Spoiling the Hellenes: intertextuality, appropriation, embedment: the case of the Christos Paschon

The twelfth-century tragedic trilogy Christos Paschon offers a good case study of the use of ancient elements as spolia. The paper investigates the implications of the processes of removal and embedment for the four main Euripidean source texts and the twelfth-century trilogy. The study looks at the processes through the concepts of cento, appropriation, identity, spolia, and, finally, translation. It concludes that the appropriation of ancient texts, prominently displayed in a later work, allowed reevaluation of those texts and affirmation of the Hellenic and orthodox identities of the Byzantine audience and author.