Lost To The West by Lars Brownworth

From The Week of October 17, 2010

Though familiar to teachers and scholars of history, the Byzantine empire is, for most 21st century Westerners, a mysterious entity largely lost to the seas of time. If it is remembered at all by this majority, it would surely be for the word byzantine which has come to refer to labyrinthine structures of power, characterized by shadowy players who fight for dictatorial influence. Lost To The West makes clear the extent to which this is a twofold tragedy. After all, the Byzantine empire outlasted the Roman empire by a thousand years and, though it may have been devious in practice, was, for much of that time, the height of world culture.

The Byzantine empire was effectively created in the chaotic, latter days of the Roman empire when, after a dizzying array of emperors crowned and overthrown, Constantine unified the Diocletian factions and, in the process, relocated the capital of the empire to Constantinople, modern day Istanbul. From here, in modern day turkey, Roman emperors ruled a sea-spanning domain for only a few decades before the western, European half of the empire was overrun by Germanic tribes, a massacre which triggered the beginning of the Dark Ages, the descent into a thousand years of cultureless, reasonless existence. The Byzantines, however, suffered no such decline. Largely protected by the intervening sea, it was able to pay off threats to its existence with its, at times, endless supply of wealth. And so, for the next thousand years, the empire of the east carried on Roman traditions lost to the west: their languages, their religions, their laws, their customs. When, in 1453, the Byzantines finally fell to Mehmed the Conquerer and the Ottomans, the last remnant of the Roman world was obliterated, but not before those thousand years preserved for the West the sources of knowledge from which flow many of our own laws and traditions.

Here, Mr. Brownworth chronicles the imperial highlights of the Byzantines, weaving the history of the empire around a recitation of its emperors and their contributions and their eccentricities. And it's here that we see why byzantine has come to be synonymous with powerplays for surely never has their been a longer line of scoundrels, thieves, and egotists who have managed to stay in power. From the greats like Justinian the Law-giver to the louts like Michael the Drunkard, Mr. Brownworth walks us through the gallery of men who not only preserved for the west Greek and Roman traditions, they fought the Ottomans for so long that, by the time Mehmed and his descendents came west for conquest in the 15th and 16th centuries, Europe had sufficiently woken from its scienceless slumber to meet the challenge head on and throw the Turks back into Asia. Without this forgotten empire, we would surely be operating from Islamic traditions, not Christian ones.

This is a fantastic book which harmonizes humor and heavy history into a sweet and edifying tune. A must read for anyone. (4/5 Stars)