ABSTRACT
The preceding chapter has provided a specific view of some of the methods employed by Makrembolites, Prodromos and Eugenianos in their revival of a genre which had seen its peak some one thousand years before. Yet although my consideration of the new novels has concentrated on only two limited aspects of the whole, it has nevertheless allowed us to watch some of the subtle processes by which the novelists managed to assert their contemporary ideological statements upon opposing ones. This sort of insight forces a re-evaluation of such observations on the Byzantine novels as were made by Perry less than three decades ago:
… slavish imitations of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus which were written in the twelfth century by such miserable pedants as Eustathius Macrembolites, Theodorus Prodromus, and Nicetas Eugenianus, trying to write romance in what they thought was the ancient manner. Of these no account need be taken.
(1967: 103)