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to “copying” these texts that was markedly absent in their more exact copy-
ing of high-status learned texts. These characteristics have been the subject of
much controversy over the influence of orality in the creation and transmis-
sion of the vernacular texts and on the degree of originality on the part of the
authors and scribes of the texts.87
However, for all the shared characteristics, the vernacular romance corpus
is far from homogeneous, and in many ways, the western translations/adap-
tations form a group of their own. Thus, while the original Greek romances
Kallimachos and Chryssorhoe and Velthandros and Chrysantza both appear
to originate in Constantinopolitan circles, the western romances originated
on the periphery of the Byzantine world.88 The original Greek Livistros and
Rhodamne and the Achilleid are likewise peripheral in origin but, again, the
western romances stand apart and this time it is in their treatment of west-
erners. Where Livistros and the Achilleid both feature heroes with explicitly
Frankish or Latin origins or attributes, the western romances simply have
western (or in the case of The War of Troy thoroughly western-styled) heroes
without this being at all explicit or stated; the difference is subtle, but it sug-
gests that the western romances originated within a westernised setting, while
Livistros and the Achilleid originated in Byzantine Greek settings where Franks/
Latins were a very familiar other.89
Again, the western romances seem closer to an oral background. Panagiotis
Agapitos has shown that the Constantinopolitan romances, but also Livistros,
the Byzantine Iliad and to a lesser extent the Achilleid, all to some degree pre-
suppose a literate society and a lettered audience. These texts are generally
presented as written works, they have learned references and constructions,
and literate actions often play key roles within their stories. Thus, even if
they were intended to be recited or read aloud, these tales “expect” that their
87 The rival positions are summarised in Roderick Beaton, Medieval Greek Romance, pp. 164–
81 and Elizabeth M. Jeffreys and Michael J. Jeffreys, “The Style of Byzantine Popular Poetry:
Recent Work,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 7 (1983), 309–43.
88 Elizabeth M. Jeffreys, “Place of Composition as a Factor in the Edition of Early Demotic
Texts,” in Origini della letteratura neograeca, atti del secondo congress internazionale
Neograeca Medii Aevi, ed. Nikolaos Panagiotakis, (Venice, 1993), pp. 313–15; see also
Duggan, “Performance and Transmission,” p. 55.
89 Thus the suggestion that the Achilleid might originate in Greek Neopatras: Paul
Magdalino, “Thessaly and Epirus in the Later Middle Ages,” in Latins and Greeks in the
Eastern Mediterranean after 1204, ed. Benjamin Arbel, Bernard Hamilton and David
Jacoby (London, 1989) [= Mediterranean Historical Review 4.1 (1989)], p. 89.