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
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 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 intended-
whether 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.

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2 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
barbarian. ProfessorDiehl does in fact point out that the Iconoclast
reformersfound their inspiration in those Asiatic provinces which
borderedupon Armenia,and we mayremindourselvesthat Armeniais
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 super-
human, and a world to which such an iconography appeared as
menschlich,allzu menschlich-a degradation of the Eternal through
identification with the transience of the material. And in this
Aimageddon of the continents Byzantium will stand as the bridge-
head, 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 characteristicfeaturesof the Byzantineworld. I would
suggestthat it is by meansof a panoramicsurveyof East Mediterranean
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,

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 SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION. 3
Constantine and the emperor Heraclius. The first period of some
three hundred years-from Alexander the Great to Augustus-
created 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 neces-
sarily 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 relent-
less 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 world-
empire; but, even if this be true, Alexander did break down the
traditional moulds of men's thinking and forced them to deal with
problems in the light of the olzouV&v-a-asProfessor Bury was fond
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 fellow-
countrymen, 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 com-
munication 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

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4 SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION.

the Diasporaa very different spirit reigned. The Septuagint is the

permanent memorial of the conquering power of the universal
language. It is in a Greek-speakingworld that Constantinoplewas
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 custodian-
trustees. 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-

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 SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION. 5
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 through-
out 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

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6 SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION.

won Gaulfor Hellenism. This jugglingwith wordsis a dangerousgame,

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
turning point in the historyof the Mediterraneanlands. He is not
merely the result of the past, he is a new beginning. The pictures
drawnby modernscholarsof Constantinehave been many and various,
but few, if any, do justiceto the boldnessand originalityof his achieve-
ment. Burckhardtand Costaare only representativeof manywho have
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
servantof God, the fellow-servantof the bishops,the man of God-a
manundera senseof mission: his fortunehe owesto the ChristianGod,
andthat relationto a ChristianGod haslaid aponhim a chargeto defend
the church, to toil unceasinglyfor ecclesiasticalunity. I feel that to
Constantinemore than to any other man the Roman world owed the
formulationof its Christian theory of sovranty, for with him that
theory had sprungspontaneouslyand vividly from his own experience.
The Roman magistrate had traditionally been entrusted with the
maintenanceof the Pax Deorum; the maintenanceof that peacewas a
matter of such vital importanceto the commonwealththat the Roman
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

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 SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION. 7

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
East Romansovrantyto,,eu xparotTo &Uv ? pe Loaptxo-how w fair
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 con-
viction 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 dis-
obey 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
Christian-empire. And with the Roman state the church accepted
the law of Rome. The law of Islam was fashioned by the religious
consciousness of Islam: religion and law were inextricably inter-
twined. 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

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8 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 bar-
barian 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 GaYnasand of Aspar the end of Roman
and civilian authority seemed very near. The West had no counter-
poise to throw into the scale against Ricimer: the East found within
its own territory the barbarian who should meet and overthrow the

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 SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION. 9

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
paper published recently in the 7ournal of Egyptian Archaeology1:
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 Greek-
speaking 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. The Journal of Egyptian
Arcbaeology, 12 (I926), 145-156.

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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 funda-
mental 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 con-
sciously 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 common-
wcalth 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. The Byzantine Emnpire published in the Honme
2
TI'he conception of East Roman civilisation University Library.
defended in this paper is that of iny little book on

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 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 develop-
ment 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.

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12 SOME ASPECTS OF BYZANTINE CIVILISATION.

into the open and put down their cards upon the table for all to see-
until 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 settle-
ment 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

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 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 successorsremainedloyal.
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.

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