People speaking the language we call Greek have lived continually in the Aegean region since at least 1600 BC, and possibly earlier. Greek is, moreover, one of the most conservative and enduring languages in history. Among those still spoken it has probably changed the least in the past three and a half thousand years, by any indicator. This is an astonishing feat of continuity and provides an obvious and fair point of national pride. But historians should be cautious of arguments for national continuity whose main foundation is language. Granted, there have been Greek-speakers in the mainland since the age of the Mycenaean palaces, but they have not always regarded themselves as Greeks – as Hellenes. On the basis of Hittite evidence and Homer, it now seems certain that the Mycenaeans called themselves Achaians, a term arising from historical circumstances and encoding values that we cannot now recover. The ethnonym Hellenes did not emerge until much later, roughly at the time of Homer in the eighth century BC, as even ancient historians such as Thucydides realized. Greek identity is a historical and social construct: it arose at a particular moment in history in accordance with a particular set of social and ideological coordinates; it then changed and evolved, as all human things do; and then went into abeyance for about a thousand years, the period that will be covered in this study.

ANATHEMA UPON PHILOSOPHY

A lone philosopher in an age of opportunity, Psellos opened up many fronts in his struggle to establish Hellenism at the heart of Byzantine intellectual life. His revolutionary project aimed to set metaphysics, science, ethics, and literature on a new basis whose foundations had been laid by the ancient Greeks. Though he had allies, students, and friends, as well as enemies, his contemporary impact cannot be gauged. It seems to have been limited, to judge from the silence that surrounds him. Modern references to “the eleventh-century revival of letters” should be treated with caution: without Psellos, the eleventh century would be one of the bleakest in Byzantine secular literature. The previous chapter took the form of an exposition of his ideas because he was the sole prophet of Hellenism in his age.

The revolutionary philosophy of one century is often the common sense of the next. This chapter is about Psellos' twelfth-century heirs, whose Hellenisms were blocked in some respects and facilitated in others. Through well-publicized prosecutions, the Komnenian regime discouraged the pursuit of a key aspect of Psellos' project, metaphysics, even while in other ways it was encouraging the development of the Hellenic sites of the culture. Komnenian society happened to evolve in a way that made the cultivation of Hellenism into a powerful trend. Psellos' heirs, a few dozen men and one woman, participated in this enterprise without necessarily sharing his philosophy or even knowing its revolutionary objectives.

To the degree that Byzantium was simultaneously Roman, Christian, and Greek, it owed its existence to three traditions that originated at roughly the same time, namely in the sixth through the fourth centuries BC. That was when the Roman res publica, Jewish Scriptural monotheism, and Greek paideia all came into being. The history of their interactions in antiquity was a continuing development that pointed toward and ultimately culminated in Byzantium. Conversely, Byzantine historical awareness extended solidly back to that time of origins and beyond, to the heroic wars, migrations, and epiphanies of the second millennium BC. The Byzantines' imagined ancestors included Aeneas and the clans of the Republic, the Israelites of the Old Testament covenant, and Greek thinkers. Yet “descent” was conceived differently in each case and varied by circumstance and rhetorical effect: it could be biological, symbolic, political, or cultural.

A Byzantine could simultaneously be a Roman, a Christian, and a Greek, because those three identities defined different parts of his life. But to the degree that it was not understood as paganism, Hellenism was the least important of the three and the most rarefied. It also generated the fewest institutions. The land of Greece was always there, of course, but inspired neither enthusiasm nor loyalty. The Greek language was more important in terms of defining Byzantine identity and became an object of scrutiny especially in political and ecclesiastical debates with the Latin West. But no institutions were needed for its preservation and continuity.

Between Synesios and Psellos, so for a period of six centuries, Hellenic identity went into abeyance. It had only a hypothetical existence, being a relic of the past that could be glimpsed in ancient texts; or the antithesis of Christianity, something that could both negate and complement but whose power was never actualized; or fragmented markers that signified little, for example the mere fact of language or geography. Not all of its elements even survived the end of antiquity. Having described the storms of late antiquity, it is useful to take stock of Hellenism and see what was jettisoned, what retained, and what washed up on the shores of Byzantium, to be salvaged in later times. The religions of the ancient Greeks, for example, were more or less ended by the end of antiquity. Some of their elements were absorbed into Christianity, but not in a way that threatened or could spark a revival. It was not until the very end of Byzantium, with Georgios Gemistos Plethon, that a revival was even imagined, and it too led nowhere. The end of paganism entailed the obsolescence of certain ancient centers of Greek identity, chiefly Delphi and Olympia. During the early Roman empire, when Hellenism spread throughout the East, those places had served to draw attention to the Greek homeland. Now a de-Hellenized Greece found itself with hardly any Christian credentials and no imperial capital.

Where to start with Psellos? The word “unique” is often used lightly by historians but in this case it is no idle epithet. Psellos' radical philosophical proposals, his manifold and innovative writings on all subjects, his prestigious and historically impactive career at the court, his importance as a source for the eleventh century, and his decisive influence on Byzantine intellectual life, make him the most amazing figure in Byzantine history. He cannot be “explained,” at least not yet. Psellos appeared almost out of nowhere and very self-consciously revolutionized intellectual life without regard for our categories and narratives. He is especially important for the revival of Byzantine Hellenism, which sprung from him like Athena from the head of Zeus, disrupting any notion of a gradual development. In fact, it took his intellectual and literary heirs long to absorb his thought, and few would go as far as he did in replacing the Christian component of Byzantine culture with Greek philosophical alternatives.

Psellos cannot easily be “summarized,” even if only under one aspect, as will be attempted here. To begin with, we lack the basic groundwork. There is still no biography or secure chronology for his manifold writings. Though most of them have been published, few have received careful individual study. This makes matters difficult because depending on the audience, circumstance, and philosophical or political goals of each work, Psellos has something different to say, often modulating or entirely contradicting what he says elsewhere.

The encounter between ancient Hellenism and Christianity in all of their forms has been one of the main coordinates of the evolution of “western” culture, and Byzantium was perhaps the most quintessentially western culture in this regard. The complexity and philosophical scope of this theme preemptively defeat any attempt to offer a comprehensive or theoretically innovative analysis. Beyond the difficulty of defining the two protagonists, the theme involves a vast amount of material, requires expertise in many disciplines, and raises philosophical issues that transcend historical inquiry. Many studies, for instance, have discussed the social backgrounds of the new faith, which necessarily drew its adherents from among those of the old; the common ground, exchange, and dialogue between pagans and Christians in late antiquity; the contributions of philosophy to the development of the doctrines of the Church; and the inevitable, albeit qualified, appropriation by Christians of the ideal of cultural Hellenism associated with the Second Sophistic.

Fewer studies have explored the urgent ethical tension underlying that cultural appropriation, a tension that has been articulated in uncompromising terms by modern philosophers such as Hegel and Nietzsche: how did a religion of humility and spiritual transcendence come to terms with an aristocratic and agonistic culture that never fully renounced bodily beauty and delight? This challenge is compounded by the heterophony of our sources. There never was a single Hellenism or Christianity, even among their chief exponents.

This book attempts to mediate among different fields, different methodologies within those fields, and my own personal interests and backgrounds. It combines intellectual, cultural, and literary history to answer the following questions: what did it mean to be Greek in Byzantium, how and why did those meanings change over time and across different sites of the culture, and how were those changes related to the reception of the classical tradition? Obviously, its primary audience will be those who are interested in late antiquity and Byzantium, but it also attempts to build bridges to (and between) Classics and Modern Greek Studies. Classicists are increasingly looking beyond the narrow definitions of their field that prevailed in the past and into the extension and reception of Greek culture in later societies (from the Second Sophistic to late antiquity, the Renaissance, and modern Greece). This book offers them a guide to how some familiar ancient themes continued to evolve in Byzantium. Students of modern Greece, on the other hand, have long been intrigued by the way in which Greek modernity has defined itself in terms of classical antiquity, sounding alternating notes of tension and harmony, but ideologies and institutions have not favored giving the same attention to Byzantium, and nonexperts are understandably intimidated by the alien, overdocumented, and understudied millennium that stands between the two canonical poles.

It is well known that the people we call Byzantines today called themselves Romans (Romaioi). In the middle period of Byzantium's history, with which the second and more narrative part of this study will be chiefly concerned, this “national” label appears or is pervasive in virtually all texts and documents (excluding the strictly theological) regardless of the geographical and social origins of their authors, which, in Byzantium, were diverse. (“Byzantines” were for them only the residents of Constantinople, archaically styled after the City's classical name.) These Romans called their state Romania (Ῥωμανία) or Romaïs, its capital New Rome (among other names, titles, and epithets), and its rulers the basileis of the Romans, whom we call “emperors.” This Roman identity survived the fall of the empire and Ottoman rule, though it was greatly changed by those events. While in Byzantium the Romans were a highly unified nation, under the Porte they were redefined so as to encompass a multi-ethnic and linguistically diverse religious community. Later, with the foundation of the modern Greek state, romiosyne came to represent the orthodox and demotic aspects of the new Hellenic national persona, complementing the classical and idealistic aspect that was projected abroad. Continuity and change are alike illustrated in a story remembered by Peter Charanis, born on the island of Lemnos in 1908 and later a professor of Byzantine history at Rutgers University.

MICHAEL CHONIATES AND THE “BLESSED” GREEKS

Rome, Greece, Scripture, and the history of the Church provided the Byzantines with a diverse source of ideals and potential identities awaiting (re)activation at the right moment, to be excerpted, recombined, and infused with new meaning. In times of crisis, Byzantine writers could turn to aspects of that past for comfort, answers, or models for the future. Some looked to the Bible or the Fathers, others to Greece or Rome. The history of these choices reflects both personal decisions and broad cultural changes that are otherwise difficult to identify in Byzantium, given the relative stability of its representational modes. In the eleventh century, for example, the historian Michael Attaleiates, who had spent his life in law and administration, turned to the pagan Romans of the Republic for explanations and solutions to the empire's decline. Attaleiates had to admit that the pagans had triumphed in their wars despite the fact that they knew nothing of God's word and did not practice Christian virtues. Attaleiates lost his faith in the link between empire and Orthodoxy, and marveled at the magnificence of the ancient Romans. Why could his own countrymen not emulate their virtue?

Attaleiates' Romanocentric response to imperial decline in the eleventh century forms a nice contrast to the Hellenocentric responses to the crisis that terminated the age of the Komnenoi. Soon after the death of Manuel, Byzantium entered another spiral of decline and dissolution.

Defining Europe and “the West” more generally has become a difficult and contentious project, as political as it is theoretical and as pressing as it is unlikely to result in a broad consensus. Now that boundaries are being tested and former certainties are becoming obsolete in both theory and practice, to define anything at this level of abstraction, with so much at stake for so many, is to enter a debate where theory is immediately translated into politics (or vice versa). For example, one recent trend of thought looks to the Roman tradition as the basis of European identity, but given how it understands “Rome” this position inevitably reflects a Latin bias. Are the Slavic, Germanic, and Greek traditions and contributions – to name only a few – so marginal? In a more sophisticated version, the Roman basis is perceived as fundamentally engaged with the Greek and Hebrew pasts and so both defined by them and in a self-conscious, secondary relation to them. Yet this ignores the degree to which ancient Hellenism and Judaism were themselves also defined through constructed oppositions, and it also tends to conflate “Roman” with “Latin” and even “Catholic,” choices that, as we will see, are anything but ideologically neutral. Others insist that Christendom is the true crucible of the modern West. But this too imposes discomforting exclusions, and challenges the secular enterprise of modernity.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter focuses on disciplina's control of the income of soldiers, including stipendia (wages or salaries), praemia (pensions and other benefits), extrainstitutional income, and donativa. Donativa were occasional gifts in cash, usually given by emperors on the occasion of a triumph, imperial accession, or other dynastic or political event. Disciplinary ideology and practice sought control over soldiers' acquisition of wealth from these sources. The imperial aristocracy regarded soldiers' access to wealth as at best unmerited, at worst illegitimate.

In more specific terms, the discipline of soldiers' income sought to routinize the remuneration of soldiers, stabilizing the imperial power by discouraging ambitious individuals' patronage of the army. The warlords of the late Republic were to some degree patrons of their soldiers, who were dependent on their leaders for pay, distribution of booty, and irregular pensions. Remuneration in this period had a charismatic and irregular quality, dependent on the general's success and ruthlessness. With the establishment of the Principate, the emperors needed to routinize and make legitimate the pay and benefits of soldiers, who could no longer be compensated by dispossessing other social groups in Italy.

The discipline of soldiers' remuneration was partly achieved through formally rational, bureaucratic means. Thus, Augustus regularized terms of service and established a special military treasury funded by new taxation in order to pay soldiers' pensions. Surviving documents and literary testimonia suggest that military stipendia were subject to formally rational accounting.

In 134 bc, Scipio Aemilianus, one of the two consuls of that year, imposed severe military discipline and training on the Roman army at Numantia in Spain. The army had been demoralized by repeated defeats and the surrender of a previous commander, C. Hostilius Mancinus, to the Numantines.

Scipio trained his soldiers this way, with digging and on the march, until “he judged that the army was alert, obedient to himself, and patient in labor.”

INTRODUCTION

Besides labor, an important feature of disciplina militaris was dietary austerity: controlling consumption, or at least governing representations of eating and drinking, in military service. Representations of food, drink, and dining reflected Greek and Roman concepts of social hierarchy, social control, and community. The subject of dining in militia is distorted by literary exclusions. Despite the warriors' feasts in Homer's Iliad, in classical culture warfare and feasting were incompatible categories and literary genres. In literature, those preparing and eating food were often of low social or moral status, rather than the normative elite male. Roman “high” genres such as history, philosophy, and oratory inherited a classical Greek tradition that relegated descriptions of food and feasting to comedy, epigram, and biography; the Romans added satire and fiction. The Greek critic Longinus regarded concrete terms for food as unsuited to lofty military narrative or panegyric; many Roman authors agreed. The ancient Spartans' reputation for military austerity was contrasted with Persian luxury. The Platonic tripartite division of the self canonized control over the appetites: reason in the mind and courage in the heart dominated the physical appetites in the stomach. These corresponded to the rulers of a city, their soldiers, and the masses. For elites and soldiers to indulge their appetites and stomachs was inappropriate, or even antisocial. The classical Greek ideal of military austerity may have emerged from hoplite warfare, emphasizing rigorous equality and unity of effort, reflecting the democratic principle of isonomia.