Customer Reviews

Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire (The Greenwood Press Daily Life Through History Series)

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In his book "Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire" Marcus Rautman has outdone himself. In this book, he has skillfully brought together insights about the Byzantine way of life from various fields in a well-organized and easy to read format.

Reading the book, you can help but feel as if you are actually visiting the Byzantine Empire. There are sections of the book that describe how Byzantines perceived life, their daily routines, the Byzantine family, and how life varied in Constantinople, larger towns and the countryside. As well, there are special sections devoted to the lives of soldiers, monks, artists and scholars. In these descriptions, Rautman explains how the situation changed at different points in the Empire's long history.

If you would like a solid background on Byzantine society, read this book. You will not be disappointed.

Marcus Rautman has performed splendidly in this comprehensive overview of daily life in the Byzantine realm. He treats a variety of subjects, including cities, the countryside, the military, religion, art, and intellectual pursuits. He examines topics as basic as money, food, and clothing but also gives considerable attention to such matters as pressing olives, setting up an army camp, and becoming a monk. While the book is largely a survey spanning the entire "Byzantine millennium", Rautman now and then points out specific changes that occurred within this period, such as the transition to a more meat-centered diet around the seventh century. The author is also to be commended for the eminent readability of his text. He manages masterfully to present his great abundance of facts in way that neither overwhelms nor bores the reader. Also, his sentence structure is sound, his transitions well executed, and his grammar refreshingly correct - which makes all the more puzzling the rare misspellings that do creep in. All in all, this is an exceptionally well researched and delightfully written guide to daily life in a relatively little-studied civilization.

I got this book for my husband who wanted to find out more about this time period. But it is just way too detailed for the casual reader. For instance, he was not interested in the clothes of that period.