Some Aspects of Byzantine Civilisation Author(s): Norman H. Baynes Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol.

20 (1930), pp. 1-13 Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/297380 . Accessed: 14/03/2013 00:29
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Roman Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:29:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION.I

Bv NORMIAN H. BAYNES.

At the outset the question may well be raised whether there is any real justification for the inclusion of a paper on such a theme in the programme of a Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. Is Byzantine civilisation--in any true sense of the word-Roman at all ? To judge from not a few modern studies of the life of the East Roman Empire, the answer to that question could only be in the negative. Take what is perhaps the best known brief presentment of Byzantine history-that of Professor Diehl of Paris-and the reader will not long be left in doubt. The preface proclaims the character of the Empire: Byzantium very quickly became, and was essentially, an oriental monarchy. In the sixth century, before Justinian's accession, one could well believe that the dream of a purelv oriental empire was near its realisation. Justinian delayed that consummation, but at the beginning of the eighth century a really Byzantine empire had come into being which grew ever more and more oriental in character. Under the Iconoclast monarchs the Empire had become completely orientalised; at the end of the Iconoclast struggle East Rome was a strictly oriental empire. The words ' oriental,' orientalise,' beat upon the mind with throbbing insistence : the monotonous repetition is almost hypnotic in its cumulative effect. The reader may without difficulty fail to note that by this subtle rhetorical device an Histoire, which is in fact a veiled Tendenzschrift, has charmed him into acquiescence. He will hardly be conscious that the ' blessed word ' oriental is given little, if any, specific content, that general assertions are not illustrated and controlled by concrete detail, that it is left uncertain what Orient is intendedwhether Syria, Persia, India or far Cathay. The Orient, thus undifferentiated, is a word not of historical science, but of mysticism; an unkindly critic might add-of mystification. If Professor Diehl were challenged on the point, what, we may ask ourselves, would be his reply ? He would doubtless point to the 7poaxivc%q of a Byzantine court; he would agree with Rostovtzeff that the Byzantine theory of sovranty as a celestial trust dates from Aurelian's eastern wars and reflects an Iranian conception of the true legitimation of a monarch's authority; he might contend that the later monastic ideal of divine contemplation-of a mystic Oewp'o-is cousin-german to Buddhism, while he would remind us that through the wanderings
I A paper read at a meeting of the Society on March 5th, 1930.

This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:29:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE

CIVILISATION.

of a far-travelledtale Buddhahimselfhas been canonisedas a Christian saint. The barbarouspunishments of Byzantine criminal justice, blinding, nose-slitting and other corporeal mutilations, he would perhaps suggest, were derived from ancient Persianpractices which were largely responsiblefor the Greek view that the Persian was a Diehl does in fact point out that the Iconoclast barbarian. Professor reformersfound their inspiration in those Asiatic provinces which that Armeniais borderedupon Armenia,and we mayremindourselves historicallya landhostile to an art of 'Darstellung'--a representational art-and enamoured of an art of ' significant form,' to borrow a phrasefrom Mr. Clive Bell, an art which sought to expressits deepest convictions in the symbolism of an ornamentationwhich went to nature only to borrow from it decorative motives-which never sought in the interest of mere realism to reproduce that nature. ProfessorDiehl might follow further in the footsteps of Strzygowski and seek to portray the whole Iconoclast controversyas a struggle between two worlds aesthetically, a struggle between the Mediterraneanman and his art of representationon the one hand and the nomad, be he of steppe or desert, with his art of symbolism on the other ; architecturally, a struggle in which the congregational basilicaand the flat roof of the West werematchedagainstthe confined spacesof the cupola constructionsof the East ; and similarly,in the religioussphere,a strugglewhere two worldsmet in conflict-a world which had raisedthe iconographyof the human to a point where it became a bridge of mediation leading man to the ideal andthe superhuman, and a world to which such an iconography appeared as allzu menschlich-a degradation of the Eternal through menschlich, identification with the transience of the material. And in this Aimageddon of the continents Byzantium will stand as the bridgehead, the prize for which Asia and Europe will dispute, the post where the issue is joined. It might indeed seem as though a Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies had but little reasonto concern itself with Byzantine civilisation. And yet I would contend that I do not standhere to-day under any falsepretence. I would claim,as a disciple of Freemanand of Bury, that there remainsa reasonfor the use of the term the Later Roman Empire, that there is a Roman element in this Byzantine civilisation. That civilisation representsto my mind the fusion of two traditions,the Greekand the Roman,and I would maintain that what oriental elements there are in its composition are not the essentialand characteristic featuresof the Byzantineworld. I would surveyof East Mediterranean suggestthat it is by meansof a panoramic histoiy that we can best picture to ourselvesthat fusion which is East Rome. As I see the process, the turning-points in the development are markedby four outstandingfigures: Alexanderthe Great, Augustus,

This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:29:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE

CIVILISATION.

Constantine and the emperor Heraclius. The first period of some three hundred years-from Alexander the Great to Augustuscreated the civilisation with which that of East Rome was continuous: its marked feature is that it was a culture shared widely by the men of a world where intercourse was general. Alexander had broken down the separate independence of the Greek city-state, and by so doing had destroyed much of its cherished individuality. The city-state lives on, but with a difference : its significance was necessarily dwarfed when brought into contact with empires and with scientifically organised armies before which its strength was as a very little thing. It may be doubted whether we always realise with sufficient vividness the discomfort of an age when empire-building was the fashion, when any day a Pyrrhus might arrive before the city gates, seeking a field for the satisfaction of a boundless egoism. The sheltering embrace of men's city walls availed little before the relentless individualists who march through Hellenistic history. Man felt himself alone in face of a dangerous world: the poles of Hel>nistic thinking are thus the individual and the cosmos. Mr. Tarn has contended that Alexander the Great never dreamed of a worldempire; but, even if this be true, Alexander did break down the traditional moulds of men's thinking and forced them to deal with Professor Bury was fond problems in the light of the olzouV&v-a-as of saying, the ' oecumenical idea ' was born. In an age when the might of the gods of the city-state had dwindled before new powers, the agencies which really counted, the forces which could do things, were the human rulers of the Hellenistic kingdoms: they were the efficient saviours and benefactors of man. While Euhemerism was reducing to human proportions the ancient deities, men were seeing their rulers as gods. The god-king was born; the sovran did not ultimately derive his legitimation from the suffrages of his fellowcountrymen, but rather from the possession of a daimonic energy which was more than the potency of any ordinary mortal. You have, you see, these two conceptions - the universe, and the divinity which raises a ruler above his kind: later these conceptions will unite, and the zoa0Lx64 aUc&oxc&-cp of the East Roman world will be the result. And together with the oecumenical idea there gradually emerged the common language, the xo\v), the necessary medium of communication in a world where the sundering barriers had fallen. And that common Greek language was the natural speech of the missionary, if he would carry his cause throughout Hellenistic society. Even the exclusiveness of the Jew yielded to the compulsion exercised by this common vehicle of thought. We are sometimes tempted to judge of all Judaism from our knowledge of Palestine of the first century of our era; but that unbending aversion from Hellenism and its ways was forged in the fires of the Maccabaean reaction, and elsewhere in

This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:29:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE

CIVILISATION.

the Diasporaa very different spirit reigned. The Septuagint is the permanent memorial of the conquering power of the universal world that Constantinoplewas language. It is in a Greek-speaking founded, and the efforts of Roman emperorsto foster the spreadof Latin within the Roman provincesof the East were foredoomedto failure. Alexander'sAsiatic campaignsnot only carriedHellenism to the Orient, but from those campaignswas brought back the scientific inaterial which formed the capital of the scholars of Alexandria. Aristotlc had lacked that rangc of knowledge from which, in the Hellenistic age, new sciences were born. But the period during which this scientific renascencelasted was brief, and Greck scicntific curiosity faded away. It was not killed by Christianobscurantism: the scientific age had passed before Christianity was born. This decay of the scicntific intercst is one of thosc mysteriouschanges in human thought which it is so difficult for the historian to cxplain: the mind of man revcrts from the frce enquiry of the unfettered reason to the acceptance of the primacy of authority--of oracle or sacredbook. Amongstthe thinkersof the fourth century of our era, Christian and pagan alike arc convinced that the final authority is to be found in the scriptures: Julian, as much as any father of the church, is assured that the plausible hypotheses of the scientists count as nothing when set against the word of God. In their lack of scicntific curiosity, in the supremacy accorded to the inspired writing, thc Byzantincsarc the spiritualheirsof thc later Alexandrines. And not in this alone : for it was the scholarsof Alexandriawho formcd the pagan canon of the classicalliterature. In their work on the texts of the great authors of the past, in the collection and prcscrvationof those texts, the sclholarsof Alexandria won their position as the librariansof the Greek world. The literature of the Hellenistic period is, I take it, the work of men who consciously wrote as epig,oni, and the range of their creative originality, as in pastoral or romance, is restricted. They are already custodiantrustees. Here obviously the Byzantinesare their successors: they cver sought to read their title clcar to the grcat inheritancewhich had descended upon them from the past. But the very splendour of that inheritance, while it might inspire imitation, paralysed initiative. For everything had alreadybeen achieved, and achieved with final mastery. We know the benediction passed upon the people which has no history. Byzantiumhad its roots in so gloriousa past that its brilliance threw the prcsent into shadow. Heisenberg is, I think, right in his assertionthat there was nothing in Byzantine history which can be called a Rcnascencein the sense in which the Wcst has used that word, and Bury in his RomanesLecture showed that, even where Byzantine literature seems to appropriateWestern models, it is in reality but bringing forth from its own treasure-

This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:29:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE

CIVILISATION.

house familiar motives. Its literary wealth was so great that there was no incentive to put the talent out to interest. But this is no new phenomenon, the fruit of a supposed sterility amongst the Byzantines: they are but continuing the task of the scholars of Alexandria; in Europe's Middle Age they are the world's librarians. This Hellenistic culture of the centuries after Alexander's death undoubtedly contains oriental elements, but it is not always easy to isolate those debts of Greece to the East. One of the most striking features of Byzantine life is the omnipresence of demon powers; this general belief in the operation of demonic agency is anothei legacy from the Hellenistic period. Is this a purely Iranian conception invading a Greek world for whiclh it was a new thing, or did the Iranian conception link itself naturally to ideas-which were already widely prevalent on Greek soil though hidden by the majestic fa9ade of the Olympian faith ? It is desperately hard to determine what was the working creed of humble folk in the classical age ; the literature which we still possess is so urban and so aristocratic. As the great gods lost not a little of their former authority, did the lesser powers of popular belief venture forth from their hiding-places into the light of day ? The supremacy of the demons in Greek lands throughout the history of our era might suggest that in some form or another they had long been familiar to the folk of the Eastern Mediterranean. And against this common civilisation of the Hellenistic East, spread throughout the kingdoms which had taken the place of the single realm of Alexandcr, there stands in clear relief the power of Rome. That is the result of the wars of the third centurv: Carthage fallen, there remained no rival to Rome in the Western Sea; Syracuse fallen, there remained no independent centre of Hellenism west of Greece. The Greek had lost his chance of making the Mediterranean a Hellenic lake from shore to shore. Henceforth Hellenism would come to Western Europe through Roman channels. The three centuries before Christ are thus a period of intercourse between two worlds-the Greek and the Roman. One current carries the armed power of Rome to the East, the other carries the culture of Greece to the West. Roman conservatism fights a losing battle, and for a time it might have seemed that, in spite of the victory of Roman arms, Greece would enslave her conqueror, that Rome itself would be transplanted to Alexandria. But Antony was defeated by Octavian, and the second period of our survey, inaugurated by Augustus, meant a reinforcement of the Roman tradition, it meant that Byzantine civilisation could draw upon the riches of a double inheritance: the heir of Hellas was also the guardian of the legacy of Rome. Attempts havc been made to disguise this fact: men have defined Hellenism as the culturc of all educated men throughout the Roman

world: Otto, for instance,has said that JuliusCaesarby his victories

This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:29:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE

CIVILISATION.

game, won Gaulfor Hellenism. This jugglingwith wordsis a dangerous for it may easily obscure facts. The principate, formed of Roman materials,is a Roman building, and the culture which Rome brought to WesternEurope,whether you like that culture or not, is a Roman product. That I firmly believe, and I confess that modern efforts to belittle that Roman achievementseem to me singularlyill-judged. For our present purposethe significanceof the work of Augustuslies in this-that the Greek East could begin to regard Rome in a new light, not merely as an exploiting power, but as one deserving of those epithets of saviourand of benefactorwhich it had lavished on its own sovrans. The ' Evangel' of a Roman emperor was laying the basis for that fusion of traditions which went to the making of East Rome: it was rendering possible the day when the proudest boast of the Greek should be the assertion that he was a Roman. And further, I would repeat, Augustus saved into the new age those Roman traditions which during the last years of the Republic were threatenedwith dissolution; when the tide which drew Rome to the Eastern Mediterraneanreassertedits force, those traditions could be transported,not to an Alexandriawhere there was every likelihood that they would simply have been submerged,but to a New Rome upon the Bosphoroswhich was the creation of an emperorwho had alreadyiuled the Roman West for many years. Thus Constantineinitiates the third period,the great transitionin which East Rome was built, and in his own personConstantinemarksa lands. He is not turning point in the historyof the Mediterranean merely the result of the past, he is a new beginning. The pictures of Constantine have been many and various, drawnby modernscholars but few, if any, do justiceto the boldnessand originalityof his achieveof manywho have and Costaare only representative ment. Burckhardt sought to explain away Constantine'sChristianity. I confess that, after a lengthy and detailedstudy of all those edicts and letters of his which have been preserved,I have come to the conclusion that Constantine'sChristianityis indeed the key to his reign. He is the of the bishops,the man of God-a servantof God, the fellow-servant manundera senseof mission: his fortunehe owesto the Christian God, God haslaid aponhim a chargeto defend andthat relationto a Christian unity. I feel that to the church, to toil unceasinglyfor ecclesiastical Constantinemore than to any other man the Roman world owed the formulationof its Christian theory of sovranty, for with him that and vividly from his own experience. theory had sprungspontaneously The Roman magistrate had traditionally been entrusted with the of the Pax Deorum; the maintenance of that peacewas a maintenance that the Roman matter of such vital importanceto the commonwealth statevery earlytook religionunderits efficientcharge. It is to the close connexionbetween Roman religionand the Roman state that Warde Fowler's masterpieceis devoted. *Thatconnexionis not lost with the

This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:29:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SOME

ASPECTS

OF

BYZANTINE

CIVILISATION.

passage of the years, and a restoration of the Roman state habitually carrieswith it a restoration of the Roman religion. Augustus, Justinian, Leo III, the Iconoclast, are all in the Roman tradition; and it is in this line that Constantine has his place. The calling of the emperor to service, the mission of the emperor, the obligation of a Christian emperor, these are the themes which fill the writings of Constantine. The formal acceptance of an Iranian theory which regards sovranty as a gift of heaven is one thing, the living conviction of experienced fact is another. When George of Pisidia in the seventh century exclaims of fair w East Romansovrantyto,,eu xparotTo &Uv ? pe Loaptxo-how a thing is monarchy with God for guide !--he is but echloing the thought of Constantine. And one must ever remember that the man who led the crusade of A.D. 323 against the persecutor Licinius was the emperor who had at first left the settlement of the Donatist controversy to the bishops, and only after their failure had been forced himself to pass judgment: that is to say that Constantine came to the Council of Nicaea with the conviction that the emperor was God's chosen mediator in ecclesiastical affairs. When an emperor has issued an order in defence of the truth, a recalcitrant bishop must be taught that it is not seemly for him to disobey the imperial mandate. And because it was Constantine, the champion and protector of the church, who formulated that principle, the church allowed the claim. Constantine admitted the church into full participation in the life of the Roman state: the church-or, at least, each individual church-is recognised as a corporation before the Roman law, bishops become Roman judges, a Christian clergy enjoys the same privileges as the pagan priesthood-many other instances could be cited. And the consequence was that the Christian churcl accepted the Roman state: it did not fashion a new state for a new-a And with the Roman state the church accepted Christian-empire. the law of Rome. The law of Islam was fashioned by the religious consciousness of Islam: religion and law were inextricably intertwined. As we have seen during the last few years, for a divorce to be effectuated a completely new mould must be created for the law of a new society. But the Christian church, professing a creed of altruism, aWcepteda code of law which, as Mitteis has shown, is logically so completely satisfying because consistently based on the presuppositions of an egoism untroubled by humanitarian scruples. It is once more the personality and the achievement of Constantine which rendered this reception of pagan law as the basis of a Christian state not merely a possibility, but a fact of history. And Constantine further entertained the vision of a Roman state which should be founded upon the unity of Christian orthodoxy and find in that unity a magnet which should draw the worlk of barbarian peoples to know and reverence the Christian God. In the early days of the fourth century this was a prophetic vision and its realisation

This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:29:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE

CIVILISATION.

was delayed, but that vision was realised at length in the Byzantine Empire where orthodox Christianitywas the inspiration that sustained, the cement which held togethec, the East Roman world. Thus, as I sec the story-and I am only attempting here to outline a personal view of the historical development-Constantine was the architect of East Rome. If I am right, the strength and consistency of the emperor's convictions sprang from the immediacy of an individual experience; they were no mere logical deductions from an inherited theory. Those convictions lcd Constantine, as it were, by a necessity inherent in themselves to divine the fabric of the Christian state which was to be. That Christian state was being constructed within the ancient shell of the doomed pagan building. The pagan walls were already sapped and undermined: in time they would fall of their own decay. That fall was certain, because it was preordained by the will of the Christian God. For the present man could work-and wait. But with a prescience that was almost uncanny in its accuracy the emperor forecast the lincaments of the Christian edifice which should one day be disclosed. The three centuries which stretch from Constantine to Heraclius are a period of transition, an age in which through religious conflict and domestic disaffection, through foreign menace and barbarian VFlkerwanderung, EastlRome-the Christianstate of Constantine's vision-was built. ' And the builders every one had his sword girded by his side, and so builded.' We have but to state the problems which received their solution in this period, and that can be done in few words. First, there was the fundamental economic question: should the money economy of the old world be carried on into the new, or should the Empire lapse into a natural economy and paymeint in kind for service rendered ? In the early years of the fourth century the Roman state strove resolutely to maintain the latter system in order that it might not be forced to expend its store of precious metal, but the unrelenting opposition of the soldier and the civil servant carried the day, and onec more salarieswere paid in cash. But this meant that a fluid taxation system must of necessity be retained, and it is on this system that the later empire was based. Only so could a standing army have been kept in being and a fleet in commission: it was througlhits gold that Byzantine diplomacy won its triumphs. The fact is familiar, but it is not infrequently forgotten. The contrast between the wcstern and the eastern halves of the empire lies precisely here : the West was bankrupt; from unravaged Asia Minor the East consistentlv drew its taxes and thus remained solvent. The East, like the West, was threatened with the supremacy of the barbarian: under the menacc of GaYnas and of Aspar the end of Roman and civilian authority seemed very near. The West had no counterpoise to throw into the scale against Ricimer: the East found within its own territory the barbarian who should meet and overthrow the

This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:29:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SOME

ASPECTS

OF BYZANTINE

CIVILISATION.

barbarianfrom without. The Isaurian mountaineers saved the empire. The result may be summarised in a sentencc: in the West all real power is concentrated in the hands of the barbarian master of the soldiery-in the East the Roman civilian Anastasiusreigns unquestioned. Sovranty, the undivided imperium of the emperor, and with it the Roman heritage of state supremacy link the East Roman state to the Rome of the Principate. Alexandria had oncc challenged Romc : the answer to that challenge was the battle of Actium. And now Alexandria challenged New Rome in the rivalry of the patriarchates. Constantine's conception of the relation of the emperor to the church could never be realised until the pride of the ecclesiastical Pharaoh, the patriarch of Alexandria, was humbled. The story of that struggle I endcavoured to outline in a 1: paper published recently in the 7ournal of Egyptian Archaeology it need not be repeated here. At the Council of Chalcedon the patriarchate of Alexandria suffered shipwreck, and henceforth the will of the emperor and of the emperor'sbishop, the patriarch of New Rome, was supreme. The vision of Constantine had become an accomplished fact. Constantinople had been built as a Chlristian city set in Greekspeaking lands, and the West, forgetting its Greek, drifted apart. In his African and Italian campaigns Justinian madcethe last great bid to restorc the Roman heritage of a Mediterrancan empire; hc made the last great gesture of a Latin tradition in his codification of the law. Both efforts failed: the West went its own way: the Greek language triumphed, but the law preserved in Greek texts was Roman law: it is a typical example of that fusion of traditions which this paper is written to illustrate. Constantine had sought, we have seen, to found the empire upon the basis of a common Christian orthodoxy. The work of this peiiod is the elaborationof the content of that orthodoxy. Its final formulation meant that Egypt and Syria weire alienated from Constantinople, but through their loss the empire and orthodoxy became conterminous, and a new cohesion was gained. With the seventh century we find ourselves in a new world: Persia, the hereditary enemy of the Roman state, is overthrown, and the empire's neighbours are the Arab and the Slav. The period of transition has been brought to a close, and the reign of Heraclius marksthe beginning of Byzantine history. There follows the momentous Iconoclast struggle in which the principles formulated during the preceding centuries are directly challenged: in the field of art a challenge to an iconography which was the outcome of Greek traditions ; a challenge in the ecclesiastical sphere when eastern monks were supported by the western Papacy in a
1

'Alexandria and Constantinople:

A Study in Ecclesiastical Diplomacy. Arcbaeology, 12 (I926), 145-156.

The Journal of Egyptian

This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:29:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

10

SOME

ASPECTS

OF BYZAN'I'INE

CIVILISATION.

demand for freedom from the intervention of the civil power a challenge in the realm of law when Iconoclast emperorsmade a consistent effort to remodel the legislation of the state and refashion it upon a Christian basis. This triple challenge and its issue are indeed of fundamental significance for any student who would seek to determine the cssential character of an empire which was at this time, if we are to believe Professor Diehl, 'ctroitement orientalisc.' For in this Iconoclast struggle a movement which, as wvesaw, took its rise from the extreme eastern provinces of the empire-the lands bordering on Armcnia - was given its opportunitv to enforce its own convictions, and to that effort, which cxtended over a century, this' eastern empire gave no uncertain answer. It resolutely refused to abandon its icons despite persecution, it maintained its loyalty to a Greekiconography; it rejected the claims of the monks to ecclesiastical freedom: it willingly acquiesced in that interposition of the civil power in religious affairswhich has behind it the unbroken tradition of Roman history; this Christian state, whose loyalty to the faith of the seven councils was its proudest boast, rejected with anathemas the consciously Christian legislation of the Iconoclasts and unhcsitatingly reaffirmed in the codc of a Macedonian sovran the Roman law of that intensely Roman monarch Justinian. It reconquered southern Italy, and on that Westcrn soil it created, in Professor Diehl's words, a veritable Magna Graecia. What an odd thing for an oricntal empirc to do. Why not a Magna Syria or a Magna Chaldaca ? Further, in its greatest and most self-conscious period East Rome cultivated with ardour a literature which was modelled on that of classical Greece, while an imperial scholar mobilised in the interest of the commonwcalth the r-ecordsof the empire's Greco-Ronian past. And asagainstthe insistenceupon the dualtradition of Greece andRome to what essential charactcristicsof Byzantine civilisation can one point if one would seekto justify the dogmatic assertionsof, let us say, Professol Otto of Munich ? ' Here Asia won a decisive victory over Europe v 1; it is easy to make such a statement: how, we may ask, is it proposed to provc it ? For mysclf, I can only say, in the familiar phrase of the lawyers, that I desire further and better particulars. Believe me, I am not trying to make a debating point: I am not merely pleading pro domo.2 I do really want to know what these oriental elements are which arc said to determine the character of East Roman life. Is it contended that the Byzantine empirc is oriental because it is Christian, Christianity being in its origin an oriental religion ? My difficulty is that Christianity has always meant diffcrent things in different surroundings, while the Orthodox Church, identified with a Greek theology, does not seem to me to be adequately characterised by the cpithet ' oriental.' Again,
Kulturgeschichte des Altertums, p. 93. TI'he conception of East Roman civilisation defended in this paper is that of iny little book on
2 '

The Byzantine Emnpire published in the Honme University Library.

This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:29:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SOME

ASPECTS

OF BYZANTINE

CIVILISAriON.

II

monasticism may be described as an oriental movement but once more, when the general pagan asceticism of the time of monastic origins is remembered, when one considers that the strongest influence in the formulation of the monasticism of the eastern church was so essentially Greek a statesman as was S. Basil, it would appear to me misleading to represent Greek monasticism as distinctively oriental. Or take the etiquette of the East Roman court ; here one mav freely admit that there is Persian influence at work, but one is forced to ask the question which is truly more individual, more characteristic of the Empire, that the sovran is honoured by the prostration of the subject or that with a profoundly Roman passion for efficiency the Bvzantine always expected the monaich to lead the armies of the Roman state-that Byzantine absolutism was never permitted permanently to reduce the emperor to the position of a roifaineant ? For me the latter fact is infinitely more significant. One by one I think of the outstanding features of this East Roman civilisation, and I fail to see that they are peculiarly oriental. It is not enough, for instance, simply to adduce the fact that Byzantine sovranty was absolute: as such absolutism is not oriental. I have even a suspicionthat we are inclined to talk somewhat too glibly of the transition from the Principate to the Dominate. We naturallylook at the development from an Italian standpoint. But Constantinople was set from the first not in Italy, but in a Greek land. For the folk of the Eastern Mediterraneanwas there ever any such thing as a Principate ? Is not the interest of the letter of Claudius, recently published by Mr. Bell, i from one side at least, just this, that it demonstrates the incomprehension of the Greek world before the unaccountable refusalsof a Roman emperor ? If you desire to represent the triumph of absolutism as an oriental encroachment, you must, for the provinces of the Roman East, go back to a very early date, to the toundation of the Principatc; yes, and even beyond that, for this absolutist conception of government was Hellenistic before ever it was Roman. If you would contend that the conception is fundamentally oriental, might it not be answered that it had at least become in the centuries after Alexander the Great so closely woven into the life of the Hellenistic world as itself to form a part of that Greek civilisation to which Rome and Byzantium were the heirs ? The Dominate, even in the West, is there 8uvteL from the first: it was the interpretation which Augustus put upon his powers which made his imperium something other; for, as soon as the imperium is deprived of its temporal limits and its col]egiate character, what is the imperiur itself but practical absolutism-if the holder of the imperium choose to make it so ? If you desire because of its absolutism to represent the Eastern empire as an oriental state, it will not be necessary to await the coming of the Iconoclast emperors. I would repeat that until Professor Diehl and Professor Otto come
1 yews and Christians in Egypt, British Museum, 1924, pp. 1-37.

This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:29:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

12

SOME

ASPECTS

OF

BYZANTINE

CIVILISATION.

into the open and put down their cards upon the table for all to seeuntil then-it is open to us to insist that those characteristic features which seem to us essential in Byzantine civilisation are developments from, and continuous with, the civilisations of Greece and Rome. Let us briefly in closing recapitulate some of those features. First among them is a state which was maintained upon the basis of a money economy: upon that basis alone depended the empire's standing army, its fleet in commission, its constantly adaptable art of war, continuously studied, and still reprcsented in the surviving military manuals-the C-TpXrJyiXi: to all of which the West stands in striking contrast, for feudalism and a landed economy made all this impossible. Further, a state which resolutely maintained a single system of Roman law ; and this maintenance goes right back to the founder of New Rome itself, who because he so unexpectedlv offered to the Christians a full and free entry into the Roman state could do so on his own Roman terms, introducing, it is true, a few minor modifications into the law of the state, but essentially leaving the massive building unaltered. M. Maurice, in a recent book which his warmest admirers can onlv regret, has represented the Constantinian settlement as a Concordat between Roman state and Christian church ; but the all-important fact for the student of the later cmpire to realise is surely this: that the admission of the Christians into the privileges of the state by Constantine was in essentials a unilateral act: thereby was determined the character of the later history of Roman law. When the Iconoclasts attempted to break the traditional moulds, it was already too late, for the Roman Empire had familiarised itself too intimately with the conditions of the Constantinian settlement to tolerate any change. And again in contrast with this statc of the single law stands the West with its welter of local courts and systems of local law. And the one law is maintaincd by a single sovranty, the direct continuation of the imperium of Rome--the only sovranty worthy of the namc in the Europe of the early Middle Age. By the seventh century the menace of feudalism is broken in the East Roman Empire, and the centralised state is supreme. Here, in this Paradise of the Austinian jurist, all authority is concentrated in and flows from God's vicegerent, the Emperor. And, as from Rome's earliest days, so now in the Christian empire, the holder of the imperium is also charged with the care of religion: the pax Deoium, which it was the duty of the Repablican magistrate to safeguard, has become a Roman emperor's maintenance of Greek theological orthodoxy, which is indeed but another instance of the fusion which I have sought to illustrate. Only to the traditional duty derived from a Western Rome there has been added a Christian missionary activity amongst the barbarians settled without the empire's frontiers. This, too, is, as we have seen, a heritage from the

This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:29:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE

CIVILISATION.

t3

founder of New Rome, for Constantine as Christian Emperor gave a new content to the title of pontifex maximus: he was ' the bishop of those without the church,' whether heretics or pagans, and to that missionhis successors remainedloyal. In a word New Rome did not belie her name: the empire set in Greek lands with its heart in the city of Constantine may still with reasonclaim the interest of the membersof a Society formed for the study of the workof Rome.

This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:29:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions