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A new history of Byzantium reveals the inner workings of a late antique empire

thecritic.co.uk

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Re: A new history of Byzantium reveals the inner workings of a late antique empire

#71

Post by Keysh »

User23 wrote: post #17
dan-robertson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to note is that the Greek works likely could not have survived medieval Europe if they had left Constantinople a lot earlier. There were two great advantages to renaissance scholars: 1. The works were still in their original Greek (rather than translations into Latin done long ago, or the translations from Greek to Arabic (and then to Latin) that came in through moorish Spain). 2. Religious attitudes allowe…

I think you’re underestimating the deleterious effects of the Turkish naval domination of the Mediterranean on intellectual communication. The enlightenment was made possible by Lepanto.

Uh, no. The Enlightenment -- which was a phenomenon of Western and Central Europe, not the Mediterranean -- was in no way affected by Turkish naval control of the (Eastern) Mediterranean.

Re: A new history of Byzantium reveals the inner workings of a late antique empire

#72

Post by Keysh »

KoftaBob wrote: post #34
dan-robertson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to note is that the Greek works likely could not have survived medieval Europe if they had left Constantinople a lot earlier. There were two great advantages to renaissance scholars: 1. The works were still in their original Greek (rather than translations into Latin done long ago, or the translations from Greek to Arabic (and then to Latin) that came in through moorish Spain). 2. Religious attitudes allowe…

> if a book disagreed with the bible it was heresy and should be destroyed, and if it agreed with the bible it was unnecessary and could be destroyed. Not sure where you're getting this from, but it's suspiciously similar to this commentary by Islamic Caliph Omar, where he was talking about the books in the Library of Alexandria. "Alexandria was captured by the Muslim army of 'Amr ibn al-'As. Several later Arabic sou…

Note that the oldest version of that story is due to a Christian Arab writing centuries later, complaining about all the bad things Muslims have done. There's no credible evidence from a non-axe-grinding source that anything like that happened.

Not to mention the fact that the Library had ceased to exist by the 4th Century, long before Omar showed up.

(Though I agree with you that the original comment looks like a recycled version of the Omar story.)

Re: A new history of Byzantium reveals the inner workings of a late antique empire

#73

Post by Keysh »

pumpkinhead wrote: post #31
qiskit wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> helped kindle the European Renaissance as we know it. The italian renaissance started in the 14th century for sure and maybe even in 13th century depending on who you ask. Though the exact date can be disputed, nobody disputes the fact that it started long before the fall of the byzantine empire in the mid 15th century. And the italian renaissance had more to do with direct trade opening up between europe and china…

"Interesting tidbit, the mongol empire had a significant but indirect part in the "discovery" of the americas by columbus." So did the Ottomans. Their monopoly of the eastern routes caused the Western kingdoms to go the other direction.

The Ottomans did not get a monopoly on eastern routes until they conquered Mameluke Egypt in the early 1500s. Western European (particularly Portuguese) attempts to go "the other direction" started in the 1400s.

Re: A new history of Byzantium reveals the inner workings of a late antique empire

#74

Post by KoftaBob »

Keysh wrote: post #72
KoftaBob wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if a book disagreed with the bible it was heresy and should be destroyed, and if it agreed with the bible it was unnecessary and could be destroyed. Not sure where you're getting this from, but it's suspiciously similar to this commentary by Islamic Caliph Omar, where he was talking about the books in the Library of Alexandria. "Alexandria was captured by the Muslim army of 'Amr ibn al-'As. Several later Arabic sou…

Note that the oldest version of that story is due to a Christian Arab writing centuries later, complaining about all the bad things Muslims have done. There's no credible evidence from a non-axe-grinding source that anything like that happened. Not to mention the fact that the Library had ceased to exist by the 4th Century, long before Omar showed up. (Though I agree with you that the original comment looks like a re…

For sure, I should've mentioned that even the quote by Omar itself is suspect in terms of whether it was ever said, let alone whether it was Omar who had anything to do with the demise of the Library of Alexandria.

Re: A new history of Byzantium reveals the inner workings of a late antique empire

#75

Post by icodar »

rnmwfQ3f wrote: post #42
dr_dshiv wrote: post #6

Isn’t it wild that the Roman Empire lasted until the 1400s, only to finally fall to the Ottoman Empire? But as the Empire fell, a large set of manuscripts were brought by the great Plethon to Cosimo d’Medici. Marsilio Ficino’s translation of Greek classics into Latin—like the complete works of Plato and the Hermetica—helped kindle the European Renaissance as we know it.

The Ottoman Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire, not the end of it. If you were a Greek living in the Byzantine Empire – or as they described themselves, a Roman living in the Roman Empire – the Ottomans were just the new Roman Emperors. The Roman bureaucracy, civil institutions, and daily life changed very little. People don't normally acknowledge it because both the Holy Roman Empire and the Russian Emp…

This is normal behavior. Some early Roman emperors also dreamed of becoming like Alexander the Great. Today Putin dreams of becoming like Napoleon Bonaparte.

Re: A new history of Byzantium reveals the inner workings of a late antique empire

#77

Post by somedude895 »

Archelaos wrote: post #76

If the illustration should show Constantinople in the period the book deals with, it is off by many centuries. Windmills were a development of the 12th century. It is like placing a knight on a motorbike instead of a horse.

> It is like placing a knight on a motorbike instead of a horse.

I just wondered if in a thousand years the lines of the different eras will become irrelevant enough that this could be a representation of the olden times. There would be plenty of photographic evidence proving that people on motorbikes never wore knight's armor, but it's possible that detail isn't important in that context.

Re: A new history of Byzantium reveals the inner workings of a late antique empire

#78

Post by Archelaos »

somedude895 wrote: post #77
Archelaos wrote: post #76

If the illustration should show Constantinople in the period the book deals with, it is off by many centuries. Windmills were a development of the 12th century. It is like placing a knight on a motorbike instead of a horse.

> It is like placing a knight on a motorbike instead of a horse. I just wondered if in a thousand years the lines of the different eras will become irrelevant enough that this could be a representation of the olden times. There would be plenty of photographic evidence proving that people on motorbikes never wore knight's armor, but it's possible that detail isn't important in that context.

> There would be plenty of photographic evidence proving that people on motorbikes never wore knight's armor

Really? -- See: https://data8.lustich.de/bilder/l/14804-ritter-auf-motorrad....

Re: A new history of Byzantium reveals the inner workings of a late antique empire

#79

Post by evol262 »

mbg721 wrote: post #43
rnmwfQ3f wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ottoman Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire, not the end of it. If you were a Greek living in the Byzantine Empire – or as they described themselves, a Roman living in the Roman Empire – the Ottomans were just the new Roman Emperors. The Roman bureaucracy, civil institutions, and daily life changed very little. People don't normally acknowledge it because both the Holy Roman Empire and the Russian Emp…

Surely this is a Ship of Theseus situation, isn't it? There may have been little change from year to year, but a red-blooded Jupiter-Optimus-Maximus-fearing classical Roman citizen transplanted into the future would have been horrified at various moments, first when the Republic became an Empire, again when Christianity took over, when the Empire was split in the Tetrarchy, and when it became apparent that the Greek-…

This is completely arbitrary. Both from the sense that, as you mentioned, there are a number of inflection points prior to that, and in "Greek-speaking" being distinctive at all.

If the classical Roman citizen weren't horrified at the organizational changes under Diocletian, or the difference in response between Adrianopole and Cannae, or moving the Imperial seat, or Romanized barbarians leading legionary armies (all of which were 100+ years before the fall of the west), they'd keep going.

The fact that the population in the East spoke Greek (and Syraic, and Aramaic, and a bunch of other languages) is a meaningless distinction. The West never truly had a formalized language anyway, at least among the citizens. The East had the same history, the same institutions, the same government

Re: A new history of Byzantium reveals the inner workings of a late antique empire

#80

Post by evol262 »

coldtea wrote: post #61
quanto wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the traditional break when the West finally gave up is as good as any. Except that the Greek-speaking part was as Roman as the Latin-speaking part in culture, heritage, bureaucracy, governance, and self-identity. The later Western European historians' designation of the East as "Byzantine" (read: not "real" Romans) is much motivated by the West Europe's desire to see themselves as intellectual descendants o…

> Except that the Greek-speaking part was as Roman as the Latin-speaking part in culture, heritage, bureaucracy, governance, and self-identity. Not that much. It was roman in leadership and had the roman legal structures, but it was always the area of prior Greece and the Hellenistic kindgoms, which had millenia of history and culture all of its own (to the point of the Roman's saying that when they conquered it mill…

That's also true of the areas in Southern Italy, Sicily, North Africa, and Illyria. Nothing about the East differentiated it, and the Romans saying that it conquered them culturally were the same as the Americans now lamenting that the US has seen cultural changes. "Oh no! You're not sending consular armies out every year to acquire new territory as your sole cultural identity!" was the complaint.

Completing the conquest of the Mediterranean basin and being left bordering only states against whom the Romans never had any particular success, the Sahara, (Parthians/Sassanids) or holding the line against rotating groups of peoples pushed further west in the Balkans and Germania left the Roman state without obvious paths to expansion. That does not mean that Hellenistic states "conquered them culturally".

If you think the West was some unified area with "Latin-speaking" culture, heritage, bureaucracy, and self-identity, you'd need to write a thesis-length paper justifying it no matter what century. Even the Italian peninsula was none of those things until long after the establishment of the Principate, at which point wealth had already precluded the existence of men like Cincinnatus.

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