Welcome to a new category of reviews
that I am currently writing, one that I’m sure will both fascinate and excite
everyone who has stumbled onto this blog by accident. These are my new
Byzantine Book Reviews. Over the next year or two, I intend to read as many
historical primary sources from the Later Roman empire (Byzantium) as I can
access, writing a little review for each one in order to increase my own
general knowledge on the subject as well as to get the word out on what is
actually available for people to read. Much of our knowledge for history in
general – not just for Byzantium – comes from the writings composed by
contemporary people, or those who lived closer to the time than we ourselves
do, and so close reading and analysis of such writings is essential for
understanding them.* Of course these writings aren’t the only source available
to us, and in order to gain any accurate picture of the past we must
necessarily use other evidence that might be at our disposal – be it
archaeological, artistic, architectural, and so on and so forth – but my interest
here is in these writings themselves. This blog deals with literature, and so I
shall be treating these sources largely as literature; or rather, as
distinct written entities that can be read for their own merits. Generally
speaking, these things are books, and they can be read as books. As such I will
read them as books, and hopefully you will join me in this voyage.
A
few clarifications must be made. As one would expect, these books which were
written by people living over a thousand years ago in the eastern Mediterranean
were not written in modern English. The original texts are predominantly in
archaic forms of Greek, and as I am still a long way off from being able to
read my way through an entire Byzantine chronicle in its original language, let
alone expect anyone else to follow me on such an undertaking, I shall be making
use of the large number of English translations that are currently available. As
I have outlined several times in previous reviews, a translation is just a
translation, and is therefore a subjective interpretation of the original text
by a translator or two. If you wish to understand the problems that can be
caused by translation, just look at a translation history of the Bible. Anyway,
with this caveat outlined, I shall be making use of English translations simply
because it is my own native language, and I will trust that the translators
themselves have done a good enough job. If you wish to find any of these texts
in their original language, then the entire corpus of Byzantine writings, the
19th century Bonn corpus (Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae)
can be found on-line – for some bright spark thought to digitise and upload
them on Google Books. You simply need the title, and you can download entire
volumes for free. I suggest checking out the Wikipedia page for a little more
background information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Scriptorum_Historiae_Byzantinae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Scriptorum_Historiae_Byzantinae
So. On to
business. In this little examination of Later-Roman history through the eyes of
the people themselves, I decided to start right at the beginning. Or rather,
about halfway through. Let me explain. The Later-Roman empire was a product of
two major world-views; the Hellenic, and the Judeo-Christian. In their
world-view, the Byzantines looked to both the Iliad and the Bible. They trace
their history back to the Exodus from the Egypt, and the Fall of Troy, and both
King David and Alexander the Great feature large in their historical outlook.
This odd mixture of the Judeo-Christian and the Pagan, which our first 'historian' George the
Synkellos combines in his Universal History, shows the seriousness with which
the Byzantines treated history. Unlike our own perceptions of history, the
Byzantine idea made no distinction between "mythical" and "factual" events. In
this curious Medieval mindset, the complete history of the world can be traced from the Creation,
down a line of some 6,000 years to the chronicler’s own day, using the evidence
provided by the Bible, by ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian king-lists, by old
Greek and Roman sources, and by the work of previous Chroniclers.
The end
result is a bewildering list of dates, generally ordered according to the Alexandrian World Era,
which reckoned the Creation of the World to have taken place on the 25th
of March 5493 BCE. With 5493 BCE being Year 1 of the Alexandrian
system, George the Synkellos lists the names and dates of the elderly Biblical
patriarchs (who generally lived for many centuries at a time), calculating that
the Flood in which Noah and his Ark were involved took place in Anno Mundi (Year of the World) 2242, that
the Exodus took place in 3816, that Troy fell in 4329, that Rome was founded in 4752,
that Alexander the Great became king of Macedon in 5156, and that Jesus was
incarnated in exactly 5500. In the modern world we are so used to historical
events being dated according to the Anno Domini system (or Common/Current Era)
that we rarely consider how recently and arbitrarily these dates have been
chosen, and to see history written about in a completely different way in these
medieval chronicles can be rather confusing if one has never encountered it before. For instance, this year would be
around the year 7523 (or hereabouts) if we used the Byzantine World Era system,
but we’re so used to it being 2015 CE that a different system can be somewhat
confusing.
George the
Synkellos himself died in 810 CE. He was a monk, the synkellos** of the
Patriarch of Constantinople Tarasios, and had lived through a time of severe
religious upheaval (see: Iconoclasm) before he decided to compose a Universal
History up to his own day. He was not the first person to attempt this, for the
6th century John Malalas and the 7th century Paschale
Chronicle precede this, but even they drew on earlier precedents, on names such
as Eusebius of Caesarea (4th century) and Flavius Josephus (1st
century). Why I started with the Synkellos and not with Malalas I can’t fully
explain, other than to say that the Synkellos is perhaps the only major
Byzantine historian who doesn’t deal with Byzantine history. He died before he
could bring his project to completion. He starts at the beginning of time and
covers the next five-and-a-half-thousand years in a certain level of detail,
but only managed to reach the beginning of the reign of the Roman emperor
Diocletian (284 CE; still half a millennium short of his goal). Fortunately his
attempt to chronicle all of the world’s history – as a resident of the Byzantine
empire would understand it – did not die with him, and the loose thread left at
the end of his chronicle would be picked up in a separate chronicle by his
friend and admirer, Theophanes the Confessor. Between them, George the
Synkellos and Theophanes the Confessor compiled one of the greatest and most
valuable works of history of the Byzantine-Roman empire, and while Theophanes’
half of the work is undoubtedly the more useful to the historian, I would argue
that it cannot properly be understood without first getting to grips with that
of the Synkellos. It’s like tackling the sequel to a story before you immerse
yourself in the first instalment. It might be possible, but it’s kind of
missing the point.
The
structure and writing style of George the Synkellos’ work is not the easiest to
cope with, even if it has been translated into a language you know. Far from
being a simple catalogue of historical data, this chronicle was written for the express
purpose of dating the order of world events and arguing why such dates ought to
be followed. George the Synkellos has no qualms about arguing with his sources,
and in between his lists of events and kings he devotes huge amounts of
parchment to setting out his disagreements. All of this is in aid of establishing
that the incarnation of Jesus Christ took place in the womb, in the year AM
5500. At this time I myself barely understand these arguments, and if you have an interest
in history rather than Biblical theology then this might wear you down as much as
it did me.
After
soldiering through these dull and rather aggressive tirades from the author,
you will eventually come to brief lists of names of kings. Sons and grandsons
of Noah, Egyptian and Mesopotamian kings, mythical Greek and Roman rulers, and
Biblical judges, kings and high priests all find themselves arranged in handy
lists with the length of their reigns (in years) and, on occasion, brief
comments on their reigns. Much of this material is lifted from earlier writers, people who established their own chronologies, and this demonstrates how much a chronicler is dependent on pilfering earlier writers for their historical material. All of the entries for the king lists of Egypt are ransacked from the work of Manetho, a 3rd century BCE Egyptian priest is notable for having attempted to produce the only narrative history of this Ancient civilisation, but his work provides no real information beyond: “The first [king], Menes of This, reigned for 62 years. He was seized by
a hippopotamus and perished.” And the lists for the subsequent thirty dynasties of Ancient Egypt proceed in this vein for the remainder of the time in which they are useful for the Synkellos. It can be repetitive and even a little hypnotic
at times, and if you have no knowledge or desire to know the names and dates of
these fragmentary and largely meaningless mythical and semi-legendary figures,
then it might be even more of an annoyance than the Synkellos’ argumentative
paragraphs. Not having much knowledge of Egyptian or Mesopotamian history, I
cannot comment on the accuracy of the king-lists presented here for those
nations, but there is little more to them than to comment that they exist in
this Byzantine chronology. Manetho's work no longer survives except in these brief snippets, and as such they prove little more than that this ancient text once existed. They say depressingly little about the history of
their respective civilisations, as the Synkellos focuses almost exclusively on
the Biblical and Judaic narratives.
Only in
the later pages do things become a tad more interesting and informative. When
we arrive into the realm of actual history, the names, places and stories
become more familiar to the historian, the narrative less keen to get
bogged-down with theological bickering. The events of Alexander the Great’s
successors jostling take place alongside the rise of Rome, and the Maccabean
Revolt is recounted in all its juicy details. Of course, one could simply go
back to better and more complete sources to find the same information that the
Synkellos is using, but this whistle-stop tour of ‘History-According-to-the-Byzantines’
does have the advantage of putting all these events in some kind of order,
applying dates to them, and placing them in the context of other world events.
The story of the arrival of Jesus Christ takes on a more interesting light from that
presented in the Bible, when we see the prior history of Israel and Jerusalem,
the rise of the Herods, and the Roman dismemberment of the Hellenistic
Kingdoms, and the historical aftermath of the rise of Christianity within the
Roman empire. This last section of the chronicle is largely comprised of short paragraphs,
covering anything from a single year to the entire reign of a specific Roman
emperor – with fewer of the Synkellos’ own diatribes to bog down the reader.
The shorter, more statement-driven nature of this last part of the Chronicle is
much easier to cope with; much easier to dip in and out of, and fortunately
sets up the formula that Theophanes the Confessor will carry on for the
entirety of his own chronicle.
To
conclude this first Byzantine book review, the Chronography of George the Synkellos is a weighty historical text
that must be approached with caution. It contains nothing really about
Byzantium, but if we remember that the Byzantines quite rightly considered
themselves to the Christian successors of the Roman empire, then what this
chronicle gives us is the story of the genesis of this strange nation. In this
regard it can still be considered as an intriguing Byzantine text, and as the
prequel to Theophanes the Confessor’s more relevant and easier-to-digest work
it serves as the other half to a monumental work of Byzantine history.
Read it
...or don’t read it.
Read it
...or don’t read it.
* There is quite a lot of debate over the usefulness of narrative sources such as these. With the advent of post-modern theory, some arguments have been made that written sources tend to obscure our picture of the past, presenting only the author's opinions and other biases which he held in one particular moment in time rather than providing us with any accurate information about the past. As this is still not an academic blog, I will not be engaging with such arguments on anything more than a tangental level. My defence is that I hope to be building up a picture of Byzantine history as the Byzantines themselves may have viewed it, as shown by the number and variety of these curious historical sources which still exist for us.
**Synkellos: syncellus, or cell-mate of
the Patriarch. Seems to me the Patriarch’s live-in subordinate.
Bibliozantium 1
The
Chronography of George Synkellos: A Byzantine Chronicle of Universal History
from the Creation. trans. W. Adler and P. Tuffin. Oxford. (2002).
Georgius
Syncellus et Nicephorus CP. Volume 1.
L. Dindorf (ed.) Bonn (1829).
