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Byzantium   Listen
proper noun
Byzantium  n.  An ancient city on the Bosphorus founded by the Greeks. It was later renamed Constaninople in honor of the emperor Constantine, and renamed Istanbul by the Turks, which name it still retains.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Byzantium" Quotes from Famous Books



... admitted the justice and even the necessity of their proposals, but that they must prove themselves to be in earnest by some act which would make it impossible for the great body of them to draw back. Upon this, Ouliades of Samos, and Antagoras of Chios conspired together, and off Byzantium, they ran on board of the ship of Pausanias, which was sailing before the rest. He on seeing this, rose up in a rage and threatened that in a short time he would let them know that they had not endangered his ship, but their own native ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... Christianity, the most important act of Constantine was the selection of Byzantium, on the Bosporus, as the new capital of the empire. One reason which led the emperor to choose this site in preference to Rome was the ungracious conduct towards him of the inhabitants of the latter city, because he had abandoned the worship of the old national deities. But there ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... just allowed the fifteen days' "notice to quit" to expire, before he showed Russia and the world that the Turks had a general, and that with a general they were still soldiers, as when the blazing scimitar of Orchan first flashed upon Europe, or Byzantium shook before the thunder of the artillery of Mohammed II. They were still worthy of their father, Osman, the "Bone-breaker;" and, in hand-to-hand combat, an overmatch for the boors of Russia, both in courage and strength. It must be said, to their disadvantage, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... by Rome. Greek influence continued, but the interest became largely philosophical. Ultimately Alexandria became the seat of a metaphysical school of Christian theology, and the scene of bitter religious controversies. In 330 A.D., Constantinople was founded on the site of the earlier Byzantium, and soon thereafter Greek scholars transferred their interest to it and made it a new center of Greek learning. There Greek science, literature, and philosophy were preserved for ten centuries, and later handed back to a Europe just awakening from the long intellectual night of the Middle ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... it first. Here I sit, the poor unknown old monk, until I die. And shall I tell thee what that world is like? I was Arsenius, tutor of the emperor. There at Byzantium I saw the world which thou wouldst see, and what I saw thou wilt see. Bishops kissing the feet of parricides. Saints tearing saints in pieces for a word. Falsehood and selfishness, spite and lust, confusion seven ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... reck of your praise and you!: the Michaels and Rafaels. Leonardo da Vinci (b. at Vinci, in the Val d'Arno, below Florence, 1452); "in him the two lines of artistic descent, tracing from classic Rome and Christian Byzantium, meet."—Heaton's 'History of Painting'. Dello di Niccolo Delli, painter and sculptor, fl. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... Marseilles to Constantinople?" cried he about Fifty times a day. "Why did I rely on the protection of my Wife's Cousin, who gave me recommendations to his brother, Cook-in-Chief to the Ambassador of France at the court of the Antique Byzantium (l'antique Byzance)? Where is my Wife? Where is my Wife's Cousin? They are drinking the wine of Ramponneau; they are dancing at the Barriers. Oh, my Cocotte! where ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... ambition of founding a city which might perpetuate the glory of his own name. During the late operations of the war against Licinius, he had sufficient opportunity to contemplate, both as a soldier and as a statesman, the incomparable position of Byzantium; and to observe how strongly it was guarded by nature against a hostile attack, whilst it was accessible on every side to the benefits of commercial intercourse. Many ages before Constantine, one of the most judicious ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... townsmen, shamelessly allied With the barbarian hosts, brought us to ruin; Or, with the failing force of Caesar leagued, By subtle devilish enginery of war, Robbed Bosphorus of its own, when, but for them, Byzantium were our prey, and all its might, And we Rome's masters? Nay; I swear to thee, I would rather see the Prince dead at my feet, I would rather see our loved State sunk and lost, Than know my boy, the sole ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris

... A.D.$ The "Eastern Roman" style, originating in the removal of the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople (then called Byzantium). It is a combination of Persian and Roman. It influenced the various Moorish, Sacracenic and ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part I • H. H. Windsor

... rebuilding Troy, and there establishing the chief seat of the Eastern Empire, heard a voice, saying, "Dost thou go to rebuild Sodom?" upon which, he altered his intention, turned his ships and standards towards Byzantium, and there fixing his seat of empire, gave his own propitious name to the city. The British history informs us, that Mailgon, king of the Britons, and many others, were addicted to this vice; that enormity, however, had entirely ceased for so long a time, that the ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis

... hear of him in all lands. Now France—now Italy—now Spain, feel the fury of his wrath, and the weight of his arm. After a time, but not until nearly a century has passed, he spreads his wings for a wider flight, and takes service under the great emperor at Byzantium, or Micklegarth—the great city, the town of towns—and fights his foes from whatever quarter they come. The Moslem in Sicily and Asia, the Bulgarians and Slavonians on the shores of the Black Sea and in Greece, well know the temper of the Northern steel, which has forced many of their chosen ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... pictures known to us are of the portrait style, and are of Byzantine or Greek origin. They were brought to Rome and the western empire from Constantinople (the ancient Byzantium), the capital of the eastern empire, where a new school of Christian art had developed out of that of ancient Greece. Justinian's conquest of Italy sowed the new art-seed in a fertile field, where it soon took ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... have your own lunacy in another phase, would laugh at mine. Celebes, Acapulco, Para, Port Royal, Cartagena, the Marquesas, Panama, the Mackenzie River, Tripoli of Barbary. They are some of mine. Rome should be there, I know, and Athens, and Byzantium. But they are not, and that is all I ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... bullets for stuffing with some incendiary composition, in fact bombs, were discovered by Dr. Keller in the Palafites or Crannogs of Switzerland; and the Hindu's Agni-Astar ("fire-weapon"), Agni-ban ("fire-arrow") and Shatagni ("hundred- killer"), like the Roman Phalarica, and the Greek fire of Byzantium, suggest explosives. Indeed, Dr. Oppert[FN184] accepts the statement of Flavius Philostratus that when Appolonius of Tyana, that grand semi-mythical figure, was travelling in India, he learned the reason why Alexander of Macedon desisted from attacking the Oxydracae who live between the Ganges ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... as mysterious powers; especially Apollo, the god of the sun, to whom in the year 308 he presented munificent gifts. Nay, so late as the year 321 he enjoined regular consultation of the soothsayers in public misfortunes, according to ancient heathen usage; even later, he placed his new residence, Byzantium, under the protection of the God of the Martyrs and the heathen goddess of Fortune; and down to the end of his life he retained the title and the dignity of a Pontifex Maximus, or high priest of the heathen hierarchy. His coins bore on the one side the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... mountains; in Italy, especially, they were great works of art, and connected all the provinces. There was an uninterrupted communication from the wall of Antoninus through York, London, Sandwich, Boulogne, Rheims, Lyons, Milan, Rome, Brundusium, Dyrrachium, Byzantium, Ancyra, Tarsus, Antioch, Tyre, Jerusalem,—a distance of thirty-seven hundred and forty miles; and these roads were divided by milestones, and houses for travellers erected upon them at points of every five or ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... that he was about to engage in a local and private war with his enemy Tissaphernes, Cyrus managed to gradually collect an army of about ten thousand Greeks whom Klearchus, an ex-governor of Byzantium, hired for him. These ten thousand were the real core of the expedition, though in addition a hundred thousand Asiatics were to form the bulk of it. With this force the young satrap believed that he could take Babylon and with it that title of Great King which he coveted. ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... Christian England. But the Roman, Greek, Syrian, and Egyptian act together from the earliest times; you are to study the influence of Rome upon England in Agricola, Constantius, St. Benedict, and St. Gregory; of Greece upon England in the artists of Byzantium and Ravenna; of Syria and Egypt upon England in St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Chrysostom, and ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... now call it, Constantinople, the city of Constantine, was built on the site of, and often called by the name of, Byzantium. It was not designed till A.C. 324, and was not dedicated till A.C. 330, or, as some think, an even later date: Constantine dying in the year ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... Christian religion had encouraged the erection of basilicas for Christian worship in Rome and Italy, effected a great political change, and one destined to exert a marked influence upon Christian architecture, when he removed the seat of empire from Rome to Byzantium, and called the new capital Constantinople,[29] after his own name. Byzantium had been an ancient place, but was almost in ruins when Constantine, probably attracted by the unrivalled advantages of its ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... revolutions that have accompanied the fall of the Greek empire in Byzantium, most of the inhabitants of Fanari, near Constantinople, boast of being descendants of the dethroned imperial families; a circumstance which is probable enough, and which nobody takes the trouble to dispute, any more ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various

... Constantinople years before that he had been deprived forcibly of his sight. He was a soldier, a statesman, and (as all good Doges were) a merchant, but he was humanly mindful of past injustices too. Hence perhaps much of his eagerness to turn aside for Byzantium. ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... of style in carving as well as building in medieval Europe took its origin. The first rudiments of the great school of art, which has been broadly classified as having a "Gothic" origin, began to make their appearance in Byzantium some three or four centuries after the birth of Christ. This city, said to have been founded by a colony of Greek emigrants, became the seat of Roman government in their eastern empire, and is now known as Constantinople: it contains a noted example of ancient art in ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack

... holding the prytany, and Heraclides being clerk, upon the motion of Timon the son of Timon the Eleusinian,[*] that"—and then in formal language it is proposed to increase the garrison of the allied city of Byzantium by 500 hired Arcadian mercenaries, since the king of Thrace is threatening that city, and its continued possession is absolutely essential to the free import ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... Holy Scriptures under the care of Eusebius of Caesarea. Tischendorf himself thinks—and his conjecture is accepted by other scholars—that this is one of those fifty Bibles, and that it was sent from Byzantium to the monks of this convent by the Emperor Justinian, who was its founder. At all events, it is incontestably a manuscript of great age, certainly of the fourth century, and probably of the ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... languages; and it was probably here too, that Constantine learned Armenian; for the introduction of several Armenian letters into the Slavic alphabet seems to prove, that this language was not unknown to him. When grown up, his parents sent him to Byzantium, where he ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... a word, Takfur, applied similarly by the Mahomedans to the Greek emperors of both Byzantium and Trebizond (and also to the Kings of Cilician Armenia), which was perhaps adopted as a jingling match to the former term; Faghfur, the great infidel king in the East; Takfur, the great infidel ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... A certain Theodotus, a native of Byzantium, introduced a novel heresy, saying some things concerning the origin of the universe partly in keeping with the doctrines of the true Church, in so far as he admits that all things were created by God. Forcibly appropriating, however, his idea of Christ from the Gnostics ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... of destruction to the end, as I have sworn to do by that Name which a Jew holds too sacred for speech. I believe myself to be the instrument of vengeance upon this generation, even as Joshua was upon Canaan, and as Khalid the Sword of God was upon Byzantium in the days of her corruption. You may hold this for an old man's fancy if you will, but it shall surely come to pass in the fulness of time, which is now at hand; and then, where I have destroyed, may you, if you will, build ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... on the 'Carpenter's Street,' very reasonably you will grant—only half a minae for the winter. I gave the stranger a fine pillow and a blanket embroidered by Stephanium, she was my great-aunt, and left it to me by will, and the beautiful red wool was from Byzantium—" ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... interminably far back, the tender and junior Buddha, Central and southern empires and all their belongings, possessors, The wars of Tamerlane,the reign of Aurungzebe, The traders, rulers, explorers, Moslems, Venetians, Byzantium, the Arabs, Portuguese, The first travelers famous yet, Marco Polo, Batouta the Moor, Doubts to be solv'd, the map incognita, blanks to be fill'd, The foot of man unstay'd, the hands never at rest, Thyself O soul that ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... power that has often swept away knowledge like a whirlwind. The Mussulman burns the library of a world, and forces the Koran and the sword from the schools of Byzantium to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... ride post near 400 miles as far as Gibraltar, where we embark for Melita and Byzantium. A letter to Malta will find me, or to be forwarded, if I am absent. Pray embrace the Drury and Dwyer, and all the Ephesians you encounter. I am writing with Butler's donative pencil, which makes my bad ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... otherwise idle and unprofitable. Most people laugh if a bald-pate or hump-back jeer and mock at others who are so too: it is quite as ridiculous to jeer and mock if one lies open to retort oneself, as Leo of Byzantium showed in his answer to the hump-back who jeered at him for weakness of eyes, "You twit me with an infirmity natural to man, while you yourself carry your Nemesis on your back."[515] And so do not abuse another as an adulterer, if you yourself are ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... system, at the head of which, in theory at least, were the Pope and the Kaiser. For the rest, the intercourse with the East gave Europe an opportunity of sharing in the mechanical civilization of the peoples originally dominated by the Arabs, and infused by the art of Byzantium and Persia, not without some tincture of the cultivation of the latter ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... which preceded the establishment of Byzantium as the capital of the Roman Empire by Constantine, the Greeks contributed to effect a mighty revolution of the whole frame of social life by the organisation which they gave to the Church from the moment they began to embrace the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... of the Egyptian city. We shall see, in a later chapter, that the Alexandrian influences were passed on to the Mohammedan conquerors, and every one is aware that when Alexandria was finally overthrown its place was taken by another Greek city, Byzantium or Constantinople. But that transfer did not occur until Alexandria had enjoyed a longer period of supremacy as an intellectual centre than had perhaps ever before been granted to any city, with the possible ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... yeares is ronne, The bands of th'elements shall backe reverse To their first discord, and be quite undonne; The seedes of which all things at first were bred Shall in great Chaos wombe againe be hid. [* Mear'd, bounded.] [** Byze, Byzantium.] ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... myself to your kindly favour, hoping that these may find you in health, as they leave me presently. I do you to wit, good mistress, that I have arrived safely, by the grace of our Lord, at Damascus, which is a very fair and rich city, and full of all manner of merchandise; and I have been by Byzantium, and have seen all the holy relics there kept; to wit, the cross of our Lord, and His coat, and the sponge and reed wherewith the heathen Jews ['Cursed be they!' interposed Friar Andrew] did give Him to drink, and more blessed relics else than I have the time to write of, the ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt

... emperors of the East, through Anne, wife of Henry I., King of France, and daughter of Iaroslaf, or Georges, King of Russia, whose father, the great Vladimir, married Anne, sister of Basilius, Emperor of Byzantium. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various

... enamelling metals appears to have been introduced from Byzantium through Venice into Western Europe at the close of the tenth century. After this time Greek artists are known to have visited this country, and to have carried on a lucrative trade in the manufacture of sacred vessels, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher

... who attended her sang carols, and presents were given |233| them in return. Kolyada is the name for Christmas and appears to be derived from Kalendae, which probably entered the Slavonic languages by way of Byzantium. The maiden is one of those beings who, like the Italian Befana, have taken their names from the ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... sanguine," continued Antonius, "for the emperor is beautifying and adding to Byzantium with eager haste. Whoever erects a new house has a yearly allowance of corn, and in order to attract folks of our stamp—of whom he cannot get enough—he promises entire exemption from taxation to all sculptors, architects, and even to skilled laborers. If we finish the blocks and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... we watched the West unfurl A cloud Byzantium newly born, With flickering spires and domes of pearl, And vapory surfs that crowd and curl Into the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... in Italy, so in India, the warlike strangers at length found it expedient to give to a domination which had been established by arms the sanction of law and ancient prescription. Theodoric thought it politic to obtain from the distant Court of Byzantium a commission appointing him ruler of Italy; and Clive, in the same manner, applied to the Court of Delhi for a formal grant of the powers of which he already possessed the reality. The Mogul was absolutely helpless; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the boundaries of Greece stretched far further than they do now, and it was upon the shores of the Bosphorus that Constantine built his new capital. There was already an ancient town there named Byzantium, but he transformed it into a new and splendid city. The Emperor willed it to be called New Rome, but instead the people called it the city of Constantine, and we know it now ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... of Byzantium, so widespread in its influence, was particularly strong in Venice, where mosaics adorned the cathedral of Torcello from the ninth century and St. Mark's became a splendid storehouse of Byzantine art. The earliest mosaic on the facade of St. Mark's was executed ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... event is the direct result of another; all events rather exert a mutual influence. It was by no means due only to the Greek scholars who emigrated to Europe after the fall of Byzantium that a love for Grecian culture and the desire to imitate it became so general among us; a similar Protestantism prevailed then in art as well as in life. Leo X., that splendid Medici, was as zealous a Protestant as Luther, and as there was a Latin prose protest in Wittenberg, so they protested ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... and progressive Catholic Empire in the west, the Arabs became recognised along with the Byzantines as the main successors of Greek culture. The science, the metaphysic, the abstract ideas of these centuries came into Germany, France, and Italy from Cordova and from Bagdad, as much as from Byzantium. And on questions like the South Atlantic or Indian Ocean, or the shape of Africa,—where Islam had all the field to itself, and there was no positive and earlier discovery which might contradict a natural reluctance to test tradition by experiment—Christendom ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... Christian art of the declining empire is divided into two great branches, western and eastern; one centred at Rome, the other at Byzantium, of which the one is the early Christian Romanesque, properly so called, and the other, carried to higher imaginative perfection by Greek workmen, is distinguished from it as Byzantine. But I wish the reader, for the present, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... strike at them in war was to aim at the vitals of an organism. Such were Thebes and Memphis in Egypt, Babylon and Nineveh in the Tigris-Euphrates valley, Carthage and Rome in the West. Such are Vienna and Berlin, Paris and London to-day. Lesser cities were centres of trade, like Corinth or Byzantium, or of culture, such as Athens. Such was Florence in the Middle Ages, and such are Liverpool and Leipzig to-day. The municipalities of the Roman Empire marked the climax of ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... Albinus, creating him Caesar. Of Niger, who was proud of having been invoked by the people, he had no hopes. Albinus on the supposition that he was going to share the empire with Severus remained where he was: Severus made all strategic points in Europe, save Byzantium, his own and hastened toward Rome. He did not venture outside a protecting circle of weapons, having selected his six hundred most valiant men in whose midst he passed his time day and night; these did not once put off their breastplates until ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... chose was the shore of the Bosphorus, where Asia and Europe are only divided by that narrow channel, and where the old Greek city of Byzantium already stood. From hence he hoped to be able to rule the East and the West. He enlarged the city with splendid buildings, made a palace there for himself, and called it after his own name—Constantinople, or New Rome, neither of which names has it ever lost. He carried many of the ornaments ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... ancient France; the barbarous Ottomans blended their equality with the refined civilisation of ancient Rome. Paris secured to the Jacobins those luxuries that their system never could have produced: Byzantium served the same purpose to the Turks. Both the French and their turbaned prototypes commenced their system with popular enthusiasm, and terminated it with general subjection. Napoleon and Louis Philippe are playing the same part as the Suleimans and the Mahmouds. The Chambers are but ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... Moslems advanced victoriously to Steiermark and Salzburg. The noblest prince of Europe at that time, the Roman King, fled from his capital before them; and St. Stephen in Vienna came near being turned into a mosque, like St. Sophia in Byzantium. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... becoming Christian or Medieval, whilst the Latin or Roman style was passing into Byzantine and Greek. Ammianus Marcellinus, the last of the Latin Pagan historians, was cotemporary with the events at the beginning of the period in question. Procopius, one of the last Pagan writers of Byzantium, died about the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... Senses. Imagination has a two-fold power. It visualizes and it creates. With clairvoyant ubiquity it floats and flows into the most recondite recesses, the most reluctant sanctuaries, of other men's souls. With clear-cut, architectural volition it builds up its own Byzantium, out of the quarried ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... Opera, may be passed over as comparative failures, but 'Esclarmonde' (1889) marks an important stage in Massenet's career. The libretto is drawn from an old French romance. Esclarmonde, the Princess of Byzantium, who is a powerful enchantress, loves Roland, the French knight, and commands her minion spirits to guide him to a distant island, whither she transports herself every night to enjoy his company. He betrays the secret of their love, and thereby loses Esclarmonde, but by ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... laid across the trade routes. The upper crust of people used to serve the Presence of God in a golden throne whilst their underlings dealt in human slaves and procured comely concubines for the emperor; their policemen took bribes and human life was cheap. And when Byzantium fell, all the world was forced to seek a new trade route. So tell His Excellency that he'd better clean up his own foul mess, or some barbarians will clean it ...
— History Repeats • George Oliver Smith

... of Kherson, then containing about sixty thousand inhabitants, surrounded by all the magnificence which Russian and Austrian opulence could exhibit. A triumphal arch spanned the gate, upon which was inscribed in letters of gold, "The road to Byzantium." Four days were passed here in revelry. The party then entered the Crimea, and continued their journey as far as Sevastopol, where the empress was delighted to find, within its capacious harbor, many Russian ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... own peculiar heritage and jurisdiction, of which the main resources for war and peace lay in Europe and (speaking by the narrowest terms) in Thrace. Henceforth, therefore, for the city and throne of Constantine, resuming its old Grecian name of Byzantium, there succeeded a theatre less diffusive, a population more concentrated, a character of action more determinate and jealous, a style of courtly ceremonial more elaborate as well as more haughtily repulsive, and universally a system of interests, as much more definite and selfish, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... pretence of pleading the cause of the orphan and widow. But what's the use of that, when every noisy and ambitious man shifts and shifts, from one see to another, till he settles himself close to Rome or Byzantium, and gets the emperor's ear, and plays into ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... laden with the mysterious centuries as with half barbaric jewels, weighed down with the ornaments of Byzantium, rigid, hieratic, constrained; and however you come to it, whether from Rimini by the lost and forgotten towns of Classis and Caesarea, or from Ferrara through all the bitter desolation of Comacchio, or across the endless marsh ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... shore is looked down upon by Port Athyras and Selymbria, and Constantinople, formerly called Byzantium, a colony of the Athenians, and Cape Ceras, having at its extremity a lofty tower to serve as a lighthouse to ships—from which cape also a very cold wind which often arises from that point ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... to build himself an Imperial city in the land which he loved, far from the scene of the tragedy. He laid its foundations in Byzantium and gave it the name of Constantinople, or the city of Constantine. Everything was done to make the new capital the most magnificent city in the world. Works of art were brought from afar, the most skillful ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes

... all the records of earlier learning, the followers of Mohammed zealously destroyed all the records of the olden days. Some of these records, however, survived among the Arabs of Spain, and others were preserved by the Christian scholars who dwelt in Byzantium, or Constantinople, and were brought into western Europe when that city was captured by the Turks in the ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... Egypt. The priests of the country laughed at the idle [624]story; and they had good reason: for the place was far prior to the people spoken of, and the name not of Grecian original. It is observable, that Stephanus of Byzantium gives the pilot another name, calling him, instead of Canobus, [Greek: Pharos], Pharus. His words are [Greek: Pharos ho Proreus Menalaou], which are scarce sense. I make no doubt, from the history of ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... the Lacedemonians,[304] having inadvertently killed Cleonice, a daughter of one of the first families of Byzantium, was tormented night and day by the ghost of that maiden, who left him no repose, repeating to him angrily a heroic verse, the sense of which was, Go before the tribunal of justice, which punishes crime and awaits thee. Insolence is in the end ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... it is called Baliar Loth, or Al-motanah. There were undoubtedly more than two cities engulphed in the "dead sea." In the valley of Siddim were five—Adrah, Zeboin, Zoar, Sodom and Gomorrah. Stephen of Byzantium mentions eight, and Strabo thirteen (engulphed) —but the last is out of all reason. It is said (Tacitus, Strabo, Josephus, Daniel of St. Saba, Nau, Maundrell, Troilo, D'Arvieux), that after an excessive drought, the vestiges of columns, walls, etc., are seen above the surface. ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... infinite tact, attempting to, might have drawn charming pictures of the life of his day; Lord Byron in a stanza of Don Juan, aiming at the impossible, might have achieved the sublime; Oscar Wilde, heaping jewels of Ispahan upon brocades of Byzantium, might have created a troubling beauty. Considering it, the mind reeled under visions of the feasts of Elagabalus; and the subtle harmonies of Debussy mingled with the musty, fragrant romance of chests in which ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... haven't decided yet what port to run for. There's no hurry. I have an uncle in the Northwest in the lumber business, who would give me a chance. I may go out there and look about awhile at first. If it doesn't promise much, there is the law to fall back upon. My father has a fruit farm at Byzantium in western New York,—where I come from, you know,—and he is part owner of the Byzantium weekly 'Bugle.' I've no doubt I could get on as editor, and go to the Legislature. Or I might do worse than begin on the farm; farming is looking up in that section. I may ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... leaving a one-eyed man to every hundred to lead them to their tsar, who fainted at the sight and died two days later. The last sparks of resistance were extinguished in 1018, and the great Slavonic realm lay in the dust. The power of Byzantium controlled once more the Illyrian peninsula. Basil died in December 1025 in the midst of preparations to send a naval expedition to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... magnificent panorama cannot be found in any part of the world. It was that splendid view which was the cause of the fall of the Roman, and of the rise of the Greek empire. Constantine the Great, arriving at Byzantium by sea, was so much struck with the wonderful beauty of its position, that he exclaimed, "Here is the proper seat of the empire of the whole world!" and in order to secure the fulfilment of his prediction, he left Rome for ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... taken as a convenient starting point for the Renaissance, though the movement was already at work in Italy, for that was the year of Byzantium's fall and of the diffusion of the classics over Europe. But, for the countries outside Italy, I think that the date 1493 is almost as important. Hitherto the new learning had been in a great measure ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... of the word Byzantium, a town founded by Megariaus in the seventh century B.C. When Constantine founded the city to which he gave his own name, Byzantium, lying east of it, was included within the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... Turkish corsairs, with Greeks, and with Algerines; they had sailed their fleets through Northern seas to face the English pirates, and, on one occasion, at the entrance of the Bosphorus, their galleys had rammed the vessels of Genoese merchants who were trying to monopolize the commerce of Byzantium. Finally, this family of soldiers of the sea, on retiring from maritime commerce, had rendered tribute of blood in the defense of Christian kingdoms and the Catholic faith by enlisting some of its scions in the holy Order of the Knights of Malta. The second sons of ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... in Bithynia, situated at the entrance of the Bosphorus and nearly opposite Byzantium. It was one of the most important towns in Asia Minor. Doubtless Hyperbolus only demanded so large a fleet to terrorize the towns ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... returned to the East, Carrying captive a Gothic king. The cities of the conquered land were garrisoned by barbarians of many tongues, who bore the name of Roman soldiers; the Italian people, brought low by slaughter, dearth, and plague, crouched under the rapacious tyranny of governors from Byzantium. ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... semblance to sane humanity, roaring and squeaking through the public press. There it stands, this incomprehensible faded show, a thing left on one side, and now still and deserted by any interest, its many emptinesses as inexplicable now as the cruelties of medieval Venice, the theology of old Byzantium. And they ruled and influenced the lives of nearly a quarter of mankind, these politicians, their clownish conflicts swayed the world, made mirth perhaps, made excitement, ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... made Byzantium the seat of his empire, he decorated that city with splendid edifices, and called it after his own name. Desirous to make reparation to the Christians for the injuries they had suffered during the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... written against me wherein I was taxed with treachery, fraud, indecency, and even hideous crimes. Such, my young friend—such are the flowers with which the glorious path of scholarship is strewed! But tell me, then: I have learned much concerning Byzantium and Thessalonica long ago from Demetrio Calcondila, who has but lately departed from Florence; but you, it seems, have ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... named in the Eastern Archipelago—'dittany' from the mountain Dicte, in Crete— 'parchment' from Pergamum—'majolica' from Majorca—'faience' from the town named in Italian Faenza. A little town in Essex gave its name to the 'tilbury'; another, in Bavaria, to the 'landau.' The 'bezant' is a coin of Byzantium; the 'guinea' was originally coined (in 1663) of gold brought from the African coast so called; the pound 'sterling' was a certain weight of bullion according to the standard of the Easterlings, or Eastern merchants from the Hanse Towns ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... to his old Asian seat, From this usurped, unnatural throne, The Turk is driven, 'tis surely meet That we again should hold our own; Be but Byzantium's native sign Of Cross on Crescent[5] once unfurled, And Greece shall guard by right divine The portals of ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... my feeble age, I dared the battle's rage, To save Byzantium's state, When the tents of Zabergan, Like snow-drifts overran The road to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... the banks of the Seine these trophies won on the banks of the Nile; to hang beneath the domes of our temples, beside the flags of Vienna, of Petersburg, of London, the banners blessed in the mosques of Byzantium and Cairo; to see them here, presented by the same warriors, young in years, old in glory, whom Victory has so often crowned—these things are granted ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... over-refinement of Roman decay, Constantine did something more than merely turn the conquering eagle back, against the course of the heavens, for which Dante seems to blame him,[2] when he established his capital at Byzantium; for there at once upon the new soil, and in less than a single century, sprang to life again all the natural modes of building and decoration that, despised as barbaric, had been ignored and forgotten amid the ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... power. Naturally and necessarily the Pope, already like other bishops a functionary charged with important secular duties, took upon himself the protection and government of Rome and the surrounding duchy, when the rulers of Byzantium shook off these unprofitable responsibilities. Naturally and excusably he claimed, over his vast Italian estates, the powers of jurisdiction which every landowner was assuming as a measure of self-defence against oppression or unbridled anarchy. In the time of Pepin the Short ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... increasing in strength. Rome fell quickly into the hands of the barbarians, and her power was broken. In A.D. 395, was founded the Byzantine Empire, also styled the East Roman, Greek, or Lower Empire, which lasted for more than a thousand years, and took its name from the capital, Byzantium or Constantinople. In this empire medical science maintained a feeble and sickly existence. During this Byzantine Period there were a few physicians of note, but they were mainly commentators, and medical science retrograded ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... the times to come, but would rather be without it in his own day. In his dialogue on fortune and misfortune, the interlocutor, who maintains the futility of glory, has the best of the contest. But, at the same time, Petrarch is pleased that the autocrat of Byzantium knows him as well by his writings as Charles IV knows him. And in fact, even in his lifetime, his fame extended far beyond Italy. And the emotion which he felt was natural when his friends, on the occasion of a visit to his native ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... ride in the most perfect security." He fixed upon a cove "which I honoured with the name of Sydney." and decided that that was there he would "plant." Every writer of mediaeval history who has had occasion to refer to the choice by Constantine the Great of Byzantium, afterwards Constantinople, as his capital, has extolled his judgment and prescience. Constantine was an Emperor, and could do as he would. Arthur Phillip was an official acting under orders. We can never sufficiently admire the wisdom he displayed ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott

... bourgeois and a Catholic, gave his blessing as an artist to a detailed description of the decadence of the Greeks. There were enthusiastic praises of novels in which the course of Lewdness was followed through the ages: Rome, Alexandria, Byzantium, the Italian and French Renaissance, the Age of Greatness ... Nothing was omitted. Another cycle of studies was devoted to the various countries of the world: conscientious writers had devoted their energies, with a monkish patience, to the study ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... the other two gates are placed the four famous horses of gilt bronze, brought from St. Mark's place at Venice, whither they had been carried after the capture of Byzantium. These productions are generally ascribed to the celebrated Lysippus, who flourished in the reign of Alexander the Great, about 325 years before the christian era; though this opinion is questioned by some distguished antiquaries and artists. Whoever may be the sculptor, their destiny is of a nature ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... only the best materials that could be found in our country or that of other lands were employed, and that the art that was used on them was the best that could be learnt or given. The original fabrics often came from Byzantium ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... from Plutarch: "It is related that when Pausanias was at Byzantium, he cast his eyes upon a young virgin named Cleonice, of a noble family there, and insisted on having her for a mistress. The parents, intimidated by his power, were under the hard necessity of giving up their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... study of jurisprudence was so enormous that there were schools of law in every part of the Empire, even in the very domain of Metaphysics. But, though the transfer of the seat of empire to Byzantium gave a perceptible impetus to its cultivation in the East, jurisprudence never dethroned the pursuits which there competed with it. Its language was Latin, an exotic dialect in the Eastern half of the Empire. It is only of the West that we ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... which still exist are of white limestone. Letronne, after having asserted in his youth (Recherches sur Dicuil, p. 107), on the authority of a fragment attributed to Philo of Byzantium, that the facing was formed of polychromatic zones of granite, of green breccia and other different kinds of stone, renounced this view owing to the evidence of Vyse. Perrot and Chipiez have ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the only absolute law. Hence Russian autocracy is forced into repeated wars for the possession of Constantinople which, in the present condition of the Empire, would be an unmitigated evil to her and would be only too glad to see a Principality of Byzantium placed under the united protection of the European Powers. I have treated of this in my paper on the "Partition of Turkey," which first appeared, headed the "Future of Turkey," in the Daily Telegraph, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... born at Amida in Mesopotamia, flourished at the beginning of the 6th century A.D. He studied at Alexandria, and became court physician at Byzantium and comes obsequii, one of the chief officers of the imperial household. He wrote a large medical work in sixteen books, founded on Oribasius and compiled from various sources, especially Galen [Galenos]. Superstition ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... outwardly, but set to work to make all preparations for taking prompt vengeance upon the Roumis,—an appellation which shows the lasting terror attaching to the name of the Romans, and commonly used at this time upon the Malabar coast, for all Mussulman soldiers coming from Byzantium. With nineteen sail Almeida appeared before the fort where his son had been killed, and gained a great victory, but one sullied, it must be confessed, by most frightful cruelties, so much so that it soon became a common saying: "May the anger of the Franks fall upon thee as ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... began in Byzantium, gradually grew, and formed itself into the Gothic,[62] which in time overcame the general ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... blinded by a brother's vengeance, dragged out years of utter misery in pain and darkness, until the Emperor of the East, suzerain of Amalfi, at last took compassion upon the prisoner's wretched plight and allowed him to be removed into honourable confinement at Byzantium. For many hundreds of years the Isles of the Sirens have lain untenanted, nor are they visited nowadays save by a few inquisitive travellers or by the fishermen of the Scaricotojo, who find safe shelter under their ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... Bosporus (a sort of broad river which connects the Marmora and Black Seas,) and, curving around, divides the city in the middle. Galata and Pera are on one side of the Bosporus, and the Golden Horn; Stamboul (ancient Byzantium) is upon the other. On the other bank of the Bosporus is Scutari and other suburbs of Constantinople. This great city contains a million inhabitants, but so narrow are its streets, and so crowded together are its houses, that it does not cover much more than half ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... illuminated the place. The gold frames of the pictures reflected it dully; the massive organ pipes, just outlined in faint blurs of light, towered far into the gloom above. The whole place, with its half-seen gorgeous hangings, its darkened magnificence, was like a huge, dim interior of Byzantium. ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... gallery of the stock-market, a vast and various collection exhaustive of the whole field of allegory, mythological and technical, and framed in the most bewitching aureoles of blue, red and green printer's ink. It seemed in '72 much more probable that the Coon Swamp and Byzantium Trans-Continental Railway would be able, the year after completion, to pay eight per cent. on fifty thousand dollars of bonds to the mile, sold at seventy in the hundred, than it did in '75 that ten millions of fifty-cent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... Enver Pasha, paced along the long German and Turkish fronts. Then he led forth his forty-four men and marched, amid new ovations, all through Stamboul, across the great bridge to Galata, to the deck of the steamship General, at the head of his little band, now grown epic, amid the cheers of Byzantium, on which he and his officers had never set foot before—always in the clear blue and sunlight of this ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various



Words linked to "Byzantium" :   Byzantine Empire, Roman Empire, Byzantine, geographic area, geographical area, metropolis



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