The eleventh century was a momentous period in the history of the Eastern Empire. It saw the last great attempt, after the anti-aristocratic reaction of the eighth century, to reorganize the Empire on lines similar to those of the occidental world. The founder of the Comnenian dynasty granted pronoiai, land for military purposes, and gave immunities which increased the intrusion of the landed aristocracy into the rights of the State. [...]

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M.A. / The main purpose of this postgraduate study has been to record and investigate the ways in which Byzantine history is presented in the history textbooks of the Hellenic general education. Our attempt has been to demonstrate the ways in which this part of the Hellenic history is presented within the curriculum and syllabi, in order to investigate the various parameters (social, political, cultural, pedagogic and religious) that affect the historic Donsciouness of the Hellenic Primary and Secondary school learners.For research purposes, we contemplated that the study should be separated into two parts. In the first part we examined the theoretical constituents which define History as a subject under the subheadings of "What is history", "Historical event and its elements", "Historical knowledge and validity" as well as "History in general education". We then attempted to sketch out a rough outline of Byzantium and its history through a timeline of the dynasties. In the beginning of each dynasty, we referred to the ruling emperors and then attempted to identify the main factors which, in our opinion, had shaped each period so that the reader can, at least, conceptualize the long, eventful and diverse history of the Byzantine Empire. In the beginning of the second part, we refer to articles and paragraphs of the Hellenic constitution and Hellenic legislation that form the framework within which are defined: the overall purpose of Hellenic education, the structure and function of Primary and Secondary education, the framework for dealing with cross-cultural issues, as well as the general framework and defming directives that are set to promote the development of the European citizen's awareness but also to sustain the national and cultural identity. We, then, proceeded in dealing exclusively with the aforementioned Hellenic general education textbooks.

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This thesis examines the portrayal of outsiders in Michael Psellos's Chronographia, Anna Komnene's Alexiad, and Niketas Choniates's Narrative - using sociological theories of deviancy. The twofold aim is to "treat texts seriously", localized in Jakobson's speech-event nexus of addresser, context, content, contact, code and addressee; and secondly to understand the texts as statements of the ideology of the dominant elite. Outsiders are defined (using the labelling orientation) as people successfully defined as deviants; deviant behaviour is whatever they do. The dominant elite creates cultural boundaries, and places individuals in outsider roles on the other side of those boundaries. Outsiders can be understood only in terms of who defines them as deviant; there is no material reality to deviancy. Stereotypes, which identify social categories of people by evaluative trait-characteristics, are necessary elements of human cognition; they become prejudice only when they are overgeneralized, based on too limited data, applied too widely and maintained in the face of contrary empirical evidence. The analysis of the three texts in depth allows the identification of those groups labelled as outsiders by these expositors of the dominant ideology. My conclusion is that these authors portray a picture of the Byzantine outsider, which is coherent between this limited sample group, allowing for individual variation. These authors used stereotypes to conceptualize and encode in the linguistic and lexicographical complexities of their texts the outsiders they identified in their societies. Their presentation uses stereotypes, but does not descend to prejudice.

Ph.D. / This is the study of an unknown man's view of his contemporary Byzantine world how it was structured and functioned both socially and culturally. In other words, this is an attempt to reconstruct the world view of an unknown individual, through expression of his emotions, impressions, principles and norms in connection with various aspects of his environment. By this approach, I trust, the anonymous author's value system can be "re-created" and examined in association with the collective cultural norms, set and shared by his contemporary society. Thus, besides theauthor's aesthetic perception of the external, physical aspects of his environment, collective and individual stereotypes found in ideologies (such as ethnocentrism, provincialism, patriotism, and class differentiation), as well as religious and social moral values (such as piety, faith, sin, generosity, divine intervention) will be identified and analysed. Our author's perception of his world order may be seen "from the inside" through his concepts, opinions, impressions, criticisms and praises. These are expressed either directly or indirectly throughout his narrative, and refer to certain situations, events, characters and the human condition in general (such as the eternal question of life and death). Certain values, which are expressed by the author through his concepts and opinions, may appear as contradicting one another. These cases will be analysed according to the author's perception of a certain event and measured against related collective ideology, i.e. generally-held conceptions and values, as well as factual information. Thus, in order to realise the purpose of our study, we shall: • examine the relationship and interaction between individual and collective concepts in the Chronicle; • establish the Chronicle's value as a source of information g on the political, economic, social and cultural life in Western Greece during a significant section of the later Byzantine era (1375-1422); • try to reach a better understanding of the mentality of multi-ethnic Byzantine society, especially in Western Greece during the 14 th and 15th centuries.

In 533, Justinian I ordered the conquest of the former Roman provinces of Africa, which had been lost to the Vandals a century earlier. The 'reconquest' has been regarded, by contemporaries and modern scholars alike, as one of the defining successes of the reign. However, despite the evident achievements of the campaign, Roman victory over the Vandals marked little more than the beginning of the Eastern Roman Empire's attempt to consolidate its position in Africa. The unanticipated threat posed by hostilities from the Berber tribes would continue until 548. Roman-Berber relations, unlike other aspects of Justinian's foreign relations, have received comparatively little attention, and this study aims to reassess the establishment of Roman authority in Africa and the Eastern Roman Empire's response to the Berber threat. In particular, it considers whether this response should be seen as a series of ad hoc reactions to immediate circumstances, or whether it is possible to identify a coherent Roman policy vis-à-vis the Berbers. The major conclusions of this study fall in two areas. First, it argues that Roman objectives in Africa were far more limited than has generally been supposed, with the empire's territorial ambitions not extending beyond key coastal positions which offered strategic and commercial advantages, and from which the empire could project its limited authority into the interior. Second, this study concludes that the Eastern Roman Empire's actions with respect to the Berber tribes lacked coherence. Attempts to implement a system of client rulers were unsuccessful, partly as a result of the competition between individual Berber leaders as they sought to establish independent polities within the frontiers of the former Roman Empire; and partly as a result of an increasing lack of resources, as well as the instability caused by constantly changing leadership within the African civil and military administrations, which prevented the development of coherent long term strategies for addressing the Berber threat.

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