Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire

by Marcus Rautman

Discover how ordinary people lived during the Middle Ages in the eastern Mediterranean in this unparalleled exploration of life in the Byzantine Empire. Learn how the subjects of the Byzantine Empire kept track of time with sundials and water clocks. Witness a typical wedding and all of the traditions followed by the bride, groom, and guests. Find out how the Byzantines kept up their appearance, covering everything from skincare to dental care. Learn the rules of games that children played, and explore everything in the city of Constantinople, from tourist attractions to city administration and defense strategies. Learn about sports entertainment at the Hippodrome as well as theaters and other festivals. Compare city life to that of the country, military, and monastery. Understand Byzantine humor, education system, and musical instruments. Ideal for high school students and undergraduates. Even general readers can explore the world of the Byzantine Empire in this comprehensive study that covers everything from clothing styles to typical city life.

Rautman discusses not only general issues of everyday life in the Byzantine Empire, but also probes into very specific topics. Questions such as Who were some writers during the Byzantine Empire? as well as, How did people brush their teeth? are answered in this extensive study. Topics include Byzantine worldviews, how their society and economy flourished, and how families were structured. Rautman also looks at the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul), as well as other cities and towns and the countryside. Other topics include life in the military and monastery, artistic life, and education beliefs. Also included are a list of Byzantine rulers, a list of Byzantine and contemporaneous writers, and a glossary. This all-inclusive study is essential to all high school, academic, and public library reference shelves.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

380 pages, Hardcover

First published March 30, 2006

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Popular introductions to the history of the Byzantine Empire, like John Julius Norwich's famous three-volume work, tend to focus only on successive emperors, their court surroundings, and the occasional wars that Byzantium fought. But what was life like for the vast majority of Byzantium's population, far from court circles and generally spent scraping a living? Marcus Rautman, a historian at the University of Missouri, sought to give a more well-rounded view of Byzantine life with this 2006 book.

Rautman starts the book with a chronology that briefly presents the dry political and administrative history of the Byzantine Empire, as found in most popular introductions to its history, just to quickly get that out of the way. Then, his survey of daily life proper is divided into chapters on various themes, such as "Worldviews", "Society and Economy", "Military Life", "Cities and Towns" on one hand and "The Countryside" on the other, "Artistic Life", and "Life of the Mind". Details of everyday life range from what was used for dog food to how much books cost.

I enjoyed this book and learned a great deal from it. Even when I had read other, more political histories of the Byzantine Empire, I had never appreciated just how drastically Byzantium changed in the crucial centuries bridging Late Antiquity and the Medieval era. Not only did upheavals like the Arab assault lead to shifts in political organization and trade, but Rautman shows how even daily life changed under the radically different circumstances; Byzantium before and after were really two completely different societies.

The book does have some downsides, however. There are some typos that should have been easily spotted, as other reviewers have noted, and I think an astute editor could have smoothed out the occasional repetition. Rautman says that most Byzantines were able to read and write a little, but this claim is not sourced and surely there must have been barriers to literacy for much or most of the population. Finally, the illustrations he uses of places and people are generally from post-Byzantine times, and this can be misleading. For example, an 1876 engraving of monks, meant to illustrate the chapter on monastery life, shows them wearing the kamilavkion, apparel that actually originated from the later Ottoman Empire and was not worn in Byzantium. One wonders why Orthodox iconography known to date to Byzantine times wasn't used more.

[A.L. Sowards · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book delivered exactly what it said it would—a detailed look at normal life during the roughly 1,000 years of the Byzantine Empire. Clothing, farming techniques, homes in cities, homes in villages, monasteries, typical diets. It’s not a narrative account, and sometimes the information repeated itself, (burial traditions, for example, were mostly the same in the city and the country, so they appeared in both chapters). A useful book if you have an interest in the subject. The information is organized in a way that would make it easy to jump around. Probably meant to be skimmed rather than read from cover to cover.

[Rev · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars rounded up.

I saw a review for this book somewhere that it isn't really newbie friendly if you don't know anything about the period, and I think that's because this was clearly written like a textbook. Now I personally am fine with that because I have a history degree, so I'm used to reading dense texts like this and still enjoy them. However, it's something to keep in mind.

This text is very dense, but it covers quite a lot of topics, and has extensive notes sections at the end of each chapter which I have a very real need to dig into to see what else they might say about the subjects. I liked all the subjects that were covered, however briefly, and it makes me want to dive into the other books I own on the Byzantine Empire.

Do recommend if you think you can take the denseness of it, but if history isn't really your thing it'd probably not be for you.

[İHSAN ERDİNÇLİ]

master thesis