Epilogue

This epilogue addresses the question of periodization in relation to Byzantium. Several recent writers prefer to see “Byzantium” proper as beginning from ca. 600 or later, and there are good reasons why. Constantinople was formally inaugurated in AD 330, but there was not yet such an entity as “Byzantium,” distinct from the eastern Roman Empire, and it remains the case that the Byzantines thought of themselves as Romans. Nevertheless, adopting a later periodization risks obscuring the fact that what people call Byzantium had a long earlier history; it was not a new state formed only in the medieval period. The chapter then argues that Byzantium belongs to mainstream history. Moreover, Byzantine studies must be rescued from its continuing association with the competing claims of negativity and exoticism. Recent publications have set an encouraging pattern, but now the subject needs to be opened up further, and Byzantium seen against more “normal” and wider perspectives.