The Roman world in the second century was remarkably homogeneous,
and the ties that bound it together remarkably thick and apparently
strong. But what happened when the western half went its own way,
when imperial territories were limited to bits of Asia Minor and the
Balkans, when the construction of new monumental buildings had
slowed to a trickle or stopped entirely, when the epigraphic habit had
died? How did political communication work in the Roman empire
of the Middle Ages that we know as Byzantium? The answer requires
conjuring up a picture of people on the move; of soldiers, priests, students,
pilgrims, appellants, merchants, tax collectors, administrators,
painters, and builders. And it requires thinking about the messages
they received and passed on. Placing the Byzantine experience in
comparative perspective to Song China, this chapter surveys the
evidence of Byzantine political communication to investigate both
the means of transmitting news and orders as well as the underlying
networks of shared discourse and identity. It shows that the survival
of the Byzantine state depended largely on its ability to create an
imagined community as the nation-state of the Romans. The decline
of Byzantium and the rise of Muslim identities in its former territories
can thus be linked to a failure to maintain effective long-distance
communication networks that projected a ‘Roman’ narrative across
the entirety of the empire.
Beyond Neurons: Long Distance Communication in Development and Cancer
