Although Byzantium is known to history as the Eastern Roman Empire, scholars have long claimed that this Greek Christian theocracy bore little resemblance to Rome. Here, in a revolutionary model of Byzantine politics and society, Anthony Kaldellis reconnects Byzantium to its Roman roots, arguing that from the fifth to the twelfth centuries CE the Eastern Roman Empire was essentially a republic, with power exercised on behalf of the people and sometimes by them too. The Byzantine Republic recovers for the historical record a less autocratic, more populist Byzantium whose Greek-speaking citizens considered themselves as fully Roman as their Latin-speaking “ancestors.”

Kaldellis shows that the idea of Byzantium as a rigid imperial theocracy is a misleading construct of Western historians since the Enlightenment. With court proclamations often draped in Christian rhetoric, the notion of divine kingship emerged as a way to disguise the inherent vulnerability of each regime. The legitimacy of the emperors was not predicated on an absolute right to the throne but on the popularity of individual emperors, whose grip on power was tenuous despite the stability of the imperial institution itself. Kaldellis examines the overlooked Byzantine concept of the polity, along with the complex relationship of emperors to the law and the ways they bolstered their popular acceptance and avoided challenges. The rebellions that periodically rocked the empire were not aberrations, he shows, but an essential part of the functioning of the republican monarchy.

Slavery may no longer exist as a legal institution, but we still find many forms of non-freedom in contemporary societies. It is a troubling paradox, and one this book addresses by considering a period in which the definition of slavery and freedom proved considerably flexible. Between more familiar forms of slavery—those of antiquity and of the Americas—the institution as it was practiced and theorized in the Byzantine Mediterranean was of a different nature.

Looking at the Byzantine concept of slavery within the context of law, the labor market, medieval politics, and religion, Youval Rotman illustrates how these contexts both reshaped and sustained the slave market. By focusing on a period of great change, his historical analysis brings a new perspective to concepts of slavery and freedom. In this period, when Byzantium had to come to terms with the rising power of the Islamic state, and to fight numerous wars over territory and economic interests, Rotman traces a shift in the cultural perception of slaves as individuals: they began to be seen as human beings instead of private property. His book analyzes slavery as a historical process against the background of the political, social, and religious transformation of the Mediterranean world, and demonstrates the flexible and adaptable character of this institution.

Arguing against the use of the term “slavery” for any extreme form of social dependency, Rotman shows instead that slavery and freedom are unrelated concepts. His work offers a radical new understanding of the geopolitical and religious dynamics that have defined and redefined slavery and freedom, in the past and in our own time.

Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, Volume 2, Part 1: Toponymy, Monuments, Historical Geography, and Frontier Studies is a topical study of the military, religious, and civil structures of the Ghassanids. Irfan Shahîd’s detailed study of Arab buildings of the sixth century illuminates how Byzantine provincial art and architecture were adopted and adapted by the federate Arabs for their own use. As monuments of Christian architecture, these federate structures constitute the missing link in the development of Arab architecture in the region between the earlier pagan (Nabataean and Palmyrene) and later Muslim (Umayyad) styles. Drawing from literary and material evidence, Shahîd argues that the Ghassanids were not nomadic, as traditionally believed, but thoroughly sedentary both in their roots and in the late Roman frontier zone they inherited.

The De Administrando Imperio, compiled by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in the tenth century, is one of the most important historical documents surviving from the middle Byzantine period, containing a wide variety of information on foreign relations and internal administration. The critical text of the De Administrando Imperio, edited by Gyula Moravcsik and translated by R. J. H. Jenkins (Dumbarton Oaks Texts), is now joined by the commentary, written in 1962 by a team of eminent scholars led by Jenkins. Long out of print, the Jenkins commentary remains the most thorough and authoritative study of this significant medieval text, and it is now republished as a companion volume to the critical text and translation. In addition to extensive commentary on the historical, geographical, and philological nuances of the Greek text, this volume contains a bibliography, map, indexes, and genealogical charts.

The Taktika, ascribed to the hand of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI "the Wise" (886-912), is perhaps one of the best-known middle Byzantine texts of an official or semi-official genre. Presented in the form of a book of guidance for provincial generals, it served as both a statement of imperial authority and power, as well as a reminder of earlier "good practice" and the centrality of the values of a Christian society in the struggle against its enemies. In particular, the Taktika identified Islam, for the first time, as a fundamental threat to the very existence of the Christian Roman Empire and Christianity itself. Yet despite its significance for the history of Byzantine administration, culture, language, and society, no study has ever been devoted to this fascinating text. John Haldon offers the first critical commentary to appear in any language, addressing in detail the many varied subjects touched on in the treatise itself and accompanied by three introductory chapters that examine the context, sources, language, structure and content of the text, as well as the military administration of the empire in Leo's time.

This is a reprint of the second revised edition of the text and translation of the De Administrando Imperio written and compiled by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in the tenth century. It contains a wide variety of information on both foreign relations and internal administration and is one of the most important historical documents surviving from the Middle Byzantine period. Its confidential character and generally honest appraisal of the empire’s political situation enhance its value for students of Byzantium and Europe during this period. The edition includes general and critical introductions, an index of proper names, and an extensive glossary, as well as grammatical notes and an index of sources and parallel passages.

By the end of the twelfth century, the Byzantine <i>genos </I> was a politically effective social group based upon ties of consanguineous kinship, but, importantly, it was also a cultural construct, an idea that held very real power, yet defies easy categorization. This study explores the role and function of the Byzantine aristocratic family group, or <i>genos</i>, as a distinct social entity, particularly its political and cultural role, as it appears in a variety of sources in the tenth through twelfth centuries.

The eastern Roman Empire was the largest state in western Eurasia in the sixth century. Only a century later, it was a fraction of its former size. Surrounded by enemies, ravaged by warfare and disease, the empire seemed destined to collapse. Yet it did not die. In this holistic analysis, John Haldon elucidates the factors that allowed the eastern Roman Empire to survive against all odds into the eighth century.

By 700 CE the empire had lost three-quarters of its territory to the Islamic caliphate. But the rugged geography of its remaining territories in Anatolia and the Aegean was strategically advantageous, preventing enemies from permanently occupying imperial towns and cities while leaving them vulnerable to Roman counterattacks. The more the empire shrank, the more it became centered around the capital of Constantinople, whose ability to withstand siege after siege proved decisive. Changes in climate also played a role, permitting shifts in agricultural production that benefitted the imperial economy.

At the same time, the crisis confronting the empire forced the imperial court, the provincial ruling classes, and the church closer together. State and church together embodied a sacralized empire that held the emperor, not the patriarch, as Christendom’s symbolic head. Despite its territorial losses, the empire suffered no serious political rupture. What remained became the heartland of a medieval Christian Roman state, with a powerful political theology that predicted the emperor would eventually prevail against God’s enemies and establish Orthodox Christianity’s world dominion.

Leo’s firsthand experience of the campaigns and courts of two Byzantine emperors provides vivid descriptions of sieges, pitched battles, and ambushes. His account of the conspiracy against Nikephoros II Phokas, murdered as he slept on the floor in front of his icons, is one of the most dramatic in Byzantine narrative histories. Alice-Mary Talbot and Denis F. Sullivan, with the assistance of George T. Dennis and Stamatina McGrath, include an extensive introduction and detailed notes to guide the reader through the complex chronology, geography, and text of the History. Also included are five maps, two genealogical tables, and four indexes.

In this history of the late antique period, which appeared earlier in the five-volume series A History of Private Life, Peter Brown shows the slow shift from one form of public community to another--from the ancient city to the Christian church. In the four centuries between Marcus Aurelius (161-180) and Justinian (527-565), the Mediterranean world passed through a series of profound transmutations that affected the rhythms of life, the moral sensibilities, and the sense of the self of the inhabitants of its cities, and of the countryside around them.

A comprehensive new history of the Eastern Roman Empire based on the science of the human past.

As modern empires rise and fall, ancient Rome becomes ever more significant. We yearn for Rome’s power but fear Rome’s ruin—will we turn out like the Romans, we wonder, or can we escape their fate? That question has obsessed centuries of historians and leaders, who have explored diverse political, religious, and economic forces to explain Roman decline. Yet the decisive factor remains elusive.

In New Rome, Paul Stephenson looks beyond traditional texts and well-known artifacts to offer a novel, scientifically minded interpretation of antiquity’s end. It turns out that the descent of Rome is inscribed not only in parchments but also in ice cores and DNA. From these and other sources, we learn that pollution and pandemics influenced the fate of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire. During its final five centuries, the empire in the east survived devastation by natural disasters, the degradation of the human environment, and pathogens previously unknown to the empire’s densely populated, unsanitary cities. Despite the Plague of Justinian, regular “barbarian” invasions, a war with Persia, and the rise of Islam, the empire endured as a political entity. However, Greco-Roman civilization, a world of interconnected cities that had shared a common material culture for a millennium, did not.

Politics, war, and religious strife drove the transformation of Eastern Rome, but they do not tell the whole story. Braiding the political history of the empire together with its urban, material, environmental, and epidemiological history, New Rome offers the most comprehensive explanation to date of the Eastern Empire’s transformation into Byzantium.

Although he probably never set foot on a battlefield, the Byzantine emperor Leo VI (886–912) had a lively interest in military matters. Successor to Caesar Augustus, Constantine, and Justinian, he was expected to be victorious in war and to subject barbarian peoples to Rome, so he set out to acquire a solid knowledge of military equipment and practice. The Byzantines had inherited a voluminous series of military treatises from antiquity on nearly every aspect of warfare, from archery to battle formations and the art of besieging or defending. Leo intended to review all this, summarize it, and present an elementary handbook for his officers on how to prepare soldiers for war and how to move them on campaign and on the battlefield. He included a chapter on naval warfare and he explained Saracen (Arab) methods of war and how to defeat them. The Tactical Constitutions, or Taktika, were the result. Painstakingly prepared from a tenth century manuscript now in Florence, this is the first modern critical edition of the complete text of the Taktika and includes a facing English translation, explanatory notes, and extensive indexes.

Although he probably never set foot on a battlefield, the Byzantine emperor Leo VI (886-912) had a lively interest in military matters. Successor to Caesar Augustus, Constantine, and Justinian, he was expected to be victorious in war and to subject barbarian peoples to Rome, so he set out to acquire a solid knowledge of military equipment and practice. The Tactical Constitutions, or Taktika, were the result. First published by Dumbarton Oaks in 2010 as part of the Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae series, and now available in this updated, revised paper edition, this is the first modern critical edition of the complete text of the Taktika, including a facing English translation, explanatory notes, and extensive indexes.