Volume 55, Number 14 · September 25, 2008
Brilliant, Beautiful & Byzantine
By G.W. Bowersock
Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire
by Judith Herrin
Princeton University Press, 392 pp., $29.95
Anyone who invokes Byzantium these days is not likely to be saying anything positive. Strictly it denotes the ancient city located on the site of modern Istanbul, the former Constantinople, and it serves as a general designation for the Christian Greek empire that was based there, with one major interruption, from 330 until 1453. But the name and its adjective 'byzantine' in modern parlance suggest intrigue, complexity, and corruption, and if there is an occasional intimation of glitter or gaudy decoration this rarely connotes beauty. The pejorative sense of the word is so deeply rooted that none of us can do much about it. It tells us as much about the real Byzantium as French toast or French kissing tells us about France. We just have to live with a common usage that grossly misrepresents the culture to which it alludes.
Review, 3315 words
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