Read By Lars Brownworth
In AD 476 the Roman Empire fell - or rather, its western half did.
Its eastern half, which would come to be known as the Byzantine Empire,
would endure and often flourish for another 11 centuries. Though its
capital would move to Constantinople, its citizens referred to them-
selves as Roman for the entire duration of the empire's existence.
Indeed, so did its neighbors, allies, and enemies: When the Turkish
Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople in 1453, he took the title
Caesar of Rome, placing himself in a direct line that led back to
Augustus.
For far too many otherwise historically savvy people today, the story
of the Byzantine civilization is something of a void. Yet for more than
a millennium, Byzantium reigned as the glittering seat of Christian
civilization. When Europe fell into the Dark Ages, Byzantium held fast
against Muslim expansion, keeping Christianity alive. When literacy
all but vanished in the West, Byzantium made primary education available
to both sexes. Students debated the merits of Plato and Aristotle and
commonly committed the entirety of Homer's Iliad to memory. Streams
of wealth flowed into Constantinople, making possible unprecedented
wonders of art and architecture, from fabulous jeweled mosaics and
other iconography to the great church known as the Hagia Sophia that
was a vision of heaven on earth. The dome of the Great Palace stood
nearly two hundred feet high and stretched over four acres, and the
city's population was more than twenty times that of London's.
From Constantine, who founded his eponymous city in the year 330, to
Constantine XI, who valiantly fought the empire's final battle more
than a thousand years later, the emperors who ruled Byzantium enacted
a saga of political intrigue and conquest as astonishing as anything
in recorded history. Lost to the West is replete with stories of
assassination, mass mutilation and execution, sexual scheming,
ruthless grasping for power, and clashing armies that soaked ...
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