Matters of History

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Charlemagne did not birth western civilisation what a stupid fucking thing to say

A German jousting shield c. 1450

Charon Wore Black (The Death of Digenis) Hear a medieval Greek epic of the akritai, the warriors who held the eastern frontier of the east Roman Empire against the Arab raids, and of the day Charos (or Thanatos), Death himself, came in black to wrestle the strongest of them out of life. The Akritic folk songs about Digenis survive to this day across the Greek world. This version comes from Cyprus, and the song given here is only one episode from the wider Digenis tradition, not the full epic of Digenes Akritas. The epic itself is most commonly thought to have been first compiled around the 12th century AD, building on earlier material which was primarily derived from oral sources. According to Chrysovalantis Kyriacou’s 'The Byzantine Warrior Hero', the heroic tone of these epics and songs also fit the warrior culture of the east Romans. The Charopalema, or death-wrestling theme, “seems to convey pre-Christian heroic values concerning the proper way of dying,” where life was loved, but “not life at any price,” since in Homeric and archaic Greek tradition “death on the battlefield was more honourable than inglorious old age.” Kyriacou then connects this older heroic ideal to the east Roman warrior aristocracy, where death in battle became “the social privilege of the hero-aristocrat.” About the figures: Basileios, known as Digenis Akritas, was an east Roman akritas, a frontier warrior of superhuman, near-invincible strength who guarded the eastern border of the empire against raids from the Arabs. The epic and the folk songs give him a Herakles-like childhood, since as a boy he killed a lion and two bears with his bare hands, and as a man he slew dragons, defeated whole bands of frontier brigands single-handed, hurled boulders larger than houses across the sea to drive off Saracen (Arab) ships, and leapt from the mountains of Cyprus to Anatolia and Crete to chase down raiders. His strength was so notorious that the emperor himself rode out to the frontier to see him in person. That Herakles-like pattern becomes clearest in the death songs, where Digenis does not merely die, but wrestles Charos himself. “The struggle between Digenes and Charos” recalls “the fight between Herakles and Hades,” so the Cypriot song turns the ancient heroic combat with Death and the underworld into a medieval Greek folk scene. Charos, also called Charontas or Thanatos, is the medieval and modern Greek folk personification of Death, in whom older Greek death-deities merged: Charon, “the mythological ferryman carrying the souls to Hades,” and Thanatos, “the winged god of death.” He also takes on a Hades-like role, since “the underworld, or Black Earth (Mavrigi), is the realm of Charos the psychopomp,” making him not only the taker of souls but the lordlike figure of the death-realm. Out of that merger came a black-dressed, sometimes winged rider who does not merely wait for the dead, but comes to take souls himself, and when they are strong enough to resist, he wrestles them out of life. Greek folk tradition could imagine him vividly at the deathbed, since “the dying person, usually a young man, may call out that he can see Charos approach, sword in hand, often dressed in black, or winged, like ancient Hades.” Source: Chrysovalantis Kyriacou, The Byzantine Warrior Hero: Cypriot Folk Songs as History and Myth, 965–1571 You can find the Greek and English lyrics in the reply.

Today is the anniversary of the ratifying of the Treaty of Windsor in 1386 between England and Portugal. It is the oldest alliance still in force today.

@Fritz_Imperial A hot mess

@KnightofValour Lies, it was beautiful

Five greatest medieval warriors. Go!