Chronology

It is first necessary to clarify our terminology when dealing with Byzantium. Once Constantine the Great had created his “New Rome” at the strategic position of Byzantium (modern Istanbul) in 330 AD, the Roman Empire reoriented itself to a new focus, not only administratively but also in economic and military organization. The association of this change with official tolerance and soon state support for Christianity represents another vital rupture in the Roman way of life as it had developed over the preceding 1000 years. For these reasons many scholars commence the Byzantine era in the early fourth century AD. This “Byzantine” civilization would only last some 300 years in all the Roman provinces which the Empire lost to the advance of Islam from the seventh century AD (North Africa and the Levant), so scholars of the Levant call the last part of this period Late Byzantine. This is confusing, since in the core regions of the new Roman world which from the fifth century were ruled from Byzantium-Constantinople (the South Balkans and Anatolia), Eastern Roman imperial power is in force till 1204 AD, and, after an interruption between then till 1261 when Crusader Franks occupy the capital, “Roman” power is restored till 1453 when the capture of the city by the Ottoman Turks definitively ends the Eastern Roman Empire. For Greek scholars then, Early Byzantine can begin with Constantine, Middle Byzantine with an important change in the nature of the Empire in the ninth century AD, and Late Byzantine with the Frankish occupation, ending with the Ottomans.

Actually, many archaeologists (including myself) prefer a different scheme to suit the material realities of Eastern Roman life. Till the seventh century AD the Roman Empire remained dominant in its Eastern provinces and its material culture and organization rest on forms and models which had developed in the third and fourth centuries AD. From the midsixth to the eighth century, by which time the Western Roman provinces had been lost to Barbarian kingdoms (with brief episodes of recapture and with minor footholds surviving in Southern Italy), a series of crises afflicted the surviving Eastern Empire, almost destroying it on many occasions. However, by the ninth century it re-emerged as a great power in the Mediterranean world. This imperial renewal also coincides with major changes in material culture (especially the emergence ofa distinctively “medieval” ceramic assemblage), novel urban forms, church architecture, and art, and is associated with a series of effective emperors (the Macedonian dynasty). Hence we shall define the era ca. 400—650 AD as Late Roman; the transitional era (“Dark Age”) 650 to mid-ninth century as Early Byzantine; and the era of greatest flourishing, from then to 1204 AD, as Middle Byzantine; finally 1204—1453 AD forms the Late Byzantine period. The latter includes Frankish-Crusader times when Greece was divided between Byzantines and these hostile colonizers.

“Byzantine” civilization was coined by Early Modern Enlightenment scholars. The inhabitants of that society called themselves “Romans” (Rhomaioi), expressing their sense of continuity as the surviving Eastern Roman Empire. Even modern Greeks, aware of their rich Medieval heritage, call the essence of Greek identity “Rhomaiosyne” (literally Roman-ness) (Leigh Fermor 1966). Nonetheless this “Eastern Roman Empire” from ca. 650—1453 underwent transformations, so although there was much inherited from the wider Empire before the collapse of the Roman West in the fifth century AD, there was far more change within the following 800 years. Latin, for example, did not survive for long as an official language once Constantinople formed the focus of the Eastern Empire, unsurprising when even in Rome’s heyday the Eastern Provinces had remained dominated by Greek and local languages such as Aramaic.

As yet Byzantium is little known outside the Southern Balkans, and is seen as a strange culture with wonderful art but disreputable politics, in any case out of the path linking the great achievements of the Ancient Greeks and Romans to Modern Western Civilization. Hence the prolonged neglect of its archaeology and history by students and the general public outside of Greece (Gregory 1984, 2006). Historical sources are also surprisingly limited for such a powerful and long-lived civilization, but this is mostly due to their destruction through war. A popular image is of a static, backward society run by corrupt priests and tyrannical emperors or their scheming courts (“byzantine” is a term used today to denote a tortuous and possibly devious administrative organization). The seeming lack of development in its best-known remains, churches and their icons, appears to confirm its stagnant nature. Yet of course no civilization could really survive so long without adaptation. But there is a core of truth in the stereotype of continuity within Byzantine history: the basic notion of the Empire remained the same. It was the Kingdom of God on Earth, a pale reflection of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the emperor was God’s earthly ruler. Since the emperor was expected to maintain order on Earth in imitation of that in Heaven, ritual and ceremonial were a central feature of court life (Haldon 2000).