ASPIS 4

PRIMARY SOURCES OF GREEK HISTORY & FOLKLORE

 translated into English

1.Wealth remains between us, in John III, 13th c.

“Because he saw the Roman wealth lost in vain clothing imported from other nations, in the varied colored silks of the Babylonians and Assyrians, and in the beautiful Italian woven fabrics, he ordered that none of his subjects be used unless one of his subjects and that is, to dishonor himself and his gender....................

2. How did the monks live? on Romanos Argyropoulou. 11th c.

«The income was distributed to the monks, who did not live a life of asceticism but lived a tender, carefree, and full of comforts, giving them entire tracts of land and, indeed, the richest and most fertile. But let's not talk about them anymore..»..........

3. Horseback riding on the horse race. on Romanos II, 10th c.

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4. Where did go at night the teenager Andronikos III? 14th c.

“He used to hang out with his friends at nights with a woman who was from a non-informal family but was immoral in behavior. She had a man named Adonis, a beautiful young man. Because the jealous had burned out  the king's soul, he had set archers and swordsmen to guard the woman’s door. So one night, around midnight, the brother of the Andronikos, despotes Konsgtantinos,.......................

5.The appearance of Zoe and Theodora, 11^th c.

6. Such were the differences that marked the sisters in character. In personal appearance there was an even greater divergence. The elder was naturally more plump, although she was not strikingly tall. Her eyes were large, set wide apart, with imposing eyebrows. Her nose was inclined to be aquiline, without being altogether so. She had golden hair, and her whole body was radiant with the whiteness of her skin. There were few signs of age in her appearance: in fact,................

6.The character of Zoe and Theodora, 11^th c.

«4. For those who did not know them it may be instructive if I give here some description of the two sisters. The elder, Zoe, was the quicker to understand ideas, but slower to give them utterance. With Theodora, on the other hand, it was just the reverse in both respects, for she did not readily show her inmost thoughts, but once she had embarked on a conversation, she would chatter away with an expert and lively tongue. Zoe was a woman of passionate interests, prepared with equal enthusiasm for both alternatives -- death or life...................

7. The princesses visit their grandmother. 9th c.

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8. The Caesar Varda's Interest in Science. On Michael III, 860s.

17. The Caesar Bardas greatly honored wisdom and learning, even though he was more interested in its display. He gathered wise men at the Magnaura, some of them philosophers and geometricians, others astronomers, and still others grammarians, and instructed them to teach all who came for free. And he paid such great attention to these matters, that he appointed the great philosopher Leo to teach philosophy, his student Theodore to teach geometry,........................

9. The prophecy of the liberation of the empire  from the time of Constantine the Great. 4^th c.

"And a snake stepped out of its nest, ran a little bit, and immediately afterward, an eagle jumped up, grabbed the snake and flies high and the snake was impacted by the eagle's body curled up. The eagle climbed to high heights, not much time again seemed to come and fall with the snake there in the same place, because the snake injured him, people ran and stabbed the snake and the eagle was released. Caesar trembled from them too much and summoned their sages and wise men told the point and they thought and said the Caesar:........................

10.The lamb with golden hair

Many years ago, was a king, with three children. After the king died, he left his property to his children to share. The two older children drunk every day at the wine stores and ate their father's money and became poor. The youngest child, guarded the property left by his father, and married and born a very beautiful girl and built a house inside earth and put her in. And the king killed the craftsman who built the house, and put somebody to shout and say that whoever deserves to find his king's daughter, take him for his wife, but if he does not find her, he will kill him...............

11. The snow of the mt. Olympus at Bythinia.

'”One winter day, where God walks in the Kesis dagi (the mount Olympos in Bithynia) he lost his knife he was holding. He got it wet, but because of the many snow he couldn't find, he got angry and the mountain was always snow-covered. And since winter-summer the snow has not been out of at this mount.”.............

12. The tomb of the emperor

“Near the Vefa Meidani, inside one chain, in the yard there is the tomb of the emperor. In the past, there was a candle on his tomb, but now they don’t light the candle. In the other side of the yard, there is the tomb of the Arab who killed our emperor, with rich clothes.”..................

14. The song of the Roumeli

The Foreign says to Roumeli:

Everyone is happy, everyone is playing games,

Roumeli and the islands sit bitterly

Roumeli, why don't you enjoy it, why don't you play games?

Roumeli says to the Foreign:

In the slavery you see me in the chains of the Turks

Find me happy, how dare you?

Are you a foreign and just got here? And you still don't know?

What is happening in Roumeli, and what is going on at Constantinople?

Are you a friend of the Greeks and want to learn?

What do I have and am not happy about? Why am I sad?................

15. Which is the national name of the inhabitants of the Greek land? 18th c.

“Today's Greeks are abusively called Romaioi. It is well known that all of Greece was in ancient times a part of those where they were supplemented by the great authority of the Romans, whom the ancient Greeks called Roman, and their language Italian, and in their language they were called Romans.

So Roman became common to all the inhabitants of different nations where they were subject to the Romans, but each nation had its own name.

After Constantine the Great transferred the throne of the empire from Rome to Byzantium in Thrace, which was originally a Greek city, he was later called emperor of the Romans, and his Roman troops, named Byzantium new Rome, thinking that they would now inspire the souls of that patriotism of old Rome, the inhabitants of Byzantine where most of the Greeks were, and all the Thracians, and all the rest of the Greeks called Romaoi, the name of their tyrants, and said that the term Hellenes is a name which belonged to pagans............................

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