Byzantine age

Byzantine age, term describing Greek history and culture of the period from (at its widest) AD 330 until 1453, derived from the name of the capital of the eastern Roman empire, the Greek city Byzantium. The period begins when the emperor Constantine the Great transferred his residence from Rome to Byzantium and renamed the city Constantinople. In AD 395, at the death of the emperor Theodosius the Great, the empire was divided between his two sons, Arcadius ruling from Byzantium/Constantinople in the East and Honorius from Rome in the West. Thereafter there was complete separation of administration and even of succession. When the western empire collapsed in the fifth century (see FALL OF ROME) relations between east and west declined. The last eastern emperor to use Latin as the official language of imperial government at Byzantium was Justinian, with whose reign (527–65) the Byzantine age (or Byzantine empire) is sometimes said to begin. Greek literature, no longer pagan, was now centred on Byzantium, and had lost its classical stamp under Roman, Eastern, and Christian influences. The Greek pronunciation had changed, syllables in Byzantine Greek having different quantities from classical Greek (see METRE, GREEK 1), with the result that after the second century AD it was no longer possible, except for a few deliberately archaizing poets, to write verse in the old classical metres. New literary genres appeared, such as Christian hymns and saints' lives. The kind of Greek used by authors varied widely, from the most ornate imitations of classical literary Greek to the very different near-vernacular. It was primarily an age of prose, of theology and history particularly; notable historians include Procopius, Anna Comnena (1083–after 1148), and Michael Psellus (c.1019–c.1078) (the last two outside the scope of this work). Many writers were occupied with lexicons, abridgements of classical works, and commentaries on them, and played an important part in the preservation and transmission of the ancient authors. The period ended in 1453 with the fall of what was still officially the eastern Roman empire and the capture of Byzantium/Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks. See also SOPHISTIC, SECOND and TEXTS, TRANSMISSION OF ANCIENT 2 and 3.