User:Biz/The New Roman Empire

The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium

Kaldellis, Anthony

Citation (APA): Kaldellis, A. (2021). The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium [Kindle iOS version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com Introduction

Highlight(yellow) - Page 3 · Location 150

In no other field of research is the identity of the people being studied denied so strenuously as in Byzantine Studies.

Part One: A New Empire

Highlight(yellow) - 1. New Rome and the New Romans > Page 13 · Location 328

Constantinople began as a Roman imperial foundation, not a Christian capital, a concept that did not yet exist.

Highlight(yellow) - 1. New Rome and the New Romans > Page 13 · Location 339

Chariot races featuring the Blue, Green, Red, and White teams were centuries-old at Rome and would continue for another nine hundred years at New Rome, until 1204, making them the longest-lived sporting events in world history.

Highlight(yellow) - 1. New Rome and the New Romans > Page 16 · Location 386

No other state in history has copied-and-pasted its capital, the city from which it took its name, and bilocated it to a former frontier province. And why did Constantine do so?

Highlight(yellow) - 1. New Rome and the New Romans > Page 19 · Location 441

By this point in Roman history, “Rome” was less a physical city than an ideal of political community, and it had expanded to encompass the provinces.

Highlight(yellow) - 1. New Rome and the New Romans > Page 21 · Location 495

It became an official name of the state only in the eleventh century. Romanía reflected the idea that “the empire of the Romans should be imagined as a single, unified city,” as the philosopher-senator Themistios put it in 366.32

Highlight(yellow) - 1. New Rome and the New Romans > Page 24 · Location 580

In elevating Themistios himself to the Senate, Constantius had seen it as a fair exchange in which one side bestowed “Roman dignity” while the other brought “Hellenic wisdom”—a fitting definition of the civilization to come.

Highlight(yellow) - 1. New Rome and the New Romans > Page 25 · Location 613

Another handsome resource were the treasures of the ancient temples, which Constantine, a Christian, forced open and melted down to mint coins in huge quantities. This perk is rarely noted in modern discussions of Constantine’s Christianity.

Highlight(yellow) - 2. Government and the Social Order > Page 34 · Location 829

The groundwork for the separation of the two halves of the Roman empire had been laid well before 395.

Highlight(yellow) - 2. Government and the Social Order > Page 36 · Location 879

This shifted power away from local authorities to surveyors and assessors appointed by the center.

Highlight(yellow) - 2. Government and the Social Order > Page 37 · Location 889

By paying salaries to its high officials, increasingly in coin, the state thereby constructed a social order in which imperial officials emerged as new elites. The core of the later Roman state was, then, a vast apparatus of redistribution.

Highlight(yellow) - 2. Government and the Social Order > Page 39 · Location 937

The family farm was likely the dominant mode of agriculture, not the vast proto-feudal estate preferred by past scholarship, and this probably remained the case throughout east Roman history.

Highlight(yellow) - 2. Government and the Social Order > Page 39 · Location 956

However, while the status may have originated in such arrangements, the freedom of coloni was increasingly limited and they were bound to the land in a way that constituted them as a distinct legal category between free and slave.

Highlight(yellow) - 2. Government and the Social Order > Page 41 · Location 987

This was one reason why a hereditary nobility never emerged in Romanía and why its aristocrats were unable to accumulate so much wealth that they could bully the state.

Highlight(yellow) - 2. Government and the Social Order > Page 56 · Location 1364

This is the paradox of east Roman politics: the regime itself—the monarchy—was stable and enduring, but the individual emperors were insecure and often deposed or killed.

Highlight(yellow) - 2. Government and the Social Order > Page 59 · Location 1427

In other words, Romanía had surpassed and transcended Rome.

Highlight(yellow) - 3. From Christian Nation to Roman Religion > Page 65 · Location 1576

This concept of the Church as an emerging nation was, to the likes of the emperor Galerius, a cancer eating away at the foundations of the republic, if not a declaration of war.

Highlight(yellow) - 3. From Christian Nation to Roman Religion > Page 66 · Location 1589

Decius was not doing anything novel from the standpoint of Roman religion, but the scope of it, in the aftermath of 212, was unprecedented. It was also an innovation on his part that all had to obtain a certificate of compliance, which mobilized the imperial bureaucracy to enforce religious uniformity. 15

Highlight(yellow) - 3. From Christian Nation to Roman Religion > Page 71 · Location 1736

It was a pan-Roman religion of empire, an idea toward which emperors had been groping since 212.

Part Two: Dynastic Insecurities and Religious Passions

Highlight(orange) - 4. The First Christian Emperors (324–361) > Page 80 · Location 1886

Eusebios cannot be trusted regarding Constantine.

Highlight(orange) - 4. The First Christian Emperors (324–361) > Page 81 · Location 1900

His insistence on this issue reflected the nexus of religion, legal status, and property that structured all of Roman society. Christianity was first recognized through the adjudication of property disputes.

Highlight(orange) - 4. The First Christian Emperors (324–361) > Page 82 · Location 1933

Moreover, philosophical sophistication in Greek was crucial for such God-splitting, so Latin speakers could not keep up. Language itself became a part of the debate, yet most participants set forth definite views and insisted on the incomprehensibility of God, especially when logic failed them. 8

Highlight(orange) - 4. The First Christian Emperors (324–361) > Page 83 · Location 1950

Nicaea also established the principle that “Ecumenical” Church Councils could be convened only by emperors.

Highlight(orange) - 4. The First Christian Emperors (324–361) > Page 87 · Location 2047

These grants, which were continued by later emperors, gave bishops the ability to appeal to the general population and use charity to sway their religious affiliation. 27

Highlight(orange) - 4. The First Christian Emperors (324–361) > Page 89 · Location 2106

These campaigns, about which we know little, resulted in a peace of thirty years between Romans and Goths, stimulating trade as well as the recruitment of barbarians into the Roman armies. Trade across the border was usually closely monitored and controlled, but now the Goths “were free to buy and sell wherever they wanted.” 42 They “were persuaded to love peace.” 43

Highlight(orange) - 5. Competing Religions of Empire (337–363) > Page 101 · Location 2363

Julius did not know this, but he was opening the first crack in what would become the Schism between the eastern (Greek) and western (Latin) Churches.

Highlight(orange) - 5. Competing Religions of Empire (337–363) > Page 102 · Location 2386

As the Church historian Sokrates put it a century later, “from that time on the western Church was severed from the eastern.” 10 This Schism between east and west would recur periodically, until it became permanent.

Highlight(orange) - 5. Competing Religions of Empire (337–363) > Page 105 · Location 2471

Moreover, in order to fund New Rome, the Church, and the solidus economy, Constantine and Constantius had confiscated temple land endowments and treasuries, which was a persecution in all but name.

Highlight(orange) - 5. Competing Religions of Empire (337–363) > Page 106 · Location 2492

Moreover, his reign had momentous consequences for Orthodox identity, as his career and the hysterical reactions to it served later as a permanent reminder of the tension between Orthodoxy and Hellenism.

Highlight(orange) - 5. Competing Religions of Empire (337–363) > Page 111 · Location 2605

Moreover, by the mid-fourth century, Christian theology itself was highly dependent on Greek thought, indeed incomprehensible without it.

Highlight(orange) - 5. Competing Religions of Empire (337–363) > Page 112 · Location 2639

Paradoxically, Julian’s expedition laid the foundations for peace along the eastern frontier, a crucial factor behind the empire’s survival during the fifth century.

Highlight(orange) - 5. Competing Religions of Empire (337–363) > Page 113 · Location 2661

Julian was perhaps the first “Byzantine” emperor.

Highlight(orange) - 6. Toward an Independent East (364–395) > Page 117 · Location 2736

In their domestic propaganda, emperors were desperate to maintain the ideal of “eternal victory” and unconditional Roman domination over barbarians. 18

Highlight(orange) - 6. Toward an Independent East (364–395) > Page 118 · Location 2760

“We cannot become servants of the heathen Persians or be hostile to the king of the Greeks. Neither can we carry on hostilities with both of them. We cannot maintain ourselves without the support of one of them,” explained an Armenian text of the fifth century. 22

Highlight(orange) - 6. Toward an Independent East (364–395) > Page 119 · Location 2785

Valens’ chief advisors in Church politics were Euzoïos of Antioch and Eudoxios of Constantinople, who baptized the emperor in 366 (it is a common error that Theodosius I was the first emperor to be baptized before his deathbed).

Highlight(orange) - 6. Toward an Independent East (364–395) > Page 128 · Location 2994

Had Valens not perished at Adrianople, the ecclesiastical schism between the western and eastern Churches might have occurred now, far earlier than it did eventually. 72

Highlight(orange) - 7. City and Desert: Cultures Old and New > Page 141 · Location 3270

Christian transvaluation, for all its brilliance, changed little in actual social behavior outside the limited contexts dominated by preachers.

Highlight(orange) - 7. City and Desert: Cultures Old and New > Page 141 · Location 3271

Specifically, Christianization changed nothing in the structure of society, that is in how social classes were defined and related to each other; in the basic social values of land, money, and family; in the institution of slavery; in the economy; the fiscal basis of the state, its operations and goals; in the armies and the military life (except for the symbols on the standards); in the law (except to regulate the Church and ban its rivals); or even in the ideology of the imperial office, which switched allegiance, without skipping a beat, from pagan divine patrons to Christ.

Highlight(orange) - 7. City and Desert: Cultures Old and New > Page 145 · Location 3391

The theorist Euagrios realized that the “demon of the love of money” could tempt a monastery’s steward to accumulate more wealth in order to perform more charitable works, until the means became the ends and the demon revealed itself in its pure form, 40 a remarkable insight, applicable to many modern non-profits.

Highlight(orange) - 7. City and Desert: Cultures Old and New > Page 146 · Location 3406

Treating them as demonic forces was a form of therapy, allowing ascetics to talk frankly about their persistent failure, after decades of effort, to master anger or lust.

Highlight(orange) - 7. City and Desert: Cultures Old and New > Page 149 · Location 3498

A hospital dedicated in Syria in 511 was adorned with a mosaic naming, in Greek, the Christian leaders who built it, and below the inscription is an image of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus (see Figure 13). 70

Part Three: The Return of Civilian Government

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 157 · Location 3632

The subjects of each half of the empire were increasingly living in separate, sibling states.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 158 · Location 3639

The emperors’ handlers were behaving almost like the leaders of rival states, even though the emperors themselves were the sibling rulers of what was in theory a single Roman state. For the next decade the chief sign of this cold war between the courts was the non-recognition of their respective consuls.

Bookmark - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 159 · Location 3672

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 160 · Location 3696

Thus, Eutropius’ undermilitarized approach enabled the political classes of Constantinople to tame the army.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 160 · Location 3697

Ethnicity played a role too. Recent scholarship has correctly refuted the idea that there were pro-and anti-barbarian parties in Roman politics at this time and that these events can be understood as the struggle between them. However, this trend has been taken to extremes, with some scholars denying that ethnicity played any role at all and asserting that barbarian armies were not regarded as different from regular Roman armies and were “just as loyal” to the Roman state. This is manifestly incorrect.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 161 · Location 3714

Thus, by 406 the east was free of major concentrations of barbarian military power, and the politicians in charge, such as Anthemius (404–414), took care not to build up the army or to concentrate it in the hands of one general. The number of officers with barbarian names gradually declined during the fifth century. 41 Eutropius had shown the civilian politicians how to survive.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 162 · Location 3745

It also revealed the power of the court in Church matters:

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 162 · Location 3760

This was Constantinopolitan imperialism in the Church.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 164 · Location 3804

This time the schism between east and west was not over doctrine but Rome’s self-arrogated right to preside over the entire Church.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 165 · Location 3812

Theodosius II was a non-entity for the duration of his reign, which was the longest of any Roman emperor yet.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 165 · Location 3813

Major decisions were made by the top civilian officials, though our sources do not allow us a clear view of the inner workings of the court. These politicians governed capably with an eye toward peace, stability, and prosperity. To this end, they continued Eutropius’ policy of preventing the military from dominating the state.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 165 · Location 3818

The cold war with the western empire ended in the summer of 408, when Stilicho, who wanted to reclaim all of Illyricum, fell out of favor and was executed. Stilicho had imposed a trade and travel embargo on the eastern empire, which was now lifted.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 165 · Location 3820

Alaric and his Goths were threatening Italy and Rome, trying in vain to extort concessions from the western empire. Constantinople sent an army of 4,000 to guard Honorius in Ravenna. When Alaric elevated a senator named Attalus to be his own puppet emperor, Ravenna and Constantinople agreed that the east would now impose an embargo on the west: “all naval bases, harbors, shores, and points of departure. . . even remote places and islands, shall be encircled and guarded. . . so that no person may be able to infiltrate the regions of our empire,” unless he bore letters from Honorius. 60 Frustrated at every turn, Alaric finally sacked Rome for three days in August 410.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 166 · Location 3851

a form of group insurance.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 169 · Location 3924

The western empire was now an eastern client state.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 172 · Location 3988

In the early empire, distinctions within the framework of Roman citizenship were based on one’s civitas, or city of origin; now they were based on one’s religio.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 173 · Location 4018

The eastern court backed down, but the law remained in the books and Rome rightly suspected that Constantinople would revisit the issue. 98 Illyricum would in fact become a chief cause of the later rupture between the two Churches.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 175 · Location 4081

It is impossible to identify a point of substantive difference between the two theological conceptions, and those who insist that it exists are usually writing from within one or the other camp. In fact, it is as easy to find Nestorios categorically rejecting the doctrine of the Two Sons and asserting that Christ was a unified and even “indivisible” entity with one will as it is to find Cyril conceding that Christ did have two natures that remained conceptually distinct, insofar as they had not fused together to form some other, third type of thing: “the difference between the natures was not abolished by their union,” he wrote. 109

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 178 · Location 4145

These blessings nearly bankrupted the Church of Alexandria.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 180 · Location 4189

The schools of Athens had gained in importance after the murder of Hypatia in Alexandria.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 180 · Location 4190

Neoplatonism would also infiltrate and take over large swaths of Christian theology.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 181 · Location 4214

In the eastern empire, the term “Hellene” had been given a religious sense. A Hellene was now no longer a member of the Greek people, but rather a pagan of any nation, even a Persian or Saracen, an irony given the word’s past. Yet there was also a minor sense in which a Hellene was someone educated in rhetoric and philosophy.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 182 · Location 4248

A novel form of Christian asceticism that emerged in the fifth century had roots in Syrian paganism.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 184 · Location 4288

Monasticism was becoming increasingly disruptive and incompatible with Roman notions of public order.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 184 · Location 4309

The primary agency here belonged probably not to the holy men themselves but to common people who sought to leverage them against their perceived oppressors.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 185 · Location 4316

Cities now had three masters-in-residence: their councils, the local representatives of the central government, and their bishops, who mostly came from the curial class but had a different agenda.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 186 · Location 4337

It is no wonder, then, that some men preferred to remain city councilors rather than become bishops, or even used episcopal office as a stepping-stone to an imperial career.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 186 · Location 4343

The Church was internalizing Roman values, but the Roman state was not conversely internalizing Christian values.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 186 · Location 4360

Christian moralists, by contrast, advocated a uniform economy of the conscience, whereby each person, no matter his or her status, was expected to abide by the same rules, authorizing sex only between husband and wife and only for the goal of procreation, the sole reason for which God had sanctified sex; otherwise it was porneia (“ fornication”), no matter the gender. 170

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 187 · Location 4383

A moralist of the period took a cynical view of this organization: the authorities had manufactured these sporting rivalries to divert the passions of the youth away from actual civil wars. 174 But soon these passions would spill out in actual civil wars.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 189 · Location 4414

Why did the court support these potentially disruptive entertainments? First, from the start of the Principate, emperors had to be seen as sharing in these popular passions, with a favorite team, in order to maintain their own popularity. Second, emperors were expected to provide bread and circuses to the populace, which was now a global Roman community in every city. But the strongest reason was likely the transition from an itinerant and military style of rulership to a sedentary, civilian, and populist one. Emperors used to be created by military acclamation, and their ongoing legitimacy was confirmed by the presence of thousands of soldiers who periodically shouted their acceptance of a reign—or ended it by violence. Now that emperors rarely left their palace chambers, this vital function could be performed only by the civilian populace, who assembled in the hippodrome, adjacent to the palace. In addition to organizing spectacles, the Blues and the Greens were charged with cheerleading the people to praise God and the emperor at the start of the games. 182 Thus, the games functioned as empire-wide demonstrations of loyalty, taking the place of the defunct imperial cult. The Blues and Greens, hooligans though they were in their sporting rivalries, orchestrated popular demonstrations of legitimacy.

Highlight(orange) - 8. The Political Class Ascendant (395–441) > Page 190 · Location 4435

In Constantinople, when a few hundred people congregated in any one place, a few thousand more showed up to find out why. The Theodosian dynasty forged not only a close but a codependent political relationship with the populace that would last for the rest of east Roman history.

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 191 · Location 4440

The rich documentation generated by the Church Councils of this era reveals, in unprecedented detail, the formal mechanisms and procedures by which the court controlled ecclesiastical politics, and the lobbying that unfolded behind the scenes.

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 191 · Location 4455

To make government more accessible, he issued his decrees in Greek rather than Latin. The trend had been in this direction for some time. In 397, Arcadius allowed judges to issue decisions in Greek, and in 439 Theodosius II allowed the wills of Roman citizens to be in Greek.

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 192 · Location 4465

Moreover, by 440, the western empire was in a bad state, increasingly requiring aid from the east. The fall of the west had begun.

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 192 · Location 4482

The western empire was trapped in a vicious circle:

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 193 · Location 4484

The loss of North Africa in particular, one of the wealthiest provinces and the breadbasket of the city of Rome, which had hitherto required few expenditures for defense, was a game-changer.

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 195 · Location 4556

It was the worst humiliation of the eastern empire so far.

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 197 · Location 4605

This Synod lit the fuse that detonated the unity of the Church in the east and fissured the Roman empire itself.

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 203 · Location 4741

The most controversial canon was the one later called “Canon 28,” which confirmed the decision of the Council of Constantinople (381) that Constantinople ranked second after Rome in the hierarchy of Churches, and gave it authority over the bishoprics in Thrace and Asia Minor.

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 209 · Location 4887

This failure bankrupted the east and ensured the doom of the western empire. In less than a decade, Italy too would be ruled by barbarian armies rather than by its native political institutions. 86

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 211 · Location 4932

On 17 November, 473, Leo assembled the people, soldiers, and foreign ambassadors from many nations in the hippodrome of Constantinople to acclaim his six-year-old grandson Leo II as Augustus, with the people doing so in Greek and the soldiers in Latin. 96

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 214 · Location 5007

The western empire was thus no longer the junior partner of the eastern one, but a nominal protectorate to be governed by proxy.

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 214 · Location 5010

The Romans, whose government was now exclusively based in New Rome, never surrendered sovereignty over their western lands.

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 218 · Location 5108

The fact that Felix believed he had such authority indicates the wide gulf that had opened between Rome and the east regarding the governance of the Church.

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 219 · Location 5116

The new schism between Rome and New Rome would last for thirty-five years, until 519.126 Because western historiography often reflects papal biases, it is called the Acacian Schism. Yet already from the days of Constantine the Great, the two Churches were always hovering close to the line of mutual excommunication, and it was always Rome that pulled the trigger in protest over its “rights” (whether about Athanasios, John Chrysostom, Ephesos II, or Petros Mongos). Schism was built into the relationship from the start and was not a development of the ninth, eleventh, or thirteenth centuries (as scholars variously pick their starting-points). Its underlying causes piled on over time—for example, the issue of Illyricum added onto that of appellate jurisdiction—making its outbreaks increasingly bitter and eventually permanent.

Highlight(orange) - 9. Barbarian Terrors and Military Mobilization (441–491) > Page 220 · Location 5159

Theoderic, his army, and his people would leave the Balkans and go to Italy, which he would rule as the representative of the eastern emperor in succession to Odoacer.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 222 · Location 5180

The reason why Romanía was different from other monarchies was that it had been created by a republic, not a specific ruling family, and it had a strong and entrenched concept of the public sphere as something that could be governed but not owned. It was not a “patrimonial state.”

Bookmark - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 223 · Location 5194

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 225 · Location 5266

Anastasius did to the bronze, the currency that most people used, what Constantine had done to the gold.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 226 · Location 5282

While the material changes present a complex picture, the institutional changes have largely been misunderstood.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 227 · Location 5313

Thus, even as east Romans were increasingly polarized over theology, their basic national and religious culture was becoming more homogenized and uniform.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 229 · Location 5357

Indeed, one strain of scholarship views this demotion of the councils as the “decline and fall of the Roman city”: once-proud classical traditions of civic politics now yielded to informal factions of rich landowners lording it over the sad ruins of the ancient city. 39 Such pessimism is unwarranted.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 231 · Location 5400

At no point in Roman history was there a “feudal” revolution of magnates who undermined the state by taking over whole provinces.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 233 · Location 5451

Anastasius’ reign was pivotal also in the escalation of hatred and conflict between the Blues and the Greens in the hippodromes and streets of many cities, and also between Chalcedonians and anti-Chalcedonians.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 235 · Location 5491

This was likely the first instance of the western Christian prejudice that Greek-speaking Christians were prone to heresy.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 235 · Location 5493

Rome’s claims swelled to fantastic proportions precisely when Rome was being ignored.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 239 · Location 5591

Paradoxically, just as the empire was losing linguistic diversity due to the extinction of the tongues of Asia Minor, more of its languages were being written than before.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 239 · Location 5598

The scholars who created the Armenian script were preceded by a long tradition of their countrymen studying in the prestigious centers of Greek learning, including Athens, and even teaching there. The first Georgian script was possibly based on the Greek alphabet and devised in Palestine, as its first extant specimen is a mosaic inscription of 430 from Jerusalem (the Bir el Qutt inscriptions). 77

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 241 · Location 5646

This was the first and last time that a major military revolt aimed not to replace the emperor but to advance a theological cause.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 242 · Location 5661

This made him the first agent of papal hegemony to bring an army against the City.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 242 · Location 5674

He was therefore remembered in ambiguous ways. Anti-Chalcedonians believed he was one of their own, whereas Chalcedonians were confused about him, except for partisans of Makedonios such as the historian Theodoros Anagnostes, who reviled him as a heretic.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 243 · Location 5679

Anastasius broke off discussions: “We will stay silent from here on, as it is absurd to show courtesy to those who make threats and refuse to be entreated. We can tolerate being insulted and despised, but we will not be ordered about.” 88

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 243 · Location 5688

Marcian was able to leave 7 million solidi only ten years after the worst of Attila’s extortion, and Anastasius left 23 million, even after he abolished the urban tax in 498.89

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 243 · Location 5690

The fall of the western empire was caused by two main factors that could, potentially, have toppled the east too but for a combination of luck and policy.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 247 · Location 5777

The post-Roman kingdoms in the west recognized the eastern empire as the font of Romanness and of imperial authority, as Anastasius used the instruments of soft power to remind their rulers.

Highlight(orange) - 10. Political Consolidation and Religious Polarization (491–518) > Page 248 · Location 5808

In the late 490s, Anastasius brought Iotabe under direct imperial rule. It was settled by Roman merchants and so part of the Indian trade was taxed by the emperor’s officials. 103

Part Four: The Strain of Grand Ambitions

Highlight(orange) - 11. Chalcedonian Repression and the Eastern Axis (518–531) > Page 254 · Location 5864

Justin set in motion the largest-scale persecution of dissident bishops in the empire’s history, though it was not an all-out war.

Highlight(orange) - 11. Chalcedonian Repression and the Eastern Axis (518–531) > Page 255 · Location 5879

Rome had previously condemned Zeno and Akakios for imposing the Henotikon by fiat, but this was what it now wanted Justin to do with the libellus, without discussion or approval by a Church Council. 11

Highlight(orange) - 11. Chalcedonian Repression and the Eastern Axis (518–531) > Page 258 · Location 5960

Later, as emperor, Justinian would manipulate laws with a similar combination of idealism and cynicism, of principle and advantage.

Highlight(orange) - 11. Chalcedonian Repression and the Eastern Axis (518–531) > Page 259 · Location 5987

In early 526, Constantinople was visited for the first time by a pope, John I. This had nothing to do with Christology. John came on behalf of Theoderic, the Arian king of Italy, to negotiate over the rights of Arians in the empire.

Highlight(orange) - 11. Chalcedonian Repression and the Eastern Axis (518–531) > Page 261 · Location 6018

The fate of Romanía would be decided in the east, and the constellation of forces from which its doom unfolded emerged in the early sixth century.

Bookmark - 11. Chalcedonian Repression and the Eastern Axis (518–531) > Page 263 · Location 6039

Highlight(orange) - 11. Chalcedonian Repression and the Eastern Axis (518–531) > Page 263 · Location 6040

The defection of two Persian client kings and the promotion of Christianity in foreign policy by Justin and then Justinian had pushed the empires to the brink of war. 47

Highlight(yellow) - 11. Chalcedonian Repression and the Eastern Axis (518–531) > Page 263 · Location 6044

But in 528, Justinian reorganized Roman Armenia and put it on an aggressive military footing, which provoked Persia.

Highlight(yellow) - 11. Chalcedonian Repression and the Eastern Axis (518–531) > Page 264 · Location 6054

This combination of idealism and calculation was a signature trait of Justinian’s reforms.

Highlight(yellow) - 11. Chalcedonian Repression and the Eastern Axis (518–531) > Page 264 · Location 6060

when Justin abruptly endorsed Chalcedon in 518 the Armenians found themselves on the wrong side of imperial theology.

Highlight(yellow) - 11. Chalcedonian Repression and the Eastern Axis (518–531) > Page 266 · Location 6104

The states around the Red Sea were becoming increasingly powerful, creating a more multipolar environment for Roman-Persian imperial competition and planting the seeds for major upheavals.

Highlight(yellow) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 270 · Location 6199

The Codex, Digest, and Institutes are collectively known today as the Corpus Iuris Civilis, or “Body of Civil Law.”

Highlight(yellow) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 271 · Location 6204

In this goal, Justinian succeeded brilliantly, which is why, after his work was rediscovered in twelfth-century Europe, he was regarded as the archetypal lawgiver (until 1623, when Prokopios’ Secret History was found, which cast a different light on him).

Highlight(yellow) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 272 · Location 6244

Justinian also believed that the Christian state had been too “tolerant” of pagans.

Highlight(orange) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 275 · Location 6308

It is possible that some senators were discontented with Justinian because he ruled autocratically, without consulting the Senate: “It assembled for the sake of appearances only and because of custom, as it was impossible for any member of that assembly so much as to raise his voice and speak.” 32

Highlight(yellow) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 276 · Location 6328

Justinian immediately threw himself into many high-stakes projects that defined his reign as much as the codification of the law. He was either desperate to improve his image or taking advantage of the suppression of domestic opposition. He made peace with Persia in 532, and rebuilt the capital, especially Hagia Sophia (532–537). He sought to find a compromise with the Monophysites; conquered North Africa from the Vandals (533–534) and Italy from the Ostrogoths (535–540 for the first phase); and reformed provincial governance (in the 530s). No Roman emperor had ever—or would ever—have so many balls in the air simultaneously.

Highlight(yellow) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 277 · Location 6357

Romanos endorsed further aspects of Justinian’s agenda, such as reforming sex work and shutting up the mouth of Hellenic philosophy. 38

Highlight(yellow) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 277 · Location 6366

The deal depended on an immense transfer of cash: Justinian agreed to pay to Khusrow 11,000 lbs gold (792,000 solidi), the biggest payoff in Roman history. 39 Justinian was burning through Anastasius’ reserves.

Highlight(yellow) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 278 · Location 6375

Certainly, the eastern Romans had never fully written off the loss of the western empire: this was Roman territory that had been seized by barbarians through what Justinian later called the “neglect” of past emperors.

Highlight(blue) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 278 · Location 6380

Only Prokopios slyly reports that two of them visited brothels in the capital, whereupon they were rendered truly speechless. 42

Highlight(yellow) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 289 · Location 6648

This was excoriated by traditionalists who called the office “the mother of the Romans’ freedom,” although it had long been a purely honorific office. 93

Highlight(yellow) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 290 · Location 6652

In most of his empire, Justinian issued them in Greek, “not in the ancestral language,” as he put it, “but in the common Hellenic one, so that everyone can grasp it.” 94

Highlight(yellow) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 290 · Location 6658

Likewise, Italy would be governed by mostly Greek-speaking officials sent from the east, another fascinating reversal.

Highlight(yellow) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 291 · Location 6684

After consulting with Theodora—and, remarkably, stating in the law that he had done so—Justinian abolished the sale of offices and issued detailed regulations about governors’ duties.

Highlight(yellow) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 292 · Location 6716

The imperial government was never more active or more powerful than in the 530s, fighting multiple wars, codifying the law, imposing its own Chalcedonian bishops in all cities, building churches and fortifications everywhere, including Hagia Sophia, and doing it all successfully and simultaneously. This is not the footprint of a disintegrating state.

Highlight(yellow) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 292 · Location 6728

This was a high-water mark for Roman law as an instrument of governance, not a sign of collapse.

Highlight(yellow) - 12. The Sleepless Emperor (527–540) > Page 296 · Location 6805

The decade before 542 was a high point of centralized imperial power. Justinian was the last emperor who had the means to operate on such a scale.

Highlight(orange) - 13. “Death Has Entered Our Gates” (540–565) > Page 300 · Location 6897

How many people died? And what impact did mass death have on society and the state?

Highlight(orange) - 13. “Death Has Entered Our Gates” (540–565) > Page 306 · Location 7047

The population of Naples was massacred when the Romans took the city in 536, and that of Milan when it was taken by the Goths in 539.

Highlight(orange) - 13. “Death Has Entered Our Gates” (540–565) > Page 309 · Location 7103

Foreign relations had become more complex, multipolar, and interconnected.

Highlight(yellow) - 13. “Death Has Entered Our Gates” (540–565) > Page 309 · Location 7122

No emperor had ever deployed so many armies on active duty on so many fronts.

Highlight(yellow) - 13. “Death Has Entered Our Gates” (540–565) > Page 312 · Location 7196

Rome now learned that the days when popes could dictate terms to the eastern court behind a wall of Gothic arms were over.

Highlight(yellow) - 13. “Death Has Entered Our Gates” (540–565) > Page 313 · Location 7217

Their long works on the subject constituted the ignominious end of Latin literature in North Africa.

Highlight(yellow) - 13. “Death Has Entered Our Gates” (540–565) > Page 313 · Location 7220

The popes had once required Justin and Justinian to bring eastern bishops into alignment with papal policy; Justinian was now requiring the pope to bring western bishops into alignment with imperial policy.

Highlight(yellow) - 13. “Death Has Entered Our Gates” (540–565) > Page 317 · Location 7303

Justinian did not passively react to the problems brought to him by his subjects, but went out and created his own. Many believed that “he had sown confusion and turmoil.” 89

Highlight(yellow) - 13. “Death Has Entered Our Gates” (540–565) > Page 317 · Location 7314

As an imperialist, Justinian used his armies mostly for reclaiming territory that Rome had lost to the barbarians in the west, and he judged the timing of those interventions carefully and cynically, in order to strike against the barbarian kings at their weakest moment.

Highlight(yellow) - 13. “Death Has Entered Our Gates” (540–565) > Page 317 · Location 7316

He ended the historical existence of the Vandals and the Ostrogoths. The only new conquest that he made was the small territory of the Tzanoi in the Pontos.

Highlight(yellow) - 13. “Death Has Entered Our Gates” (540–565) > Page 318 · Location 7330

His permanent legacy includes the codification of Roman law, the rebuilding of Hagia Sophia and other iconic churches such as the Holy Apostles, and the silk industry.

Highlight(yellow) - 13. “Death Has Entered Our Gates” (540–565) > Page 318 · Location 7343

He frequently shortchanged his soldiers or did not pay them for years, which caused them to defect or prey on the people they were supposed to be protecting or liberating.

Bookmark - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 320 · Location 7351

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 320 · Location 7357

For the first time the emperor and his wife were depicted together on coins. Sophia was the most powerful empress in our history so far.

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 321 · Location 7375

A small group of men could now run each province with less oversight. Justin told them that they could no longer complain to him about the quality of local governance, but it is unlikely that much changed in practice. 3

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 322 · Location 7387

Justin wanted to make “peoples and kingdoms tremble” with his “stiff determination”: “You dare match strength against me?” 6 He is frequently accused of stirring up unnecessary wars that brought ruin to the empire.

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 323 · Location 7411

Years of acrimonious negotiations ensued, but Justin’s approach was paying off: Sirmium, lost to Rome since the 440s, was now restored to the empire. 9

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 323 · Location 7412

Justin was also cultivating close relations with the Turks, to use them as a counterweight to the Persians and Avars, whom the Turks viewed as their runaway “slaves.” He also wanted to access alternative trade routes through Central Asia, especially for raw silk.

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 323 · Location 7424

In any case, Alboin quickly overran the Po valley, leaving garrisons in key locations under his duces—a Roman military office that later gave rise to medieval “dukes.”

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 327 · Location 7523

Roman morale was boosted in 576, when Ioustinianos, another son of Germanus, defeated the shah and sent him fleeing for safety. The Romans even captured his tent and fire altar. In sum, both empires ground each other down without making significant gains. 28

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 328 · Location 7534

Slavic forces, up to 100,000 strong, began to cross the Danube in ca. 577–581 and raid Roman territory, roaming as far south as central Greece.

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 328 · Location 7544

One inhabitant carved a poignant prayer on a brick: “Lord, help the city, stop the Avar, and protect Romanía and me.”

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 328 · Location 7553

Maurikios (582–602) faced three challenges: how to fight concurrent wars with limited manpower; how to do so cheaply, as he found the treasury empty and revenues fell short of expenses; and how to raise money and cut expenses without alienating core constituencies. It was a delicate balance, and he managed it for twenty years. But when he failed, he failed so spectacularly that it not only toppled his regime, it destabilized the empire.

Bookmark - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 329 · Location 7575

Bookmark - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 330 · Location 7590

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 330 · Location 7605

The answer must be fiscal: Maurikios could simply not afford to hire more soldiers.

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 331 · Location 7613

Thus, whereas in the early fifth century the empire had demilitarized in order to protect the court from its own generals, in the later sixth it demilitarized due to fiscal constraints.

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 331 · Location 7617

In sum, the Roman army in this period could deal properly with only one major enemy at a time.

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 331 · Location 7618

Why was there not enough money? The empire bequeathed by Justinian to his successors was overextended and more expensive. Justinian himself had been unable to cover expenses and had to cut corners. Also, recurring outbreaks of the plague—every fifteen years in the City, for example—had further eroded the tax base, as Tiberios II had noted in his tax-relief law of 575.46 Moreover, the disruptions of the sixth century were having a cumulative effect, including Avar and Slavic raids, deportations of urban populations from Antioch, Apameia, and other cities into Persia, and the earthquakes, fires, and plague. If you lose a city here, a city there, eventually state revenues will diminish appreciably.

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 332 · Location 7643

The Gothic king Reccared (586–601) had recently converted from Arianism to Roman Christianity, so the imperial line was now that Spania had to be defended from “barbarians” instead of from heretics.

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 335 · Location 7725

In a letter that accompanied one of his dedications, Khusrow states that his wife was a Christian and he a “Hellene,” i.e., a pagan. He also refers to the proper name—Romanía—of the state that helped him.

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 336 · Location 7732

Thus, within a decade, both empires dismantled the leadership structures of their Saracen clients and replaced them with decentralized groupings. 67 This likely facilitated the Arab conquests of the 630s.

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 338 · Location 7793

The eastern empire had not experienced such a political convulsion in its entire history, and emperors had not been directly overthrown by the army since the third century.

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 339 · Location 7812

For the first time, through the mediation of their Turkish allies, the Romans received detailed knowledge of northern China, with references even to Korea, and through the overseas trade route they learned about India, Sri Lanka, and southern China. Never had there been such knowledge of the broader world.

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 340 · Location 7831

These policies had palpable consequences a generation later, as the end of the century was a wasteland by comparison.

Highlight(yellow) - 14. The Cost of Overextension (565–602) > Page 342 · Location 7877

On a more fundamental level, Christianity had still brought no changes to the economic, social, and political structures of the empire or—and this is perhaps more important—to the social values that underpinned them, other than to become more deeply integrated into them.

Part Five: To the Brink of Despair

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 348 · Location 7942

He would become the most fearsome enemy Rome had known since Hannibal.

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 348 · Location 7958

The Romans abandoned everything east of the Euphrates, and were unable to mount counterraids. 9

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 349 · Location 7963

The civil war that they set into motion was the most destructive that the eastern empire had yet suffered. It ravaged Egypt, a productive province, and distracted the court, allowing the empire’s foreign enemies to make large territorial gains. The empire’s collapse was precipitated by this war.

Highlight(blue) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 349 · Location 7984

sword of Damocles

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 350 · Location 8001

Yet Herakleios’ coup inflicted far more direct damage to the already weakened Roman state than Phokas’. Worse, Herakleios had forced Phokas to divert scarce assets away from the defense against Persia to fight a civil war in Egypt. It was the opening that Khusrow needed.

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 352 · Location 8047

The Romans withdrew to Cilicia, where the Persians won another Pyrrhic victory. The emperor pulled back to Asia Minor, while Tarsos and Cilicia fell to the Persians. 22 The empire was already taking on the geographical contours of its middle-period phase.

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 354 · Location 8091

Herakleios offered to become Khusrow’s “son.” Shahin departed, but the Roman envoys who went with him, three of the highest-ranked men in the state, never returned from Persia. By this violation of diplomatic immunity Khusrow signaled that this was to be a war to the finish. 29

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 355 · Location 8106

Certainly the Persians ranged widely across Asia Minor during those years, but they did not “conquer” it. Instead, they spread fear.

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 355 · Location 8113

With the Romans on the defensive in Asia Minor, Khusrow moved to seize the greatest prize of all, Egypt, which generated up to 30% of the eastern Roman empire’s revenue.

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 357 · Location 8128

The Persian occupation lasted for twenty years in northern Mesopotamia, such as at Edessa, and in Egypt for ten. Recent scholarship has tried to downplay its severity by arguing that after the initial “jolt” of conquest life went back to its usual rhythms and that the Persians maintained a quiet and discreet presence. 38

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 358 · Location 8159

Movement was also restricted, and travel along the Nile was by permit only, causing additional hardship. 42

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 359 · Location 8177

The occupation forces also purchased goods from the locals, which is sometimes taken as proof for business as usual, but the prices that they paid were below their usual Roman levels, which is indicative of an exploitative military occupation. 48

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 359 · Location 8179

A later, but well-informed Muslim geographer had data which showed that Khusrow’s revenues increased by 42% between 608 and the end of his reign.

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 360 · Location 8225

The occupation was about conquest and exploitation, not co-optation and integration. The war would not end unless the Persians could eliminate the Roman state altogether.

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 361 · Location 8229

the Avars and Slavs began to raid again, and possibly to settle, south of Danube. They were enabled to do so by the withdrawal of the armies to the east and the civil war of 608–610.56

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 361 · Location 8242

The Roman military organization also seems to have collapsed, except in Thrace nearest to the capital. Coupled with the loss of Syria-Palestine in the 610s and Egypt in 619, Herakleios was presiding over a rapidly failing state that was being dismembered by “grasping wolves.” 59

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 361 · Location 8253

Herakleios was running out of cash, soldiers, and provinces all at once. Then, in 619, when the Persians conquered Egypt, he ran out of food.

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 363 · Location 8287

Armenians are never mentioned as fighting for him in the east, further refuting the modern fiction that Herakleios was an emperor of Armenian origin who drew his support from Armenia. 66

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 364 · Location 8313

The siege of Constantinople, for which we have three eyewitness accounts, was the first sustained attack on the City by a foreign enemy, and put the empire’s defenses to the test.

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 365 · Location 8329

The khagan proposed that the people abandon the City with only their clothes and entrust themselves to the Persians, who would presumably deport them. It appears that he was planning to destroy Constantinople, not occupy it.

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 365 · Location 8336

He had been foiled by the Theodosian Walls, the Bosporos, the irrelevance of his strongest asset (his heavy cavalry), the logistical nightmare of feeding a huge army, and the determination of the Romans.

Highlight(orange) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 366 · Location 8344

The patriarch wrote the verses honoring her that now open the Akathistos Hymn (so named because the congregation stands):

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 369 · Location 8419

In the far-west, in Spain, the Visigoths had seized the opportunity to conquer Malaga in ca. 615 and to terminate the Roman province of Spania altogether in ca. 624 by taking Cartagena. 81 And few knew what was even going on in the Balkan hinterlands beyond the walls of Thessalonike.

Highlight(yellow) - 15. The Great War with Persia (602–630) > Page 370 · Location 8431

The latter included the emperor’s personal visits to Jerusalem, an order to convert all the Jews in the empire, and the official adoption in 629 of the title “basileus of the Romans, faithful in Christ.” 84 This title is cited by historians as proof that the empire was henceforth Christian rather than Roman, or, depending on one’s ideology, that it was Greek rather than Roman. But none of this holds up.

Bookmark - 16. Commanders of the Faithful (632–644) > Page 373 · Location 8498

Highlight(yellow) - 16. Commanders of the Faithful (632–644) > Page 374 · Location 8542

The Romans and Sasanians had eliminated their Saracen client kings in the later sixth century, leaving both empires without buffers to the south and with little sway through proxies in Arabian tribal politics.

Highlight(yellow) - 16. Commanders of the Faithful (632–644) > Page 375 · Location 8566

In attacking the two exhausted empires, early Muslims found a fight that could keep them united.

Highlight(yellow) - 16. Commanders of the Faithful (632–644) > Page 380 · Location 8670

The great households of Roman Egypt suddenly disappear in the papyrus record after that. 20

Highlight(yellow) - 16. Commanders of the Faithful (632–644) > Page 381 · Location 8687

It is easy to explain why the Romans lost this war. The prolonged conflict with Persia had downgraded the empire’s operational capabilities, including its organization, manpower, and wealth.

Highlight(yellow) - 16. Commanders of the Faithful (632–644) > Page 382 · Location 8726

It was the emperor’s responsibility to then deal with the problem. “Struggles to the death” were not part of the Roman repertoire, and historians are wrong to expect them. Passivity on the part of Monophysites is therefore not noteworthy.

Highlight(yellow) - 16. Commanders of the Faithful (632–644) > Page 384 · Location 8768

For Mu‘awiya, Islam belonged to the conquerors, and he pursued no policy of conversion. 36 For the Romans, therefore, the new message was simply that Saracens ruled. Speakers of Arabic, however, were treated differently by the conquerors. They were expected to convert and were specifically targeted for proselytization. 37

Highlight(yellow) - 16. Commanders of the Faithful (632–644) > Page 385 · Location 8782

Starting in the 660s, inscriptions and papyri in Greek start referring to the “Arabs.” 38

Highlight(orange) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 387 · Location 8814

Compared to its heyday a century before, it is likely that the empire had lost 75% of its revenue.

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 389 · Location 8875

The assassination of the caliph ‘Uthman in 656 temporarily halted the push to destroy Rome and led to the first Muslim civil war, a tangle of tribal, regional, religious, and personal rivalries that had been simmering beneath the surface of the conquests. They burst out now, altering the course of Muslim history.

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 390 · Location 8899

Rome now became a center of resistance to Constantinople. In the later sixth century, pope Gregory had little access to Greek learning, but in the mid-seventh, in part due to this migration, Rome had become a center of eastern thought.

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 390 · Location 8902

The transcripts of this debate, however, were a later literary concoction by the anti-Monotheletes, who were adept and unscrupulous propagandists.

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 390 · Location 8905

The bishop of Rome had no authority to appoint a bishop for Constantinople. 15

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 392 · Location 8951

This was the worst treatment that a pope had ever received at the hands of an emperor, and yet no pope had yet acted with such reckless impudence and treasonous intent toward the imperial capital. It appears that Rome was not displeased at Martin’s removal:

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 393 · Location 8975

we do not know where it was stationed in the mid-seventh century. A new field army known as Opsikion (from Latin obsequium, meaning in attendance upon the emperor) is attested by ca. 660. The fleet, more important than ever, was reconstituted as the command of Karabisianoi (literally, “shipmen”), based probably in the Aegean. It is possible that the naval command of the Kibyraiotai, responsible for the southern coast of Asia Minor, was also created at this time, though it is not attested until the eighth century. This was an unprecedented level of interest in the navy, a response to Mu‘awiya’s investment in fleets.

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 394 · Location 8979

A letter of the emperor Justinian II in 687 attests that these named forces, along with those of Italy and North Africa, constituted the basic framework of imperial defense. It must have come into being under Konstas II. But we do not know the size of these forces in the mid-seventh century. 23

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 394 · Location 8986

when other Slavs attacked the city, the Belegezites were friendly and supplied it with food during the siege. Thus, the process by which they were absorbed into the empire appears to have begun under Konstas. 24

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 394 · Location 8997

However, many relocated to mountains or fortified coastal settlements, abandoning lowland valleys. 25

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 394 · Location 9001

Moreover, just as many Romans had fled from Palestine to North Africa and Rome, many fled from Greece to Sicily and southern Italy, thereby reintroducing the Greek language into Magna Graecia.

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 395 · Location 9005

It appears that an Augustus was now regarded as inferior to a basileus.

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 396 · Location 9033

As city councils went extinct (by ca. 600), the Roman army and its officers became the matrix of a new social and landowning elite. In many ways, the rulers of central medieval Italy emerged out of the empire’s military administration. That was still in the future.

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 397 · Location 9055

In 666, he was lobbied successfully by the bishop of Ravenna to make his see autocephalous from Rome. Ravenna’s bishop was to be appointed locally with no interference from the pope. This may have been lingering payback for the troubles caused by papal overreach over “Monotheletism.” 37

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 397 · Location 9059

Historians have speculated about his goals in this unconventional venture in Italy: they were likely to confirm the loyalty of the Italians, and especially of Rome; extract resources, especially grain with which to feed Constantinople; organize the defenses of North Africa and Sicily against the growing Arab threat in the central Mediterranean; and subject the Lombards in the south.

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 397 · Location 9062

The Arab raids into Asia Minor resumed as soon as Mu‘awiya prevailed over his enemies and became the first Umayyad caliph (661–680).

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 397 · Location 9066

Eastern chronicles pay little attention to the raids, in part because they did not result in conquests but also because the later Abbasid tradition, which compiled this information, was not interested in highlighting the deeds of the Umayyads. But occasionally the victims recorded their experiences.

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 398 · Location 9096

This moment should have been the end of the eastern Roman empire. The emperor in Constantinople, Konstantinos IV, was only sixteen

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 399 · Location 9121

This was the first major check that the expanding caliphate received, the first counteroffensive that any of its targets around the world was able to launch.

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 400 · Location 9144

There was one more open wound, however: Rome. For reasons that remain obscure, Rome was again refusing to recognize the patriarchs of Constantinople in the 670s, possibly because of the treatment of pope Martin, the theological issues left open from the Lateran Synod of 649, and the removal of Ravenna from papal jurisdiction.

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 401 · Location 9157

This disrupted the papal narrative of Rome’s unerring orthodoxy.

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 402 · Location 9188

In reality, both groups were created by the controversy of the seventh century; the latter was not a response to their prior existence. It was by picking fights that splinter groups were created in the Church, not the other way around.

Highlight(orange) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 402 · Location 9189

The Sixth Ecumenical Council effectively closed the cycle of theological controversies that had preoccupied the Roman empire and Church since the early fourth century. “Substances” had led to “Natures” and then to “Activities” and “Wills.”

Highlight(yellow) - 17. Holding the Line (641–685) > Page 403 · Location 9199

The Roman empire was in shambles. Moreover, the Council was conducted against a backdrop of dynastic strife, which peaked in late 681.

Part Six: Resilience and Recovery

Bookmark - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 407 · Location 9232

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 407 · Location 9252

By the late seventh century its population, between 40,000 and 100,000, had declined to a fraction of its peak of about half a million in 541 ad. 3

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 408 · Location 9266

Romanía had lost the Balkans to the Avars and Slavs and the east to the Arabs. As a result, state revenue was at least three quarters smaller than before, about one million nomismata (solidi), down from 4–6 million in the mid-sixth century. 5

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 409 · Location 9281

It is telling that, after ca. 700, Roman towns were often called kastra, i.e., “forts,” rather than poleis, “cities.”

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 409 · Location 9289

The author of a religious-apocalyptic drama, surveying the wreckage of the seventh century, inferred that it must have been caused by levels of sin “the likes of which no generation of the earth had seen before.” 12

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 409 · Location 9291

The institutions of local governance also declined, except for the Church and the army, which were managed from the capital.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 409 · Location 9296

The economy had contracted. Evidence from the botanical analysis of core samples suggests a decline in agricultural production to levels unseen since the second millennium BC and an expansion of wild forests. Around lake Nar in south-central Asia Minor, agriculture collapsed and did not resume again until the tenth century. 14

Bookmark - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 411 · Location 9348

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 413 · Location 9373

Thus, despite major losses, the foundations for a revival were there.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 413 · Location 9392

The intensified attacks against Judaism can be explained by the prominent role that many Jews played in facilitating the Persian invasion of the 610s, though it has been proposed that Jews were surrogate targets for similar practices within Islam (avoidance of pork, circumcision, aniconism).

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 414 · Location 9408

But many pagan customs rejected by the Council were folk traditions embedded in the rhythms of Christian life; some survive to this day. 30

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 415 · Location 9422

Justinian aspired to redefine Roman society on a Christian basis and draw stark lines between his empire and the Islamic caliphate.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 416 · Location 9454

Arabic culture was also to attain superiority in science and philosophy too, though no Roman seems to have admitted this before the eleventh century.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 416 · Location 9456

The Islamic world was large enough to set its own agenda independently of the Roman past. The center of this world’s gravity shifted away from Constantinople to Damascus and later to Baghdad.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 417 · Location 9468

By contrast, the biggest challenge facing the caliphate, one that proved fatal to it, is that it never developed a consensual governing ideology.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 417 · Location 9481

The political unity of the Muslims, enjoined in the Quran, was a pious fiction. Infighting began almost immediately and eventually the caliphate disintegrated as regional dynasties broke away from the center. The various factions held widely divergent beliefs about identity and purpose, about who should be ruling whom, why, and how. 39 The Romans had long since resolved such questions.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 418 · Location 9504

The new state administration had emerged directly from its predecessor. A strategos was just the Greek translation of magister militum.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 419 · Location 9522

To carry out this work, their agents consulted manuals of land measurement (the literal origin of the word “geometry”). 43

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 419 · Location 9533

The state’s focus had shifted from the great landowners and local notables, who had mediated in previous centuries between the imperial government and the world of small farmers, directly to the farmers themselves.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 420 · Location 9552

The logothete of the stratiotikon was in charge of recruitment, military supplies, and pay.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 420 · Location 9555

The logothete of the dromos was often the emperor’s deputy and prime minister.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 421 · Location 9574

At the start of the ninth century, they became the “themes” (themata), but before then the term is, strictly speaking, anachronistic.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 422 · Location 9591

supporting the army was woven into the tax system.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 422 · Location 9598

at least a quarter of a million people distributed across Asia Minor were linked directly to the state, its institutions, and its ideology. Moreover, those soldiers were fighting not just because of a distant paymaster but in defense of their lands, communities, faith, and national identity as Romans.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 423 · Location 9611

As the law did not grant special rights based on family or place of origin, there were no castes or feudal families in Roman society.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 423 · Location 9623

With the collapse of the civic elites, that hierarchy was now tightly concentrated around the imperial court, which became the arbiter of power and prestige.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 424 · Location 9657

The aristocracy was literally investing its capital in the state system. 66

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 424 · Location 9659

The apparatus of government was regarded as public property that did not belong personally to the men who staffed it. This concept of the res publica was fundamental to the Roman tradition and had not lost its vitality in later times.

Highlight(orange) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 425 · Location 9678

By learning Greek, converting to Orthodoxy, and taking on Roman names, outsiders could become indistinguishable members of the polity, though the memory of their ethnic origins followed them for a generation or two.

Highlight(yellow) - 18. Life and Taxes among the Ruins > Page 426 · Location 9696

A unit of Gotthograikoi (“ Greek-speaking Goths”) was stationed in Bithynia in the seventh and eighth centuries, possibly as part of the elite Opsikion army.

Bookmark - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 428 · Location 9748

Highlight(yellow) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 429 · Location 9758

An emperor at that time even boasted that “the emperor of Constantinople rules the seas as far as the Pillars of Herakles.” 9

Highlight(yellow) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 429 · Location 9778

The Church of Rome was the largest landowner in Italy, possibly in the entire empire, and was often at odds with Constantinople. 12

Bookmark - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 430 · Location 9787

Highlight(yellow) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 430 · Location 9794

Separate identities, which we call “Catholic” and “Orthodox,” had not yet emerged.

Highlight(yellow) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 431 · Location 9812

The exarchs continued to be based at Ravenna, but the city, like Rome, was developing autonomous institutions.

Highlight(orange) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 431 · Location 9819

There was no sign so far that Rome was seeking its independence from the empire or even of the idea of a papal state. 16

Highlight(orange) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 432 · Location 9846

In the treaty of Aachen between Romanía and Francia in the early ninth century, they were recognized as possessions of the eastern empire. 22

Highlight(yellow) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 434 · Location 9895

But Bulgaria was not part of the empire. In 716, the emperor Theodosios III and the Bulgar khan drew up a detailed treaty that defined the border between the two states and stipulated terms for refugees and the certification of merchants. This agreement secured peace between the two polities until the 750s. 28

Highlight(yellow) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 437 · Location 9955

Muslims were a tiny minority in 700.

Highlight(yellow) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 437 · Location 9961

Conversion to Islam was driven in part by a desire to escape the additional burdens brought by the conquest.

Highlight(yellow) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 437 · Location 9975

In the long run, the Greek-speaking population of the caliphate proved to be a different kind of asset to the Roman empire. As they immigrated to the empire in the eighth and ninth centuries, they brought with them their learning, books, labor, and skills, infusing new life, from its former lands, into a devastated culture.

Highlight(yellow) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 438 · Location 9990

The period between his first fall from power, in 695, and the 720s, when Leon III secured himself on the throne, was turbulent, but it was not an “age of anarchy.” State institutions functioned well, there was little social unrest, and the Romans held their own against the Arabs; in fact, they emerged from that era victorious, guaranteeing their survival and setting the empire on a trajectory of revival. Instability was limited to the throne.

Highlight(yellow) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 440 · Location 10048

The rest of the fleet anchored along the Bosporos, so Leon drew a heavy chain across the entrance to the Golden Horn, barring them from that strategic inlet (this is the first historical reference to that device).

Highlight(yellow) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 441 · Location 10060

Later Romans who were hostile to Leon for religious reasons did the same, but at the time he was the real winner. His strategy had been brilliant. 47

Highlight(yellow) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 442 · Location 10074

This was more frequent than in the preceding centuries (fourth–sixth), but the armies were now positioned closer to the capital and more deeply enmeshed in its politics.

Highlight(yellow) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 442 · Location 10077

the loss of the fleet ended Arab naval hegemony.

Highlight(yellow) - 19. An Empire of Outposts (685–717) > Page 442 · Location 10082

The defense of Constantinople blocked the Arabs from expanding into the Balkans and Europe.

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 444 · Location 10121

The Ekloge is a practical handbook designed to be accessible, concise, and clear. It reflects a simpler and less stratified society than did Justinianic law, a society of soldiers and farmers and not of senators and city councilors.

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 444 · Location 10123

It makes some innovations, for example by treating marriage as a Christian institution and not, as in ancient Roman law, a private contract.

Highlight(orange) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 447 · Location 10205

Iconophile polemic gives the impression that the emperor wanted to destroy icons. This is what “iconoclasm” literally means, though iconophiles more commonly used the term “iconomachy,” or “fighting against images,” for their opponents. 20

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 449 · Location 10238

There is no proof, however, that Leon attributed the Roman defeats in the seventh century to icon worship. Modern scholarship has invented that link, and later iconophiles would have pounced on such an argument, had it been advanced.

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 449 · Location 10249

While the empire had strengthened its position in the south, Rome, Ravenna, and the Pentapolis were slipping out of its grasp as pro-and anti-imperial factions fought it out. 27

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 449 · Location 10252

Rome was now asserting itself as an independent player.

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 449 · Location 10254

The loss of the patrimonial estates in the south diminished the flow of cash and goods into Rome, affecting a large part of the population and turning it against Constantinople; also, Rome now had its own militia, which was increasingly loyal to the pope.

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 450 · Location 10258

In the 730s, papal Rome had to navigate a complex political landscape that included the exarch, the powerful Lombard king Liudprand (712–744), and the Lombard dukes, who often acted independently of their king.

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 450 · Location 10268

This was one of many Arab defeats taking place around the world at that very time, precipitating the disintegration of the Umayyad caliphate, its replacement by the Abbasids, and a new balance of power.

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 451 · Location 10306

A recent argument attributes the renovation to Eirene after she had restored icons, further proving that the cross was not part of the culture war over icons. 33

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 453 · Location 10322

By 750, the Umayyads were defeated and massacred,

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 454 · Location 10347

The army thus acquired two tiers: the fully professional soldiers of these new battalions (tagmata), who were better paid and stationed in Constantinople, and the provincial armies of Asia Minor, which were descended from the field armies of the fourth–seventh centuries and were now increasingly being called themata.

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 459 · Location 10455

The new pope, Stephen II (752–757), invited the emperor to come with an army and deliver Italy from the Lombards, but no army arrived from Constantinople. Throughout these events, the popes were acting as loyal subjects of the emperor and the issue of images never came up. 50

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 460 · Location 10469

In the new papal view the res publica was henceforth that of St. Peter, not the eastern empire.

Highlight(orange) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 460 · Location 10474

These ideological moves still shape western perceptions of “Byzantium.”

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 460 · Location 10486

Popes quietly appropriated the symbols and prestige of eastern Romanness, even while they openly attacked Constantinople as un-Roman. 56

Highlight(yellow) - 20. The Lion and the Dragon (717–775) > Page 461 · Location 10492

The detached sees, from Reggio and Syracuse to Athens, Thessalonike, and Crete, were mostly Greek-speaking, so this transfer consolidated Romanía as a primarily ethnic Roman state with a unified government and Church.

Highlight(orange) - 21. Reform and Consolidation (775–814) > Page 462 · Location 10504

He sent them gifts, including, in 757, an organ, an instrument unknown in the west. 1

Highlight(yellow) - 21. Reform and Consolidation (775–814) > Page 473 · Location 10722

His leading theologians, Theodulf and Alcuin, had, in rejecting Nicaea II, even pointed to the reduced authority of the eastern empire. 33

Highlight(yellow) - 21. Reform and Consolidation (775–814) > Page 473 · Location 10728

But the pope and some of Charlemagne’s subjects saw in his coronation a displacement of Constantinople’s rights.

Highlight(yellow) - 21. Reform and Consolidation (775–814) > Page 474 · Location 10747

It was also now that iconophile groups began to deploy the rhetoric of martyrdom, instigated a culture war, and invented “iconoclasm” after the fact.

Highlight(yellow) - 21. Reform and Consolidation (775–814) > Page 476 · Location 10809

At this time Greek developed its lowercase letters (minuscule).

Highlight(yellow) - 21. Reform and Consolidation (775–814) > Page 478 · Location 10859

This idea shaped reactions to Second Iconoclasm.

Highlight(yellow) - 21. Reform and Consolidation (775–814) > Page 479 · Location 10870

Thus the “theme system” finally emerged as a unified framework for provincial and military administration.

Highlight(orange) - 21. Reform and Consolidation (775–814) > Page 480 · Location 10913

By contrast, Nikephoros relied on professional armies, a uniform administration, and salaried officials who worked for the state. The vast majority of his subjects were—ethnically, politically, and legally—Romans.

Highlight(yellow) - 21. Reform and Consolidation (775–814) > Page 483 · Location 10980

A detailed treaty was worked out over Venetia, called today the Treaty of Aachen. Venetia would be nominally subject to Constantinople, but in practice autonomous. It was at this time that the Venetians began to build up the Rialto as their principal settlement. Without a hinterland to exploit, they invested in trade. Constantinople treated Venice as an overseas base for its operations.

Highlight(yellow) - 21. Reform and Consolidation (775–814) > Page 484 · Location 10992

The three great rivals to the Roman emperor had all died within a few years. Despite recent defeats on the battlefield, Romanía was well positioned to come out ahead.

Highlight(yellow) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 486 · Location 11025

More explicitly than before, this had become a debate over the emperor’s power to decide religious matters.

Highlight(yellow) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 488 · Location 11075

Thus was “Byzantine Iconoclasm” invented. 10

Highlight(yellow) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 488 · Location 11083

No sooner had Michael II taken the throne than his old comrade Thomas rebelled in Asia Minor, resulting in a vicious, three-year civil war,

Highlight(yellow) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 490 · Location 11128

Just when the eastern frontier was stabilizing, the entire Aegean coastline and the islands were exposed to Muslim raiding. 19

Highlight(yellow) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 493 · Location 11188

These finds have shed light on the gradual transition in Mediterranean shipbuilding from a shell-first to a skeleton-first approach. 30

Highlight(yellow) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 493 · Location 11198

The total strength of the thematic armies at the end of Theophilos’ reign has been estimated at 96,000 in the themes, plus another 24,000 in the tagmata (which seems too high), for a total of 120,000, so a 50% increase since Konstantinos V. Between a fourth and a fifth of these forces were cavalry. 32

Highlight(orange) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 494 · Location 11231

The historian al-Tabari preserves a detailed and reliable narrative of the expedition, written likely by a participant and worth reading, especially for its accounts of how information was gathered about enemy movements during a campaign; the Roman sources, by contrast, are confused. 38

Highlight(orange) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 499 · Location 11343

The procession was repeated annually thereafter and the Feast of Orthodoxy has been celebrated on the first Sunday of Lent ever since.

Highlight(orange) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 502 · Location 11382

It was “Iconoclasm” that established the veneration of icons.

Highlight(pink) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 507 · Location 11517

“the emperor of the Greeks”

Highlight(orange) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 508 · Location 11523

Little did they know that Nicholas’ conception of his powers was based on a set of forged documents, the Pseudo-Isidoran Decretals. 79

Highlight(orange) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 508 · Location 11543

Contrary to a popular myth, Constantinople had no master plan to convert foreign nations.

Highlight(pink) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 509 · Location 11562

“Nicholas” claims that Michael insulted Latin as a “barbarous and Scythian tongue,” which has been taken by modern scholars as a sign that Constantinople was leaving its Latin past behind, but the emperor was probably referring only to the vulgarization of contemporary Roman Latin, which made it difficult to translate in Constantinople.

Highlight(pink) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 509 · Location 11564

Anastasius distorted the text to wax indignant, and demanded that Michael cease calling himself “the emperor of the Romans,” as the “Greeks” spoke no Latin at all. He rubs it in that the Greeks had lost Crete, Sicily, and other provinces.

Highlight(orange) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 510 · Location 11575

Writing against the “errors of the Greeks” now became a genre of Latin theological polemic, and “Greece” was regarded as a breeding ground of heresy. 86

Highlight(yellow) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 512 · Location 11643

Yet despite these philological facts, the Roman state in this period was not sociologically an empire. It was the kingdom or polity of the Roman people, which is what it consistently called itself.

Highlight(orange) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 513 · Location 11646

The ninth century was a brief moment of equilibrium between Romanía and its main rivals, the papacy in the religious sphere, the Franks in claiming the legacy of Roman empire, and the Muslims in offering an alternative to the Christian Roman order.

Highlight(yellow) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 513 · Location 11647

It is no accident that this was when Constantinople and the Frankish kings began to spar over the imperial title; when Rome and New Rome began to spar over Latin and its relation to Romanness;

Highlight(yellow) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 513 · Location 11657

Photios and Michael III pushed back against that claim, leading to what scholarship, given its western bias, calls the “Photian Schism,” although it was the pope who first excommunicated the patriarch. Photios had, up to then, been accommodating and deferential to Rome.

Highlight(pink) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 514 · Location 11673

Some Muslim scholars claimed that contemporary Greek, which they called “the language of the Romans,” was a separate language from “Ionian,” which is what they called ancient Greek. 101

Highlight(orange) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 514 · Location 11689

According to an influential thesis, the end of iconoclasm in 843 inaugurated a phase of humanism in literature and a closer engagement with ancient models. 105

Highlight(yellow) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 515 · Location 11699

This was sponsored by the kaisar Bardas and is often called a “university” by scholars. The teachers were paid by the state and students attended for free. 106

Highlight(yellow) - 22. Growing Confidence (815–867) > Page 515 · Location 11701

Leon also devised the optical telegraph, an “early warning” system of fire beacons that connected the eastern frontier to Constantinople.

Part Seven: The Path toward Empire

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 522 · Location 11815

Anastasius, a masterful propagandist, was the most virulent ideological opponent to date of the eastern empire, and his polemics, which were disseminated widely, have shaped western perceptions to this day. 17

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 528 · Location 11953

Even so, Constantinople had swiftly transformed the Italian south. Its hegemony there would last until the mid-eleventh century.

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 528 · Location 11962

The mixed and religiously peaceful situation in Italy reveals how irrelevant the disputes of high Church politics were to people on the ground. 41

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 529 · Location 11973

Scholars sometimes claim that Basileios initiated a “violent persecution” of Jews throughout the empire and tried to force them to convert to Christianity, but the most reliable sources say only that he tried to bribe many of them to do so with cash and titles.

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 530 · Location 11997

Finally, on Christmas Day, 888, Leon released a sixty-book edition in Greek of Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis, the Basilika, a project set in motion by Basileios. The text was based on Greek translations of the Corpus made in the sixth century for teaching, so the link between the Macedonians and Justinian was direct.

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 530 · Location 12000

Thus, the prefaces of the three legal texts of the Macedonian dynasty had effectively cycled through the three foundations of the culture: Biblical, Greek, and Roman. 48

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 530 · Location 12010

Some historians believe that this programmatic return to the Roman past was an anxious response to western challenges to eastern Romanness. The court was burnishing its Roman credentials in the face of ideological aggression from the popes and Franks. However, there is no trace of such insecurity in these texts or any reference to the west as a potential peer. It is modern scholars, not the east Romans, who view eastern Romanness as tenuous and in need of validation. Not for a second did Constantinople regard the Frankish kings and popes of the ninth century as viable contenders for the Roman legacy. Moreover, Justinianic law was still almost unknown in the west, so this was not an arena in which the west could even compete.

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 532 · Location 12046

The Romans had a long-standing trade treaty with the Bulgarians, first drawn up in 716, renewed in 816, and apparently still in effect.

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 532 · Location 12050

At the end of his reign, Leon also made a treaty with Oleg, the ruler of Rus’.

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 532 · Location 12054

Leon renewed the ancient ban on the export of weapons to barbarians, a capital offense. 57

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 532 · Location 12055

In the last year of his reign, 911–912, Leon also compiled the Book of the Eparch, a set of regulations for the City guilds.

Bookmark - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 533 · Location 12067

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 533 · Location 12073

It was a trade dispute that sparked a brief war with Bulgaria, or at least that provided its ruler Simeon with the pretext for one.

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 535 · Location 12125

Never in the history of the empire had naval warfare played so prominent a role as under Leon VI,

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 536 · Location 12142

The fear of raids, whether by land or by sea, shaped the daily life of the Romans between the seventh and tenth centuries far more deeply than did iconoclasm or the controversies over Leon VI’s marriages, though scholars have devoted far more attention to the latter topics.

Highlight(yellow) - 23. A New David and Solomon (867–912) > Page 536 · Location 12153

Credit systems and investments sprouted around people’s bodies. 75

Highlight(yellow) - 24. A Game of Crowns (912–950) > Page 546 · Location 12362

The history of Roman-Bulgarian relations presents a curious image.

Highlight(yellow) - 24. A Game of Crowns (912–950) > Page 546 · Location 12372

In the end, imperial rivalries and ethnic differences overcame a history of coexistence and a shared faith.

Highlight(yellow) - 24. A Game of Crowns (912–950) > Page 548 · Location 12422

Kourkouas’ campaigns were so extraordinary that someone wrote a panegyrical history of them in eight books, comparing him to Trajan and Belisarios and saying that he “doubled the size of Romanía.”

Highlight(yellow) - 24. A Game of Crowns (912–950) > Page 549 · Location 12438

Expansion created both new friends and new enemies. Among the former were the Banu Habib, a force of 10,000–12,000 Arab cavalrymen from the region of Nisibis who went over to the Romans in the early 940s, converting to Christianity and enrolling in the imperial army. This was a major coup, because, like the Khurramites a century before, they were experienced fighters who had an intimate knowledge of the enemy and the terrain. 33

Bookmark - 24. A Game of Crowns (912–950) > Page 555 · Location 12535

Highlight(yellow) - 24. A Game of Crowns (912–950) > Page 555 · Location 12541

Konstantinos was essentially doing to these fields of knowledge what his father Leon VI had done to law and military science, in the Basilika and the Taktika.

Highlight(yellow) - 24. A Game of Crowns (912–950) > Page 555 · Location 12556

In sum, Konstantinos was appealing to a Roman past that was both classical and imperial-Christian, and jumping over the Biblical model of the Isaurians. The empire was expanding, both geographically and intellectually, and it needed more resources than Biblical fundamentalism to cope with the full range of its ancient patrimony as well as the growing complexity of its present circumstances.

Highlight(yellow) - 24. A Game of Crowns (912–950) > Page 557 · Location 12589

Constantinople’s diplomatic offensive was coupled with a resurgence of military aggression. Imperialism was back on the table. We know this because, starting around 900, court orators began to deny that warfare in the east was motivated by imperialism: it was only the Romans taking back their “ancestral inheritance” and restoring an older order. That, of course, is exactly the voice of imperialism.

Highlight(yellow) - 24. A Game of Crowns (912–950) > Page 557 · Location 12606

The caliphate was in terminal disarray, its lands ruled by whatever warlord could grab territory and establish a dynasty. Western Europe was also fragmenting into small, ineffectual principalities and cities. Only Umayyad Spain had its act together, and it was an ally of Constantinople.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 559 · Location 12630

The imperial army, geared for centuries toward the defense of Asia Minor, had now taken on a more offensive stance. Its notional strength consisted of around 140,000 soldiers and another 12,000 in the fleet under the droungarios.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 560 · Location 12635

The foreign units of Rus’, Armenians, and Bulgarians, while colorful, were few and rarely numbered more than 700 men. 3

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 561 · Location 12660

The goal of this legal intervention was to protect soldiers’ lands from being absorbed into larger estates owned by “the powerful.”

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 562 · Location 12684

The second, fictional narrative attempts to fold the history of the eastern empire into a Marxist-lite model requiring a “feudal” phase. It claims that a “landed aristocracy” of “feudal Anatolian magnates”—the “powerful” mentioned in the land laws—challenged the centralized bureaucratic state of the Macedonian dynasty and eventually overturned it in pursuit of their own class interest.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 562 · Location 12698

Moreover, unlike the Carolingian and Ottoman empires, Romanía did not engage in conquest in order to reward its aristocracy with new lands. It did so for strategic reasons of national defense, to increase the power of the state itself.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 562 · Location 12702

The armies of the conquest period were likely the best trained and most capably led, dangerous, and efficient fighting forces in the history of the eastern Roman empire.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 566 · Location 12786

Holding Crete and Cyprus, and following the destruction of the Tarsiot fleet in 956, the Romans now dominated the eastern Mediterranean.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 566 · Location 12799

At this time the Syrian Orthodox were for all intents and purposes an ethnic group. 32

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 566 · Location 12805

Thus began the annexation of Armenia.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 569 · Location 12865

Tzimiskes (969–976) was one of the best military strategists in the empire’s history, and also, despite his impetuous side, an astute politician.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 571 · Location 12930

This list reflects a major innovation in military structure introduced by Tzimiskes, possibly building on a precedent from southern Italy.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 574 · Location 12985

In these respects, the civil wars of 963, 970, 976–979, and 987–989 were not unlike those of Sulla, Caesar, and Pompey, although the Roman polity was now far more stable at its core.

Highlight(pink) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 578 · Location 13095

The Greek sources again say nothing about this process.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 578 · Location 13103

He did not wage class war against the existing aristocracy, as is often thought. Basil merely kept them in check, in part by strengthening the land legislation of his predecessors.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 579 · Location 13109

“depose all who accumulate too much power; don’t let generals grow too rich; run them down with unfair taxes so that they are always busy with their private affairs; don’t let a woman into the palace; don’t be accessible; and don’t let many know what you are thinking.”

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 580 · Location 13142

Tripoli seems to have been the only additional place that the emperors wanted to acquire because of its strategic importance for naval operations.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 582 · Location 13186

Basil’s conquest approximately tripled the extent of the empire’s holdings in the Balkans, adding all the territory from Philippopolis to the Adriatic along the east-west axis, and from the mountainous core of western Greece in the south up to Vidin on the Danube in the north, with a long extension along the Danube that reached to Sirmium, on the borders of Hungary.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 583 · Location 13206

The elimination of the Bulgarian court decapitated its nobility as well, though local society was probably unaffected and Basil allowed the Bulgarians to “carry on under their own leaders and customs.”

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 585 · Location 13242

The Phokades tended to launch civil wars precisely when the empire was preoccupied with foreign wars, a tactic that would cost the empire dearly in the 1070s.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 585 · Location 13251

From a military standpoint, further conquest was feasible, but the empire was weary of incorporating Muslim populations, and mountainous regions, such as in the western Balkans were unprofitable. In fact, as we will see, it is likely that after the Bulgarian war the Roman state exercised little effective control over mountainous western Greece and Albania. But there was one area—southern Italy—where imperial authority could still be buttressed and one territory that could be profitably reconquered: Sicily.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 585 · Location 13263

Basil’s administration ensured stability in Italy for a generation.

Highlight(yellow) - 25. The Triumph of Roman Arms (950–1025) > Page 587 · Location 13298

The Romans held an empire again, which paradoxically meant that the barbarians were inside the gates. Traveling to the frontier or settling in the new territories produced feelings of alienation and anguish.

Highlight(yellow) - 26. A Brief Hegemony (1025–1048) > Page 589 · Location 13351

As no one had any “right” to the throne in the Roman system beyond what he or she could persuade others to recognize, power was always up for grabs.

Highlight(yellow) - 26. A Brief Hegemony (1025–1048) > Page 590 · Location 13358

Thus, a rift opened within the leadership between the civilian or courtly interests (politikon) and the military (stratiotikon). This is how Psellos explained the putsch of 1057, when the dam finally burst:

Highlight(yellow) - 26. A Brief Hegemony (1025–1048) > Page 591 · Location 13392

Agricultural expansion implies population growth. Guesses as to its size in ca. 1025 reach as high as 19 million. 11

Highlight(yellow) - 26. A Brief Hegemony (1025–1048) > Page 593 · Location 13438

The emperors of the eleventh century were pulling in more revenue than at any time since the age of Justinian, in an economy, moreover, that was highly monetized. 23 Why, then, were Monomachos and his successors short of cash after 1050?

Highlight(yellow) - 26. A Brief Hegemony (1025–1048) > Page 593 · Location 13455

Thus, political insecurity exacerbated deficits.

Bookmark - 26. A Brief Hegemony (1025–1048) > Page 595 · Location 13475

Highlight(yellow) - 26. A Brief Hegemony (1025–1048) > Page 602 · Location 13636

Monomachos’ reign was pivotal in the history of the empire. It was then that its geostrategic position began to change from hegemonic to defensive, and soon it would be fighting for survival.

Highlight(yellow) - 26. A Brief Hegemony (1025–1048) > Page 603 · Location 13678

Monomachos, therefore, was not an idle emperor on the military front. He enforced the empire’s claims and quickly replaced generals who failed.

Highlight(yellow) - 26. A Brief Hegemony (1025–1048) > Page 604 · Location 13701

Tornikios’ rebellion revealed the ambitions of the military cadres that were entrenched in the Balkan provinces, the products of Basil II’s long wars. There was now a “military aristocracy” there to rival that of Asia Minor. In fact, within a generation, the empire would flip its orientation and become a predominantly Balkan state. That transition was already underway.

Highlight(yellow) - 26. A Brief Hegemony (1025–1048) > Page 607 · Location 13765

Monomachos was not handing titles away, but allowing “new money” to buy into the court system, so this was a mechanism for the state to capture cash being created through trade. By giving titles in exchange for money, the state satisfied its “thirst for gold” and ensured that it remained the arbiter of social status in emerging economic sectors. 76

Part Eight: A New Paradigm

Bookmark - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 611 · Location 13789

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 611 · Location 13792

History accelerated in the mid-eleventh century, not only for the Romans. The entire arc of the Christian and Muslim world, from Iran to England, witnessed momentous changes that ushered in new geopolitical challenges. Romanía was situated at the center of this arc and barely managed to survive the unleashing of forces that collided with its antique structures.

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 613 · Location 13846

Thus Constantinople was squeezed between the rise of Turkish power on one side and the demands of papal supremacy and expansion of western lordships on the other. This set the framework for the remainder of east Roman history. It began during the reign of Monomachos.

Bookmark - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 613 · Location 13847

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 614 · Location 13873

The Pecheneg war was costly in men and money. It proved to be a historical fulcrum, marking a change in Constantinople’s stance in the Balkans from dominant to defensive.

Bookmark - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 615 · Location 13899

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 615 · Location 13901

Leo now tried to persuade Monomachos to prioritize Italy and the Norman problem, especially as the Pecheneg wars were over. In 1054, he dispatched a cardinal (Humbert), papal chancellor (Friedrich), and bishop (Petrus of Amalfi), to Constantinople to forge an alliance.

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 616 · Location 13911

At this point, modern narratives tell the following story of the events of 1054.

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 617 · Location 13937

Monomachos is often accused of “demilitarizing” the Iberian army in a way that later enabled the Seljuks to enter Asia Minor through that gap in the frontier. This accusation is based on sources which state that around 1050 Monomachos reformed the recruitment and payment of soldiers in the Iberian doukaton, but the nature of this reform remains opaque. 15

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 617 · Location 13946

Contraction had begun in the east, but was yet perceptible only at the outer fringes. At the same time, the slow end of the Macedonian dynasty was dragging Constantinople into a political crisis.

Bookmark - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 618 · Location 13957

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 619 · Location 13992

During this reign, the employment of eunuchs in military positions, so prevalent during the late Macedonian dynasty, began to diminish. The dynasties of Komnenos, Doukas, and Diogenes reasserted the dominance of the “bearded” officer class.

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 620 · Location 13995

The policy of buying political support with “gifts” had been bankrupting the state.

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 622 · Location 14053

It is possible that Doukas paid for this political largesse by shortchanging the army. Psellos says that he downsized it and preferred diplomacy over war because it was cheaper. Attaleiates says that Doukas neglected the army and the frontiers; failed to ensure that soldiers were adequately equipped; and discharged the best and therefore more expensive soldiers, leaving only the dregs behind. 37

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 622 · Location 14063

The major failure of the reign occurred in 1064, when the new sultan, Alp Arslan (1063–1072), moved up from Azerbaijan, subjugated Georgia, and then conquered the city of Ani after a brief siege.

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 623 · Location 14085

None of these territories were the popes’ to assign, and Sicily was still under Muslim rule. But open aggression, coupled with the cynical use of invented titles, was the circular process that propelled this new breed of military opportunists from the north and their papal backers. A striking demonstration of how it worked—at the level of an entire state and not just its outlying provinces—was given by William, the duke of Normandy, who conquered England in 1066.

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 624 · Location 14106

The empress Eudokia confided to Psellos that “our empire is withering and regressing.”

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 626 · Location 14157

Diogenes was also funding the construction of forts inside Asia Minor, guarding the passes from the central mountainous plateau to the plains in the west. The interior was already being treated as a frontier zone, anticipating the strategic configuration of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 55

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 627 · Location 14178

Diogenes eventually rejected their overtures and marched out on the third day, 26 August. He found the enemy ready for battle, but they fled before him. He pursued them but eventually stopped, so as not to fall into an ambush. But when he ordered his standard to be reversed, this was taken in the rear as a signal that the emperor had fallen, and the soldiers fled. It was alleged that the general Andronikos Doukas, son of the kaisar, deliberately withdrew and spread a rumor about the emperor’s demise, causing a general panic.

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 627 · Location 14185

In Attaleiates’ account there is no “battle” of Mantzikert, only a confused pursuit that ends in the emperor’s capture. In the twelfth century, the historian and kaisar Nikephoros Bryennios, relying possibly on information passed down from his homonymous grandfather, the general, presents it more like a set battle on the final day, with left and right wings flanking Diogenes in the center, all fighting the Turks with variable results, until the emperor is captured. 59

Bookmark - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 628 · Location 14204

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 629 · Location 14218

Mantzikert was a military disaster, the worst in Roman history since the Yarmuk (636 ad). It was not costly in terms of lives, nor was it lost to an enemy who was bent on the immediate conquest of Roman territory; Alp Arslan was looking elsewhere at the time. 65 It was a disaster because of its timing. It dispersed and demoralized the Roman armies precisely when quasi-independent Turkish groups were eager to expand into new lands. “Surging out of Persia, the Turks marched into the Roman themes, for there was no one to oppose them.

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 630 · Location 14248

This mechanism for rewarding followers would later be implemented by Alexios I on a vaster scale and it enabled some prominent families to relocate from eastern Asia Minor.

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 631 · Location 14291

In a sense, the rest of Roman history was a struggle to steer a course between Frankish and Turkish predators, hiring the one to fight the other, a dynamic that expanded until it filled up the entire strategic horizon.

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 632 · Location 14292

Nikephoritzes, the power behind Michael VII’s throne, had made his choice between the two, “preferring to see the land of the Romans under Turkish rule than to see Latins ensconced in any part of it, even if only to repel Turkish attacks.” By contrast, the historian of those events, Attaleiates, was all for using Latins against Turks. 80 It is still unclear which of the two did more damage to Romanía.

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 633 · Location 14320

Michael VII earned the nickname Parapinakis, “Cheapskate.” By 1077, the regime had lost credibility and the dam burst.

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 634 · Location 14357

So instead of being used to destroy each other, Turks and Franks were now being deployed together to destroy the remaining Roman armies of the west. 93

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 636 · Location 14391

The nucleus for the next century of Roman leadership was contained within that tense alliance, along with the seeds of its fateful demise.

Highlight(yellow) - 27. The End of Italy and the East (1048–1081) > Page 636 · Location 14397

The eleventh-century decline had both exogenous and endogenous causes. Scholars have focused overwhelmingly on the latter, and there is a bias in favor of socioeconomic explanations. But the exogenous factors were critical here.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 638 · Location 14436

This had serious consequences for the relationship between the court and provincial elites, because titles and salaries had for centuries bonded the two. Now most provincials were excluded from the court system, while a coterie of intermarried military aristocrats ensconced themselves in the upper echelons that Alexios created for them.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 639 · Location 14445

The pope presented the imminent Norman attack on Byzantium as an act of contrition and faith, an ideology that would before long fuel the crusades. The pope also excommunicated Alexios. 5 Rome, after all, stood to gain from the Norman conquests.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 640 · Location 14476

Both the Italian rebellions and Heinrich’s march had been spurred on by eastern diplomacy and funded by Constantinopolitan gold. It was with reason that westerners later compared Alexios to a scorpion: “he is not dangerous from the front, but watch the tail.”

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 642 · Location 14521

As so many times before, the Romans had lost the battles but won the war, in large part through diplomacy and subversion.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 644 · Location 14572

Alexios managed to forge an alliance with the Cumans, who turned up in force in 1091 to help him against their common foe—another scorpion’s tail.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 645 · Location 14599

Overall, this was possibly the single greatest confiscation of lands in the history of the empire.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 645 · Location 14604

Alexios ruined a large part of the aristocracy in order to save the Roman polity from insolvency during the Pecheneg crisis.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 647 · Location 14643

Alexios began to conduct foreign policy via concession too. It was likely in 1092 (rather than 1082, the traditional date) that he issued a chrysobull exempting Venetians from taxes on trade throughout the territory of the empire.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 647 · Location 14655

The empire was no longer an entire world—an oikoumene—unto itself.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 647 · Location 14661

“When two enemies of the Roman empire were fighting against each other, he would side with the weaker one, make gains at the expense of the stronger one, and then move on to take the next city.”

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 651 · Location 14751

The leaders of the First Crusade had family traditions of pilgrimage to Jerusalem and knowledge of east Roman affairs.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 654 · Location 14798

When Godefroy resisted, his supplies were withdrawn. When his men ravaged the City’s suburbs, they were fired upon by men under the kaisar Nikephoros Bryennios (the rebel’s son or grandson, Anna’s husband). Godefroy submitted and took the oath in a formal ceremony.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 654 · Location 14816

Urban II himself had intended for the crusade “to liberate the Churches of the East,” including the east Romans (“ Greeks”), and to secure the pilgrimage routes. No western pilgrims could be safe with Tzachas prowling the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. 75

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 656 · Location 14845

Doukas’ brilliant campaign lasted until mid-1098, retaking Smyrna and Ephesos, then marching inland to Sardeis, Philadelpheia, Laodikeia, and Polyboton, routing the Turkish forces. The northwestern third of Asia Minor was restored to Roman rule, after a gap of almost twenty years.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 656 · Location 14848

Doukas was able to reach deep into Phrygia because the Franks had already passed through there in 1097, smashing the opposition.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 656 · Location 14853

The crusaders’ journey after that need not be retold here, except to emphasize that as far as Antioch they followed established Roman strategies (probably pointed out to them by Tatikios) and were acting in the interest of the emperor, fulfilling their oath to him. This is grudgingly admitted in their accounts, which were written later in a context of increasing animosity toward the “Greeks.” It is missing from Anna, because she did not understand the strategy of the campaign and some of its gains in the east proved to be short-lived, though they pointed toward a more ambitious conception. It is also absent from most modern accounts, who see the crusade exclusively through western eyes.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 658 · Location 14900

Subsequent crusades would reveal that the success of the first had been a fluke, and despite the emperor’s efforts many in the west blamed him for these failures and spread rumors that he was cynically feeding Christians to the Turks. This lie soon became a known fact, as it fit prevailing prejudices about “the Greeks,” and it shaped accounts of the First Crusade into a “systematic defamation” of the empire. 91

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 660 · Location 14962

In 1110, the Pisans swore vassal allegiance to the emperor and, in 1111, he granted to them concessions similar (but not as wide-ranging) as those of the Venetians, including a wharf and establishment to the east of the Venetians’ in the City; a tax reduction on trade (4% instead of 10%); and reserved seats in Hagia Sophia and the hippodrome. In return, they vowed to be “loyal to Romanía” in its wars. 101

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 661 · Location 14974

The frontier between the Romans and the Turks was an irregular series of passes and valleys between Phrygia and the central Anatolian plateau, and they too needed to be fortified and even reclaimed from local Romans who tried to be independent of both sides. 104

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 661 · Location 14991

Whereas Justinian found it strong and left it weak, and Basil had found it strong and made it stronger, Alexios found the empire on the verge of collapse and renewed it so that, under the reigns of his son and grandson, it could emerge again as a great power.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 662 · Location 15003

It is often said that during his reign the Roman republic became more like a family-run business. There is some truth in this.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 662 · Location 15016

It is often said that the Komnenian revolution represented the victory of the military aristocracy over the Roman state itself, but this is misleading.

Highlight(yellow) - 28. Komnenian Crisis Management (1081–1118) > Page 663 · Location 15022

It worked well as the basis of government for as long as they could tame their kin. After them, however, the flaws inherent in the Komnenian system brought down the entire polity.

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 665 · Location 15060

Not all Romans in Asia Minor wanted to be liberated. In 1141, Ioannes found that those of lake Beyşehir (near Konya) sided with the Turks against him. Sixty years after the conquests, they regarded the Turks as friends, neighbors, and trading partners. As Choniates famously put it, “time and custom had prevailed over race and religion.” 6

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 665 · Location 15070

This was the second time that Romanía was attacked by a foreign power that hoped for trading concessions (the first was by Simeon of Bulgaria in the 890s). Venice was gradually regarded less as a junior partner of empire and more a predatory business associate who also slandered the “faithless” Greeks, despite having won the concessions.

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 668 · Location 15116

No society had yet conceived an institution that resembled a modern hospital more than this, or endowed it so lavishly, though there were east Roman precedents.

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 669 · Location 15157

In 1140, the emperor’s son Manuel was betrothed to Bertha of Sulzbach, sister-in-law of the German king Konrad III Hohenstaufen. Imperial princes, including Ioannes’ heir Alexios, were married to foreign princesses from Georgia, Russia, and the west more frequently than ever before. This reflected an awareness of the multipolar world in which the empire now operated. 21

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 670 · Location 15181

In Asia Minor the Romans had lost the more pastoral uplands but they recovered the agricultural and more urbanized western plains along the coasts. According to the state’s tax offices, the land in western Anatolia was 30% more productive than that in the interior. 26

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 671 · Location 15195

In many regions, the state outsourced the collection of taxes to officials who received land concessions. As a result, some tax revenue did not go back to the center but directly supported the regional branch office of the Komnenian administration; salaries were exchanged for tax concessions and exemptions.

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 671 · Location 15209

No comparison to western feudalism is warranted. These grants could be, and often were, reassigned by the authorities. We cannot assess how widely this instrument was implemented, and its pros and cons are debated. Choniates protested that, with their needs met, soldiers were not incentivized to perform well to earn their pay, and he objected to the fiscal subordination of “proud Roman peasants” to foreign soldiers who were “half-barbarian runts.” 31 This system of pronoias and concessions was less consistent and uniform than what it replaced, for tax collecting was now carried out locally by a variety of non-professionals, which made the system feel unfair. It is unclear why the Komnenoi favored this decentralization of fiscal authority.

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 672 · Location 15219

The Komnenoi would often settle defeated foreign invaders on imperial lands and then recruit them. 32

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 673 · Location 15260

Spoken Greek, a language that was already being called “Romaic,” had not previously been used for literature, so this was a significant development, similar to the emergence of vernacular Romance literature in the west.

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 675 · Location 15287

They presided loosely over a sprawling network of private teachers, tutors, and grammarians. They formed a pool from which the exceptionally learned bishops of this period were drawn, redistributing the capital’s intellectual assets to the provinces. 44

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 676 · Location 15313

Literary life was busier and more original under the Komnenoi than any previous time, possibly surpassing the era of Justinian.

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 677 · Location 15349

Roman emperors had rarely in the past made deals with other monarchs as their equals, and Manuel struggled to preserve his superior status while in effect making bilateral deals. His treaties with the Genoese, for example, were pitched as concessions by a benevolent overlord to foreign hirelings, but the Genoese were in reality bargaining hard with him as equal and free partners. 55 The age of multilateral diplomacy had arrived.

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 677 · Location 15360

Through extraordinary effort, Manuel managed to control the chaos. After him, however, the waves of these storms would overwhelm and sink the Roman state.

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 678 · Location 15372

Manuel pushed his resources and infrastructure into overdrive. He spent huge sums bribing men in key positions in foreign nations, so that “there was no city in Italy, or even farther away, where the emperor did not have agents sworn to promote his interests.” 60 Fomenting internal discord beneath his enemies’ thrones was a deliberate strategy during his reign. 61

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 681 · Location 15455

It was becoming a conventional trope in the west that crusades failed “because of the Greeks.” A critical mass of resentment and racist and religious hatred was building up. 72

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 682 · Location 15468

Manuel (correctly) perceived that western Christians were far more dangerous to his empire than Muslims, and he pursued a calculated strategy of divide-and-rule. 74

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 683 · Location 15489

Manuel secured the support of Genoa through a deal similar to that with Pisa (from 1111), and sent agents loaded with money to buy allies in Italy.

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 684 · Location 15525

Manuel’s goal was not to dominate the Latins, but to open his east Roman world to them and make them feel that it was also part of their own.

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 685 · Location 15545

Constantinople was now the chief patron of the crusaders states.

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 687 · Location 15593

Manuel controlled more of the Balkans than any emperor since the fourth century, though this dominion would be brief.

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 691 · Location 15686

The figure given in one source of 60,000 Latins in the City alone is impossible; a Genoese chronicle offers the more plausible figures of 1,000 Pisans and 300 Genoese in 1162.110

Bookmark - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 692 · Location 15716

Highlight(yellow) - 29. Good John and the Sun King (1118–1180) > Page 693 · Location 15730

Choniates, our main source, gets the location wrong, so we do not know where the attack took place, though the name that he gave to it, Myriokephalon, has stuck.

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 696 · Location 15803

Manuel’s death had been like the sudden removal of a support beam: everything started leaning in opposite directions. 1

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 701 · Location 15936

In 1184, using forged documents of appointment, he seized Cyprus and, from this point on, the island ceased to be part of the main Roman polity. Fragmentation had begun.

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 702 · Location 15946

The Norman fleet of 220 ships quickly captured Dyrrachion on 24 June. Its army marched to Thessalonike, reaching it without opposition on 6 August, while the fleet sailed around Greece and arrived on 15 August. The walls were breached after a hard-fought siege and the city fell on 24 August. We have a detailed account by the archbishop Eustathios, who focuses on blaming the incompetence of the governor, David Komnenos.

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 703 · Location 15979

Isaakios regained Dyrrachion in 1186, but the Ionian islands of Kephalonia, Ithaca, and Zakynthos were occupied by the Norman admiral Margaritone. They were permanently lost to the empire, and would pass to Venetian control after 1204. Margaritone’s fleet also held some Aegean islands in 1186, subjecting them to tribute. Romanía was being chipped away at the edges. 29

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 704 · Location 15992

This was effectively the end of the Roman imperial fleet as a formidable Mediterranean force. 32

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 706 · Location 16036

Two years into Isaakios’ reign, the walls were closing in. Cyprus, the Ionian islands, and northern Bulgaria were lost, as was most of the imperial fleet.

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 706 · Location 16050

alarmingly, some locals intermarried with the pirates and joined in their depredations, a sign of mounting provincial alienation from Constantinople. 39

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 709 · Location 16117

Choniates used Latins as a mirror to make his own people look bad.

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 709 · Location 16128

Cyprus’ occupation was a brutal colonial conquest and should not be romanticized in chivalric terms.

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 710 · Location 16139

The second was the greater frequency with which Romans crossed state and ethnic lines to form alliances with foreigners. In theory, it was supposed to be barbarians who assimilated to Roman manners and fought for Romanía against their former nation. Now defections began to cut in the other direction, a trend that had been pioneered by Isaakios sebastokrator and his sons. 56

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 711 · Location 16174

Some scholars see an uptick in the power of bureaucratic families at this time, including the Kamateroi, Kastamonites, and Hagiotheodorites. 61

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 712 · Location 16181

These cross-border links were creating a fluid frontier. Even after supporting Mangaphas against the emperor, the sultan Kai Khusrow twice went to Constantinople seeking help against his brothers (in 1196 and 1200), and he was there when the Fourth Crusade arrived. Conversely, some Roman captives “preferred to resettle among barbarians rather than in the Greek-speaking cities, and happily quit their own fatherland.” 62

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 713 · Location 16225

He lacked sons and needed to shore up his regime by appointing potential heirs, giving them, in succession, the title of despotes.

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 715 · Location 16262

The Romans had lost the entire northern Balkans, though they still held Dyrrachion in the far west. 73

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 717 · Location 16313

Historians praise Innocent in grand terms for his “visionary” promotion of crusading, but he failed to take fiscal responsibility for the mess that he created.

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 718 · Location 16323

Manuel’s once proud fleet of 200 ships had been reduced, in part thanks to the corruption of the megas doux Stryphnos, to “twenty rotting hulks.” 83

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 719 · Location 16348

We have to be careful on one point here. The sources written by the crusaders, which are followed here by much of the scholarship, depict the presence of Alexios as a weighty factor in the deliberations, as if he personally, or his alleged “rights,” could not in good conscience be ignored by the counts, the marquis, and the Venetians.

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 725 · Location 16506

Choniates laid the blame for the empire’s fall on the Komnenoi for this reason: “by consorting with nations that were hostile to the Romans, they became a plague upon their country.” 111

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 725 · Location 16512

Aristocracies tend to form lateral ties with their counterparts in neighboring countries, regarding themselves as superior to the mass of their subjects at home. 112 Romanía had never before had an aristocracy of this kind. Its elite had been one of state service, drawn from the provinces, and families rotated in and out of power. That is why the Roman imperial elite had, for almost a millennium, not meshed well with its neighboring aristocracies. But in the twelfth century it had become an aristocracy conducive to lateral, international links, for its domestic power rested as much on personal ties as on institutional-statal positions.

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 726 · Location 16531

Choniates was right: the gulf between Romans and Latins was too wide. Aristocratic marriages brought meddling, not cultural understanding or fusion, and the crusades supercharged suspicion into hostility and war.

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 727 · Location 16539

Choniates rightly blamed Manuel for failing to make good provisions for the succession, 113 but a truer accusation would be that he created a system of dynastic governance that no successor could manage.

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 728 · Location 16567

depict Constantinople as a parasite, exerting “fiscal violence” to feed the insatiable greed of a corrupt administration that was always taking but not giving back what Roman citizens expected from their government: justice and security. 119 The provinces, after all, had only limited means of self-defense against pirates and invaders; that is why they paid taxes to the center.

Highlight(yellow) - 30. Disintegration and Betrayal (1180–1204) > Page 729 · Location 16597

By contrast, decentralization enabled the Latin world to experiment with new approaches not only in intellectual matters, but also in politics and economics.

Part Nine: Exile and Return

Highlight(yellow) - 31. “A New France”: Colonial Occupation > Page 739 · Location 16750

These were likely the largest confiscations of land in Roman history.

Highlight(yellow) - 31. “A New France”: Colonial Occupation > Page 749 · Location 16988

As ethnic Romans were now divided among many states, the term “Romanites” emerged to designate a Roman from the free states, though it is rare. 66 In the treaty that Venice made with the Cretan rebel Alexios Kallergis in 1299, after years of fighting, the Latin term Greco is rendered Romaios in the Greek version. Kallergis was in a position of strength and could represent his people’s identity as he chose. 67

Highlight(yellow) - 31. “A New France”: Colonial Occupation > Page 750 · Location 16997

The text thus recognizes that Romanness, as an ethnic identity, cut across political boundaries, but it was working to retain the allegiance of Moreot Romans and prevent them from making common cause with outside Romans.

Highlight(yellow) - 31. “A New France”: Colonial Occupation > Page 751 · Location 17031

Many of the chroniclers of the Fourth Crusade cast the conquest of Constantinople as payback against the Greeks by the western descendants of the Trojans, which is what many western Europeans believed that they were, sparking the production of much Trojan-themed literature.

Highlight(yellow) - 31. “A New France”: Colonial Occupation > Page 751 · Location 17045

“Romaic,”

Highlight(yellow) - 31. “A New France”: Colonial Occupation > Page 752 · Location 17051

Thus, we have the paradox that the Latins did more to stimulate vernacular Greek literature than the Romans themselves ever had.

Highlight(yellow) - 31. “A New France”: Colonial Occupation > Page 753 · Location 17096

It was, then, conquerors and immigrants who shed the most light on the Greek spoken in the Morea and Anatolia in the thirteenth century, regions that had parted ways politically in the later eleventh century.

Highlight(yellow) - 32. Romans West and Romans East (1204–1261) > Page 756 · Location 17165

A tally of attested names suggests that in the fourteenth century about 35% of the overall population of some 250,000 were non-Roman.

Highlight(yellow) - 32. Romans West and Romans East (1204–1261) > Page 759 · Location 17200

The Roman world became a looser coalition of regional statelets and cities that were trying to chart a safe, or advantageous, course through the storm, like the fragments of a shipwreck.

Bookmark - 32. Romans West and Romans East (1204–1261) > Page 761 · Location 17259

Highlight(yellow) - 32. Romans West and Romans East (1204–1261) > Page 761 · Location 17268

The pope had excommunicated any and all Latins who did this, for in his eyes maintaining the Latin empire was a crusading priority.

Highlight(yellow) - 32. Romans West and Romans East (1204–1261) > Page 762 · Location 17293

However, Alexios was arrested by Bonifacio, stripped of his royal insignia, and sent to Montferrat. He was the first emperor of Constantinople to visit Italy since Konstas II in the seventh century. 35

Highlight(yellow) - 32. Romans West and Romans East (1204–1261) > Page 765 · Location 17358

Thessalonike was cut off and invested in 1223.48 Apokaukos crowed that the Thessalonians longed for Theodoros, “at least those among them who are of our religion, who speak the Hellenic tongue.” 49

Highlight(yellow) - 32. Romans West and Romans East (1204–1261) > Page 767 · Location 17412

What kept them together was their common ethnic Roman identity, vision of national restoration, and shared Orthodoxy. This was effectively a new experience of Romanness, held together by ideas and identities and not, as before, also by unified institutions.

Highlight(yellow) - 32. Romans West and Romans East (1204–1261) > Page 771 · Location 17507

Never before had there been so many kings and emperors packed into this territory, which had once been a single polity. 77

Highlight(yellow) - 32. Romans West and Romans East (1204–1261) > Page 773 · Location 17563

This strategy was reminiscent of the eleventh century, when emperors used flexible appointments to prevent the aristocracy from entrenching itself in administrative positions.

Highlight(yellow) - 32. Romans West and Romans East (1204–1261) > Page 775 · Location 17599

Nikaia realized that the Roman polity was unlikely to reconquer Serbia and Bulgaria and so it converted their de facto independence into an anti-Latin asset by giving them what the pope would not: ecclesiastical autonomy.

Highlight(yellow) - 32. Romans West and Romans East (1204–1261) > Page 782 · Location 17762

In the east-west debates of that time, more charitable thinkers than Theodoros recognized that both Greeks and Latins had common roots in the global Roman empire of antiquity and drew their shared name, culture, and religion from it. 121

Highlight(yellow) - 32. Romans West and Romans East (1204–1261) > Page 784 · Location 17810

These battle lines—for and against Theodoros II—reflected the later partisan division between the Laskarids and Palaiologoi and exacerbated the debate over Union. The seeds of this later social division were being sown already in the mid-1250s.

Highlight(yellow) - 33. Union with Rome and Roman Disunity (1261–1282) > Page 792 · Location 17972

According to a Dominican friar, “scarcely one third of it is inhabited, the rest is gardens and fields, or deserted.” Constantinople used to be celebrated as an urban megalopolis, but now it had separate villages and suburbs within its walls, and authors, both Roman and foreign, praised its sylvan attractions too.

Highlight(yellow) - 33. Union with Rome and Roman Disunity (1261–1282) > Page 795 · Location 18040

But it now appears that—foreign conquest aside—the Roman state never lost control of its lands or its aristocracy. 28 This was not why it eventually fell.

Highlight(yellow) - 33. Union with Rome and Roman Disunity (1261–1282) > Page 799 · Location 18153

For the next century and a half, while the Genoese were presumed to be allies and quasi-subjects of the basileus, the Venetians were presumed to be enemies who signed periodic five-or ten-year “truces” with Romanía. Their representatives were given inferior positions in palace receptions.

Highlight(yellow) - 34. Territorial Retrenchment and Cultural Innovation (1282–1328) > Page 814 · Location 18519

It was Andronikos who lost Roman Anatolia.

Highlight(yellow) - 34. Territorial Retrenchment and Cultural Innovation (1282–1328) > Page 818 · Location 18601

But in 1307, he was defeated and pushed back to his upland base by a large Mongol army, a setback “forgotten” by the later Turkish tradition. Ottoman expansion was halted for the next twenty years because of it. 45 For now, the main cities of Bithynia—Nikaia, Nikomedeia, and Prousa—held out.

Highlight(yellow) - 34. Territorial Retrenchment and Cultural Innovation (1282–1328) > Page 819 · Location 18643

Court dress—and Roman dress generally in this era—shunned western styles, though not necessarily western fabrics, which were imported and used to make Roman-style clothing. This choice has been linked to the rejection of Union, which under Andronikos became almost a core element of Roman identity. Foreign tastes looked instead to the east, leading to the adoption of turbans and caftans. Elite fashion sense fixated on hats, whose extravagant and exotic styles elicited commentary on the decline of Roman mores.

Highlight(yellow) - 34. Territorial Retrenchment and Cultural Innovation (1282–1328) > Page 829 · Location 18879

The books that he left in his will included Thucydides, Lucian, Homer, and Aristotle. 94

Highlight(yellow) - 34. Territorial Retrenchment and Cultural Innovation (1282–1328) > Page 830 · Location 18916

Whether they know it or not, modern classicists stand in a tradition that goes directly back to these east Romans, a tradition that, a century later, was transported to the west and curated by the Italian humanists.

Highlight(yellow) - 34. Territorial Retrenchment and Cultural Innovation (1282–1328) > Page 839 · Location 19140

The civil war between the Andronikoi was essentially a forced generational transfer of power from men in their sixties to men in their twenties.

Highlight(yellow) - 34. Territorial Retrenchment and Cultural Innovation (1282–1328) > Page 840 · Location 19147

conflict, and

Highlight(yellow) - 34. Territorial Retrenchment and Cultural Innovation (1282–1328) > Page 840 · Location 19160

Thus, the cause of Palaiologan infighting was the structure of the state economy, not some defect in the family’s character.

Part Ten: Dignity in Defeat

Highlight(yellow) - 35. Military Failure and Mystical Refuge (1328–1354) > Page 851 · Location 19360

Siege warfare rarely involved direct assaults on the walls anymore.

Highlight(yellow) - 35. Military Failure and Mystical Refuge (1328–1354) > Page 852 · Location 19401

(There was no sense here of a single “universal empire” over which these rulers were competing; that is a modern fiction.)

Highlight(yellow) - 35. Military Failure and Mystical Refuge (1328–1354) > Page 855 · Location 19481

Moreover, Orthodoxy came to be strongly associated with mysticism and Athos, both of which had previously been marginal.

Highlight(yellow) - 35. Military Failure and Mystical Refuge (1328–1354) > Page 855 · Location 19483

Neo-Palamism remains strong today, and its adherents uphold their hero as the “essence” of Orthodoxy.

Highlight(yellow) - 35. Military Failure and Mystical Refuge (1328–1354) > Page 856 · Location 19500

Gregoras took an even more extreme view, that theology is only a rough approximation of metaphysical truth that caters to the needs of simple people. 61

Highlight(yellow) - 35. Military Failure and Mystical Refuge (1328–1354) > Page 858 · Location 19553

By Synods comprising a couple dozen bishops at most, Orthodoxy was now redefined as Palamism.

Highlight(yellow) - 35. Military Failure and Mystical Refuge (1328–1354) > Page 859 · Location 19563

The Roman state was tiny—encompassing only southern Thrace, Thessalonike, a few islands, and a corner of the Peloponnese—and contained only a few hundred thousand people.

Highlight(yellow) - 35. Military Failure and Mystical Refuge (1328–1354) > Page 862 · Location 19642

But in the process, he essentially devised the late Palaiologan system of governance through regional commands assigned to members of the royal family. These are sometimes called “appanages” by modern scholars, a term taken from the French feudal model. It is a misleading term. These posts were not hereditary and did not entail ownership of the lands in question. 91

Highlight(yellow) - 35. Military Failure and Mystical Refuge (1328–1354) > Page 863 · Location 19657

The Roman state was henceforth a patchwork of interlinked domains whose histories began to diverge. Thessaly and Epeiros, for example, were conquered by Dušan before the decade was out.

Highlight(yellow) - 35. Military Failure and Mystical Refuge (1328–1354) > Page 864 · Location 19679

No one had done more to entrench the Turks in the Balkans than Kantakouzenos.

Highlight(yellow) - 36. The Noose Tightens (1354–1402) > Page 867 · Location 19750

Trebizond was an independent state. It skillfully adapted to the more fragmented world of the Turkish emirates that emerged in the fourteenth century. It has even been called, in that context, a “Greek emirate,” but this is wrong. 1

Highlight(yellow) - 36. The Noose Tightens (1354–1402) > Page 869 · Location 19792

Ioannes was the first Roman monarch who was heavily in debt to a foreign power. 8

Highlight(yellow) - 36. The Noose Tightens (1354–1402) > Page 874 · Location 19930

This is one of the first extant cases of a formal canonization process in the Orthodox Church, which required documenting the saint’s miracles. Palamas was pronounced a pillar of Orthodoxy, meaning that anyone who disagreed with him was excommunicate. 41

Highlight(yellow) - 36. The Noose Tightens (1354–1402) > Page 877 · Location 19993

Ironically, the only trend toward unity in this period was the recognition of Palamism by the Churches of Serbia, Bulgaria, and Russia. This was a conspicuous victory for Athos and Constantinople and a confirmation of their leadership in the broader Orthodox world. 51 Yet it too came at a cost. Palamism was divisive among Roman intellectuals, and even contributed to some of them converting to Catholicism. It also strengthened the barrier between the two Churches: on the one hand, Rome would never accept the new doctrines of the energies and lights, while on the other the patriarch risked losing his newly confirmed preeminence among the Orthodox Churches if he accepted Union. But the “international Palamism” of the Church brought almost no political, economic, or military advantages to any of its members.

Highlight(yellow) - 36. The Noose Tightens (1354–1402) > Page 879 · Location 20038

In one estimate, Muslims were a majority in Anatolia by the fourteenth century, as a result of both conversion and migration. 60

Highlight(yellow) - 36. The Noose Tightens (1354–1402) > Page 881 · Location 20068

In the 1370s, the Roman basileus became a vassal of the Ottoman sultan. This did not happen in 1371, after the Maritsa battle, as is commonly believed, but in 1376.

Highlight(yellow) - 36. The Noose Tightens (1354–1402) > Page 881 · Location 20084

In the past, Romans would draw foreigners into their civil wars in exchange for concessions, but now foreigners were instigating Roman civil wars in order to win concessions.

Highlight(yellow) - 36. The Noose Tightens (1354–1402) > Page 889 · Location 20282

But before they could reach him, Timur destroyed the Turkish army at the battle of Ankyra on 28 July, 1402. Bayezid was captured and placed in a cage. This defeat threw the Ottoman empire into chaos and confusion, as it was not yet a settled state but still only an expansionist project linked to a dynasty of warlords. While Bayezid’s heirs fought it out among themselves, the Roman polity was given an unexpected fifty-year extension.

Highlight(yellow) - 37. The Cusp of a New World (1402–1461) > Page 896 · Location 20436

This strategy of employing Turks to fight civil wars was the playbook of his grandfather Ioannes Kantakouzenos, and had led to the same outcome: subordination to the Ottomans.

Highlight(yellow) - 37. The Cusp of a New World (1402–1461) > Page 897 · Location 20461

In past centuries, Roman elites had drawn their wealth from the state and fought to defend it; now that their wealth came from private business in the context of a weak state, they resented its impositions.

Bookmark - 37. The Cusp of a New World (1402–1461) > Page 899 · Location 20517

Highlight(yellow) - 37. The Cusp of a New World (1402–1461) > Page 901 · Location 20566

These men shaped the legacy that New Rome would leave behind after its death in 1453: the politicians by fighting the Ottomans to the end rather than surrendering; Scholarios by finding a path for the Church under Ottoman rule; and Bessarion by injecting Greek learning into western humanism.

Highlight(yellow) - 37. The Cusp of a New World (1402–1461) > Page 907 · Location 20701

Leonardo Bruni, the chancellor of Florence, wrote a Constitution of the Florentines in passable classical Greek, which he gave to Plethon to correct.

Highlight(yellow) - 37. The Cusp of a New World (1402–1461) > Page 911 · Location 20815

The pro-Union historian Doukas slanders Notaras by making him speak an infamous line: “Better the Turkish turban in the City than the Latin mitre.”

Highlight(yellow) - 37. The Cusp of a New World (1402–1461) > Page 914 · Location 20870

Mehmed mopped up the remaining pockets of Roman independence, taking the Morea in 1460 and Trebizond in 1461, along with Acciaiuoli Athens in 1456 and Gattilusi Lesbos in 1462.