Byzantium

San Vitale, Ravenna: The Emperor Justinian and his Court (c. 547 CE)

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

- W. B. Yeats, "Byzantium" (1932)

Rise of Empires: Ottoman: The Fall of Constantinople (2020)

Every now and then you run across a genuinely exciting documentary series on Netflix. One such was "Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan" (2021), a dramatic and informative - albeit blood-soaked - account of the unification of Japan by various warring daimyō (or clan-lords) over the period from 1551 to 1616.

Another was "Rise of Empires: Ottoman." The first series of this Turkish docudrama told the story of the siege and fall of Constantinople in 1453. The second - even more gripping, if somewhat gruesome - instalment of six episodes outlined the bloody conflict between Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror and his childhood companion Vlad the Impaler, culminating in the 1462 Ottoman invasion of Wallachia.

If you want to know who a bit more about Vlad than the fact that he was the original for Bram Stoker's Count Dracula, this is the place to go. Trigger Alert: if anything, he was even more terrifying in the flesh than in fiction ...

Steven Runciman: The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (1965)

Steven Runciman. The Fall of Constantinople 1453. 1965. Cambridge University Press. London: Readers Union Ltd., 1966.

The other day I picked up a copy of Steven Runciman's classic account of the siege, The Fall of Constantinople. Sir Steven Runciman (1903-2000), one of the strangest people ever to adorn the profession of history, specialised in the subject of the Eastern Roman empire before and after the era of the Crusades, as you'll discover if you look into the pages of his biography, Outlandish Knight:

Minoo Dinshaw: Outlandish Knight (2017)

Minoo Dinshaw. Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman. 2016. Penguin Books. London: Penguin Random House UK, 2017.

His magnum opus, the three-volume History of the Crusades (1951-54), remains the most elegant and lapidary account of the period despite the seventy years that have passed since its appearance.

Steven Runciman: The History of the Crusades (3 vols: 1951-54)

Steven Runciman. A History of the Crusades. 3 vols. 1951-54. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.

• The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1951)
• The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100-1187 (1952)
• The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (1954)

Admittedly, it has its rivals. Notably, a spirited single-volume account of the first three Crusades by the almost equally eccentric and glamorous Russian-French novelist-historian Zoë Oldenbourg.

Zoë Oldenbourg (1916–2002)

Zoë Oldenbourg. The Crusades. 1965. Trans. Anne Carter. Pantheon Books. New York: Random House, Inc., 1966.

The question remains: what is it about Byzantium? Why does it arouse such intense passions in people even now, nearly six centuries after its fall?

I suppose it might be because it still remains a bit of an unknown quantity for most readers. Rightly or wrongly, we all have some kind of mental image of the Romans and their Empire (slaves, togas, the forum, the legions, SPQR).

We also have certain select vignettes of the Ancient Greeks: Socrates and Plato arguing in the agora at Athens, swift Greek triremes defeating the Persian fleet at Salamis - even, perhaps, the last stand of the 300 at Thermopylae ...

Tell them in Sparta, passer-by
That here, obedient to their will, we lie.

- Simonides of Ceos

Or perhaps you prefer Lord Byron?

The mountains look on Marathon —
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dream’d that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians’ grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.

- "The Isles of Greece"

Joshua Reynolds: Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

Edward Gibbon. The History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire. 1776-88. Ed. Betty Radice & Felipé Fernández-Armesto. 8 vols. London: Folio Society, 1983-90.

• The Turn of the Tide (1983)
• Constantine and the Roman Empire (1984)
• The Revival and Collapse of Paganism (1985)
• The End of the Western Empire (1986)
• Justinian and the Roman Law (1987)
• Mohammed and the Rise of the Arabs (1988)
• The Normans in Italy and the Crusades (1989)
• The Fall of Constantinople and the Papacy in Rome (1990)

But what about Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire? It doesn't help that the most celebrated historian to have written on the subject, Edward Gibbon, had an intense prejudice against the Byzantines, and seized every possible chance to disparage them in his epic, immensely influential history of the long decline of Rome and its empire.

Nor has anything comparable been written in their defence. W. B. Yeats adored them, of course. I quoted above from his great poem "Byzantium", but there's also the earlier "Sailing to Byzantium" (1927) to consider:

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Lady Ottoline Morrell: Yeats at Garsington (1930)
[l-to-r: Walter de la Mare, Georgie Yeats, W. B. Yeats, unknown]

Yeats was, admittedly, a bit of a weirdo. He spent much of his youth studying magic with the self-appointed Magi of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but it was the spirit messages he received at a series of séances with his newly married wife Georgie Hyde-Lees on their honeymoon which inspired him to construct a whole theory of history based on repeating cycles (or "gyres").

This led him to the conclusion that medieval Byzantium was the apex of all human cultures, and - presumably - to his (alleged) desire to spend eternity as a golden clockwork bird on a tree-branch.

These ideas also led him to write great, resonant poems, such as "The Second Coming" ("what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"). Beyond that, though, it's hard to say to what degree he actually believed in his theories, despite the immense detail devoted to the subject in his prose work A Vision (1925 / 1937).

Clara Molden: John Julius Norwich (1929-2018)

John Julius Norwich. A History of Byzantium. 3 vols. 1988-1995. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990-1996.

• The Early Centuries (1988)
• The Apogee (1991)
• The Decline and Fall (1995)

It wasn't, in fact, until the last decades of the twentieth century that Byzantium received anything like the historical treatment it deserved. Popular historian John Julius Norwich decided to bite the bullet and try to produce a three-volume history to stand alongside Runciman's earlier work on the Crusades.

Did it redress the balance? Not really, no. Norwich is no Runciman. But he's a very accessible writer, who's written illuminating books about Venice, the Norman conquest of Sicily, and a variety of other Mediterranean events and personages. His history of Byzantium (also available in abridged form in a single volume) is a fine addition to the bibliography of the subject.

Robert Graves: Count Belisarius (1938)

Robert Graves. Count Belisarius. 1938. London: Cassell & Co. Ltd., 1962.

Which is, of course, immense. In fact, so many books touch on various aspects of Imperial Byzantium's thousand-year history, that it can be hard to know where to begin.

If in doubt, start off with an historical novel can be good advice on such occasions. After the immense success of I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1935), maverick English poet Robert Graves attempted to repeat the trick with a book about the great Byzantine general Belisarius (500–565).

Just as the Claudius books were largely based on the surviving writings of Roman historians Suetonius and Tacitus, so this new one was inspired by Procopius's History of Justinian's Wars and Secret History.

Procopius: The Secret History (1966)

Procopius. Works. Trans. H. B. Dewing, with Glanville Downey. 7 vols. 1914-1940. Loeb Classics. London: William Heinemann / Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1978 & 1979.

• History of the Wars, Books I & II. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1914 (1979)
• History of the Wars, Books III & IV. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1916 (1979)
• History of the Wars, Books V & VI. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1919 (1968)
• History of the Wars, Books VI.16-VII.35. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1924 (1979)
• History of the Wars, Books VII.36-VIII. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1928 (1978)
• The Anecdota or Secret History. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1935 (1969)
• Buildings / General Index to Procopius. Trans. H. B. Dewing, with Glanville Downey. 1940 (1971)

Procopius is unique among Classical historians in that as well as writing a long, tediously official history of Justinian's wars in Persia and Italy, he also left behind a scurrilous volume of scandalous gossip about the Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora - allegedly a circus performer and even prostitute before she became an Empress - the Secret History.

Graves takes full advantage of this material, and compiles a spirited yarn about the virtuous Belisarius, betrayed by his own wife Antonina as well as the corrupt Imperial couple who employed him to clean up their mistakes for so long.

Is Procopius's backstairs gossip all true? Who knows? Perhaps not the stuff about Justinian transforming into a hairy demon when he thought he was unobserved - but a lot of the rest sounds uncomfortably plausible. However, some contemporary historians have advanced a rather different reading of the Secret History:

... it has been argued that Procopius prepared the Secret History as an exaggerated document out of fear that a conspiracy might overthrow Justinian's regime, which — as a kind of court historian — might be reckoned to include him. The unpublished manuscript would then have been a kind of insurance, which could be offered to the new ruler as a way to avoid execution or exile after the coup. If this hypothesis were correct, the Secret History would not be proof that Procopius hated Justinian or Theodora.

- Wikipedia: Procopius

Speaking for myself, that sounds to me like one of those perverse hypotheses historians like dreaming up to avoid the obvious conclusions already sanctioned by other scholars - a bit like the one about how the poet Ovid just pretended to have been banished to the Black Sea by the Emperor Augustus, but instead just sat in his house at Rome and wrote poems about being in exile.

In other words, given the tone of his invective, the chances that the author of the Secret History actually admired Justinian and Theodora are about as likely - in my humble opinion - as the possibility that Q-Anon was actually right about Pizzagate, and Donald Trump really was divinely ordained to combat demon worship in Washington D.C.

John Masefield: Basilissa: A Tale of the Empress Theodora (1938)

John Masefield. Byzantine Trilogy. London: William Heinemann, Ltd., 1940-47.

• Basilissa: A Tale of the Empress Theodora (1940)
• Conquer: A Tale of the Nika Rebellion in Byzantium (1941)
• Badon Parchments (1947)

Mind you, Justinian and Theodora do have their admirers. British Poet Laureate John Masefield, in his two historical novels Basilissa and Conquer, portrayed the Empress Theodora as a kind of distant cousin of Wallis Simpson - a potential breath of fresh air for a moribund court and royal family. She can do little wrong in his eyes (though Justinian does come across as a bit of a wimp).

The final volume in his trilogy (and the last novel he ever wrote), Badon Parchments, presents the story of King Arthur's victory over the Saxons at Mons Badonicus through the eyes of some official Byzantine observers, sent by the authorities of the Eastern Empire to observe, and - if possible - encourage this new manifestation of Roman fighting spirit.

William Rosen: Justinian's Flea (2006)

William Rosen. Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire and The Birth of Europe. 2006. London: Pimlico, 2008.

A no less absorbing, and considerably more accurate picture of the Byzantine Empire at its apogee under Justinian, is given by William Rosen's account of one of the very worst outbreaks of plague ever to afflict the human race - and its possible influence on both the rise of Islam and of an independent Europe.

Isaac Asimov: Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire (1970)

Isaac Asimov. Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970.

However, if that sounds like a bit of a fun bypass, you could do worse than check out either SF writer Isaac Asimov's focussed and informative short history of the "Forgotten Empire", or - for a more recent view - Aussie Radio personality Richard Fidler's travel book Ghost Empire.

Fidler attempts to recount certain picturesque events from the history of Byzantium in a series of rather stilted dialogues with his young son. It's a surprisingly successful formula, and gives a good basis for further reading - just like its even more beguiling follow-up Saga Land (2017), about the wondrous world of the Icelandic Sagas.

Richard Fidler: Ghost Empire (2016)

Richard Fidler. Ghost Empire. 2016. ABC Books. Sydney: HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty Ltd., 2017.

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David Talbot Rice: Byzantine Art (1968)

1. John Julius Norwich (1929-2018)
2. Zoë Oldenbourg (1916–2002)
3. Steven Runciman (1903-2000)
4. Byzantine Historians
5. History & Travel

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Books I own are marked in bold:

John Julius Norwich (1929-2018)

John Julius Norwich
[John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich]
(1929–2018)

1. [with Reresby Sitwell] Mount Athos (1966)
2. The Normans in the South, 1016–1130 [aka 'The Other Conquest'] (1967)
   • Included in: The Normans in Sicily: The Normans in the South, 1016-1130 & The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194. 1967 & 1970. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.
3. Sahara (1968)
4. The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130–1194 (1970)
   • Included in: The Normans in Sicily: The Normans in the South, 1016-1130 & The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194. 1967 & 1970. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.
5. Great Architecture of the World (1975)
6. Venice: The Rise to Empire (1977)
   • Included in: A History of Venice. 1977 & 1981. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003.
7. Venice: The Greatness and Fall (1981)
   • Included in: A History of Venice. 1977 & 1981. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003.
8. A History of Venice (1982)
   • A History of Venice. 1977 & 1981. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003.
9. [with Suomi La Valle] Hashish (1984)
10. The Architecture of Southern England (1985)
11. Fifty Years of Glyndebourne (1985)
12. A Taste for Travel (1985)
13. Byzantium: The Early Centuries (1988)
    • Byzantium: The Early Centuries. 1988. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990.
14. The Normans in Sicily (1992)
    • The Normans in Sicily: The Normans in the South, 1016-1130 & The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194. 1967 & 1970. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.
15. Byzantium; vol. 2: The Apogee (1992)
    • Byzantium: The Apogee. 1991. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993.
16. Byzantium; vol. 3: The Decline and Fall (1995)
    • Byzantium: The Decline and Fall. 1995. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
17. A Short History of Byzantium (1997)
18. [with Quentin Blake] The Twelve Days of Christmas (1998)
19. Shakespeare's Kings: the Great Plays and the History of England in the Middle Ages: 1337–1485 (2000)
20. Paradise of Cities, Venice and its Nineteenth-century Visitors (2003)
    • Paradise of Cities: Nineteenth-century Venice Seen through Foreign Eyes. London: Viking, 2003.
21. The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (2006)
    • The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean. 2006. London: Vintage Books, 2007.
22. Trying to Please [autobiography] (2008)
23. The Popes: A History [aka 'Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy'] (2011)
24. A History of England in 100 Places: From Stonehenge to the Gherkin (2012)
25. Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History (2015)
26. Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe (2016)
    • Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe. London: John Murray (Publishers), 2016.
27. France: A History: from Gaul to de Gaulle [aka 'A History of France'] (2018)

Edited:


28. Christmas Crackers: Being Ten Commonplace Selections 1970-1979 (1980)
29. Britain's Heritage (1983)
30. The Italian World: History, Art and the Genius of a People (1983)
31. More Christmas Crackers, 1980-1989 (1990)
32. Oxford Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Art (1990)
33. Venice: a Traveller's Companion (1990)
34. Still More Christmas Crackers, 1990-1999 (2000)
35. Treasures of Britain (2002)
36. The Duff Cooper Diaries (2006)
37. The Great Cities in History (2009)
38. The Big Bang: Christmas Crackers, 2000–2009 (2010)
39. Darling Monster: The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to Her Son John Julius Norwich (2013)
40. [with Quentin Blake] The Illustrated Christmas Cracker (2013)
41. Cities That Shaped the Ancient World (2014)
42. A Christmas Cracker: being a Commonplace Selection (2018)

•

Zoë Oldenbourg

Zoë Oldenbourg
[Зоя Сергеевна Ольденбург]
(1916–2002)

Fiction:


1. Argile et cendres (1946)
   • The World is Not Enough. 1946. Trans. Willard A. Trask. 1948. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964.
2. La Pierre angulaire (1953)
   • The Cornerstone. 1953. Trans. Edward Hyams. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1954.
3. Réveillés de la vie (1956)
   • The Awakened. Trans. Edward Hyams (1957)
4. Les Irréductibles (1958)
   • The Chains of Love. 1958. Trans. Michael Bullock. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1959.
5. Les Brûlés (1960)
   • Destiny of Fire. 1960. Trans. Peter Green. 1961. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
6. Les Cités charnelles, ou L'Histoire de Roger de Montbrun (1961)
   • Cities of the Flesh, or The Story of Roger de Montbrun. Trans. Anne Carter (1962)
7. La Joie des pauvres (1970)
   • The Heirs of the Kingdom. 1970. Trans. Anne Carter. 1971. Fontana Books. London: Wm. Collins., 1974.
8. La Joie-souffrance (1980)
9. Le Procès du rêve (1982)
10. Les Amours égarées (1987)
11. Déguisements [short stories] (1989)

Non-fiction:


12. Le Bûcher de Montségur, 16 mars 1244 (1959)
    • Massacre at Montségur: A History of the Albigensian Crusade. 1959. Trans. Peter Green. 1961. Phoenix Giant. London: Orion Books Ltd., 1998.
13. Les Croisades (1965)
    • The Crusades. 1965. Trans. Anne Carter. Pantheon Books. New York: Random House, Inc., 1966.
14. Catherine de Russie (1966)
    • Catherine the Great. 1966. Trans. Anne Carter. Preface by Arthur Calder-Marshall. Women Who Made History. Geneva: Heron Books, 1968.
15. Saint Bernard (1970)
16. L'Épopée des cathédrales (1972)
17. Que vous a donc fait Israël ? (1974)
18. Visages d'un autoportrait (1977)
19. Que nous est Hécube ?, ou Un plaidoyer pour l'humain (1984)

Plays:


20. L'Évêque et la vieille dame, ou La Belle-mère de Peytavi Borsier, pièce en dix tableaux et un prologue (1983)
21. Aliénor, pièce en quatre tableaux (1992)

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Sir Steven Runciman (1903-2000)

Steven Runciman
[Sir James Cochran Stevenson Runciman]
(1903-2000)

1. The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus and His Reign: A Study of Tenth-Century Byzantium (1929)
2. A History of the First Bulgarian Empire (1930)
3. Byzantine Civilization (1933)
4. The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy (1947)
5. A History of the Crusades, Volume One (1951)
   • A History of the Crusades. Vol. 1: The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. 1951. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
6. A History of the Crusades, Volume Two (1952)
   • A History of the Crusades. Vol. 2: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100-1187. 1952. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
7. A History of the Crusades, Volume Three (1954)
   • A History of the Crusades. Vol. 3: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades. 1954. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
8. The Eastern Schism (1955)
   • The Eastern Schism: a Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches during the 11th and 12th Centuries. 1955. Panther History. London: Panther, 1970.
9. The Sicilian Vespers (1958)
   • The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century. 1958. A Pelican Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960.
10. The White Rajahs: A History of Sarawak from 1841 to 1946 (1960)
11. The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (1965)
    • The Fall of Constantinople 1453. 1965. Cambridge University Press. London: Readers Union Ltd., 1966.
12. The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence (1968)
13. The Last Byzantine Renaissance (1970)
14. Orthodox Churches and the Secular State (1971)
15. Byzantine Style and Civilization (1975)
16. The Byzantine Theocracy: The Weil Lectures, Cincinnati (1977)
17. Mistra: Byzantine Capital of the Peloponnese (1980)
18. The First Crusade (1980)
19. A Traveller's Alphabet: Partial Memoirs (1991) ISBN 9780500015049

Secondary:


20. Dinshaw, Minoo. Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman. 2016. Penguin Books. London: Penguin Random House UK, 2017.

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Anna Komnene (1083-1153 CE)

Byzantine Historians

Anna Komnēnē [Comnena] (1083–1153)


1. The Alexiad. Trans. E. R. A. Sewter. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.

Procopius of Caesarea (c.500–c.565)


2. Works. Trans. H. B. Dewing, with Glanville Downey. 7 vols. 1914-1940. Loeb Classics. London: William Heinemann / Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1978 & 1979.
   1. History of the Wars, Books I & II. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1914 (1979)
   2. History of the Wars, Books III & IV. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1916 (1979)
   3. History of the Wars, Books V & VI. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1919 (1968)
   4. History of the Wars, Books VI.16-VII.35. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1924 (1979)
   5. History of the Wars, Books VII.36-VIII. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1928 (1978)
   6. The Anecdota or Secret History. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1935 (1969)
   7. Buildings / General Index to Procopius. Trans. H. B. Dewing, with Glanville Downey. 1940 (1971)
3. The Secret History. Trans. G. A. Williamson. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966.
4. The Secret History. c.550 CE. Trans. G. A. Williamson. 1966. Introduction by Philip Ziegler. London: The Folio Society, 1990.

Michael Psellos / Psellus (c.1017/18-c.1078)


5. Fourteen Byzantine Rulers: The Chronographia of Michael Psellus. Trans. E. R. A. Sewter. 1953. Penguin Classics. 1966. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.

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The Sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders (1204)

History & Travel

1. Asimov, Isaac. Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970.
2. Burckhardt, Jacob. The Age of Constantine the Great. 1852. Rev. ed. 1880. Trans. Moses Hadas. 1949. A Vintage Book V-393. New York: Random House, 1967.
3. Byron, Robert. The Station. Athos: Treasures and Men. 1928. Introduction by Christopher Sykes. A Phoenix Press Paperback. London: The Orion Publishing Group Ltd., 2000.
4. Byron, Robert. The Road to Oxiana. 1937. Introduction by Bruce Chatwin. London: Picador, 1981.
5. Dalrymple, William. From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium. 1997. Flamingo. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998.
6. Fidler, Richard. Ghost Empire. 2016. ABC Books. Sydney: HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty Ltd., 2017.
7. Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire. 1776-88; 1910. Ed. Betty Radice & Felipé Fernández-Armesto. 8 vols. London: Folio Society, 1983-90.
   1. The Turn of the Tide. Ed. & with an introduction by Betty Radice (1983)
   2. Constantine and the Roman Empire. Ed. & with an introduction by Betty Radice (1984)
   3. The Revival and Collapse of Paganism. Ed. & with an introduction by Betty Radice (1985)
   4. The End of the Western Empire. Ed. & with an introduction by Betty Radice (1986)
   5. Justinian and the Roman Law. Ed. & with an introduction by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (1987)
   6. Mohammed and the Rise of the Arabs. Ed. & with an introduction by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (1988)
   7. The Normans in Italy and the Crusades. Ed. & with an introduction by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (1989)
   8. The Fall of Constantinople and the Papacy in Rome. Ed. & with an introduction by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (1990)
8. Hodgkin, Thomas. The Barbarian Invasions of the Roman Empire. ['Italy and her Invaders,' 1880-1899]. Introduced by Peter Heather. 8 vols. London: The Folio Society, 2000-3.
   1. The Visigothic Invasion. 1880. rev. ed. 1892 (2000)
   2. The Huns and the Vandals. 1880. rev. ed. 1892 (2000)
   3. The Ostrogoths, 476-535. 1885. rev. ed. 1896 (2001)
   4. The Imperial Restoration, 535-553. 1885. rev. ed. 1896 (2001)
   5. The Lombard Invasion, 553-600. 1895 (2002)
   6. The Lombard Kingdom, 600-744. 1895 (2002)
   7. The Frankish Invasion, 744-774. 1899 (2003)
   8. The Frankish Empire. 1899 (2003)
9. Hallam, Elizabeth, ed. Chronicles of the Crusades: Eye-Witness Accounts of the Wars Between Christianity and Islam. 1989. Godalming, Surrey: CLB International, 1997.
10. Hill, Rosalind, ed. Gesta Francorum et Aliorum Hierosolimitanorum. Nelson’s Medieval Texts. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1962.
11. Joinville & Villehardouin. Chronicles of the Crusades: The Conquest of Constantinople / The Life of Saint Louis. Trans. M. R. B. Shaw. 1963. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
12. Rice, David Talbot. Byzantine Art. 1935. A Pelican Book. 1954. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.
13. Rosen, William. Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire and The Birth of Europe. 2006. London: Pimlico, 2008.
14. Wilmot-Buxton, E. M. The Story of the Crusades. 1910. Told Through the Ages. 1912. London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1927.

San Vitale, Ravenna: The Empress Theodora (c.540s CE)

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The Antikythera Conundrum

Jo Marchant: Decoding the Heavens (2008)

Jo Marchant. Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World's First Computer. 2008. Windmill Books. London: The Random House Group Limited, 2009.

The other day I ran across an interesting-looking book in one of the vintage shops I frequent. What's more, it appeared to have been signed by its author, presumably at some book festival or other, which added even further to its cachet.

Of course I'd heard of the Antikythera Mechanism. As I recall, it figured in an old episode of Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World (1980), and since then it's been used as the principal plot point in the latest - hopefully last - Indiana Jones movie:

James Mangold, dir.: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

The conceit there was that it was an Ancient Greek time machine, built by Archimedes of Syracuse, which some Nazi was trying to use to go back and change the course of history so that the Germans would win the Second World War.

As is so often the case, the truth in this case is far more interesting than the fiction. Jo Marchant and her publishers seem to have found it difficult to settle on a subtitle adequate to the significance of this artefact: "Decoding the Heavens: A 2,000-Year-old Computer and the Century Long Search to Discover Its Secrets" was the first one they came up with. The paperback edition simplified this to "Solving the Mystery of the World's First Computer."

Digital replica of the Antikythera Mechanism (2021)

Is it a computer? Well, that depends on what you mean by the term. Certainly it's an extremely complex calculating machine used - it would appear - to collate and chart astronomical phenomena. So, while it's an analogue rather than a digital device, the concensus of opinion seems to be that "computer" is indeed an appropriate description for it.

Jo Marchant, an award-winning science writer who also has a PhD in Microbiology, has put together a fascinating read. She charts the story of this strange piece of machinery from its recovery in 1901 from an Ancient Greek shipwreck off the island of Antikythera, to its present day place of honour in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.

Like her predecessor in this particular subgenre, Dava Sobel in Longitude (1995), Marchant assembles a varied cast of heroes and villains along the way. Among the heroes are:

Derek J. de Solla Price (1922-1983)



• Derek de Solla Price, who became interested in the mechanism in 1951, after it had been unearthed from the hiding place in which it was concealed during the Nazi occupation of Greece, and who made the first (approximate) reconstruction of it in the early 1970s.

Michael T. Wright (1948- )



• Michael Wright, who, initially fascinated by Price's monograph Gears from the Greeks (1974), has worked on the mechanism ever since, creating a model in 2006 which is the most accurate so far, and which is now in the Athens museum.

So far so good. There's no doubt that both of these ingenious scholars deserve the warmest praise. Wright appears to have cooperated fully with Marchant's book, which earned him the following encomium in her acknowledgements:

I am greatly indebted to Michael Wright, a gentleman who fielded my never-ending questions with honesty and grace ...

Charles Sturridge, dir. Longitude (2000)

Wright is, in effect, Marchant's equivalent to Dava Sobel's John Harrison (1693-1776), the working-class hero whose pioneering work on marine chronometers made possible the accurate determining of longitude at sea.

Unfortunately there's something about the Antikythera mechanism which seems to bring out the worst in people. It's a little like that fatal golden apple of discord inscribed "to the fairest," which led to the shepherd Paris having to make a choice between three contending goddesses, thus causing (inadvertently) the Trojan War.

If one continues reading the acknowledgments to Marchant's book, this is the next paragraph after the one about Michael Wright.

Thanks to Tony Freeth and his colleagues ... who were charming company and of great help when I first researched the Antikythera mechanism. Once I started writing this book, they felt unable to speak to me any further about their work or to be involved in any way. I hope I have done justice to their roles.

Tony Freeth

This is an unfortunate admission. Dr Tony Freeth is a founding member of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project and an Honorary Senior Research Associate at University College, London. Much of the more recent work on the mechanism has taken place under his auspices.

Nor did he agree that Marchant had "done justice" to his role in the reconstruction and study of this ancient orrery. As Wikipedia article on Marchant's book sums it up:

The author acknowledges ... that none of the principal researchers from the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project were involved "in any way" with the writing of the book. The project has published a commentary that sets out problems with the book's account of their work.

The entry continues: "The book's account of the collaboration between Michael Wright and Allan Bromley is disputed."

Allan G. Bromley (1948-2002)

This is another area of controversy in Marchant's book. Michael Wright collaborated with the late Australian academic Allan Bromley, an expert on Charles Babbage's calculating machines, in obtaining accurate X-ray pictures of the Antikythera mechanism in the Athens museum in the early 1990s. It's contended in Marchant's book that Allan Bromley unfairly monopolised these images, failing to grant access to Wright until shortly before Bromley's death from cancer in 2002.

Allan Bromley & Frank Percival: Antikythera Mechanism Replica

This is, to put it mildly, not how his widow sees it. As you'll see if you click on the following link, Anne Bromley objects strongly to the way in which her husband is portrayed in the book.

Jo Marchant (1948-2002)

As a result of all this controversy, Jo Marchant decided to publish her own response to these criticisms:

It seems that Decoding the Heavens is causing some controversy on the web. In recent weeks, some of the researchers working on the Antikythera mechanism, as well as Anne Bromley (second wife of the late Allan Bromley, another Antikythera researcher) have posted comments expressing concern about the way that certain parts of the book are presented.

As you'll know if you have read Decoding the Heavens, the Antikythera mechanism is an emotionally-charged area of research. All of the researchers involved have devoted years if not decades of their lives to solving its mysteries, and that has resulted in a fair amount of passion and rivalry. In fact without those driving forces they probably wouldn't have reached such impressive results ...

Yes, that certainly resembles the "Apple of Discord" theory I outlined above. "Emotionally charged" is probably an understatement, in fact: the "comments" compiled by members of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project run to 12 A4 pages! She goes on:

But this also means that there are many disagreements between the various researchers regarding how different parts of the story unfolded, and where the credit for various different discoveries is due. I doubt that any single account could please everyone, but as a journalist I spoke at length to as many people as possible in order to reach my own careful and independent conclusions about what happened. In writing the book I've also tried to give a flavour of the various viewpoints, with different parts of the story seen through the eyes of different people, and it was important to me where possible to portray these scientists as human - reflecting their strengths and weaknesses rather than leaving them as bland, one-dimensional "heroes". I (and my publishers) stand by Decoding the Heavens as an honest and accurate account of the Antikythera story.

My own impression as a reader is that her main cast is largely sorted into heroes (Price and Wright) and - if not outright villains, less than scrupulous rivals (Bromley and Freeth).

Arthur Koestler: The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (1959)

But then, the same could be said of many successful pieces of scientific popularisation. Arthur Koestler's classic history of cosmology, The Sleepwalkers, for instance, makes no secret of his preference for Johannes Kepler over Galileo Galilei. The latter is portrayed as sly and intellectually dishonest, whereas Kepler's perplexities and contradictions are seen as signs of his immense and painful integrity.

It makes gripping reading, but could hardly be regarded as a definitive statement on the significance of the two in scientific history. The same (as I've mentioned above) is true of Dava Sobel's Longitude.

The majority of the researchers mentioned in the book are happy with the end result. But of course there are different perspectives and if you are interested in finding out about these then please do look at the comments from members of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project. These researchers were very helpful and open when I first started reporting on the Antikythera mechanism, but I should note that after I told them in May 2007 that I planned to write a book, some members - Tony Freeth, Mike Edmunds, Yanis Bitsakis, Xenophon Moussas and John Seiradakis - declined to speak to me further ... They said that to do so would conflict with their own plans for Antikythera books and media projects.

Tony Freeth was named to me as the AMRP team's spokesperson on any matters regarding Decoding the Heavens. I offered him the opportunity to comment on the two chapters regarding the team's work before publication but he declined, and in the nine months since the book came out, none of the team has mentioned any concerns about its content to either me or the publisher. I am sorry to hear at this stage that they believe there are inaccuracies, and any factual errors they raise now will of course be corrected in future reprints.

Fair enough. Marchant then goes on to mention some points which seem to her debatable: whose team it actually was, for instance: Freeth's or Mike Edmunds' ("This is technically correct ... but none of the sources I spoke to were in any doubt that Freeth was the real driving force behind the project"). She concludes: "I think though that most of the comments they have posted come down to differences in interpretation."

Regarding Anne Bromley's comments about the way her late husband is portrayed ... it was not my intention to describe him in a negative way, and I am genuinely surprised by her reaction. The impression I got of Allan Bromley during my research was of a brilliant, lively, forceful, friendly person, who could be manipulative and competitive at times, especially when it came to knowledge and information, but who got things done and was capable of sweeping others along with his enthusiasm. I hope this is the way he comes across in the book, and multiple sources who were close to Bromley in both the UK and Australia have said that they found my account reasonable and fair.

It's good to see Decoding the Heavens provoking discussion though. Please do read the comments and make up your own minds.

That last sentence sounds like very sensible advice. Endless, after all, are the arguments of mages ...

Joachim Wtewael: The Judgment of Paris (1615)

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Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE)

In one of his philosophical dialogues, the Roman orator Cicero mentions two machines built by Archimedes which were brought back as booty by the Roman General Marcus Claudius Marcellus from the siege of Syracuse in 212 BCE. Unfortunately the Greek inventor himself was killed by a Roman legionary who'd been given orders to arrest him and bring him back to headquarters. So died one of the greatest minds of all time.

I had often heard this celestial globe or sphere mentioned on account of the great fame of Archimedes. Its appearance, however, did not seem to me particularly striking. ... But as soon as Gallus had begun to explain, by his sublime science, the composition of this machine, I felt that the Sicilian geometrician must have possessed a genius superior to any thing we usually conceive to belong to our nature. Gallus assured us, that the solid and compact globe, was a very ancient invention, and that the first model of it had been presented by Thales of Miletus. ... He added, that the figure of the sphere, which displayed the motions of the Sun and Moon, and the five planets, or wandering stars, could not be represented by the primitive solid globe. And that in this, the invention of Archimedes was admirable, because he had calculated how a single revolution should maintain unequal and diversified progressions in dissimilar motions. When Gallus moved this globe, it showed the relationship of the Moon with the Sun, and there were exactly the same number of turns on the bronze device as the number of days in the real globe of the sky. Thus it showed the same eclipse of the Sun as in the globe [of the sky], as well as showing the Moon entering the area of the Earth's shadow when the Sun is in line ...

Dominico Fetti: Archimedes (1620)

It should be emphasised that this, the device described by Cicero, is certainly not that: the Antikythera mechanism. However, his remarks do confirm that such devices were known in the Ancient world, and that any attempts by earlier commentators to explain away the more complex features of this "celestial globe" as misunderstandings on the Roman lawyer's part can be now be seen to be completely misguided.

The Antikythera mechanism

The vital significance of the Antikythera mechanism is that, while undoubtedly a wonderful piece of craftsmanship, it was not unique. The elaborate instructions included on it imply that it was meant for a less-then-expert recipient - some rich collector, perhaps, who wanted it to show off to his friends.

Massimo Mogi Vicentini: The Antikythera Celestial Machine (2012)

The complexity of the gearing, and the tiny size of many of the components also argue for a long tradition of building such machines. In short, Ancient Greek philosophers and proto-scientists were not all theory and no practice. And many of the great advances in - for instance - the creation of mechanical clocks, previously attributed to the genius of Renaissance inventors, can now be seen to be far more probably based on the surviving work of ancient craftsmen of this type.

Dave Goodchild: Antikythera Mechanism Replica (2018)

We may never be able to reconstruct definitively the complexities of the Antikythera mechanism. It's too damaged from its two thousand years under the sea - not to mention rough handling at the time it was first found ... and neglect for a number of years after that. The amazing thing is how much of its working has been able to be recovered by the combined work of mechanically minded scientists such as Derek de Solla Price, Michael Wright, Allan Bromley, Tony Freeth, and their many collaborators.

Site of the Antikythera shipwreck (2021)

It is not known where the device originated: certainly somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean, possibly in Corinth. In 2008 the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project "identified the calendar on the Metonic Spiral as coming from Corinth, or one of its colonies in northwest Greece or Sicily." This led them to posit a possible connection with Syracuse, which was both "a colony of Corinth and the home of Archimedes."

The Eastern Mediterranean at the time of the Antikythera shipwreck (2006)

However, more recent research has demonstrated that while this calendar is of the Corinthian type, it cannot be that of Syracuse. Other suggested points of origin for the device include Pergamon, home of the celebrated Library of Pergamum, second only in importance to the Library of Alexandria. However:

The ship carrying the device contained vases in the Rhodian style, leading to a hypothesis that it was constructed at an academy founded by Stoic philosopher Posidonius on that Greek island. Rhodes was a busy trading port and centre of astronomy and mechanical engineering, home to astronomer Hipparchus, who was active from about 140-120 BC. The mechanism uses Hipparchus' theory for the motion of the Moon, which suggests he may have designed or at least worked on it.

- Wikipedia: Antikythera mechanism

The device is estimated to have been built in the late second century BCE or the early first century BCE.

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Computer model of the Antikythera mechanism (2021)

How ought one to conclude this strange tale of scholarly rivalry and eventual, triumphant discovery? The Ancient Greeks (and, to a lesser extent, Romans) clearly deserve far more credit for their brilliance than we, their arrogant descendants, gave them credit for. Whoever the genius was who originated this particular class of devices - Archimedes or Hipparchus both seem possible suspects - they were certainly not working in a vaccuum.

Let's face it, there's a huge amount we still don't know about Greek (and Babylonian) science - not to mention the great achievements of their inheritors, the Islamic scholars of Baghdad and Córdoba, between the eighth and thirteenth centuries, before the Mongol conquest in 1258. The Renaissance inherited far more than we ever guessed from these predecessors. If we have seen further - to paraphrase Newton - it is only by standing on the shoulders of these giants.

Jo Marchant may have jumped the gun slightly in assuming that the mysteries of the Antikythera mechanism had been more or less solved by 2008, the date of her book. It's a fairly venal error, though. Her book remains a rattling good read and - until a better account comes along - well worth the trouble of hunting out.

Jo Marchant: Decoding the Heavens (2008)

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2,000,000+ Hits!

2,000,110 Pageviews (5/8/2024)

I wrote a post a little over five years ago about breaking the million hit barrier on this blog. I'm glad to see that the traffic must have more than doubled over this period, as it took me more than a dozen years to reach that original figure.

1,000,000 Pageviews (14/6/06-6/12/18)

As I said in that earlier post:

I find it rather amazing that this most self-indulgent of websites, dedicated to so many subjects which I suspect I'm quite unusual in finding fascinating - bibliography, ghosts, poetry, the 1001 Nights, poetry readings and book-launches - should have clocked up so many individual hits ...

Frequency of hits

Admittedly some of the more recent increase in traffic took place during the Covid lockdowns, when people were more prone to itinerant scrolling. However, if anything, the number of hits on my posts seems to have grown over the past few months, as you can see from the graph above.

Mind you, I do understand what a blunt instrument such counters can be. There's nothing qualitative about this data. A long read of a post will show up just the same as a momentary glance at a headline or an image.

Location of hits

They're not all from me, either. There's a little link you can click on to make sure that your own pageviews don't get counted in the total, otherwise it would all seem a bit incestuous.

Countries of origin

And as for the countries the hits are coming from, why so many from France, for instance? Why more from Russia (and Singapore) than from New Zealand? It's hard to reach clear conclusions about such matters, beyond noting the bare facts.

More to the point, though, I recently conducted a census of all the various websites I operate (you can find a complete list of them here, if you're curious). The nearest contender to this one, The Imaginary Museum, was my book collection site, A Gentle Madness, which has reached 439,131 pageviews. Most of the others were considerably less than that - though I was pleased to see that our Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive site has clocked up 319,446 hits.

In total, they came to approximately four and a half million pageviews, so I'd have to say that this long experiment on online writing / publishing must be seen as a success. I don't see how I could ever reached anything like that number of people by conventional means.

I know that blogs are now considered passé - but then the same fate seems to overtake each new social media platform in turn: even the giants of the internet, Instagram, X [the site formerly known as Twitter], Tik-tok et al. Enforced obsolescence pursues us all.

For my own part, though, I still like blogs. They're a great way to comment on the world around you - albeit usually to a very specialised sub-tribe of users. In my case this includes bookhounds and pop culture vultures generally.

Favourite Posts (5/8/24)

Pageviews (6/12/18)

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