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DIGENES ACRITAS, BASILIUS

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Originally appearing in Volume V08, Page 262 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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DIGENES ACRITAS, BASILIUS , See also:

Byzantine See also:national See also:hero. probably lived in the loth See also:century. He is named Digenes (of See also:double See also:birth) as the son of a Moslem See also:father and a See also:Christian See also:mother; Acritas (c.xpa, frontier, boundary), as one of the frontier See also:guards of the See also:empire, corresponding to the See also:Roman milites limitanei. The See also:chief See also:duty of these acritae consisted in repelling Moslem inroads and the raids of the apelatae (See also:cattle-lifters), brigands who may be compared with the more See also:modern Klephts. The See also:original Digenes epic is lost, but four poems are extant, in which the different incidents of the See also:legend have been worked up by different hands. The first of these consists of about 4000 lines, written in the so-called " See also:political " See also:metre, and was discovered in the latter See also:part of the 19th century, in a 16th-century MS., at See also:Trebizond; the other three See also:MSS. were found at Grotta Ferrata, See also:Andros and See also:Oxford. The poem, which has been compared with the Chanson de See also:Roland and the See also:Romance of the See also:Cid, undoubtedly contains a See also:kernel of fact, although it cannot be regarded as in any sense an See also:historical See also:record. The See also:scene of See also:action is laid in See also:Cappadocia and the See also:district of the See also:Euphrates. See also:Editions of the Trebizond MS. by C. Sathas and E. Legrand in the Collection See also:des monuments pour servir a l'etude de la langue hellinique, new See also:series, vi. (1875), and by S. Joannides (See also:Constantinople, 1887).

See monographs by A. Luber (See also:

Salzburg, 1885) and G. Wartenberg (See also:Berlin, 1897). Full See also:information will be found in C. See also:Krumbacher's Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur, p. 827q (2nd ed., 1897) ; see also G. Schlumberger, L'E°popee Byzantine d la fin du dixicme siecle (1897).

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