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"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. This book 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. Kaldellis 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.' He 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"--
List of contents
Contents Preface 1. Introducing the Byzantine Republic 2. The Emperor in the Republic 3. Extralegal Authority in a Lawful Polity 4. The Sovereignty of the People in Theory 5. The Sovereignty of the People in Practice 6. The Secular Republic and the Theocratic "Imperial Idea" Conclusion Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments Index
About the author
Anthony Kaldellis is Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics at The Ohio State University. He is the author of many books, including The Christian Parthenon, Hellenism in Byzantium, and The Byzantine Republic, which have been translated into French, Greek, and Russian.
Report
Any student of political science will find this study of interest because of its discussions of both theory and specific historical documents... Byzantine specialists will find intriguing the author's remarks about continuity, and nonspecialists will appreciate his discussion about the legitimacy of power in a medieval context.
-- J. W. Nesbitt Choice
This is a path-breaking book that will change the discussion on the political structure of the later Roman Empire-Byzantium-and put it, finally, on a proper course.
-- Dimitri Gutas, Yale University
This is an important book that establishes beyond a doubt that the image we have of Byzantium, the Roman Empire in the East, is in need of revision. Kaldellis breaks down the artificial and damaging divide between Roman and Byzantine studies with his encyclopedic knowledge of the full run of Byzantine historiography.
-- Paul Stephenson, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
