Byzantium on film

I just discovered that a film titled Byzantium is under production, to be released next year. Disappointingly, it is not about Byzantium! Recently, there was a film titled Constantine, and it wasn’t even historical film. The movie industry is apparently conspiring aginst all things Byzantine, totally ignoring its existence, at the expense of the public who really ought to know this fascinating period of Roman history.

The Roman Empire, once Christianity became its official relgion, is called the Byzantine Empire. It was still the superpower of the day, and, as such, had considerable influence in history. Eastern Europe and a part of the Middle East are practically its direct legacy. The very people who destroyed it, the Ottoman Turks, had to imitate from the Byzantines and, by conquering and absorbing them, some wonder, maybe the Empire of the Ottomans was merely a continuation of the Roman Empire under the Turkish dynasty. Of course the Turks absolutely dismiss such notion.

Well, so, in our Westernised world, how much do we know about this Roman Empire from the mass media of films and TV programmes?

Not much, sadly. The Western media is obsessed with Republican and early Imperial Rome, not Christian Rome. (And so the idea of Islamic Rome is utterly abhorrent not just to the Turks but to us also!)

So, Byzantium has become almost like a ficticious empire of magic and darkness in some TV. For example,

Buffy (1997-2005)

In 1997, Joss Whedon started a TV show for teenagers titled, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’. While most people, including me, cringed at this silly title, it did remaind me of Basil the Vulgar Slayer, which is a rather lame translation to the Byzantine nickname for Emperor Basil II who finally subjugated the Bulgars in 1014.

The Balkans is full of gory stories of vampires and demons – possibly this is mysologizing of actual human conditions that helped shape the mentality of people living there, having experienced real horrors of butchery, cruelty and insanity, which were nasty byproducts of political violence (with ordinary folks as their chief victims). The whole region was soon considered as a bloodthirsty place.

Whedon must have encountered Byzantium when doing research on the subject of the vampire. In Season 5, my suspicion was confirmed, when a bunch of Byzantine knights showed up in order to stop a hell god in exile trying to destroy the world. (Funny, their general was called Gregor, a very unlikely name for a Byzantine. Of course, since they all spoke good American, presumably many of them are American recruits by the order!)

Is it possible that there was a particular Byzantine military order to fight forces of evil? For one thing, they would not have called themselves Byzantines anyway, and, if there was ever such an order, it is more likely that it was a roleplaying club by some history buffs (no pan intended) dressed up like medieval knights, fighting demons and having fun. Then they got entangled with real world of magic and became serious…

Agora (2009)

Ok, something more serious. Agora is a fantastic film, even though, personally I do not agree with the main message. (And technically it is not Byzantine history either.) Still, well, it is just great that a film showing how things were in Egypt in the late Roman period gets made.

Rachel Weisz is perfect in the role of Hypatia, the Greek aristocratic lady who is known as one of the leading scientists and philosophers in Roman Alexandria, who was killed by increasingly fanatical Christians in Alexandria. (Weisz was the Anglo-Egyptian girl in The Mummy.)

The film was cleverly plotted, though maybe a bit melodramatic. Since we simply don’t know much about Hypatia’s life, the filmmakers restructured history of Roman Alexandria, throwing Hyptia in the thick of the most violent incidents in the city. Some of the events depicted in this film didn’t happen in her lifetime, but this really is not a problem. The point is, she could easily have been involved with something similar, given the volatile and venomous atmosphere in the city at the time. She was the focal point of main events in the film, giving viewers a good reference point to follow the story.

And of course, love interest. Well, actually there is none from her side. But, a young man, one of her students at Academy, fell in love with her. Accroding to anecdotal stories the chroniclers recorded, she rebuffed his advances by showing a piece of her sanitary cloth, soaked with her menstral blood, saying, is this what you love? (Translation: grow up. You are too young to know a real woman.)

This young man’s identity is not known. The film thus brought in a fictional character, Orestes, instead of the real Orestes, who was the Roman governor and rather old at the time. One of the reasons for Hypatia’s murder was political jealousy she aroused in her rivals, but, by making the young man who was in love with her the young Orestes, their alliance gets not just intellectual but also intimately personal. (She might not be interested, but she was happy to be his friend and mentor.) Since her enemies were trying to influence Orestes without much success, the only way to stop their relationship was to kill her. By making Orestes in love with Hypatia, the film skirted around the problem of trying to show why their ties were so strong.

The film could be controversial, as it is blatantly anti-religious, with full of allusions to modern day fundamentalism both in the Christian and Islmaic worlds. Also the film ends with Hypatia’s death, who was on the verge of a major scientific discovery, which was eventually made by Johannes Kepler in the 17^th century. Implication: advancement of science was stopped by the fanatics!) Well, I don’t think she was about to discover that Earth’s orbit was epicyclic in the 4^th century. Also if I try to be critical of religious fundamentalism, I’d rather pursue the question of where it comes from before attacking what they do (that’s for the judges). Still, the movie is enjoyable enough to spend two hours watching a CGI version of the Library of Alexandria.

John Romer, Byzantium (TV documentary series, ca. 1994)

Originally a Ch4 documentary series by the eminent Egyptologist, John Romer. Exploring the splendour of Byzantium in Romer’s unique style, this is probably the best introduction to Byzantine history from the foundation of Constantinopolis until the very end, the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453.

Egypt was a Roman/Byzantine province until the coming of Muslim Arabs, so it is no wonder Romer should be interested in the subject. Indeed, many major archaeological discoveries on Byzantium are from Egypt, where Byzantine Christianity, Coptic Church, paganism and Judaism fought for supremacy, as depicted in Agora. Recently, some early Christian documents were dug up in Egypt, which, unfortunately, inspired some popular novelists to write on the assumption that the Church suppressed true origins of Christianity. The truth is, there were so many Christian sects in Egypt, producing different kinds of gospels according to their different creed. Each church tried to prove that their version was most true. It is more likely that the ultimate winner suppressed other versions of the gospel because they genuinely believed that they were false. There was no conspiracy. It’s just politics in plain sight.

Anyway, this series is now available as TLC video, I think.

Naval Museums

The Viking ships, Oslo, Norway

These ships were excavated at locations in the UK and Norway. Considered as 9^th – 11^th century Viking long ships, a couple of them are beautifully reconstructed. Below is the exhibit showing the surviving part. What is amazing, however, is that the majority of the timber for these boats survived, so that these reconstructed ships use most of the original material. This is because these ships were used for burial of powerful people like chieftens, and somehow the soil preserved them. It is believed that these ships were not built specifically for burial. Perhaps the powerful Vikings wanted to be buried on ships they used throughout their lives? They are similar to those boats depicted on Bayeaux Tapestry, the comic book of the Middle Ages telling the story of the Norman invasion of England, 1066. So we might imagine that the Vikings did use this type of vessels for ocean crossing. The Viking ship is often small enough so it can be dragged on land, giving the Vikings overall land and sea mobility. They were the most feared amphibious raiders the Anglo-Saxon England didn’t know how to counter.

The Jylland (Jutland), Ebeltoft, Denmark

After some country drive from Denmark’s second city, Arhus, you’d suddenly find this fine ship museum in the sleepy town of Ebeltoft. This steam powered frigate participated in Scheswig-Holstein War precipitated by the rapid and meteoric rise of the Kingdom of Prussia. Bismarck, the Prussian Chancellor, famously advocated a policy to provoke short victorious wars so Prussia could gain more power. His successful wars against Denmark, Austria and France paved the way for the birth of the German Empire in 1870.

The Peder Skram, Copenhagen, Denmark

This modern warship of the Cold War era is now decommissioned and used as a museum ship, but open only with appointment I gather. It is a typical modern frigate, with the usual weapons arrays of naval guns, SSM tubes (Harpoon anti-ship missiles) and ASW weapons. Peder Skram is a Danish naval leader in the 16^th century, who played a major part in wars when Northern European states were locked in struggles for supremacy in the Baltic.

The Aurora, St. Petersburg, Russia

This is where the Russian Revolution started! Need to say more?

The Mikasa, Yokosuka, Japan

Now one of the Aurora’s nemesis, the Japanese Mikasa. Built by the British shipbuilder, Vickers, this modern warship helped the Japanese rise to the rank of the Great Powers at the beginning of the 20^th century. In 1905, led by the Mikasa, the Japanese battle fleet defeated the Russian Baltic Fleet, demonstrating superiority of British technology and training. (But then also that trying to engage a major modern combat fleet after getting your crew dead tired in a 3-month voyage around the globe is a bad strategy!)

The Mikasa can be found near Yokosuka USN base, Japan

The Averoff, Athens, Greece

This Italian made armoured cruiser, later modified in the US (notice the top mast), is the forgotten hero of the Greek wars against the Turks in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Obviously even the Greeks themselves don’t care much about the Averoff nowadays. If anything, young people use the aft deck for party or something, provoking furious reactions from good citizens of Athens!

But this ship fought off the Turkish fleet in the Balkan wars. At the conclusion of WW1, the Averoff was a part of the Greek fleet occupying Constantinople. When, taking advantage of the Turkish defeat in WW1, the Greeks launched the war of the Megali Idea, the Averoff was also in the thick of it, escorting troop carriers landing at Smyrna. The Greeks, trying to revive the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor, advanced further inland. Unfortunately, the modern Greeks were no Byzantines, and they got creamed by the Young Turks led by Kemal Ataturk, the founding hero of the Turkish Republic. The routed Greeks were ejected from Asia Minor for good. To settle this war between the Greeks and Turks, the Great Powers held the Lausannce Conference in 1923, where they settled their oil interests in the ex-Turkish territories, which are now called Syria, Iraq and Israel.

The Olympia, Athens, Greece

oh and by the way, there is another forgotten ship, the Olympia, the reconstructed Athenian Trireme. Originally an experiement led by an Anglo-Greek team of researchers, the Olympia was used to try out the rowing system of the ancient trireme warship. She is now sitting quietly in a shed next to the Averoff in Faliro Harbour, Athens.