Forty years ago, I contributed my first independent article to Volume 1 of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, ‘The lament of the Virgin in Byzantine literature and modern Greek folksong’. For this fortieth anniversary issue, dedicated to A. A. M. Bryer, I have, as in the closing words of Theodore Prodromos’ seventh letter to Aristenos (Πεϱὶ Γλώττης), nothing to offer but μικϱαῖς ἀντιδεξιοῦσα σταγόσι, καὶ ταύταις θολεϱαῖς (‘meagre and murky drops’),Footnote ¹ further sullied with speculation on possible meanings of a single rare word: skordapsos. Does it mean ‘gut-knot’ or ‘eyesore’? Is it a vulgar form of chordapsos, an affliction of the intestines (attested in early medical texts)? Or is it a later vernacular term for ‘eye disease’, for which garlic (skordo) was, and remains, a known curative? And does it matter?

Yes, because the question will engage and amuse Bryer and us all for its ambivalent specificities, medical and linguistic, learned and vernacular, serious and funny. BMGS has demonstrated, throughout its life, breadth and range, depth and detail, coverage of Byzantine and Modern Greek, separately and together: language and literature; art and archaeology; religion and anthropology; history and politics – the list could go on. Controversial as certain issues may have seemed, never has academic rigour been sacrificed, thanks to expert teamwork over editorial generations. The journal has created a lively debating ground where scholars from diverse fields and disciplines, young and old, have exchanged views, without fear of the kind of intimidation and discrimination all too familiar to my generation, as we embarked upon research projects which transgressed safe chronological and disciplinary boundaries – and Hellenic ones too! Footnote ² Bryer played a leading role in this process, as he also did by daring to encourage diversity and controversy at the Centre for Byzantine Studies, in collaboration with members of the Departments of Medieval History, Hellenic and Roman Studies at the University of Birmingham. Debate on skordapsos may not be inappropriate for this celebratory issue of a journal that has been affectionately known by inserting the fifth and first vowels between the first and second, third and fourth consonants of its otherwise unpronounceable acronym: B*MG*S.

When invited to contribute to this issue, I planned a scholarly overview of the benefits and difficulties encountered in juxtaposing Byzantine and Modern Greek themes. I shall keep instead to some playfully serious remarks in appreciation of key advances made in recent years by younger scholars.

I begin with the Timarion, a satirical dialogue which has long fascinated Byzantinists and Hellenists alike, and is now reaching wider and more rounded acclaim as a truly original and quintessentially Byzantine composition.Footnote ³ When I began work on the text, most studies had been limited largely to questions of date, authorship and prosopography, with general recognition by historians for the socio-economic importance of the description of the Festival (πανήγυϱις) of Saint Demetrios at Thessalonike; the rhetorical exaggerations in the description of the entry of the unnamed doux; and the liturgical implications of the religious ceremony that followed. Humorous and satirical qualities were recognized in general terms (rather than analysed in depth or detail), with dismissive comments that the Timarion was ‘imitative’ and scattered with ancient ‘tags’.

My own initial contribution to the discussion, inspired by a tiny graduate seminar taught in the spring of 1981 at UCLA, was limited to close literary analysis of one section, with scrutiny of ancient sources as cited in Romano's edition. I followed modern rather than Byzantine literary and aesthetic theory, in the absence of any proper recognition of the latter, although aware that we have our own ‘distorting mirrors’, and that the application of modern literary theory to medieval texts — especially Byzantine ones — is fraught with dangers. Michael Hendy distanced himself from what he called my ‘flights of literary fancy’, despite our shared enjoyment of its extraordinarily complex combination of sparkling humour and seriousness of satirical intent. I revised and expanded my original interpretation in Chapter V of After Antiquity: Greek Language, Myth, and Metaphor, yet could provide neither the socio-historical key nor the appropriate theoretical framework, because my knowledge of Byzantine sources was insufficient.

Dimitris Krallis has recently given us a persuasive answer to the question who was the doux? and breaks new historical ground in exploring the text's doubleness – literary wit with historical punch - ‘harmless satire, stinging critique’.Footnote ⁴ In the present issue of BMGS, Byron MacDougall carries discussion forward in a seemingly more literary direction: the potential functions of Byzantine mimesis and ekphrasis. His scrutiny of parallels between our text and Heliodoros’ Aithiopika demonstrates the author's ability to transform familiarity with ancient authors into an astute means of commenting, humorously yet profoundly, on hazardous contemporary matters, not to parade erudition or indulge in slavish imitation.

MacDougall shows that mimesis has both purpose and system, as in other twelfth-century texts, such as Eustathios Makrembolites’ novel, Hysmine and Hysminias, and the works of Theodore Prodromos. Ingela Nilsson of the University of Uppsala has contributed to a forthcoming co-edited volume on Greek Laughter and Tears: Antiquity and After a chapter on ‘Tearful laughter in the Komnenian novel: comfort, education and entertainment’, which brings out more than any previous study (my own included) the versatility, sophistication and literary appeal of the best Byzantine writers. Once we accept Byzantine texts on their terms, rather than judge them by our own criteria, we can go a step further, and ask, was there such a thing as Byzantine aesthetic theory? Not in terms that we might recognize; but in another chapter of Greek Laughter and Tears, ‘Towards a Byzantine theory of the comic?’, Aglae Pizzone of the University of Southern Denmark combs through Byzantine sources of the tenth to thirteenth centuries (including rhetorical handbooks) to suggest that there existed both system and framework, where wordplay and punning – the more abstruse the better – had a major role to play.Footnote ⁵

A further key question raised by MacDougall concerns mimesis and realia: does allusion to ancient texts preclude relevance to contemporary events? It is a huge question, crucial for our interpretation of Byzantium, its debt to the past, and its legacy for the Renaissance and beyond, since it concerns not just ‘literary baggage’, but the very processes of cultural expression and transmission. Let me take another lead from MacDougall's insights into the ‘blending of colours’ in the hair of the doux (which has a close parallel in the shifting hues of marble slabs in Sosthenes’ paradisiac garden as described in the opening paragraph of Hysmine and Hysminias), and turn to observations by an art historian. In her book Reconstructing the Reality of Images: Byzantine Material Culture and Religious Iconography, Maria Parani discusses the relationship between the ideal and the real, defining reality as the ‘sensible reality of Byzantine culture, the secular artefacts (realia)’, and deals with items of dress (male and female), footwear, house and household management, including cooking utensils and foodstuffs, writing implements and decorated artefacts. She notes increased reference to everyday objects in ‘works as diverse in character as the letters of Eustathios of Thessalonike and Ptochoprodromos’, and observes the paucity of earlier evidence for artists who turned for inspiration to daily life. She concludes:

Parani's observations on the sacred in Byzantine art are mirrored in Greek Orthodox women's practices today, as researched by Juliet du Boulay, Renée Hirschon and Laurie Kain Hart, each of whom highlights the religious and aesthetic attention to ritual detail that women pay to such everyday activities as cooking and food, washing and clothes, home and abroad – even if their own perambulations outside the house are restricted to church, cemetery and back!Footnote ⁷ The parallels are significant because they suggest aesthetic perceptions of sacred and secular different from our own: everyday activities and artefacts operate on a symbolic, even metaphorical level, and are not measured just for their intrinsic value.Footnote ⁸

To return to the twelfth century: Parani draws attention to the apparent coincidence of increased reference to everyday objects in writers as diverse as Eustathios and Ptochoprodromos. She refers to Eustathios’ Letters, but if we look at lexical items in his Scholia on Homer and compare them with rare words in Ptochoprodromos, the similarities are even more striking. Eustathios draws parallels between everyday life in Homer and in his own contemporary world, citing many everyday words and practices. Can exploration and experimentation with the vernacular belong, in part, to a process similar to what Parani finds in art? If, in the ikon, the everyday functioned as a channel of communication between the faithful and the spiritual world, Ptochoprodromos reverses the process: everyday things and people (with flaws and bodily fluids) are presented so as to draw attention to the malfunctioning of order from the very lowest levels. Since all of the Ptochoprodromos poems are addressed to an imperial patron of the Comnene court, who is God's representative on earth, contemplation of beauty may turn into confrontation with ugliness, and vice versa. Daily life at the bottom mirrors imperial existence at the top, and therefore becomes the touchstone according to which imperial and divine rule may be measured and judged — a pervasive theme throughout, although the depth of menace is as carefully concealed by double-edged language and rhetoric as in the Timarion.

Now to our key word, skordapsos. Brief observations, excerpted from my textual commentary (in draft), are set down here for the record, to provoke debate. The word skordapsos occurs twice in the five Ptochoprodromos poems: at I, line 22, and at III, line 325j;Footnote ⁹ In the proem to Poem I, its contextual sense is markedly ambivalent (lines 15–23): ‘even if I seem to laugh and play at once, I am undergoing true suffering (πάθος, suggesting the Passion), not from any physical ailments, external or internal, but – from a quarrelsome wife!’ Few of the eight diseases listed can be identified with certainty, but I am grateful to John Duffy for his advice on all medical terms. I translate σκοϱδαψόν (22) as ‘gut-knot’. According to Hesychios (s.v.) χοϱδαψός = πάθος τῶν ἐντέϱων (χοϱδή + ἅπτω). For analogies to sound shifts from initial κ- to σκ-, σχ- to σκ, cf. MG σκόνη (AG κόνις) σκολειό (AG σχολεῖον). Another nasty detail is that the ailment involved obstruction of the intestines, with the result that the patient may shoot projectile faeces from the mouth,Footnote ¹⁰ not something to be spouted outright onto your patron in an initial appeal for cash!

In the second instance, at Poem III.325j (ed. Hesseling-Pernot MS H, = IV 414 Eideneier, p. 122),Footnote ¹¹ the context is murkier, darker – almost surreal in rapid shifts of sense, motion, images from bathtub (and noxious substances) to baptismal font (green with verdigris) with its contents (ἁγιοζοῦμι / ἰοζοῦμι) ‘holy broth’ or ‘viral swill’? Prodromos implies that, during the inter-courses of the abbots’ illicit feasts and feats, from where he is ‘down under’ (the table? the abbots? or both, as in the bathtub?), he gets σκοϱδαψός slap in the mouth. Eideneier (p. 122) translates σκοϱδαψός as ‘Augenleiden’ (eye disease) in the first passage and as ‘Meerzwiebelkopf’ (‘with head like a sea turnip’) at III.325j, following late sources cited by Phaidon KoukoulesFootnote ¹² and N. P. Andriotis.Footnote ¹³ Could such a rare word be used twice in the course of these poems with such different meanings? I used to say no, asking what evidence suggests that σκοϱδαψός as ‘swelling and inflammation around the eyes of horses’ (attested in earlier lexica) could also be applied to humans? Rosemary Bancroft has countered with good evidence from later lexica for the word as ‘eyesore’ (possibly ‘stye’). I can offer no answer yet, but refer readers to Pizzone's forthcoming chapter on laughter, where she addresses the amusing but serious question for Byzantines, ‘do horses laugh or humans neigh?’ Bancroft is right to question my certainty on ‘gut-knot’ rather than ‘eyesore’, as I ponder her citations from etymological dictionaries of the Cretan dialect and Peter Mackridge's reference to σκοϱδαψός as the plant allium aflatunense.Footnote ¹⁴ Hans Eideneier's reading against H's lectio difficilior (ms. H), in his revised editionFootnote ¹⁵ at IV, line 414 σκοϱδαλλοῦ is unnecessary. ‘Gut knot’ indicates scatological, sexual and linguistic afflictions; ‘eyesore’ implies impaired sight for the consequences. Prodromos’ conceptual use of ‘foul matter’ (from whatever aperture) can be linked with ‘foul language’ (modern Greek), which is why we should continue debates beyond BMGS.

Bi-lingual and tri-lingual wordplay works across all languages, but gains in subtety when tossed across multiple and shifting registers within the same language, the older and more vulgar the better. A last word, from an Aristophanic perspective: