The byzantines

Fro more than a thousand years, Byzantium flourished at the crossroads of the Eastern ans Western worlds. But who were the people of the first modern civilized state? What features distinguished tehm from ealier civilizations, and what cultural characteristics, despite their multi-ethnic origins, made them uniquely Byzantine? Through a series of remarkably detailed composite portraits an international collection of distinguished scholars has created a startlingly clear vision of the Byzantines and their social world. Paupers, peasants, soldiers, teachers, bureaucrats, clerics, emperors and saint, all are vividly and authentically presented in the context of ordinary Byzantine life.