This study places the Byzantine hero, Digenis Akritas, in his mediaeval setting, Anatolia, one of a myriad cultures and languages. The author attempts to displace the ubiquitous Greek nationalist ideology of a Digenis battling against Turks,to his historical, empiricist and epic setting, whilst at the same time, emphasising the hero's choice to live along the border between Greek Byzantine and Moslem Arab far from the splendeurs of Constantinople and its tyrannical power, where his geographic marginality provides him the means of exercising the art of alterity, this art inherited from both his dual-origin, and his dwelling in the deserts of Anatolia.