Serving Byzantium's Emperors
Subtitle: The Courtly Life and Career of Michael Attaleiates
Publisher: Springer International Publishing AG; Palgrave Macmillan; Springer
Published: 2019
Language: eng
Number of pages: 309
ISBN-13: 9783030045241
Subjects: Historians, biography; Byzantine empire, history
Description: "This book is a microhistory of eleventh-century Byzantium, built around the biography of the state official Michael Attaleiates. Dimitris Krallis presents Byzantium as a cohesive, ever-evolving, dynamic, Roman political community, built on traditions of Roman governance and Hellenic culture. In the eleventh century, Byzantium faced a crisis as it navigated a shifting international environment of feudal polities, merchant republics, steppe migrations, and a rapidly transforming Islamic world. Attaleiates' life, from provincial birth to Constantinopolitan death, and career, as a member of an ancient empire's officialdom, raise questions of identity, family, education, governance, elite culture, Romanness, Hellenism, science and skepticism, as well as political ideology during this period"--