[330 - 1453] Byzantine Greece

Our story of Greece now enters a new, sprawling chapter, one that lasts for over a thousand years, from 330 to 1453 AD. This is the age of the Eastern Roman Empire, an empire we now call Byzantine, though they would have called themselves simply *Rhomaioi*—Romans. For the people living in the lands of Athens, Sparta, and Corinth, it was a world remade. The sun was setting on the marble temples of Zeus and Athena, and a new light, that of Christ, was dawning from a new capital to the east. In 330 AD, the Emperor Constantine the Great made a decision that would change the world. He moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to a new city built on the site of old Byzantium, a city he named *Nova Roma*, New Rome. We know it as Constantinople. Suddenly, Greece was no longer a peripheral province of a distant Latin-speaking emperor; it was the strategic backyard of a new, Greek-speaking, Christian powerhouse. The old rhythms of life began to shift. The bustling *agora*, the ancient center of civic life, slowly lost its purpose. Its place was taken by the courtyard of the local church, where news was exchanged and community was forged under the watchful eyes of saints depicted in brilliant mosaics. The whispers of the old gods faded, replaced by the chanting of Orthodox liturgy. Great philosophical schools in Athens, which had run for nearly a millennium, were finally closed by Emperor Justinian I in 529 AD, a symbolic end to the pagan intellectual tradition. Yet, Justinian was also a builder. While his grandest project, the magnificent Hagia Sophia, rose in the capital, its architectural DNA—the revolutionary use of a massive dome on a square base—would be replicated in countless smaller, domed churches that began to dot the Greek landscape. Life for the average Greek peasant remained, as always, tied to the soil. The holy trinity of their diet was bread, wine, and olive oil. They lived in simple stone or mud-brick houses, their days governed by the seasons of planting and harvest. Their clothing was a practical tunic of wool or linen, though in the cities, the wealthy classes began to adopt the opulent, silk-adorned styles of the imperial court, a clear sign of the East’s growing influence. But this new world was not always peaceful. In the 6th century, the Justinianic Plague swept through the empire, a devastating pandemic that may have killed up to a third of the population. It left villages empty and fields fallow, a ghost that haunted the empire for generations. Then, from the 7th century onwards, new threats emerged. Slavic tribes pushed down from the north, settling deep into the Greek mainland. Arab pirates harried the coasts, their sleek *dromon* warships making every island and port vulnerable. For a time, it seemed the Greek world might be extinguished, sinking into a dark age. The empire’s response to this crisis was ingenious and defined life in Greece for centuries. It was called the *Thema* system. The land was divided into military provinces, or *themata*. Instead of a professional, paid army stationed far away, free peasants were granted plots of land in exchange for military service. A farmer in the Peloponnese was also a soldier, a *stratiotes*, ready to defend his home and family at a moment’s notice. This created a fiercely loyal, local defense force that kept the empire alive. It was a hard, militarized existence. Hilltops once crowned with ancient acropolises were now fortified with rough-hewn stone walls, creating safe havens called *kastra*. This struggle forged a new identity. By the 10th and 11th centuries, under the powerful Macedonian dynasty, the empire roared back to life. Emperors like Basil II, the "Bulgar-Slayer," expanded the borders and filled the treasury. This was a golden age. Art flourished. Inside dark, candle-lit churches, artists perfected the craft of mosaic. They were not aiming for realism, but for spiritual truth. Look upon a Byzantine mosaic of Christ *Pantokrator*—the ruler of all—staring down from a dome, and you feel the awesome power of the divine. His elongated face and large, knowing eyes are meant to transport you beyond the earthly realm. Each tiny piece of glass or stone, called a *tessera*, was set at a slight angle to catch and reflect the flickering light, making the images seem to shimmer and breathe. In Constantinople, the heart of this world, scholars preserved and copied the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Homer, ensuring the survival of classical knowledge. Imperial engineers perfected a terrifying weapon: Greek Fire. A closely guarded state secret, this liquid incendiary was shot from siphons mounted on ships. It could burn on water and struck absolute terror into the hearts of their enemies. But the good times would not last. The empire was weakened by internal decay and a catastrophic defeat by the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. And then came a blow from an unexpected direction. It was 1204. The knights of the Fourth Crusade, sworn to fight for Christendom in the Holy Land, diverted their mission. Lured by promises of Venetian gold and political ambition, they turned their siege engines not against the enemies of their faith, but against the greatest Christian city in the world: Constantinople. They sacked the city, ransacking its churches, melting down a thousand years of treasure, and shattering the empire. The Greek world was carved up by Western lords. French dukes ruled in Athens and Thebes, and Venetian merchants controlled the most important islands and ports. Suddenly, towering Crusader castles, like the mighty fortress of Mystras, were built by foreign knights, often right on top of ancient Greek or Byzantine ruins. It was a time of confusion and conflict, of Catholic lords ruling over an Orthodox Greek population. Though the Byzantines would recapture Constantinople in 1261, the empire was a shadow of its former self. Its final two centuries were a long, slow, heroic decline. The heartland of this dying empire was now Greece itself, particularly the Peloponnese, where the Despotate of the Morea, centered at Mystras, experienced a remarkable final burst of culture and art—a stunning sunset before the long night. The end came on May 29th, 1453. After a heroic 53-day siege, the massive cannons of the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed II, breached the legendary walls of Constantinople. The last Roman Emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, died fighting on the ramparts, and the city fell. For the people of Greece, the Roman eagle had finally been replaced by the Ottoman crescent. An era of over 1100 years was over. The world they had known, the Christian Roman Empire that had shaped their language, their faith, and their very soul, had ceased to exist. A new and uncertain chapter was about to begin.