdam 1910) 10–22 Google Scholar. The attribution in the titles to Poem III in mss CSA to one ‘Hilarion Ptochoprodromos’, a monk, together with the name ‘Hilarion’ as the narrating persona in the text (III.387), has misled some literal-minded Byzan-tinists into postulating the ‘real’ existence of such a person as author of this poem, see Hatzidakis, M., VVA (1897) 100–27 Google Scholar, and Papadimitriu, S., ibid. 5 (1898) 92–130 Google Scholar, whose proliferation of a sub-species of Prodromic personae goes so far as to count both ‘Hilarion Ptochoprodromos’ and ‘(Theodore) Ptochoprodromos’ as authors separate from the ‘real’ Theodore Prodromos. Hesseling — Pernot (1910) 91–130, Beck, H.G., Geschichte der byzantinischen Volksliteratur (Munich 1971) 103–4 Google Scholar, and Hörandner, W., Theodoros Prodromos: historische Gedichte (Vienna 1974) 65–7 Google Scholar, rightly consider the attribution of Poem III to ‘Hilarion’ to be a misunderstanding of the copyists. Jacopone da Todi’s use of the name ‘Hilarion’ in the satirical context of an impoverished monk might usefully be explored, see Dronke, P., The Medieval Lyric (Hutchinson 1978) 216 Google Scholar. A similar, if more grotesque, bogus attribution is cited by Beck (1971) 176 n.l, from the fifteenth-century Vienna manuscript of the unrhymed poem, Synaxarion ton Gadarou, glossed by P. Lambricius as ‘De quodam Gadaro sanctitatis vitae claro’!

2. For the most recent summaries and discussions of Theodore Prodromos’ works, certain and disputed, see Hörandner (1974) 37–78 and Kazhdan, A., Studies on Byzantine literature of the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Cambridge 1984) 87–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. The arguments on authorship have hitherto rested almost exclusively on style, language and metre. The details and principles are summarised in Appendix I. The Birmingham Text Seminar, while devoting no more than an Appendix to the question, would wish to keep the debate open.

4. Pseudo-Luciano, , Timarione, ed. Romano, R. (Naples 1974)Google Scholar; see also Alexiou, M., ‘Literary subversion and the aristocracy in twelfth-century Byzantium: a stylistic analysis of the Timarion, chapters 6–10’, 8 (1982/3) 2–45 Google Scholar, and Baldwin, B., Timarion. Byzantine Texts in Translation (Detroit 1984).Google Scholar

5. Foucault, M., ‘What is an author?’, in Textual Strategies, ed. Harari, J.V. (Cornell 1979) 141–60 Google Scholar. The implications for dubiously transmitted Byzantine texts are noted by Alexiou (1982/3) 30–31 n.4. *G. Calofonos has cogently argued the relevance of Foucault’s case to dream-books, anonymously composed, but later authenticated by attribution to specific persons. Lodge, D., ‘Milan Kundera, and the idea of author in modern criticism’, Critical Quarterly 26.1/2 (1984) 105–21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has recently challenged the rejection by R. Barthes and M. Foucault of the concept of ‘author’.

6. Romanos, the Melodist, Cantica dubia, edd. Maas, P. and Trypanis, C.A. (Berlin 1970)Google Scholar; see also Wellesz, E., The Akathistos Hymn, in Monumenta Musicae Byzan-tinae 9 (Copenhagen 1957)Google Scholar. Problems of authorship are by no means restricted to vernacular and religious texts: the date and authorship of the learned tragedy, Christos Paschon, probably twelfth century but attributed to Grgory of Nazianzus, remain open, see Tuilier, A., Grégoire de Nazianze: la Passion de Christ, tragédie, in Sources chrétiennes no.149 (Paris 1969)Google Scholar for a summary of the evidence, and for a pro-fourth-century case. Contra, see evidence cited and summarised by Macrìdes, R., ‘Poetic justice in the Patriarchate. Murder and Cannibalism in the Provinces,’ Cupido Legum (Frankfurt am Main 1985) 167.Google Scholar

7. See Jeffreys, M.J., ‘The literary emergence of vernacular Greek’, Mosaic 8 (1974) 171–93 Google Scholar, and H. and Eideneier, N., ‘Leser oder Hörerkreis? zur byzantinischen Dichtung in der Volksprache’, Ellenika 34 (1982/3) 119–50 Google Scholar. No firm conclusions may be drawn.

8. Kazhdan (1984) 92–104 examines in detail the life and works of Theodore Prodromos and ‘Ptocho-Prodromos’, noting the remarkable coincidences of historical and social circumstance, which outweigh statistical analyses of language and metrics.

9. See Genette, G., Narrative Discourse (Blackwell 1980) 213–4 Google Scholar. The relevance of the distinction for the Timarion has already been argued by Alexiou (1982/3) 29–45. For the Prodromic poems, Kazhdan is among the few to argue correctly that they are ‘genre exercises, and their supposed “authors” are no more than literary per-sonae’, (1984) 91.

10. The argument is posed, hypothetically, by Beck (1971) 104.

11. Our Text Seminar has striven to steer a narrow course between the Scylla of circular arguments based on philological, metrical and historical minutiae, and the seductive Charybdis of structuralist and post-structuralist theories, which tend to dismiss all history (and archaeology) as ‘literary texts’, thereby comfortably justifying any lack of reference to historical time or context.

12. See Hesseling — Pernot (1910) 10–24.

13. Ibid. 84–103.

14. Ibid.

15. The case is argued in detail by Eideneier (1982/3) 119–50, on the grounds that some of the variant readings in the manuscripts can be explained as oral rather than as purely scribal changes. A further possibility, proposed by R.A. Fletcher in relation to Digenes Akrites, should be investigated: that differences between extant versions derive from scribal mangling or aural mishearing rather than to ‘genuine’ oral tradition, see Mandatoforos 8 (May 1976) 8–9. For a more general reassessment of the problem, see Bäuml, F.H., ‘Medieval texts and the two theories of oral-formulaic composition: a proposal for a third theory’, New Literary History 16.1 (1984) 31–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Hörandner (1974) 66.

17. Hesseling — Pernot (1910) 30–1 (I.1–26), 38–41 (II.1–25), 48–50 (III.1–32).

18. See Appendix II for a translation of the four proems.

19. See n.57.

20. Similar devices, possibly literary rather than autobiographical, are to be found, for example, in Porphyrogenitus, Constantine, De Caerimoniis, ed. Reiske, (CSHB, Bonn 1829) 3 Google Scholar, and Kekaumenos, Strategikon, edd. Wassiliewski, B. and Jornstedt, V. (Amsterdam 1965) 6.Google Scholar

21. Nagy, G., The Best of the Achaeans (Johns Hopkins 1979) 300.Google Scholar

22. Evidence for the scarcity of parchment and paper in the twelfth century is cited by Wilson, N.G., ‘Books and readers in Byzantium’, in Byzantine Books and Bookmen (Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium, Washington D.C. 1975) 2–4 Google Scholar; partly repeated from Reynolds, L.D. and Wilson, N.G., Scribes and Scholars (Oxford 1968) 51–63 Google Scholar: Balsamon comments on a canon forbidding the palimpsesting of biblical texts; Michael Choniates complains that the supply of books may fail because shiploads of parchment are sold to the Italians; seasonal supply is indicated by Gregory II of Cyprus (1283–89), who notes that he cannot have a text of Demosthenes copied until spring, when people begin to eat meat and parchment is available (before selective breeding only 8 pages can be expected from each animal); John Tzetzes complains of lack of charti in the capital in the twelfth century, commenting on Aristophanes Frogs 843: tous chartas, ‘which may be taken as meaning parchment or as a generic term for paper and parchment’, Wilson (1975) 2. There is no evidence that paper, supposedly introduced by the Arabs from China via Samarkand after 768, was either cheaper, or more plentiful, than parchment at the time in question. Prices are hard to calculate, but parchment might have cost roughly 50 ff. per nomisma (*A.A.M. Bryer). A comparable irony may underlie the impoverished father’s complaints in Poem II, whose desiderata among ‘basic foodstuffs’ include some spices and condiments which must have cost a small fortune at the time (II.36–45G, 37a-45a H).

23. eis ton xenōna IV.89, cf. III.334a (H, CSA). Koukoules, Ph., Byzantinōn Bios kai Politismos (Athens 1948–1955) 1.130, 131f, 141 Google Scholar, adduces other evidence for the word as ‘hospital’ as well as ‘guest house’; see also Kyriakis, M.J., ‘Poor poets and starving literati in twelfth-century Byzantium’, B 44 (1974) 305–6.Google Scholar

24. See especially lines 141–4. The perfective aspect of kratēsēs, in juxtaposition with kratiste, suggests a veiled irony.

25. See especially lines 160–2. The appeal, directed to Christ acting through Manuel’s beneficence, is couched in terms which can scarcely be refused.

26. The definitions given by Kriaras, E., Lexiko mesaiōnikēs ellēnikēs demōdous grammateias (Thessaloniki 1968)Google Scholar and in the Historikon Lexikon tēs Akadēmias Athēnōn (Athens 1933-)are not precise; however, the fact that it is smoked (akropaston), with two sides, i.e. with a kind of skin? (sympleuron), and coated in fat (syllardon) suggests some kind of smoked sausage. See below, n.35, on obscene connotations of apakin and its ancient comic equivalents; also n.39 on the joys of stolen food.

27. The many uses of the word capa (or cappa), from personal garment to clerical vestment and small place of worship, are listed in Cange, Du, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae Graecitatis(Leyden 1688, repr. Paris 1943)s.v., 118–9 Google Scholar. From it derives the word ‘chapel’ (*Z.Gavrilović). The play on meanings is important, since it links the seemingly unconnected themes of cloak, exclusion from public worship and resource to private prayer. For lice, see below, nn.28 and 38.

28. The sequence runs: Alexios I (1081–1118), loannes II (1118–43), Manuel I (1143–80), Alexios II (1180–83), Andronikos I (1183–85); for the prophecy, see Niketas Choniates 169.91–5, ed. I.A. Van Dieten (CFHB, Berlin 1975). I owe this information to the kindness of M.F. Hendy. The figure four, developed in the closing ad dress of the fourth poem with reference to the four soldier saints, is taken up from the proem, where the tetraugust metaphor is further linked with the motif of the Cross. It is particularly relevant to Manuel’s porphyrogenital state, since he is the fourth son, addressed as such en tois porphyranthesi sou adelphois by Michael Rhetor, see Regel, W., Fontes rerum byzantinarum (St. Petersburg/Leipzig 1892-) VIII Google Scholar. The modes of address range from standard titles to less usual metaphors, all of which can be paralleled in contemporary sources: for Manuel as both ‘born in the purple’ and ‘of Comnene lineage’, see, for example, Regel (1892) I, 111.41–12 (ō porphyras blaste and ō porphyras augasma), VI. 121.9–10 (blaste porphyras), 122.3–4 (ō kalon basileias anthos) *J.F. Haldon).

29. See Hendy, M.F. Coinage and money in the Byzantine Empire 1081–1261 (Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D.C. 1969) 111–22 Google Scholar, Plates 12–18. The four soldier saints invoked here balance the winged emperor and Cross motifs of the proem, also engraved on coins (the former from mid- to late thirteenth century), see Hendy (1969) ibid. For Manuel’s munificence, a recurrent theme of the poem (lc and lr), see Hendy, , Studies in Byzantine monetary economy (Cambridge 1984) 199 Google Scholar; and for imperial euergesia, see Hunger, H., Prooimion, Elemente der byzantinischen Kaiseridee in den Arengen der Urkunden (Wien/Graz/Köln 1964) 139–43 Google Scholar. Manuel as successful soldier is a favourite Prodromic topos, see sources cited by Kazhdan (1984) 105–7. Wealth, munificence and military prowess are thus subtly interlinked in an indirect request for money. For possible parody of the Lord’s Prayer, see n.31.

30. See Kyriakis (1974) 290–309 for a crudely literal interpretation of the author’s (sic) poverty. Kazhdan (1984) 104–5 reminds us that the ‘autobiographical’ information in the vernacular poems should not be taken literally, and itemises what can be reconstructed of Theodore Prodromos’ actual lands and properties: he was no pauper.

31. Clear allusion to the Lord’s Prayer is made in the closing address to the emperor, see lines 284–6. However, both the formal structure and the persistent message of the whole poem can be read as a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer whi The extent and subtlety of the allusions can best be demonstrated by comparing the textch reinforces the narrator’s appeals to the emperor for help. of the Lord’s Prayer with parallel passages in the poem:

1.

Line 1: The idea of the emperor as supreme father is projected through the passages where the poet seeks shelter and expects to be heard, protected and comforted (1a-1h, 1a-1p, 1mm-1xx) and 141–2, 160–2, 275–7. The poet seeks refuge in the emperor (the supreme father) from the hardships provoked by his actual father’s advice (1–15); he also prays that the emperor might keep his eternal and almighty sway (141–4), thereby perhaps suggesting that unless his own appeals are heard the emperor may be treated by the Almighty as he has been by his own father? Line 2: the poet expresses his plea for money in terms of a plea for bread. Reference to bread, and to his lack of it since he became a grammatikos, is constant (16–17, 23–7, 31–2, 79–82, 135–7, 156–8, 202–12): he is in dire and daily need! Lines 7–8: he is deep in debt (1tt) and implores the emperor to satisfy the demands of his creditors (285–7). Lines 9–10: the command rusai is used to implore the emperor to save him from hunger and poverty (160–2, 285). In fact, the whole poem is a plea for deliverance not only from hunger but from moral decline, in accordance with the Byzantine belief in man’s constant need to combat the bestial side of his dual bestial/spiritual nature in order to reach the desired state of apatheia: it is the poet’s immediate hunger which enforces his obsession with food, his jealousy of other tradesmen (23–140), his encounters with females on the streets whose sexual appetites appear voracious but fulfilled (99–108, 227–57), his (unwitting) provocation of advice from others to give up the spiritual struggle as papas-grammatikos and become entirely bestial, like the common crafsmen. Viewed in the context of the Lord’s Prayer, the fourth poem is far from lacking in design and structure (*C. Galatariotou).

32. Mango, C.A., Byzantium: the Empire of New Rome (New York 1980) 83, 251 Google Scholar. The remark is a worn topos of Prodromic commentary.

33. See, for example, PI. Gorg.491a. The lowly status, dubious practices (and products) of cobblers (in addition to the sale of extravagant shoes at exorbitant prices), are documented comprehensively by Headlam, W., Herodas: the Mimes and Fragments (ed. Knox, A.D., Cambridge 1922), pp.xlviii–xlix, 301–2, 304, 328, 336–7, 339 Google Scholar. Lucian i.636 chooses the cobbler as the typical poor man who is delighted to die; while Julian Or.p.81B stresses the ignobility of cobbling and other menial trades. Also traditional is the coupling of cobbler with schoolmaster (grammatistēs) as despicable, see Dio Chrys.2.219, Plut. Mor.776B. Among Byzantine writers, Tzetzes expresses similar sentiments: Iamb. p.511, Kiessling. To these sources cited by Headlam may be added one (out of many) remarkable parallels to our poem from the historical poems of Theodore Prodromos, ed. Horandner (1974) 378–9 (XXXVIII.35–44), where, in a poem addressed to Anna Doukaina, he recalls his father’s advice to ‘learn his letters’, since he was too weak to be a soldier, and other trades were too base! As in our poem, his efforts were rewarded with poverty. Headlam’s editorial practices, both for Herodas’ Mimes and Aeschylus’ Oresteia (ed. G. Thomson, Cambridge 1938), remain a model for scholarship and a mine of information, not least for Byzantinists. Of particular value is his careful sifting of literary topoi which remained traditional from antiquity throughout the Byzantine period, always viewed with reference to the specific literary and historical context of each author. It is important to stress that the use of topoi is not incompatible with historicity; nor should the process of documenting them be confused with the nebulous and romantic concepts of ‘Greekness’, or cultural continuity which is perpetuated by the unlettered Greek ‘folk’.

34. See, for example, the literary and historical evidence cited by Bergren, A.T.L., ‘Language and the female in early Greek thought’, Arethusa: Semiotics and Classical Studies 16.1/2 (1983) 69–96 Google Scholar, and the etymological evidence adduced by Nagy (1979) 299–300.

35. Apakin seems to have taken over the metaphorical overtones of AG allas (‘sausage’), used to denote the male member in Hipponax 48, Crates Com. 16, Ar.Eq. 161: the role of the allantopōlēs (‘sausage-seller’) in Aristophanes’ Knights is suggestive for sexual, homosexual, scatological and political innuendoes. For these and other sources, see Henderson, J., The Maculate Muse: obscene language in Attic comedy (Yale 1975) 20, 66–70 Google Scholar. The connection between alias and apakin (in conjunction with loukaniko) has been noted by Bancroft-Marcus, R., George Chortatsis: a critical study (D. Phil, thesis, Oxford 1979) 242ffGoogle Scholar, who cites a number of remarkable parallels between ancient and Cretan Renaissance comedy in the obscene connotations of certain foodstuffs, animal and vegetable (see for apaki Chortatsis Panoria A 389, B 18, Katzourbos glossary and Foskolos Fortounatos E 55,70, all of which pass without editorial comment). That this, too, was a literary topos, rather than due to conscious imitation (or oral tradition), is indicated by its presence in the commentaries to Aristophanes (ad loc.J by Tzetzes. For enteron as “guts, reached through the vagina”, see Henderson (1975) 20, 69, 125: cf. the taunt of the butcher’s wife to our scholar-narrator at line 255 grammatike philosophe, enterochordoplyta. Kreas (‘meat’) occurs in Aristophanes both in homosexual contexts (E.q.428, 484 Sch., fr.130.3) and as a slang term for ‘female parts’ (Ach.195, Lys. 1062). As for bakers and their confections, different kinds of cake (plakous) were exploited in antiquity for obscene connotations, Henderson (1975) 144–5, duly annotated by Tzetzes. The katablattas (‘dyer’, ‘fuller’) seems to be the medieval equivalent of AG knapheus, gnapheus, on whose lowly status and dubious associations, see Headlam (1922) 211–2. Of uncertain meaning is sēkōtēs: either ‘weigher of goods’, cf. zygostatēs, as suggested by Hendy (1984) 589 and n.168, or ‘carrier’, ‘porter’, in accordance with the modern sense of the word; if the latter, his status on the City’s streets was, indeed, the lowest of the low, yet even he, according to our text (114–8), was assured of his ‘daily bread’. See Koukoules (1948–55) 2, 185–6 for the status of bastagarios, nōtophoros, phortiaphoros, sēkōtēs.

36. See, for example, Men. Samia 98–101, ed. Gomme, A.W. and Sandbach, F.H., Menander: a commentary (Oxford 1973) 555 Google Scholar (reference owed to the kindness of A. Henrichs).

37. IV.5–6: for condemnation of male luxury in shoes, especially vehement in the Church fathers, see sources cited by Headlam (1922) xlviii. Koukoules (1948) 4, 397, 407–8, provides parallels to Byzantine fashions in footwear.

38. Cf. Ar. Pl.537–47: the similarities are extremely close. According to Byzantine dream books, to dream of a shepherd’s cloak signified envy of another’s wealth, poverty, or long sickness (all of which our narrator complains of throughout the four poems), see Drexl, F. (ed.), ‘Das Traumbuch des Patriarchen Nikephoros’, Beiträge zur Geschichte des christlichen Altertums (Bonn/Leipzig 1922) 103.64; 116.324; 117.325; 326 Google Scholar (*G. Calofonos). The association with dreams is suggested by our narrator’s drowsiness (nustazō 268) and sleep (koimoumai 269), wrapped in his kappa (tyligomai 268), following his exclusion from Church (ekklēsia 262) and his enforced retreat to his dilapidated home (palaiospiton, kainourgiochalasmenon 267). The collapsing house and human disease (cf. 1.75–87, II.57a (H), IV.177, 180) as apocaplyp-tic symbols are attested in Joseph Bryennios, ed. Eugenios Voulgaris ii (Leipzig 1768), p. 191, and paraphrased by Mango, Byzantium and its Image (Variorum, London, 1984), p.34: “for just as the death of a body is foreshadowed by sickness and gradual disintegration, as the collapse of a house by cracking walls and falling plaster, so indeed is the end of the world indicated in advance by the disappearance of all goodness and virtue, the growth of wickedness and superstition, and by the fact that the Roman Empire had contracted as never before”. Once more, apocalyptic dreams and portents are interlinked with the contrast between wealth (his patron’s) and poverty (his own) in order to suggest his dependence upon letters (kappa is the tenth letter of the Greek alphabet) and his need for cash: the letter kappa was inscribed as part of the five-letter Cross monogram on the obverse of Manuel I’s coins, see Hendy (1969), Plates 17 and 18, and p. 121 for documentation on the half tetarteron, mint of Thessalonica, Type A (heavy standard):

39. Cf. Babrius xxvii, Lucian i.603 (harpaktikōteroi tōn galōn), Ar. Vesp363, Pax 1151, Thesm.559 (‘it must have been the cat!’), Plut. Mor.519D (kathaper opson, galēs paradramousēs, airousin ek mesou) (sources cited by Headlam (1922) 358. The point was not lost on twelfth-century intellectuals, see, for example, Eustathios of Thessaloniki on the joys of stolen foods, particularly among monks: (*G. Calofonos) (0.229.94).

40. See Headlam (1922) 347–8 on brōzousi (Mimes VII. 63) as a form of bibrōskousi, cf. Hesychios: trōzein psithyrizein, synousiazousin, and Aeschylus, fr. 44 era men hagnos ouranos trōsai khthona. Dogs’ appetite for leather was proverbial, as a habit hard, if not impossible, to unlearn, Lucian iii. 121: the sense in Herodas is that women exceed even dogs in their appetite for ‘leather’.

41. “Eparete droubaniston oxygalan, gynaikes!” (IV. 112). For droubaniston, see Kriaras, (1968), s.v. droubanizō. Droubani is glossed by Hadzidakis, G. in BZ 1 (1892) 99–100 Google Scholar for contemporary meanings. See also V. Tsiouni, Dieg. Paid., for form draganizō (?Slavonic root), and Miklosich, F., Lexicon palaeoslovenico-graeco-latinum emendatum auctum (Aalen.1977)Google Scholar. Droubanistēs is the name of a torrent on Mt. Athos, according to a document of 1496, Actes de Dionysiou, ed. N. Oikonomides (Paris 1968) 39.8, 184 (*A.W. Dunn). Oxygalon is probably yogurt, here beaten up to make a refreshing and frothy drink, much like the modern Turkish ayran (drink made with yogurt and water, mixed with snow or ice, rather than ‘buttermilk’), still sold on the streets of Istanbul, see Hendy (1984) 588–90. For obscene connotations of milk and cheese, see Bancroft-Marcus (1978) 253–4 on Chortatsis Am.C388: na sou gemisō athogalo olē tē galautia sou (Yiannoulis to Frosyni). Tzetzes, commenting on Ar. Ran. 1328, elaborates on the ‘twelve positions’ of the hetaira Kyrene, with a characteristic attack on earlier scholiasts which implies an acknowledged association between milking goats and odd forms of sexual intercourse: W.J. Koster (ed.), Scholia in Aristophanem (Scripta Academica Groningiana, Gronigen/Amsterdam 1962) IV.3 (In Ranas 1328, 1340, pp.1074–5, 1081. The topos is not unattested in Hebrew and Byzantine religious literature, see Matons, J. Grosdidier de, Romanos te Mélode, vol.4. pp.166–71 Google Scholar (Sources Chrétiennes 128, Paris 1967).

42. Grinding pepper as metaphorical for sexual intercourse is frequent in modern folk tradition, see, for example, Petropoulos, D.A., Ellēnika dēmotika tragoudia II: Basikē Bibliothēkē no. 47 (Athens 1959) 209–10 Google Scholar (*A. Kasdagli). The nearest equivalent in Byzantine sources is perhaps to be found in the satirical song, purportedly of the tenth century but extant in a sixteenth-century ms. from the Marcian Library, Venice, edited by G. Morgan, ‘A Byzantine satirical song?’, BZ47 (1954) 292–7. Although somewhat obscure, the obscenities connected with grinding, baking and trumpeting are plain enough. For roasting meat or fish on red-hot sparkling charcoals (IV. 130–4), see Henderson (1975) 142–3 for the unequivocal connotations of Ar.Eq. 1286 (kukōn tas escharas), glossed by the scholiast as ta cheilē tōn gunaikeiōn aidoiōn. Eschara as ‘labia’ was a common term, see Eust. Thess. 1523.28, 1539.33. These and further particulars are cited by Henderson.

43. Henderson (1975) 192–3: eating dung meant low, animal behaviour, notably in the contexts of homosexuality and auto-eroticism (see especially the sausage-seller’s threat to Kleon in Ar.Eq..295 koprophorēsō se). Note the proverb concerning scatophagy recorded by Tzetzes. (Chil. 10.306, 82) (*G. Calofonos).

44. The interconnections between eating and sexual activity appear to be universal; the particular forms they take (including taboos) are culture specific, see Leach, E., Social Anthropology (London 1982) 114–6, 196, 221.Google Scholar

45. Wilson (1983) 190–6 provides ample evidence for the continued interest in Aristophanes throughout the twelfth century. Of Tzetzes, he notes that ‘while he thought that some of Aristophanes’ plays were excellent, he was unable to enjoy the Frogs. He complains more than once (at lines 25 and 1144) that the poet must have been drunk when he wrote, while on line 358 he remarks that the poet does little except talk nonsense in this play. The obscenity of 422 irritated him. But it does not seem to have occurred to him to leave the play out of his reading-programme’ (194). Cur rent research in our Text Seminar is revealing many subtle allusions to Aristophanes and other comic writers in undisputed works of Theodore Prodromos, in particular in the historical poems edited by Hörandner (1974).

46. See, for example Constantine Porphvrogenitus, De Caerim., praef., 5,2–11; and Kekaumenos, Stralegikon, 75–6, 30–1.^1–9. The opposition between what has been seen and experienced by the writer as incontrovertibly true, on the one hand, and what has been learned only from hearsay (akoē), or from other writings, as impli citly or potentially false, on the other, is one which runs right through Byzantine writers from Prokopios to Comnena and beyond: it suggests that, despite the advanced state of literacy (at least among the èlite), prime importance was attached to direct visual evidence, as in oral or residually oral cultures, rather than to documented (therefore ‘written’) proof, as in societies reliant upon the printed word, see Ong, W. J., Orality and Literacy (London 1982) 96–101 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The new subtlety introduced by the form of the topos in our poems is that narrator foregrounds his intention to write fluently in the language used normally for speaking directly, and therefore, to write truthfully.

47. For the intrusion of narrator in the text as a phenomenon first found in Byzantine texts of the late eleventh century, developed in the twelfth, see Kazhdan (1984) 192–4. Correctly, he situates the development in the context of social and intellectual upheavals of the time. R.M. Beaton, in a paper delivered to the Eighteenth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies (University of Oxford, April 1984), explores the literary aspects of some twelfth-century narrative techniques, first discussed in the context of the Prodromic poems by Alexiou in the draft paper (April 1983) which formed the starting-point for this article; see also Alexiou (1983) 29–46 for a literary and stylistic analysis of the Timarion.

48. See Appendix I for details of the discussion.

49. Jeffreys, in his careful review of Hörandner (1974), notes the fondness in the Prodromic poems for rhetorical devices which can also be found in folk songs, particularly for the ‘framework of three’, whereby the balancing and antithetical halves of one line are rounded off by the first half of the following line, (1977) 106–7. However, the parallels are by no means limited to rhetorical and structural devices, as a detailed study of lines 258–65 will show:]

(258–9).

Cf. appeals to objects in the folk tradition:

Petropoulos (1959) 11.23 Ibid. 129–30

Polites, N.G., Eklogai apo ta tragoudia tou ellēnikou laou (Athens 1914), p.45.31 Google Scholar

ibid. 123.85.

Similar appeals are found in the verses of Michael Glykas (ed. E. Tsolaki, Thessaloniki 1959): (196) and in the Erotopaignia (ed. Th. Siapkaras-Pitsillides, Thessaloniki 19): (435).

(ii) (263)

Cf. petropoulos 11.59

(also 11.63, 11.78,11.122, 11.129, Ioannou, G. Paraloges (Athens 1975) p.52)Google Scholar. Petropoulos 11.87 (also Politis 110.80, 122,85)

Giankas, Epeirotika dēmotika tragoudia (Athens n.d.) 415–6.

Again, the line is found in vernacular verse of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, for example Synaxarion tou timēmenou Gadarou (ed. G. Wagner, Leipzig 1874) 5: and Gadarou, lykou ki aloupous diēgesis oraia (ed. Wagner)25:

(iii)

This formula, suggesting exclusion, occurs both in folk songs:

Ioannou 283

ibid.285

Politis 163.128B

(also Petropoulos 11.59,11.158); and in vernacular laments for historical and natural disasters, see Herzfeld, M.F., ‘New light on the 1480 Siege of Rhodes’, British Museum Quarterly 36 (1972) 69–73 Google Scholar, and, in slightly different form, To Anakalēma tēs Konstantinoupolēs (ed. E. Kriaras, Thessaloniki 1956) 31.56–60.

(iv) (265)

The motif of swaggering motion, usually in an erotic context, is common, cf.

Politis. 151.110

ibid. 113.81.49

ibid.115.82.14

Petropoulos 11.147

Further, the syntactic structure, introducing the result (usually negative) of excess, can be paralleled in laments and Kleftic songs:

Ioannou 288

Politis 214.204

Petropoulos 11.246

(Folk song parallels (researched by *A. Kasdagli). More research is needed before firm conclusions can be drawn; but meanwhile such formulaic lines should not be dismissed or attributed to later scribal interference.

50. Standard titles and modes of address in the poem include autokratōr, autokratōr tōn Rōmaiōn (adopted from Michael I, 811–3), despotēs (introduced by Justinian I, 527–65), augoustos (after tenth century only used on imperial edicta and letters to foreign powers), stephēphoros, kratistos, tropaiouchos, anax, skeptouchos, kratarchēs: documentation for their use in the twelfth century is cited in books and articles referred to by F. Dölger, Byzantinische Diplomatik: 20 Aufsätze zum Urkundenwesen der Byzantiner (Ettal 1956); see also Dölger, F. and Karayannopoulos, J., Byzantinische Urkundenlehre (Munich 1968)Google Scholar, Hunger, (1964), Hendy, (1969), Mango, ‘The Conciliar Edict of 1166’, DOP 17 (1963) 315–30 Google Scholar. Less usual modes of address and metaphors include the emperor as skepē (‘protection’), cf. sources cited in Regel (1892) III.41, VI. 103; as harbour/haven/sea of tranquility (lg-lm, loo-rr, cf. III.440), see Regel (1892) IX.156; as refuge and haven (1i, 1k, 1rr, 283), cf. Regel (1892) 111.27, 41; as bestower of wealth (1c,280), cf. Regel (1892)

I.IV.17–18; as ruler of rulers (1p,160,163,276,284), cf. Mango (1963), Dölger-Karayannopoulos (1968) 157, Regel (1892) I, 111.40, VI.103; as successful soldier (1cc-111), cf. Mango (1963), Regel (1892) 1,1.4, 15, III.28–9, 40–1,43 VI.101,103, VIII.151, IX.156,162; as wise as Solomon (lxx), cf. Mango (1963) 28, Regel (1892) I, VIII.132, X.166; as mimesis theou (lj, cf. 111.16), cf. Hunger (1964) 58–63. See also note 28. (*J.F. Haldon).For liturgical and religious texts alluded to in poem IV, see the Short Note by Z. Gavrilović, in this issue below.

51. H. Grégoire’s attempts to date Digenes Akrites from ‘historical’ elements in the text have been questioned, see Beck (1971) 63–97 for a useful summary; over-reaction to ‘Grégoirism’ should not, however, lead scholars to ignore the historical and dateable evidence provided in literary texts.

52. Hendy (1969) 19–20, 27.

53. Hendy, , Catalogue of the Byzantine coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection IV: Alexios I to Michael VIII (1081–1261) (Washington D.C.): in progress.Google Scholar

54. Hendy (1969) 5,6,28–9.

55. Ibid. 6–7, 23–5, 28–9.

56. Hendy (1984) 534–45. See Appendix II, Proem IV lines 1jj-11.

57. Nur ad-din (lkk), ruler of Aleppo, established Saladin in Egypt, and in 1171 he was free to turn his attention to the north, where he built up a strong coalition of forces against the Selcuk ruler Arslan. A pact between the two in 1173 agreed that Arslan was to take his responsibilities in the Holy War more seriously; Nur ad-din died in 1174. Melias, or Mleh, brother of Theodore (Toros II, ruler of the Armenian principality in Cilicia 1145–69) succeeded by virtue of his under-age son Ruben II (1169–70); Mleh invaded the realm on Ruben’s accession with the support ot Nur ad-din, and seized control. Reversing the traditional policy of the dynasty for allying with the Crusaders, Mleh made a pact with the Muslims. His position was undermined by the death of Nur ad-din in 1174, and he was murdered by his own vassals in 1175. Stefan Nemanja, the most vigorous of the Serbian princes to submit to Manuel after an imperial show of force in 1172, was brought to Constantinople as a captive. The fact that he was not heard of throughout the rest of Manuel’s reign, but emerged soon after as the successful leader of a breakaway Serbian state, argues a date prior to 1181 for the composition of the proem, since after then he would not have been used as a negative example for the prospective rebels; by the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries he would have been a forgotten figure. It should also be mentioned that the proem seems to contain no reference to the unfortunate outcome of the Battle of Myriokephalon (1176). (*A.E. Harvey)

58. Cited in Sharf, A., Byzantine Jewry from Justinian to the Fourth Crusade (London 1971) 136.Google Scholar

59. These are cited by Kazhdan (1984) 78–86, 144–6 and Hendy (1984) 577–88.

60. Hendy (1984) 587 n.

61. Chill. 11.364.22 (Kiessling 404). For the division of other commodities into three categories, starting always from the top, see Const. Porph. De Caerim. 1.470.10 and the detailed analysis by Hendy (1984) 307–10 and 310n. Mesos for bread of the second quality is attested in the dream-book of Daniel, Drexl (1922) 314. The case for interpreting to mesokatharon… tēs mesēs as referring to social status is argued by Koukoules (1948–55) 5.19. For a contrary view, see K. Amantos ‘Glōssikai Paratērēseis’, EEBS2 (1925) 78–86 and Glōssika Metetēmata (Athens 1964) 279–81. The division of society according to a tripartite formula is further attested in Eustathios of Thessaloniki and Niketas Choniates, see Kazhdan (1984) 143, who points out that it departs in some respects from earlier Byzantine conventions and has parallels in contempory western classifications.

62. The twelfth-century context has recently been questioned, largely on metrical and linguistic grounds, by Eideneier (1982/3) 139–40 and n.l; it is affirmed, on numismatic, historical and social grounds by Hendy (1984) 588–90 and no. 158.

63. Mango’s view, formulated in an inaugural lecture, ‘Byzantine literature as a distorting mirror’ (Oxford 1975), that despite the bulk of extant texts, not much historical, social or even literary sense can be made of them, has provoked undue hostility, particularly among literary scholars. A constructive reappraisal of the problems and their possible solutions may be found in Kazhdan (1984) 27ff, 43,105,158–9,194–5, who stresses that a subtler reading of literary and other texts within their historical and social context often reveals significant patterns of change, despite the rigid conventions in forms of expression.

64. Apaideusia was considered a misfortune, hence parents were responsible for the education of their children. Gregory Nazianzenos had recommended that fathers should teach their children rudimentary letters (Patrologia Graeca 37.381); if unable to do so, they should send them to an elementary school-master, a lowly figure who often had a second job as a notary (taboullarios), cf. the insulting appellation grammatike notare of the butcher’s wife in our poem (245). Complaints about parents’ failure to provide a satisfactory education for their children were not infrequent, see Neophytos the Recluse, Hermēneia despotikōn entolōn Cod.Coisl.Gr. 287, fols.180b-181a, and Joseph Bryennios, ed. Voulgaris (1768) 1.108. On the status and duties of the grammatikos, required to provide rudimentary literacy and knowledge of basic scriptures and religious texts, see Browning, , ‘Enlightenment and repression in Byzantium in the eleventh and twelfth centuries’, Past and Present 69 (1975) 3–23 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘Byzantine world’, BMGS 4 (1978)46–8. Had the narrator of poem IV been no more than an ordinary grammatikos, his complaints of poverty might not have aroused sympathy. However, he displays knowledge of secular learning, e.g. ancient myths (lbbb), learned verse and metre (71–7,82), Homer, Libanios, Oppian and the classics (213–23), and philosophy (255), and is thereby qualified as a teacher of the thurathen or esōthen paideia, as well as of the enkuklios paideia, the second cycle of Byzantine education, see Konstantinides, K., Higher education in Byzantium in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries (Nicosia 1982) 16, 135–44 Google Scholar and Koukoules (1948–55) 1.66–7, 105. At the same time references to the priesthood (137–40, 173) are consistent with the teacher of exōthen paideia, or hiera grammata, see Konstantinides (1982) 1,7. In this way our narrator’s plight is perhaps intended to illustrate the poverty not of one particular teaching profession, but of all men forced to earn a living from their education. (*C. Galatariotou).

65. On the emergence of the vernacular, it should be noted that prevailing attitudes in the twelfth century favoured the ornate and high-flown style for written texts, and no longer tolerated the excuses, traditional until the tenth century, for ‘unadorned’ or ‘low’ style on grounds of comprehensibility. The climate of the times is exemplified by the order of the Patriarch, Nikolaos Mouzalon (1147–51) for the destruction of the Life of Saint Paraskevi the Younger because it was written idiōtikos para tinos chōritou, see Browning, , ‘The language of Byzantine literature’, Byzantina kai Metabyzantina (Malibu 1978) 103–33 Google Scholar and Beck, , Kirche und theologische Literatur (Munich 1959) 640 Google Scholar. When a learned writer of the eleventh and twelfth centuries employs the ‘simple’ language, he is careful to explain precisely why he does so, whether for reasons of lack of education (Neophytos the Recluse) or because he is deliberately ‘writing down’ to his audience (Philip the Monk, the introductory works of Psellos, texts by Tzetzes and Manasses intended for imperial court ladies), see Jeffreys, , ‘The nature and origins of political verse’, DOP 28 (1974) 162–3 Google Scholar (*C. Galatariotou). The author of the Prodromic poems neither lacks education nor can claim to be addressing the lower classes, hence the choice of the vernacular points to a deliberate attempt to use the popular language for amusement at high levels, cf. the prison poem by Michael Glykas. Such a choice is unlikely to have been made by a person without education and without standing in the imperial court, see Appendix I.