Les Grâces à Athènes

The only known work of Nikolaos Kataphloron, an eminent orator and teacher in 12th century Constantinople, has so far remained mostly unpublished. This book presents its first full critical edition commented and translated into French, with Introduction and Indices. The text is a masterpiece of Comnenian rhetoric; the author, through the praise of a Byzantine aristocrat governor residing in Athens, without deviating from the regulatory framework of the genre, raises issues of rhetoric and political theory, philosophical reflection, social behavior and ethics, literary and self-criticism. More over, he composes and integrates various rhetorical genres, exemplary laudatory pieces for different types of men, women and circumstances, in a high and elaborate style, with a multitude of quotes or indirect references to texts of Christian and pagan literature. This work seems to have functioned as a source of feed for any interested orator. In the Introduction and the footnotes, in addition to the Nikolaos Kataphloron biography, the questions about the recipient’s prosopography, the historical context in which the text was composed and its date, they are discussed issues related to the education, the rhetoric and more generally the literature of Comnenian era.

Marina Loukaki, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.