Serving Byzantium's Emperors
The Courtly Life and Career of Michael Attaleiates
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Published:18th Feb '19
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This book is a microhistory of eleventh-century Byzantium, built around the biography of the state official Michael Attaleiates. Dimitris Krallis presents Byzantium as a cohesive, ever-evolving, dynamic, Roman political community, built on traditions of Roman governance and Hellenic culture. In the eleventh century, Byzantium faced a crisis as it navigated a shifting international environment of feudal polities, merchant republics, steppe migrations, and a rapidly transforming Islamic world. Attaleiates’ life, from provincial birth to Constantinopolitan death, and career, as a member of an ancient empire’s officialdom, raise questions of identity, family, education, governance, elite culture, Romanness, Hellenism, science and skepticism, as well as political ideology during this period. The life and work of Attaleiates is used as a prism through which to examine important questions about a long-lived medieval polity that is usually studied as exotic and distinct from both theEuropean and the Near Eastern historical experience.
ISBN: 9783030045241
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
288 pages
1st ed. 2019