The Byzantines

by Cavallo, Guglielmo; Dunlap, Thomas; Fagan, Teresa Lavender; Lambert, Charles

• ISBN13: 9780226097916
• ISBN10: 0226097919
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-12-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

For more than a thousand years, Byzantium flourished at the crossroads of the Eastern and Western worlds. But who were the people of the first modern civilized state? What features distinguished them from earlier civilizations, and what cultural characteristics, despite their multi-ethnic origins, made them uniquely Byzantine? Through a series of remarkably detailed composite portraits, an international collection of distinguished scholars has created a startlingly clear vision of the Byzantines and their social world. Paupers, peasants, soldiers, teachers, bureaucrats, clerics, emperors, and saints--all are vividly and authentically presented in the context of ordinary Byzantine life. No comparable volume exists that so fascinatingly recovers from the past the men and women of Byzantium, their culture and their lifeways, and their strikingly modern worldview.

Table of Contents

TRANSLATORS' NOTE	VII
INTRODUCTION	1	(14)
Guglielmo Cavallo
1 THE POOR	15	(28)
Evelyne Patlagean
2 THE PEASANTRY	43	(31)
Alexander Kazhdan
3 SOLDIERS	74	(21)
Peter Schreiner
4 TEACHERS	95	(22)
Robert Browning
5 WOMEN	117	(27)
Alice-Mary Talbot
6 ENTREPRENEURS	144	(28)
Nicolas Oikonomides
7 BISHOPS	172	(25)
Vera von Falkenhausen
8 FUNCTIONARIES	197	(33)
Andre Guillou
9 EMPERORS	230	(25)
Michael McCormick
10 SAINTS	255	(26)
Cyril Mango
INDEX	281