ABSTRACT
Self-identified Byzantines were aware of their dress as distinctive and distinct from that of the foreign other. What made this dress ‘Byzantine,’ i.e., expressive of a Byzantine ethnic or cultural identity, however, is difficult to define. This is not surprising when one considers the ambiguity and mutability of Byzantine identity, on the one hand, and the stunning diversity in form and function of Byzantine dress, on the other, over a period coeval with the Empire's millennial existence. Still, by exploring certain of the dress's features that are associated with (a) the articulation and presentation of the human body, (b) the construction and display of similarity and difference, and (c) the adherence to tradition and the incorporation of change, one is able to trace a number of general characteristics and tendencies that were culturally circumscribed and expressive of the complexities that defined Byzantine society, thus endowing the dress in question with what may be described as its Byzantine quality. This same exploration suggests that the aspects of an overarching Byzantine identity that were being communicated through dress varied depending on the wearer's gender, an observation that opens up alternative ways of looking at the challenging question of Byzantine identity and dress.
