ABSTRACT
The seventh and eighth centuries, the so-called 'dark centuries' of Byzantium, have been removed from cultural history, not only by the Byzantines themselves, who in the epoch known as 'l'age heroique de Byzance' wished to be directly linked to late antiquity, but also, for a long period, by modern scholars. An asymmetry seems to have developed in the transmission of culture, and therefore of authors and texts, between Constantinople and the provinces beginning in the late sixth century, reaching its height during the seventh and continuing until the late eighth century. Alexandria, as a centre for the study of Greek authors and texts, also made an important contribution to the Armenian milieu. The intellectual formation of a very well-known figure, John Moschus, dates to somewhere between the sixth and seventh century and attests a lively circulation of Greek culture in the areas of the Near and Middle East.
