The Importance of Being Stilicho: Diptychs as a Genre

In a seminal article on genre in Byzantine literature, Margaret Mullett refers to Procopius of Caesarea's period, the first half of the sixth century, as a 'time of great flux and mixing of genres, not in the sense of modulation or of inclusion but of sheer mixing'. One aspect of Procopius' prose that is particularly striking and has not garnered much attention is its technicality. It is necessary, however, to consider what one means by technical, and whether technical writing can be considered a genre, or a useful generic category, as well as whether the technical has to be constructed in opposition to what is accepted as literary. There is arguably a limited amount of actual technical knowledge behind his descriptions, and it appears instead that their technical flavour is part of a rhetorical stance and is achieved through a variety of textual devices.