Simplifying the Byzantine
Praises a comprehensive, comprehensible overview of the millennium-spanning history of Byzantium
PETER HEATHER account of the apparently triumphant Justinian in the sixth century and the consequent deluge of imperial collapse at the hands of Islam in the seventh. Unlike some of the competition, Harris is crystal clear that the Byzantium that emerged was as much a successor state to the Roman empire as any of the contemporary kingdoms of western Europe.
The key era of new expansion in the ninth and tenth centuries receives similar focus, as do the final centuries of Latin dominion and the last great dynasts struggling to retain power in the face of the Genoese, popes and everyone else with a finger in the imperial pie. This is my favourite part of the book – perhaps because it’s the era I know least – but it’s also Harris’s speciality, and that shows.
Another huge virtue is the refusal to be tied to political history. Harris rightly emphasises that what made Byzantium distinctive was its long-term synthesis of classical culture and Orthodox Christianity, and the book explores this key dimension to the full.
To pack in so much, choices have to be made, and there are points at which I would have chosen differently. For my tastes, the glory-to-disaster story of the sixth and seventh centuries remains just a bit descriptive. Cause and effect here is currently hotly contested, and Harris doesn’t commit himself. But he would surely object to the losses that my choices would entail and, overall, he triumphantly overcomes the limits of his brief to take the reader to the heart of what it
meant to be Byzantine.