Re: Fwd: Law book to trump all law books

Thanks, Lorenzo.  To Wickham, makes a lotta sense.  He seems merely
allusive in *Framing *but gets down to business in his essay, "Tributary
Empires: Late Rome and the Arab Caliphate" in Peter Bang and C.A. Bayly,
edd., Tributary Empires in Global HIstory (Palgrave: 2015).  This is a
brief but interesting sociological - structural comparison between tax and
admin structures in the Abassid Caliphate and later Rome.

I would not have dug into this without your comment!

Best,

Dan

On Sun, Mar 24, 2019 at 10:17 PM Lorenzo Smerillo <[email protected]>
wrote:

> This quote from CW makes no sense. The "Byzantine" empire *is* the Roman
> Empire.
> If I am not in error the Islamic rulers were issuing coinage in Greek until
> nearly 700 ecv.
> The Romans, to put it in a nutshell, were exhausted by 20 years of war with
> the Sassanians, who were exhausted by 20 years of war with the Romans, and
> the common joes in the middle would have welcomed Mickey Mouse as galdly as
> Mohammad.
>
> feliciter.
>
> On Sun, Mar 24, 2019, 22:05 DANIEL P. Tompkins <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > 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.
> >
> >
> >
> https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww3.unisi.it%2Fsemicerchio%2Fupload%2Fpisini.pdf&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C0517b6dae73b432e4cf608d6b0dbdfd5%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636890855746976250&amp;sdata=we9KjEmMNCYYDIq4w7qVRl%2FXPtjZelXALvsUAA6lIQ8%3D&amp;reserved=0
> >
>