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Byzantium
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The city of Byzantium was chosen to be the capitol of the Eastern Roman Empire. Sixty five years later... the name of the city was changed to Constantinople in honor of its founder, Constantine. Even though this radical change was made in the concept of the empire, the Byzantines always referred to themselves during their one thousand year long history as the Roman Empire and their nation as the Nation of Rome. After the collapse of the empire, however, historians began to refer to this empire as the "Byzantine" Empire and so it is remembered today. This empire began in 330 and lasted until 1453, for 1123 years. A struggle between Moslems and Christians began to arise in the Middle Ages.
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"Sailing to Byzantium" is an endlessly interpretable poem, and suggests endlessly fascinating comparisons with other important poems--poems of travel, poems of age, poems of nature, poems featuring birds as symbols. (One of the most interesting is surely Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale," to which this poem is in many ways a rebuttal: Keats writes of his nightingale, "Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! / No hungry generations tread thee down"; Yeats, in the first stanza of "Sailing to Byzantium," refers to "birds in the trees" as "those dying generations.") It is important to note that the poem is not autobiographical; Yeats did not travel to Byzantium (which was renamed Constantinople in the fourth century A.D., and later renamed Istanbul), but he did argue that, in the sixth century, it offered the ideal environment for the artist. The poem is about an imaginative journey, not an actual one.
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In Byzantium's single-centered society, this religious conflict had far-reaching cultural, political, and social implications. In 731 Pope Gregory II condemned iconoclasm. Leo's decision to destroy icons stressed the fracture lines that had existed between east and west for the past four centuries, expressed in the linguistic differences between the Latin west and the Greek east. Leo's successors continued his religious and political policies, and in 754 Pope Stephen II turned to the north and struck an alliance with the Frankish king Pepin. This was the first step in a process that half a century later would lead to the birth of the Holy Roman Empire and the formal political split of Europe into the east and west (see ch. 9).
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The term "Byzantine" itself comes from "Byzantium", the name that the city of Constantinople had before it became the capital of Constantine. This older name of the city would rarely be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts.
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International byzantologists' symposium "Niš and Byzantium" can not be mentioned apart from the name of the Niš Bishop Irinej who gave his blessing to this meeting and thanks to that it has been maintained. The opening ceremony started with the blessing of the Niš Bishop Irinej and with the welcome word of the Mayor Mr. Smiljko Kostic. The meeting was welcomed ... by H.E.Mr. Athanasios Anastopoulos, Consul of Greece in Niš and on behalf of the Greek editing department of Niš Philosophy Faculty the participants were addressed by Dr. Dimosthenis Stratigopoulos. The meeting was opened by Mr. Ioanis Sisiou in Greek and in Serbian, who indicated the general importance and all lamination of the Byzantine Art. The end of the work sessions was crowned by a detour of the urban complex of the glorious Byzantine city named Komplos and its churches, latter Koprijan, the Serbian city fortified by the prepossessing walls.
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All historians of Byzantium declare in unison that a new period in her history opens with the beginning of the eighth century. The seventh century had ended in anarchy and in the almost complete ruin of the Empire. In the year 717 the Arabs besieged Constantinople, and her internal disorder made her an easy prey for a conqueror. Leo the Isaurian – one of those soldiers, numerous in the Byzantine army, from the eastern border country, who often rose to the highest ranks and by whom the Empire was actually held together – saved her. Leo was proclaimed Emperor and he started a new dynasty, that of the Isaurians. In a series of victorious wars, he (717–745) and his son, Constantine Copronymus (745-775), retrieved the situation and added internal strength by a profound military, economic and administrative reform of the state.
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