A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD BY H. G. WELLS
41.THE BYZANTINE AND SASSANID EMPIRES
The Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman Empire showed much more political tenacity than the western half. It weathered the disasters of the fifth century A.D., which saw a complete and final breaking up of the original Latin Roman power. Attila bullied the Emperor Theodosius II and sacked and raided almost to the walls of Constantinople, but that city remained intact. The Nubians came down the Nile and looted Upper Egypt, but Lower Egypt and Alexandria were left still fairly prosperous. Most of Asia Minor was held against the Sassanid Persians.
The sixth century, which was an age of complete darkness for the West,
saw indeed a considerable revival of the Greek power. Justinian I
(527-565) was a ruler of very great ambition and energy, and he was
married to the Empress Theodora, a woman of quite equal capacity who
had begun life as an actress. Justinian reconquered North Africa from
the Vandals and most of Italy from the Goths. He even regained the
south of Spain. He did not limit his energies to naval and military
enterprises. He founded a university, built the great church of Sta.
Sophia in Constantinople and codified the Roman law. But in order to
destroy a rival to his university foundation he closed the schools of
philosophy in Athens, which had been going on in unbroken continuity
from the days of Plato, that is to say for nearly a thousand years.
From the third century onwards the Persian Empire had been the
steadfast rival of the Byzantine. The two empires kept Asia Minor,
Syria and Egypt in a state of perpetual unrest and waste. In the first
century A.D., these lands were still at a high level of civilization,
wealthy and with an abundant population, but the continual coming and
going of armies, massacres, looting and war taxation wore them down
steadily until only shattered and ruinous cities remained upon a
countryside of scattered peasants. In this melancholy process of
impoverishment and disorder lower Egypt fared perhaps less badly than
the rest of the world. Alexandria, like Constantinople, continued a
dwindling trade between the east and the west.
THE CHURCH (NOW A MOSQUE) OF S. SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE
THE CHURCH (NOW A MOSQUE) OF S. SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE
The obelisk of Theodosius in in the foreground statue on left
_Photo: Sebah & Foaillier_
Science and political philosophy seemed dead now in both these warring
and decaying empires. The last philosophers of Athens, until their
suppression, preserved the texts of the great literature of the past
with an infinite reverence and want of understanding. But there
remained no class of men in the world, no free gentlemen with bold and
independent habits of thought, to carry on the tradition of frank
statement and enquiry embodied in these writings. The social and
political chaos accounts largely for the disappearance of this class,
but there was also another reason why the human intelligence was
sterile and feverish during this age. In both Persia and Byzantium it
was all age of intolerance. Both empires were religious empires in a
new way, in a way that greatly hampered the free activities of the
human mind.
THE MAGNIFICENT ROOF-WORK IN S. SOPHIA
THE MAGNIFICENT ROOF-WORK IN S. SOPHIA
_Photo: Sebah & Foaillier_
Of course the oldest empires in the world were religious empires,
centring upon the worship of a god or of a god-king. Alexander was
treated as a divinity and the Cæsars were gods in so much as they had
altars and temples devoted to them and the offering of incense was made
a test of loyalty to the Roman state. But these older religions were
essentially religions of act and fact. They did not invade the mind.
If a man offered his sacrifice and bowed to the god, he was left not
only to think but to say practically whatever he liked about the
affair. But the new sort of religions that had come into the world,
and particularly Christianity, turned inward. These new faiths
demanded not simply conformity but understanding belief. Naturally
fierce controversy ensued upon the exact meaning of the things
believed. These new religions were creed religions. The world was
confronted with a new word, Orthodoxy, and with a stern resolve to keep
not only acts but speech and private thought within the limits of a set
teaching. For to hold a wrong opinion, much more to convey it to other
people, was no longer regarded as an intellectual defect but a moral
fault that might condemn a soul to everlasting destruction.
THE RAVENNA PANEL, DEPICTING JUSTINIAN AND HIS COURT
THE RAVENNA PANEL, DEPICTING JUSTINIAN AND HIS COURT
_Photo: Alinari_
THE ROCK HEWN TEMPLE AT PETRA
THE ROCK HEWN TEMPLE AT PETRA
_Photo: Underwood & Underwood_
Both Ardashir I who founded the Sassanid dynasty in the third century
A.D., and Constantine the Great who reconstructed the Roman Empire in
the fourth, turned to religious organizations for help, because in
these organizations they saw a new means of using and controlling the
wills of men. And already before the end of the fourth century both
empires were persecuting free talk and religious innovation. In Persia
Ardashir found the ancient Persian religion of Zoroaster (or
Zarathushtra) with its priests and temples and a sacred fire that burnt
upon its altars, ready for his purpose as a state religion. Before the
end of the third century Zoroastrianism was persecuting Christianity,
and in 277 A.D. Mani, the founder of a new faith, the Manichæans, was
crucified and his body flayed. Constantinople, on its side, was busy
hunting out Christian heresies. Manichæan ideas infected Christianity
and had to be fought with the fiercest methods; in return ideas from
Christianity affected the purity of the Zoroastrian doctrine. All ideas
became suspect. Science, which demands before all things the free
action of an untroubled mind, suffered a complete eclipse throughout
this phase of intolerance.
War, the bitterest theology, and the usual vices of mankind constituted
Byzantine life of those days. It was picturesque, it was romantic; it
had little sweetness or light. When Byzantium and Persia were not
fighting the barbarians from the north, they wasted Asia Minor and
Syria in dreary and destructive hostilities. Even in close alliance
these two empires would have found it a hard task to turn back the
barbarians and recover their prosperity. The Turks or Tartars first
come into history as the allies first of one power and then of another.
In the sixth century the two chief antagonists were Justinian and
Chosroes I; in the opening of the seventh the Emperor Heraclius was
pitted against Chosroes II (580).
At first and until after Heraclius had become Emperor (610) Chosroes II
carried all before him. He took Antioch, Damascus and Jerusalem and
his armies reached Chalcedon, which is in Asia Minor over against
Constantinople. In 619 he conquered Egypt. Then Heraclius pressed a
counter attack home and routed a Persian army at Nineveh (627),
although at that time there were still Persian troops at Chalcedon. In
628 Chosroes II was deposed and murdered by his son, Kavadh, and an
inconclusive peace was made between the two exhausted empires.
Byzantium and Persia had fought their last war. But few people as yet
dreamt of the storm that was even then gathering in the deserts to put
an end for ever to this aimless, chronic struggle.
While Heraclius was restoring order in Syria a message reached him. It
had been brought in to the imperial outpost at Bostra south of
Damascus; it was in Arabic, an obscure Semitic desert language, and it
was read to the Emperor, if it reached him at all, by an interpreter.
It was from someone who called himself “Muhammad the Prophet of God.”
It called upon the Emperor to acknowledge the One True God and to serve
him. What the Emperor said is not recorded.
A similar message came to Kavadh at Ctesiphon. He was annoyed, tore up
the letter, and bade the messenger begone.
This Muhammad, it appeared, was a Bedouin leader whose headquarters
were in the mean little desert town of Medina. He was preaching a new
religion of faith in the One True God.
“Even so, O Lord!” he said; “rend thou his Kingdom from Kavadh.”