304 BALKAN BALLADS

with the name of the emperor Basil I, of titanic memory; and his
weapon—a club—may have been that of Hercules. Another name
which appears in the Akritic ballads is that of Tsamados, otherwise
unknown; there is a Kimiskes derived from the emperor John
Tzimiskes (969-76), a certain Skleropoulos or Syropoulos (i.e. a
Syrian), and Amouropoulos, a hero of Amorium (captured in 838).
Above all these names, however, that of Constantine prevails in the
ballads, taking the place of the Sweet William of Scotland or the
Stojan of Bulgaria. He is generally called Constantine the Little,
Mikrokonstantinos, or Kostantas or Kosta.

Digenis, a hero of both ballads and an epos,1 was so well known
in one or the other capacity that the emperor Manuel Comnenus
(1143-80) could be addressed as 'the new Akritas'. As the panegy-
rist, Theodore Prodromes, goes on to mention the hero's club, his
allusion is satisfied rather by the epic poems than by the ballads.
Akritas' club spoils many a promising encounter; he bludgeons his
enemies before his admirers can savour the piercing emotions of
doubtful battle. His crudity is the more strange because the poet
has read some of the best epic models. He quotes textually from
the Iliadand the Bible; he knows either his Quintus Curtius or one
of the Alexander-romances; he has enjoyed Greek novels, and cites
Aldelaga and Olope. The Greek is tolerably accurate, especially in
the Trebizond manuscript, and the whole poem is sub-literary
rather than oral and traditional. Yet its conduct is a series of
failures; the poet continues to outline dramatic situations, which
he continues to foozle through sheer lack of gift for narrative. It is
the most disappointing of popular epic poems; for there is no doubt
of its popularity. Its influence has spread to Russia, Armenia, and
the Syrian Arabs, and the Turkish hero Sayyid Battal is a kinsman
in spirit of Digenis Akritas.2

The first three books detail the romance of Digenis's birth: his
mother was carried off by the emir Mousour during an absence
from home of her brothers; they followed the raiders, upbraided

1 Basileios Digenes Akrites, ed. C. Sathas and E. Legrand (Collection de
Monuments pour servir a 1'e'tude de la langue neo-helle*nique, nouv. ser. 6)
Athens-Paris, 1875, reproduces a fifteenth-century manuscript from Trebizond.
The manuscript of Andros is allied to this by their inserting in the hero's family
tree a certain Aaron, identified as a duke of Edessa in the eleventh century. In
the Grottaf errata manuscript Digenis's maternal grandfather is said to have been
'Antakinos apo tdn Kinnamaddn'. A variorum edition is needed in order to
establish the relationship of the various manuscripts.

2 See Note O, p. 391.