Околовизантийское. Несколько ссылок.

Dec 07, 2020 17:50



Сведения летописей о балканских походах Святослава справедливо критикуют, но и с византийскими свидетельствами не все так хорошо, как хотелось бы.

Warren Treadgold. The Middle Byzantine Historians. 2013

"Средневизантийские историки" проявляли меньший интерес к описанию событий своего времени, чем их предшественники. У них видна довольно неприятная тенденция к "следованию образцам золотого прошлого". В том числе - архаизация словоупотребления и самого языка. И они редко когда прилично разбирались в военном деле и давали внятные его описания.

Under the circumstances, even though the middle Byzantine historians wrote mostly derivative works about the times before their own, those who wrote contemporary histories had distinct advantages. Most of the contemporary historians, like Thucydides and Xenophon before them, had been well placed to know the main political events of their times and were well acquainted with others who knew still more. All things being equal, the classical historians’ idea that the best man to record events was a participant in them had much to recommend it. Psellus, Anna, Attaliates, Choniates, and some others have accordingly left us animated and largely reliable pictures of the politics of their times. Our knowledge of the warfare of those times has suffered somewhat from their lack of military experience and interests, especially in comparison with Thucydides, Xenophon, Ammianus, or Procopius. Nonetheless, Anna, Attaliates, and Cinnamus, by drawing on their own experience and that of their informants, managed to write competent accounts of a number of battles and campaigns. Our knowledge of the middle Byzantine Church is also limited because, in comparison with the church historians of the earlier period, few authors of surviving middle Byzantine contemporary histories were active churchmen. Our knowledge of the Church would probably be improved if we had the complete histories of Nicetas the Paphlagonian, Theodore of Sebastea, and Demetrius of Cyzicus. For most purposes, however, the middle Byzantine histories are as informative and perceptive as those of earlier Byzantine times.

Тот же Лев Диакон - это не Прокопий. И тем более - не Ксенофонт. Добавлю еще вот это Sinclair K.J. War Writing in Middle Byzantine Historiography. Sources, Influences and Trends. 2012

Далее две статьи, затрагивающие любимую мою тему - цитирование.

Anthony Kaldellis. The Byzantine conquest of Crete (961 AD), Prokopios' Vandal War, and the Continuator of the Chronicle of Symeon // Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 39. 2015. Pp. 302-311

Historians reconstruct the Byzantine conquest of Crete in 960-961 based largely on the History of Leo the Deacon and two variants of the continuation of the Chronicle of Symeon the Logothete. However, the account in the continuation is modelled closely, in narrative structure, imagery, vocabulary and ideology, on Prokopios' account of the conquest of North Africa by Belisarios in 533-534. This challenges our knowledge of the campaign but sheds interesting new light on the sophisticated use of classical texts that Byzantine 'chroniclers' could make.

...

Let us look more closely at the deliberation scenes. The one in Prokopios happens to be based itself on Xerxes' decision in Herodotos to invade Greece, so the Continuator's imitation of Prokopios has Herodotos as its indirect (and unintentional) 'grandparent.' We will compare only the two Byzantine texts.

...

We have a heroic poem by Theodosios the Deacon that is full of exaggerated feats and holy violence, and from which it is hard to extract concrete facts about the campaign. We have also the account in the Continuator of Symeon's Chronicle on which historians have so far relied implicitly, guided by the assumption in the field that chronicles are down-to-earth and not so prone to rhetorical invention and literary games, though this one turns out to have copied long parts of its account from Prokopios. Moreover, the accounts of Theodosios and the Continuator have little in common. Beyond the most basic facts about the expedition (i.e., that there were Saracens and a siege of Chandax), Theodosios' poetic account does not intersect on any level with that of the Continuator (e.g., Theodosios begins when the fleet arrives on Crete, has no 'deliberation' scene, and so on). These two sources, therefore, represent entirely different traditions. There is no sign that the Continuator used Theodosios.

...

Finally, a word must be said about our third contemporary source, Leo the Deacon, though his History still requires extensive and detailed analysis. The following comments are thus offered merely as suggestions for further research. Leo actually presents far fewer hard facts than is usually recognized. Most of his account consists of rhetorical elaboration (e.g., speeches, editorial asides on the moral aspects of actions and persons, and theological polemic). One of the striking aspects of his narrative is its wealth of information about tenth-century warfare, which is often used to confirm that the military manuals of that period do in fact describe the Byzantine army as known from the 'historical' sources, such as Leo. The two types of source thus reinforce each other. But there are grounds for caution. It is just as possible that Leo lifted that 'information' directly from the military manuals. It is suspicious that he uses more technical terms and information about battle arrays than any other Byzantine historian, and it is unlikely that he had a source for the conquest of Crete that included such material. It is even possible to wonder whether Leo had anything more than Theodosios' poem, which he then embellished with rhetoric, moralizing reflections, and technical information from the military manuals. To be sure, there are some scenes in Leo that are not in Theodosios, but we may have independent doubts about them too. For example, the Saracen woman on the walls who shows her private parts to the Romans may have been lifted from another author whom Leo is also known to have used ... Prokopios! This is only a preliminary suggestion, but in the end we may have only two sources for the conquest of Crete, the classicizing poem of Theodosios and the classicizing narrative of the Continuator of Symeon.

Поэма Феодосия - велеречивая официозная эпика, которая почти не содержит внятных описаний. Текст Льва Диакона - тот же переработанный Феодосий (с собственными добавками из Прокопия и Агафия). "Продолжатель Симеона", похоже, хоронил афинян в Нисибее. =/

Это именно выводы. Сравнение текстов в статье. Дополнительно - Сюзюмов М. Я. Объ источникахъ Льва Дьякона и Скилицы // Византийский временник. 1916. Т. 2. Еще - Denis Sullivan. The Rise and Fall of Nikephoros II Phokas. Five Contemporary Texts in Annotated Translations. 2018.

Anthony Kaldellis. The original source for Tzimiskes’ Balkan campaign (971 AD) and the emperor’s classicizing propaganda // Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 37(1). 2013. Pp.35-52 Или вот тут.

Про сходство описания Святослава и Аттилы где и кто только уже не писал, тут автор копает еще глубже и шире. К примеру - вопрос с тем, откуда во время июльского сражения под Доростолом появился Феодор Стратилат.

The mention of the feast day raises additional questions. Skylitzes says that ‘the battle occurred on the very day when we are accustomed to celebrate the memory of the Stratelates.’ The problem is that the feast day of the saint was 7 February and the commemoration of his translation was 8 June, whereas the battle took place in July. Leon says that it was fought on Friday, 24 July, but 24 July in 971 AD fell on a Monday, so either the day or the date is wrong (though not the month). It would appear that our source played loose with chronology, perhaps in order to preserve the link between the day of the battle and the feast in honour of the white horseman, a link that he would have found in the ancient source he was using for lake Regillus (also, the Ides of Quintilis is 15 July).

Поминаемый эпизод - явление Диоскуров во время битвы при Регильском озере. И Касторовы иды - как раз 15 июля...

На каких источниках базировался текст Скилицы и Льва Диакона - достоверно неизвестно. Есть пачка разных гипотез, которые сложно чем-то подтвердить. Автор относит себя к группе, которая полагает, что Лев и Скилица работали с одними и теми же материалами (именно по кампании 970-71 годов). Скорее всего - с чем-то похожим на поэму Феодосия о завоевании Крита. Она была, скорее всего, составлена по горячим следам, но не была "строго документальной".

Отмечу - автор, все-таки, постоянно оговаривается, что "это может быть списано отсюда, оттуда, или откуда-то еще, а может - быть реально случившимся фактом". Проблема не только в том, что изначальные свидетельства подвергались существенной литературной обработке. Мы только "с большими допусками" можем говорить о самом факте такой обработки и ее степени.

Далее - немного в сторону. В ходе чтения этих статей наткнулся на целую пачку работ, посвященных эпифании/ангелофании.

- W. K. Pritchett. Military epiphanies // The Greek state at war, Part III: Religion. 1979
- Verity J. Platt. Double Vision: Epiphanies of the Dioscuri in Classical Antiquity // Archiv für Religionsgeschichte Volume: 20. Issue: 1. Pages: 229-256. 2018
- Gabriel Herman. Greek Epiphanies and the Sensed Presence // Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte. Bd. 60, H. 2 (2011), pp. 127-157
- Fritz Graf. Trick or Treat? On Collective Epiphanies in Antiquity // Illinois Classical Studies. Vol. 29, Divine Epiphanies in the Ancient World (2004), pp. 111-130
- Graham John Wheeler. Battlefield Epiphanies in Ancient Greece: A Survey // Digressus 4 (2004). 1-14

И это и близко не "всё".

P.S.

- Щавелев А. Разговор о варваре с римским другом, читая книгу: Kaldellis A. Ethnography after Antiquity. Foreign Lands and Peoples in Byzantine Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013 // Европа. Альманах. 2014. Т. XIII. № 1-2. 2014.

- Anthony Kaldellis. The Byzantine Role in the Making of the Corpus of Classical Greek Historiography // The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 132 (2012)

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