Byzantine re-enactment

[spyros]

You will find there are Byzantine re-enactment groups in Poland, France and the UK but none in Greece.

No surprise there. Byzantium is demonized in modern Greece. It would be an interesting idea though. For the future...

[spyros]

No surprise there. Byzantium is demonized in modern Greece. It would be an interesting idea though. For the future...

Wow, what a shame to hear. I was always curious if Byzantine history was taught in Greek elementary schools as part of learning about their heritage. I guess the Turks are the closest to being the true heirs of Byzantium despite their being Muslim. Geez, that just adds insult to injury...

~Theo

Ahem, sorry for the misunderstanding, obviously I wasn’t clear enough. The vast of majority sees Byzantium as part of our cultural and historic heritage but the feeling is that its part of our history better left alone. Dark, corrupt and full of religious hysteria. Also the fact that the glory of the empire was and it’s invoked by right wingers and nationalists doesn’t really help.
In recent years a number of historians and fiction writers have helped to change this a bit.

There is also another reason involving the golden age syndrome. Greeks recognize three periods as “golden erasâ€

[Josef]

I guess the Turks are the closest to being the true heirs of Byzantium despite their being Muslim. Geez, that just adds insult to injury...

~Theo

That was a joke right ?

[Robert Vermaat]

spyros\\n[quote] There is also another reason involving the golden age syndrome. Greeks recognize three periods as “golden erasâ€

[Theodosius the Great]

early Byzantine period (ie 5th-6th century AD) representations of lamellar show the plates quite long compared with their width - and with curved edges.

Earlier I was speculating that the Christ mosaicshows lamellar plates similar to this much later depiction :



Both depictions show horizontal leather bands that I don't see very often in Byzantine Art. The column, IMO, shows plates with straight edges and so I thought that perhaps the Christ mosaic may show the same thing.

BTW, I haven't been able to locate a better photo of the mosaic. One day I may have to visit the Palace myself and take some good photos :wink:

Also, see the guys with both axes and shields here.

I'd like to have a Securis like the one shown in Osprey's 'RMC' (3) since axes are so cheap to make

The vast of majority sees Byzantium as part of our cultural and historic heritage but the feeling is that its part of our history better left alone. Dark, corrupt and full of religious hysteria.

I see. So the average Greek has basically adopted the caricatured view of Byzantium that the West has held for the last 1,000 years or more. Western Europe has never expressed any gratitude for the Eastern Romans. And now there's no nation that gives the Byzantines their due for saving Europe from the first wave of Islamic conquest.

As for the Turks, of course they are heirs of Byzantium

In a superficial sense, yes, I agree. They certainly aren't spiritual heirs and therein lies the insult, both from my viewpoint and, of course, the Byzantines'. The injury is, of course, the conquest of the Empire's heartland (i.e. Anatolia) and ultimately of Constantinople.

~Theo

[spyros]

As shown by several members of this forum, many Greeks look at the Byzantine period as 'Roman' and therefore something alien.
I think that's very sad. The Byzantine period was a thousand years of rich cultural development. If you look only at the end, or what lands were lost, you forget what was transferred. By the time Byzantium ended, Europe was on the rise and took over the torch of European culture.

As for the Turks, of course they are heirs of Byzantium, as are the rest of the Balkans and in lesser extend Russia. There is injury but no insult, as in Greece’s case vs. “vulgar Latium” so did Nova Roma “conquered” the Ottomans

In the West the new Germanic kingdoms never equalled Rome in splendour or power, but they sure tried to emulate it, and passed on Roman culture and religion to their descendants. In that way, they made sure Rome never died.

The Turks, likewise learning from their enemies, ended up as a city-based centrally-led state, not a tribal confederation of cattle-driving nomads, as their ancestors had been. They formed an Empire that allowed all cultures and religions to remain what they were, despite the state being Turkish and Islamic. That ensured not only the passing on of Byzantine cultural inheritance as well as a stable state for the next 500 years.

Vortigen and Theo, I’ll have to agree with both of you on those points but without trying to sound or be an apologist for Greeks, and even though this is out of topic allow me to add a couple of ideas.

The main problem is something found in almost every modern culture, especially in Europe today. That is the clash between “Ethnos” (sense of belonging in a cultural group) and “Genos” (a racial group).

Since we are talking about Greeks and Byzantium allow me to use these terms.

Happily enough, although this is a continuous clash, in many cases it has been subsided. So for example in the UK a man from Kent belonging to the English Genos co-exist without any problem with a welsh who might see himself as a Celt but belongs to the English Ethnos.

This is not the case for Greece. Or at least this is no longer the case of Greece. It used to be, Loukianos for example, although he was a Syrian no one would deny that he was he was part of the Hellenic Ethnos in every sense. Rome had the intelligence to become an Ethnos and Romania continued to be the same, everyone, Greek, Armenian, Syrian, Illyrian, and even Turks where Romans.

The Ottoman Empire was not by the way. Ottomans divided the population into three Ethoi, rum, all their Christian subjects, chifut, the Jews, and the faithful, the Muslims (I’m sorry I can’t remember the Turkish word).

When Greece rebelled in 1821 the timing was excellent because of Romantism. But that proved to bee a two edged sword, what was Greek was good, what was Byzantine (even though it was also Greek IMHO) was bad. I’m ashamed to admit that in a large extend Byron and poets like him created more or less the Modern Greek idea. Modern Greece, unlike it predecessors, followed the ideals of its time and adopted Genos. Today, Greece is the most homogenous country in Europe, 95% of our population declare themselves to be ethnic (in the modern meaning of the word, that is of the same Genus) Greeks.

I see. So the average Greek has basically adopted the caricatured view of Byzantium that the West has held for the last 1,000 years or more. Western Europe has never expressed any gratitude for the Eastern Romans. And now there's no nation that gives the Byzantines their due for saving Europe from the first wave of Islamic conquest.

As for the average Greek, Theo, he or she believes the same that almost everyone except for some Byzantologist and history crazies like most members of a particular internet forum, believes all around the world. Why should the average Greek be any different? Most people these days don’t give a fig for their history.

Also, as I mentioned on my previous post, Byzantium is hijacked by extreme right wingers and in a larger extend by the church. These two groups do not have many friends here.

To return to Byzantium I’m constantly amazed as I read more and more about it by the unbelievingly pagan soul of the empire. I had the good fortune of buying Cyril Mango’s “The Oxford History of Byzantium” (Nefeli publications for Greek readers). It includes an essay by the same titled New religion, Old civilization. Even though I suggest that this book should be read, as well as Maria Lampadaridou-Pothou “Πήραν την Πόλη, πήραν την”, which has been translated in English also (Byzantium the fall, Athens, 2001, Terzopoulos publishing house) a novel describing the last years of Byzantium. Books like those two mentioned, my not change the common conception on Byzantium but at least I would suggest that on should what one condemns

In the hopes that you will make sense of my rant and excuse my off topic drift I bid you Ypno Kallon (good sleep)

[Theodosius the Great]

When Greece rebelled in 1821 the timing was excellent because of Romantism. But that proved to bee a two edged sword, what was Greek was good, what was Byzantine (even though it was also Greek IMHO) was bad.

Yes, I knew the English, and the French for that matter, were the culprits who divorced reality from fact and implanted the modern fictionalized account of Byzantium into the minds of modern Greeks. The English were content to leave the Ottomans' Christian subjects to languish under their yoke until one day the Christians (who still called themselves Romans) found out that they had better start calling themselves 'Greeks' to get the Greek-loving English to expel Ottoman rule from the Balkins. So the English deluded themselves into thinking they were 'liberating Greece' :roll:

As for the average Greek, Theo, he or she believes the same that almost everyone except for some Byzantologist and history crazies like most members of a particular internet forum, believes all around the world. Why should the average Greek be any different? Most people these days don’t give a fig for their history.

You're right, spyros. I was hoping things weren't as bad in Greece given your proximity to your eastern neighbors across the Aegean.

Also, as I mentioned on my previous post, Byzantium is hijacked by extreme right wingers and in a larger extend by the church. These two groups do not have many friends here.

Doesn't the Byzantine liturgy survive in the church Mass ? I don't see why this would be seen as hijacking a culture.

spyros\\n[quote] I had the good fortune of buying Cyril Mango’s “The Oxford History of Byzantiumâ€

[egfroth]

Oh, it's just the clothes I liked. Botaniates was a pretty useless Emperor.

Alexios I is one of my heroes - turned the tide of decline in the Empire and issued in a new age of (albeit diminished) glory and success.

But I don't know about any Alanian wife. Didn't Alexios marry a Dukas?

[spyros]

Alexios I is one of my heroes - turned the tide of decline in the Empire and issued in a new age of (albeit diminished) glory and success.

But I don't know about any Alanian wife. Didn't Alexios marry a Dukas?

Pretty much so, Irene Doukena

Wikipedia has a very thorough article on Alexios: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexius_I_ ... I_Comnenus

[Comerus Gallus]

Oh, it's just the clothes I liked. Botaniates was a pretty useless Emperor.

Alexios I is one of my heroes - turned the tide of decline in the Empire and issued in a new age of (albeit diminished) glory and success.

But I don't know about any Alanian wife. Didn't Alexios marry a Dukas?

Yes, but Alexios & Maria was rumored to be lovers.

Some of maria's cousin married the Komnenoi, to Isaac K. & others.

Suposedly Botaniates was an Alan himself, apart of other claims.

[Robert Vermaat]

I split this from the main thread, to continue views about Byzantine history here.

[Hoplitesmores]

better start calling themselves 'Greeks'

They called themselves Greeks and never stopped.It wans't invented or imposed by greeks or English/French.
In "byzantium"
The majority of the common people spoke greek
The language of the Church was greek
the language of administration was greek
the language of the scholars was also greek
and finally they were called Greeks in the west and by the Pope and by most foreign states.

The romios/roman was a political/religious epithet.

Even my 95 year old grandmother that lived deep in turkey before she was exchanged said "Ellinei" in Ionian dialect using the "ei". :?

[Hoplitesmores]

And the english didnt kick the ottomans out.We did.How many years did the english or French fought with us and in what numbers?

Last time i checked in Mesollogi the Ottomans had french officers helping them and we had a handfull of phillellenes.

[Hoplitesmores]

It is well known that the so-called "Byzantines" defined themselves as Romans (citizens of the Roman Empire). After the edict of Caracallus all free people of the Empire became Romans. Other nations and peoples such as Latins, Franks, Germans, Russians, Armenians, Georgians, Khazarian Jews thought of the "Byzantines" as Greeks or Yunani, Yavani, Yoyn (Ionians). The "Byzantines" called their state "Kingdom of the Romans" (Basileion ton Rhomaion) but others described it as Graecia (Greece), the Greek Empire, or Yunastan, Yavan, Yawan (Ionia).

Aristotle, Apollodoros, the Chronicle of Paros and other ancient sources tell us that the name Greek is older than Hellene. It was occasionally used by the Byzantines themselves for self-identification, but more frequently it was used to designate the learning, language, and culture of their Empire. With some exceptions, for most of the foreigners the whole Byzantine Empire, including Asia Minor, was Greece, and its citizens Greeks. In determining the Greek national character, outsiders made no distinction between pagan and Christian Greeks, between the Greeks of ancient times and the "Byzantines" of the Middle Ages.

The overwhelming majority of the "Byzantines" themselves were
conscious of their uninterrupted continuity with the ancient Greeks
who, although not Christians, were ancestors. Though the adjective
Hellene, was used to imply pagan, it never disappeared as an ethnic
name. However, the names Greek and Ionian had been extensively used
by their neighbors and other people of Europe and the Orient and even
by themselves.

Graekos, as an ethnic identification, was used often. Priskos, the
fifth century historian, relates that, while unofficially on an
embassy to Attila the Hun, he had met at Attila's court someone
dressed like a Scythian but who spoke Greek. When Priskos asked him
where he had learned the language, he smiled and said that he was a
Graikos [Greek] by birth.

Many other "Byzantine" authors speak of the Empire's natives as
Greeks [graikoi] or Hellenes. For example, writing about the revolt
of a Slavic tribe in the district of Patras in the Peloponnesos,
Constantine Porphyrogennitos of the tenth century writes that the
Slavs first proceeded to sack the dwellings of their neighbors, the
Greeks, [ton Graikon], and gave them up to rapine and next they moved
against the inhabitants of the City of Patras.

Hellene as an ethnic name was used frequently after the eleventh
century by Anna Komnene, Michael Psellos, John III Vatatzes, George
Pletho Gemistos and several more. Anna Komnene writes of her
contemporaries as Hellenes. She does not use Hellene as a synonym
for pagan. Anna boasts about her Hellenic classical education, and
she speaks as a native Greek not as an outsider who learned Greek as
a foreigner. She writes of her country not as an insider.

Michael Psellos, a philosopher and historian of the 11th century was
another person conscious of the Greek nature of the Empire. When he
attacks Herodotos, the son of Lykos, who dared to criticize his
fellow Greeks and express his bias in favor of the Persians, Psellos
writes as if Herodotos had insulted his own ancestors. Emperor John
III Vatazes in his correspondence with old Rome writes of his people
as Hellenes.

In one of the early debates between representatives of the See of
Rome and the Patriarchate of Constantinople at the Council of
Florence (1438-1439) on the subject of Purgatory, Markos of Ephesos
and Bessarion of Nicaea drafted a response to the Latin position and
added that "on the subject [of Purgatory] our Fathers and all of the
Hellenes who have written have said nothing about it. What the
Latins have said, appear to us Hellenes unintelligible (senseless)."
Note here that Markos and Bessarion used the name Hellenes rather
than Graekoi or Romioi.

It was on the basis of the learning and language that Plethon
Gemistos identified the Empire's people as Hellenes. There are
linguistic, cultural and psychological indications that
the "Byzantines" viewed themselves as direct descendants and
inheritors of the ancient Hellenes. Culture, language, education,
religion were far more important factors than racial characteristics
in their self-understanding.

To be sure most of them followed the beliefs and practices of
Orthodox Christianity. But their religious faith did not force them
to reject their cultural past.

Instead, we discern in their writings and practices of daily life an
effort to integrate their old culture with the new faith. Their
perception of themselves found support in the views of their
neighbors and other nations which invariably called them Greeks or
Ionians.

The sixth century Syrian monk, Joshua the Stylite, writing about a
famine that plagued Edessa in Mesopotamia ca. 501-502 praised the
army stationed there for the help they provided to the victims. He
relates that "the Greek soldiers" set up places in which they looked
after the sick.

In a seventh century text, known as an Apocalypse, originally written
in Syrica and attributed to Methodios of Patara, known as Pseudo-
Methodios, uses the terms Greeks and Romans as synonyms,
interchangeably. He describes the rulers of the Byzantine Empire
as "the rulers of the Greeks, that is the Romans."

To Benjamin of Tudela, the Spaniard Jew who traveled to the East in
the 12th century, the whole of the Empire, including the Balkan
Peninsula and Asia Minor, is Greece. Constantinople "is the capital
of the whole land of Javan, which is called Greece." In the eyes of
Benjamin, the Byzantines were not warlike. Instead, for their wars,
usually defensive, they hired among all nations warriors called
barbarians to fight against the Sultan of the Seljuks, "for the
natives are not warlike." Lawless people from the hills of Wallachia
despoiled and ravaged "the land of Greece." While those lawless
people refrained from killing Jews, "they killed the Greeks."
Benjamin adds that in Constantinople is the church of Santa Sophia
and the seat of the Patriarch of the Greeks, "since the Greeks do not
obey the Pope of Rome." He calls the whole Empire, including the
Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor, "the Empire of Greece." The Greeks
are described as very rich, possessing of gold and precious stones,
and dressed in garments of silk with gold embroidery; they ride
horses and look like princes. "Indeed, the land [of the Greeks] is
very rich in all cloth stuffs, and in bread, meat, and wine. Wealth
like that of Constantinople is not to be found in the whole world.
Here also are men learned in all the books of the Greeks, and they
eat and drink, every man under his vine and his fig-tree."

For Ibn Batuta, the twelfth century Arab traveler, the Emperor in
Constantinople is the King of the Greeks. Cities such as Sinope,
Brusa, Ephesos are Greek cities. Ghazi Chelebi ruled over Sinope, a
city surrounded by eleven villages inhabited by Greek infidels, he
used to sail out in order to "fight the Greeks." He writes that the
City of Brusa was captured "from the Greeks." Ephesos on the other
hand, a large and ancient town, was venerated by "the Greeks." When
Smyrna was besieged by the Turks "the Greeks under pressure of the
attacks appealed to the West for help."

The Russian chroniclers of "Tales of Bygone Years," known also as The
Primary Chronicle or The Chronicle of Nestor, very frequently
describe the Byzantine Empire as Greece and its inhabitants as
Greeks. The Empire's ruler is the Emperor of Greece; the Russian
prince, Igor, advanced upon the Greeks and he received from the
Greeks gold and palls. But who were the Greeks? They were
Macedonians, Thracians, Thessalians, Epirotes, Peloponnesians and
people of the entire Greek nation in other geographical areas of the
ancient Greek world. For the Chronicle Byzantium meant only the City
of Byzantion.

Later Russian sources, too, call the Byzantine Empire a Greek land.
For example, the Zabelin and Hludov manuscripts of The `Wanderer'
Stephen of Novgorod relate that "in Constantinople, at the Jordan, on
the Holy Mountain ,and all over the Greek land it is the Typikon of
St. Sabas [which is followed]."

What do they mean by "all over the Greek land?" To be sure, not
merely the mainland, the Greek chersonese proper.

There is no great need to elaborate on how Latin sources refer to the
Byzantines. A few illustrations will suffice. In several of the
lives of popes such as Stephen II, Hormisdas, John I, John III,
Stephen III, Hadrian I, the Byzantine Empire is Graecia, its emperor
is called Greek Emperor, and the Empire's inhabitants are designated
as Greeks. Several Latin or Western European sources, too, such as
Gregory of Tours, the Venerable Bede, Gregory the Great, Isidore of
Seville, Liutprand of Cremona, to mention only a few representative
sources provide identical information.

The designation Greek was not used as a derogatory name but as a
historical and long-standing appellation. Paul the Deacon, the
eighth-century chronicler of the Lombards, writes that Maurice (582-
602) was the first emperor of the race of the Greeks. And for
Liutprand of Cremona whether for realistic or polemical reasons, the
Byzantine Empire was Greek and its emperor the king of the Greeks.

For the Latin chroniclers who wrote about the Crusades, the
Byzantines were Greeks and their Empire, including Asia Minor, was
Graecia.

Guibert of Nogent praised "the hospitality of the inhabitants of the
Greek Provinces," notwithstanding the "utmost insolence" of
the "pilgrim" crusaders. For Peter the Hermit, it was the Empire of
Constantinople and its inhabitants were Greeks. For Geoffrey of
Villehardouin and Robert di Clary, both eyewitnesses of the Crusades
and recorders of speeches by the movement's leaders, the Byzantine
Empire is called Greek Empire and its citizens Greeks.

Several more western Europeans, travelers, chroniclers, and
theologians after the twelfth century continued o call the so-called
Byzantine Empire as Graecia and its inhabitants Greeks. Khazarian
Hebrew sources express themselves in terms identical with Latin
sources.

For the Arabs, too, the "Byzantines" were the descendants of the
ancient Greeks. Arabic sources indicate that the Arabs made no
distinction between ancient and contemporary Greeks.

"Only the highest praise could do justice to the importance of the
Greeks. Even excessive admiration is not infrequently expressed" by
Arabs in the words of Franz Rosenthal, a leading scholar of Islam and
the Arabs. He cites Arabic sources.

For the Arabs, the Byzantine rulers were Greeks, not Roman,
and "Greek rulers were always building level roads through difficult
territory, filling hollows, cutting through high mountains and
banishing fear of them.

They were always constructing various kinds of bridges, erecting
strong walls, building aqueducts and diverting rivers… They were
concerned with science and medicine." Other Arabic sources describe
the Byzantine state as Rum but they consider its people and culture
as Ighritsi (Greek).

For Armenians, Georgians, and several Semitic people of the Near
East, the "Byzantines" are Ionian Greeks (Yoyn, Yavani) and their
Empire is Yunastan, Yavan, Javan, Yawan (Ionia, Greece).

For Armenian sources in particular, all the emperors from Diocletian
in the third to Constantine XI Palaiologos in the fifteenth century
as well as military leaders, and all the Patriarchs of Constantinople
are called Yoyn.

In brief, the so-called "Byzantines" identified themselves as
Graekoi, Hellenes, and Rhomioi while Western European (Latin,
Germanic, Frankish) and Eastern European (Russian, Khazarian, Hebrew) and other non-Greek sources describe them as Greeks and their Empire as Graecia, or "land of the Greeks." The sources we have cited were closer to the events they described, and to the mind of the people they knew. They should be considered more reliable than later
writers who invented rather than inherited the perceptions of the past

[hoplite14gr]

Theo, Byzantine History is tought at schools because it is part of our heritage.
The succesfull military emperors defending the empire are stressed of course and Justninian fot building Hagia Sofia (Altouhg he was a b****t in my opinion.)
Detailed research in Byzantium shows many negative things especially in the early and late periods


Byzantine renactment also if you do not do light troops is more expensive than ancient.

Kind regards