Fwd: Law book to trump all law books

Dame Averil Cameron tweets, appropriately I think: "Dame Averil Cameron:
Well .... surely the ideas that Islam burst forth from the desert and that
local populations were alienated have both been exploded by now."

I am a rank amateur in this area, and posted partly to get more info.  That
was a start.  IN the meantime, Chris Wickham's wonderful *Framing the early
MIddle Ages* has a lot to say about the Muslims' arrival post 636 CE
including this intriguing sentence, which follows Wickham's assertion that
even when weak, ca 650, the tax-based internal structure of the Byzantine
Empire kept it stronger than non - tax-based polities:  but "what the
Byzantine empire could not match, on the other hand, was the wealth of the
early caliphate, which in many ways was the clearest lineal descendent of
the Roman empire."

Dan

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: DANIEL P. Tompkins <[email protected]>
Date: Sun, Mar 24, 2019 at 12:03 PM
Subject: Law book to trump all law books
To: Classical Greek and Latin Discussion Group <[email protected]>, dg
<[email protected]>, relay-57 <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected] <
[email protected]>


In a very spirited review praising a fine edition by Bruce Frier
(Michigan), Michael Kulikowsky sums up early Christian "achievements,"
which -- contra today's right-wing hyperbole online & elsewhere --
fractured the Roman empire, leaving it vulnerable to the arriving Muslims:

... After 636, when the followers of Muhammad’s new religion burst forth
from Arabia, they found a Roman populace with little or no loyalty to the
emperor in Constantinople. Syrians and Egyptians did not resist the Arab
armies the way the Italians had resisted imperial forces in the Ostrogothic
wars. Justinian’s religious policy had alienated the Christians of the east
to the point at which *a heavily taxed life under rulers of a different
faith was preferable to the intolerable orthodoxy of an ostensible
co-religionist.*...

A dour fanatic, fragile and immovable by turns*, Justinian is as unlikeable
as he is mesmerising. With his preternatural stamina, he changed the course
of Western history, if not for the better: his ambitions enfeebled the
state he tried to restore and the future he bequeathed to Europe was one of
poverty and schism. And yet his *Code, Digest* and *Institutes*– the *Corpus
Iuris Civilis* – are the *greatest legal monument ever created*.

*London Review of Books* 3/21/19 reviewing Frier et al, *The Codex of
Justinian*. Cambridge, three vols, 2963 pp [!!!], £450.00 [!!!]

Dan

* see Cavafy, "From the Unpublished History," in Mendelsohn, tr. Cavafy:
the Unfinished Poems:

Frequently Justinian's gaze
caused terror and revulsion among his servants.
They suspected something that they dared not say:
when by chance one night they were able to confirm
that he was indeed a demon out of Hell:
he came out of his chamber quite late, and went about
headless in the great halls of the palace.


Mendelsohn's note: C's source is p 424 of Bury, *History of the Later Roman
Empire *v2 (1923). C. seems to have acquired Bury promptly: his draft is
dated shortly thereafter.  Mendelsohn quotes Bury, on his use of Procopius
as a source:

It may be asked whether the book deserves any serious consideration as an
historical document, except so far as it illustrates the intense
dissatisfaction prevailing in some circles against the government.

Cavafy in Greek:

Συχνά το βλέμμα του Ιουστινιανού
φρίκην και βδελυγμίαν ποιούσε στους θεράποντάς του.
Κάτι υποπτεύονταν αυτοί που δεν τολμούσαν να το πούν˙
όταν τυχαίως μια νύχτα βεβαιωθήκαν
πως ήταν απ’ την Κόλασι βγαλμένος δαίμων:
βγήκεν απ’ το δωμάτιο του αργά, και γύριζεν,
ακἐφαλος στες αίθουσες του παλατιού.

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