ABSTRACT
This book provides a better understanding of the literary phenomenon of Byzantine compilation literature and, in particular, collections of historical excerpts. Lemerle’s concept has since dominated scholars’ approaches to the Byzantine literary culture during the Macedonian dynasty and the term encyclopaedism continues to be employed by Byzantinists. In fact, encyclopaedia is a modern term pointing to artefacts with literary functions different from Byzantine collections. The book shows that collections of historical excerpts share a series of literary features which identify them as a specific group within historiography. Specifically, collections of historical excerpts share methodological principles. Yet shifting patterns of contents, such as the addition, omission, or alteration of extracts, are one of the particularly interesting features of Byzantine collections of historical excerpts. The study of their structure and the examination of certain passages in them identify several features of compilation practice.
