In this article strategies of translating ancient texts are considered in the light of two main oppositions: domesticating/foreignizing translation, modernization/archaization within both interlingual and intralingual translation. Special attention is paid to the practice of intralingual translation in Byzantine literature, caused by a pronounced hierarchy of registers in Byzantine Greek: from spoken to classicizing literary language. The examples considered in this article show how much an original text was transformed by this practice, which allows to make a conclusion that the translators were coauthors of the translated texts.