Cam b r id g e

UNIVERSITY PRESS

Review: BYZANTINE IDENTITIES

Author(s): NIKETAS SINIOSSOGLOU
Review by: NIKETAS SINIOSSOGLOU
Source: The Classical Review, New Series, Vol. 59, No. 2 (OCTOBER 2009), pp. 543-545
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf o f Classical Association
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 THE C L A S S I C A L REVI EW 543

texts might reveal a Chrysostom who more closely resembled Basil of Caesarea, or
even Libanius himself.
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge RICH ARD FLOWER
raf33@cam.ac.uk

BYZANTINE IDENTITIES
K a l d e l l i s (A.) H ellen ism in B yza n tiu m . T h e T ra n sform a tion s o f
Pp. xii +
G reek Id en tity and the R ecep tio n o f th e C la ssica l Tradition.
46 8 .
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007 .
Cased, 65 , US$125 . ISBN: 978 -0 - 521 - 87688 -9 .
doi: 10.1017/S0009840X09001024

Edward Gibbon is unpopular these days, at least among Byzantinists. A rehabilitation

of Byzantium seems to be in full development. It purports to liberate scholarship
from those Enlightenment prejudices that are held responsible for the dismissal of
Byzantium as nothing but a theocratic and decadent empire that never achieved
anything beyond imitating and plagiarising its ancestors. The now prevalent and
certainly en vogue view seems to be that Byzantium was so multi-faceted,
heterogeneous, pluralistic and complex that Enlightenment verdicts of this sort are
immediately rendered obsolete. Apparently our post-modern times may better
sympathise with Byzantium. Then, as now, a paramount characteristic has been the
liquidity (to apply to the Byzantine context Zygmunt Baumans catchword) of
religious, intellectual and national identities.
The book under review is the most comprehensive and ambitious study of the
problem of Hellenic identity in Byzantium. Well written, well researched and
admirably argued, it covers the vast period from Late Antiquity to the thirteenth
century, and it presents an intelligent argument. Hellenic identity poses difficulties
from the outset because in Byzantium it was never just Hellenic; rather, Hellenic
identity found itself in constant negotiation with Roman and Christian identities. K.
argues convincingly that the Roman identity of Byzantium has been suppressed by
modern scholarship. Western bias perpetuated the impression of Rome as something
alien to the Byzantines (p. 47). In reality the Byzantines were the Romans of the
Eastern Empire: Romania, retrospectively designated with the modern coinage
Byzantium, was nothing like a multi-ethnic empire, but rather a united nation
unrestricted by ethnic considerations (p. 99). K. shows how the Roman compound of
Byzantine identity developed naturally out of a long discussion regarding the relation
between Hellenism and Roman-ness in late antiquity, of which Julian and Synesius
provide characteristic instances. As a result of this long negotiation, the Hellenes of
Byzantium were not those who merely spoke Greek; those were only the Romans.
They were rather those who engaged in a study of classical thought and forged, on the
basis of paideia, a new Hellenic identity, as did the scholars of Erasmus Europe (p.
119). Still, K.s verdict on the late Platonists who were not primarily interested in
defending any ideal of Hellenism (p. 170) seems to disregard the possibility of
Platonic philosophy itself having turned into an ideal of Hellenism.
An Interlude appropriately entitled Hellenism in Limbo: the Middle Years
(400-1040) covers a dark period of six centuries for which Hellenic identity went
into abeyance (p. 173), presumably along with other things. This chapter links K.s
discussion of Hellenism in Late Antiquity to an excellent chapter on Psellus

The Classical Review vol. 59 no. 2 The Classical Association 2009; all rights reserved

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544 THE C L A S S I C A L R E V I E W

reception and revitalisation of Hellenic philosophy. As in The Argument o f Psellos

Chronographia (Leiden, 1999), K. writes eloquently, here drawing from a variety of
works by Psellus in order to reconstruct the mindset of one of the most innovative
and fascinating figures in Byzantine intellectual history. Psellus marks the emergence
and anticipates the flourishing of Byzantine humanism, but also presents its tension
with clerical authority. A persuasive point made by K. is that Psellus often reverted to
dissimulation: Unlike Socrates, he had no interest in dying for his beliefs (p. 209).
Indeed, the reception of Hellenic paideia posed for Byzantine intellectuals deep
problems affecting their own self-conception and understanding. The tripartite nature
of identity in Romania (Hellenic, Roman, Christian) resulted in successive - yet not
linear, as K. notes (p. 391) - fusions, revisions and re-conceptualisations of Hellenism
according to often transient and conflicting perceptions of paganism, Christian
Orthodoxy and the Latin West.
After the eleventh century this reception of Hellenic paideia eventually resulted in
a radical transformation of Hellenic identity. The process was not smooth:
anathemas had been pronounced upon philosophy, which did little to reverse the
emergence of Hellenism as a cultural ideal, at the same time as the cause of an
autonomous philosophical thought led to continuous challenges of both Eastern
Orthodoxy and the Latin West. Hence during the Third Sophistic under the
Comnenoi the Greeks went from being regarded as deceived and deceitful pagans
to paragons of natural virtue (p. 286). Hellenism is applied diversely: it may
function as an anti-Latin weapon of discourse, relate to professional classicism or
really flourish as a cultural ideal under the patronage of aristocracy, even within the
Church and the structures of bureaucracy. But it is in the thirteenth century that
Hellenism properly undergoes another transformation, this time conditioned by the
urgent need for a national identity: A very different sense of Greek identity was now
forced by an ascendant West upon a reluctant East (p. 352). This is captured in one
source describing the Latins as men of another race (a llo p h y lo if and men of
different language (allo glo sso if (p. 357). In the case of Theodore II Laskaris,
Modern Hellenism not only revolves around the idea of a national community and
issues of its continuity, but anticipates Romantic Hellenism (p. 378). Perhaps an
idea regarding the repercussions and echoes of these transformations of Hellenic
identity in post-Byzantine contexts may be taken from another volume published
this year (K. Zacharia (ed.), Hellenisms. Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity from
Antiquity to M odernity [Aldershot, 2008]).
One is tempted to note that K.s account of Hellenic identity as discursively
constructed (p. 6) is largely conditioned by its methodological presuppositions.
According to K., it is impossible to speak of authentic Hellenism and Christianity.
Their essences are not immutable entities but rather sites of contestation (p. 2). This
anti-essentialist position enjoys a growing popularity among historians (see the
criticism of essentialist approaches to Byzantium in A. Cameron, The Absence of
Byzantium, in Nea Hestia 163.1807 [2008], 4-58). But it should be noted that
Hellenism appears very different through the prism of philosophy than through that
of history. The long Byzantine negotiation of Hellenism and Orthodoxy described by
K. presupposes Hellenism and Christianity to be conflicting world-views on the
philosophical level. Their varying phenomenology within shifting historical and
discursive contexts does not cancel the ultimately essential difference between modes
of thinking regarding man, god, the world and history that are conceptually poles
asunder. On the contrary, it is this core difference between essentially conflicting views

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 THE C L A S S I C A L R EVI EW 545

of the world that accounts for the continuation and inconclusiveness of that
negotiation from Late Antiquity to late Byzantium.
It is hard to do justice to a volume of this erudition and extent that covers much
diverse and seriously understudied material. K. succeeds not only at showing the
ambiguities and different applications of the word Hellen in the Byzantine context(s),
but also at showing why the questions he asks matter according to his methodological
priorities. But the book is remarkably successful in another respect too: it makes the
reader genuinely interested in what Byzantine intellectuals like Psellus, Michael
Choniates, Ioannes Tzetzes, Eustathius of Thessalonike and other less well known
figures really thought and felt about a problem as pertinent now as it was in their
times: identity. This, too, is no small accomplishment.
University o f Cambridge NIKETAS SINIOSSOGLOU
sinios@cantab.net

ANCIENT ITALY
Bradley (G .), I sayev (E.), R iva (C.) (edd.) A n c ien t Italy.
R eg ion s w ith ou t B oun daries. Pp. xviii + 334 , ills, maps. Exeter: Exeter
University Press, 2007 . Cased, 4 5 , 67 .50 , US$8 5 . ISBN:
978 -0 - 85989 - 813 - 3 .
doi: 10.1017/S0009840X09001036

Regional perspectives on the Classical world are currently en vogue. Archaeologists

and historians of Italy, in particular, have for some time been pursuing approaches
that aim at producing alternative accounts to those provided by both the dominant
literary tradition and the excavation of high-profile sites. The growing popularity of
landscape archaeology in recent years means that no Italian region remains terra
incognita , while interest in better studied areas - such as M agna Graecia and Etruria -
now extends to previously neglected aspects of these cultures. With the volume under
review, the contributors offer a synopsis of such regional perspectives on the history
and archaeology of, in the first instance, pre-Roman Italy: in the nine central
chapters (2-10), ten scholars provide a comprehensive survey of the peninsula by
region. In combination with the introduction and conclusion (Chapters 1 and 11),
these papers succeed admirably in combining concise surveys of large amounts of
data with insightful discussions of recent debates and innovative approaches.
In her introduction (pp. 1-21), E. Isayev addresses the timeliness of a concerted
scholarly effort to address the regional diversity of ancient Italy, which can be traced
throughout the peninsulas history, even (or especially) at times of apparent cultural
and political homogeneity. I. addresses the issue of distinct regional identities that
had their roots in the pre-Roman period but remained fundamental to the culture of
Italy during Republican and even Imperial times. This dimension, she argues, is only
now coming to the fore in scholarly discourse, as a result of both advanced archaeo
logical techniques and heuristic approaches that transcend the disciplinary divisions
between Ancient History and Archaeology. In principle, I.s line of argument is
sound: the injection of theory-driven, interdisciplinary approaches to the classical
world - in Italy and elsewhere - has been one of the more significant trends within our
subject, as the volume under review well illustrates. However, this should not amount
to re-inventing the wheel, and I would be more comfortable if, in this specific case,

The Classical Review vol. 59 no. 2 The Classical Association 2009; all rights reserved

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