Paradigms of Dominance and Relationships of Exchange in the Andes

By juxtaposing close readings of four studies on exchange in the 19th and 20th century Andean region, we can better understand how pre-existing perceptions about indigenous groups played into relationships of exchange, as well as how these relationships contributed to form ideas about race, political agency, and economic power.

In 19 th century Latin America, independence movements and modernity involved complex forms of negotiation between indigenous populations, local elites, and capitalistic powers abroad. Interactions of trade, gift giving, and commodity exchange from that period have been the focus of published scholarly studies by Michael Taussig, Ariel de la Fuente, and Deborah Poole. Mary Weismantel's work contributes to this group through her study on exchanges in the Andes region in the 20 th century. By juxtaposing these four studies, we can better understand pre-existing perceptions about indigenous groups, some of which were passed on from the colonial period, as well as paradigms in formation regarding race, political agency, and economic power.
When studying relationships of commodity exchange there are, as Arjun Appadurai suggests, many perspectives that one can take: we may focus on the object, the value of the object within a given reality, the traders, and/or the relationship between both. Particularly interesting in the negotiations in the aforementioned texts is that while commodities act as avenues through which groups maintain or gain control over others, trade also complicates binary relationships of subject/object, dominant/dominated, etc. Considering this paradox, we may question why certain cases of trade involve great physical violence, when others do not. What role do paradigms of historical dominance play in how these relationships of exchange occur? In this paper I will examine how the four authors approach instances of commodity exchange in the Andes, and analyze how each, directly or indirectly, comments on pre-existing paradigms as well as the formation of paradigms about Indians through relationships of exchange and the different notions of violence involved in each.
Relationships of trade or exchange are not formed outside of historical relationships and often reflect pre-existing notions about the relationship between the participants of the exchange. At the same time, the objects traded are usually related to the immediate needs or "desires" of the participants. As Appadurai states, we know that objects alone do not have value but rather, demand for them endows them with value. Likewise, the value of objects changes and as a result, they move in and out of the commodity state. In other words, commoditization of objects is a process that changes during a given historical moment and people may manipulate the commodities deemed "valuable" in order to come closer to their own personal objectives. For this reason, not only objects of trade but also, the reasons for which objects are traded tell us a great deal about the interests of those involved in the exchange, as well as their respective perceptions of those with whom they trade.
• Relationships of trade or exchange are not formed outside of historical relationships and often reflect pre-existing notions about the relationship between the participants of the exchange.
• Bringing these text into dialogue allows us to conceive physical and symbolic violence as equivalents, as well as to better appreciate figures who resist that very violence, in the figure, for example, of the chola.
The first text we will consider, Shamanism, colonialism, and the wild man, written by Michael Taussig (1987), documents the political and economic backstage of the Colombian rubber boom of the early 1900s. As local elites and British company managers exploited the rubber on a macro-level they required a substantial workforce. While they had to compete with private individuals or traders who made a living off of the rubber, the Arana brothers, owners of a large company owned in part by Peruvian and British capitalists, had a successful system for obtaining Indian labor: forcing them to submit to a form of exchange known as "debt-peonage". Taussig's documentation comes out of the trial and investigation held by the British House of Commons Select Committee on the Putumayo that took place following the disarray of locals who witnessed the enslavement, torture, and murder of Indians that had been forced into relations of debtpeonage. Most of his citations come from the testimonies and diaries of Roger Casement who was sent by the British government to the Putumayo region as a consular representative in order to investigate the grievances, Walter Hardenburg, a North American who was captured by Arana's men, and Joaquin Rocha, a Colombian who knew the Putumayo region from his travels in 1903. Taussig uses the accounts of these men to expose the different versions of how and why Indian groups were treated so brutally, with the common end being forced labor for extraction of rubber. Taussig is fascinated by the senselessness involved in "the fiction of trade", however the details of how the trade actually occurred are somewhat ambiguous. As we will see, one of Taussig's explanations for this brutal violence is the notion of commodity fetishism.
In Casement's testimony he states that giving Indians valuable objects and indebting them was a pre-text for obtaining them for labor and this process occurred under the guise of "giftgiving", "advances", and "trade". From Taussig's research and analysis, we find that this form of indebting was inconsistent, and constructed for the sole purpose of enslaving Indians. As Casement states in the Putumayo Report, "'When the Indians agreed to work rubber, after being caught, they would get things given to them, i.e., cloth etc., a shirt, a pair of pantaloons, a cutlass, axe, powder and shot, and perhaps trade guns'" (Taussig, 1987: 65), after which time, they would be expected to continue extracting rubber. Indians were "caught" in correrías (which Taussig describes as slave raids) and by conquistas, a term that was highly problematic and unclear for the Committee but which Arana described as "to attract a person to conquer their sympathies" (Ibid., 28). Is it possible then, that in order to "catch" Indians they would offer them material goods? If so, then the objects given to Indians could have been interpreted as "gifts" in the sense that upon receiving them, they might not have been aware of the labor obligation that was involved. Joaquin Rocha documented an earlier system of exchange (between the Tama and Coreguaje Indians and their patrons) in which certain items were considered "gifts" (rum and tobacco) and others were given only as advances for rubber (cloth, guns, axes, etc.) (Ibid.,28). In this way, while the investigation of the Committee reveals that gifts or advances served to entangle Indians into relationships of debt, in different regions the process for indebting Indians differed, as most likely did their own concepts of trade. Although possibly outside of the scope of Taussig's study, it would Open Journal for Studies in History, 2018, 1(1), 1-8. ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 3 be informative to have insight on the Putumayo Indians' understanding and modes of trade, as this would help explain why they accepted or declined initial offers by capitalists to engage in relationships of exchange 1 .
Through the testimonies of the Trial, we also learn that Casement and Hardenburg had different ideas about the motivations for such extreme violence against the Putumayo Indians. Casement believed that the men of Arana's company were fighting for a scarce resource of labor while Hardenburg believed that it was "senseless brutality". Throughout the first part of the book, we learn that many of Arana's workers believed that labor was indeed scarce, yet this belief did not stop them from ritualistic and morbid mass killings of Indians. Taussig suggests that Casement and those who shared this opinion was based less on truth than on fears that existed from the colonial period regarding cannibalism and the threat of Indian rebellion. Therefore, according to Taussig, in the minds of the capitalist "conquistadores", their only option was to inculcate fear in order to coerce Indians to work for the company.
As we have seen, Taussig understands both the violence against the Putumayo Indians as well the reaction of the Indians as intimately linked to traumas suffered during the colonial period. For the author, the debt-peonage system is a repetition of the original trauma of colonization in the XVI century. In the "space of death", a state of being expressed by the Putumayo Indians, Taussig suggests that it involves the imaginaries of both Europeans and indigenous peoples that are continually dealing with the trauma of colonization. "With European conquest and colonization, these spaces of death blend into a common pool of key signifiers binding the transforming culture of the conqueror with that of the conquered" (Taussig, 1987: 5). Taussig notes that for Indians of the Putumayo, the space of death means to no longer be alive while living. It implies a loss of personhood and creates the sense that one has become a wandering, placeless object. Taussig first learned about the space of death from an Ingano Indian who suffered from fever.
With the fever I was aware of everything. But after eight days I became unconscious.
[…] Of the pain of the fever, I remembered nothing; only the space of death.
[…] Of the world I knew nothing, nor the sound of my ears.
[…] I was searching, to find me a place in the five continents of the world (Taussig, 1987: 7).
Though a single account of this space, the author sees in these words a human that has been transformed into a "thing"; an object. Taussig's analysis of the effects of debt-peonage in the imaginaries of Indians in relationship to the actions of Arana's workers reveals his belief that local elites and company managers began to "see" the Indians as human debts. As axes, cloth, and other items were exchanged to entangle the debtors, Indians too were treated and seen as commodities, and in this way, they were the objects of Marx's commodity fetishism 2 . As Taussig states, "And if one asks, what is a debt? In a situation in which goods called advances or gifts are forced onto unwilling recipients, the answer is a man, or failing that, an Indian or a peon" (Taussig, 1987: 70).
1 The author cites Hardenburg saying, "Indians received their advances with great pleasure, because if they did not, they were flogged to death" (72). But Taussig also refers to Indians in the northern area of Arana's territory that denied advances. Considering that exchanges changed over time as Indians in the region found out about the false trade, it would be interesting to know how initial exchanges occurred. 2 According to an online encyclopedic definition, commodity fetishism is "the inauthentic state of social relations, said to arise in complex capitalist market systems, where people mistake social relationships for things." (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Commodity-fetishism.) Within Taussig's text he states that commodity fetishism is one of the main explanations for the "conqueror's" treatment of the Indians as human "debts". "This cost-accounting way of building sense presupposed and hence reinforced as eternal verities the notions of market pressure, the capital-logic of commodities, and the rationality of business. Thus even in blaming the market, its mode of appropriating reality and creating intelligibly was upheld" (53).

4
While it is clear that debt-peonage was a system of slavery and the Indians were considered commodities, it is not clear as to why such violence was continually used. Were the managers so sure that extreme violence was the only way to keep the Indians under their control? Is it possible that the rubber industry itself was unstable and therefore committing atrocious acts against defenseless Indians was a form of self-vindication? Taussig does not answer these questions specifically but they will serve as interrogatives for the next texts we examine in which little or no physical violence is involved.
In Ariel de la Fuente's Children of Facundo (2000), he examines patron-client relationship between gauchos and caudillos in the Argentinean provinces in the second half of the XIX century. In stark contrast to Taussig's account, the participants of these patron-client relationships identify with each other due to common geography, basic needs, and in some cases, political goals. Their relationships are based, therefore, not only on commodity exchange, but also on an emotional and moral "debt" linked to the material support and political protection provided by the caudillo in their particular regions. When considering the gaucho and the caudillo as historical figures, it is important to mention that fictional and literary representations as well as common descriptions of gauchos tend to emphasize their roles as criminals and bandits 3 . De la Fuente, however, examines the complexities of the relationships of exchange between gauchos and caudillos, which led to political agency and informed individual and national identities.
When we compare gaucho-caudillo alliances to the enslavement of the Putumayo Indians, we find that these patron-client relationships of Argentina are based on consistent and shared beliefs about the relationship. In terms of material commodities, it is noteworthy that the gauchos that participated in the montoneras trusted that they would be compensated, as was "custom". As de la Fuente explains, during the mobilization of montoneras, they would eat beef (from cattle rustling), they would receive clothes and shoes, and in some cases they would receive cash (from looting). The gauchos who were willing to do this work would receive the material goods and, in some cases, salaries and promotions.
The caudillo, on the other hand, had an obligation to provide protection, material and political, for his gauchos. "Assistance […] was not only a moral obligation for the caudillo; he was also aware that it permanently tested the patron-client relationship" (de la Fuente, 2000: 101). This relationship involved stepping in to protect gauchos if they were in legal binds, and being generous when gauchos needed financial support. Part of the caudillo's ability to offer this kind of protection was based on their reputations that became, as de la Fuente says, an "acquired right that gauchos learned to use and manipulate" (Ibid., 102). In one case, a laborer was arrested by a merchant in La Rioja and, having participated in two Federalist montoneras he exclaimed that "the chief of police would pay for the damage their accusations had done to him when General Peñaloza arrived" (Ibid., 103), when in fact Chacho was in a different province at that time. This threat was enough for the suspension of the accusation (at least until after the assassination of Chacho). As we can see then, caudillos had to be reliable patrons in order to build a patron-client relationship of trust, and at the same time gauchos could potentially use the reputations of the caudillos to obtain liberties. 3 As de la Fuente explains, the meaning of the term "gaucho" depended on the speaker. It tended to include different ethnic categories and could be used to mean "all those who live in the countryside" (75). The meaning the author refers to is "poor inhabitants of the countryside" (76). He makes the distinction that for neighbors within rural areas the word meant, "those involved in cattle rustling or any other type of crime, even assassination," (76) and similarly, in the 1860s "provincial authorities and national government officials also used gaucho as a synonym for bandit" (77). Many times this particular use was the result of Unitarian agendas. The most well known account in canonical literature regarding the gauchos after Independence are a book of published essays written by Domingo F. Sarmiento entitled Facundo (1845) in which he argues that the gauchos must be exterminated as they inhibit progress of the nation.
In addition to the material support that caudillos provided, De la Fuente reveals that in oral tradition, caudillos are described as having Christ-like characteristics: not only are they omniscient and omnipresent, in some stories caudillos would repay the gauchos because of their loyalty in unusual circumstances. In one story, a peon who unknowingly helps Quiroga cross a river is later rewarded with ten oxen and ten cows. The significance of this story is understood in the poverty of landless Argentines. "(The compensation) allowed the peon to begin raising cattle, thereby distancing him from the periodic specter of hunger that was part and parcel of casual wage labor and subsistence agriculture" (de la Fuente, 2000: 128). When we consider this aspect of rural Argentinean reality and lacking resources and commodities, which the caudillos could provide, we see that these leaders merited stories about their Christ-like attributes.
The patron-client relationships of the Argentinean provinces revolved heavily around material exchange as well as the emotional and psychological security provided by that exchange. When we consider the political weight of the gaucho-caudillo collaboration under the Federalist banner 4 in opposition to the Unitarians, it seems that the sheer number of "loyal" gauchos facilitated political strength. At times the Unitarians wished to capitalize on the "masses", as the gauchos were derogatorily known, in order to move towards their goal of central government yet they were rarely successful 5 . In this equation, if one group were to use excessive and massive violence, comparable to that of the Putumayo region, against another it seems that it would have been the Unitarians against the gauchos. Because of the debts and exchanges that were mostly faithful, incurred by the gauchos with their patrons, as a unit their collaboration was difficult to penetrate or threaten at this time. Their bond and strength as a group, then, was partly enabled by consistent exchanges of commodities that enabled forms of agency for both parties.
We can also understand the loyalty involved in the patron-client bond when we consider that a central government was in formation in Argentina but that the gauchos and caudillos had control in the provinces. Though a very Mary Roldan explains that La Violencia of 1946-1953 in Colombia, resulted from unstable or unreliable relationships between the people, the municipal and departmental authorities, and the central government. When the "peoples'" needs were not met by their respective elected officials, some took the matter into their own hands through violence against the State. According to one of her sources, parties guaranteed to satisfy peoples' basic needs and if a group's respective party was not elected, "Cualquier conflicto entre los partidos inevitablemente conducía a un conflicto generalizado" ( de la Fuente, 2000: 44). In terms of the gaucho-caudillo collaboration, this relationship provided the gauchos with many necessities and politics were dealt with on a micro-level, by way of the caudillo.
Our next example is a text written by Deborah Poole (1997) entitled Vision, race, and modernity: A visual economy of the Andean image world. As in the previous two texts, Poole deals with exchange between indigenous communities and local elites, as well as European consumers. Whereas in the other texts, patron-exchange took place via material commodities between individuals, by contrast this text presents an exchange in which Indian bodies constitute commodities. The original carte-de-visite was a small photograph that individuals traded or gifted to friends and acquaintances in 19th century Europe. The photographers of the carte-de-visite would emphasize, through lighting and poses, the traits deemed most valuable or esteemed among the bourgeoisie class. Poole notes that in reality, the carte-de-visite represented a global class as 6 cartes from different European countries were strikingly similar. With the invention of the stereoscope, which produced a three-dimensional image, the carte-de-visite of the bourgeoisie class became less popular yet they were considered the perfect medium for categorizing "types." Throughout the 19 th century, an interest in categorizing racial phenotypes in the Andes region, led scientists to use the carte-de-visite for that very purpose. The new "colonial" or "type" carte-de-visite displayed different Andean Indians categorized by their trade: water carrier, Indian brigade, landowner, peon, as well as by racial type. Interestingly, the carte-de-visite "culture" did not change as these continued to be displayed, collected, and traded. But one of the largest differences was that, while the original carte-de-visite was collected as proof of a person's "moral achievement" such that the cartes were representative of the quality and breadth of one's social circle, type cartes were desirable for their aesthetic quality. Their value as Poole states, differed from the carte-de-visite in that they were, "emptied of what we might think of as the 'photographic use value' of representing reality" (Poole, 1997: 141). While the photographs of the colonial cartes could not be linked to any specific reality for the non-traveling bourgeoisie, they had a capacity to contain the "exotic" images. Poole argues that their popularity, as Baudrillard's states, was based on "the passion for the code… the ambivalent fascination for a form [that is the] logic of the commodity or system of exchange" (Ibid., 141).
When we consider the role that the Indians had in the process of creating the cartes, Poole shows that Andean Indians were maintained at a distance that was considered "safe". The cartes served to bring those from the altiplano who, as Poole points out, had not technically been "colonized", into a realm that was familiar to European bourgeoisie of the "colonial other". Similarly, prominent Andean figures such as the gaucho who were associated with Argentinean nationalism as we saw in de la Fuente's text, were rendered yet another "type" of Indian within the broad category of "American Types". The small photographs functioned to reassure the bourgeoisie that these Indians were void of history and subjectivity. The photographs were aesthetically pleasing and it is important to note that the images reinforced beliefs that were already very much a part of European and Indian imaginaries: The poses were often false yet Indian models would "perform" in exchange for small gifts and in some cases without any compensation. In this way we may see that the imaginaries that took part in the production and consumption of the photographs were very similar to the ones that participated in the violence of the Putumayo Indians. Though the photographs caused no physical deaths, as subjects, the Indians in both cases were contained in the dominant discourse through their exclusion as subjects.
In the mid 1800s when migration to major cities increased throughout Latin America and urban and marginalized spaces were defined by Modernity, these photographs renewed a practice that was common in the colonial period of Latin America: categorizing mixed races, or castes, which were considered a threat to the established order. In the 18th century caste paintings were meant to reinforce the hierarchies between races at a time when racial mixing was cause for concern among the ruling Spanish and criollo elite. In the 19 th century, these cartes were similarly meant to capture and enclose the unfamiliar Andean highland Indians that, though physically distant, could be capitalized on through commodity fetishism. As we have seen, figures within the same time period such as the gaucho who continually posed a threat to Unitarian leaders and had a system of organization that was difficult to penetrate, could be tucked away in the category of "American Type". In Poole's work, we find that while physical distance separated the Europeans from the Andean Indians, the cartes created a reassurance of difference through commodity fetishism. As we saw in Taussig's account of the Putumayo Indians, "differences" between Europeans, local elites, and Indian communities can be maintained through violence as well as through commodity fetishism. Poole is careful, though, not to essentialize Europeans as having a 'predisposition to misrepresent or belittle the 'other'" (Poole, 1997: 27), and emphasizes the role of growing capitalism within a global culture to explain their popularity as commodities. As she 7 links the production of the cartes to the anatomical equivalences created by French physical anthropologist Arthur Chervin, and the criminal typologies of Alphonse Bertillon, we see that their common denominator is that they established difference. In light of this connection, it is interesting to question the role of fear, stemming from Modernity with echoes from colonial fears, in the production of these pictures. As we have seen, the Indians became the material commodity whose difference was controlled and contained by the photograph.
A counter-example to this control over difference is found in one of the albums used by Poole from Dr. L. C. Thibbon, a Bolivian consul in Brussels, which epitomizes the organization and "sameness" afforded by the colonial cartes, and gives insight into the European fascination with the figure of the Bolivian chola. The chola forms part of Mary Weismantel's (2001) study in Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of race and sex in the Andes and as Poole stated, she represents a space outside of racial categories, as she is not considered mestiza, Indian, or white. The chola is a woman who draws attention because she defies and challenges norms associated with her gender and racial identity: She is a loud and confident woman, in charge of a business, and she is not of the "dominant" race. What is particularly interesting about the chola in relationship to the other "traders" we have examined is that her image, like that of the caudillo, is intertwined with her job. Therefore, while her vendor skills are indeed important, so too is the fact that she instills unease in others because she cannot be categorized.
In several interviews conducted by Weismantel, she found that not only foreign travelers, but also locals in the Cuenca region, both male and female, were fearful of cholas. The author describes these experiences as uncanny in that the market women violate gender norms. "This public visibility of the female form, on display not for male delectation but for other purposes entirely, presents a symbolic inversion of the dominant sexual order that some find profoundly unsettling" (Weismantel, 2001: 53). In addition to this estrangement of gender, Weismantel argues that there is also a sense for foreigners that cholas may cheat them. "This uneasiness can translate into a suspicion that one has been fleeced: accusations of financial chicanery abound, even when, as is often the case, prices are fixed" (Ibid., 34). The chola exists and dominates a public space in which her job affords her with a status above that of women who do domestic work, and as we have seen, their image and reputation imply increased agency. Similar to the caudillo, the chola maintains her identity through the consistency of her image.
At the same time, despite their agency and economic power, it is also important to recognize the idea that they have also been treated as a commodity. Weismantel states that cholas were originally national symbols yet today they are considered valuable resources for the economy.
As tourism expands in otherwise contracting economies, such antiquated images (as the chola) become the only attractions capable of luring enough scare foreign currency to shore up the faltering prosperity of the middle class.
In this way, as the chola continues to cause newly arrived tourists and local elites discomfort, the Ecuadorian economy benefits as it needs her to be "scandalous" and "different", even if this means maintaining her economically challenged. Even within this system of trade in which she maneuvers money, goods, and minds, she must maintain a certain predictability in her dress, speech, and attitude. While she defies categories, her defiance has become a category for outsiders. She too, then, lives at a distance that is safely mysterious. In this way the chola identity is a paradigm within the discourses of dominated/dominator.
As we have seen, the collective groups and individual figures studied by these four authors allow us to critically approach notions of violence and agency. The carte-de-visite and the enslavement of Putumayo Indians are examples of extreme isolation and commodification. Taussig's account of the Putumayo presents the most extreme physical violence, yet symbolic violence abounds in the type carte. In contrast, the gaucho-caudillo collaboration as well as the cholas are examples of political and economic possibility within the paradigms of European dominance. They defy the categories that have been imposed on them, both historical and economic, by maneuvering within and around them through dynamic forms of exchange. While it is clear that paradigms of dominance play an important role in the types of exchange that exist between local elites, indigenous groups, and foreign capitalists in the Andean region as studied in these four cases, we have also seen that imaginaries fluctuate and change and therefore relationships of exchange maintain their complexity and need to be deciphered and contextualized.

Introduction
Shakespeare was an English poet but also a playwright. Indeed, he is considered to be the greatest writer in the English language and one of the most important dramaturgists in the world (Wells, 1997: 399). His surviving works consist mainly of 38 theatrical plays, which have been translated into most languages of the world and have been more often interpreted by the works of any author (Craig, 2003: 3). He wrote most of his works between 1589 and 1613 (Kastan, 1999: 37).
During the Middle Ages, Greek and Roman drama fell into obscurity and the new tradition revolved around the Medieval Church, so the drama stayed behind. During the Renaissance, however, the classical plays survived. The greatest impact on drama during the Renaissance came from Rome and not from Greece. So Shakespeare's influence came from the classical and the Roman world, especially from the theatrical tradition. It was also influenced by the Latin writers and borrowed a lot of them. Specifically, it was influenced by Ovidius, Plafto, Seneca, Plutarch, and Virgilius.
These Latino writers are defined by some characteristic features. Latin author Ovidius "hits" the Europe of Renaissance. Senecas, a classic tragic writer, has produced blood-stained stories about revenge and torture during the Renaissance. Plutarch's Parallel lives are a major source of Roman history (Taylor, 1994: 283-314).
The Roman elements govern the work of Shakespeare. Indeed, blood and violence are typical of Roman works, as is the struggle of clans and citizens of ancient Rome. Suicide is also an important Roman custom. Just as the Romans are presented as conscientious theatrical as well as historical, and they are well acquainted with the characters they are in touch with and analyze them in depth. Shakespeare's England was nationalistic and imperial. On the other hand, Shakespeare's Rome was more than an ancient city. Rome is the incarnation of the era of Virgilius. It has invasions, hunger, betrayal, rebellion, adultery, intertwined reactions to the history of human civilization.
In other words, in Rome there are imperfections and innate corruption. Shakespeare at this time was in England behind the kingdom of Elizabeth and Jacob (Chambers, 1923: 208-209). Let's note that the political situation of the time was not just morbid. The palace intrigue was not lacking, while the theater was popular as a political manipulation of the masses.

Latin and ancient Greek literature in Shakespeare's work
Each Shakespeare's work is also influenced by a representative of Latin or ancient Greek literature. Shakespeare's works relate to Roman history and are associated with the Latin poets, but also with the Greek historians and Socratic philosophers. Here is the role of Shakespeare, who is studying the above. In the work of Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare borrows tragic love stories from antiquity, one of which is the love story of Pyramos and Thisbe. This myth derives from Greek mythology. This myth then evolved by the Romans and appeared in Ovidius (Metamorphoseis, 4, 55-166). The common point of this myth with Shakespeare's work is the final tragic ending of Piramus and Thisbe, likewise in Romeo and Juliet.
In his work also Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare is influenced by the Metamorphoseis of Ovidius, where there are similar correspondences and parallelisms with the history of Shakespeare's work (Crabbe, 1981: 274-327). All the stories of human Metamorphoseis are erotic and enriched with elements of passion, which are also evident in the work of Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet. Ovidius was a Latin poet, born in 43 BC and died in 17 AD. This one has a Greek background, but as we progress chronologically, the use of Greek is diminishing. His Metamorphoseis consist of fifteen books.
Indeed all 15 books of his Metamorphoseis are a mixture of scenes. These scenes are mythical, fantastic, scenes that have to do with Homer's literature, scenes of Rome's tragedy, erotic scenes (Von Albrecht, 1997: 735-7), to complete and complete this work with its deposition Caesar. The scenes that converge there are Greek and Roman. Also in the presentation of this work, Shakespeare is influenced by the Ephesians (1, 1-8), a novel of Xenophon of Ephesus. There are similarities in lover separation and the filter that causes dead sleep. The only surviving work of the Ephesian, tells the story of Anthia and Avrokomi. It is also considered to be a great work for the study and development of the evolution of the Greek novel, and an important ancestor of medieval novels (romances).
In Shakespeare's work Antonios and Cleopatra seems to be influenced by the Latino writer Virgilius and the work of Aeneid. In this work we have the history of Dides and Aeneas. Beyond this mature love story, common points in Shakespeare's and Aeneid's specific work are passionate life, post-mortem life, protest for the values of Rome, and the political necessity of marriage.
This epic work, which has been described as the most important one ever written in Latin, links Rome with Troy and its legends while at the same time praising the "traditional" Roman virtues and "legitimizing" the Julian dynasty as originating from the founders, heroes and gods of Rome and Troy. The Aeneid is made up of twelve books, the first six have to do with Aeneas, the central protagonist, whose adventures we see from Troy until he reaches Italy, influenced by Homer's Odyssey.
While the other six books refer to the war of Troy and the Latins, influenced by the Iliad. Virgilius as a Latin poet incorporated into the work of many myths about the face of Aeneas, which is nothing but mythical. Virgilius, however, was born in 70 BC with 19 AD, he cannot be influenced by the political conditions of his time and beyond his poetic qualities and the incorporation into his works of mythical elements, not to incorporate them into them, in particular the work of Aeneid associated with Shakespeare's work, and true historical facts. Moreover, this task was commissioned from August. Virgilius's life begins in the years of Pompey's occupation, in 70 AD. Then Pompey keeps the East and Caesar the West.
When Caesar is assassinated, Virgilius was 26 years old, he lives the civil wars in Rome, and he sees with his own eyes in August bringing peace to the Roman Empire and enjoying it. Therefore, apart from the fact that Virgilius's work shares points with Antonios and Cleopatra of Shakespeare, it is a Roman work and not only a text of European civilization. Also, Shakespeare in this work as regards the performance of the leading physiognomy and the politics of Octavianus Caesar was influenced by Horatio (Albrecht, 1997: 626-633).
In the plot of Shakespeare's work Coriolanus, the writer's influence is influenced by the myth of Menenius, the myth of Aesop's belly, used by Shakespeare through Coriolanus mouth as an example to show that all at the same time must work the same and right for to achieve something right, in this case our work will have people and power to operate equally.

Shakespeare's works and the Roman figures
The following tragedies associated with Roman history: First we meet Titus Andronicus, which was published in 1594. Then follows the work of Romeo and Juliet, which was published in 1597. Then Julius Caesar followed in 1599. It follows the work of Troilos and Chryssidas, which was written in 1602 (mythological work). Coriolanus is written between 1605-1608. While the other work of Antonios and Cleopatra, we know that it was written in 1607. To complement his work may be added that wrote and mythological works in Greece (Timon of Athens, Troilus and Chryseis, Venus and Adonis, Midsummer night's dream), but not so many works for Athens, perhaps because he did not know enough about it (Creek, 2014: 9-13).

Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronikus was the Roman General who distinguished himself in the wars against the Goths. The Goths make their presence felt in the Roman Empire in the 3rd century, and find the Roman state in a political, military and economic crisis. At that time between 379-395 Emperor Theodosius I acted (Gibbon, 1932: 895). The Goths now plunder Thrace and Adrianople. Thus, the new emperor of the eastern Roman state, Theodosius I, came in concert with the Goths and allowed them to settle in the Roman state with the obligation to provide military units to them during the Roman wars (Carr, 2015: 40-43). Between 527-565 he acted Justinian A'37, who inherited from his predecessor military commitments on the eastern border, and of course the Goths within their borders.
The Goths reiterate in 537, specifically on 27 December 537, their reappearance. Specifically, when the temple of Hagia Sophia is inaugurated in Constantinople, Rome is besieged by the Goths. In 552 the Goths crashed into the Bust Gallorum of Umbria (Haldon, 2003: 17-19). Seeing the Romans' victories over the Goths, we can place Titus Andronikus, at the time of Theodosius I, at the beginning of his reign with his victories against the Goths, or in the time of Justinian I, between 537-552, victories of the Roman Empire against the Goths are noted.
Titus Andronikus was the first tragedy that William Shakespeare wrote, written between 1593 and 1594, probably in collaboration with George Peele. It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy, and is often seen as his attempt to emulate the violent and bloody revenge plays of his contemporaries, which were extremely popular with audiences throughout the 16th century (Cook, 1981: 13). It was first published in 1623, and it is based on real historical events and people (Mowat, 2014: 13). This work was a successful work of Shakespeare, which before 1623 had seen success. It was, of course, a work of the poet who had not yet had such maturity, that of his later works. It was an early work without the appropriate maturation. Specifically, the poet wishes to place in his work so much information, so many varied emotions diffused, elements that suggest exaggeration and characterize his work as a genius.
In this particular work Shakespeare seems to be hooked by the Latin writers Seneca and Ovidius, but also to use in his work subjects of Greek mythology, the habit of the Renaissance. The general climate of the era in which he publishes the work of Titus Andronicus is governed by the heavy veil of the Middle Ages. But the poet wants to escape this dark period and follow the first steps of the Renaissance. As far as the technique of this particular project is concerned, it is influenced to a large extent by Seneca, and uses artfully from scenery tricks. The plot of tragedy now has as its main source the virtue which contrasts with evil, while revenge is the one that gives the final touch (Sonnestatter, 2008: 3, 16).

Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (100 BC -44 BC) was a Roman politician, general and noted writer of Latin historiography. After the collapse of the Roman Republic he helped rise of the Roman Empire. In 59 BC he was elected to Rome. It is worth noting that Caesar was with the proletarian side and not with the aristocracy of the Senate. The climate of the era was governed by corruption and ballot. Plutarch considers him superior to all the Roman generals until then, judging him from the adverse environmental conditions of the places where he fought, the extent of the countries he conquered, the crowd and the passion of the enemies, and the loyalty he had in his army (Plutarch,Caesar,(15)(16).
The work of Shakespeare Julius Caesar was written between 1599-1600. This work represents the poetic maturation of the poet, not his youthful work, but he is in his full maturity and in his overall whole perfectly constructed. This is the political backstamps that exist in a state, as well as the power problems. Julius Caesar of Shakespeare is influenced by Plutarch, whom he uses as his source (Lippincott, 1913: 394). Specifically, in this work two points prove that his work is clearly influenced by Plutarch. The information that is part of the main theme of his work ensures a continuous flow, drawing on the work of Plutarch, in particular by the Parallel lives.
He is also influenced by Shakespeare in his work and another point as to the shaping of his characters. It is influenced in the way Plutarch defines the characters that surround Caesar. So he puts them in the work according to how they are projected through Plutarch's work. In his particular work and other works he is influenced by the Renaissance, but also by the freedom of the ancient Greek spirit, elements that we find in the works of Plutarch.
The plot in this work also defines its subject. The subject in Shakespeare's particular work is centered in Julius Caesar and his murder by the conspirators, with his main consort, Brutus. In a wider context, these two faces are confronted by Caesar and Brutus, who represented two different things, with two different central axes. Behind all, the thirst for power on a different Open Journal for Studies in History, 2018, 1(1), 9-16. ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 13 scale for each of the two protagonists.
The central aim of Caesar seems to have been the establishment of tyranny in Rome in order to completely eradicate democracy and to make Rome and its sovereignty. We distinguish from his actions an overwhelming ambition by not wanting to lose the struggles he carries by giving everything to accomplish, bringing together the axioms one by one. Of course, Caesar's success was many who exploited her to propagate political propaganda against him (Guthrie, 1954: 15-18).

Coriolanus
Coriolanus or Gaios Markos was a Roman politician and general and acted in the 5 th century BC (Plutarch, Koriolanos, 251: 1-39). His name took it from the city that he conquered in 493 BC, which is called Koriolis (Titos Livios, Ad urbe condita, 2.33). This city belonged to Volsky, where the Romans with them had a strong counter. Even between 500 BC and 338 BC, the Volks and the Romans had constant warfare until the Romans finally defeated the Volsky. So, after the above defeat of the Volcans, he became the leader of the extreme aristocratic of Rome (Plutarch,Koriolanos,8,9,10). In 491 BC, he pissed off, and decided not to divide the grain of Sicily into the Penitentians, caused the people's hatred to his face, and in an assembly of the municipality he was determined to be exiled.
Coriolanus was a great soldier and a man with strong ideals, but he despises the citizens. His extreme perceptions spark a massive outburst and Rome drowns in blood. Being patrician was humiliating and despising the eunuchs, that is, the generally simple people. Of course, the difference between Coriolanus and the rest of the patriarchs lies in the fact that Coriolanus was burning with the crowd and mocker, while most patricians were wary of the people because they had the power of the mob in the back of their minds and feared all sorts of rebellion, so they were interrupted with them. So he allied himself with his enemy to fight against the corrupt political scene in Rome (Plutarch,Koriolanos,(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29).  (1605), where Pope Adrian IV compares a well-run government to a body in which "all parts performed their functions, only the stomach lay idle and consumed all" (Parker, 1994: 17-21): the fable is also alluded to in John of Salisbury's Policraticus (Camden's source) and William Averell's A marvailous combat of contrarieties (1588). Other sources have been suggested, but are less certain. Shakespeare might also have drawn on Livy's Ab Urbe condita, as translated by Philemon Holland, and possibly a digest of Livy by Lucius Annaeus Florus; both of these were commonly used texts in Elizabethan schools. Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy were available in manuscript translations, and could also have been used by Shakespeare. He might also have made use of "Plutarch's original source, the Roman antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as well as on his own grammar-school knowledge of Roman custom and law" (Parker, 1994: 18).
In particular, this work negotiates the relationship of people -power. The citizens of Rome live in the misery and deception that is being done against them by the rulers and the demagogues. In a city that dies and seeks heroes, a ruler of arrogance, stubborn and brave wins the title of the High of Rome. At the center of this project, pride takes place which is capable of leading to misguided movements leading a whole city to destruction.

Αntonios and Cleopatra
Markus Antonios was born on January 14, 83 BC, or in 85 AD and was a Roman general and politician, who played a major role in turning Roman democracy into a Roman empire. He was a supporter of Julius Caesar and served as one of his generals in the conquest of Galatia and in the civil war (Appianos,Civil Wars,5,76). In 43 BC created a triumvirate with Octavian and Lepidus to punish Caesar's murderers. Antonios directed Syria to prepare for the war against the Parthians (Plutarch, Antonios, 36). But there was something that delayed him in dealing with the Parthians. This was nothing but a meeting with Cleopatra. Antonios had so much to do with Cleopatra by taking her and going to Alexandria.
Octavianus saw that Antonios in his actions considered Alexandria as the center of the Roman world. At the same time, his relations with his sister Octavia were non-existent because he was fascinated with Cleopatra and not simply fascinated with her, as they were joined by two children. All this led Octavian to propose the Senate in 33 BC against Anthony, and afterwards the Senate, after its own investigation, ended in 32 BC to remove every post from Antonios and to carry out war in Egypt. The naval battle at Aktio took place in 31 BC. Octavianus officially enters Alexandria on 1 August 30 AD. (Plutarch, Antonios, 82). Antonios committed suicide and Cleopatra arrived in Rome. Cleopatra's death is a mystery, but according to the signs found in her body, her death indicates cobra sting. Her death was attributed to suicide (Virgilius, Aeneid, VIII, 696-697).
Antonios and Cleopatra was the 5 th tragedy in turn of Shakespeare, which was written in 1607 and published in 1623 (Barroll, 1965: 115-62). It is the ultimate tragedy because we have to do with the poetic maturity of the poet, which has reached the highest degree, so the performance of the two central figures is clear. In particular, this work deals with the original sin and can be considered as the opposite of the work of Romeus and Juliet, because the first love he goes after death.
The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Markus Antonios from the time of the Sicilian revolt to Cleopatra's suicide during the Final War of the Roman Republic. The major antagonist is Octavius Caesar, one of Antonios' fellow triumvirs of the Second Triumvirate and the first emperor of the Roman Empire. The tragedy is mainly set in Rome and Egypt and is characterized by swift shifts in geographical location and linguistic register as it alternates between sensual, imaginative Alexandria and a more pragmatic, austere Rome (Neill, 1994: 45). Also in his work he makes a correlation of the history of Antonios and Cleopatra, with the history of Dides and Aeneas, influenced by the Virgilius of Aeneid. This work is governed by a multifaceted plot as it involves love (namely the love of the two central heroes of the work, Antonios and Cleopatra) and death, two different things that inevitably look like this work. Here we meet a mature love, the love of Anthonios and Cleopatra. These two heroes are mature, conscious, so their love becomes another dimension, they are not young, dreamlike like Romeo and Juliet (Bevington, 1990: 12-14).

Shakespeare's influence
The 19th century is the age of Shakespeare's internationalization. The translations of his entire works into foreign languages began after the middle of the 18 th century, with the first German and French host languages in which they were released multi-volume editions between 1760 and 1785. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in the Tolstoy century, Shakespeare is the dominant influence of dramatic writers and writers in general: from one end of Europe to the other, some consider him to be demigods, all in the cultural centers such as Paris or Vienna or even in the region such as Rome or Athens try to imitate him and, if possible, reach him.
And so it does not seem to us that Tolstoy, like many other compatriots, has been involved with Shakespeare, but otherwise. While Pushkin, Turgeniev and Dostoevsky were overflowing with admiration, he was immersed in doubt. Tolstoy carefully asks the question of why Shakespeare is so important and is retreating to de-rupt it. Tolstoy tries to spot the moral perpetrator of Shakespeare's everyday worship. Thus, the greatest "conqueror" is none other than Goethe (1749-1832) who imposed his opinion on aesthetic issues in his errand proclaimed Shakespeare a great poet.
As much as one disagrees with many of Tolstoy's tentative remarks, we would all agree today that Shakespeare's cultural sovereignty begins in 18th century England, which makes him a flagship of the culture of a Thracian colonial world superpower. Then, in fact, the Germans, with their predecessor Goethe embracing Shakespeare, like the French romantics, and beyond that the English poet's progress is steadily rising to this day.

Introduction
The accession of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic to NATO in 1999 was a milestone in the history of the Alliance. Since the end of the Cold War, there had been an intense debate about whether NATO should invite countries from the former Soviet Bloc. Finally, all NATO nations understood and accepted the need, which emerged from the new political and security context. The first round of enlargement after the fall of the Berlin Wall 2 was a historic step in itself, but also opened the way for further rounds of accession in the following years (Hende, 2015). It should be noted that while the potential admission of new members was only one aspect of the entire process of NATO transformation in the first decade after the end of the Cold War, it nevertheless sparked a number of debates that strongly influenced all other elements of the process. And last but not least, candidate countries from Central Europe, in spite of being an external factor for the time being, also had a significant impact on the issue of NATO expansion and hence -on the overall transformation of the organization.
Undoubtedly, the start of this transformation was triggered by the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union didn't bring to the dissolution of the Alliance, even though many politicians and analysts considered its further existence pointless. Actually, from that point on, NATO ceased to be solely a collective defense union for deterrence of a powerful foreign adversary and therefore needed to build a new, definitive identity for itself in the context of radical political changes on a global scale. Most of all, the Alliance had to find its new place in the rapidly transforming architecture of international relations. As a result, NATO took on a new and much more complex role. It included establishing a partnership dialogue with the countries in Central and Eastern Europe and other countries in CSCE (OSCE, since 1995); developing constructive relationships with other international institutions that had a strong commitment to the European security such as the UN and WEU; as well as introducing new structures in the Allied military command and armed forces due to the changing security environment.
NATO embarked on the political and military transformation of its structures at the beginning of the 1990s. In July 1990, in a Summit declaration entitled the London Declaration on a Transformed North Atlantic Alliance, Allied leaders announced their intention of adapting the Alliance to the new security environment. A little over a year later, in November 1991 at the Rome Summit, they published a new strategic Concept and a Declaration on Peace and Cooperation. Together these documents charted the course for reorganizing and streamlining Alliance's political and military structures and procedures; reducing significantly Alliance's force and readiness levels; and reconfiguring Alliance's forces to make them better able to carry out the new missions of crisis management and peacekeeping, while preserving the capability for collective defense (NATO Handbook, 1998: 16). Building strategic partnerships with the countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the members of the recently established Commonwealth of Independent States, the Russian Federation in particular, was another key factor for the successful transformation of NATO.

Change of attitude in periods
From the very beginning the establishment of partnership relations significantly influenced the future enlargement of the Alliance in Central and Eastern Europe. If until 1997 NATO had mostly concentrated on the partnership approach both on a bilateral level (Charter on a Distinctive Partnership between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Ukraine 1997 or the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation signed in Paris, 1997) or a multilateral level (Partnership for Peace program and the Mediterranean Dialogue, both initiated in 1994), so the period after 1997 was mostly focused on the membership of the post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, and the first membership aspirations of the post-Soviet states of Ukraine and Georgia. In June 2017 Montenegro became the most recent NATO Member State.
Although NATO did not admit new Member-States during the first period, the period itself may be divided into two sub-periods depending on the change in the attitude towards possible enlargement of the Alliance. The first sub-period extended from 1990 to 1994 when the overwhelming opinion within the North Atlantic Council is that NATO should not expand, while the second one spanned the time between 1994 and 1997 when the necessity of enlargement became increasingly obvious.

Arguments against enlargement -Trevor Taylor
Special mention deserves Trevor Taylor (Taylor, 1991), Head of the International Security Program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London in 1990-1993, who in his statement in October 1991 described in detail the main concerns of the leading figures in NATO from a potential eastward enlargement of the Alliance in the future:  First, extending NATO eastward could cause future governments of Russia to fear that the West sought domination over them. It would then make Moscow reluctant to embark on the defense spending cuts which are needed for Russia to achieve economic advance, and it could contribute to the establishment of a strong military influence on the government of the new independent Russia. Further nuclear disarmament would become more difficult and needed partnership between Russia and the West on issues including the proliferation of nuclear and conventional arms would become more elusive.  Second, admitting Central European states as NATO members would be very disruptive of the Alliance's level of integrity. Since 1950, NATO had been operating on the basis that there should be an equal commitment to the defense of all the territory of allies. As a result, command structures had been put in place, infrastructure elements such as pipelines and airfields had been built, forces from a range of allies had been deployed forward, multinational exercises had been held, and guiding strategy had been laid down.  Making Poland, the CSFR 3 and Hungary credible NATO members would thus involve the forward stationing of at least nominal US and West European forces in Poland, the CSFR and Hungary and the preparation and maintenance of plans for their rapid reinforcement, the construction of infrastructure arrangements and so on. Apart from any political problems, this could be interpreted as illegal under the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty.  Third, NATO countries lacked the resources to extend their defense commitments. Their publics wanted to spend less on defense and taking formal responsibility for the security of Central Europe would be an additional burden which falling Western defense budgets could not bear.  Fourth, a serious debate about membership could well split the Alliance. Some members would be extremely wary of making a new commitment in which they felt there was even a remote chance that they could get involved in a nuclear war for the defense of Central Europe. Since NATO decisions required consensus, a proposal for new members, or for new sorts of member, could generate a politically damaging debate and yet not lead to membership suggestions being accepted.  Fifth, if three countries could become formally associated with NATO, others (for instance Bulgaria or at some later stage Latvia or the Ukraine) would want the same status. Already the political liaison dialogue with Romania and Bulgaria was of a similar degree of intensity as it is with Central European states. It would not be easy in political terms to hold the line at just three new members.  Sixth, should NATO acquire Poland, the CSFR and Hungary as members, it might at some future point find itself being drawn into ethnic disputes crossing state borders in Central Europe.
Trevor Taylor also expressed the doubt that Poland, the CSFR and Hungary were in any apparent danger at that particular moment (Taylor, 1991). He pointed out that even the Soviet coup leaders in their brief period in power were anxious to stress that they would abide by existing international commitments. The last Soviet forces had already left the CSFR and Hungary. There were still about 40,000 Soviet personnel in Poland but their withdrawal would most likely have been sped with the new regime in Moscow (author's note: the last Soviet troops left Poland in September 1993). Also, with Belarus and Ukraine on the road to full sovereign statehood (author's note: finalized in December 1991) to go with their extant UN membership, the three countries of Central Europe would no longer have a military superpower on their immediate borders.
Instead of future membership in NATO, Trevor Taylor proposed enhancing the political dialogue with all the former members of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, continuing the process of arms reduction, making an official statement that NATO would not tolerate military aggression against any country in Central Europe, as well as encouraging Poland, the CSFR and Hungary to build up their own defense capabilities in postures which are effective without being provocative to their neighbors (Taylor, 1991).
As an alternative to NATO enlargement, there were at least three possible political strategies. The first alternative, favored above all by Russia, was for Russia and NATO to give security guarantees to the countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The second alternative could be the setting up of a sub-regional security system based, for example, on the Visegrád Group. The third alternative, promoted by Russia as well, would be to establish a pan-European security organization based on the OSCE (Pieciukiewicz, 1996(Pieciukiewicz, /1997. Neither the leading political circles in NATO, nor the governments of the Central European states were interested in solutions such as these.

Arguments against enlargement -Russia and the supposed "promise" of Western leaders not to expand NATO. Debunking of the myth
In his memoirs the distinguished Russian politician and diplomat Yevgeny Primakov also pointed out that according to the Russian archives a number of Western leaders during that period had expressed their disagreement on any future enlargement of NATO beyond Eastern Germany (Primakov, 2000). He went even further by advocating the widely popular in Russia theory that, as a compensation for the reunification of Germany, the leaders of the Western countries had promised NATO would never expand eastward (Primakov, 2000). Another Russian diplomat -Valentin Falin -shared the same view (Falin, 2015). However, other analysts proved in their research that during the negotiations between the Soviet Union and the West in 1990 on the German reunification only two main assurances were offered to Moscow. They concerned the 'special military status' of the territory of the former GDR and the large amounts of funding that would be transferred from the Federal Republic to the USSR, ostensibly to offset the 'costs' of German reunification for the USSR, including the expenses of Soviet troop withdrawals (Kramer, 2009).
One of the most important aspects of the negotiations -the "nine points" presented by Baker to Gorbachev -included the transformation of NATO, strengthening European structures, keeping Germany non-nuclear, eschewing any NATO deployments in Eastern Germany during a specified transition period, granting of a respectable transition period for the withdrawal of all Soviet troops from German territory, and taking Soviet security interests into account. However, they did not mention any guarantee preventing NATO from admitting more countries as members. A more recent research (Savranskaya & Blanton, 2017) showed that multiple Western leaders and researchers indeed considered the pros and cons of a possible Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991. For example, inside the U.S. government, opinions differed, but the suggestion from the Defense Department as of 25 October 1990 was to leave "the door ajar" for East European membership in NATO (Dobbins, 1990, 25 October). The view of the State Department was that NATO expansion was not on the agenda, because it was not in the interest of the U.S. to organize "an anti-Soviet coalition" that extended to the Soviet borders, not least because it might reverse the positive trends in the Soviet Union (Dobbins, 1990, 22 October). The Bush administration took the latter view. And that's what the Soviets heard.
However, such discussions did little to incorporate any written guarantees against possible NATO enlargement beyond East Germany during the official negotiations with the USSR, not least as the Soviets themselves did not ask for such a thing. Primakov himself underlined this weakness in the Russian interpretation of the results of the negotiations (Primakov, 2000). Moreover, there have not been any debates whatsoever on this issue within the North Atlantic Council, and Article 10 was not changed in any way to forbid further enlargement of the Alliance.
Eventually, it is safe to assume that in 1990 the Soviet Union didn't raise the issue of NATO enlargement except in connection with Eastern Germany. Gorbachev did for a long while seek assurances that Germany would be kept out of NATO, but he failed to receive them. The West German and U.S. governments stuck by their position that Germany should be a full member of NATO and the Soviet leader ultimately backed down on the issue. In a 2014 interview Gorbachev said that the topic of "NATO expansion" as such was 'not discussed at all', although he maintained that the decision to expand NATO into the east was a 'violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990' (Kórshunov, 2014).
In any case, back in 1990 a possible enlargement in the East was not a priority of the Alliance. Only after a few years, however, a combination of internal and external factors triggered a change in the prevailing opinion that such enlargement would be unnecessary or even harmful for the Alliance.

The active signals from Central and Eastern Europe
First, Poland and Hungary have been maintaining active contacts with NATO since 1990. Poland established diplomatic ties with NATO as early as March 1990. Only half a year later (in November 1990) the Polish representative was appointed as a special member of the Political Committee of the North Atlantic Assembly of NATO (author's note: NATO Parliamentary Assembly since 1999) (Boyadjieva, 2013). Such an appointment of a representative from a non-member country was unheard of in the entire previous practice of the Alliance. When Poland took the initiative for establishing long-term political contacts with NATO, other members of the Warsaw Treaty soon followed suit. In June 1990 the foreign minister of Hungary Géza Jeszenszky made a personal visit to the Brussels' headquarters, the first time for a government member to do so (History of Hungarian-NATO relations). In November 1990 Bulgaria also sent a special parliamentary delegation to meet NATO Secretary General Manfred Wörner in Brussels (Memorandum Concerning the Visit of Bulgarian Parliamentarians to NATO, 1990). The delegation members informed him of the ongoing political reorientation of Bulgaria. At the beginning of 1991 a group called "Friends of NATO" was formed within the Bulgarian National Assembly and, along with the Atlantic Club of Bulgaria, began pursuing opportunities for Bulgarian membership in NATO (Boyadjieva, 2013). Since 1991 meetings between representatives of government, parliament and military from the former Warsaw Treaty members with their colleagues from NATO countries became more frequent. In March 1992, during a visit to Poland, NATO Secretary General Manfred Wörner said that "NATO's door is open" (Poland's road to NATO). In the meantime, the deteriorating political situation in several countries in Eastern Europe proved very soon that the Alliance would mostly benefit rather than suffer harm by admitting new members.

The political crisis in Russia
One of the countries with very serious political hardships was the Russian Federation. For two years, the Russian people and the Russian government grudgingly accepted the strategy of President Boris Yeltsin for rapprochement with the West. But in 1993, when Yeltsin visited Poland and the Czech Republic and granted at least tacit approval for the first round of NATO enlargement, he drew fierce criticism back home, especially from the Russian Parliament and military officers. Far from an opportunity, these two groups saw the enlargement of their former adversary as a direct threat to Russia's security. Russia's Intelligence Service (SVR) held a similar view. In a report it issued in late 1993, NATO was referred to as the "biggest military grouping in the world that possesses an enormous offensive potential." As a result, apparently under pressure from his armed forces and leading political circles, Boris Yeltsin sent a letter to President Clinton opposing any expansion of NATO to include East European nations like Poland or the Czech Republic (Smith, 2008;Primakov, 2000;Perlez, 1993;Cohen, 1993). But this was only one of the grievances the Russian Parliament held against Yeltsin -many of its members openly criticized the economic and political reforms of the President. Eventually, even before he sent the aforementioned letter to Clinton, Yeltsin decided to take drastic measures against the opposition at home. On 21 September 1993, the President aimed to dissolve the country's legislature, triggering in this way a whole 13-day-long political standoff between him and the Parliament. Eventually, the most serious constitutional crisis in post-Soviet Russia was put to an end after the military intervened in Yeltsin's favor. But this conflict proved that democratic reforms in Russia were not irreversible and further stimulated the desire of Central European countries to join NATO.

NATO and the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina
In addition to that, with or without new members, NATO really found itself involved in an ethnic conflict in Eastern Europe -the devastating war that broke out during the breakup of former Yugoslavia. The intervention of NATO in the conflict started as a series of naval blockade and no-fly zone operations in the Adriatic Sea and over the airspace of Bosnia and Herzegovina in support of several UN resolutions including 713, 752, 757, 781 and 787 among others. However, due to the high number of violations of the no-fly zone over Bosnian airspace, the intervention of NATO gradually escalated with Operation Deny Flight (12 April 1993 -20 December 1995) which gave NATO "all measures necessary" to enforce a more stringent no-fly zone, and with Operation Deliberate Force (30 August -20 September 1995) which targeted at the Army of Republika Srpska whose presence in Bosnia posed a danger to United Nations "safe areas". The latter two operations played a key role in ending the war. The IFOR (1995( ) and SFOR (1996( -2004 were also created under NATO leadership in order to ensure ending of hostilities, stabilization of peace, establishment of a central Bosnian government and contribution to a secure environment. Central European countries gave strong backing to NATO's operations and proved to be valuable allies to the organization.

The decision for NATO enlargement is made
All these circumstances influenced the policies that were adopted in January 1994 at the NATO Summit in Brussels, which marked a turning point for the transformation of the Alliance. Most prominent among the decisions taken at this Summit was the unveiling of the Partnership for Peace initiative. This was an open invitation to states participating in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) and other CSCE (OSCE since 1995) states to join NATO countries in a wide-ranging program of practical cooperation designed to further the capability of working together in undertaking peacekeeping, crisis management and humanitarian tasks (NATO Handbook, 1998: 16-17).
At the Brussels Summit Allied leaders also reaffirmed that the Alliance was open to membership of other European states in a position to further the principles of the Washington Treaty and to contribute to security in the North Atlantic area (NATO Handbook, 1998: 81), thus giving start of the second sub-period (1994)(1995)(1996)(1997) concerning the future NATO enlargement. Allied leaders looked forward to welcoming new members into the Alliance as part of an evolutionary process taking into account political and security developments in the whole of Europe.
Somewhat surprisingly, those statements generated little reaction inside Russia until U.S. president Bill Clinton, later that same year, recognizing the political currency that NATO enlargement held for him both at home and abroad, began emphasizing that NATO enlargement would "not depend upon the appearance of a new threat in Europe" (Smith & Timmins, 2001). In other words, regardless of what Russia did -positively or negatively -enlargement would move ahead (Smith, 2008).

The Study on NATO enlargement
Following a decision by Allied Foreign Ministers in December 1994, the "why and how" of future admissions into the Alliance was examined by the Allies during 1995. The resulting Study on NATO enlargement was shared with interested Partner countries in September 1995 and made public. The principles outlined in the Study remain the basis for NATO's open approach to inviting new members to join. With regard to the "why" of NATO enlargement, the Study concluded that, with the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Warsaw Treaty, there was both a need for and a unique opportunity to build an improved security in the whole of the Euro-Atlantic area, without recreating dividing lines (NATO Handbook, 1998: 81). The Study drew conclusions that were a far cry from the assumptions made by Trevor Taylor several years earlier.
The Study further concluded that the enlargement of the Alliance would contribute to enhanced stability and security for all countries in the Euro-Atlantic area in numerous ways. It would encourage and support democratic reforms, including the establishment of civilian and democratic control over military forces. It would foster the patterns and habits of cooperation, consultation and consensus building which characterized relations among the then Allies and would promote good-neighborly relations in the whole Euro-Atlantic area. It would increase transparency in defense planning and military budgets, thereby reinforcing confidence among states, and would reinforce the tendency toward integration and co-operation in Europe. Furthermore, it would strengthen the Alliance's ability to contribute to European and international security and support peacekeeping under the UN and OSCE; and would strengthen and broaden the transatlantic partnership (NATO Handbook, 1998: 82).
With regard to the "how" of enlargement, the study confirmed that, as in the past, any future extension of the Alliance's membership would be through accession of new member states to the North Atlantic Treaty in accordance with its Article 10. Once admitted, new members would enjoy all the rights and assume all obligations of membership under the Treaty. They would need to accept and conform to the principles, policies and procedures adopted by all members of the Alliance at the time that they joined. The Study made clear that willingness and ability to meet such commitments, not only on paper but in practice, would be a critical factor in any decision taken by the Alliance to invite a country to join (NATO Handbook, 1998: 82).
The Study also noted that the ability of interested countries to contribute militarily to collective defense and to peacekeeping and other new missions of the Alliance would be a factor in deciding whether to invite them to join the Alliance. Ultimately, the Study concluded, Allies would decide by consensus whether to invite each new member to join, basing their decision on their judgement -at the time such a decision has to be made -of whether the membership of a specific country would contribute to security and stability in the North Atlantic area or not. No country outside the Alliance had or would have a veto or "droit de regard" over the process of enlargement or decisions relating to it (NATO Handbook, 1998: 82-82).

Overcoming the Russian reluctance
Undoubtedly, the last part addressed indirectly the traditional Russian reluctance if not outright protest against any plans for NATO enlargement eastward. However, on the eve of NATO Madrid Summit in July 1997, Alliance's continuing effort to build partnership with the Federation marked significant progress. On 27 May 1997, in Paris, the Allied leaders and Russian President Yeltsin signed the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation. This Founding Act not only created a mechanism for consultation and cooperation -the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council (PJC) -but also set out specific areas of mutual interest in which NATO and Russia could build a solid, effective and enduring partnership (NATO Handbook, 1998: 18). In exchange, Yeltsin officially blessed the first round of NATO enlargement to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary in 1997 (Smith, 2008). Yeltsin made clear, however, that Russia strongly opposed additional rounds of enlargement, especially to the Baltic countries. This new 'red line' ran along the borders of the former Soviet Union 4 .

The first enlargement of NATO is achieved
Considering the conclusions of the Study and the signing of the NATO-Russia Founding Act, it was only a matter of time before the first round of NATO enlargement came about. NATO Madrid Summit in July 1997 marked a decisive phase in the process of transformation of the Alliance. During the forum Allied Heads of State and Government invited the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to begin accession talks with NATO. Following this decision, negotiations took place with each of the invited countries in the autumn of 1997 and Accession Protocols for each of the three were signed in December 1997. The three countries officially became members of the Alliance in March 1999.

Results of the first NATO enlargement
It is important to note that NATO enlargement is an open, continuing process, not a single event. In Madrid the Allies once again underlined that NATO remains open to new members under Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty and that the Alliance will continue to welcome new members in a position to further the principles of the Treaty and to contribute to security in the Euro-Atlantic area. It should be noted that in March 1997 the caretaker government of Stefan Sofiyanski also applied for full membership in NATO.
NATO enlargement did not result in weakened cooperation between the countries in Central and Eastern Europe, as many critics had feared. Quite the opposite, the prospect of membership helped consolidate democracy in Central Europe, strengthen free market reform and encourage NATO aspirants to settle disputes with their neighbors. The newcomers did not want to "close NATO's door". They became advocates of further enlargement. The vision of NATO membership and conditionality of enlargement was another impulse to intensify the already existing cooperation in the region. In 1994, the Good Neighborly Relations and Military Cooperation Agreement was concluded between Poland and Lithuania, in 1996 the Treaty on Good Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation between Hungary and Slovakia was signed, as was the Bilateral Defense Cooperation Agreement between Hungary and Slovenia and Bilateral Friendship Treaty between Hungary and Romania, and in 1997 the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Romania and Ukraine was concluded (The debate over NATO expansion, 1997).
NATO's policy of enlargement had a positive influence on the consolidation of the newly founded democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and the establishment of new level of cooperation between them. In this way the enlargement of NATO influenced in a positive way the security environment in the whole of Europe. On the other hand, NATO also benefited from its new members, meaning that the new members successfully contributed to the North Atlantic Alliance. First, all of them offered significant geopolitical space to NATO in form of the availability of their territories. Second, the new members extended political and military support to Allied international missions by contributing with people, experts, suggestions and specific viewpoints (Starova, 2015).

Concluding remarks
The evolution of the 1990-1997 NATO enlargement concept and the experience of the accession of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary to the Alliance in 1999 paved the way for another three rounds of enlargement (in 2004, 2009 and 2017). As a result, 10 more countries joined NATO. For them, membership in the Alliance meant accomplishing a strategic foreign policy goal and strengthening their stability and security. On the other hand, the enlargement contributed to NATO's own capabilities in the new security environment after the end of the Cold War. Due to this interdependence, NATO's door remains open for all European democracies, which are willing and able to assume membership responsibilities and whose inclusion can contribute to common security and stability.
International Affairs in Riga in cooperation with the Atlantic Treaty Association in Brussels, Warsaw -Prague -Brussels. Taylor, T. (1991, October). NATO and Central Europe. NATO Review,Web Edition,39(5)

Introduction
In the course of time, Byzantium changed its form, as the borders grew, the political, administrative, economic and military structures were diversified and its character constantly adjusted to the new circumstances. Also, the different peoples, who composed the population of the Empire, brought with them separate customs and traditions, which the Roman administration had not unified. These changes, undoubtedly, affected the position of the woman in society. After all, the cultural heritage of Rome differed from that of the woman of the East or of Egypt, with the result, for the first few centuries, that the image of the female presence appeared different in different places.
Then, the state organization, combined with the Greek education, which was the cultural background of Byzantium, and the Christianity that all its citizens embraced, contributed to the unification of conditions and conditions, but did not entirely eliminate the differences. Thus, the role of woman in Byzantium does not present a single image in space and time.
And of course we cannot ignore the fact that the nature of the sources, i.e. the texts of the historians and chronographers or the hagiological texts, are all products of male expression. Nevertheless, we will try to present a complete picture of the woman of the Byzantine period (Mamagakis, 2008: 53), referring mainly to empresses and women of the lower social strata in relation to the rest.

The private life of Byzantine
According to the Byzantine concepts, the role of the woman had to be interwoven with the interior of the house, which she ruled and was under the control of her husband (James, 2009: 35). Αccording to the ideal pattern of women's behavior, their activities were confined to the boundaries of the house, often in the women's land, where only family members could enter (Imbriotis, 2002: 14;Vakaloudis, 1998: 44).

Childhood and adulthood of Byzantine
Initially, the birth of a daughter in Byzantium was not a delightful event, as it marked an additional expense and special care for the preservation of virginity (Crark, 1993: 119;Lai, 1993: 133) and the securing of her dowry. Common practices that threatened the purity of girls were rape and weariness of virginity, which was associated with the insulting of the woman's honor. In particular, grabbing is considered as a serious misconduct for the Byzantines, who legally equate it with murder. For this reason, the limitation of women to the gynekonite, known as "thalamism" (Rowlandson, 1998: 218), was intended to protect her from immoral men's proposals.
They were always leaving the house accompanied by maids whenever they wanted to attend religious ceremonies or visit religious feasts or go to women's baths. When this happened, having lowered eyes, they were looking to cover their face with a blanket (Rautman, 2006: 47-48).
The education of girls began at the age of six, it lasted three years and included teaching writing, reading, arithmetic, sacred history and music. Teaching, actually, took place in the girl's house, while teacher's duties were mainly performed by their mothers.

Wedding and birth of children of Byzantine woman
For Byzantine, marriage and monasticism are the two socially acceptable ways. The marriage for the Byzantines (men) is considered necessary and is related to the role that men are called to play as a dominant gender (Eco, 1994: 55). On the contrary, marriage to women was totally related to the father of the family (pater familias), who as the absolute master chooses his daughter's future wife (Flaceliere, 1995: 77;Clark, 1997: 43). Indeed, in the case of the reaction of the daughter to the fatherly desires, there was always the threat of father's curse.
Before the wedding, the engagement preceded (Nicholas, 2005: 73;Laiou, 1992: 280;Papadatos, 1984: 74). It is a mutual promise of man and woman, that is, the memory and promise of the marriages that are to come, without any time limitation on its realization (Vakaloudis, 1998: 38). In fact, according to its type of constitution, it was divided into imperfect or civil or legal engagement and mainly or sacred engagement. The engagement, like the marriage, could be concluded either in writing or unwritten.
The average age of marriage for girls is the 12th and 13th year (Mansouri, 2000: 172), while the social standards of the time were the same as a good husband with a virgin, polite, wealthy, loyal and competent hostess.
However, in order to be able to marry, the woman had to fulfill a prerequisite, that of the dowry. The economic factor was very important, since a marriage was also a financial transaction between the two families, followed by careful financial settlements recorded in a contract (Clark, 1997: 42). The institution of the dowry (White, 1981: 547) is part of the marriage agreement and obligation of the bride's parents to the groom in order to preserve the family. The dowry, together with the premarital donation of the groom, formed the basis of family property. Ιn fact, by improving the role of the Church, Leo VI's made compulsory the blessing of the marriage by the Church (Cooks, 1951: 85). In conclusion, except of the strengthening of the institution of marriage, the woman's role in married life has indirectly improved.
After marriage, the basic pursuit of the Byzantine family is the acquisition of offspring, while agelessness is considered as a shame and a cause of great sadness for a family. Consequently, the childless woman is subject to contempt and is often isolated from her social environment (Walker, 2003: 227;Vikan, 1984: 78).
Adultery is considered as the main reason for a divorce. It is defined as a "female offense" that has to do with marital infidelity and illegal love relationships. Penalties for the misconduct of adultery were many (Beaucamp, 1990: 139). A fairly popular punishment was mowing or spoofing. But since humiliation was not enough to punish the adulterers, they were lashed, scratched, and smoothed with soot or tar even before they were scorned (Gardikas, 1925: 40).

Divorce and widowhood
In Byzantine law divorce is permitted, although there is a negative attitude towards it. Of course, the right of divorce was set on a different basis for each sex. More specifically, the husband had the right to ask for a divorce, when his wife committed adultery or when his wife was paying his life or knew others who threatened her and did not notify them to him, as well as if his wife was suffering from leprosy. Accordingly, the woman could ask for a divorce from her husband if her husband had committed adultery with a married woman (Girtzis, 2009: 58). In addition, other cases of divorce were the following: the presence of adultery in the home, the imprisonment of her life, the man's absconding of his marital duties for more than three years, the class also for criminal offenses, her abuse, the case of the insanity of her husband. Finally, when one of the two spouses was to be o monk, both genders were allowed to make a request for the dissolution of the marriage.
On the issue of widowhood, losing a wife leads a woman to a higher position than a man (Beaucamp, 1990: 11). The widow of the lower classes in Byzantium is considered to be a socially weak person. For the middle-class and upper-class woman, things are clearly better. In particular, the widow is obliged to mourn her husband for one year before she remarries, so that she does not qualify as "dishonest", although the widow did not have such a legal commitment. She returned to her father's house, who had to marry her again, since she had not only reached the age of twenty-five. When the widow had a dowry from her father, she was in a position to keep her with what her husband had left her. Otherwise, she had the right to inherit a quarter of her husband's estate, provided she did not remarry (Kiousopoulou, 1990: 52).
The widow becomes the heir of the family property, and can acquire legal status. Moreover, by making use of this right, she founded monasteries and managed businesses if she had property. In addition, her job was to raise, educate and marry her children.

The activities of Byzantine
Woman in the lower and middle classes is mainly engaged in home care. Byzantine is the "queen" of the house, because only within her house she was able to have some autonomy in her actions. So, within the household she prepares the food, and she takes care of the cleanliness of the house. Also, she is involved in the knitting, the making of clothes, the grinding of the wheat, the kneading, in order to cover the needs of the family (Nikolaou, 1994: 27). At the same time, she is responsible for bringing up children, such as the education of the daughters, but also the study of the Scriptures.
But her main occupation is dealing with the thread. The processing of the yarn, the weaving and the manufacture of the clothing used by a family, was par excellence the work of the woman, regardless of her social position (Frontisi-Ducroux & Vernant, 1997: 98).
They were seldom educated, and when this happened, the level of education was lower than that of men. The education of women in the urban class was limited to the study of manuscripts and hagiographies by combining some basic knowledge. Depending on the possibilities offered by her social class, she devoted time to cosmetic and myrrh care.
Although Byzantine society did not allow many freedoms for women, the 11 th century social changes, namely economic and intellectual development as well as the expansion of the nuclear family, gradually contributed to the liberalization of society and the widening of the role of the female sex on the basis of similar social reality (Kazhdan & Epstein, 1997: 163).
Thus, in addition to the domestic occupation and the upbringing of her children, the woman, depending on her social status, her education and her place of residence, could be active both professionally and socially (Cavallo, 2001: 129). Women of the lower social class had greater freedom of movement, since they were treated with more elastic ethical criteria.
Usually, they were mostly assisting their husbands for mostly living reasons. More specifically, women either worked in daily work, as in the case of doctors or in the family shop as a monger and stationery. In addition, women also worked in rural areas. Besides, there were also female professionals who worked autonomously as doctors, calligraphers and shop owners. (Medzou-Meimari, 1982: 241).
Finally, a common phenomenon in Byzantine society was monasticism. Women of the upper class were usually nuns after a child's waking or death, while in the poorer classes monasticism was the result of coercion by their parents due to the inability to provide a dowry. Generally, in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, women were always low, poor, and inconspicuous (Penna, 2001: 246).

The Byzantine slave
The institution of slavery and the Byzantine period accepted the influences of the ancient Greek heritage, the Roman tradition and the principles of Christianity. Mostly, however, Justinian legislation lowers the position of slaves, forbidding the separation of members of a family of slaves, putting restrictions on their deportation and ultimately making their release easier (Kopstein, 1989: 409).
Thus, in public life, the slave was more free than in private life. The lady saw in the face of the slave the opponent who claimed her position and her husband. In fact, women's behavior towards servants is just as tough as that of men. Probably, this behavior of the lady towards her servant expresses the oppression she suffers from the male-dominated society.
Interpersonal relations of slaves and bosses also include erotic relationships and the resulting two-way relationship of slavery and prostitution. Indeed, many are the cases where servants were forced by their masters into prostitution. Besides, the value of a slave was directly related to its sexuality. This includes her virginity, her ability to provide erotic services to her master and her reproductive capacity. The slave has no choice but to become mistress of his master. This kind of love affair was socially acceptable and common in Byzantine society, since the slave was an asset that its owner could treat as he wished (Papayiannis, 1991: 426).
The legal sanctions, which resulted in the marriage of a married man with his servant or servants, were essentially assets. If the slave belongs to the possession of a rich man, the law provides for the forced sale of the slave to another province, for the benefit of the State. But if the perpetrator was lousy and had no property, the penalty imposed was corporal punishment (Hatzinicolau-Marava, 1950: 76). Similar sexual exploitation with slaves had the servants. Even a supreme lord with a wife, concubines, and mistresses, did not consider it deplorable to be in love with the women who served him.
Sexual relations with slaves, however, were also free women, except that the sentences were much stricter than those imposed on men for the corresponding offense. In Justinian law, for example, the punishment for the lady was one of the capital punishment and for slave death in the fire. Different dimensions are taken by the love relations of master and slave, if he is unmarried and expresses the desire to marry her (Evans, 2002: 145). The law of M. Constantine banned marriage between men of superior order and underwhelmed women.

The public life of Byzantine
In Byzantine society, according to their political theory, women are excluded from public offices and are limited to practicing their religious duties, attending festivals, charitable activities, and visiting the baths. Women of the upper class (Augusta) and women of the margin live completely opposite lives and situations.

The life of Augusta
When the emperor was unmarried, he had to marry in order to obtain a possible successor. The succession was the result of the approval of the army, the senate and the municipalities (Beck, 1996: 92). In the 8 th and 9 th centuries, the choice of the imperial bride was done with a process that reminded beauty (Connor, 2004: 210), since the emperors went to the various provinces of Byzantine territory in order to find the appropriate bride, the Emperor made the final choice. The bridal selection criteria was unparalleled, natural beauty, impeccable ethics and noble origin (Treadgold, 1979: 409). Often, however, the criterion of natural beauty was more burdensome than the bride's gentle origins. Of course, the bride's choice was often made on the basis of political criteria.
Throughout the 11th century, the emperors sought mainly spouses within the Byzantine empire, but the marriage of Byzantines with foreign brides was a frequent phenomenon because of political expediency. In the courtyard of the future bride, Greeks were sent to teach the Greek language and tradition. Upon her arrival in Constantinople for the marriage, the foreign princess now belonged to the Byzantine courtyard. In conclusion, the foreign princess was baptized Christian, if it was not, and acquired a Greek name (Panagopoulou, 2006: 468).
Thus, throughout the Byzantine period, the crowned Princess could participate in political affairs. The title of crowned women uses the names Augusta (Missiou, 1982: 129), Queen and respected with predominant the first name, which means the imperial wife, mother, sister or daughter, but also the member of the conventions. In the first Byzantine ages, the Augusta and Queen titles created some confusion when referring to the same person, but then they come to be identified and mean either the imperial wife or the crowned empress. Lastly, the address of respected has a variety of meanings. First means the lady, the house the free woman from the slave, the wife of the throne successor, the queen and the contract, even one who exercises power without being crowned as a regent.
The power and privileges of an imperial spouse are directly dependent on the emperor. The conditions by which a woman of the imperial environment acquires the position of the Augusta do not remain stable. In the early and middle age, the right to coronation is acquired by the imperial spouses only after childbirth. In the later years, if the emperor already possessed the throne, crowning and marriage became at the same time on the wedding day. If he was already married, the husband was crowned with the emperor's crown on the day of his ascension to the throne.
The model of "good" Augusta has been shaped in Byzantium on the basis of moral and political criteria and is characterized by the following traits: apart from the external attributes, the candidate royal spouse should have a noble origin, spiritual culture, be a philanthropist, and characterized by modesty, marital belief and religious reverence. On the contrary, negative features are political ambition, loose sexual morals and erotic scandals, ruthlessness, the moment of luxury and laziness, arrogance, lack of education, and the skill in illicit intrigue (Garland, 2000: 76). The primary role of an Augusta is to help preserve the legitimacy of power. Therefore, her most important concern is childbirth. The role of the mother is the strongest ideological role in Byzantium and on this issue the Augusta does not differ from other women. The only difference is that she gains access to power through childbirth. Particular emphasis is placed on the birth of a male child, since he would be the successor to the throne. Indeed, according to the perceived concepts, a boy is always welcomed by every family, let alone the royal family. On the other hand, the daughters who were crowned had the right to succession. However, the birth of a boy is one that fully assures dynastic continuity. Agelessness, if and why it is not considered a reason for divorce, to a ruler creates a problem in its succession, as the illegitimate children have no right to power.
The primacy of the Augusta, compared to other love comrades, is indisputable, being the wife of the emperor and the mother of the throne successor. However, the coexistence of the legal husband with the concubine was a reality for the Byzantines, common mortals and kings (Garland, 2000: 160). According to the imperial protocol, the place of living of the Augusta is the imperial woman's. In fact, however, the Augusta is freely circulating in the palace and has full control of its habitats for reasons imposed by the ceremonial ritual or personal life. The selection of the people who will surround the imperial court and become the imperial couple's trustworthy, requires special attention to avoid intriguing phenomena.
However, the issue of taking power from the woman is not particularly paradoxical. Generally speaking, the Byzantines have treated the power of women in moderation, yet they do not abandon the view that positions of authority are a man's affair (Karagiannopoulos, 1993: 160). The only connection with power is that her role as a mother is called upon to defend the rights of the minor successor as a member of the convention. However, there are many times that the political actions of imperial women are the result of their personal aspirations with positive or negative impressions.
Finally, regarding the issue of social mobility in Byzantium, there are no restrictions and therefore all women have the right of access to the post, regardless of social order and origin.

Woman's life on the sidelines
With the founding of the Byzantine state and the prevalence of Christianity, the model of ethics affects the formation of state and social norms. An exemplary example is Rule 86 of the Troullsh Council, which imposes very strict penalties: "women who have been engaged in prostitution are deprived of Divine Communion for six to nine years, even in extreme cases they are even subject to apostasy" (Ralli & Poutli, 1852: 325). Prostitution, however, is not only characterized by the relationship with professionals of the kind, but also by the relationship with a free (non-slave) woman. Prostitute, however, is not only characterized by the relationship with professionals of the kind, but also by the relationship with a free (non-slave) woman. Prostitute is the woman who lives with a man outside marriage, the married woman who deceives her husband and her daughter who is the victim of abduction, seduction or even rape.
Over time, the main causes of women's prostitution are captivity, slavery and poverty. Prostitution was not only an important fun for men, it was also a key element of their lives. A woman, however, was turning to prostitution, and because of the moment of lust.
It was also common for parents themselves to sell or rent their children to pimples, even those who were under the age of ten. We suppose that the motivation of these parents was their total impoverishment. In addition to parents for pimping, husbands have also been accused.
Finally, the concubine at Byzantium did not enjoy the same appreciation as they had in antiquity, and therefore the use of the word from the sources seems to be weak. The majority of them had extensive education, they were particularly beautiful, sophisticated and managed their own property. From the poor prostitutes who plow the streets to find a customer, to the privileged prostitutes who are constantly changing "patrons", it is hard to talk about stagnation. Their main feature was the adoption of bright colors, strong fragrances and intense grooming, which served as a means of attracting customers. Indeed, this fancy dress and sexy grooming was not only part of the professional appearance of public women, it also served as a distinctive difference from the honest. With the passage of time, the adversity faced by women in the process of development is intensifying as they face old age and physical decline. The most lucky ones managed to make a legal marriage or live as a couple with a mate.