{"title":"Anthony Kaldellis","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the world of Byzantine history with Anthony Kaldellis. His works offer fresh perspectives and insightful analysis. Perfect for history enthusiasts seeking a deeper understanding of the Eastern Roman Empire.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"hellenism-in-byzantium-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780521297295","title":"Hellenism in Byzantium","description":"This 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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49509686051089,"sku":"GOR013580403","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51003080507665,"sku":"NIN9780521297295","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52401647517969,"sku":"NLS9780521297295","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/052129729X.jpg?v=1751358936"},{"product_id":"cabinet-of-byzantine-curiosities-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780190625948","title":"A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities","description":"Byzantium has long been regarded by many as one big curiosity -- decadent, degenerate, superstitious, theocratic, effeminate. With its tales and trivia - ranging across religion, bureaucracy, food, theatre, medicine, xenophobia, warfare - this book will confirm some of these prejudices, but also open eyes to the life of this extraordinarily interesting civilization.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49532439462161,"sku":"CIN0190625945G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49660393423121,"sku":"GOR009089790","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49729035567377,"sku":"NGR9780190625948","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51249687691537,"sku":"NIN9780190625948","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53052333392145,"sku":"GOR009834338","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0190625945.jpg?v=1751133382"},{"product_id":"field-armies-of-the-east-roman-empire-361630-book-anthony-kaldellis-9781009296946","title":"The Field Armies of the East Roman Empire, 361630","description":"This book presents a new history of the leadership, organization, and disposition of the field armies of the east Roman empire between Julian (361-363) and Herakleios (610-641). To date, scholars studying this topic have privileged a poorly understood document, the Notitia dignitatum, and imposed it on the entire period from 395 to 630. This study, by contrast, gathers all of the available narrative, legal, papyrological, and epigraphic evidence to demonstrate empirically that the Notitia system emerged only in the 440s and that it was already mutating by the late fifth century before being fundamentally reformed during Justinian's wars of reconquest. This realization calls for a new, revised history of the eastern armies. Every facet of military policy must be reassessed, often with broad implications for the period. The volume provides a new military narrative for the period 361-630 and appendices revising the prosopography of high-ranking generals and arguing for a later Notitia.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49701822333201,"sku":"CIN1009296949G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51012409262353,"sku":"NIN9781009296946","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52686886404369,"sku":"NLS9781009296946","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1009296949.jpg?v=1751236121"},{"product_id":"byzantine-republic-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780674365407","title":"The Byzantine Republic","description":"Scholars have long claimed that the Eastern Roman Empire, a Christian theocracy, bore little resemblance to ancient Rome. Here, Anthony Kaldellis reconnects Byzantium to its Roman roots, arguing that it was essentially a republic, with power exercised on behalf of, and sometimes by, Greek-speaking citizens who considered themselves fully Roman.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49729492156689,"sku":"NGR9780674365407","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51326027268369,"sku":"CIN0674365402G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53483770085649,"sku":"NIN9780674365407","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0674365402.jpg?v=1777629658"},{"product_id":"new-herodotos-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780884024019","title":"A New Herodotos","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis companion to the two-volume Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library edition and translation of the Histories by Laonikos Chalkokondyles is the first book-length investigation of an author who has been poorly studied. Providing biographical and intellectual context for Laonikos, Anthony Kaldellis shows how the author synthesized his classical models to fashion his own distinctive voice and persona as a historian.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIndebted to his teacher Plethon for his global outlook, Laonikos was one of the first historians to write with a pluralist's sympathy for non-Greek ethnic groups, including Islamic ones. His was the first secular and neutral account of Islam written in Greek. Kaldellis deeply explores the ethnic dynamics that explicitly and implicitly undergird the Histories, which recount the rise of the Ottoman empire and the decline of the Byzantine empire, all in the context of expanding western power. Writing at once in antique and contemporary modes, Laonikos transformed \"barbarian\" oral traditions into a classicizing historiography that was both Greek and Ottoman in outlook.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eShowing that he was instrumental in shifting the self-definition of his people from Roman to the Western category of \"Greek,\" Kaldellis provides a stimulating account of the momentous transformations of the mid-fifteenth century.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49730992668945,"sku":"NGR9780884024019","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0884024016.jpg?v=1750819458"},{"product_id":"romanland-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780674986510","title":"Romanland","description":"Was there ever such a thing as Byzantium? Certainly no emperor ever called himself Byzantine. While the identities of eastern minorities were clear, that of the ruling majority remains obscured behind a name made up by later generations. Anthony Kaldellis says it is time for the Romanness of these so-called Byzantines to be taken seriously.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49732093575441,"sku":"NGR9780674986510","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51849980412177,"sku":"GOR011390929","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53196319785233,"sku":"NIN9780674986510","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0674986512.jpg?v=1751360382"},{"product_id":"streams-of-gold-rivers-of-blood-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780190053208","title":"Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood","description":"In the second half of the tenth century, Byzantium embarked on a series of spectacular conquests: first in the southeast against the Arabs, then in Bulgaria, and finally in the Georgian and Armenian lands. By the early eleventh century, the empire was the most powerful state in the Mediterranean. It was also expanding economically, demographically, and, in time, intellectually as well. Yet this imperial project came to a crashing collapse fifty years later, when political disunity, fiscal mismanagement, and defeat at the hands of the Seljuks in the east and the Normans in the west brought an end to Byzantine hegemony. By 1081, not only was its dominance of southern Italy, the Balkans, Caucasus, and northern Mesopotamia over but Byzantium's very existence was threatened.   How did this dramatic transformation happen? Based on a close examination of the relevant sources, this history-the first of its kind in over a century-offers a new reconstruction of the key events and crucial reigns as well as a different model for understanding imperial politics and wars, both civil and foreign. In addition to providing a badly needed narrative of this critical period of Byzantine history, Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood offers new interpretations of key topics relevant to the medieval era. The narrative unfolds in three parts: the first covers the years 955-1025, a period of imperial conquest and consolidation of authority under the great emperor Basil \"the Bulgar-Slayer.\" The second (1025-1059) examines the dispersal of centralized authority in Constantinople as well as the emergence of new foreign enemies (Pechenegs, Seljuks, and Normans). The last section chronicles the spectacular collapse of the empire during the second half of the eleventh century, concluding with a look at the First Crusade and its consequences for Byzantine relations with the powers of Western Europe. This briskly paced and thoroughly investigated narrative vividly brings to life one of the most exciting and transformative eras of medieval history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50696986296593,"sku":"NGR9780190053208","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50999585898769,"sku":"NIN9780190053208","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51328047972625,"sku":"CIN0190053208G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51415540269329,"sku":"CIN0190053208VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51463737737489,"sku":"GOR014290242","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52481138229521,"sku":"NLS9780190053208","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0190053208.jpg?v=1751441334"},{"product_id":"byzantine-readings-of-ancient-historians-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780367869199","title":"Byzantine Readings of Ancient Historians","description":"The survival of ancient Greek historiography is largely due to its preservation by Byzantine copyists and scholars. This process entailed selection, adaptation, and commentary, which shaped the corpus of Greek historiography in its transmission. By investigating those choices, Kaldellis enables a better understanding of the reception and survival of Greek historical writing.    Byzantine Readings of Ancient Historians includes translations of texts written by Byzantines on specific ancient historians. Each translated text is accompanied by an introduction and notes to highlight the specific context and purpose of its composition. In order to present a rounded picture of the reception of Greek historiography in Byzantium, a wide range of genres have been considered, such as poems and epigrams, essays, personalized scholia, and commentaries. Byzantine Readings of Ancient Historians is therefore an important resource for scholars and students of ancient history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51001720799505,"sku":"NIN9780367869199","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52532967375121,"sku":"NLS9780367869199","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0367869195.jpg?v=1750941762"},{"product_id":"hellenism-in-byzantium-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780521876889","title":"Hellenism in Byzantium","description":"This 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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51003279180049,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51003282096401,"sku":"NIN9780521876889","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52472434950417,"sku":"NLS9780521876889","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0521876885.jpg?v=1750911798"},{"product_id":"procopius-of-caesarea-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780812237870","title":"Procopius of Caesarea","description":"Justinian governed the Roman empire for more than thirty-eight years, and the events of his reign were recorded by Procopius of Caesarea, secretary of the general Belisarius. Yet, significantly, Procopius composed a history, a panegyric, as well as a satire of his own times. Anthony Kaldellis here offers a new interpretation of these writings of Procopius, situating him as a major source for the sixth century and one of the great historians of antiquity and Byzantium.  Breaking from the scholarly tradition that views classicism as an affected imitation that distorted history, Kaldellis argues that Procopius was a careful student of the classics who displayed remarkable literary skill in adapting his models to the purposes of his own narratives. Classicism was a matter of structure and meaning, not just vocabulary. Through allusions Procopius revealed truths that could not be spoken openly; through anecdotes he exposed the broad themes that governed the history of his age.  Elucidating the political thought of Procopius in light of classical historiography and political theory, Kaldellis argues that he owed little to Christianity, finding instead that he rejected the belief in providence and asserted the supremacy of chance. By deliberately alluding to Plato's discussions of tyranny, Procopius developed an artful strategy of intertextuality that enabled him to comment on contemporary individuals and events. Kaldellis also uncovers links between Procopius and the philosophical dissidents of the reign of Justinian. This dimension of his writing implies that his work is worthy of esteem not only for the accuracy of its reporting but also for its cultural polemic, political dissidence, and philosophical sophistication.  Procopius of Caesarea has wide implications for the way we should read ancient historians. Its conclusions also suggest that the world of Justinian was far from monolithically Christian. Major writers of that time believed that classical texts were still the best guides for understanding history, even in the rapidly changing world of late antiquity.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51007944720657,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51007948030225,"sku":"NIN9780812237870","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812237870.jpg?v=1752316631"},{"product_id":"field-armies-of-the-east-roman-empire-361630-book-anthony-kaldellis-9781009296939","title":"The Field Armies of the East Roman Empire, 361–630","description":"This book presents a new history of the leadership, organization, and disposition of the field armies of the east Roman empire between Julian (361–363) and Herakleios (610–641). To date, scholars studying this topic have privileged a poorly understood document, the Notitia dignitatum, and imposed it on the entire period from 395 to 630. This study, by contrast, gathers all of the available narrative, legal, papyrological, and epigraphic evidence to demonstrate empirically that the Notitia system emerged only in the 440s and that it was already mutating by the late fifth century before being fundamentally reformed during Justinian's wars of reconquest. This realization calls for a new, revised history of the eastern armies. Every facet of military policy must be reassessed, often with broad implications for the period. The volume provides a new military narrative for the period 361–630 and appendices revising the prosopography of high-ranking generals and arguing for a later Notitia.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51012287856913,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51012290806033,"sku":"NIN9781009296939","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51465224290577,"sku":"NGR9781009296939","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52664963662097,"sku":"NLS9781009296939","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1009296930.jpg?v=1751398040"},{"product_id":"christian-parthenon-book-anthony-kaldellis-9781009113953","title":"The Christian Parthenon","description":"Byzantine Athens was not a city without a history, as is commonly believed, but an important center about which much can now be said. Providing a wealth of new evidence, Professor Kaldellis argues that the Parthenon became a major site of Christian pilgrimage after its conversion into a church. Paradoxically, it was more important as a church than it had been as a temple: the Byzantine period was its true age of glory. He examines the idiosyncratic fusion of pagan and Christian culture that took place in Athens, where an attempt was made to replicate the classical past in Christian terms, affecting rhetoric, monuments, and miracles. He also re-evaluates the reception of ancient ruins in Byzantine Greece and presents for the first time a form of pilgrimage that was directed not toward icons, Holy Lands, or holy men but toward a monument embodying a permanent cultural tension and religious dialectic.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51012295655697,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51012298375441,"sku":"NIN9781009113953","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52614047924497,"sku":"NLS9781009113953","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/100911395X.jpg?v=1751397989"},{"product_id":"cambridge-intellectual-history-of-byzantium-book-anthony-kaldellis-9781107041813","title":"The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium","description":"This volume brings into being the field of Byzantine intellectual history. Shifting focus from the cultural, social, and economic study of Byzantium to the life and evolution of ideas in their context, it provides an authoritative history of intellectual endeavors from Late Antiquity to the fifteenth century. At its heart lie the transmission, transformation, and shifts of Hellenic, Christian, and Byzantine ideas and concepts as exemplified in diverse aspects of intellectual life, from philosophy, theology, and rhetoric to astrology, astronomy, and politics. Case studies introduce the major players in Byzantine intellectual life, and particular emphasis is placed on the reception of ancient thought and its significance for secular as well as religious modes of thinking and acting. New insights are offered regarding controversial, understudied, or promising topics of research, such as philosophy and medical thought in Byzantium, and intellectual exchanges with the Arab world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51019852644625,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51019854938385,"sku":"NIN9781107041813","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52618248388881,"sku":"NLS9781107041813","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1107041813.jpg?v=1751334634"},{"product_id":"streams-of-gold-rivers-of-blood-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780190253226","title":"Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood","description":"In the second half of the tenth century, Byzantium embarked on a series of spectacular conquests: first in the southeast against the Arabs, then in Bulgaria, and finally in the Georgian and Armenian lands. By the early eleventh century, the empire was the most powerful state in the Mediterranean. It was also expanding economically, demographically, and, in time, intellectually as well. Yet this imperial project came to a crashing collapse fifty years later, when political disunity, fiscal mismanagement, and defeat at the hands of the Seljuks in the east and the Normans in the west brought an end to Byzantine hegemony. By 1081, not only was its dominance of southern Italy, the Balkans, Caucasus, and northern Mesopotamia over but Byzantium's very existence was threatened.  How did this dramatic transformation happen? Based on a close examination of the relevant sources, this history -- the first of its kind in over a century -- offers a new reconstruction of the key events and crucial reigns as well as a different model for understanding imperial politics and wars, both civil and foreign. In addition to providing a badly needed narrative of this critical period of Byzantine history, Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood offers new interpretations of key topics relevant to the medieval era. The narrative unfolds in three parts: the first covers the years 955-1025, a period of imperial conquest and consolidation of authority under the great emperor Basil \"the Bulgar-Slayer.\" The second (1025-1059) examines the dispersal of centralized authority in Constantinople as well as the emergence of new foreign enemies (Pechenegs, Seljuks, and Normans). The last section chronicles the spectacular collapse of the empire during the second half of the eleventh century, concluding with a look at the First Crusade and its consequences for Byzantine relations with the powers of Western Europe. This briskly paced and thoroughly investigated narrative vividly brings to life one of the most exciting and transformative eras of medieval history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51130486391057,"sku":"NIN9780190253226","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51423220334865,"sku":"CIN0190253223G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52488700756241,"sku":"NLS9780190253226","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0190253223.jpg?v=1776938640"},{"product_id":"byzantium-unbound-book-anthony-kaldellis-9781641891998","title":"Byzantium Unbound","description":"For a civilization that preserved its existence and integrity against overwhelming odds and contributed in captivating ways to the diversity of human culture, Byzantium is strangely one of the most maligned and misunderstood civilizations of the past. The way in which history has been carved up into periods has worked to its disadvantage, and Byzantium has been artificially cut off from its Roman roots. This book proposes a long view of Byzantium, one that begins in the early Roman empire and extends all the way to the modern period. It is a provocative thought-experiment which posits Byzantium as the most stable and enduring form of Greco-Roman society, forming a sturdy bridge between antiquity and the early modern period, as well as between East and West, and which sees the ancient Greek, Roman, and Christian traditions as flowing together. It offers a Byzantium unbound by other cultures and fields of study that would artificially cut it down to size.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51379203866897,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51379203965201,"sku":"GOR014247207","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1641891998.jpg?v=1768563283"},{"product_id":"christian-parthenon-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780521882286","title":"The Christian Parthenon","description":"Byzantine Athens was not a city without a history, as is commonly believed, but an important center about which much can now be said. Providing a wealth of new evidence, Professor Kaldellis argues that the Parthenon became a major site of Christian pilgrimage after its conversion into a church. Paradoxically, it was more important as a church than it had been as a temple: the Byzantine period was its true age of glory. He examines the idiosyncratic fusion of pagan and Christian culture that took place in Athens, where an attempt was made to replicate the classical past in Christian terms, affecting rhetoric, monuments, and miracles. He also re-evaluates the reception of ancient ruins in Byzantine Greece and presents for the first time a form of pilgrimage that was directed not toward icons, Holy Lands, or holy men but toward a monument embodying a permanent cultural tension and religious dialectic.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52121391661329,"sku":"NLS9780521882286","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780521882286.jpg?v=1757430455"},{"product_id":"phantom-byzantium-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780226847139","title":"Phantom Byzantium","description":"How the West appropriated aspects of the eastern Roman empire while portraying it as inferior.     Unveiling the ideological foundations of Byzantine studies, Phantom Byzantium is a pioneering survey of western European perceptions of the eastern Roman empire (also known as Byzantium) spanning late antiquity to World War II. Through ten chronological chapters, Anthony Kaldellis makes the case that western Europe gradually formed its identity by adopting prestigious cultural elements from the eastern empire but simultaneously portraying the east as inferior. The West modeled its Roman imperial style on Constantinople while minimizing the latter as Greek rather than Roman; appropriated a host of Christian traditions from the east while casting the east as schismatic, heretical, or treacherous; and, during the Renaissance, used classical Hellenic philology from Greek scholars before marginalizing them as unworthy bearers of that tradition. This orientalizing impulse worked to buttress western exceptionalism and resulted in the fictitious construction of “Byzantium” as Europe’s evil doppelgänger, embodying the worst versions of traditions fundamental to European identity and casting the region as despotic, superstitious, and degenerate.   Explaining the creation, history, and functions of the ideological construct of Byzantium in the western imagination and European self-fashioning, this book has critical implications for contemporary views of European history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52449455014161,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52449455276305,"sku":"NGR9780226847139","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780226847139.jpg?v=1771495559"},{"product_id":"byzantine-readings-of-ancient-historians-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780415732321","title":"Byzantine Readings of Ancient Historians","description":"The survival of ancient Greek historiography is largely due to its preservation by Byzantine copyists and scholars. This process entailed selection, adaptation, and commentary, which shaped the corpus of Greek historiography in its transmission. By investigating those choices, Kaldellis enables a better understanding of the reception and survival of Greek historical writing.  Byzantine Readings of Ancient Historians includes translations of texts written by Byzantines on specific ancient historians. Each translated text is accompanied by an introduction and notes to highlight the specific context and purpose of its composition. In order to present a rounded picture of the reception of Greek historiography in Byzantium, a wide range of genres have been considered, such as poems and epigrams, essays, personalized scholia, and commentaries. Byzantine Readings of Ancient Historians is therefore an important resource for scholars and students of ancient history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52522167599377,"sku":"NLS9780415732321","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53108444397841,"sku":"NIN9780415732321","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780415732321.jpg?v=1760575425"},{"product_id":"1453-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780197827505","title":"1453","description":"A detailed account of the siege and fall of Constantinople in 1453, a watershed year that closed the book, once and for all, on the Roman Empire and confirmed for Europeans their worst fears about an expanding Ottoman Empire.  Anthony Kaldellis offers a new narrative of the siege and fall of Constantinople in 1453, a watershed year that closed the book, once and for all, on the Roman Empire and confirmed for Europeans their worst fears about an expanding Ottoman Empire.   By the fifteenth century, Constantinople had seen better days, but it was still a vibrant center of learning, worship, commerce, and information. 1453 sketches the tense but exciting shared world of Italians, Turks, and Romans that was thrown into crisis by Mehmed II's decision to conquer the city. Kaldellis showcases a detailed reconstruction following events on a day-by-day basis, pulling from gripping eye-witness testimonies in Latin, Italian, Greek, Russian, and Turkish. He weighs the strategies of both the attackers and defenders, and proves that, contrary to the fatalism that marks almost all narratives written with hindsight, in reality the defense was hardly a lost cause. The defenders knew exactly what they were doing. They were willing to risk their lives, but it was not their intention to become martyrs. Instead, it was the sultan who was scrambling to neutralize a seemingly impregnable defense. That he did so was a testament to his ingenuity and tenacity.  The final chapters of 1453 trace the fate of the vanquished and their captivity. It also weighs the impact of the city's fall on the conquerors, the conquered, and on world history. 1453 was not merely a symbol for the passing of the Middle Ages and the onset of early modernity: it changed the very nature of the Ottoman empire and redirected the transmission of cultural legacies, especially those of Greek classical scholarship. The fall of Constantinople is therefore a nexus of converging pathways between east and west, medieval and modern, ends and beginnings.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52718702985489,"sku":"NGR9780197827505","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53397487386897,"sku":"NIN9780197827505","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780197827505.jpg?v=1772036155"},{"product_id":"ethnography-after-antiquity-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780812245318","title":"Ethnography After Antiquity","description":"Although Greek and Roman authors wrote ethnographic texts describing foreign cultures, ethnography seems to disappear from Byzantine literature after the seventh century C.E.-a perplexing exception for a culture so strongly self-identified with the Roman empire. Yet the Byzantines, geographically located at the heart of the upheavals that led from the ancient to the modern world, had abundant and sophisticated knowledge of the cultures with which they struggled and bargained. Ethnography After Antiquity examines both the instances and omissions of Byzantine ethnography, exploring the political and religious motivations for writing (or not writing) about other peoples.  Through the ethnographies embedded in classical histories, military manuals, Constantine VII's De administrando imperio, and religious literature, Anthony Kaldellis shows Byzantine authors using accounts of foreign cultures as vehicles to critique their own state or to demonstrate Romano-Christian superiority over Islam. He comes to the startling conclusion that the Byzantines did not view cultural differences through a purely theological prism: their Roman identity, rather than their orthodoxy, was the vital distinction from cultures they considered heretic and barbarian. Filling in the previously unexplained gap between antiquity and the resurgence of ethnography in the late Byzantine period, Ethnography After Antiquity offers new perspective on how Byzantium positioned itself with and against the dramatically shifting world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52858334937361,"sku":"NIN9780812245318","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780812245318.jpg?v=1765117308"},{"product_id":"new-roman-empire-book-anthony-kaldellis-9780197855263","title":"The New Roman Empire","description":"A major new history of the eastern Roman Empire, from Constantine to 1453.In recent decades, the study of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium, has been revolutionized by new approaches and more sophisticated models for how its society and state operated. No longer looked upon as a pale facsimile of classical Rome, Byzantium is now considered a vigorous state of its own, inheritor of many of Rome's features, and a vital node in the first truly globalized world.The New Roman Empire is the first full, single-author history of the eastern Roman empire to appear in over a generation. Covering political and military history as well as all the major changes in religion, society, demography, and economy, Anthony Kaldellis's volume is divided into ten chronological sections which begin with the foundation of Constantinople in 324 AD and end with the fall of the empire to the Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century. The book incorporates new findings, explains recent interpretive models, and presents well-known historical characters and events in a new light.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53356763152657,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53356763447569,"sku":"NGR9780197855263","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780197855263.jpg?v=1774870897"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-anthony-kaldellis.oembed?page=2","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}