The presentation of portraits of emperors and saints in Byzantine art can be compared to theories of physiognomy and logic put forward by Aristotle and his Byzantine followers. Similar observations have been made about the portal sculptures of High Gothic cathedrals, but although the ordering of images in the two cases reflected similar patterns of thought, the particular forms of the portraits differed in each milieu, responding to a different relationship between images and the faithful in each society.

This article is a first attempt to approach the figure of the storyteller in three types of early Byzantine tale collections (fourth–seventh centuries): collective biography, miracle collection, and collection of edifying tales. Our approach draws significantly on Walter Benjamin's discussion of the storyteller and Monica Fludernik's work on conversational storytelling. Our analysis has a twofold purpose: first, to revise the impression that the storyteller is a canonical force that possesses the same characteristics in every single tale; second, to suggest that the storyteller is an inherent feature of short hagiographical narratives.

This article presents 19 lead seals from the Museum of Bergama (ancient Pergamon), dating from the early eighth to the early twelfth century. We offer a descriptive catalogue of these Middle and Late Byzantine seals preserved in a western Turkish museum. The owners of these seals were primarily ecclesiastical, legal or military dignitaries who were probably active in Pergamon, in southwestern Mysia, Aeolis or Lydia. The catalogue is followed by an appendix on a Byzantine magical amulet.

Many theories have been proposed to explain the success of the Theban silk industry from the twelfth century onward. To contribute to this discussion in the context of recent research developments, this article explores the Theban metropolitan's hypothetical contribution to the industry through the case study of John Kaloktenes, who initiated a series of projects during his tenure (before 1166–c.1190). The analysis of three of these projects suggests that they might have been designed to support the industry. Thus, this article proposes the working hypothesis that Thebes's industrial success might have benefited substantially from the local metropolitan's active promotion.

This article assembles the evidence for the presence of Greek refugees in early modern Scotland. These refugees came in two distinct waves: one in the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and another in the seventeenth century. In both periods, inter-regional religious networks brought Greeks to Scotland: in the first phase, these were structured around the church institutions of the Latin West; in the second, they followed ecumenical interest in Protestant Northern Europe. The wanderers were mostly clergymen. This movement of refugees, alongside the capture of Scots by North African corsairs, linked Scotland with the distant Ottoman world.

This article examines the controversy over Ancient Greek [AG] as a school subject, a controversy that re-emerged in 2016, when SYRIZA was in power. The issue is ideologically charged: classical antiquity has played a fundamental role in shaping modern Greek ethnic identity. The arguments for and against teaching AG as a school subject are analysed and explained in relation to the ideological preferences, strategies and interests of the involved agents. The polarization of the arguments is interpreted within the broader context of the financial crisis, as an attempt by the agents involved to reinforce the left/right divide, which was significantly blurred after the adoption of austerity policies by both the self-proclaimed leftist SYRIZA and the conservative New Democracy parties.

This article explores the movie Τέλος εποχής (End of an Era) by Antonis Kokkinos (1994), a key film in the regeneration of Greek cinema in the mid-late 1990s. The film constitutes a form of public history construing and problematizing relations between the images and the historical past, exploring the dictatorship (1967–74) through the consumer-oriented values of the 1990s. By scrutinizing historical (dis)continuities (similarities, differences, and transformations in consumer politics and sexuality in particular) between the dictatorship and the 1990s, the article argues that, focusing on 1960s youth, End of an Era underplayed the dictatorship's authoritarianism and (re)defined politics through the availability (or not) of consumer choices, expressing the relaxed ideological climate of the 1990s.