OUP (2012) p/b 465pp £29.99 (ISBN 9780190241087)
In this collection of essays (paperback 2015), essential reading for anyone with an academic or enthusiast’s interest in the history of Byzantium, Bryan Ward-Perkins is clear precisely why we should study the two cities comparatively: Constantinople was known as ‘New Rome’; its facilities and administration (domestic and imperial) were at least comparable with Rome’s; it was granted a senate on its dedication in 330; by the 350s there was a city prefect; by a canon of 381 it was addressed as in the ecclesiastical first division (though see later on this); the two cities shared much in how they were represented to the world.
Here, then, are seventeen essays by scholars from a range of disciplines, summarising state-of-the-art knowledge and, sometimes provocatively, where Byzantine studies should go from here. Ward-Perkins charts Constantinople’s development of its defences, civil engineering, civic ornamentation and domestic architecture throughout the 4th century—usually in Rome’s shadow—and then how, by the 5th century, Constantinople is flourishing as Rome begins to decay. However, papal wealth ensured the big ecclesiastical builds in Rome (including Santa Maria Maggiore), while Constantinople maintained a continuous inward flow of saintly relics, and, with the True Cross and Mary as city patron, held a pretty strong hand. At the second dedication of Santa Sophia (January 563), the Orator can say: ‘But you too, first born Latin Rome; come, rejoicing that you see your child surpassing her mother, for this is the delight of parents.’
Antique Constantinople is much harder to find than antique Rome because of Ottoman destruction during its rebuild, but John Matthews focuses attention on Pierre Gilles’ (diplomat 1544-1548) survey based on the Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae, a regional survey dedicated to Theodosius 2nd (408-450).
James Crow considers the development of water supply in Late Antique Constantinople, and Carlos Machado demonstrates how the fully Christianised Rome under Gregory 2nd (669-731) was exploited by the wealthy to place their new domus on sites of choice, publicly owned or not. Constantinople, of course, had all the advantages, and disadvantages, of a Canberra or Brasilia. Constantine had houses built for the choicest of his citizens, and the Notitia mentioned above identifies 4,388 domus. From the end of the 4th century, regulations begin to proliferate, by which, unlike later in Rome, public space was protected from encroachment.
Neil McLynn considers the Council of Constantinople of 381 and the third canon which states ‘The bishop of Constantinople shall have the prerogatives of honour after the bishop of Rome through its being New Rome’. This is prima facie exciting stuff. The bishops of Rome and Constantinople are paired for the first time, and major sees are being ranked. So where are Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem? Seventy years later, at the Council of Chalcedon, the words were taken to imply (canon 28) equivalence between Rome and Constantinople, which entitled the bishop to consecrate metropolitans in the surrounding dioceses. However, Constantinople seems to have been a difficult council, according to its bishop Gregory, who resigned within a month in office. McLynn concludes that the statement is far blander than its interpretation would have it. Constantinople got nothing. The canon created ‘a self-contained class for the two Romes, with Constantinople (naturally) in second place’. The several and collective noses of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem remained in-joint. All was in proper, peaceful order, and the two Romes continued in their own, largely separate ways.
Anthony Kaldellis ends provocatively. Essentially, when the inhabitants of the Eastern Empire referred to themselves as ‘Romans’, they did so rightly, because that is what they were. Beginning with the Roman conquest of Greece, Byzantium became Rome via Constantinople, to be fully realised as Rome by the 7th century and continuing thus to the end of the 4th Crusade. Being Roman was based not on ethnicity, but a ‘national and civic’ identity, which legitimised the institutions of government. The people were not Romans because they had a Roman Emperor (even when [s]he wasn’t); the Emperor was Roman ‘because he governed the Roman people’. Byzantium was the Roman Empire by a consensus formed of language (albeit Greek), religion, art, social customs, national exclusivity and the Roman ideology of all branches of government. Thus Byzantium fits the modern definition of ‘nation state’. It was not an homogeneous empire any more than it was multi-ethnic. The population may have been ‘differentiated by region …Romans from Greece, Thrace, Kappadokia, Paphlagonia and so on’, but that had been the case in Old Rome’s empire. The idea of Rome was detached from the city—Old Rome had already had an east end to its empire, and it was this that made Byzantium Roman. And the Romanisation of the east is grossly understudied when compared with its Christianisation. The idea of the continuity of the empire has been aired before, and there is more of this to come, but the battle lines seem to be drawn.
The remaining chapters are as excellent as those reviewed, covering, amongst other subjects, ritual, panegyric, historiography, the ecclesiastical, literary and political. Seriously stimulating.
Adrian Spooner