ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the importance of including interactions between philosophical and legal traditions in sixth-century Byzantium and beyond when attempting to understand both continuity and change in concepts of ideal rulership in Byzantine civilization. It also discusses the visual depictions of the emperor, both martial and non-martial, across a range of visual mediums. The book examines the continuing allure of the prejudicial Roman/barbarian binarism in the Age of Justinian. It examines how two different non-Roman historians represented the past to their peoples, the Gothic historian Jordanes’ sixth-century work, the Getica, and the eighth-century Lombard historian Paul the Deacons’ History of the Lombards. Scholars have become increasingly aware that the rubric, “Byzantium” is largely a construct of later western European sources. “Roman” and “Greek” were only two of many markers of identity in Byzantium.
