The History tells how they expanded the frontiers of the empire and brought back captured relics, booty, and prisoners of war to parade in triumph through the streets of Constantinople. Leo accompanied at least one expedition, and drew on his firsthand experience to provide vivid descriptions of sieges, pitched battles, ambushes, and single combat. His account of the conspiracy against Nikephoros II Phokas, murdered as he slept on the floor in front of his icons, is one of the most dramatic in Byzantine narrative histories."--page 4 of cover.

Perceptions about gender and sexuality have shaped the lives of men and women in every known culture and in every period of history. To study these perceptions one must delve into the underlying religious, social, philosophical and scientific influences. Understanding gender and sexuality during the Middle Ages requires an examination of the ideas, laws and institutions of the time--for example, the regulations of the Christian church, the anatomical studies of the medieval medical community, the chronicles of the time and the social criticism found in medieval literature. This reader brings such documents from throughout the medieval world into one collection. Representing a diverse range of ethnic, geographic and religious backgrounds, documents of the late Roman, Germanic, Anglo-Norman, Mediterranean, Byzantine, Slavic, Jewish and Islamic identities are all included. The book's chapters are organized according to nine areas--the Bible; Christian thought; chronicles; law; biology, medicine and science; literature; witchcraft and heresy; Judaism; and Islam--allowing for comparative examination of different societies and periods of the Middle Ages.

This Dictionary: explains technical Roman legal terms, translates & elucidate those Latin words which have a specific connotation when used in a juristic context or in connection with a legal institution or question, & provides a brief picture of Roman legal institutions & sources as a sort of an introduction to them. The objectives of the work, not the juristic character of available Latin writings, therefore, determined the inclusion or exclusion of any single word or phrase. This dict. is not intended to be a complete Latin-English dict. for all words which occur in the writings of the Roman jurists or in the various codifications of Roman law. The reader must consult a general Latin-English lexicon for ordinary words that have no specific meaning in law or juristic language. Reprinted 1980.

In The Concept of the Elect Nation in Byzantium, Shay Eshel shows how the Old Testament model of the ancient Israelites was a prominent factor in the evolution of Roman-Byzantine national awareness between the 7th and 13th centuries. The Byzantines' interpretation of the 7th century epic events as manifestations of God's wrath enabled them to incorporate the events into a paradigm which they now embraced: the Old Testament paradigm of the Israelite Elect Nation's complex relationship with God, a cyclic relation of sin, wrath, punishment, repentance and salvation. The Elect Nation concept enabled the Byzantines to express the shift in their collective identity toward a shrunken, yet more clearly defined, national awareness.