People and Power in Byzantium: An Introduction to Modern Byzantine Studies

Dumbarton Oaks
Alexander Kazhdan and Giles Constable
ISBN: 0884021033
price: $15.00  

What was the nature of Byzantium and why do we study this civilization, much of which was destroyed half a millennium ago? In considering these questions, the scholar, writes Alexander Kazhdan, finds the problems of that civilization to be analogous to those of the twentieth century. To contemplate the past is also to contemplate the present, and historians, as members of contemporary society, must respond to its needs and examine history with this in mind.Through study of the humble and ignorant as well as the powerful and wise, through the application of new research techniques, scholars will discover how homo byzantinus differed from people who lived before or after or contemporaneously in other parts of the world; how, possessing "individualism without freedom," and living under old and new pressures, the Byzantines' behavior converged on one point to define their uniqueness.