Search

A. Characteristics The rise of the Byzantine world was neither the awakening of a mindless people to historical self-consciousness nor the entry of a new “barbarian” nation into the old Graeco-Roman civilization of the Mediterranean. Byzantium was, in fact, a late form of Mediterranean civilization itself with all its distinctive features, a late form of the Roman Empire, of the ancient Hellenistic mentality and the characteristic Mediterranean way of life. Byzantium regarded its inherited forms a…