ABSTRACT
Late in the thirteenth century Konstantinos Akropolites, hagiographer and prominent courtier, addressed an epistle to an unnamed friend, in which Dimitris Krallis discussed a twelfth-century satirical text known to us as the Timarion. The Timarion is a comic dialogue, characterized by a wealth of classical references, sometimes obscure Greek, and by a reasonably funny storyline. The first trip takes Timarion from Constantinople to Thessalonike, where he attends festivities linked to the annual festival of St Demetrios. The second is undertaken within the temporal boundaries set by the first, as the conductors of the dead drag the narrator to the underworld on the mistaken presumption that he has fatally lost his vital humours. Thus, while the Timarion is on the surface a story about crossing the boundaries between life and death, it is also deeply rooted in Byzantine political, religious and cultural realities.
