Researchers Find Rare Letters From Fifth Century Gaza Strip

AFP ^ | 1-24-2005

[ParadigmLost]

:: Swiss researchers have uncovered a rare exchange of letters

Were they proportionally spaced? (grin)

[The_Reader_David]

I think you misunderstand. My point is that the civilization did not collapse, classical learning was not lost, and the old order persisted in the Empire--not the 'city of Byzantium', which by the way was called Constantinople (indeed was still called that down until Ataturk changed the name to the usual way Turks refered to it with the corruption of the Greek phrase eis politas as Istanbul)--not that where wasn't trouble on the borders, a plague, and bad harvests. BTW, do you have some reason for not giving the Imperial capital its proper name?

Of course all A.D. dates have Denys 'initial condition error'. But how is that relevant? The Empire still used the indiction system well into the period when the West used the A.D. system--as I pointed out Anna Comnena writing around 1100 A.D. uses it. What possible relevance does Denys error or when his system was generally adopted have to your point? Are you trying to claim Belisarius retook Ravenna earlier than the standard account so that the mosaics of San Vitale aren't counterexamples to your 'no significant art' claims?

[muawiyah]

Anything that is claimed to have happened after 541 is questionable simply because of the level of depopulation and the consequent economic decline.

With the environmental catastrophe that precipitated the Dark Ages having happened in 538, a whole lot of what is claimed to have happened between 538 and 541 is also questionable, with some variance given for latitude and other local conditions.

With the Germans having just taken over the Western Empire a few years before the beginning of the Dark Ages, the absence of documentation in the West for that period is frequently attributed to the supposed barbarous nature of those Germans. The supposed survival of Byzantium in a pristine state is further used to underscore the comparative barbarity of the new Roman ruling class.

The fact is they simply lived further North and West and were hit harder than those who lived at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean.

That does not mean Byzantium did not have it's own troubles at the time, which it did. Citing dates at the nexus of the beginning of the collapse as evidence that "nothing happened in Byzantium" is ridiculous.

BTW, it was Byzantium for many centuries before anyone thought to call it Constantinople and I bet you that even in 538 AD there were people living in the "old city" who continued to refer to Byzantium.

[The_Reader_David]

Do you call the current city on the site Byzantium or Istanbul? If you want to insist on calling it by something other the then current name when it was the Imperial capital, I presume you will be just as insistent now that it is a major city in the Turkish republic.

And have you read my posts? Or are you just grinding Gibbon's old axe as you insistence on calling Constantinople "Byzantium" suggests? I guess you think a plague, bad harvests, and trouble on all the borders is 'nothing'. Can you pull a quote from any of my posts which says 'nothing happened to the Empire'? No. But I assert rightly that the old social and political order persisted, that classical learning was not lost.

How about you just concede those two points and that the mosaics of Justinian and Theodora in San Vitale in Ravenna really were made after 540 and we call it a day?

I return, I'll expicitly concede that things were really tough inside the Empire due to a plague, bad harvests and trouble on all the borders with the Persian, the Slavs, the Avars and the Arabs, and remained so into the next century.

[muawiyah]

Gibbon pretty much blamed the whole thing on invading barbarians. Subsequent research has demonstrated the barbarians were pretty civilized, didn't destroy the Western Roman Empire economy, and had nothing to do with the climatic catastrophe that precipitated the Dark Ages.

Gibbon was also soft on the idea that the Eastern Empire suffered.

Given that you and Gibbon are in lockstep agreement on all the major points, why are you complaining about Mr. Gibbon?

[The_Reader_David]

Gibbon popularized the notion that there was a Roman Empire which disolved into chaos and a different 'Byzantine' Empire existed in the East, He was the one who created the fiction of the 'Fall of Rome'. I was tweaking you for you Gibbonian insistence on using 'Byzantium'.

[SunkenCiv]

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