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The Byzantine Achievement
An Historical Perspective: CE 330-1453
By Robert Byron
“This book, it hardly seems too much to say, changed my life. It filled me with a fascination for Byzantium and the whole Byzantine world which I have never lost.”
—John Julius Norwich
Summary
Robert Byron believed that the very summit of ancient Greek civilization was not to be found in 5th century BCE Athens, as almost everyone believes. Instead it was to be found in post-classical Byzantium, also called Constantinople by the Romans. Byzantine civilization was truly glorious, as we see by looking through Byron’s fresh eyes.
Byron was a brilliant writer as well as an unashamed propagandist. In The Byzantine Achievement, he made his startling claim with verve and imagination. This is a young man's work: sometimes brash and one-sided in its judgments, seeking the gaudy and brightly colored parts of history to the exclusion of the dull and prosaic. But the consequence is a literary classic that brings Byzantium and its achievements alive.
The introduction is by Richard Luckett of Magdalene College, Cambridge, Byron's authorized biographer.
About the Author
A graduate of Eton and Merton College, Oxford, Robert Byron was famous for his books about Central Asia as well as for those about Byzantium. He died in 1941, aged 34, when the ship carrying him was torpedoed.
