Sandwich
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La pens?e d'un homme est avant tout sa nostalgie
Posts: 208
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Post by Sandwich on Apr 7, 2004 0:18:09 GMT -5
I don't see how classical culture can be frozen into a single chunk.. It was a dynamic living thing, changing, devouring itself and making itself anew throughout its life. Alexander destroyed real Athenian democracy and Polis autonomy, and created the Hellenistic world. The Romans brought us new notions of law but their art was a corruption of Greek art, imperial rather than humanist. Byzantium preserved the Platonic tradition but allowed magic and numerology to creep into it rather than problematised mathematical enquiry.
Christianity was a religion for slaves; what the Romans hated was that Christians tried to preach it to their high-born children. Constantine recognized its power as a force that could bring order to an empire. Byzantium used it as one of its most powerful tools to pacify its borders. That kind of stability meant a decline in supplies of new slaves and eventually slavery was replaced by feudalism, incorporating the barbarian hordes not as Roman citizens but as feudal vassals and their serfs.
Centralised feudalism ossified Byzantium internally, and peripheral and unstructured feudalism in the form of the 4th Crusade, finally killed it, although it took the Turks to bury the body.
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Post by kynikos on Apr 7, 2004 15:43:28 GMT -5
Yup - nice synoptic analysis Sandwich...
Short, sweet and to the point.
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Ioulianos
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Anegnon,Egnon,Kategnon
Posts: 199
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Post by Ioulianos on Apr 8, 2004 20:04:38 GMT -5
I don't see how classical culture can be frozen into a single chunk.. It was a dynamic living thing, changing, devouring itself and making itself anew throughout its life. Alexander destroyed real Athenian democracy and Polis autonomy, and created the Hellenistic world. The Romans brought us new notions of law but their art was a corruption of Greek art, imperial rather than humanist. Byzantium preserved the Platonic tradition but allowed magic and numerology to creep into it rather than problematised mathematical enquiry. Christianity was a religion for slaves; what the Romans hated was that Christians tried to preach it to their high-born children. Constantine recognized its power as a force that could bring order to an empire. Byzantium used it as one of its most powerful tools to pacify its borders. That kind of stability meant a decline in supplies of new slaves and eventually slavery was replaced by feudalism, incorporating the barbarian hordes not as Roman citizens but as feudal vassals and their serfs. Centralised feudalism ossified Byzantium internally, and peripheral and unstructured feudalism in the form of the 4th Crusade, finally killed it, although it took the Turks to bury the body. So,Christianity helped the Eastenr Roman empire survive for another 1000 years.So what?What was its culturally production in this period?Byzantine democracy?What was the Byzantine art,beside this envolved with religious matters?As Platonic tradition,christians didnt preserve it,they just adjasted a part of it to their beleifs to create a christian theology.You can talk about cultural decline in 2 century only if you compare it to classical times,but then you should call "chaos" what followed the christian rise
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Sandwich
Full Member
La pens?e d'un homme est avant tout sa nostalgie
Posts: 208
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Post by Sandwich on Apr 10, 2004 7:06:45 GMT -5
Not all Byzantine cultural production was Christian. However, even if we confine ourselves to the post-Justinian period, Simplicius and Stephanus figure as crucial transmitters of the pre-Socratic, Aristotelian and Platonic traditions.
The origination of the Cyrillic alphabet and the general civilizing of the slavs surely count as significant cultural achievements, as do the historical and encyclopaedic writings of the 10th century. Throughout, the City itself stands as a model of what civilized life means.
It's not classical Athens or Augustan Rome, of course, but who said it was - or could have been?
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