Resources Recently Announced

Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire, I (641-867)
The November 2000 newsletter announced the imminent appearance of the CD of the 'Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire, I (641-867)', a vital reference tool for all serious scholars. The project covers a period when the administrative structure and governing elite of Byzantium were undergoing crucial changes, and when the Mediterranean world of Late Antiquity was assuming the forms of the Middle Ages. It is the first publication of a major project which will ultimately include all known individuals in or connected with Byzantium from AD 641 to 1261. Funded by the British Academy and the Arts and Humanities Research Board, this is the continuation into the Byzantine period of PLRE, the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, also edited by John Robert Martindale. Combining and making accessible information sifted from hundreds of sources, in Greek, Latin, Arabic, Syriac and other languages, with original research, this CD will help revolutionise the study of Byzantium. For the first time it will be possible to search for individuals by their offices, locations, and many other attributes, including gender and ethnicity, and to ask questions hitherto only answerable by hours of laborious library work. In addition, the thousands of records shed completely new light on what has been a dark period of humanity. This is a vital new resource for scholars, and not only for Byzantinists, but for all working on the history of the early Middle Ages, from Spain and Italy across to the Islamic East.

This new database contains the equivalent of over 1,100 pages of text - for each entry there is a text article with full source information. It ensures that each of about 8,500 individuals can be found by name, date or through a variety of different indexes. The database offers search and browse facilities not available with traditional publications and is easily browsable and searchable even by beginners, and can be used on all standard PCs and Macs.

One stage may be finishing yet the hard work continues on the subsequent periods (II 867-1025; III 1025-1261). The project will be missing the firm helmsmanship of John Martindale who retired at the end of September after 40 years of dedication to the discipline of prospography and Dion Smythe, who will be taking up a lecturing post at Belfast.

The ‘Arbeitsgemeinschaft deutscher Byzantinisten’ has just published a Publikationsliste 1999 with information on publications (1998/99 and forthcoming) of German Byzantinists. It is distributed by:
Prof Dr Diether-Roderich Reinsch, Podbielskialle 60, D-14195 Berlin, Germany (e-mail: dreinsch@zedat.fu-berlin.d).

The new Multi-Campus Research Group in Late Antique History and Culture, funded for five years by the President of the University of California, involves scholars and graduate students throughout California through lectures, worshops, inter-campus exchanges, and international conferences, including the annual Graduate Student Conference in Late Antiquity. For further information, consult the website: http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/lateantique/

Ms Olga Karagiorgou has written to announce her work on the sigillographic corpus of the seals of Hellas. This work aims to bring together, for the first time, the whole group of lead seals belonging to various officials of the theme of Hellas, in order to produce a reference tool and a source on the prosopography and the administrative structure of the theme. All the collected seals (ca. 220 specimens, so far) have been entered in a database; they cover a period from the 7th to the 13th c. A.D. and many of them are either unpublished or in need of re-edition. Some of the specimens were excavated, but the majority of them are kept in private and museum collections around the world: Dumbarton Oaks and the Fogg Museum of Art, Numismatic Museum of Athens, Archaeological Museum of Thessalonica, Hermitage, British Museum, Ashmolean Museum (Oxford), Bibliothèque Natonale, Staatliche Münzsammlung (Munich), Vatican, Archaeological Museum of Syracuse and the Archaeological Museums of Sofia and Belgrade. The corpus includes also a couple of specimens that have appeared in auction catalogues. Ms Karagiorgou would be most grateful to receive information from SPBS members on seals of Hellas which are either unpublished or found in museum collections other than the ones listed above.

New Websites

The Military Martyrs is dedicated to the cult of military martyrs in late antiquity and includes both original and ex-copyright translations of various sources relating to the cults of such martys as St Andrew, St Christopher, St Maurice and the Theban Legion, St Maximilian of Tebessa, St Menas, St George, SS. Sergius and Bacchus, St Theagenes, St Theodore, St Typasius, and St Victor of Milan, as well as bibliographies, images, and some original essays.
http://www.ucc.ie/milmart/index.html