ABSTRACT
Henri Gregoire (1881-1964) searched relentlessly for the historical Digenes (e.g. Gregoire 1931b; 1936; 1942-3), yet, with the exception of David Hook's paper, is not much cited in this volume. He looked for context: of specific time, place and people. True, his ingenious learning sometimes led him to conclusions which have not caught on - such as the Bulgarian origin of The Tempest W the creation of a thirteenth-century island emirate all of two acres in size but otherwise unknown to history (Bryer and Winfield 1985: 1, 129, n.46). But he had in front of him the lively example of how Homer could be applied to archaeology; though in the case of Digenes Akrites it was more a question of applying what archaeology there was to the poem. More boldly still, Gregoire placed Digenes Akrites in the context of other Anatolian border epics (see Bowra 1964; Beaton 1981b), which the present volume is largely shy of tackling.
