Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization

Such public humiliation was galling, but Roman writers had been lamenting the decay of the national character for years. As early as the second century BC, Polybius blamed the politicians whose pandering had reduced the republic to mob rule, Sallust railed against the viciousness of political parties, and Livy—the most celebrated writer of Rome’s golden age—had written that “these days … we can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies.”^*

Now, however, a more ominous note crept in. The predictions of disaster gave way to glowing panegyrics celebrating the greatness and permanence of emperors who were plainly nothing of the sort. The men on the throne seemed like shadows flitting across the imperial stage, an awful confirmation that the gods had turned their backs on humanity. Barbarian enemies were gathering like wolves on the frontiers, but the generals sent against them more often than not used their swords to clear a path to the throne. The army, once a servant of the emperor, now became his master, and dynasties rose and fell with bewildering frequency.

The chaos of nearly continuous civil war made it hard to tell who the emperor actually was, but the tax collectors came anyway, with their unceasing demands for more money. The desperate shadow emperors tried to save money by reducing the silver content of their coins, but the resulting inflation crippled the economy, and most of the empire reverted to the barter system. Terrified by the mounting uncertainty men took refuge in “mystery religions” that taught that the physical world was fleeting or evil, and put their hopes in magic, astrology, and alchemy. Life was full of pain, and the more extreme refused marriage or committed suicide to escape it. The very fabric of society was coming apart, and rich and poor alike prayed for deliverance.

Salvation came, unexpectedly enough, from Dalmatia. A tough soldier named Diocletian from that backward, rugged land of craggy peaks and lush forests rose up to claim the throne. Assuming power in the usual way by assassinating his predecessor and climbing over the bodies of rival armies, Diocletian was pragmatic enough to admit what others had only dimly suspected. The empire was simply too large to be successfully governed by one man in these troubled days. Its vast territory embraced the entire Mediterranean, stretching from the damp forests of Britain in the north to the blazing deserts of Egypt in the south, from the Rock of Gibraltar in the west to the borders of Persia in the east. Even if he spent his entire life in the saddle, Diocletian couldn’t possibly react quickly enough to stamp out every crisis, nor could he dispatch surrogates to fight on his behalf; recent imperial history provided too many examples of such generals using their armies to gain the throne. If the wobbling empire were to be preserved at all, Diocletian needed to somehow shrink its enormous size—a task that had overwhelmed all of his immediate predecessors. Few leaders in history can have started a reign with such a daunting job, but the pragmatic Diocletian found an unorthodox solution: He raised an old drinking buddy named Maximian to the rank of senior emperor, or Augustus, and split the world in half.

It wasn’t quite as revolutionary a decision as it sounded, especially because the empire was already divided linguistically. Long before Rome had dreamed of world conquest, Alexander the Great had swept east to India, crushing all who stood against him and forging the unwieldy territories into an empire. In his footsteps had come Hellenization, and though Alexander’s empire had crumbled with his death, Greek culture seeped in and took root. Rome had spread from the west like a veneer over this Hellenized world, superior in arms but awed by the older culture’s sophistication. Latin was spoken in the eastern halls of power, but not in its markets or homes. In thought and character, the East remained firmly Greek.

Handing over the western areas of the empire, where Latin was the dominant language, to Maximian, Diocletian kept the richer, more-cultured Greek east for himself. In theory, the empire was still one and indivisible, but each half would have a drastically different fate, and the rough line that was drawn between them still marks the divide between eastern and western Europe today. The full ramifications wouldn’t become clear for another two centuries, but Diocletian had effectively divided the world into Roman and Byzantine halves.