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Byzantium and Europe
by Speros, Jr. Vryonis
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace (1967)
ISBN: 0500320055
EAN: 9780500320051
Hardcover: 216 pages
SKU: 4AB2-118-7-1008
Condition: G G
Comments: EX-LIBRARY with typical stickers and markings; Clean body of text; Dust jacket shows very slight shelfwear; Pages toning slightly with age; Corners and ends of spine lightly bumped; Tight copy. *International Buyers Welcome!* (except for prohibitively heavy items, as noted) - Satisfied customers in over 40 countries! We ship quickly and guarantee satisfaction. Your purchase helps support a U. Chicago student
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Customer Reviews
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Too long forgotten
Rating  (5)
Date: 2006-08-19
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
This excellent little 200-plus page illustrated history briefly delineates the rise and fall of the Byzantine Empire, thereby providing some useful reminders to contemporary 21st Century readers.
While focusing predominantly on Byzantium's masterful cultural successes, and its enormous influence on Western civilization--which extends into our own time--the book also briefly describes the ease with which Islam violently overtook the Byzantine Empire, after successfully subduing Syria, Hellenist Palestine following their "crushing defeat" in the battle of Yarmuk in 636.
In 637, Arab armies massacred the Persians at Kadesiya, and within three years they also marched into Egypt and fully conquered Mesopotamia. As Vyronis observes, "In less than a decade a little known people had with ease terminated a millennium of Graeco-Roman rule in the Near Wast and had settled the fate of the Sassanid state."
The critical phase of Byzantium's destruction came during Constantine IV's reign, from 668 through 685, when "the ambitious caliph Muawiyya" set out to cast the ironclad control of "the Islamic giant" forcefully upon his neighbors. Thus he repeatedly raped Asian Minor, additionally creating a naval force which overtook Cyprus, Rhodes, Chios and Cyzicus, and besieged Constantinople in 669, with the major Arab onslaught following between 674 and 678.
During this period, at least, Byzantium effectively held the Arab armies out of Europe, largely confining Islam (outside of Spain) to the non-European Middle East.
The history is illustrated by a large number of black and white and color plates and photographs, showing both Byzantine art in its own right, and the heavy Byzantine influences on Islamic art--as for example in the case of the great mosque in Damascus.
This book is an excellent reminder, both that even the greatest of Empires is never invincible, and that the roots of Western civilization rest in the classical Greek and Roman, and Judeo-Christian cultures, morals, ethics and ideals.
--Alyssa A. Lappen
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