The Byzantines never called themselves Byzantines. Up to the day the Turks took Constantinople,
they referred to themselves as Romaioi – Romans – and remained keenly aware that their emperors were
the heirs of Caesar and Augustus. Describing the medieval incarnation of the Eastern Roman Empire
as the Byzantine Empire is nothing more than a traditional, and sometimes misleading, convention.
The distinction is useful, however, to the degree that it reflects the profound transformation of
Roman society during the millennium after the fall of the western empire.
The chronological division between “Roman” and “Byzantine” is most often placed in the
seventh century, when generations of almost continuous warfare with the Persians, Slavs,
and Arabs reduced the Eastern Roman Empire to an impoverished fragment of its former self.
Throughout this crisis, the intellectual heritage of antiquity remained alive
in the schools and monasteries of Constantinople. As the empire revived,
that heritage would spark a cultural renaissance. But at least on the popular level, a great deal
of knowledge about the past had been lost during the crises of the seventh and eighth centuries.
The identities of the ancient statues that loomed over the public places of Constantinople,
for example, were forgotten, and the statues themselves came to be regarded
as magical talismans. Ancient ruins and temples, likewise, were dreaded as the homes of demons.
At every level of Byzantine society, knowledge of Latin became rare outside
legal circles (whose members had to read the works of the Roman jurists).
Although closer contacts with Western Europe encouraged a modest revival in Latin learning
from the eleventh century onward, very few Byzantines ever read Latin texts for pleasure.
Byzantine students were not normally exposed to works of Roman history.
Although they might be introduced to a few famous figures, such as Caesar and Nero,
in the context of rhetorical exercises, they knew even these as little more than names.
Only those with a special interest in the Roman past read more deeply.
Such scholars were rare; but as we’ll see, they had important resources at their disposal.
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Back to Byzantium. Even after the crises of the seventh and eighth centuries, Greek histories of
the classical Roman Empire could still be found at Constantinople, and were still being read.
During the ninth century, for example, the scholar (and sometime patriarch) Photius
produced summaries of nearly 400 works, about half of them pre-Christian, which he had read.
His list included Roman historians of the classical period, notably Appian, chronicler
of the civil wars that ended the Republic. Although the breadth of Photius’ reading was
exceptional, the essentials of Roman history were available to every literate Byzantine via
the chronicles that comprised the most popular and enduring form of Byzantine historiography.
These works, pioneered in late antiquity by Eusebius of Caesarea and other patristic authors,
were essentially religious in character, focused on salvation history and the growth of the church.
They made reference, however,
to the chronological framework of the Roman monarchy, Republic, and Empire.
A more substantial, if diffuse, account of Roman history was available in the sprawling
tenth-century encyclopedia known as the Suda. Although most of the historical entries in this
very popular work deal with late antiquity, about a third explore such topics as the institutions
of the Roman Republic, biographies of early Roman emperors, and Trajan’s wars of conquest.
Perhaps the most intriguing middle Byzantine survey of Roman history is Michael Psellus’
Historia Syntomos, written for the benefit of his pupil, the future emperor Michael VII. Beginning
with Romulus and the kings of Rome, Psellus covers the foundation of the Roman Republic, and
then skips ahead to Caesar, Augustus, and their successors, providing a brief moralizing biography
of each emperor. The fall of the Western Roman Empire is ignored, and the string of imperial
lives extended to Basil II, who died in 1025 – only a generation before Psellus was writing.
By Psellus’ time, many classical texts existed in only a handful of copies, and were correspondingly
likely to disappear, whether from simple neglect or in one of the fires that periodically swept
Constantinople. The Crusader sack of 1204, for example, seems to have destroyed a considerable
part of the classical literature that had survived to that point, including a number of histories.
Yet despite the slow disappearance of ancient literature, educated Byzantines never forgot
their Roman roots. Not long before the fall of Constantinople, Emperor Manuel II marveled
at the ruins of a city founded by Pompey the Great fourteen centuries earlier. On seeing a
deserted plain nearby, he reflected: “This place must have had a name,
when it was fortunate enough to be ruled and peopled by Romans. But when I ask what that name
was…no one can tell me. Most of the cities are in ruins…and when I ask what they were called,
I receive the reply “men destroyed those cities, but time took their names.”
This Byzantine emperor, at least, knew how fragile history can be.
For more on the relationship between the Byzantines and their Roman roots, check out
my interview with Professor Anthony Kaldellis. You’ll find that video and other episodes of
the Toldinstone podcast, along with much more content, on my channel Toldinstone Footnotes.
I have another channel called Scenic Routes to the Past, which is dedicated
to historically-themed travel. You'll find both channels linked in the description.
Please consider joining other viewers in supporting toldinstone on Patreon. You might also
enjoy my book, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants. Thanks for Watching.