Sir Roderick Macleod Beaton, FBA, FKC (born 29 September 1951) [1] is a retired academic. He was Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College London from 1988 to 2018.
Born in 1951, Beaton was educated at George Watson's College, Edinburgh, and Peterhouse, Cambridge, graduating with an English literature degree in 1973. [1] He remained there to complete his PhD, which was awarded in 1977 for his thesis "Myth and tradition in modern Greek folk poetry, a study of non-literate tradition, its technique and aims, in the context of lyric and ballad, rather than epic poetry." [2]
Beaton spent three years as the Ouranis Foundation Fellow in Modern Greek at the University of Birmingham (1977–80) [1] before joining King's College London in 1981 as a lecturer. He was appointed Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College in 1988, [3] and was also head of the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies from 1988 to 1994 and again from 1995 to 1998, [1] and director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies from 2012 to 2016. He also held a Major Leverhulme Fellowship from 2009 to 2012. [3] He retired from his chair at King's College in 2018. [1]
In 2013, Beaton was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. [4] He was also elected a Fellow of King's College London in 2018. [1]
On 9 September 2019 he was appointed Commander of the Order of Honour by Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos for his lifelong contribution to the promotion of medieval and modern Greek studies and culture. [5]
He was knighted in the 2024 King's Birthday Honours "for services to history and to UK/Greece relations". [6]
Giorgos or George Seferis, the pen name of Georgios Seferiadis, was a Greek poet and diplomat. He was one of the most important Greek poets of the 20th century, and a Nobel laureate.
Digenes Akritas is a medieval Greek romantic epic that emerged in the 12th-century Byzantine Empire. It is the lengthiest and most famous of the acritic songs; Byzantine folk poems celebrating the lives and exploits of the Akritai, the inhabitants and frontier guards of the empire's eastern Anatolian provinces. The acritic songs represented the remnants of an ancient epic cycle in Byzantium and, due to their long oral transmission throughout the empire, the identification of precise references to historical events may be only conjectural. Set during the Arab-Byzantine wars, the poem reflects the interactions, along with the military and cultural conflicts of the two polities. The epic consists of between 3,000 to 4,000 lines and it has been pieced together following the discovery of several manuscripts. An extensive narrative text, it is often thought of as the only surviving Byzantine work truly qualifying as epic poetry. Written in a form of vernacular Greek, it is regarded as one of its earliest examples, as well as the starting point of Modern Greek literature.
Byzantine literature is the Greek literature of the Middle Ages, whether written in the Byzantine Empire or outside its borders. It was marked by a linguistic diglossy; two distinct forms of Byzantine Greek were used, a scholarly dialect based on Attic Greek, and a vernacular based on Koine Greek. Most scholars consider 'literature' to include all medieval Greek texts, but some define it with specific constraints. Byzantine literature is the successor to Ancient Greek literature and forms the basis of Modern Greek literature, although it overlaps with both periods.
Alan Douglas Edward Cameron, was a British classicist and academic. He was Charles Anthon Professor Emeritus of the Latin Language and Literature at Columbia University, New York. He was one of the leading scholars of the literature and history of the later Roman world and at the same time a wide-ranging classical philologist whose work encompassed above all the Greek and Latin poetic tradition from Hellenistic to Byzantine times but also aspects of late antique art.
The Byzantine Greeks were the Greek-speaking Eastern Romans throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. They were the main inhabitants of the lands of the Byzantine Empire, of Constantinople and Asia Minor, the Greek islands, Cyprus, and portions of the southern Balkans, and formed large minorities, or pluralities, in the coastal urban centres of the Levant and northern Egypt. Throughout their history, the Byzantine Greeks self-identified as Romans, but are referred to as "Byzantine Greeks" in modern historiography. Latin speakers identified them simply as Greeks or with the term Romaei.
Cyril Alexander Mango was a British scholar of the history, art, and architecture of the Byzantine Empire. He is celebrated as one of the leading Byzantinists of the 20th century.
Patricia Elizabeth Easterling, FBA is an English classical scholar, recognised as a particular expert on the work of Sophocles. She was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1994 to 2001. She was the 36th person and the first — and, so far, only — woman to hold the post.
Judith Herrin is an English archaeologist, byzantinist, and historian of Late Antiquity. She was a professor of Late Antique and Byzantine studies and the Constantine Leventis Senior Research Fellow at King's College London.
Robert Browning, FBA was a Scottish Byzantinist and university professor.
The Song of Armouris or the Lay of Armouris is a medieval Greek heroic poem of the middle Byzantine period. Dating from the 11th century, it is probably one of the oldest surviving Acritic songs, narrative heroic songs or ballads celebrating the lives and exploits of the Byzantine Akritai. Written in vernacular medieval Greek, it is, along with the more famous Digenes Akritas, the earliest example of Byzantine folk poetry and Greek vernacular literature. Its plot is based on the Byzantine-Arab conflict and describes in political verse the efforts of a young Byzantine akrite warrior to rescue his father from captivity.
Donald MacGillivray Nicol, was an English Byzantinist.
The King's College London Faculty of Arts & Humanities is one of the nine academic Faculties of Study of King's College London. It is situated on the Strand in the heart of central London, in the vicinity of many renowned cultural institutions with which the Faculty has close links including the British Museum, Shakespeare's Globe, the National Portrait Gallery and the British Library. In the 2024 Times Higher Education World University Rankings by subject, King's Arts & Humanities ranked in the top twenty worldwide.
Romilly James Heald Jenkins was a British scholar in Byzantine and Modern Greek studies. He occupied the prestigious seat of Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College London, in 1946–1960.
David William Holton is Emeritus Professor of Modern Greek at the University of Cambridge. He was educated at Northampton Grammar School and Hertford College, University of Oxford, where he studied Classics and Medieval and Modern Greek. He completed his DPhil thesis at Oxford in 1971. From 1973 until 1975 he was a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, where he also worked as a university administrator (1975-1981). In 1981 he was appointed Lewis-Gibson Lecturer in Modern Greek at the University of Cambridge; in 1982 he became a Fellow of Selwyn College. He was promoted to Reader in 2000 and Professor of Modern Greek in 2006, and retired in 2013.
Virginia Cox, is a British scholar of Italian literature, culture and history. She is best known for her research on Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italian literature, the reception of classical rhetorical theory in Italy between the 13th and 16th centuries and Italian early modern women's writing.
The Department of Classics is an academic division in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at King's College London. It is one of the oldest and most distinguished university departments specialising in the study of classical antiquity in the United Kingdom.
Helena Stefanovich Schilizzi, was a wealthy Greek-British philanthropist, and second wife of the Greek statesman Eleftherios Venizelos.
Gonda Aline Hector Van Steen is a Belgian-American classical scholar and linguist, who specialises in ancient and modern Greek language and literature. Since 2018, she has been Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature, the first woman to hold this position, and Director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College London. She previously held the Cassas Chair in Greek Studies at the University of Florida, and taught at the University of Arizona and at Cornell University. She has also served as the President of the Modern Greek Studies Association (2012–2014).
The Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature is a chair in the Classics Department at King's College London. It was established in 1918 to serve as a focal point in the United Kingdom and beyond for the study of Greek history and culture from the end of antiquity to the present day.
John Frederick Haldon FBA is a British historian, and Shelby Cullom Davis '30 Professor of European History emeritus, professor of Byzantine history and Hellenic Studies emeritus, as well as former director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University.