Conclusions

Here, our brief survey of the Byzantine Late Antiquity comes to a close. By following Byzantine historiographical writing, we traced the application of late antique aesthetic principles to the Byzantine construction of its past; authors such as Theophanes and Georgios the Monk write the past as a series of signs immediately available to the reader. We then noted, within Byzantine literary criticism of late antique texts, the shift toward an expansion and renegotiation of those aesthetic principles. Photius and later authors such as Michael Psellos advance an appreciation of form and style besides and, often, despite content and meaning. Finally, we detected a Byzantine rewriting of the history of the late antique past, a rewriting that was based on the new methods of reading the texts of the past. In Konstantinos Manasses or in Niketas Choniates, the past is aestheticized. It is to be narrated in an ostensibly rhetorical mode, or to be appreciated for its full aesthetic value. The original late antique projection of theology was gradually replaced in Byzantium by a consciousness of discursive aesthetics and an appreciation of form.

This change may appear at first glance to mark a radical break from Late Antiquity, a break from its critique of fiction and appearance. Yet, at every moment in this gradual development, Byzantine authors deliberately present their approaches, whether traditional or innovative, as being firmly established in the late antique tradition. From the author of the Parastaseis Chronikai to Choniates and from Photius to Psellos, the writing of the late antique past and the reading of late antique discourse is imagined as a continuation of late antique precepts. The Byzantines are not mistaken in that claim. Their approaches, varied as they may be, are all different threads of a complex texture already inherent in late antique discourse itself. For what the Byzantine dialogue with its past reveals is the dialogical nature of Late Antiquity itself. It reveals tensions, open-ended structures, and unspoken conditions of a highly discursive culture. For is not the late antique aversion to rhetoric also a rhetorical pose? Is not the patristic appetite for metaphors also a concession to discourse? Is not the claim that one is telling the truth simultaneously an attempt to silence the fiction involved in the telling? As the Byzantine reading of late antique texts and the writing of late antique history suggests, theology may be the most explicit statement of Late Antiquity, yet aesthetics is the tacit knowledge that conditions its cultural dynamics.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

No comprehensive treatment ofByzantium’s relation to its late antique past exists. Nevertheless, most studies about middle and late Byzantine culture deal with the reception of Late Antiquity in one fashion or another. A good starting point for the study of the Byzantine Late Antiquity are several items in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Kazhdan 1991), where one can also find further information and bibliography on Byzantine authors and topics mentioned above;

See also Beck 1959; Hunger 1978; and Kazhdan 1999. For the Byzantine view of the past in general, see Beck 1978; Jeffreys 1979; Mango 1980: 189-200; Dagron 1984; Kazhdan and Epstein 1985; Lemerle 1986; Kazhdan 1987; Sevcenko 1992; Magdalino 1992 (with Spiegel 1994); Magdalino 1994 (with Clarke 1990 and Averil Cameron 1996); Kazhdan 1995; Speck 1998; and especially Magdalino 1999. See also Vryonis 1978; Adler 1989; Gray 1989; Stolte 1991; Macrides 1991; Koder 1991-2; Maas 1992; and T. S. Brown 1993. For the Byzantine view of the Hellenic and Roman past in particular, see Irmscher 1973; Mullett and Scott 1981; Garzya 1985; Baldwin 1988; Macrides and Magdalino 1992 (with Magdalino 1983); Mosshammer 1998; and Markopoulos 2006. On Byzantine historiography, see Karpozilos 1997-2002; Odorico and Agapitos 2006 with further bibliography. Byzantine chronicles were translated into other premodern languages (for example, Church Slavonic), and so influenced the construction of the past in later premodern cultures as well (Sorlin 1973; Franklin 1992). For the textual transmission of late antique texts, see Hunger et al. 1961 and Byzantine Books and Bookmen 1975. Groundbreaking work has been produced on Gregory of Nazianzus: see Http://nazianzos. fltr. ucl. ac. be. Byzantine manuscripts often reveal a fascinating reading of late antique discourse through their mere selection, arrangement, or illustration of texts: see, for examples, Wilson 1978 and Pontikos 1992 (on a thirteenth-century manuscript aligning late antique with Byzantine rhetorical production), and Brubaker 1999 (on a ninth-century illustrated manuscript of Gregory of Nazianzus’ Homilies). From the numerous studies on Byzantine reception of specific aspects of the late antique world, three examples may suffice here: Angelidi 1991 (the hagiographical refashioning of a late antique woman); Agapitos 1998a (the reading of late antique fiction); and Lauxtermann 2003 (the formation of Byzantine poetry in response to late antique reading and writing poetic habits). Some of the themes presented above are further elaborated in Papaioannou 2004, 2006a, and 2006b.