ASIA MIXOR, GREECE	30
Paulicians in the eighth century, which the emperors drowned i
blood only after a tradition of fine generalship had been set up b
the Paulician commander Corbeas. Only strong emperors—th
two Basils and John Tzirniskes—appeared on this borderland, th
Percles of which were the powerful Doukas family. On the othe
side also, it was not from the distant caliph of Baghdad that peac
and war were to be expected but from the more imminent power o
the emirs of Edessa. Xo general plan governed the war. Ther
were daring razzias, brilliant single-handed achievements in which
a man might owe everything to his armour or his horse, ambuscades,
and sudden eclipse. Such were, no doubt, the 4experiences of dis-
tinguished persons' which the accursed Paphlagonians touted from
door to door, at an obol apiece, in the first years of the tenth century.
To all such poetry it is customary to assign the epithet 'Akritic'.
Digenis Akritas was a historical personage who perished in battle
some ten years after Roland and his peers died at Roncesvalles.
H. Gregoire1 has recognized his name in that of Diogenes, tur-
rparch of the Anatolians, who perished at the skirmish of Kopid-
^adon in 788. The site was probably a defile (korne Podandos) of
the chief pass leading from Ciliciai nto Cappadocia. Popular tradi-
tion assigned to him as a place of burial the tomb constructed for
one of the Commagenian kinglets on an abrupt hillock overlooking
the Cappadox or Gok-sil, which flows into the Euphrates near
Samosata. His mother was of the house of Doukas, and his father
an emir. According to Gregoire5 this emir must have been the
Abu-Hafs, grandson of 'Umar al-Xu'man (who perished gloriously
in 863), who carried his tribe of the Banu-Habib over to the Greeks
in 928. So, for DiogeneSj we get Digenes (pronounced Digenis or
Dienis) 'born of two races'. The hero's personal name thus became
a nickname, and in the epics he is called Basileios. A further by-
name was Akritas "the frontiersman*, a title which he shared with
such other champions as Porphyries, the Farfurius of the Persian
epics. Scarcely distinguishable from these defenders of the
frontiers were the Apelates (Philopappos, Kinnamos, loannakis),
who were rievers and robbers. Their names appear in the ballads,
but their exploits were in a large measure annexed to the glory of
Digenis. His feats of strength were those historically associated
1 H. Gregoire, *Le tombeau et la date de Digenis Akritas* and 'Autour de
Digenis Akritas*, Bvzantion v-vii, 1929-32; S. Kyriakides, 'O Digenes Akritas
(Syllogos pros diadosin ophelimon biblion, 45), Athens.