Lost to the West

Day 1,350, 06:38 • Published in Greece Australia • by Ouke Stinos

What we call «The Byzantine Empire», was in fact the eastern half of the Roman Empire, and its citizens referred to themselves as Romans from the founding of Constantinople in 323 AD, to the Fall of the City, 11 centuries later. For most of that time, their neighbours, allies and enemies alike saw them in this light. When Mehmed II conquered Constantinople, he took the title Caesar of Rome, ruling, as he saw it, as the successor of a line that went back to Augustus.

Only the scholars of the Enlightment, preferring to find roots in ancient Greece and classical Rome, denied the Eastern Empire the name «Roman», branding it instead after Byzantium -the ancient name of Constantinople. The «real» empire -for them- had ended in 476 AD, with the abdication of the last western emperor. The history of those «impostors» in Constantinople, was 'nothing more than a thousand-year slide into barbarism, corruption and decay'.

Western civilization, however, owes an incalculable debt, to this scorned city of the Bosporus. Among other achievements:

[☧] Without Byzantium, the surging armies of Islam would surely have swept into Europe in the 7th century, and as Gibbon mused, the call to prayer would have echoed over Oxford.

[☧] While in the West, civilization flickered dimly in the remote Irish monasteries, it blazed in Constantinople. Its artisans gave us the brilliant mosaics of Ravenna and the supreme triumph of the Hagia Sofia, its scholars passed to us all the Greek and Latin classics that we know today, which the Dark Ages all but extinguished in the West.

[☧] Byzantium's greatest emperor, Justinian gave us Roman law, the basis of most European legal systems even today (in Louisiana, USA, it's the basis of the law practiced today!).

[☧] The brilliant patriarch Photius added the Slavic people to Christendom and the imperial cultural orbit, with the help of the brother monks Cyril and Methodius. The Cyrillic alphabet named after the first, is used by most of the Slavic world today.

[apanthesma from Lars Brownworth's, «Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization», Crown Publishers, New York 2009]
ΣΗΜ: Η Δύση φαίνεται ότι αρχίζει ν'αναθεωρεί το μικρόψυχο σνομπάρισμα αιώνων προς την 'Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων'. Αυτήν δλδ. που μας έμαθαν να αποκαλούμε κι εμείς αστόχαστα «Βυζάντιο» και υπό αυτό το αρνητικό πρόσημο, να την απορρίπτουμε συνολικά, ως δήθεν κατάσταση κατάπτωσης και παρακμής. (Μα για σκεφθείτε: συνέβη ποτέ μια 'παρακμή' να κράτησε 11 ολόκληρους αιώνες;; ) Στη φωτογραφία επάνω, ο Σουηδικής καταγωγής φιλέλληνας Αμερικανός συγγραφέας, στον Βόσπορο.

Κι αφού πρώτα έπεισαν εμάς, τα χαϊβάνια τους Έλληνες των τελευταίων χρόνων, να παραιτηθούμε από την κληρονομιά των δικών μας αυτοκρατόρων, το απίθανο είναι πως τώρα μέχρι και οι Τούρκοι πλασάρονται ως δήθεν συνεχιστές της δόξας και των συμβόλων του Βυζαντίου!

Κάτω, το σημερινό έμβλημα της Τουρκικής Ακαδημίας Αστυνομίας.


Μην εκπλαγείτε αντικρύζοντας τον δικέφαλο στη στολή κάθε τούρκου αστυνομικού όπως και έξω από κάθε αστυνομικό τμήμα της γείτονος.