Digital Experiences

Performing Epigrams in Byzantium

Modern scholars know very little about how the Byzantines perceived inscriptions. There is a relative scholarly concession that texts inscribed on buildings and objects were read out loud. The video below aims to give a sense of possible enactments of potentially inscribed poems (=epigrams) on now-lost buildings in Byzantium Constantinople (modern Istanbul). I created the following video in 2013 using Google SketchUp, GIMP and iMovies (obviously, technology has moved since 2013). The text (and similar ones) is analysed in my book Words and Artworks in Byzantium (Tolworth, 2021), 123–128.