bears with swords
In the same sense that The Need for Roots is primarily concerned with finding reasons for the fall of France and the Vichy government, Mavrogordato’s introduction to Digenes Akrites – while still an entertaining and enlightening excursion through the manuscript tradition and historical context of the poem – is less about Byzantine poetry than it is about the decay of empires, particularly those of Mediterranean: the moral questions of Cyprus and Algiers (among others) form an uneasy resonance with the heroic (but not at all admirable) predations of Basil the border guard.