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Byzantine bride-shows: mothers dominate sons in choosing wives
A seldom-recognized historical antecedent to today’s beauty pageants is bride-shows that occurred early in the Byzantine Empire. Byzantine bride-shows selected from a wide-ranging search the bride for...
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wisps of hair and imaginary arrow whip great warrior Alexander
The bold Greek warrior Alexander was struck with love for Sordamour, the niece of King Arthur. Yet he didn’t dare to speak of his love for her. He imagined her as an arrow, especially fashioned for...
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gender in evolutionary understanding of violence against men
Interpersonal violence among adults in human societies is highly disproportionately violence against men. For example, four times more men than women die from interpersonal violence in the U.S. today....
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translatio studii et imperii: Chrétien de Troyes’ Ovidian Cligès
Ancient books tell us all We know of ancient history And what life was like, back then. And we’ve learned from those books that in Greece Knighthood and learning ranked Above all other things. Ancient...
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Chrysorroi described Kallimachos as deserving her love because of his labors
In the fourteenth-century Byzantine romance Kallimachos and Chrysorroi, a maid and three royal eunuchs caught Queen Chrysorroi having sex in the garden with her dragon-killing lover Kallimachos....
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conservative medieval women impeded progress toward gender equality
Whoever truly desires Something is supposed to ask for it. What? Shall I ask him to love me? Never. And why? No woman Makes the mistake of asking A man for his love, unless She’s totally out of her...
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servants and eunuchs destroy joyful sexual fulfillment
The King was away on business, fighting enemies abroad. His eunuch counselors wrote to him: The lamentations, the suffering, the agony, the bewilderment, the restless petulance, and the terrible...
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violence against man led to woman’s head crushed by stone
The extent of criminalization of men and violence against men easily prompts despair among the warm-hearted. In twelfth-century Byzantium, the eminent writer Theodore Prodromos apparently turned to...
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Livistros and Rhodamne shows men under despotic Eros in Byzantium
In the mid-thirteenth-century Byzantine romance Livistros and Rhodamne, Rhodamne learns that her long-lost husband, the Latin knight Livistros, is alive. She exclaims: My doubts are many and my...
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damsel instructed hero on how to slay dragon
Dragon Castle was filled with gold, precious stones, and sumptuous furnishings. Yet the place seemed to be bereft of human beings. Amid all the splendor, Kallimachos felt lonely. He entered a room...
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saintly Fenice in Cligès shows scope of medieval Latin literature
In Chrétien de Troyes’s late-twelfth-century Arthurian romance Cligès, Empress Fenice represents a saint in the Latin tradition of Saint Marina. Other motifs and structures in Cligès apparently came...
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Prodromos with Dosikles challenged instrumental valuation of men
Many men feel they must work and achieve to be manly (virtuous). That oppressive social construction of manhood is pervasive historically — from ancient Greece and ancient Rome to present-day...
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ancient Constantinople statues identified virgins & cuckolded men
For good evolutionary reasons, men throughout history have been interested in the sexual fidelity of women. Unlike a woman, a man in the absence of modern DNA testing lacks certainty whether a child...
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Rhodanthe as back-biting bitch: the real world of Byzantine romance
In a twelfth-century Byzantine romance, Rhodanthe and Dosikles were passionately in love. Each was enthralled with the other’s beauty. Only a few weeks before Rhodanthe was to marry another, Dosikles...
View Articledo whatever necessary to make your mother happy
A friend’s mother is obsessed with U.S. national politics. She said that she was deeply wounded by the election results and still needs time for emotional healing. Here’s how my friend helped her....
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