Literature in Frankish Greece 317
mixed language and the various stylistic consequences of its nature as a “heard
text” which have been detailed above.
Listen that You Might Learn 83
The three vernacular western romances The War of Troy, Florios and Platzia-
Flora and Imberios and Margarona share much with the roughly contemporary
Greek Chronicle of the Morea in terms of their relationship with the oral tradi-
tion, their language and their meter. They similarly have a westward inclina-
tion, as they are translations or adaptations of western-language texts. The Wa r
is a fairly close translation of Benoit de Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie, a mas-
sively popular French work which was widely translated. Florios and Platzia-
Flora is a freer adaptation of the Italian Cantare di Florio e Biancafiore, itself a
version of a story which probably dates back to at least the 12th century and
was again well-known in many language versions throughout western Europe.
Similarly, Imberios and Margarona is a version of yet another popular western
tale, the Provencal Pierre de Provence et la Belle Maguelonne.
These western romances need to be seen in the general context of the medi-
eval Greek romance genre. They have a great deal in common with those origi-
nal Greek romances produced around the same time, not least in their use of
the vernacular and the fifteen-syllable metre.84 All these romances, whether
original Greek or western, are anonymous.85 The genre also exhibits specific
stylistic characteristics—notably, firstly, the mixed language of the type which
has already been referred to in relation to the Greek Chronicle of the Morea,
and secondly a tendency to repetition of stock phrases both within individ-
ual poems and across the group. Additionally, where there is more than one
manuscript version of a romance, these versions show a remarkable degree of
scribal variability.86 Scribes seem to have enjoyed a freedom in their approach
83 Emmanuel Kriaras, ed., “Florios and Platzia-flora,” v. 276.
84 I class here as “original Greek romances” Livistros and Rhodamne, Kallimachos and
Chryssorhoe, Velthandros and Chrysantza, the Achilleid, and the Byzantine Iliad. There
is also the further “eastern” translated romance Alexander and Semiramis: Panagiotis
Agapitos, “Writing, Reading and Reciting (in) Byzantine Erotic Fiction,” in Lire et écrire à
Byzance, ed. Brigitte Mondrain (Paris, 2006), pp. 165–67.
85 Although it is probable that Kallimachos and Chryssorhoe was written by Andronikos
Palaiologos, a nephew of Michael viii Palaiologos: Beaton, Romance, pp. 104–05; however,
see also Agapitos, “Writing, Reading and Reciting,” pp. 157–58.
86 Kallimachos and Chryssorhoe, Velthandros and Chrysantza and the Byzantine Iliad each
survive in a single version only.