Sailing from Byzantium: How a Lost Empire Shaped the World

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Colin Wells

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Pages: 368 (Paperback)

ISBN: 055338273X

Pub: Delacorte Press

Pub date: 2007-07-31

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 433351

Reader Reviews:

Byzantium's cultural legacy (1/1 people found this helpful)

As a previous reviewer has observed, this book could be a good place to start your reading on Byzantium, but is also well worth a look if you have already read reasonably widely on the subject. It is not (and makes no pretence to be) dominated by original research, but it is a valuable work insofar as it consolidates an immense reading list (helpfully included at the back of the book) into a relatively brief and readable volume. As such it is more useful to the 'armchair' Byzantium enthusiast than the scholar, but none the worse for that.

The book is thematic rather than chronological, covering the legacy of Byzantium to the Greek, Islamic, and Slavic worlds. Of these the section on the Slavs is the most impressive, and it comes as no surprise that this is the author's main interest. The Islamic section is fascinating if a little brief, and the Greek section, though interesting, suffers from slightly clunky prose in places. Nonetheless all are worth reading, though a reader with an interest in one or two of these areas could happily confine themselves to that section.

Having read Norwich's superb three volume history, I would recommend this book to those who would like to dwell slightly longer on Byzantium's culture (sadly impossible in chronological narrative history). You will not be dissapointed.

OUTSIDE IN (15/15 people found this helpful)

If you feel an unsatisfied curiosity about Byzantium, this book is actually a good place to start, precisely because it works from the outside, focussing on the external outreach whereby Byzantine language, culture, and literature reached Italy (sparking the Renaissance), the Muslim world, and the embryonic Slavic world. Underneath that story, the ebb and flow of Byzantium's fortunes, its dark age, and its periods of renaissant literature and religion are sketched lightly but vividly by Wells. This book offers a painless way to get your feet wet in this subject by placing it in a broader world context. After, you're ready for Cyril Mango's superb thematic intro "Byzantium" followed by the historical surveys of John Julius Norwich (short in one volume or long in two). Then, if you're still on board, you can dive into the deep waters of the great John Meyendorff ("Byzantine Theology" and others). Byzantium has been well studied since the 1950s; this book by Colin Wells will serve as your way in.

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