From Rome to Byzantium

By Michael Grant

Book Overview

Byzantium was dismissed by Gibbon, in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and his Victorian successors as a decadent, dark, oriental culture, given up to intrigue, forbidden pleasure and refined cruelty. This great empire, founded by Constantine as the seat of power in the East began to flourish in the fifth century AD, after the fall of Rome, yet its culture and history have been neglected by scholars in comparison to the privileging of interest in the Western and Roman Empire. Michael Grant's latest book aims to compensate for that neglect and to provide an insight into the nature of the Byzantine Empire in the fifth century; the prevalence of Christianity, the enormity and strangeness of the landscape of Asia Minor; and the history of invasion prior to the genesis of the empire.
Michael Grant's narrative is lucid and colourful as always, lavishly illustrated with photographs and maps. He successfully provides an examination of a comparatively unexplored area and constructs the history of an empire which rivals the former richness and diversity of a now fallen Rome.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415147530
• ISBN13: 9780415147538
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 218 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.4" x 0.7" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

From Rome to Byzantium - Grant does it again

Another lucid, elegant and accesible text for the lay reader, as well as the more specialized researcher. Grant takes a survery at the salient aspects of life in the Roman world, as dusk crept over the classical world and the roman mind grappled with a reordered world, not in their traditional image. Grant summarises the responses of state and individual well, giving due room to the responses of the religious and artisitic minds. A well produced volume, with thorough apparatus. One criticism - is there any point to reproductions of mosaic and architecture in black and white? Come on Routledge - if Taschen, Terrail et al can do it, so can you.