International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Ana Elaković Nenadović
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philology, Belgrade, Serbia; 
[e-mail]
The Criticism of Photius on Lycurgus’ and Aeschines’ Oratory
This paper focuses on the analysis of Photius’ testimonies about life and literary style of two 
Athenian rhetoricians Lycurgus and Aeschines, who belonged to the famous Canon of ten Attic 
orators. The main subject of our research is comparison of the Photius’ criticism of the style and 
rhetorical skills of these two authors with some modern tendencies in description and evaluation 
of their oratory. Therefore, the research will be conducted on the corpus consisted from Photius 
Bibliotheca, speeches of the two orators aforementioned and some recent interpretations of their 
rhetorical means, in order to determine if and how the criticism on these two orators has evolved 
through centuries.
Dragoljub Marjanović
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade, Serbia; 
[e-mail]
The Term 
τρισκατάρατος
in Byzantine and Serbian Medieval Literature
Starting point of this paper is the account of a council against heretics which was held by the 
Serbian grand zupan Stephen Nemanja in his dominions in the late 12
th
century Serbia. Later, in 
the first half of the 13
th
century Nemanja’s son and hagiographer, the first crowned king Stephen 
Nemanjic utilized a specific technical term thrice accursed (τρισκατάρατος) in his account of the 
council which was convened. Our aim is to present the levels of cultural and literary traditions 
which were transmitted from various Byzantine literary genres, which stem from the attic oratory as 
far as the 4
th
century B.C. (Demosthenes’ Oration against Aristogeiton), through the literary works 
of the rhetor Lucian the Sophist in the second century A.D., and which later entered Byzantine 
tradition through pseudo chrisostomian works, and the liturgical and historiographical texts 
such as Romanus Melodus, George the Monk, and Constantine Manasses. We tend to present 
both the development in the meaning of the term thrice accursed in its long historical path from 
Demosthenes to Manasses, its shift from ancient pagan to Christian semantics and thus utilization 
in various genres of Byzantine literature, and finally its influence on the genre of Serbian medieval 
hagiography, especially in the works of Stephen the first crowned, St. Sava Nemanjic, and archbishop 
Daniel II in his Lives of Serbian kings and archbishops.

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