Table of Contents

List of Figures vi

List of Maps vii

Preface viii

Acknowledgements xiii

Abbreviations xv

1 What was Byzantium? 1

2 The Changing Shape of Byzantium: From Late Antiquity to 1025 20

3 The Changing Shape of Byzantium: From 1025 to 1453 40

4 The Byzantine Mirage 63

5 Ruling the Byzantine State 78

6 An Orthodox Society? 96

7 How People Lived 116

8 Education and Culture 133

9 Byzantium and Europe 163

10 Byzantium and the Mediterranean 179

Conclusion 197

Chronology 199

References 207

Notes 229

Index 260

About the Author

Averil Cameron is Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine History at the University of Oxford and the Warden of Keble College, and was recently awarded a DBE. Her publications include Changing Cultures in Early Byzantium (1996) and Eusebius, Life of Constantine (ed. with Stuart G. Hall, 1999), and she is a co-editor of volumes XII, XIII and XIV of the Cambridge Ancient History.

Reviews

" The Byzantines is a welcome addition to the renewal of Byzantine Studies in contemporary academia." ( Canadian Journal of History , winter 2009) Winner of the 2006 John D. Criticos Prize "Seeks consistently to place Byzantium in Context and to make the reader question fundamental preconceptions about the Byzantine empire." ( Anglo-Hellenic Review )