ABSTRACT
This chapter considers figures representing the months, which have both verbal and visual currency in Byzantium. Several seals associated with this person survive from the late twelfth century. However, Hysmene and Hysmenias can surely only is part of the lively literary scene of the first part of the twelfth century. The theme of the personified months is one that is well known in late antiquity. Several series of twelve figures, all male, depicted with attributes that represent Ehe civic and agricultural pursuits deemed typical of that month, survive from many periods and in different media. Makrembolitis has set his novel in a vaguely antique past, in fictional communities whose names, like Evrykomis and Avlikomis, seem to cry out for symbolic interpretations. The antique past is conveyed by an environment in which heralds are despatched to celebrate rituals in honour of Olympian deities, though none of the procedures ring quite true with any modern understanding of practices in the classical world.
