This study examines the formulaic language of Byzantine book epigrams inscribed by scribes in manuscript margins, texts that combine poetic expression with the documentation of manuscript production. While formulaicity in Greek historical texts has been theorised primarily in oral and administrative contexts, the nature of other texts like Byzantine book epigrams remains largely underexplored. Focusing on the mostformulaic subset in the Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams (DBBE), namely scribe-related epigrams, the study proposes a typological framework which classifies formulaic sequences by pragmatic function: address, request, thanksgiving, representation of individuals or the community, and recording of practical information. Beyond models grounded in orality, cognitive processing, or epistolary convention, the analysis conceptualises these formulae as ritualised communicative acts embedded in Byzantine manuscript culture, demonstrating how they mediated human-divine relations, reinforced communal identity, and functioned as a performative medium of piety and scribal agency, capturing both formulaic constraint and creative flexibility.
This paper presents thefirst critical edition and English translation of an anonymous Byzantine dodecasyllabic poem On Teeth (pi epsilon pi o delta o nu tau omega), preserved uniquely in the late thirteenth-century manuscriptMarcianusgr. 524. The poem offers a vivid first-person account of toothache, combining personal suffering with medical, biblical, and classical imagery. Rather than functioning as a didactic medical text, it dramatizes pain as lived experience, using technical medical terminology alongside mythological and scriptural allusions to explore sin, bodily affliction, and speech. Placed between eleventh and twelfth-century literary culture, the poem resonates with works by Andronikos Protekdikos,Theodore Prodromos, Constantine Stilbes, and Michael Psellos in its tragic-ironic tone and skepticism toward medicine. Through close analysis of manuscript context, intertextuality, and language, the article argues that the poem exemplifies a Byzantine mode of poetic journalism, transforming private suffering into a performative act addressed to a small circle of educated readers in later medieval Constantinopolitan intellectual environments and social settings.
This paper examines the metaphors employed in Plutarch's De virtute morali to critique Stoic and Platonic models of passion. It is argued that Plutarch's metaphors reflect his anti-Stoic polemic and serve an educational agenda, advancing increasingly complex conceptualizations of passion-from inert matter, to vegetal growth, to the cognitively richer animal model. Section 1 contrasts Stoic suppression of passion with Plutarch's artisanal metaphors, which relocate & micro;rpov pound in a Peripatetic framework inspired by the Timaeus. for the symbiotic models of reason and passion. Section 3 explores the subtle influence of the Phaedrus on Stoic definitions of passion. Section 4 highlights how Plutarch's zoological metaphors diverge from Stoic views on animal nature, aligning ethical moderation with humane treatment of animals. While Plutarch and the Stoics employ similar imagery, their conceptualizations of passion diverge fundamentally, reflecting broader differences in their ethics and psychology.
This paper challenges the hypothesis of Edward Harris and Alberto Esu that Athenian eisangelia for major political trials (traditionally known as eisangelia to the Assembly) was initiated like ordinary public prosecutions, by filing a written indictment with the relevant magistrate rather than in the Assembly itself. It argues that this reconstruction rests on inference and arguments from silence, and that it conflicts with the available literary evidence. A close analysis of passages in Demosthenes and Hyperides, especially In Defence of Lycophron, shows that accusations and the formal submission of the eisangelia occurred in the Assembly and constituted the first procedural step, sometimes even in the defendant's absence. Further evidence from Against Phormio also fits the traditional model better than Harris' reinterpretation. The paper concludes that the established view of Assembly-initiated eisangelia remains more consistent with the sources than its recent revision offered by Harris and Esu
This paper examines the section on the lion (Epit. 2.133-150) of Aristophanes of Byzantium's Epitome as preserved in the Byzantine Sylloge. Close textual comparison with the Historia animalium and other Aristotelian works shows that Aristophanes' epitome is not merely derivative, but reflects a deliberate process of selection and reorganization. While usually faithful to its source material, the epitome introduces notable divergences, ranging from stylistic compression to substantive deviations, including omissions and generalizations. The epitome also contains details unattested in extant sources, which may derive from now-lost works, from Aristophanes' own interpretive contributions, orfrom later additions by the compiler of the Sylloge. Crucially, Aristophanes' aim differs from Aristotle's: he produces a species-focused handbook for a different readership, largely omitting causal explanations central to Aristotle. The lion case demonstrates that epitomes are generative: they preserve, adapt, and at times innovate on their sources. Scholars should therefore treat epitomes both critically, when reconstructing sources, and productively, as witnesses to the organization and reception of knowledge in the Hellenistic and Byzantine worlds.
