Digenes Akritas
Digenes Akritas is a medieval Greek romantic epic that emerged in the 12th-century Byzantine Empire. It is the lengthiest and most famous of the acritic songs, Byzantine folk poems celebrating the lives and exploits of the Akritai, the inhabitants and frontier guards of the empire's eastern Anatolian provinces. The acritic songs represented the remnants of an ancient epic cycle in Byzantium and, due to their long oral transmission throughout the empire, the identification of precise references to historical events may be only conjectural. Set during the Arab-Byzantine wars, the poem reflects the interactions, along with the military and cultural conflicts of the two polities. The epic consists of between 3,000 and 4,000 lines and it has been pieced together following the discovery of several manuscripts. An extensive narrative text, it is often thought of as the only surviving Byzantine work truly qualifying as epic poetry. Written in a form of vernacular Greek, it is regarded as one of its earliest examples, as well as the starting point of Modern Greek literature.
The epic details the life of the eponymous hero, Basil, whose epithet Digenes Akritas alludes to his mixed Greek and Arab descent. The text is divided into two halves: the first half, epic in tone, details the lives and encounter of Basil's parents; his mother, a Byzantine noblewoman from the Doukas family named Eirene, and his father, an Arab emir named Mousour who, after abducting Eirene in a raid, converted to Christianity and married her. The second half, in a more romantic atmosphere, discusses Basil's early childhood and later, often from a first-person point of view, his struggles and acts of heroism on the Byzantine borders. Allusions to Greek mythological elements, including the Hercules-like childhood of Basil, and his affair with the Amazon warrior Maximo, also appear throughout the text. Though a legendary figure, it has been suggested that inspiration for the hero may have derived from the 11th-century Cappadocian general and emperor Romanos Diogenes.
The epic of Digenes Akritas continued to be read and passed down in the post Byzantine period, with the most recent surviving manuscripts dating to the 17th century. The character became the archetype of the ideal medieval hero featuring in a number of folk songs popular throughout the Greek-speaking world, most prominently in Crete, Cyprus, and Asia Minor. The epic would go on to have significant impact on the culture of modern Greece, particularly on folk music, the arts, and literature.
History
Manuscripts
The epic of Digenes Akritas is most commonly thought to have been first compiled around the 12th century AD building on earlier material which was primarily derived from oral sources. The existence of the epic during this time is referenced at a Ptochoprodromic poem to emperor Manuel I Komnenos under the name "New Akrites". During the 19th and 20th centuries, a total of six manuscripts of the epic became available, with the oldest surviving piece dating back to the late 1200s–early 1300s. Each of the surviving manuscripts constituted a different version of the same medieval story. Comparative evidence suggests that word-for-word precision was a rare instance in the Byzantine period and it was typical for copies of literary works to involve some degree of variation.- Trebizond manuscript
- Andros manuscript
- Grottaferrata manuscript
- Escorial manuscript
- Oxford manuscript
- Andros manuscript
There exists an Old Slavonic version of Digenis Akritas under the title Deeds of the Brave Men of Old, which is adapted from a line in the Grottaferrata manuscript. The Slavonic version is often called the Devgenievo deianie, but this title is not found in manuscripts. It contains both straightforward translation and free retelling of the Greek version in the Grottaferrata manuscript. It was produced in a bilingual Greek–South Slavic milieu, probably in Macedonia under the Serbian Empire or its successors. It has features suggestive of oral-formulaic composition.
Discovery and publication
The existence of the epic of Digenes Akritas remained unknown prior to the second half of the 19th century when most of the manuscripts were discovered and published. Until then, the hero – variously referred to as Digenes, Constantine, or Giannis – was only known through the songs and ballads of the Acritic Cycle that had been preserved in the oral tradition of the Greek-speaking world and had been collected and published around the same time. The first manuscript of the epic was discovered in 1868 at the Sumela Monastery of Trebizond and it was first published in 1875. It was soon followed by the Andros manuscript which was discovered in 1878 and published in 1881. A rhymed version from the Lincoln College of Oxford was published in 1880; the version had the advantage of being signed by its writer, a monk from Chios by the name Ignatios Petritzes, in 1670. The oldest surviving manuscript was found in the Greek monastery of Grottaferrata, near Frascati, in 1879 and it was published in 1892. A prose version written by Meletios Vlastos of Chios in 1632 was discovered in Andros in 1898 and it wasn't published until 1928. The incomplete Madrid version, published in 1912, was discovered in the Escorial library of Spain in 1904.Overview
Acritic cycle
The names 'Digenis' or 'Akritas' have long been widespread throughout the Greek-speaking world representing heroes of folk-songs that are particularly popular in Crete, Cyprus, and Asia Minor. Before the discovery of the manuscripts, the protagonist of the epic was only known through the Acritic songs; narrative vernacular songs or ballads typically in political verse that originated from the Byzantine period and reflected episodes and characters associated with the epic-romance of Digenes Akritas. Collected primarily from 19th century oral sources, the best of those songs were found on the fringes of Asia Minor, like Pontus, and Cyprus. In the acritic tradition, the warriors are presented as paragons of elegance and nobility ; they reside in luxurious houses typically on the edges of the Christian world, and sometimes bear names of the Byzantine aristocracy.The Byzantine acritic songs represented the remnants of an ancient epic tradition that appears to predate the epic of Digenes itself. The songs have been subjected to the transformation of up to a thousand years old oral transmission making the identification of historical events and individuals only presumptive. The similarities between the songs and the epic are likely to have arisen as both drew inspiration from a common pool of folk material. Those songs that appear closer to the surviving versions of the epic are more likely to have been influenced by it. The acritic saga appears to loosely draw on four bodies of Greek myth; Heracles, the Argonauts, Thebes, and Troy. The fusion of folklore with Christian tradition is also a typical motif in the works of the acritic cycle. Some recurrent elements include the exploits of particularly endowed warriors, or a speaking bird usually bringing about the desired closure to a troubling story. Fine examples of the Acritic songs that feature prominent Anatolian elements include The Song of Armouris, The Son of Andronikos, Porphyris, The Bridge of Arta, and more.
The most famous episodes of Digenes' life that appear in the acritic songs include the abduction of his future bride, the building of his house, his encounter with the beast, and his death. The hero's dramatic battle with Charon, an element that features prominently in the acritic songs, does not occur earlier in the epic. Politis has interpreted this theme as a symbol of the struggle between the Christian Greek population and its Muslim masters during the Turkish conquests of Byzantines lands.