Digenes Akritas

Digenes Akritas
Manuscript of the epic of Digenes Akritas, National Library of Greece.
Original title	Διγενῆς Ἀκρίτας
Written	12th century
Country	Byzantine Empire
Language	Medieval Greek
Series	Acritic songs
Genre(s)	Epic, Romance

Digenes Akritas (Latinised as Acritas; Greek: Διγενῆς Ἀκρίτας)^[a] is a medieval Greek romantic epic that emerged in the 12th-century Byzantine Empire. It is the lengthiest and most famous of the acritic songs; Byzantine folk poems celebrating the lives and exploits of the Akritai, the inhabitants and frontier guards of the empire's eastern Anatolian provinces. The acritic songs represented the remnants of an ancient epic cycle in Byzantium and, due to their long oral transmission throughout the empire, the identification of precise references to historical events may be only conjectural.^[2] Set during the Arab-Byzantine wars, the poem reflects the interactions, along with the military and cultural conflicts of the two polities. The epic consists of between 3,000 to 4,000 lines and it has been pieced together following the discovery of several manuscripts. An extensive narrative text, it is often thought of as the only surviving Byzantine work truly qualifying as epic poetry.^[3][4] Written in a form of vernacular Greek, it is regarded as one of its earliest examples, as well as the starting point of Modern Greek literature.^[5][6][7]

The epic details the life of the eponymous hero, Basil, whose epithet Digenes Akritas ("two-blood border lord") alludes to his mixed Greek and Arab descent.^[8][9] The text is divided into two halves; the first half, epic in tone, details the lives and encounter of Basil's parents; his mother, a Byzantine noblewoman from the Doukas family named Eirene, and his father, an Arab emir named Mousour who, after abducting Eirene in a raid, converted to Christianity and married her.^[7][10] The second half, in a more romantic atmosphere, discusses Basil's early childhood and later, often from a first-person point of view, his struggles and acts of heroism on the Byzantine borders. Allusions to Greek mythological elements, including the Hercules-like childhood of Basil, and his affair with the Amazon warrior Maximo, also appear scarcely throughout the text.^[11] Though a legendary figure, it has been suggested that inspiration for the hero may have derived from the 11th century Cappadocian general and emperor Romanos Diogenes.^[12]

The epic of Digenes Akritas continued to be read and passed down in the post Byzantine period, with the most recent surviving manuscripts dating to the 17th century. The character became the archetype of the ideal medieval hero featuring in a number of folk-songs popular throughout the Greek-speaking world, most prominently in Crete, Cyprus, and Asia Minor. The epic would go on to have significant impact on the culture of modern Greece, particularly on folk music, the arts, and the literature.^[13]

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