"Israeli archaeologists have published a 360-degree analysis of a rural, affluent Christian town in the Galilee that was most likely destroyed by Persian invaders in 613 CE." Source: Times of Israel.
"Unearthed in 2007 in a salvage excavation before roadworks near Shlomi and Kibbutz Hanita, the remains of the Byzantine settlement at Pi Mazuva are located in modern Israel’s northwest corner on the border with Lebanon. The finds include Christian iconography, a large house and a colorful, high-quality, partially preserved mosaic floor."
Note: "According to the researchers, there were about 140 Christian settlements in the region during this era, including 63 churches or monasteries. Another 13 settlements had a mixed population. Many of these Christian sites in the Galilee were destroyed in the Persian invasion."
Next video shows the remains of a 5th-century Byzantine church discovered near Jerusalem (in 2015?).
"The Nika riots ... Nika revolt or Nika sedition took place against Emperor Justinian I in Constantinople over the course of a week in 532 CE. They were the most violent riots in the city's history, with nearly half of Constantinople being burned or destroyed and tens of thousands of people killed." Source: Wikipedia.
The Nika revolt was set off by the Greens and Blues, two factions who supported different chariot-racing teams, but the outbreak of rabid violence that almost overthrew Justinian was a lot more than a simple sports brawl like the soccer riots we have today.
The Greens and Blues were loose political, social and religious associations vaguely similar to today's political parties. And chariot-racing itself was more than just a sports spectacle. According to Wikipedia, "The chariot races were important in the Byzantine Empire, as in the Roman Empire, as a way to reinforce social class and political power, including the might of the Byzantine emperor, and were often put on for political or religious reasons."
Justinian's government wasn't exactly popular with the rabble. The riots were a protest over political corruption, high taxes, budget cuts, legalized brutality, the slow pace of reforms, and a variety of other reasons too complex to go into here. His legitimacy as a ruler had also been called into question by military setbacks such as the Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Callinicum in 531 AD (one year before the riots broke out).
Tension had been growing in Constantinople for a long time and the lowborn emperor and his wife, Theodora, weren't just unpopular with the masses. Some of the legal reforms the emperor managed to push through "made him unpopular with the aristocracy from the start, as they made it impossible to use obscure laws and jurisprudence to avoid unfavorable verdicts, further angering the aristocracy." (Wikipedia)
I'm skipping over a lot of history here -- a detailed description would require an entire book -- but the tensions finally boiled over into what can only be described as a massive insurrection against an emperor the historian Procopius described as a demon in human form.
The Secret History by Procopius is one of the most vicious and entertaining political hit pieces ever written.
The bad feeling against Justinian came to a head in the crowded Hippodrome of Constantinople when the rival Greens and Blues united against him:
"On 13 January 532, as the Emperor took his place in the Hippodrome and gave the signal for the games to begin, his appearance was greeted by an uproar. Suddenly, he realized that, for the first time, the Greens and Blues were united; and that their clamour was directed not at each other but at him. 'Nika! Nika!' they cried, using the normal word of encouragement -- 'Win! Win!' -- by which they cheered on the charioteers. In the past, however, each side had tried to shout down the other. Now, they were speaking with one voice; and that voice was not pleasant to hear." -- A Short History of Byzantium, John Julius Norwich, p. 63. (Highly recommended.)
Justinian managed to escape from the Hippodrome, but the city descended into chaos. According to Norwich, "the mob poured out of the great circus, hell-bent on destruction" and "for five days and nights the smoke lay thick over the city." The fires destroyed the Hagia Sophia, the most important church in Constantinople.
The violence made the riots we're seeing today look like child's play. To make a long story short, the situation got so bad that it almost brought Justinian's rule to an end. He was on the verge of giving up his throne and fleeing the city when Theodora convinced him to stay and fight, and once he made up his mind he didn't screw around:
"Fortunately, two of the Empire's best generals were present in the palace. The first, a Romanized Thracian named Belisarius, was still in his twenties. The second, Mundus, was an Illyrian who happened to have with him a sizeable force of Scandinavian mercenaries. Secretly the two slipped out of the palace, rallied their soldiers and, by separate routes, marched on the Hippodrome." (Norwich, p. 64).
The rioters had gathered in the Hippodrome to crown a new emperor, one of Justinian's relatives named Hypatius, and the two generals caught them by surprise:
"...they burst in simultaneously on the mob, taking it completely by surprise. No quarter was given; Greens and Blues were slaughtered indiscriminately. Meanwhile the commander of the imperial bodyguard ... had stationed his men at the principal exits with orders to cut down all who tried to escape. Within a few minutes, the angry shouts in the great amphitheatre had given place to the cries and groans of wounded and dying men; soon these too grew quiet. (Norwich, p. 64).
"A section of the famous Theodosian Walls (Tower 69) of Constantinople (modern Istanbul), located on Sulukule Street in the Topkapi neighbourhood, has collapsed 'due to an unknown reason', Turkish news sources have reported." Source: Archaeology News Network.
Comment: The reasons for the collapse are obvious: age, neglect and sloppy restoration work. The walls of Constantinople have been in sketchy condition for a long time. Next video, for instance, shows the Theodosian Wall as it appeared in 2011. Some sections are in relatively decent condition while others are little more than ruins.
Note:"The Theodosian Walls are the fortifications of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, which were first built during the reign of Theodosius II (408-450 CE). Sometimes known as the Theodosian Long Walls, they built upon and extended earlier fortifications so that the city became impregnable to enemy sieges for 800 years. The fortifications were the largest and strongest ever built in either the ancient or medieval worlds." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.
"Many sections [of the walls] were 'restored' during the 1980s, with financial support from UNESCO, but the restoration program has been criticized for destroying historical evidence, focusing on superficial restoration, the use of inappropriate materials and poor quality of work." (Archaeology News Network)
"The Byzantine Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire [see comment] in the Greek-speaking, eastern part of the Mediterranean. Christian in nature, it was perennially at war with the Muslims, Flourishing during the reign of the Macedonian emperors, its demise was the consequence of attacks by Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, and Ottoman Turks." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.
Comment: The Byzantine Empire is usually referred to as the "Roman empire in the East," but I've never thought there was anything particularly Roman about the Byzantines. Romans weren't Greek-speaking Christians; they were pagans who spoke Latin. If you ask me, the real Roman empire had already ceased to exist as a distinct social organism by the time Constantinople was founded by Constantine in 324 - 337. After Italy and the western provinces of the old empire were overrun by Germanic tribes in the fifth century AD the Byzantines retained Roman institutions, but they were essentially an Oriental kingdom, a hybrid of western and eastern traditions.
According to this view the Roman Empire collapsed as a culture long before it was conquered militarily. When Rome fell in the West, that was the end of it. Parts of its territory still remained, however, most of it in the East, but it's hard to see these surviving territories as Roman.
The picture is very complicated, naturally. There were similarities and differences between the Roman and Byzantine empires. It would be surprising if nothing had carried over from the old world. As a general rule, civilizations aren't suddenly obliterated, leaving no trace behind. Collapse doesn't work that way. Kingdoms and empires rise and fall and evolve into new political systems, usually after a period of chaos and warfare. Zombie civilizations are common in history -- nations that still exist long after their cultures have died or changed out of all recognition. Christian Rome and the Roman Byzantine Empire are both good examples, I think, of zombie empires.
The Byzantine empire was a "continuation" of the Roman Empire in the sense that it was once part of the Roman empire with all of its legal and political institutions, but it was Roman in name only. The main difference, I think, was religious. Paganism had been outlawed and driven underground, replaced by Christianity, an essentially Oriental religion.
Here's a modern analogy. Let's say that the United States becomes a Muslim caliphate, but keeps all of its current institutions in place. There's a White House, a Congress, a Supreme Court, and so on. People still vote, but all the candidates are Muslims. The county courthouse still looks the same, but Christianity is illegal and the courts enforce Shariah Law. Then the western half of the country is invaded and overrun by savage barbarians who settle down and take over the existing legislative machinery. The eastern half of the country still survives as an independent nation, but is it American? The answer is obvious.
"After ten centuries of wars, defeats, and victories, the Byzantine Empire came to an end when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in May 1453. The city’s fall sent shock waves throughout Christendom. It is widely quoted as the event that marked the end of the European Middle Ages." Source: Encyclopedia Britannica.
The Byzantine Empire had been in decline for a long time before Constantinople was finally captured by Mehmed II (The Conqueror).
"The fall of Constantinople was a huge blow for the Christian world but, although Pope Nicholas V called for a crusade to regain the city for Christendom, no concerted military response was made. Now styled 'the Conqueror,' Mehmed declared the city his new capital and claimed to be the rightful successor to the Roman Empire." (Encyclopedia Britannica)
As corrupt and crazy as its rulers were, the fall of the Byzantine Empire was a calamity for the western world and Constantinople, at one point the largest and wealthiest city in Christian Europe, has remained in the hands of the Muslims ever since.
"The modern Turkish name for the city, İstanbul, derives from the Greek phrase eis tin polin (εἰς τὴν πόλιν), meaning 'into the city' or 'to the city'. This name was used in Turkish alongside Kostantiniyye, the more formal adaptation of the original Constantinople, during the period of Ottoman rule, while western languages mostly continued to refer to the city as Constantinople until the early 20th century. In 1928, the Turkish alphabet was changed from Arabic script to Latin script. After that, as part of the 1920s Turkification movement, Turkey started to urge other countries to use Turkish names for Turkish cities, instead of other transliterations to Latin script that had been used in the Ottoman times. In time the city came to be known as Istanbul and its variations in most world languages." Source: Wikipedia.
The Greek Orthodox Church still refers to the city as Constantinople, a stubborn and commendable tribute to the past. If the Islamization of Europe continues at its present pace, we may soon reach a point where all European cities have been given new names.
One of the greatest legacies of the Byzantine empire, a symbol both of its religious mysticism and its secular wealth, the magnificent Hagia Sofia was turned into a mosque after the conquest and later transformed into a museum. The same thing is happening to churches in Europe today.
"New research from Adelphi University has revealed the first forensically-assessed archeological discovery of remains of a group of domineering mounted archer-lancers and their kin of the Eastern Roman Empire from the turbulent ProtoByzantine period, which spanned the fourth to seventh centuries [AD]." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"Ten skeletal remains -- four women and six men likely of high social standing -- were discovered in the Paliokastro site on Thasos island in Greece. Their bones illuminated their physical activities, traumas, and even a complex form of brain surgery."
The trauma cases analyzed by this new research "had been treated surgically or orthopedically by a very experienced physician/surgeon with great training in trauma care. We believe it to have been a military physician."
It's not surprising to find evidence of complex brain surgery in the Eastern Roman Empire. For instance, the Greco-Roman doctor, surgeon and philosopher Galen, a major forerunner of modern medicine, was influenced by more ancient eastern practices:
"Galen's understanding of anatomy and medicine was principally influenced by the then-current theory of humorism (also known as the theory of the four humors: black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm), as advanced by ancient Greek physicians such as Hippocrates." (Wikipedia)
Surgery was already relatively advanced in the Mediterranean world centuries before the period covered by this research. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, "Greek surgeons were active in Rome by the end of the 3rd cent. BC."
Note: "Neurosurgery, or the premeditated incision into the head for pain relief, has been around for thousands of years, but notable advancements in neurosurgery have only come within the last hundred years." (Wikipedia) "The Incas appear to have practiced a procedure known as trepanation since the late Stone age. During the Middle Ages in Al-Andalus from 936 to 1013 AD, Al-Zahrawi performed surgical treatments of head injuries, skull fractures, spinal injuries, hydrocephalus, subdural effusions and headache."
"Researchers have compared medieval and modern plague pathogens. In a comparison of more than 300 contemporary strains of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague, with ancient bacterial DNA isolated from victims of the Black Death (1347 -- 1351), a team led by researchers at University of Tuebingen obtained evidence suggestive of a bubonic plague outbreak in the late antique period (8th to 10th centuries AD). The study raises strong suspicions that the plague of Justinian, a massive pandemic that is thought to be in part responsible for the collapse of the East Roman Empire, may have been caused by the same bacterium implicated in the Black Death." Source: Science Daily (2012).
Comment: History is a lot more contingent than we like to believe. For instance, Justinian might have been able to complete his reconquest of the western Roman empire if the east hadn't been ravaged by the plague that "devastated and depopulated the Roman Empire [Byzantine Empire]," (Wikipedia). There were other factors involved -- the outbreak of the so-called Roman-Persian War and the incompetence and infighting of various generals in Italy -- but the plague put an end to Justinian's ambitions in the west and probably played a large role in the eventual collapse of the Byzantine Empire and its conquest by the Ottoman Turks.
Constantinople, once the eastern capital of the Roman Empire and later the capital of the Byzantine Empire, is now Istanbul, a primarily Muslim city. If Justinian had been able to reconquer the west, a reunited Roman Empire would have changed the course of European history in unpredictable ways. Ironically, the plague later intervened again when the Black Death devastated Europe, but this time its net effect was beneficial, leading to the collapse of the feudal system, weakening the grip of the church, and playing a large role in the birth of the Renaissance. It's unnerving, to say the least, that all these major historical events were influenced by a bacterium invisible to the naked eye which no one even knew existed at the time.
Some books are dangerous. For various reasons, they're dangerous to read or to possess and their authors sometimes take huge risks to write them. Books can be dangerous because of the knowledge they contain, e.g., the medieval grimoires of black magic, and some books, like the illegal English translations of the Bible before the English Reformation, are dangerous simply because they exist. Back in the medieval world, the people who wrote or read these books were often persecuted and sometimes executed in grisly ways.
Some books are dangerous because they expose the crimes and moral degeneracy of the powerful. The Secret History by Procopius is a good example of this kind of forbidden book. At the time it was written, it was probably the most dangerous book in the western world. If not, it was certainly dangerous to its author, who would have almost certainly been put to death after prolonged torture if his masters, the rulers of Byzantium found out what he was writing about them.
"Having dutifully written the official war history of Justinian's reign, Procopius turned around and revealed in The Secret History the other faces of the leading men and women of Byzantium in the sixth century. Justinian, the great law-giver, appears as a hateful tyrant, wedded to an ex-prostitute, Theodora; and Belisarius, the brilliant general whose secretary Procopius had been, is seen as the pliable dupe of his wife Antonina, a woman as corrupt and scheming as Theodora herself." -- Procopius, The Secret History, Penguin Classics.
Procopius goes relatively easy on the general Belisarius, who comes off as a hapless cuckold easily manipulated by the treacherous Antonina. Most of The Secret History is devoted to a detailed survey of the lurid crimes and personalities of the emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora, the absolute rulers of the Christian Byzantine empire. Both of these admittedly accomplished monsters are now considered saints by the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Procopius describes Justinian and Theodora as literal demons in human form, bloodthirsty psychopaths who committed bestial murders, betrayed their loyal friends and supporters, seized businesses and property in order to enrich themselves and corrupted the state for their own benefit as a matter of routine. The emperor was "dissembling, crafty, hypocritical, secretive by temperament, two faced..." Theodora was a deranged, power-mad slut, cruel and scheming, a former dancing girl and whore, intelligent but "malicious in the extreme."
Procopius writes: "In view of all this, I, like most of my contemporaries, never once felt that these two were human beings: they were a pair of blood-thirsty demons and what the poets call 'plaguers of mortal men'. For they plotted together to find the easiest and swiftest means of destroying all races of men and all their works, assumed human shape, became man-demons, and in this way convulsed the whole world." -- The Secret History, p.102.
In The Secret History, Justinian and Theodora are like the shape-shifting reptilians of modern conspiracy theories. According to Procopius, "some of those who were in the Emperor's company late at night, conversing with him (evidently in the palace) -- men of the highest possible character -- thought that they saw a strange demonic form in his place." -- Ibid, p.103. One of these witnesses claimed to see Justinian's head disappear while he paced around the room.
"A second man said that he stood by the Emperor's side as he sat, and saw his face suddenly transformed into a shapeless lump of flesh: neither eyebrows nor eyes were in their normal position, and it showed no other distinguishing features at all; gradually, however, he saw the face return to its usual shape." -- Ibid, p.103.
The Secret History is a classic example of what we would now call a political hit piece. After discussing the relationship between Belisarius and Antonina, Procopius goes on to describe in vivid detail "Justinian's Misgovernment," "The Crimes of Theodora," "The Destruction Wrought By The Demon Emperor," "The Ruin Of Various Classes Of The Community," and how "Everyone And Everything [was] Sacrificed To the Emperor's Greed," just to quote the chapter headings.
Note: I'm not sure if the chapter headings are used in the original manuscript. The book was apparently given the title "The Secret History" by later scholars.
Is The Secret History authentic? The book is so unlike Procopius's other works -- his history of Justinian's wars and his pandering description of the emperor's admittedly fantastic building projects -- that some scholars have wondered if The Secret History was actually written by Procopius at all. However, according to the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition, written by the translator, G.A. Williamson, the book is most likely authentic.
The question is why Procopius would have written such a vicious attack in the first place. It was an extremely dangerous thing to do, to say the least, and he couldn't have published it while the emperor and his wife were still alive and in power. Williamson argues that no one would have forged the book for the same reason. If they couldn't publish it, what would be the point? Furthermore, nothing in The Secret History contradicts the information in Procopius's other books and he most likely thought he could get it published after Justinian died. One way or another, Procopius must have taken extraordinary measures to safeguard the manuscript while he was working on it.
I can only imagine what Justinian and Theodora would have done to Procopius if they had discovered what he was writing about them. They would have executed him, naturally, but how? Considering their well-deserved reputation for cruelty, whatever method they used wouldn't have been gentle or quick. I like to imagine Procopius working on his manuscript by candlelight in a locked chamber in the middle of the night, constantly on the alert for approaching footsteps. He must have hidden the scrolls somewhere safe--under a loose floorboard, maybe, or behind a stone in the wall. If you're writing a book that could get you blinded, flayed and burned alive, you're not going to just leave it lying around on your desk.
Theodora died, maybe of cancer, in 548 AD, Justinian about 20 years later. The Secret History is thought to have been written around the same time that Procopius wrote books 1-7 of his history of the wars, according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised). "The Secret History covers roughly the same years as the first seven books of the History of Justinian's Wars and appears to have been written after they were published," according to Wikipedia. "Current consensus generally dates it to 550 or 558, or maybe even as late as 562." Justinian died in 565, so Procopius had to keep the Secret History secret for several years at least.
The Secret History "is a virulent, uncritical, and often scurrilous attack on the whole policy of Justinian and on the characters of the emperor and his consort, which can only have been circulated clandestinely so long as Justinian was alive. It provides a kind of subtext to the History of the Wars, and reveals Procopius as a diehard, if occasionally almost paranoiac, adherent of the aristocratic opposition..." (OCD)
Were Justinian and Theodora as bad as Procopius says they were? Probably. They were highly intelligent and competent in many ways, but never forget that these "saints" also massacred thousands of their own subjects at the Hippodrome during the Nika riots. Procopius may have been "uncritical" and "paranoid," but The Secret History is one of the most entertaining books I've ever read about the period. Highly recommended.
"The Black Sea is considered to be one of the world’s finest underwater laboratories due to the anoxic (un-oxygenated) layer which preserves artefacts better than any other marine environment." Source: Black Sea Marine Archaeology Project. The sea bottom is a museum full of ancient shipwrecks from all over Europe, Asia and the Near East, as well as submerged artefacts and shorelines dating back to prehistoric times:
"Perhaps the most promising areas in deepwater archaeology are the quest for submerged prehistoric settlements in the continental shelf and for ancient shipwrecks in the anoxic zone, which are expected to be exceptionally well preserved due to the absence of oxygen. This concentration of historical powers, combined with the preservative qualities of the deep anoxic waters of the Black Sea, has attracted increased interest from marine archaeologists who have begun to discover a large number of ancient ships and organic remains in a high state of preservation."
"Analysis of eight new plague genomes from the first plague pandemic reveals previously unknown levels of plague diversity, and provides the first genetic evidence of the Justinianic Plague in the British Isles." Source: Science Daily.
"...The Justinianic Plague began in 541 in the Eastern Roman Empire, ruled at the time by the Emperor Justinian I, and recurrent outbreaks ravaged Europe and the Mediterranean basin for approximately 200 years. Contemporaneous records describe the extent of the pandemic, estimated to have wiped out up to 25% of the population of the Roman world at the time. Recent genetic studies revealed that the bacterium Yersinia pestis was the cause of the disease, but how it had spread and how the strains that appeared over the course of the pandemic were related to each other was previously unknown."
Note: "Some scholars have suggested that the plague facilitated the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, as its aftermath coincided with the renewed Saxon offensives in the 550s. Maelgwn, king of Gwynedd in Wales, was said to have died of the 'Yellow Plague of Rhos' around 547 and, from 548 to 549, plague devastated Ireland as well. Saxon sources from this period are silent, as there are no 6th-century English documents." (Wikipedia)