Byzantium: The Lost Empire
For more than 1,000 years, the Byzantine Empire was the eye of the entire world – the origin of great literature, fine art and modern government. Heir to Greece and Rome, the Byzantine Empire was also the first Christian empire.
After a year of filming on three continents, TLC unlocks this ancient civilization, spanning 11 centuries and three continents. Pass through the gates of Constantinople, explore the magnificent mosque of Hagia Sophia and see the looted treasures of the empire now located in St. Marks, Venice.
Byzantium, brings to life an empire that, while seemingly distant, is very closely linked to the evolution of Western Civilization. Traces the growth of the first Christian empire, one that lasted for over a thousand years and the maturity and decline of Byzantium through its conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
John Romer, the author and on-screen guide for the series, breathes life into the city and the powerful ideas that made the Byzantium a thriving cultural and commercial center while western Europe was slogging through the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages.
At its height, Byzantium housed the most precious Christian relics, including a piece of Christ's cross. Located on the border of Europe and Asia, it ruled an empire that extended across Asia Minor and the Balkans. Then, after the rise of Islam, the empire shrank until little was left outside the city walls.
Byzantium turned to Europe for help in fighting the infidels, only to have its own city sacked by the Crusaders whose help it sought. Venice, its erstwhile trading partner, carried off many of its artistic masterpieces. The Hagia Sophia, originally built as a Christian church, became Istanbul's most famous mosque.
And the scholars who had kept alive the study of Greek for more than a millennium fled to Europe where they helped lay the groundwork for the Renaissance. Byzantium, the video, takes us on a visually sumptuous journey to key locations throughout the empire, while putting a human face on the key actors in the history of this unique and vital empire. I never suspected I would find this story as compelling as it turned out to be.
Well worth a watch .. inspiring and eye opening
Tony Robinson is my boy, I will watch anything he's doing, but he's a TV presenter. Romer is an archaeologist with a talent for explaining abstract concepts like Egyptian society had no monetary system, noone common bought or sold anything in country. The rulers traded with other nations sure, but an average person worked their job day after day and got everything they needed from the state in the form of redistribution of offerings to god temples.
Specifically to all the people saying they watch 1st part, or a little bit before stopping because "he has an agenda, he talks soft, he's too excited, he's a bad presenter..."
He's not a TV presenter that does lots of historical stuff, he had a long long career as an archaeologist and is THE authority on a number of things, as he's the one that found, translated, confirmed specific things. He's the most unbiased person I've ever seen on a historical thing.
Once you're used to the way he presents stuff you will find it's just different, not lacking in any way. I think this is 5 parts? He builds on information so a phrase in part 4 has lots of context before that takes it from "quick tidbit" to "with the information leading up to this, it means so much more .
His excitedness and obsession with history/archaeology is because he is those things 100%.
This looks and may be a waste typing all this when I look up and see people arguing about the most asinine stuff. However, I stopped the first documentary I found from him for the same reasons mentioned above, then when looking for something on a specific subject, his was the only one so I said i'd watch the part I wnted to see, not the whole thing. By the time I had seen the section I was interested in, anything I thought was negative about him my mind was completely changed, and I had seen hour-2hour thing and was sad when it was over.
If anyone watches an entire series, 3, 5, 7 parts, from him I know you can at least then say you weren't missing things later that others would use to say you didn't get far enough to understand.
Lastly - His Ancient Lives doc-show focuses on 1 little town in egypt that as a whole prepared tombs in the valley of kings. He identified this place, excavated, and found enough contemporary written accounts from most anyone that lived there over hundreds of years. He put it all together in order and had found unbroken documentation of a place that's not the thing any high up scribes would care to mention ever so this kind of thing was groundbreaking.
Please give yourself another chance to check his work out. If you loathe Egyptian stuff I think his "Wonders of the World" doc show would be perfect. It's what I almost stopped for the same reasons as above, but continuing was the best thing I did. Remember, he's not and doesn't want to be a Tony Robinson, He explains facts, written/recorded, doesn't speculate to make something more interesting.
Long post but I have learned or got a true understanding of so so so many things from his work like this.
I absolutely loved this, John Romer is a god among men. Somehow he's down to earth and romantic at the same time. He really makes you feel the dreams of the people he's talking about.
It's like, when you take a tour of Washington D.C. and see all the great monuments and statues and the symbolism in the Capitol building, you really get the sense of the values of the country. Of course, reality is much more complicated and much less ideal, and it's easy to tear them down or go on about irony. Romer somehow brings both views without diminishing either.
I think a major fault of a lot of history teaching is that it either mythologizes or is too cynical, it's equally important to know the romantic aspirations of people as the pragmatic, daily decisions they made, to really understand them.
E-Juuust realized all the comments are from 3 or 4 years ago. Whatev.
What do you mean by Private?
It's a pity that when the west has the opportunity of taking back the west lost empire, the british empire who were the one for the job threw away the opportunity. Instead of forging their empire into one people, one nation one religion. They were simply interested in their own selfish gains and they prefer to use didvide and rule. That singular mistake they made in failing to merge the east and west together has resulted in todays troubles in modern world. The british empire failed to finally ones and for all put down the different btw middle east and west. The world as we know it today could have been a better place.
What? Rome never fell from power? How does this guy figure that the Roman Empire never fell from being the world major power? I must have missed something unless he means that Rome must have never tripped over a rock and actually fell over, lol.
lets by honest the turks need to give back the greeks what is rightfully theres!! they are destroying history itself, disregarding the ancient culture and historic buildings that's infront of them!! its as if they look at the once great empire that exists within istanbul as a pile of rocks that need to be cleaned away, this really annoys me. also the ottoman empire originally came as a barbarian horde they should go back to arabia and mongolia where they originally came from and stop destroying ancient church's and converting them into mosks its disgusting!!
What a genius account. It was the passion of the presenter that brought the history alive. History is about passion in the context of lives and the great and every day events this inspires. The number of negative comments on here displays only how complex society is ... and how tumultous history also is.
A very, very biased documentary, with terrible, terrible narration. With many a hypothesis are bluntly adopted as fact, this is more of an action film production than a scientific approach to history.
Why keep on calling it Byzantium?
Doing so dilutes the perceived influence that this Empire has on Europe.
IT IS the Roman Empire, all its inhabitants called it the Roman Empire, everyone in the world at that time called it the Roman Empire. Even the Muslims recognized it as the Roman Empire (one of the early Seljuk Sultanates to conquer the area called itself the Sultanate of Rome (Salj?qiy?n-e R?m)!
Doing otherwise makes it sound like its some 'other, exotic' Empire that just sprang out of nowhere and disappeared to nowhere.
Alexandria was burned 3 times. First by the Greeks (or Romans, sorry forgot which), then by the Christians, then by the Muslims. All cultures desired to save for themselves knowledge while denying it to others.
Isn't it great that with the web, vast quantities of great education and knowledge cannot be destroyed any longer?
Loved this. Today's religion will be the future's mythology. Both believed at one time by many; but proved wrong by the clever.
Great subject. Loony presenter. Part way through the sixth piece I could no longer abide the orgasmic superlatives and I watched a rerun of Frazier instead. I would still like to see more on this subject though.
Bloody annoying presenter. Sounds like he's getting off on talking about this lol slightly obsessed maybe?
a good documentary ,
religions change over time, words change, the meaning of texts are lost,
people don't change that much,always blaming one thing or the other, for this or that.
if your a muslim be a good muslim,or be a good christian ,or just a good human-being , religion of itself is responsible for ideas and laws , but after all, all writings are floored in some way or other because people are involved, and people are not perfect, religion can be the excuse for wrong actions just as anything else can be.
@aryseblade
dude im not attacking alexander i think he did deserve his title being great, and he mixed all cultures together even when conquering persia he brought the persians back in, gave them government spots , married greeks with persians i believe in an effort to bring a kind of harmony between everyone. also he or the persians never turned their backs on ther gods like constantine. so what were the gods that the 1000s of years greeks and romans believed be4 him suddenly not good enough ? also the romans was pretty much my way way or the highway..u.s style melting pot. sure there waa all kind of different peoples but you were either a loyal roman or a roman slave. slaves were also big in ancient greece , guess they picked that up from the egyptians who pretty much started with the hebrews. but i dont get where you come up with alexanders conquests being diplomatic? he wanted the glory nothing more , to be great , so crack some eggs to make the omellette. dont see much diplomacy, still he was great
@Grey its true that religion may be misguided at times, especially in the search for a common God, specifically the psychology of turning a group of individuals into a mob.
Yes, it may be true that Rome was established on the concept of conquest... Read your history or mythology and you will find that to be absolutely true, but done attack Alexander, who assimilated most of the cultures he found reign over. Generally speaking, the great majority of his conquests were diplomatic, not militaristic in nature.
That is the only defining point between our modern Hitler and Alexander. Alexander conquered by assimilation and Hitler conquered by assassination. In my opinion that makes Alexander more intelligent, he built his armies based upon common ground instead of killing his enemies based upon the fact that they weren't his preferred class.
Perhaps, you should read some more history and take an example from someone who was intelligent enough to join all men, not snipe them away or troll them into mental retardation.
@ Grey area
So we are debating about the way the Turkish state is actively ruining the remains of byzantine culture inside it's borders and suddenly you start calling me names like Christian and racist. I am neither, i am a agnostic and i despise any form of organized religion with any form of hierarchy. Sure Christians did a lot of wrong things in the name of their fait as well but i don't see what this has to do with the state of the remains of Byzantium. If you want to turn this into a debate about Iraq or the catholic church because you've got nothing sensible to say about the subject just say so or say nothing because this is just bad debating. My point was just the double face of Turkey and it's government considering the old buildings they have and the old Greek minority.
But if you insist of going down this road then there is one big difference in the religions and the violence coming from those religions which you would now if you'd read the Bible, Koran and Hadith. The Christian texts give yo moral stories kinda like Disney does wich are easy to interpret and Christ the inspiring figure for Christians never hurt anyone but was a die hard pacifist. Then Islam wich is a collection of commands wich don't give people any freedom to interpret because it's gods word and they're pretty straight foward. Then Mohamed who is an inpiring figure for any Muslim was a warlord who enslaved screwed children and decapitated many people himself. Also islam gives us clear blueprint of how a state should be organised and how law should be so exept of a relligion there is also al political system incorporated in it.
The church is an organisation that never followed christs ideas is just the biggest mafia family wich uses christ as a way of propaganda. But everything we despise about islam can be found in the commands that god gives muslims and is part of the relligion while with the church i think you can easily say that what the church does has nothing to do with christ and his life. That's all i got to say about relligion now, not that it isn't an interesting debate and i do want to hear your response but this isn't the place for a heated and long religious debate. In the future don't start with calling people racist or something but think first. I am just an hisorian who can't stand the way a f@#$%^ up government and country like Turkey destroyed the remains of one of the beacons of civilization.
Maybe you should read some more because you start getting the american invasion in iraq in this debate (like i just said that the invasion was great) but the only reason Turkey can say and do what it want's to do without getting sanctions from the west is because it allows countries like the us to use it for strategic means and the placement of rockets and every time another counry comments on for example the armenian genocide Turkey threatens to break of all relations and everybody shuts up.
do you ever see evangelical preachers in any other religion? preaching for money? noone in any other religion or atheist like myself would give money to those scumbags. like are the people there blind? dont they see ther getting swindled? then the holy preacher hops in his bentley, rips away, eats steak and lobster and laughs himself to sleep at how stupid his fellow christians are. BRAVO MAN BRAVO
@ Belisarius
well since your so keen on rape of art and culture then ud know it works both ways yah? the christians destroyed much art and culture and beutiful mosques with intricate art and detail. which still happens now , like when u.s 2nd invasion of iraq they bombed the golden dome mosque completely destroying it, which was said to be the most beautiful in iraq . if thats not rape you tell me what is. in byzantium countless mosques and even jewish temples wwer turned over into churches , more rape. its only when the christians precious sophia is turned over they weep. the very thing they did to all others churches. im neither christian or muslim , if anything id be buddhist because its so laid back. but without a doubt i can tell you christianity is the most evil of any religion, and you are clearly christian , i can tell from your bias\racist comments. islam ive assesed is the religion of the poor low class, freedom fighters and masses of the world, christianity has become the rich-fat cat religion
I had the great privilege to live in Istanbul a couple years ago. I knew it had a tremendous history, and this doc helped me learn more. I have seen St. Peter's in Rome, Notre Dame in Paris, and several huge cathedrals in Spain. All very stunning. But Hagia Sofia is the only man-made building that has brought tears to my eyes. Words don't do it justice. By the way, in one episode the narrator says that it's a mosque. No longer. The far-sighted Ataturk, father of modern Turkey, made it into a museum years ago.
Grey area, The beauty of St. Sophia was renown all over the world. I would have loved to have seen it. That it all. You are seeing bias/racism when none exist. Take some breaths and just relax.
@ lori
your grief at the hands of the muslims?? im sorry i didnt know that once a structure changes names it loses all its beauty?? would a rose by any other name smell different ?? so let me get this straight , if it was a church ud be in love right but if its a mosque ull become full of grief? that right? You should have been on george w. bushs staff because ud fit right in. a little bias/racist are we?
Belisarius, I, too, love this time period and have been reading about it. That is why I did not like this film. He glossed over too many details when there was plenty of time in the film to include them. I realize that the film media does not have the scope that a book has, but there was no excuse for the sloppy scholarship this film maker exhibited.
As for the rest of your post, I agree wholeheartedly. For instance I have been interested in the architecture of St. Sophia in Constantinople/Istanbul and have always felt a degree of grief at the changes that were done at the hands of Muslims to change it over to a mosque but that is the way of this world. I wish I could freely explore this place but know I could never do that.
Let's hope a better and more accurate and certainly less emotional exploration of this time period will be forthcoming.