Byzantine

How should I tell you the story of Byzantium?  Perhaps it’s a story of beginnings, the story of the emperor Constantine, who made not one but two decisions nearly two thousand years ago which shape the world we live in today.  Perhaps it’s a story of intrigue and betrayal, the story of how the Christian church split in two and how the Byzantines were betrayed by the very people they thought were coming to save them.  Perhaps it’s a story of strength, the story of how the empire forced the armies of Islam to head west into north Africa, rather than north, into Europe. Perhaps it’s a story of endings, a story of how the walls of the city held inviolate for a thousand years, until the army of Mehmed II finally captured it.  Or perhaps it’s the story of new beginnings, the story of how the oncoming Ottoman armies drove scholars and intellectuals from the empire to Italy, where they seeded and fertilized the movement that was later to become known as the Renaissance.

However you tell it, the story of Byzantium is a fascinating one and little known.  When I was at school, the story we were told about European history was that there were the Greeks, then the Romans, then the dark ages, where nothing much happened for a thousand years, and then the Renaissance, where everyone pretty much rediscovered the Greeks and history got started again.  The Roman empire fell in the fifth century, we were told, bringing the curtain down on progress in Europe but what our teachers never told us - perhaps they didn’t know - was that the Roman empire didn’t fall. It continued for another millennia, growing, developing, changing but still recognizably Roman, with a series of emperors who traced their lineage back to Augustus, the first Roman emperor.  Even the inhabitants of the empire called themselves Roman, even though Rome itself had long since been lost to the empire.

Originally founded around 660 BC, Byzantium occupied a favoured place on a peninsula in the Bosphorus.  The emperor Constantine, who never really liked the city of Rome, recognised its potential and ordered a new city to be built there, one which he suggested should be known as “new Rome” but which came to be known as the city of Constantine - Constantinople.  Such was Constantinople’s fame that, during the European middle ages, it was simply known as “the city” - everyone knew which city you meant. In fact, Constantinople’s current name, Istanbul, is a derivation of medieval Greek and simply means “to the city.”

Much of Byzantine history has been lost but if you visit Istanbul - and I recommend that you do because it’s a beautiful city - you can still see traces.  There are the gargantuan city walls, the magnificent Hagia Sophia, the echoes of the Hippodrome, where the Blues and the Greens used to meet, and occasionally fight, and the Milion, the point from which all distances in the empire were measured - literally the centre of the world for the Byzantines.  It was Byzantium that rekindled my interest in history and there’s a fantastic project called Byzantium1200, dedicated to recreating the city virtually, as it was in the year 1200.  You can find their website here and if you want to know more about Byzantine history, I can’t recommend Lars Brownworth’s podcasts on the subject highly enough - you can find his website here.