Sailing from Byzantium: How a Lost Empire Shaped the World

by Colin Wells

Book Overview

A gripping intellectual adventure story, Sailing from Byzantium sweeps you from the deserts of Arabia to the dark forests of northern Russia, from the colorful towns of Renaissance Italy to the final moments of a millennial city under siege....

Byzantium: the successor of Greece and Rome, this magnificent empire bridged the ancient and modern worlds for more than a thousand years. Without Byzantium, the works of Homer and Herodotus,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 055338273X
• ISBN13: 9780553382730
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Entertaining biographical sketches that shaped the world after 1453

This readable history of the historical waves emanating from Byzantine influences is an indispensable work. The style is partly biographical sketches and partly telling of a story making it easily accessible and useful to novice and professional historian alike. The biographical flavor provides the structure for history as events involving human beings with complex characters and mixed motivations acting on the society in their time. The story-telling aspect provides the glue that sweeps the characters and their influence through their geographical dispersions to reveal their influence in Russia, western Europe, and Islam. An enjoyable read for any historian looking for hints of the Byzantine in the world today. Well done.

Byzantium the Golden

Sailing From Byzantium (the title is morphed from Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium") is a wonderful introduction to Byzantine civilisation for the general reader. Byzantine studies are sadly ignored in the UK and America, but without this powerful Christian state the West would never have survived. Beyond history, the culture of Byzantium informs our own culture in many and varied ways, and is a joy to celebrate.

Fascinating reading

The previous reviewers have more or less agreed that this is an information-dense book, fitting a tremendous amount of knowledge into a compact narrative. I agree. I write only to add that the story it tells, in clear and elegant prose, is one that is almost unknown to the average educated American. The Roman Empire survived for over 1,000 years after the fall of Rome itself. The eastern portion of the Empire, governed from Constantinople, survived institutional weakness, the Persians, the Huns, the Goths, the Slavs, religious wars, almost a thousand years of attack from Islam, and the devastating impact of the Fourth Crusade that effectively destroyed the Empire as a major power, leaving only a shell of a state that weakened and diminished until the Turks finally captured the underpopulated and bravely but hopelessly defended city in 1453. In a sense, the Eastern Empire was a buffer for the West. Without it, invasions from the east would likely have been more frequent and more consequential and the tide of Islam could well have entered Europe from the east as well as from the south. The political narrative of the Empire is one full of tragedy and missed opportunities. The inability of the structure of its government to provide for peaceful, orderly succession (a common problem with several types of governments, including monarchies) and the amount of power held by the noble families meant that there was a great deal of political instability inherent in the Byzantine political system. This was increased by the importance of religion to the Byzantine civilization and the consequent destabilizing power of doctrinal wrangles (something almost inevitable with an orthodoctic religion). The riots over whether icons should be allowed or destroyed, the accession of emperors more devoted to religious study than maintaining the military forces that were all that stood between the empire and its many enemies, and the supreme suicidal follies that led to the disasters of Manzikert (where a substantial body of the army in effect stood by and watched as the Turks captured the emperor - a debacle that led ultimately to the loss of Anatolia and its transformation into the home of the Ottomans who finally annihilated the empire) and of the Fourth Crusade (in which a claimant to the imperial throne enlisted the Venetians to place him on the throne, a venture that led to the pillaging of the city and the destruction of the structure of the imperial government - a blow from which the empire never recovered.) The cultural story, on the other hand, is one of preservation of the learning of ancient Greece and Rome and the carrying on of some of their traditions and inquiries. There is no single work that I know of that explores in detail the way that Byzantine philosophy, medicine, art, and creative writing moved forward from their Classical roots. To the extent that mainstream history notices such things, it notes Justinian's closure of the Academy in 529 and stops

Neglected History

For many of us in the West, Byzantium is an exotic mystery. Colin Wells opens up this mystery by outlining the crucial role of Byzantium in transmitting ancient Greek culture to three civilizations: the West, the Slavic East, and Islam. There is much in this history that is of relevance today as we reflect on the different roles played by these three civilizations that were shaped by Byzantium. Yes, the myriad of unfamiliar names and places are at times overwhelming; but Wells provides a list of major characters in his history to help the reader, along with a chronology and plenty of maps. For me and I suspect many others, this book opens up a previously neglected but crucial part of our history.

Interesting illuminating history

Byzantium is that unwanted step-child, forever forgotten beneath the greatness that was Rome and the newly emerging Islamic-Arab civilization. Many have forgotten, what Gibbon did not, that Byzantium was a brilliant meeting pleace of cultures. PArtially Greek, rife with the trade in eunichs, it single handedly held back Islam from colonizing Europe, an important bulwark of western/eastern orthodox civilization, it also was important in fusing and transmitting European culture to the east and vice-versa. Most importanlty Byzantium colonized Eastern europe, made the slavs into a slave people that would not escape this sin until the 19th century, brought Greek learning back, tolerated Pagans and transmitted Christianity to parts of Europe. In the end it all appeared a failure when cosmopolitan, fanatical, backwards, lush, pagent, corrupt, lazy, avariscous, licentious, arrogant, gluttonous Bazantium was conquered in 1453. This book sheds light on the more fascinating role of Byzantium as the crossroads of culture, how it helped transmit learning such as Aquinas and Aristotle to the Arabs and back to Europe. An overlooked empire, this book examines its naval role in the mediteranean(often times Byzantium was only Constantinople as varous 'barbarians' conquered Anatolia and Europe from it). Seth J. Frantzman