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Parius

Plebes
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Everything posted by Parius

  1. For anyone who can read Greek you can find the whole book here
  2. Parius

    Emperor and Titles

    Constantine Porphyrogenitus wrote a book called De Cerimoniis Aulae Byzantinae dealing with matters of protocol and the such (at least for the 10th century) . Most likely the book you mentioned is quoting from this. As far as Western potentates are concerned, he gives the following: 1) For the Pope: Spiritual Father 2)For the Kings (rex not basileus) of Saxony,France,Germany : Spiritual Brother 3)For the Doge of Venice and the princes of Capua, Salerno,Naples etc nothing specific
  3. We know that the "Byzantines" considered themselves Romans and took that fact very seriously.They came into conflict with the Western emperors more than once, over which empire was the "real" Roman.We know about the incident where Nicephorus Phocas threw the Papal embassadors to jail becaused they addresed him as emperor of the Greeks(instead of the Romans). But what exactly did they mean with the word "Roman"?Looking at various writings and chronicles of the era,(e.g the Alexiad) you find a lot of references to early Christian emperors like Constantine the Great(of course),Justinian or Heraclius but very little for the "pagan" emperors.Actually the only ones that come to mind are the biographies of early christian martyrs where only the persecutions are mentioned... And i seem to recall a passage from Liutprand, where he asks Nicephorus Phocas how can the "Byzantines" call themselves Romans, when they did nothing to protect the City of Rome from invaders.Phocas's response is something in the lines of "old" Rome falling to her enemies because it was too much connected with paganism and descendence."New" Rome(Constantinople) is the one that really matters now, because that's the city God himself "chose". Was that pretty much the attitude the Byzantines had?That the Roman empire before Constantinople and Christianity, didn't deserve much interest or respect, because it was "pagan and degenerate"? Curius to listen to your opinions..
  4. I was just reading J.J Norwich's "Byzantium" and I came across this reference to the decanneacubita. This was a special dining room with nineteen couches, where the emperors and their guests would gather to dine on special occasions, like Christmas, the old fashioned roman way (reclining on couches instead of sitting on tables). So this started me thinking, what other customs and traditions held on to Byzantium, in one form or the other from the old times? There were the horse races in the Hippodrome for one thing, that lasted all the way to 1204 ( the latins used the place fro jousting tournaments I think, and then when the Byzantines retook the City it was used by young aristocrats to play polo) And the triumphs.They were more in a christian context of course, like when John Comnenus gave his place on the chariot to an icon of Mary, and i'm not sure if they had slaves whispering in their ears "remember that you are a mortal", but they were triumphs nonetheless. Anyone have more information on the subject?
  5. I was indeed refering to Charlemagne's kingdom and the later "Holy Roman empire" of Otto.But you are right, i don't consider them true successors to the western empire, i just used the term for convenience's sake. It's been a while since i read that passage, but i believe that when Liutprand mentioned the "failure" of the Byzantines to protect Rome, he was talking about the 8th c. when the Pope turned to Pepin and his Franks for protection from the Lombards, instead of the Byzantines. In any case, this wasnt my point. The reason i mentioned all these is to show the importance the Byzantines gave to the fact that they were the continuation of the Roman empire.What i'm interested in, is to get a picture of how they themselves(the Byzantines) saw,thought,felt,wrote about, etc. about the empire when it was still pagan and the capital located at Rome.
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