Focus Question: How have the Byzantines influenced modern culture?

Byzantine EmpireThe Deaths of Some Emperors

• In total, 23 emperors had a violent death (accidents don’t count).• 2 emperors were taken prisoners by the enemy: Romanos V Diogenes was

captured by the Seljuk Turks in Manzikert (1071) and was freed later. Alexios V Murtzuphlos after the fall of 1204 was blinded by his father-in-law Alexios III and later was arrested by the Latins and was executed (thrown from the top of the column of Theodosius)

• 13 emperors were the subject of cruel treatment. At least 4 suffered public torture before their death. 3 had suffered some form of Mutilation (nose and/or tongue slitting) and 5 were blinded. 1 was semi-blinded (one eye only - Andronikos IV). 3 emperors rose again to the throne long after their mutilation: Justinian II Rhinotmetus, Issac II Doukas and Andronikos IV.

• 2 emperors were killed by their successors personally: Phocas was decapitated by Heraklios (610) and Nikephoros II Phocas was murdered in his bedroom by a gang of conspirators under the command of his successor John I Tzimiskes (969)

• None of the Byzantine emperors committed suicide (Suicide, after all, was a cardinal sin in a theocratic state)

Hagia SophiaChristian Church built in Constantinople. Construction was completed by Justinian I in 532 AD.Later, after the Ottomans captured the city in 1453, the church was converted to a Mosque

III. The Law of Persons.The chief division in the rights of persons is this: men are all either free or slaves.

1. Freedom, from which men are said to be free, is the natural power of doing what we each please, unless prevented by force or by law.

2. Slavery is an institution of the law of nations, by which one man is made the property of another, contrary to natural right.

4. Slaves either are born or become so. They are born so when their mother is a slave; they become so either by the law of nations, that is, by captivity, or by the civil law, as when a free person, above the age of twenty, suffers himself to be sold, that he may share the price given for him.

5. In the condition of slaves there is no distinction; but there are many distinctions among free persons; for they are either born free, or have been set free.

Definition: Short statements of general, or summarized, truth.

From Justinian’s Code, Book I, “Of Persons”

I. Justice and Law.JUSTICE is the constant and perpetual wish to render every one his due.

1. Jurisprudence is the knowledge of things divine and human; the science of the just and the unjust.

3. The maxims of law are these: to live honesty, to hurt no one, to give every one his due.

Byzantine Empire• Lasted for 1,129 years• Saw 90 Emperors– First: Constantine the Great, 324-337 AD– Last: Constantine XI Palaiologos, 1149 –

1453 AD– Oldest: Anastasius I, 491-518. Died at

88– Youngest: Michael III the Drunkard, 842-

867. Emperor at 2, reigned for 25 years