Hellenism in Byzantium

This 2008 text was the first systematic study of what it meant to be 'Greek' in late antiquity and Byzantium, an identity that could alternatively become national, religious, philosophical, or cultural. Through close readings of the sources, Professor Kaldellis surveys the space that Hellenism occupied in each period; the broader debates in which it was caught up; and the histo...

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This 2008 text was the first systematic study of what it meant to be 'Greek' in late antiquity and Byzantium, an identity that could alternatively become national, religious, philosophical, or cultural. Through close readings of the sources, Professor Kaldellis surveys the space that Hellenism occupied in each period; the broader debates in which it was caught up; and the historical causes of its successive transformations. The first section (100-400) shows how Romanisation and Christianisation led to the abandonment of Hellenism as a national label and its restriction to a negative religious sense and a positive, albeit rarefied, cultural one. The second (1000-1300) shows how Hellenism was revived in Byzantium and contributed to the evolution of its culture. The discussion looks closely at the reception of the classical tradition, which was the reason why Hellenism was always desirable and dangerous in Christian society, and presents a new model for understanding Byzantine civilisation.

Preface
Introduction
Part 1 Greeks, Romans, and Christians in late antiquity
1 “We too are Greeks!”: the legacies of Hellenism
Classical Greece
The Hellenistic world
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Preface
Introduction
Part 1 Greeks, Romans, and Christians in late antiquity
1 “We too are Greeks!”: the legacies of Hellenism
Classical Greece
The Hellenistic world
The Second Sophistic
2 “The world a city”: Romans of the East
Becoming Roman
The translation of Romania
Byzantium as a nation-state
The myth of the “multi-ethnic empire”
The fictions of ecumenical ideology
Where did all the Greeks go?
3 “Nibbling on Greek learning”: the Christian predicament
Between Greeks and Barbarians, within Hellenism
The challenge of Hellenism
The legacy of Julian
Ours or theirs? The uneasy patristic settlement
Conclusion: the end of ancient Hellenism
Interlude. Hellenism in limbo: the middle years (400–1040)
Part 2 Hellenic revivals in Byzantium
4 Michael Psellos and the instauration of philosophy
“Unblocking the streams of philosophy”
Science and dissimulation
Between body and soul: a new humanism
Hellenes in the eleventh century?
5 The Third Sophistic: the performance of Hellenism under the Komnenoi
Anathema upon philosophy
Emperors and sophists
Hellenism as an expansion of moral and aesthetic categories
Hellenic fantasy worlds: the new Romance novels
A philosopher’s novel: Prodromos on religion and war
Hellenic afterworlds: the Timarion
Toward a new Hellenic identity
Anti-Latin Hellenism
Ioannes Tzetzes: professional classicism
Eustathios of Thessalonike: scholar, bishop, humanist
6 Imperial failure and the emergence of national Hellenism
Michael Choniates and the “blessed” Greeks
Athens: a Christian city and its classicist bishop
East and West: negotiating labels in 1204
Moderni Graeci or Romans? Byzantines under Latin occupation
Roman nationalism in the successor states
Imperial Hellenism: Ioannes III Batatzes and Theodoros II Laskaris
The intellectuals of Nikaia
General conclusions
Bibliography
Index
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