Effeminate Greeks or Sophisticated Romans? The Western View of Byzantium

Western Europeans often portrayed the Byzantines as deceitful, weak, and overly luxurious, dismissing them as “Greeks” rather than true Romans. Michael Goodyear writes on how behind these stereotypes stood one of the Middle Ages’ most sophisticated and resilient empires — a civilization that preserved ancient knowledge, amassed immense wealth, and defended Europe for centuries.

By Michael Goodyear

While it is hard to generalize how half a continent viewed the Byzantine Empire, two distinct impressions stand out in contemporary literature: duplicity and effeminacy or ostentatiousness. As a threshold view, Western writers often condescendingly referred to the Byzantines as the “Greeks” and their emperor as the “King of the Greeks,” even though the Byzantines referred to themselves as Romans (as they were indeed the continuators of the Eastern Roman Empire) and were ruled by an emperor.

Especially in regard to the Crusades, writers recounted how the Byzantines had deceived the crusading armies, were false friends, or were trying to extort money from their supposed allies. For example, during the course of the First Crusade (1096–1099), the contemporary Gesta Francorum described how the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) captured the city of Nicaea for himself through “vain and evil thinking” and allowed the Turks to retreat unharmed, despite weeks of Franks dying in battle during the siege. The source also refers to Alexios failing to aid the crusaders during their siege of Antioch, despite his oath to do so.

Fifty years later, Odo of Deuil, a monk who traveled with the French army during the Second Crusade in the twelfth century, criticized the Byzantines for withholding adequate food supplies (or charging exorbitant rates) and suggested that they only aided the French king, Louis VII, because of their dishonest intentions. Western writers also frequently referred to Byzantines as effeminate or weak. Odo referred in passing to the Byzantines as an “effeminate people.”

The tenth-century emissary from the Holy Roman Empire to Constantinople, Liudprand of Cremona, condescendingly noted that the Byzantine emperor’s power “was snoozing, along with that of [his] predecessors, who in name alone, and not in actual fact, are considered emperors of the Romans.” This view of Byzantium as effeminate was partially inspired by the presence of eunuchs and the sumptuous clothing worn by the Byzantine court.

However, the description of Byzantines as effeminate in modern memory was cemented by the British scholar Edward Gibbon in his famous eighteenth-century book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In that work, Gibbon was highly critical of the Byzantines, referring to them as “the servile and effeminate Greeks of Byzantium.” He partially blamed this perceived effeminacy for the decline and eventual fall of the (Eastern) Roman Empire. His impression was no doubt colored by, in his view, the inexcusable rule of women. Gibbon’s picture of Byzantines as a decadent and morally derelict people has continued to shape modern perceptions of the Byzantine Empire.

This impression, however, is guided by fear and condemnation of the “other.” A more detailed investigation of Byzantium reveals an empire that was remarkable in many ways that rebut the modern, derogatory image of the Byzantines. In particular, the Byzantine Empire awed foreign peoples with its sophistication and wealth, its preservation of ancient knowledge, and the way in which it doggedly fought a centuries-long battle for its existence.

A Place of Riches and Ceremony

Out of these three attributes, Byzantine wealth is likely the most well known today, albeit often in connection with ostentatiousness. The Byzantine Empire, and especially Constantinople, boasted many of the most impressive churches in the world, enormous palaces, foreboding ancient walls, and the accumulated riches of centuries.

Even when the empire was declining, foreign peoples were awed by its wealth. When the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204, the victorious crusaders and Venetians were astounded by the vast amounts of gold, precious stones, and relics they uncovered. They were not even able to remove all of it from the great city. Some of the most famous plundered items now adorn Venice, including a porphyry statue of the four Roman tetrarchs and four bronze horses that formerly adorned the Constantinopolitan Hippodrome.

The device known as Greek fire was recently popularized by the television show Game of Thrones. Byzantine emperors commissioned updated manuals on the art of war that improved upon traditional Roman tactics to fight new enemies. However, while the Byzantines built upon Greek and Roman creations, arguably their greatest contribution in this area was preserving them for future generations.

Greek and Roman writing on math, science, history, philosophy, Christianity, and other subjects formed the basis for many later works and discoveries, and many of these ancient sources are still actively read today (perhaps to the chagrin of some first-year university students). When these works were rediscovered more fully in the Renaissance, Italians had to turn to Byzantine scholars such as Manuel Chrysoloras and Georgios Gemistos Plethon to learn the wisdom of the ancients.

Saviours of Europe: A Land of War

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Byzantium was that it was far from an effeminate, middling state—it was a significant military power for centuries. After all, an empire that survived for over a millennium (and for nearly two millennia as the Roman Empire) could not have been so feeble.

In fact, Byzantium boasted an incredibly sophisticated and adaptable military apparatus for much of its history. While its armies originally reflected those of its counterpart, the Western Roman Empire, they adapted in response to the rise of Arab armies with the advent of Islam, the arrival of the Bulgars, the onslaught of the Normans, and other new enemies. These changes are reflected in the military treatises that successive Byzantine emperors wrote and updated.

Byzantine military prowess and tenacity allowed multiple recoveries and even expansions of the empire. Under Justinian (r. 527–565), talented generals such as Belisarius and Narses recovered North Africa and Italy for the empire, as well as southern Spain.

Heraclius (r. 610–641) brought Byzantium back from the brink of disaster by defeating the Sassanian Persians, marching into Persia itself, and recovering the entirety of the empire. When the rapid rise of the Islamic Caliphate devastated the exhausted Byzantines only a decade later, they again adapted, gradually modifying their army into local thematic forces drawn from the surrounding population, alongside a mobile central army known as the tagmata. This looser structure proved effective in countering annual Arab raids into the remaining core of the empire in Anatolia.

Byzantine resistance to the Arabs is perhaps their most notable military accomplishment and one of the most important for world history. The Byzantines twice overcame Arab sieges of Constantinople in 674–678 and 717–718 with the help of Greek Fire. If Constantinople had fallen, the forces of Islam would very likely have swept across much of Europe. While Charles Martel’s victory at the Battle of Tours in 732 is often credited with stopping the Muslim advance into Europe, the sieges of Constantinople posed a far greater threat due to the city’s proximity to the Arab heartland. Some commentators have therefore referred to the Byzantines as the “saviors of Europe.”

The Byzantines endured over two centuries of brutal seasonal guerrilla warfare against Arab forces, who raided Anatolia only to be pursued and defeated, when possible, by thematic armies. Eventually, the Byzantines went on the offensive, and by the tenth century, a series of brilliant generals—John Kourkouas, Nikephoros II Phokas (r. 963–969), and John I Tzimiskes (r. 969–976)—led campaigns deep into Syria, reconquering territories lost three centuries earlier. Phokas, in particular, was a fearsome general, dubbed the “White Death of the Saracens” by his enemies.

Byzantine military successes were not limited to the Arab frontier. The empire successfully defended Constantinople against numerous sieges by Goths, Avars, Persians, Bulgars, Rus, and others. In the Balkans, Byzantine forces eventually subdued the Bulgars. Tzimiskes defeated a powerful Rus army threatening the capital in 971, ending the most serious Russian threat in the region until the modern era. Bulgaria was finally conquered under Basil II (r. 976–1025), known as “Bulgaroctonos,” or “Bulgar-Slayer,” for his relentless campaigns, including the blinding of thousands of Bulgarian soldiers, with one in every hundred left with one eye to guide the others home.

Even after setbacks in the eleventh century, the Byzantine Empire recovered militarily twice more. Under the Komnenian Dynasty (r. 1081–1185), the Byzantines, alongside the First Crusade, reconquered much of the Anatolian coastline and reestablished themselves as a major political force in the Holy Land, Eastern Europe, and Italy. Even after Constantinople fell to the Fourth Crusade, the Laskaris and Palaiologan dynasties (r. 1204–1453) reconquered the core territories surrounding the capital.

On May 29, 1453, the final day of the Byzantine Empire, the last emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos (r. 1449–1453), died fighting in the defense of Constantinople, alongside the last defenders of Byzantium.

The “Other” No More?

These examples represent only a fraction of the Byzantine Empire’s profound and often underappreciated impact on world history. As with many encounters between cultures, Western Europeans frequently viewed Byzantium as decadent, corrupt, and weak—a foreign “other” that was difficult to understand.

However, the Byzantines were far more complex than these long-standing biases suggest. They were not only wealthy and sophisticated but also deeply learned in the traditions of the ancient world and highly capable in warfare. Incorporating Byzantine perspectives alongside Western accounts allows for a more balanced and accurate understanding of this remarkable empire.

Michael Goodyear is a lawyer in New York. He has a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and an A.B. in History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago, where he specialized in Byzantine history. He has been published in a variety of academic and general-interest publications on history and law, including ANTIQVVS and World History Encyclopedia, as well as law journals at Harvard, Stanford, and Vanderbilt.