Amazon.com Review
Michael Grant, the noted classical historian, opens his newest book by observing that while most classicists can name the Roman emperors in chronological order, few can say anything about Byzantium other than that it was founded by Constantine in the aftermath of a vision in which Christianity became the official religion of his empire. Grant does much to educate his colleagues, and his many readers, in this well-written, heavily illustrated book about Byzantium's first century, when Rome fell to German invaders and Constantinople, far to the east, rose. Byzantium, Grant says, was "in many ways a pretty nasty place," thanks to a succession of despotic governments, civil wars, and intrigues. But it would last a thousand years and leave a mark on world history, still commanding our attention today.
--Gregory McNamee
From Kirkus Reviews
The great popular classical historian (Greek and Roman Historians, 1995; Constantine the Great, 1994; etc.) here meditates briefly on the century that saw the death agony of the Roman Empire and the birth pangs of the ``new Rome'' of the East, a civilization that would persist, against great odds, for almost a thousand years. Since before the age of Constantine the Great (c. 272337 a.d.), the Roman Empire had been divided for administrative convenience into eastern and western halves. Constantine unified the empire, but his achievement was short-lived: After Theodosius I died, in 395 a.d., the two halves became permanently riven into eastern and western empires. The eastern empire, based in Constantine's old capital of Constantinople and held together by vigorous rulers, an all-powerful bureaucracy, and a vital citizen-army, repelled repeated barbarian invasions and gradually coalesced into the Byzantine Empire. Meanwhile, as Grant shows, the old locus of Roman imperium in the West quickly slid into desuetude: Alaric and his Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 a.d. Ganseric and the Vandals repeated this humiliation four decades later. By 476 a.d. petty principalities. Grant deftly sketches the distinctive cultural achievements of the early Byzantines in church architecture and in the visual arts; in literature, Grant points out, the Byzantines were not as accomplished as their western counterparts. In conclusion, Grant laments the sparse attention given the important eastern empire in historical scholarship and credits the Byzantines with the preservation of Western culture during Europe's Dark Ages. So brief as to seem superficial at points, Grant's study nonetheless is impressively erudite and characteristically well researched, and provides a fresh perspective on a century that was truly the best and worst of times. (44 b&w photos, 6 line drawings, not seen) --
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