Personifications are a frequent motif in the visual culture of the late antique Eastern Mediterranean. Some were particularly popular, especially figures such as Ktisis (‘Foundation’), Ananeosis (‘Renewal’), Charis (‘Grace’) or Tryphe (‘Luxury’), depicted not only in floor mosaics but also in book illumination and jewellery. Many personifications are not only late antique innovations without earlier…
The so-called Dialogus de scientia politica, written by an anonymous author probably outside Constantinople during the reign of Justinian I, deals with the ideal constitutional form and function of the Roman state. It thereby emphasizes the role of the emperor as a philosopher-king, who governs the state indirectly through his chosen magistrates from the senatorial…
Despite an extensive scholarly literature, there is currently no consensus about how to define the “Mirror of Princes” genre in Byzantium, assuming it existed there at all. At stake in these debates is not merely a taxonomy of literary works but the analytical frames through which those works are interpreted. Genres presuppose a set of…