One of the best Byzantine Studies pages. A Gateway. Text, audio and visual.
Comprehensive links to array of topics such as art, religious and historical
images. Listen to Byzantine music. Paleontology, reference documents on Byzantine
Culture. "Byzantium is the name given to both the state and the culture of
the Eastern Roman Empire in the middle ages. Both the state and the inhabitants
always called themselves Roman, as did most of their neighbors. Western
Europeans, who had their own Roman Empire called them Orientals or Greeks...
The composite nature of Byzantium. It was, without any doubt, the continuation
of the Roman state, and until the seventh century, preserved the basic structures
of Late Roman Mediterranean civic culture: - a large multi-ethnic Christian
state, based on a network of urban centers, and defended by a mobile specialized
army.
Byzantine civilization constitutes a major world culture. Because of
its unique position as the medieval continuation of the Roman State, it has
tended to be dismissed by classicists and ignored by Western medievalists.
Its internal elite culture was archaicizing and perhaps pessimistic. But
we should not be deceived. As the centrally located culture, and by far the
most stable state, of the Medieval period, Byzantium is of major interest
both in itself, and because the development and late history of Western European,
Slavic and Islamic cultures are not comprehensible without taking it into
consideration.