For Edward Gibbon, writing in 1776, the thousand years of Byzantine history could be dismissed as “the triumph of barbarism and Christianity.” Voltaire declared it to be “a worthless collection of orations and miracles,” and Montesquieu, in his survey of the grandeur and decadence of Rome, saw in the Byzantine Empire only “a tragic epilogue to the glory of Rome,” “a tissue of rebellions, insurrections and treachery.” These representatives of the Enlightenment make two implications: first, that Byzantine society had no development of its own, but remained, fossilized and unchanging, in a world of growth and development which culminated in...

The first period to be looked at extends from 500 to the death of the Emperor Heraclius in 641. The political history of the age is marked by two great movements, one near the beginning, the other at the end. At the dawn of the sixth century a.d., the Emperor Anastasius reigned in Constantinople. There had been no Roman emperor in the west for a quarter of a century. Italy, with Sicily and part of the Dalmatian coast, formed the kingdom of the Ostrogoths, ruled by Theodoric from his capital at Ravenna. In the closing years of the fifth century...

The loss of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and soon the whole of North Africa in the middle of the seventh century was a shattering blow to the Byzantine Empire. These regions were the most densely populated in the empire and in every respect the most advanced economically and technologically. They included some of its largest and most important cities—Alexandria, a center of christianized Hellenic culture and the entrepôt through which the agricultural surplus of Egypt was exported to feed the vast population of Constantinople; Antioch, another ancient center of art and letters with a centuries-old Christian tradition, and the terminal...

The accession of Basil I, however questionable the manner in which it was carried out, marked the beginning of a new epoch in the history of the Byzantine Empire in more ways than one. Basil founded a dynasty which occupied the throne for nearly two centuries and which numbered among its members some of the most able and dynamic rulers in the long history of the empire. He continued and developed with energy and brilliance the move from defense to expansion which had been cautiously and tentatively begun by his immediate predecessors in the mid-ninth century. The age of the...

When Alexios Comnenus, with the support of a coalition of provincial aristocratic families, established himself in power in Constantinople, the problems he had to face were at first sight not unlike those which confronted the successors of Heraclius four and a half centuries earlier. Asia Minor, the richest and most populous region of the empire, was almost entirely in the hands of the Seljuq Turks. The armies of the state were defeated and demoralized and its coffers empty. The Seljuqs, it is true, lacked the fanatical drive which carried the Arabs in less than a century from Medina to the...

The western conquerors of Constantinople proceeded to divide the former territories of the empire between themselves with mathematical precision. One quarter was allocated to the emperor; three-eighths went to Venice as a reward for providing transport, supplies, and naval support; three-eighths was to be divided among the Latin knights as fiefs. Constantinople itself was partitioned equally between the emperor and the Venetians. The reality, however, was somewhat different. The Latins were not in control of the whole of the territory to which they laid claim. There were pockets of resistance headed by former Byzantine officials or local dignitaries in many...