181-502: The Dionysiaca / ˌ d aɪ . ə . n ɪ ˈ z aɪ . ə . k ə / ( Ancient Greek : Διονυσιακά , Dionysiaká ) is an ancient Greek epic poem and the principal work of Nonnus . It is an epic in 48 books, the longest surviving poem from Greco-Roman antiquity at 20,426 lines, composed in Homeric dialect and dactylic hexameters , the main subject of which is the life of Dionysus , his expedition to India, and his triumphant return to
362-633: A devastating war with Persia exhausted the empire's resources; the early Muslim conquests that followed saw the loss of the empire's richest provinces— Egypt and Syria —to the Rashidun Caliphate . In 698, Africa was lost to the Umayyad Caliphate , but the empire subsequently stabilised under the Isaurian dynasty. The empire was able to expand once more under the Macedonian dynasty , experiencing
543-537: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in
724-456: A sensational victory against Bulgaria and the Kievan Rus' in 971. John in particular was an astute administrator who reformed military structures and implemented effective fiscal policies. After John's death, Constantine VII's grandsons Basil II and Constantine VIII ruled jointly for half a century, although the latter exercised no real power before Basil's death in 1025. Their early reign
905-574: A blind wanderer. While Dionysus is entertained in the halls of Nereus, the Bacchic army is dispirited. The satyr Pherespondos arrives at the court of the Indian king Deriades and gives him Dionysus' message: he should accept the cult of the vine or face him in battle. Deriades, a son of the river ( Jhelum River ) dismisses Dionysus' offer of peace. Dionysus leaves the bottom of the sea, joins his troops and prepares for battle. Book 22 – The Bacchic troops arrive at
1086-480: A bull his own. Deluded, Ampelus rides a bull and provokes Selene by saying that he is a better bull-rider than her. Selene sends a gadfly to sting the bull. The animal starts kicking and Ampelus falls on his head on the ground. A satyr brings Dionysus the ill news. Dionysus prepares the body for the funeral and makes a long lament. Eros tries to console and distract him with the story of Calamos and Carpos , two handsome youngsters who were in love with each other. During
1267-508: A cave, but Zeus sleeps with her in the form of a snake, and she bears Zagreus . At Hera's bidding, the Titans kill Zagreus and chop him up. In anger, Zeus floods the world, causing havoc to the pastoral deities and the rivers. Book 7 – Life on earth is miserable. Aion , god of time, begs Zeus to ease mortal life. Zeus predicts that the birth of Dionysus will change everything. Eros makes Zeus fall in love with Semele . The girl wakes up after
1448-600: A channel to recover lost Hellenistic poetry and mythic traditions. The edition of Nonnus in the Loeb Classical Library includes a "mythological introduction" which charts the "decline" of Dionysiac mythology in the poem and implies that the work's only value is as a repository of lost mythology. Nonnus remains an important source of mythology and information to those researching classical religion, Hellenistic poetry, and Late Antiquity. Recently, however, scholars have focused more positively on Nonnus' use of mythology within
1629-463: A combination of external threats and internal instabilities caused the Roman state to splinter as regional armies acclaimed their generals as "soldier-emperors". One of these, Diocletian ( r. 284–305 ), seeing that the state was too big to be ruled by one man, attempted to fix the problem by instituting a Tetrarchy , or rule of four, and dividing the empire into eastern and western halves. Although
1810-626: A considerable increase in the size of urban settlements, together with a notable upsurge in new towns. Trade was also flourishing; the Venetians, the Genoese and others opened up the ports of the Aegean to commerce, shipping goods from the Crusader states and Fatimid Egypt to the west and trading with the empire via Constantinople. Manuel's death on 24 September 1180 left his 11-year-old son Alexios II Komnenos on
1991-449: A dowry. Book 4 – Harmonia refuses to marry Cadmus because of his poverty, but Aphrodite takes the shape of Peisinoe, a girl of the neighbourhood, and produces a full encomium of Cadmus' beauty to convince her. Harmonia willingly leaves Samothrace with Cadmus who sails with her to Greece. Cadmus consults the oracle at Delphi and is told to follow a cow until she collapses and found there Thebes. There he slays Ares' dragon (thus attracting
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#17328476446342172-480: A drunken celebration. During his night with them he dreams that the wild king Lycurgus attacks him like a lion attacks a deer. The next morning Staphylus gives Dionysus splendid presents and encourages him to fight. While Dionysus is busy filling Assyria with his vine, Staphylus suddenly dies and his palace is filled with mourning voices. Dionysus returns to the palace only to find his friend dead. Book 19 – Dionysus consoles Methe and Botrys giving them wine and hosts
2353-429: A horrible nightmare predicting her death, consumed by the thunderbolt, and is told to sacrifice to Zeus to avert the omen. Spattered by the victim's blood she bathes naked in a river nearby, where Zeus spots her beauty and falls madly in love with her. That night Zeus joins Semele in her bed and metamorphoses into different animals during the courtship. Book 8 – Semele becomes pregnant with Dionysus. Envy tells Hera of
2534-472: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and
2715-577: A large number in Venice. According to chronicler Niketas Choniates , a prostitute was even set up on the patriarchal throne. When order had been restored, the crusaders and the Venetians proceeded to implement their agreement; Baldwin of Flanders was elected emperor of a new Latin Empire , and the Venetian Thomas Morosini was chosen as patriarch. The lands divided up among the leaders included most of
2896-504: A lengthy conflict against Sasanid Persia and ended in 363 with the death of his son-in-law Julian . The short Valentinianic dynasty , occupied with wars against barbarians , religious debates, and anti-corruption campaigns, ended in the East with the death of Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Valens's successor, Theodosius I ( r. 379–395 ), restored political stability in
3077-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in
3258-632: A line through the Adriatic Sea and south to Cyrene, Libya . This encompassed most of the Balkans , all of modern Greece, Turkey, Syria , Palestine ; North Africa, primarily with modern Egypt and Libya ; the Aegean islands along with Crete , Cyprus and Sicily , and a small settlement in Crimea . The landscape of the Empire was defined by the fertile fields of Anatolia , long mountain ranges and rivers such as
3439-604: A loose structure akin to Late Antique mosaics. Vian has proposed looking at the poem's encyclopedic content as paralleling the full range of the Homeric cycle poetry. Shorrock's contention is that the Dionysiaca employs a variety of narrative organizational principles and viewpoints, attempts to narrate all of classical mythology through the myths of Dionysus, and uses allegory and allusion to challenge his readers to draw meaning from his unconventional epic. Book 1 – The poem opens with
3620-487: A number of gifts, which she despises. After a day hunting, Nicaea drinks from a river whose waters are turned into wine, following Dionysus' earlier intervention in the first battle against the Indians. Inebriated, Nicaea falls asleep and is raped by the god as a punishment for killing Hymnus. Dionysus abandons her and when she wakes up she realises that she has been raped. She tries to find her rapist but soon she realises that she
3801-543: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment
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#17328476446343982-671: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek , and Koine may be classified as Ancient Greek in a wider sense. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek
4163-483: A series of combats and descriptions of carnage, Deriades fights one-on-one with Dionysus: Dionysus eludes him adopting different shapes, imprisons him with the tendrils of a vine and finally releases him. Dionysus orders the Rhadamanes to build a fleet for him. Deriades presides the Indian assembly, in which he harangues his troops for the sea-battle. The two armies sign a truce to bury the dead. Book 37 – Dionysus builds
4344-440: A shapeshifting god, in the proem (preamble) serves as a metaphor for Nonnus' varied style. Nonnus employs the style of the epyllion for many of his narrative sections, such as his treatment of Ampelus in 10–11, Nicaea in 15–16, and Beroe in 41–43. These epyllia are inserted into the general narrative framework and are some of the highlights of the poem. Nonnus also employs synkrisis , comparison, throughout his poem, most notably in
4525-450: A small fleet of 100 ships to defend the capital, but other than that he was indifferent to the populace. He was finally overthrown when Isaac II Angelos , surviving an imperial assassination attempt, seized power with the aid of the people and had Andronikos killed. The reign of Isaac II, and more so that of his brother Alexios III , saw the collapse of what remained of the centralised machinery of Byzantine government and defence. Although
4706-430: A son (Polydorus). Cadmus gives Autonoe's hand to Aristaeus , well known as an inventor. They have a son, Actaeon , who becomes a passionate hunter. One day he sees Artemis bathing naked in a spring and is punished for it with his transformation into a stag which is then devoured by his dogs. Autonoe and Aristaeus search for his body but can only find it when the ghost of Actaeon appears to his father and tells him to find
4887-417: A speedy and marked improvement. Gradually, however, Andronikos's reign deteriorated. The aristocrats were infuriated against him, and to make matters worse, Andronikos seemed to have become increasingly unbalanced; executions and violence became increasingly common, and his reign turned into a reign of terror. Andronikos seemed almost to seek the extermination of the aristocracy as a whole. The struggle against
5068-609: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c. 300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as
5249-516: A swimming contest Carpos drowns and Calamos, incapable of living without him, commits suicide. Calamos becomes the reeds of the river and Carpos the fruit of the earth. Dionysus is comforted with the story but mourning does not leave him. In the meantime the Seasons visit the house of Helios , the Sun. Book 12 – Autumn enquires when the vine will appear on earth and become her personal attribute. Description of
5430-500: A tap of a vine cluster on Orontes' chest is enough to split his armour. Orontes plunges his sword into his own belly and throws himself into the river nearby, giving it his name ( Orontes river ). The Bacchic troops massacre the Indians. Astraeis flees. Book 18 – Dionysus arrives in Assyria, where the king Staphylus ("Cluster of grapes"), his wife Methe ("Drunkenness) and his son Botrys ("Grapes") entertain him in their marvelous palace in
5611-479: A teenager and lives in Lydia with a court of Satyrs. He falls in love for the first time with one of them, Ampelus (Vine). His passion for the boy is only spoiled by the knowledge that he will soon die, just as all the young lovers of the gods do. Dionysus and Ampelos indulge in a series of sports contests, the god allowing the boy to win. Book 11 – Dionysus organizes a swimming contest and allows Ampelus to win. Ampelus
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5792-593: A two-century-long renaissance . This came to an end in 1071, with the defeat by the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert . Thereafter, periods of civil war and Seljuk incursion resulted in the loss of most of Asia Minor . The empire recovered during the Komnenian restoration , and Constantinople would remain the largest and wealthiest city in Europe until the 13th century. The empire was largely dismantled in 1204, following
5973-510: A two-month siege on 29 May 1453. The final Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos , was last seen casting off his imperial regalia and throwing himself into hand-to-hand combat after the walls of the city were taken. The Empire was centred in what is now Greece and Turkey with Constantinople as its capital. In the 5th century, it controlled the eastern basis of the Mediterranean running east from Singidunum (modern Belgrade ) in
6154-414: A verse paraphrase of St John's Gospel , is now discredited, since a host of indications point to the latter being the earlier work and because it misses the eclecticism of late antique culture. Editors have pointed out various inconsistencies and the difficulties of Book 39 which appears to be a disjointed series of descriptions, as evidence of lack of revision. The primary models for Nonnus are Homer and
6335-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and
6516-442: A war against the impious Indians if he wants to join the gods on Olympus. Rhea gathers the troops for Dionysus. Catalogue of heroic troops including seven contingents from Greece and seven peripheral contingents. Book 14 – Catalogue of semi-divine troops, also gathered by Rhea for Dionysus. Dionysus sets his army in motion until they encounter the first Indian contingent, led by Astraeis. Hera deludes Astraeis to go to battle against
6697-556: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of
6878-662: Is about to rape her the serpent that protects her virginity attacks him. In the meantime Hermes lets the Bacchantes out of the city. Zeus awakens and forces Hera to cure Dionysus' madness by breastfeeding him (a sign of adoption) and anointing him with ambrosia. Dionysus rejoins his army. Book 36 – Confrontation of pro-Dionysiac and pro-Indian divinities in the Olympus: Athena defeats Ares, Hera defeats Artemis, Apollo confronts Poseidon, but Hermes pacifies them. On earth, Deriades harangues his troops and charges with his elephants. After
7059-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected
7240-644: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to
7421-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in
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7602-439: Is elated by his success and dresses up as a Bacchante as a form of celebration. Dionysus warns the boy to stay close to him, just in case a deity is jealous of their happiness and tries to kill him. A portent tells Dionysus that Ampelus will die and become a vine. Ate (Delusion) makes Ampelus jealous reminding him that Dionysus and the gods usually give their friends a special present, a special mount, and suggests that he should make
7783-531: Is evidence that some Komnenian heirs had set up a semi-independent state in Trebizond before 1204. According to the historian Alexander Vasiliev , "the dynasty of the Angeloi, Greek in its origin, ... accelerated the ruin of the Empire, already weakened without and disunited within." In 1198, Pope Innocent III broached the subject of a new crusade through legates and encyclical letters. The stated intent of
7964-532: Is impossible to precisely date the foundation of the Byzantine Empire. In a series of conflicts between the third and first centuries BC, the Roman Republic gradually established hegemony over the eastern Mediterranean , while its government ultimately transformed into the one-person rule of an emperor . The Roman Empire enjoyed a period of relative stability until the third century AD , when
8145-399: Is pregnant and gives birth to Telete ('Initiation'). Dionysus founds the city of Nicaea , as a double commemoration of the namesake nymph and of his first battle against the Indians. Book 17 – Dionysus travels through the east and is entertained by a shepherd, Brongus, in a country fashion. In thanks for his hospitality, Dionysus gives him some wine and teaches him how to grow and harvest
8326-438: Is so beautiful and provides so much merriment to humankind. Insertion of a second legend on the origins of the vine: it was growing wild and unknown of until Dionysus saw a snake suckling the juice from the grapes; Dionysus and his satyrs build the first wine press, make wine for the first time and have the first feast of the harvest, completely inebriated. Book 13 – Zeus sends Iris to the halls of Rhea, ordering Dionysus to make
8507-432: Is so charmed by Cadmus' song that he promises him whatever he wants in exchange for it, not understanding that Cadmus is actually singing how he is defeated by Zeus. Book 2 – Zeus steals the lightning from Typhon and takes Cadmus to a safe place. When Typhon notices the disappearance of Cadmus and of Zeus' weapons, he attacks the cosmos with all his poisons and the help of his animals. Chaos and destruction follow. During
8688-692: The Tactica , a military treatise; and the Book of the Eparch , which codified Constantinople's trading regulations. In non-literary contexts Leo was less successful: the empire lost in Sicily and against the Bulgarians , while he provoked theological scandal by marrying four times in an attempt to father a legitimate heir. The early reign of that heir, Constantine VII , was tumultuous, as his mother Zoe , his uncle Alexander ,
8869-524: The Catalan Company ravaging the countryside and increasing resentment towards Constantinople. The situation became worse for Byzantium during the civil wars after Andronikos III died. A six-year-long civil war devastated the empire, allowing the Serbian ruler Stefan Dušan to overrun most of the empire's remaining territory and establish a Serbian Empire . In 1354, an earthquake at Gallipoli devastated
9050-681: The Council of Clermont and urged all those present to take up arms under the sign of the Cross and launch an armed pilgrimage to recover Jerusalem and the East from the Muslims. The response in Western Europe was overwhelming. Alexios was able to recover a number of important cities, islands and much of western Asia Minor. The Crusaders agreed to become Alexios' vassals under the Treaty of Devol in 1108, which marked
9231-655: The Council of Piacenza in 1095, envoys from Alexios spoke to Pope Urban II about the suffering of the Christians of the East and underscored that without help from the West, they would continue to suffer under Muslim rule. Urban saw Alexios' request as a dual opportunity to cement Western Europe and reunite the Eastern Orthodox Church with the Roman Catholic Church under his rule. On 27 November 1095, Urban called
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#17328476446349412-470: The Cyclic poets ; Homeric language, metrics, episodes, and descriptive canons are central to the Dionysiaca . The influence of Euripides ' Bacchae is also significant, as is probably the influence of the other tragedians whose Dionysiac plays do not survive. His debt to poets whose work survives only in disjointed fragments is far harder to gauge, but it is likely that he alludes to earlier poets' treatments of
9593-622: The Cyclopes and Korybantes . Book 29 – Exploits of Dionysus' lover, Hymenaeus , who is wounded by an Indian arrow and healed by Dionysus. Exploits of the Dionysiac troops, especially Aristeus, the Kabeiri and the Korybantes. Offensive of the Bacchantes, wounded by the Indians and healed by Dionysus. The battle comes to a halt with the arrival of night. Rhea sends Ares a deceitful dream: he should abandon
9774-471: The Danube , he pushed his troops too far in 602—they mutinied, proclaimed an officer named Phocas as emperor, and executed Maurice. The Sasanians seized their moment and reopened hostilities ; Phocas was unable to cope and soon faced a major rebellion led by Heraclius . Phocas lost Constantinople in 610 and was soon executed, but the destructive civil war accelerated the empire's decline. Under Khosrow II ,
9955-717: The Danube . In the north and west were the Balkans, the corridors between the mountain ranges of Pindos , the Dinaric Alps , the Rhodopes and the Balkans . In the south and east were Anatolia, the Pontic Mountains and the Taurus - Anti-Taurus range, which served as passages for armies, while the Caucasus mountains lay between the Empire and its eastern neighbours. Roman roads connected
10136-617: The Empire of Trebizond , was created after Alexios I of Trebizond , commanding the Georgian expedition in Chaldia a few weeks before the sack of Constantinople, found himself de facto emperor and established himself in Trebizond. Of the three successor states, Epirus and Nicaea stood the best chance of reclaiming Constantinople. The Nicaean Empire struggled to survive the next few decades, however, and by
10317-693: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect
10498-582: The Middle Ages . The eastern half of the Empire survived the conditions that caused the fall of the West in the 5th century AD, and continued to exist until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire remained the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in the Mediterranean world . The term "Byzantine Empire" was only coined following
10679-663: The Normans who arrived in Italy at the beginning of the 11th century. During a period of strife between Constantinople and Rome culminating in the East-West Schism of 1054 , the Normans advanced gradually into Byzantine Italy . Reggio , the capital of the tagma of Calabria, was captured in 1060 by Robert Guiscard , followed by Otranto in 1068. Bari , the main Byzantine stronghold in Apulia ,
10860-565: The Pechenegs , who were caught by surprise and annihilated at the Battle of Levounion on 28 April 1091. Having achieved stability in the West, Alexios could turn his attention to the severe economic difficulties and the disintegration of the empire's traditional defences. However, he still did not have enough manpower to recover the lost territories in Asia Minor and to the advance by the Seljuks. At
11041-407: The Roman papacy . In 780, Empress Irene assumed power on behalf of her son Constantine VI . Although she was a capable administrator who temporarily resolved the iconoclasm controversy, the empire was destabilized by her feud with her son. The Bulgars and Abbasids meanwhile inflicted numerous defeats on the Byzantine armies, and the papacy crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor in 800. In 802,
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#173284764463411222-446: The Sack of Constantinople by Latin armies at the end of the Fourth Crusade ; its former territories were then divided into competing Greek rump states and Latin realms . Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the reconstituted empire would wield only regional power during its final two centuries of existence. Its remaining territories were progressively annexed by the Ottomans in perennial wars fought throughout
11403-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)
11584-457: The sea walls of Constantinople , overhaul provincial governance, and wage inconclusive campaigns against the Abbasids. After his death, his empress Theodora , ruling on behalf of her son Michael III , permanently extinguished the iconoclastic movement; the empire prospered under their sometimes-fraught rule. However, Michael was posthumously vilified by historians loyal to the dynasty of his successor Basil I , who assassinated him in 867 and who
11765-453: The state religion , and other religious practices were proscribed . Greek gradually replaced Latin for official use as Latin fell into disuse. The empire experienced several cycles of decline and recovery throughout its history, reaching its greatest extent after the fall of the west during the reign of Justinian I ( r. 527–565 ), who briefly reconquered much of Italy and the western Mediterranean coast . The appearance of plague and
11946-417: The "land of the Romans" ( Bilād al-Rūm ), but the people of medieval Western Europe preferred to call them "Greeks" ( Graeci ), due to having a contested legacy to Roman identity and to associate negative connotations from ancient Latin literature. The adjective "Byzantine", which derived from Byzantion (Latinised as Byzantium ), the name of the Greek settlement Constantinople was established on,
12127-548: The 14th and 15th centuries. The fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 ultimately brought the empire to an end. Many refugees who had fled the city after its capture settled in Italy and throughout Europe, helping to ignite the Renaissance . The fall of Constantinople is sometimes used to mark the dividing line between the Middle Ages and the early modern period . The inhabitants of the empire, now generally termed Byzantines, thought of themselves as Romans ( Romaioi ). Their Islamic neighbours similarly called their empire
12308-415: The 15th-century historian Laonikos Chalkokondyles , whose works were widely propagated, including by Hieronymus Wolf . "Byzantine" was used adjectivally alongside terms such as "Empire of the Greeks" until the 19th century. It is now the primary term, used to refer to all aspects of the empire; some modern historians believe that, as an originally prejudicial and inaccurate term, it should not be used. As
12489-507: The 19th-century attitude to this poem as a pretty, artificial, and disorganized collection of stories. As with many other late classical poets, newer scholarship has avoided the value-laden judgments of 19th-century scholars and attempted to reassess and rehabilitate Nonnus' works. There are two main focuses of Nonnian scholarship today: mythology and structure. Nonnus' compendious accounts of Dionysiac legend and his use of variant traditions and lost sources have encouraged scholars to use him as
12670-510: The 532 Nika revolt he rebuilt much of Constantinople, including the original Hagia Sophia . Justinian took advantage of political instability in Italy to attempt the reconquest of lost western territories. The Vandal Kingdom in North Africa was subjugated in 534 by the general Belisarius , who then invaded Italy ; the Ostrogothic Kingdom was destroyed in 554. In the 540s, however, Justinian began to suffer reversals on multiple fronts. Taking advantage of Constantinople's preoccupation with
12851-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):
13032-504: The Arab efforts to capture Constantinople in the 670s , but suffered a reversal against the Bulgars , who soon established an empire in the northern Balkans . Nevertheless, he and Constans had done enough to secure the empire's position, especially as the Umayyad Caliphate was undergoing another civil war . Justinian II sought to build on the stability secured by his father Constantine but
13213-490: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from
13394-503: The Bacchantes with a massive pole-axe . Dionysus jumps into the sea where he is entertained and consoled by Nereus . In his warlike paroxysm Lycurgus even attacks the sea and provokes the gods. Book 21 – Lycurgus attacks the Bacchantes a second time, in particular Ambrosia who is metamorphosed into a vine and suffocates Lycurgus with its shoots, while the Bacchantes throng to kill him. Poseidon causes an earthquake, but Hera saves him temporarily until Zeus punishes him turning him into
13575-450: The Bacchic troops. Maenads and satyrs massacre the Indian troops until Dionysus takes pity on them and turns the waters of the neighbouring lake Astacid. The Indians try wine for the first time. Book 15 – The Indians become drunk, fall asleep and are bound by the Dionysiac troops. Story of the virgin nymph Nicaea , who lives near the lake Astacid, enjoys hunting and refuses to behave like a woman. The shepherd Hymnus (a personification of
13756-408: The Byzantine administration's policy of heavy taxation and abolishing of the levy. The weakening of Georgia and Armenia played a significant role in the Byzantine defeat at Manzikert in 1071. Basil II is considered among the most capable Byzantine emperors and his reign as the apex of the empire in the Middle Ages . By 1025, the date of Basil II's death, the Byzantine Empire stretched from Armenia in
13937-765: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs, Byzantine The Byzantine Empire , also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire , was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred in Constantinople during late antiquity and
14118-572: The Empire by land, with the Via Egnatia running from Constantinople to the Albanian coast through Macedonia and the Via Traiana to Adrianople (modern Edirne ), Serdica (modern Sofia ) and Singidunum. By water, Crete, Cyprus and Sicily were key naval points and the main ports connecting Constantinople were Alexandria, Gaza, Caesarea and Antioch. The Aegean sea was considered an internal lake within
14299-432: The Empire. The emperor was the centre of the whole administration of the Empire, who the legal historian Kaius Tuori has said was "above the law, within the law, and the law itself"; with a power that is difficult to define and which does not align with our modern understanding of the separation of powers. The proclamations of the crowds of Constantinople, and the inaugurations of the patriarch from 457, would legitimise
14480-463: The Indians in the river, where most of them drown. Hera encourages the Hydaspes to drown the Bacchic troops as they cross the river. The Bacchic army starts to cross the Hydaspes using strange means of navigation. The Hydaspes is upset because his waters are fouled with blood and dead bodies and because of how easily the Bacchic troops cross it. He tries to drown them in a flood. Dionysus responds angrily to
14661-565: The Mongol invasion also gave Nicaea a temporary respite from Seljuk attacks, allowing it to concentrate on the Latin Empire to its north. The Empire of Nicaea, founded by the Laskarid dynasty , managed to recapture Constantinople in 1261 and defeat Epirus . This led to a short-lived revival of Byzantine fortunes under Michael VIII Palaiologos , but the war-ravaged empire was ill-equipped to deal with
14842-568: The Normans were driven out of Greece, in 1186 the Vlachs and Bulgars began a rebellion that led to the formation of the Second Bulgarian Empire . The internal policy of the Angeloi was characterised by the squandering of the public treasure and fiscal maladministration. Imperial authority was severely weakened, and the growing power vacuum at the centre of the empire encouraged fragmentation. There
15023-570: The Olympus to save their protégés and the army settles in the hills nearby. Thureus tells the Indian king Deriades of what has happened. The news of the defeat reaches the Indian people and their morale deteriorates. In the forest, the Bacchic troops celebrate their victory. Leucus sings the story of Aphrodite's weaving contest with Athena and her defeat. Book 25 – The poet invokes the Muse in his second proem, saying that in emulation of Homer he will skip over
15204-656: The Sassanids occupied the Levant and Egypt and pushed into Asia Minor, while Byzantine control of Italy slipped and the Avars and Slavs ran riot in the Balkans. Although Heraclius repelled a siege of Constantinople in 626 and defeated the Sassanids in 627, this was a pyrrhic victory . The early Muslim conquests soon saw the conquest of the Levant , Egypt , and the Sassanid Empire by
15385-465: The Tetrarchy system quickly failed, the division of the empire proved an enduring concept. Constantine I ( r. 306–337 ) secured sole power in 324. Over the following six years, he rebuilt the city of Byzantium as a capital city , which was renamed Constantinople . Rome , the previous capital, was further from the important eastern provinces and in a less strategically important location; it
15566-476: The Turkish invaders at the Battle of Hyelion and Leimocheir , brought troops from the capital and was able to gather an army along the way, a sign that the Byzantine army remained strong and that the defensive program of western Asia Minor was still successful. John and Manuel pursued active military policies, and both deployed considerable resources on sieges and city defences; aggressive fortification policies were at
15747-597: The West, Khosrow I of the Sasanian Empire invaded Byzantine territory and sacked Antioch in 540. Meanwhile, the emperor's internal reforms and policies began to falter, not helped by a devastating plague that killed a large proportion of the population and severely weakened the empire's social and financial stability. The most difficult period of the Ostrogothic war, against their king Totila , came during this decade, while divisions among Justinian's advisors undercut
15928-401: The West. Zeno ( r. 474–491 ) convinced the problematic Ostrogoth king Theodoric to take control of Italy from Odoacer, which he did; dying with the empire at peace, Zeno was succeeded by Anastasius I ( r. 491–518 ). Although his Monophysitism brought occasional issues, Anastasius was a capable administrator and instituted several successful financial reforms including
16109-581: The Western provinces to achieve an economic revival that continued until the close of the century. It has been argued that Byzantium under the Komnenian rule was more prosperous than at any time since the Persian invasions of the 7th century. During the 12th century, population levels rose and extensive tracts of new agricultural land were brought into production. Archaeological evidence from both Europe and Asia Minor shows
16290-522: The abolition of the chrysargyron tax . He was the first emperor to die with no serious problems affecting his empire since Diocletian. The reign of Justinian I was a watershed in Byzantine history. Following his accession in 527, the law-code was rewritten as the influential Corpus Juris Civilis and Justinian produced extensive legislation on provincial administration; he reasserted imperial control over religion and morality through purges of non-Christians and "deviants"; and having ruthlessly subdued
16471-424: The absence of Dionysus. Morrheus attacks the Bacchantes and takes some captives as a gift for Deriades, who sends them to be tortured and killed in various ways. Chalcomede lures Morrheus out of the battle. Deriades drives the Bacchantes inside the city walls. Book 35 – The Indians slay the Bacchantes in the city. Chalcomede lures Morrheus away from the battle making him believe that she is in love with him. When he
16652-569: The administration's response. He also did not fully heal the divisions in Chalcedonian Christianity , as the Second Council of Constantinople failed to make a real difference. Justinian died in 565; his reign saw more success than that of any other Byzantine emperor, yet he left his empire under massive strain. Financially and territorially overextended, Justin II ( r. 565–578 )
16833-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has
17014-568: The aristocracy turned into wholesale slaughter, while the emperor resorted to ever more ruthless measures to shore up his regime. Despite his military background, Andronikos failed to deal with Isaac Komnenos of Cyprus, Béla III of Hungary who reincorporated Croatian territories into Hungary, and Stephen Nemanja of Serbia who declared his independence from the Byzantine Empire. Yet, none of these troubles compared to William II of Sicily 's invasion force of 300 ships and 80,000 men, arriving in 1185 and sacking Thessalonica . Andronikos mobilised
17195-421: The arrival of Dionysus' brand-new fleet. Deriades and Dionysus harangue their troops, and Aeacus and Erechtheus ask the gods for help. The narrative of the battle is dominated by descriptions of carnage until the Indians are routed by a burning ship sent into their line. Deriades flees. Book 40 – Deriades returns to battle and is confronted by Dionysus who grazes him with his thyrsus and forces him to jump into
17376-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in
17557-496: The battle because Hephaestus is about to seduce Aphrodite. Ares leaves at once. Book 30 – Exploits of Morrheus, Deriades' son-in-law. Tectaphus is slain by Eurymedon (one of the Cabiri, children of Hephaestus and Cabiro). Hera encourages Deriades to fight and Dionysus is about to flee, but Athena stops him. Dionysus goes back to battle and massacres the Indian troops. Book 31 – Hera goes to Persephone and tricks her into lending her
17738-525: The bones of a stag and bury them. Agaue marries Echion and bears Pentheus to him. Ino marries Athamas, but Semele is reserved for Zeus, who is resenting the death of the first Dionysus (Zagreus), whom he had engendered with Persephone . Beginning of the story of Persephone: all the gods of the Olympus are madly in love with her. Book 6 – Demeter , upset by Zeus's attention, goes to Astraeus , god of prophecy, who casts Persephone's horoscope, telling of her imminent rape by Zeus. Demeter conceals Persephone in
17919-488: The capital, and Alexios Angelos was elevated to the throne as Alexios IV along with his blind father Isaac. Alexios IV and Isaac II were unable to keep their promises and were deposed by Alexios V . The crusaders again took the city on 13 April 1204 , and Constantinople was subjected to pillage and massacre by the rank and file for three days. Many priceless icons, relics and other objects later turned up in Western Europe ,
18100-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West
18281-464: The city had collapsed so severely that it was now little more than a cluster of villages separated by fields. On 2 April 1453, Sultan Mehmed 's army of 80,000 men and large numbers of irregulars laid siege to the city. Despite a desperate last-ditch defence of the city by the massively outnumbered Christian forces (c. 7,000 men, 2,000 of whom were foreign), Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans after
18462-652: The city of the Indians in the seventh year of the war. Description of the shield, covered with constellations and adorned with a number of scenes: foundation of Thebes, Ganymede and Zeus and the Lydian myth of Tylos . Book 26 – Athena drives Deriades to gather his allies. Catalogue of Indian troops: fourteen contingents from the Indus valley and the eastern areas of the Median empire . Descriptions rich in ethnographic material. Book 27 – Deriades exhorts his troops to attack Dionysus near
18643-546: The comparison of Dionysus and other heroes in Book 25. The complexity of organization and the richness of the language have caused the style of the poem to be termed Nonnian "Baroque." The size of Nonnus' poem and its late date between Imperial and Byzantine literature have caused the Dionysiaca to receive relatively little attention from scholars. The contributor to the Encyclopædia Britannica (8th edition, 1888), noting
18824-493: The creation of new compounds, adjectives, and coined words, and Nonnus' work has some of the greatest variety of coinages in any Greek poem. The poem is notably varied in its organization. Nonnus does not seem to arrange his poem in a linear chronology; rather, episodes are arranged by a loose chronological order and by topic, much as Ovid's Metamorphoses . The poem states as its guiding principle poikilia , diversity in narrative, form, and organization. The appearance of Proteus,
19005-540: The crusade was to conquer Egypt , the centre of Muslim power in the Levant. The Crusader army arrived at Venice in the summer of 1202 and hired the Venetian fleet to transport them to Egypt. As a payment to the Venetians, they captured the (Christian) port of Zara in Dalmatia , which was a vassal city of Venice, it had rebelled and placed itself under Hungary's protection in 1186. Shortly afterward, Alexios IV Angelos , son of
19186-473: The daughters of Lamos, river nymphs, until Hera drives them mad. Hermes then gives the boy to Ino and she places him under the care of her attendant Mystis, who teaches him the rites of the mysteries. Hera finds out the whereabouts of Dionysus, but Hermes reaches him before she does and transfers him to the care of Rhea . Dionysus grows up in the mountains of Lydia where he learns to hunt and to dominate beasts. His early pursuits make his mother Semele proud. In
19367-425: The deed and she disguises herself as an old woman the young girl trusts and tricks her into asking to see Zeus armed in full power with the lightning. She does and Zeus cannot say no to her. The fires of thunder burn Semele alive and Zeus immortalizes her. Book 9 – Zeus rescues Dionysus from the fire and sews him into his thigh until he is ready to be born. Hermes receives baby Dionysus after birth and carries him to
19548-499: The deposed and blinded Emperor Isaac II, made contact with the Crusaders. Alexios offered to reunite the Byzantine church with Rome, pay the Crusaders 200,000 silver marks, join the crusade, and provide all the supplies they needed to reach Egypt. The crusaders arrived at Constantinople in the summer of 1203 and quickly attacked , starting a major fire that damaged large parts of the city, and briefly seized control. Alexios III fled from
19729-611: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of
19910-471: The east by allowing the Goths to settle in Roman territory; he also twice intervened in the western half, defeating the usurpers Magnus Maximus and Eugenius in 388 and 394 respectively. He actively condemned paganism , confirmed the primacy of Nicene Christianity over Arianism , and established Christianity as the Roman state religion . He was the last emperor to rule both the western and eastern halves of
20091-433: The east to Calabria in southern Italy in the west. Many successes had been achieved, ranging from the conquest of Bulgaria to the annexation of parts of Georgia and Armenia, and the reconquests of Crete , Cyprus , and the important city of Antioch . These were not temporary tactical gains but long-term reconquests. At the same time, Byzantium was faced with new enemies. Its provinces in southern Italy were threatened by
20272-527: The emperor's role as the leader of the Christian world, John marched into the Holy Land at the head of the combined forces of the empire and the Crusader states; yet despite his efforts in leading the campaign, his hopes were disappointed by the treachery of his Crusader allies. In 1142, John returned to press his claims to Antioch, but he died in the spring of 1143 following a hunting accident. John's chosen heir
20453-418: The empire's demise; its citizens referred to the polity as the "Roman Empire" and to themselves as "Romans". Due to the imperial seat's move from Rome to Byzantium , the adoption of state Christianity , and the predominance of Greek instead of Latin , modern historians continue to make a distinction between the earlier Roman Empire and the later Byzantine Empire . During the earlier Pax Romana period,
20634-523: The empire's eastern defences. The emergency lent weight to the military aristocracy in Anatolia, who in 1068 secured the election of one of their own, Romanos Diogenes , as emperor. In the summer of 1071, Romanos undertook a massive eastern campaign to draw the Seljuks into a general engagement with the Byzantine army. At the Battle of Manzikert , Romanos suffered a surprise defeat against Sultan Alp Arslan and
20815-544: The empire, gaining only short-term success. To avoid another sacking of the capital by the Latins, he forced the Church to submit to Rome, again a temporary solution for which the peasantry hated Michael and Constantinople. The efforts of Andronikos II and later his grandson Andronikos III marked Byzantium's last genuine attempts to restoring the glory of the empire. However, the use of mercenaries by Andronikos II often backfired, with
20996-460: The empire; after his death, the West would be destabilised by a succession of "soldier-emperors", unlike the East, where administrators would continue to hold power. Theodosius II ( r. 408–450 ) largely left the rule of the east to officials such as Anthemius , who constructed the Theodosian Walls to defend Constantinople, now firmly entrenched as Rome's capital. Theodosius' reign
21177-514: The end of the Norman threat during Alexios' reign. Alexios's son John II Komnenos succeeded him in 1118 and ruled until 1143. John was a pious and dedicated emperor who was determined to undo the damage to the empire suffered at the Battle of Manzikert half a century earlier. Famed for his piety and his remarkably mild and just reign, John was an exceptional example of a moral ruler at a time when cruelty
21358-606: The enemies that surrounded it. To maintain his campaigns against the Latins, Michael pulled troops from Asia Minor and levied crippling taxes on the peasantry, causing much resentment. Massive construction projects were completed in Constantinople to repair the damage of the Fourth Crusade, but none of these initiatives were of any comfort to the farmers in Asia Minor suffering raids from Muslim ghazis. Rather than holding on to his possessions in Asia Minor, Michael chose to expand
21539-508: The first six years of the war. Comparison of Dionysus' deeds with those of Perseus , Minos , and Heracles , concluding that Dionysus is better than the heroes. Return to the main narrative: the Ganges, Deriades and the Indian people are scared by a number of Bacchic miracles. Dionysus is angry because Hera is delaying his victory. Rhea sends Attis to visit Dionysus and give him a shield that will protect him in battle and promises that he will conquer
21720-569: The former Byzantine possessions. Although Venice was more interested in commerce than conquering territory, it took key areas of Constantinople, and the Doge took the title of " Lord of a Quarter and Half a Quarter of the Roman Empire ". After the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by Latin crusaders, two Byzantine successor states were established: the Empire of Nicaea and the Despotate of Epirus . A third,
21901-663: The forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c. 1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c. 800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c. 500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been
22082-544: The fort, allowing the Ottomans (who were hired as mercenaries during the civil war by John VI Kantakouzenos ) to establish themselves in Europe. By the time the Byzantine civil wars had ended, the Ottomans had defeated the Serbians and subjugated them as vassals. Following the Battle of Kosovo , much of the Balkans became dominated by the Ottomans. Constantinople by this stage was underpopulated and dilapidated. The population of
22263-562: The funeral games for Staphylus, with contests of singing and pantomime. Book 20 – The end of the games brings the mourning to an end. In a dream, Eris drives Dionysus to war. Methe, Botrys and their servant Pithos ("Wine-jar") join the Bacchic forces. They arrive in Arabia, where king Lycurgus has been stirred to fight by Hera. At the same time Hera deludes Dionysus with a false dream, in which Hermes counsels Dionysus to approach Lycurgus peaceably and without weapons. Lycurgus attacks Dionysus and
22444-735: The girdle, they make love, and while Zeus sleeps Megaira drives Dionysus mad. In the absence of Dionysus, Deriades and Morrheus rout the Bacchantes. The Bacchic army panics. Book 33 – A Grace tells Aphrodite about Dionysus' madness and of how Morrheus is pursuing the Bacchante Chalcomede. Aphrodite sends Aglaia to fetch Eros, who is playing kottabos with Hymenaeus. In exchange for a chaplet made by Hephaestus, Eros agrees to cause Morrheus to fall in love with Chalcomede. Shaken by lovesickness Morrheus loses interest in battle and pursues Chalcomede, who makes him think that she reciprocates his feelings. Morrheus' lovesickness becomes more acute during
22625-405: The god's anger onto himself), sows its teeth, and reaps the crop of sown-men . Book 5 – Cadmus then founds Thebes, dedicating its seven doors to seven gods and planets. The gods attend to his wedding with Harmonia and enrich them with their gifts, of which the necklace given to her by Aphrodite receives particular attention. They have four daughters ( Autonoe , Agaue , Ino and Semele ) and
22806-431: The heart of their imperial military policies. Despite the defeat at Myriokephalon, the policies of Alexios, John and Manuel resulted in vast territorial gains, increased frontier stability in Asia Minor, and secured the stabilisation of the empire's European frontiers. From c. 1081 to c. 1180 , the Komnenian army assured the empire's security, enabling Byzantine civilisation to flourish. This allowed
22987-556: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from
23168-472: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to
23349-583: The historiographical periodizations of " Roman history ", " late antiquity ", and "Byzantine history" significantly overlap, there is no consensus on a "foundation date" for the Byzantine Empire, if there was one at all. The growth of the study of "late antiquity" has led to some historians setting a start date in the seventh or eighth centuries. Others believe a "new empire" began during changes in c. 300 AD. Still others hold that these starting points are too early or too late, and instead begin c. 500 . Geoffrey Greatrex believes that it
23530-708: The later part of his reign, John focused his activities on the East, personally leading numerous campaigns against the Turks in Asia Minor. His campaigns fundamentally altered the balance of power in the East, forcing the Turks onto the defensive, while retaking many towns, fortresses, and cities across the peninsula for the Byzantines. He defeated the Danishmend Emirate of Melitene and reconquered all of Cilicia , while forcing Raymond of Poitiers , Prince of Antioch, to recognise Byzantine suzerainty. In an effort to demonstrate
23711-562: The life of Dionysus, such as the lost poems by Euphorion , Peisander of Laranda 's elaborate encyclopedic mythological poem, Dionysius, and Soteirichus. Reflections of Hesiod 's poetry, especially the Catalogue of Women , of Pindar , and Callimachus can all be seen in the work of Nonnus. Theocritus ' influence can be detected in Nonnus' focus on pastoral themes. Finally, Virgil and especially Ovid seem to have influenced Nonnus' organization of
23892-449: The meantime a mad Ino wanders in the hills until Apollo takes pity on her and restores her sanity. Ino's household mourns for her disappearance, while his husband Athamas marries Themisto. Book 10 – Themisto goes mad and kills her son. Athamas goes mad too and slaughters his son Learchos. Ino arrives when he is about to kill their son Melicertes whom she saves by jumping into the sea, becoming divinized. Meanwhile, Dionysus has become
24073-418: The measures he took to reform the government of the empire have been praised by historians. According to the historian George Ostrogorsky , Andronikos was determined to root out corruption: under his rule, the sale of offices ceased; selection was based on merit, rather than favouritism; and officials were paid an adequate salary to reduce the temptation of bribery. In the provinces, Andronikos's reforms produced
24254-579: The mid-13th century it had lost much of southern Anatolia. The weakening of the Sultanate of Rûm following the Mongol invasion in 1242–1243 allowed many beyliks and ghazis to set up their own principalities in Anatolia, weakening the Byzantine hold on Asia Minor. Two centuries later, one of the Beys of these beyliks, Osman I , would establish the Ottoman Empire that would eventually conquer Constantinople. However,
24435-501: The monster Typhon , following orders of his mother, the Earth, steals Zeus' weapons (the thunderbolts) and tries to dominate the world causing chaos and destruction wherever he goes. Zeus is now making love to Europa, but when he realises the dire situation calls Pan, Eros and Cadmus for help: Pan provides Cadmus with a pastoral disguise and he is supposed to charm Typhon with a pastoral song and Eros' help, while Zeus recovers his weapons. Typhon
24616-542: The most capable Byzantine emperors, withstood continued Arab attacks, civil unrest, and natural disasters, and reestablished the state as a major regional power. Leo's reign produced the Ecloga , a new code of law to succeed that of Justinian II, and continued to reform the "theme system" in order to lead offensive campaigns against the Muslims, culminating in a decisive victory in 740 . Constantine overcame an early civil war against his brother-in-law Artabasdos , made peace with
24797-465: The mouth of the Indus . Dionysus places his battalions carefully and harangues his troops. In the meantime, in the Olympus, Zeus encourages Apollo and Athena to join their brother Dionysus and also addresses the gods who back the Indian side (Hera and Hephaestus). Book 28 – The battle rages. Exploits and deaths of Phaleneus, Dexiochus and Clytios. Exploits of Corymbasos. Strange deaths in battle. Exploits of
24978-567: The new Abbasid Caliphate , campaigned successfully against the Bulgars, and continued to make administrative and military reforms. However, due to both emperors' support for the Byzantine Iconoclasm , which opposed the use of religious icons , they were later vilified by Byzantine historians; Constantine's reign also saw the loss of Ravenna to the Lombards , and the beginning of a split with
25159-466: The newly-formed Arabic Rashidun Caliphate . By Heraclius' death in 641, the empire had been severely reduced economically as well as territorially—the loss of the wealthy eastern provinces had deprived Constantinople of three-quarters of its revenue. The next seventy-five years are poorly documented. Arab raids into Asia Minor began almost immediately, and the Byzantines resorted to holding fortified centres and avoiding battle at all costs; although it
25340-657: The night Zeus is encouraged to fight by Victory itself (Nike). The following morning Typhon challenges Zeus into combat and is defeated and killed by him after a long battle that affects the whole cosmos. While the earth repairs itself, Zeus promises to Cadmus the hand of Harmonia, daughter of Ares and Aphrodite , and bids him to found Thebes . Book 3 – Cadmus' ship wanders the sea and stops at Samothrace , where Harmonia lives with her step-mother Electra and her step-brother Emathion . Joining them at their beautiful palace, he tells Electra of his lineage. Hermes bids Electra give her daughter Harmonia to be Cadmus' bride without
25521-407: The night. Chalcomede fears for her virginity but is comforted by Thetis, who asks her to delude Morrheus and promises that a serpent will protect her virginity. Book 34 – Morrheus wanders on his own during the night and his servant Hyssacos recognises the signs of love and comforts him. Beginning of a new day: Morrheus nourishes his hope of love, while the Bacchic troops are completely dispirited in
25702-499: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which
25883-505: The outset of his reign, Alexios faced a formidable attack from the Normans under Guiscard and his son Bohemund of Taranto , who captured Dyrrhachium and Corfu and laid siege to Larissa in Thessaly . Guiscard's death in 1085 temporarily eased the Norman problem. The following year, the Seljuq sultan died, and the sultanate was split due to internal rivalries. By his own efforts, Alexios defeated
26064-490: The pastoral song) falls in love with her and courts her. Nicaea refuses even to listen to him and the boy becomes so desperate that he even asks her to kill him (a frequent line in the speeches of unrequited lovers). Nicaea takes the line literally and shoots him dead. The nature and its gods lament the dead shepherd and call for revenge. Book 16 – Eros inspires in Dionysus a mad desire for Nicaea. Dionysus woos her and offers her
26245-521: The patriarch Nicholas , the powerful Simeon I of Bulgaria , and other influential figures jockeyed for power. In 920, the admiral Romanos I used his fleet to secure power, crowning himself and demoting Constantine to the position of junior co-emperor. His reign, which brought peace with Bulgaria and successes in the east under the general John Kourkouas , was ended in 944 by the machinations of his sons, whom Constantine soon usurped in turn. Constantine's ineffectual sole rule has often been construed as
26426-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c. 1450 BC ) are in
26607-416: The poem as a way of talking about contemporary events, as a way of playing with generic conventions, and as a way of engaging with predecessors intertextually, leading to an encouraging reassessment of his poetic and narrative style. The unconventional structure of the Dionysiaca encouraged harsh criticism of the poem in scholarship. Robert Shorrock and Francois Vian have been at the forefront of reexamining
26788-431: The poem's "vast and formless luxuriance, its beautiful but artificial versification, its delineation of action and passion to the entire neglect of character," remarked, "His chief merit consists in the systematic perfection to which he brought the Homeric hexameter. But the very correctness of the versification renders it monotonous. His influence on the vocabulary of his successors was likewise very considerable," expressing
26969-628: The poem. Nonnus seems to have been an important influence for the poets of Late Antiquity, especially Musaeus , Colluthus , Christodorus , and Dracontius . He remained continuously important in the Byzantine world, and his influence can be found in Genesius and Planudes . In the Renaissance, Poliziano popularized him to the West, and Goethe admired him in the 18th century. He was also admired by Thomas Love Peacock in 19th-century England. The metrics of Nonnus have been widely admired by scholars for
27150-482: The poet's careful handling of dactylic hexameter and innovation. While Homer has 32 varieties of hexameter lines, Nonnus only employs 9 variations, avoids elision, employs mostly weak caesurae , and follows a variety of euphonic and syllabic rules regarding word placement. It is especially remarkable that Nonnus was so exacting with meter because the quantitative meter of classical poetry was giving way in Nonnus' time to stressed meter. These metrical restraints encouraged
27331-400: The poet's invocation of the muses, his address to Proteus , and his commitment to sing the various episodes of Dionysus' life in a varied style (stylistic concept of ποικιλία, poikilia). The narrative starts with the origins of Dionysus: Zeus kidnaps Europa and her father orders Cadmus (Dionysus' maternal grandfather) to search for her. While Zeus is distracted making love to the maiden Pluto ,
27512-410: The pope and Western Christian kingdoms, and he successfully handled the passage of the crusaders through his empire. In the East, Manuel suffered a major defeat in 1176 at the Battle of Myriokephalon against the Turks. These losses were quickly recovered, and in the following year Manuel's forces inflicted a defeat upon a force of "picked Turks". The Byzantine commander John Vatatzes , who destroyed
27693-590: The ports of southern Italy, he sent an expedition to Italy in 1155, but disputes within the coalition led to the eventual failure of the campaign. Despite this military setback, Manuel's armies successfully invaded the southern parts of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1167, defeating the Hungarians at the Battle of Sirmium . By 1168, nearly the whole of the eastern Adriatic coast lay in Manuel's hands. Manuel made several alliances with
27874-509: The pyre for Opheltes and celebrates funeral games, including a chariot race, pugilism, wrestling, foot race, discus, archery and javelin throw. Book 38 – Two omens foretell Dionysus' victory, first a solar eclipse and then an eagle (i.e. Dionysus) throwing a serpent (i.e. Deriades) to the river. The first of them is interpreted by the seer Idmon, the second by Hermes, who tells at length the story of Phaethon from his genealogy to his death and catasterism. Book 39 – The sea-battle begins on
28055-410: The river Hydaspes , where the trees and animals receive Dionysus with joy. The Indians see the miracles performed by Dionysus and are tempted to surrender, but Hera deceives their leader Thureus. The Indians try to ambush the Bacchic troops but a nymph warns Dionysus of the impending peril. In the battle Oeagrus, Aeacus , and Erectheus all distinguish themselves. Book 23 – Dionysus and Aeacus fight
28236-455: The river Hydaspes, calling the war to an end. Deriades' wife (Orsiboe) and daughters (Cheirobie and Protonoe) mourn him. Dionysus buries the dead, celebrates his victory and distributes spoils. Modaeus is appointed as governor of India. Dionysus travels to Tyre , admires the city, and hears the story of its founding from Heracles . Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes
28417-409: The services of a Fury , Megaira , whom she instructs to madden Dionysus. Hera also instructs Iris to persuade Hypnus to cause Zeus to sleep, claiming that as god of nocturnal revels, Dionysus is his natural enemy, and that he should not risk angering Hera, the mother of his beloved Pasithea . Hera borrows Aphrodite's girdle, the cestus , in order to seduce Zeus. Book 32 – Hera charms Zeus with
28598-433: The structure of the poem. Earlier scholars have looked to elaborate ring composition , a prophetic astrological program in the tablets of Harmonia, rhetorical encomium , or epyllion as structural concepts behind the poem to make sense of the unconventional narrative. Others have felt that the style of the poem relies on dissonant juxtaposition for effect, using the so-called "jeweled style" of detailed narrative cameoes within
28779-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies
28960-424: The tablets of Phanes , on which all the oracles of the future are engraved. Prediction of the metamorphosis of Ampelus into a vine. In the meantime, Dionysus mourns for Ampelus. Ampelus is transformed into the vine and Dionysus makes wine for the first time, reflecting on how Ampelus has escaped death. Dionysus adopts the vine as his personal attribute and claims to be superior to the other gods, because no other plant
29141-418: The threat and sets the river banks on fire. The survival of the vegetation, fish and river nymphs is under threat. Hydaspes asks Tethys to help him. Book 24 – Zeus and Hera stay the anger of the contenders. Hydaspes surrenders and Dionysus draws back his torch. The Bacchic army finishes crossing the river only to find that Deriades has placed his troops on the other bank of the river. The gods come down from
29322-543: The throne. Alexios was highly incompetent in the office, and with his mother Maria of Antioch 's Frankish background, his regency was unpopular. Eventually, Andronikos I Komnenos , a grandson of Alexios I, overthrew Alexios II in a violent coup d'état . After eliminating his potential rivals, he had himself crowned as co-emperor in September 1183. He eliminated Alexios II and took his 12-year-old wife Agnes of France for himself. Andronikos began his reign well; in particular,
29503-442: The unpopular Irene was overthrown by Nikephoros I ; he reformed the empire's administration but died in battle against the Bulgars in 811. Military defeats and societal disorder, especially the resurgence of iconoclasm, characterised the next eighteen years. Stability was somewhat restored during the reign of Theophilos ( r. 829–842 ), who exploited economic growth to complete construction programs, including rebuilding
29684-412: The vine. Astraeis informs Orontes, son-in-law of the Indian king Deriades, of the defeat of the Indian army and the ruse of the waters turned into wine. Orontes is furious and harangues his troops not to fear the effeminate Dionysus and his army of women. The Indians charge in and at first seem to win, but Dionysus screams like nine thousand men and detains them. Orontes and Dionysus engage in single combat:
29865-458: The west, the warlord Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus in 476, killed his titular successor Julius Nepos in 480, and the office of western emperor was formally abolished. Through a combination of luck, cultural factors, and political decisions, the Eastern empire never suffered from rebellious barbarian vassals and was never ruled by barbarian warlords—the problems which ensured the downfall of
30046-478: The west. The poem is thought to have been written in the 5th century AD. The suggestion that it is incomplete misses the significance of the birth of Dionysus' one son (Iacchus) in the final Book 48, quite apart from the fact that 48 is a key number as the number of books in the Iliad and Odyssey combined. The older view that Nonnus wrote this poem before conversion to Christianity and the writing of his other long poem,
30227-483: The western parts of the empire became increasingly Latinised , while the eastern parts largely retained their preexisting Hellenistic culture . This created a dichotomy between the Greek East and Latin West . These cultural spheres continued to diverge after Constantine I ( r. 324–337 ) moved the capital to Constantinople and legalised Christianity . Under Theodosius I ( r. 379–395 ), Christianity became
30408-422: The zenith of Byzantine learning , but while several works were compiled, they were largely intended to legitimise and glorify the emperor's Macedonian dynasty . His son and successor died young; under two soldier-emperors, Nikephoros II ( r. 963–969 ) and John I Tzimiskes ( r. 969–976 ), the Roman army claimed numerous military successes, including the conquest of Cilicia and Antioch , and
30589-425: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,
30770-447: Was besieged in August 1068 and fell in April 1071 . About 1053, Constantine IX disbanded what the historian John Skylitzes calls the "Iberian Army", which consisted of 50,000 men, and it was turned into a contemporary Drungary of the Watch . Two other knowledgeable contemporaries, the former officials Michael Attaleiates and Kekaumenos , agree with Skylitzes that by demobilising these soldiers, Constantine did catastrophic harm to
30951-560: Was captured. Alp Arslan treated him with respect and imposed no harsh terms on the Byzantines. In Constantinople a coup put in power Michael Doukas , who soon faced the opposition of Nikephoros Bryennios and Nikephoros III Botaneiates . By 1081, the Seljuks had expanded their rule over virtually the entire Anatolian plateau from Armenia in the east to Bithynia in the west, and had established their capital at Nicaea , just 90 kilometres (56 miles) from Constantinople. The Komnenian dynasty attained full power under Alexios I in 1081. From
31132-449: Was given credit for his predecessor's achievements. Basil I ( r. 867–886 ) continued Michael's policies. His armies campaigned with mixed results in Italy but defeated the Paulicians of Tephrike . His successor Leo VI ( r. 886–912 ) compiled and propagated a huge number of written works. These included the Basilika , a Greek translation of Justinian I's law-code which included over 100 new laws of Leo's devising;
31313-514: Was his fourth son, Manuel I Komnenos , who campaigned aggressively against his neighbours both in the west and east. In Palestine, Manuel allied with the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and sent a large fleet to participate in a combined invasion of Fatimid Egypt . Manuel reinforced his position as overlord of the Crusader states, with his hegemony over Antioch and Jerusalem secured by agreement with Raynald , Prince of Antioch, and Amalric of Jerusalem . In an effort to restore Byzantine control over
31494-487: Was invaded annually, Anatolia avoided permanent Arab occupation. The outbreak of the First Fitna in 656 gave Byzantium breathing space, which it used wisely: some order was restored in the Balkans by Constans II ( r. 641–668 ), who began the administrative reorganisation known as the " theme system ", in which troops were allocated to defend specific provinces. With the help of the recently rediscovered Greek fire , Constantine IV ( r. 668–685 ) repelled
31675-497: Was marked by the theological dispute over Nestorianism , which was eventually deemed heretical , and by the formulation of the Codex Theodosianus law code. It also saw the arrival of Attila 's Huns , who ravaged the Balkans and exacted a massive tribute from the empire; Attila however switched his attention to the rapidly-deteriorating western empire , and his people fractured after his death in 453. After Leo I ( r. 457–474 ) failed in his 468 attempt to reconquer
31856-406: Was not esteemed by the "soldier-emperors" who ruled from the frontiers or by the empire's population who, having been granted citizenship , considered themselves "Roman". Constantine extensively reformed the empire's military and civil administration and instituted the gold solidus as a stable currency. He favoured Christianity , which he had converted to in 312. Constantine's dynasty fought
32037-506: Was occupied by conflicts against two prominent generals, Bardas Skleros and Bardas Phokas , which ended in 989 with the former's death and the latter's submission. Between 1021 and 1022, following years of tensions, Basil II led a series of victorious campaigns against the Kingdom of Georgia , resulting in the annexation of several Georgian provinces to the empire. Basil's successors also annexed Bagratid Armenia in 1045. Importantly, both Georgia and Armenia were significantly weakened by
32218-450: Was only used to describe the inhabitants of that city; it did not refer to the empire, which they called Romanía —"Romanland". After the empire's fall, early modern scholars referred to the empire by many names, including the "Empire of Constantinople", the "Empire of the Greeks", the "Eastern Empire", the "Late Empire", the "Low Empire", and the "Roman Empire". The increasing use of "Byzantine" and "Byzantine Empire" likely started with
32399-441: Was overthrown in 695 after attempting to exact too much from his subjects; over the next twenty-two years, six more rebellions followed in an era of political instability . The reconstituted caliphate sought to break Byzantium by taking Constantinople, but the newly crowned Leo III managed to repel the 717–718 siege , the first major setback of the Muslim conquests. Leo and his son Constantine V ( r. 741–775 ), two of
32580-467: Was soon at war on many fronts. The Lombards , fearing the aggressive Avars , conquered much of northern Italy by 572. The Sasanian wars restarted that year, and continued until the emperor Maurice finally emerged victorious in 591; by that time, the Avars and Slavs had repeatedly invaded the Balkans , causing great instability. Maurice campaigned extensively in the region during the 590s, but although he managed to re-establish Byzantine control up to
32761-428: Was the norm. For this reason, he has been called the Byzantine Marcus Aurelius . During his twenty-five-year reign, John made alliances with the Holy Roman Empire in the West and decisively defeated the Pechenegs at the Battle of Beroia . He thwarted Hungarian and Serbian threats during the 1120s, and in 1130 he allied himself with Lothair III , the German Emperor against the Norman King Roger II of Sicily . In
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