Let me begin with a short tale from a Byzantine text that records the cultural achievements of Late Antiquity. In a brief narrative from the Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai, an anonymous collection of descriptions of Constantinopolitan monuments written in the eighth or early ninth century (Mango 1963; Cameron and Herrin 1984; Dagron 1984: 29-48; Sevcenko 1992: 289-93; James 1996), we find what we may regard as the encapsulated completion of the cultural workings of Late Antiquity; a Byzantine review of the ways in which Late Antiquity reacted to its own classical and Greco-Roman heritage (for which see Averil Cameron 1996). In this tale ( Parastaseis 27-8), two friends - one of whom is the narrator - visit an abandoned part of the city in order to, as the narrator claims, narrate and explain (historein) the statues that exist there. Coming to a late antique statue, they stop and marvel at it (thaumazein). Suddenly, the statue falls and kills the narrator’s friend. Entirely shocked, the narrator first tries to hide the body, then declares the event to the authorities. People gather amazed at the miraculous event (again, thaumazein). A ‘‘philosopher’’ divines that, according to a text of the past, the statue’s fall was the work ofdivine providence, and the emperor orders the statue to be buried, ‘‘for it was impossible for it to be destroyed.’’ The narrator concludes with an exhortation to his reader: ‘‘Studying these things in truth [aletheia], pray not to fall into temptation, and beware when you behold the old statues, especially the pagan ones.’’
As the story suggests, what collapses upon the head of the unfortunate Byzantine viewer is not simply a statue. It is also a system of knowledge that collapses, a method of viewing, and a mode of representation. By the end of the story, explanatory narrative (historia) has been replaced by truth (aletheia); truth that is now based on textual authority from the past, to be interpreted by an authority in the present and enforced by imperial power. Aesthetic marvel has been displaced by miraculous wonder. And an awesome materiality (the statue is pachys, heavy and thick) has been hidden - buried, as it were - under a prescriptive discourse of moral imperative and perfect clarity. The narrator tells us that he has studied with precision (akribeia) and is making visible (phaneroun) that which he is narrating. This movement from the old to the new, as thematized by this short tale, implies the completion of a cultural project. It is as if the ambiguous and dangerous world of antiquity was safely buried, Late Antiquity had completed its work, and the Byzantine Middle Ages could begin.
World History
