The Byzantine Empire Serapis Classics

Two thousand five hundred and fifty-eight years ago a little fleet of galleys toiled painfully against the current up the long strait of the Hellespont, rowed across the broad Propontis, and came to anchor in the smooth waters of the first inlet which cuts into the European shore of the Bosphorus. There a long crescent-shaped creek, which after-ages were to know as the Golden Horn, strikes inland for seven miles, forming a quiet backwater from the rapid stream which runs outside. On the headland, enclosed between this inlet and the open sea, a few hundred colonists disembarked, and hastily secured themselves from the wild tribes of the inland, by running some rough sort of a stockade across the ground from beach to beach. Thus was founded the city of Byzantium...

Two thousand five hundred and fifty-eight years ago a little fleet of galleys toiled painfully against the current up the long strait of the Hellespont, rowed across the broad Propontis, and came to anchor in the smooth waters of the first inlet which cuts into the European shore of the Bosphorus. There a long crescent-shaped creek, which after-ages were to know as the Golden Horn, strikes inland for seven miles, forming a quiet backwater from the rapid stream which runs outside. On the headland, enclosed between this inlet and the open sea, a few hundred colonists disembarked, and hastily secured themselves from the wild tribes of the inland, by running some rough sort of a stockade across the ground from beach to beach. Thus was founded the city of Byzantium...

THERE WAS A TIME, NOT so very long ago, when the taunt was true that history was written as if it were a mere string of anecdotal biographies of great men. But for the last forty years the pendulum has been swinging so much in the other direction, that it has become necessary to enforce the lesson that the biographies of great men are, after all, a most important part of history. It is well to have conceptions of the streams of tendency and the typical developments of every age, but the blessed word "evolution" will not account for everything, and it is absurd to neglect the influence of the great personalities. Roman history in particular has been so much treated of late years as a mere example of constitutional growth and degeneration, or as a bundle of interesting administrative and legal details, that it seems not out of place to recall that other aspect of it which was more familiar to elder generations, and to look at it for a moment from the personal and biographical point of view, with Plutarch before us as well as Mommsen and Marquardt's Stoatsrecht and Staatsverwaltung. This is all the more rational because in the last century of the Roman Republic we find ourselves in a time of dominating personalities. In Rome's earlier days this was conspicuously not the case, and her history was (as has been truly said) the history of great achievements done by men who were themselves not great. But from the Gracchi onward we come to a period in which individuals make and mar the course of the times, when the doings of a Sulla and a Caesar, or even of a Marius and a Pompey, form the main determining element in the history of the day...

What caused the fall of the Roman Empire? The first reply that occurs to us is this: That the Romans were corrupt and enfeebled by corruption; the Barbarians, while rougher, were also stronger and less corrupt. When the latter had once crossed the Rhine and the Danube, their ultimate victory was assured; the Empire was bound to fall, new social conditions were bound to arise. But what had corrupted and weakened a people that had been for so many centuries a model of discipline, virtue, and strength - a people that had conquered the world? Its corruption was a consequence, not a cause, and was the first symptom of the decline that had already begun. The Empire that Livy had seen bending beneath the burden of its own greatness could not last for ever...

George Finlay's History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires - Volume Two covers the period of history from 666 to 1057. Finlay's work is a detailed history of some of the world's great empires. Volume Two is divided into two distinct books, both included in this publication. Book one is entitled The Contest with the Iconoclasts and covers the period of history from 717 to 867. This book opens with a discussion of the Byzantine Empire under the rule of the Isaurian Dynasty, also known as the Syrian Dynasty. Other chapters in book one are devoted to the reigns of Michael I and Leo V, The Amorian Dynasty, and a general look at the state of the Byzantine Empire during the time period being discussed. Book two examines the consolidation of Byzantine legislation, a period of conquest and military achievement, and what is deemed a period of stationary prosperity. Throughout the work Finlay makes frequent references to other historians whose work he has relied upon, although no bibliography is included. Finlay has put together an extensive history of the Byzantine and Greek Empires, demonstrating an impressive understanding of the major themes in the history of the Byzantines and Greeks. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

According to history books, the Roman Empire ended in 476 CE with the fall of Rome. But if you asked most people alive at that time, they would have pointed you to what they considered the continuation of the Roman Empire—the civilization we now call the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines, however, were more than just a remnant of Roman glory. At its geographical peak, the Byzantine Empire stretched out across the Mediterranean world. Culturally, the Byzantines both preserved the knowledge of the classical world, much of which was lost in the West, and added to it. Inside you will read about... ✓ A Divided Empire ✓ The Fall of the West ✓ Rising to Glory ✓ An Age of War ✓ The Destruction of Icons ✓ The House of Macedon ✓ The Comnenian Revival ✓ The Final Decline And much more! Shaped by its classical roots, its Christian religion, and the changing medieval world, the story of the Byzantine Empire is one of both glorious victories and terrible defeats, of a civilization that rose from the brink of destruction again and again, and of the development of a culture whose vestiges remain today.

Excerpt from The Empresses of Constantinople In concluding an earlier volume on the mistresses of the western Roman Empire I observed that, as the gallery of fair and frail ladies closed, we stood at the door of "the long, quaint gallery of the Byzantine Empresses." It seemed natural and desirable to pass on to this more interesting and less familiar series of the mistresses of the eastern Roman Empire, and the present volume will therefore tell the story of the Empresses, or Queens, as they preferred to be called, who occupied the throne set up by Constantine in New Rome, or ancient Byzantium, until the victorious Turk thrust it disdainfully aside to make way for his more spacious harem. The eastern or Byzantine Empire has long been regarded in Europe as a world of far less interest than that which centred on the banks of the Tiber: a world of monotonous piety and little adventure or spirit, almost Chinese in its placid and unchanging adherence to traditional and very conventional forms. One is tempted to attribute this error, not merely to the longer concealment of Byzantine antiquities from our fathers and the superior attractiveness of Italy, but, in some measure, to the disproportion of Gibbon's work. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.