Tag Archives: Roman Empire

Byzantium: The Decline and Fall

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Mark Rossiter

The last in the series is an ever-more dizzying whirligig of passing characters and incidents, few of them with enough purchase for this to be more than a shallow parade. Maybe that is the nature of the subject matter, given … Continue reading →

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Byzantium: The Apogee

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

Second volume: more of the same, equally entertaining and well-written, with the same caveats. Most monstrous character: Basil the Macedonian, who maneuvered himself from stable boy to imperial confidant to Michael III, murdered the emperor’s uncle (who had effectively been … Continue reading →

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Byzantium: The Early Centuries

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

John Julius Norwich, author of this history of the Eastern Roman Empire from the founding of Constantinople in 330 until the coronation in 800 in Rome by the Pope of Charlemagne as rival Emperor of the West, is a jolly … Continue reading →

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Istanbul: The Imperial City

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

This book about Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul, by the American teacher John Freely, is a curious read. It purports to be a chronological history of the city, yet is in fact mostly a string of anecdotes about the doings of its sometime rulers … Continue reading →

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back to Byzantium

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

Once again in Istanbul: Asia to the left, Europe to the right, with the Sea of Marmara in the background and the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia on the hill: By the Marmara shore, this is all that remains of … Continue reading →

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the man who invented Europe

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

On Sunday afternoon, Aachen is a quietly typical German bourgeois town, with a brass band playing in the Cathedral square and teenagers wearing t-shirts emblazoned with legends like NEW YORK FUCKING CITY. It has hot springs, which, along with its … Continue reading →

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48 hours in Moravia

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

On into Moravia, the other half of the Czech lands. Long vistas of rolling land, field and heath and forests that are just as cool and dense and lush, if a little more coniferous than in Bohemia. At a small … Continue reading →

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Dresden: the Saxon one percent

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

Upstairs in the Royal Palace of the Kings of Saxony is a spectacular collection of Ottoman weaponry, from the days when the Turks had Hungary and threatened Vienna. Downstairs, the so-called Green Vault: two floors of unbelievable and unnecessary trinkature … Continue reading →

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home soil

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

I landed in London at 6 in the morning. People are really friendly. Everything moves slowly, and there seems so much space and time between objects. Almost nobody employed in London, apart from the guys with the green fluorescent waistcoats … Continue reading →

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Byzantium by bus

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

And so, 30 years after I first conceived the ambition while turning right at Thessaloniki, I came not sailing but on a highway bus (aware, always, of the tyre-tracks of history) to Istanbul-Constantinople-Byzantium. The rain had cleared and we descended … Continue reading →

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