Byzantines

“ The second most important thing to remember about the Byzantines was that Constantinople never fell into the hands of the enemy. This means that the empire never fell into the hands of the barbarians, for in those days the capital was even more important than it is today, and so in spite of all the lands it governed, Constantinople was the empire. As long as it stood, the empire stood. The Byzantines had plenty of troubles, and more than once saw the turbans and scimitars of the Arabs, and the felt hats and yellow faces of the followers of some steppe-riding khagan, right beneath their walls. ”

“ But in Byzantine days there were very few fabulously rich countries left to conquer, and the Byzantines had to find some other source of wealth. They had to rely on hard work and on their own skill and cleverness. They supported themselves on the little farms that nestled in every Balkan valley and the huge estates that sprawled over Thrace and Anatolia (the Asiatic part of modern Turkey) . They earned a living, sometimes even amassing treasure, in the many industries that were found in every Byzantine city. They became wealthy from their world-wide foreign trade. ”

“ It seems that the Byzantines may not unreasonably have been confident in their ability to sustain a siege. Their fortifications were the admiration of the world, and their strong and lofty walls, we are told, were so skilfully built and cemented that they presented the appearance of one vast continuous block of stone. Visitors to the city in after days hardly knew whether to wonder most at the art and finish displayed in their origin and construction, or at the destructive power of the besieging army of Severus. ”

“ Their army and their navy with its strategoi and drungariuses (generals and admirals) cost them a lot of money and so did their extravagant ambassadors. The church with its own mighty army of high officials and lesser functionaries was very expensive too.
But as long as the Byzantines were not only able to support emperor, army, navy, diplomats, and the church, but were willing to do so, the Byzantine Empire flourished and was great. It was only after they began to economize, when a lot of Byzantines decided they were spending too much on the army, that their troubles began. ”

“ Their lives were spared, and they were sent as prisoners to Athens. Those who had trusted to Athenian clemency were not doomed to disappointment. The Byzantines obtained for themselves the same terms as the citizens of Chalcedon had done. Once more, after a siege of nearly a year, in the winter of 408 B.C., Byzantium returned to its former political condition, and it was one of the most honourable achievements of Alcibiades to have recovered for Athens, as a tributary ally, this most important city. ”

“ As was well said by Gibbon, the mental paralysis of the Byzantines was "the natural effect of their solitary and insulated state." [368] The one civilisation from which Byzantium might latterly have profited—the Saracen—was made tabu by creed, which was further the efficient cause of the sunderance of Byzantine and Italian life. ”

“ Byzantine art is not only wonderful itself, but it shows how the Byzantines helped themselves to everything good that had been done before them. On the walls of a famous tomb in Ravenna, there is a mosaic of two doves at a drinking fountain that might have come from the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. There is also Byzantine art that bubbles over with Greek love of life. Some of it is filled with early Christian saints and symbols, like the peacock and the fish. There is some with the lions and eagles of the ancient Hittites, and others whose fierce, bearded saints are like Assyrian warriors. ”

“ Besides Constantinople itself, there was Smyrna, Thessalonica, Patras, and in the early days, Alexandria. There were several others, many of which are very good seaports even today.
The Byzantines also knew how to promote business. We are apt to think of a world’s fair as something modern, but the Byzantines knew all about them. Every year, in October, they held an enormous trade fair on the Vardar plain outside Thessalonica. There they built a huge temporary wood-and-canvas city of booths and bazaars, and even amid the troubled Middle Ages, merchants and peddlers flocked to it from all over. ”

“ Although a few poor men—like the saint from Asia Minor who had to tend his father’s swine and did not learn to read until he was forty-seven—did not have the chance to be educated, most Byzantines went to school or a university from the time they were five until they were twenty. ”

“ At Byzantium there would be sure to be many who feared and hated Athens, and would be ready to submit to anything rather than again pass under her power. Philip might well think that it might be possible for him to appeal successfully to such persons, and that through them the city might be cajoled into an alliance with himself against Athens. It must have been with some such idea that he made his attempt on Byzantium. But the Byzantines, much to their credit, declined to become his tools, and preferred to stand by the common cause of Greece. ”

“ The next day the Byzantines had the horror increased even above what it had been. For, when the surf had subsided, the whole sea in the vicinity of Byzantium was covered with corpses and wrecks with blood, and many of the remains were cast up on shore, with the result that the catastrophe, now seen in its details, appeared even worse than when in process of consummation.
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The Byzantines straightway, though against their will, surrendered their city. ”

“ The Byzantines preserved classic culture. They preserved Greek literature, Greek science, Greek learning, and even the Greek language. And this at a time when almost everybody in the West had completely forgotten Greek, and as a matter of fact, only churchmen and a handful of ragged scholars even knew Latin.
This was a very important contribution. No civilization ever starts from scratch, and our modern one is based on the renewed interest in classic culture that is called the Revival of Learning. ”

“ They could not help wondering what their fate would be now that their archenemy and rival, Venice, had taken over.
Finally, there were the Byzantines themselves. Proud and haughty noblemen with strange titles you could hardly pronounce. These noblemen moved through the streets arrogantly and did not seem to know that their great days were over. Sometimes a slave walked beside them, carrying a bright-colored umbrella or parasol. Lovely ladies, beautifully dressed, jeweled and painted, and probably with a smile for [Pg 25] the tall, fair-haired northerners. ”

“ Greek fire frightened the enemy even more.
But the Byzantines did not rely only on the army or the navy to win their battles for them. Helping them in every way was the Byzantine diplomatic service. For just as the Byzantines did not ever fight a battle if they could find some other way of winning it, so too they didn’t even begin a war unless [Pg 66] they had to. Why fight if they could persuade an enemy to become their friend and ally? Why fight, and risk their own safety, if they could talk someone else into fighting for them? To the Byzantines, this made sense. ”

“ The Byzantines saw them living fearlessly in all the little towns along the coasts and in the sacred precincts even, as nobody drove them out, for the inhabitants were absolutely panic-stricken and did not know what steps to take. ”

“ We have numerous tirades against the manners of Constantinople preserved in Byzantine literature, and may judge from them something of the faults of the time. It would seem that there was much of the sort of luxury to which ascetic preachers take exception—much splendour of raiment, much ostentatious display of plate and furniture, of horses and chariots. Luxury and evil living often go together, but when we examine all the enormities laid to the charge of the Byzantines, there is less alleged than we might expect. ”

“ Both the barbarians, with their hard-riding horsemen, and the valiant border lords played an important part in defending the Byzantine Empire from its enemies, but the Byzantines never really trusted either group. A barbarian chieftain was far too likely to ride off with his hordes and found a kingdom of his own as Theodoric had done in Italy. A border lord from Asia Minor was too likely to try to become emperor himself. ”

“ Another thing the Byzantines did was to insist on education. Even the mighty French emperor Charlemagne had a hard time if he wanted to spell his way through a book and sign his name. Most Byzantine emperors could not only read and write but were thoroughly educated. Theophilus studied everything from Greek to natural history. Leo the Philosopher composed poems, sermons, and a life of his father. Constantine Born-in-the-Purple was famous for his books on the barbarians and on his empire. ”

“ With Constantine we find the Byzantine epoch in its maturity. With the simplicity of the early Christians we have remarked that everything like representation of the Godhead was eliminated or rather forbidden.
It was the Byzantines who created for the gem market token cameos and intaglios on which were incised effigies of the Holy Family, and incidents in every phase in that series of events that never has been equalled in historic interest in the records of time: the birth, life, trial, sufferings, death, and resurrection of the Son of God. ”

“ In all this we have a good example of the Byzantine attitude of that time. There is, first, frank acknowledgement that originally the sees of Southern Italy and Sicily were under the Pope (whether as Patriarch or as Metropolitan) ; but, because he is no longer in the Roman Empire (of the East, the Empire whose capital was Constantinople) , therefore he has lost all his rights. He is in the hands of Lombards, Goths, or Normans, whom the Byzantines pleasantly dismiss as Barbarians. We see also the typically Byzantine idea that politics must settle the whole question of ecclesiastical order. ”

“ We have already seen that in the case of the Neo-Byzantines or Lesser Greeks, [368] the path of evolution lay 84 through a series of historical vicissitudes in which there was more of artificial forcing than of the insensible growth essential to the formation of a homogeneous people. Owing to its geographical position it was perhaps inevitable from the first that Byzantium should become a cosmopolitan town, whose population should develop little political stability or patriotic coherence. ”

“ The Byzantines were able to keep Constantinople safe because they were one of the few peoples living in the time between the fall of Rome and modern days who had a strong government and one that worked. The rest of the Roman Empire had been divided by conquest into a good hundred or more independent units. These were ruled by kings, princes, dukes, marquises, and counts, and some cities were even free republics headed by wrangling priors. Their boundaries were always changing, and nobody ever knew just who was governing whom today, and who would be tomorrow. ”

“ Though the Byzantines, therefore, are themselves possessed of the first and best advantages of this happy situation, which enables them to make both an easy and a profitable exchange of their superfluous commodities, and to procure in return, without any pain or danger, whatever their own lands fail to furnish ”

“ Byzantium grew rich on commerce. It was the port of call at which every ship entering or leaving the Bosphorus was bound to touch; no craft sailed the Euxine without paying dues to the city at its mouth. Polybius, in a very interesting passage, [120] points out how Byzantium occupied “the most secure and advantageous position of any city in our quarter of the world, as far as the sea is concerned.” Then he continues:
“The Pontus, therefore, being rich in what the rest of the world requires to support life, the Byzantines are absolute masters in this respect. ”

“ Of all ways of making a living, farming probably came first. Rich or poor, almost every Byzantine had an eye for the land, that is, everyone except the city mobs who couldn’t bear to be too far away from the excitement of the Circus.
In fact, many people say that the reason the Byzantine Empire finally lost its wealth was because the average Byzantine preferred to invest his money in an estate rather than in foreign trade. The Byzantines let foreign trade fall into the hands of the Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans. ”

“ With the Byzantines, however rude the cutting, every line is lovely, and the animals or men are placed in any attitudes which secure ornamental effect, sometimes impossible ones, always severe, restrained, or languid. ”

“ Under Claudius II. the remainder of the Byzantines fought bravely against the Goths. (Trebell. Poll. Claud. 9.) In the civil wars which succeeded the abdication of Diocletian, the fortifications of Byzantium had been strengthened: Licinius, after the battle of Adrianople, retired to this stronghold; Constantine pursued the siege so vigorously, by constructing mounds of an equal height with the ramparts, and erecting towers upon their foundation, from which the besieged were galled by large stones and darts hurled by engines, that the town at length surrendered. ”

“ There was an empire, but it was now a Latin empire and no one but the crusaders recognized it. Even they did not leave it all its territory. Venice took over a third of Constantinople and most of the Byzantine islands in the Aegean and Ionian seas. Every knight or baron who wanted it was given a fief or a principality in southern Greece. Besides that, three Byzantine “governments in exile,” each claiming to be the real one, sprang into being. ”