Justin asks how Athens fared during the Byzantine period.
To put it bluntly, Constantinople’s gain was every other prestigious
city’s loss. Constantine and his immediate successors looted Athens of
much of its impressive works of art, including the famous statue of
Athena that graced the Parthenon. This, combined with an exodus of
talent (the action was clearly in Constantinople) reduced the city to a
shell of itself. The deathblow, however, was Justinian’s closing of the
Academy which ended its one remaining attraction as a university town.
In 580 invading Slavs burned the lower city and (in a demonstration of
how little importance was now attached to the place) it took the empire a
decade to rebuild.
It was probably around this time that the Parthenon was converted
into a church. Roman emperors had started making pronouncements in the
4th century to convert all pagan buildings to Christian ones, but these
edicts had been largely ignored in the backwater parts of the empire.
And Athens was by now a true backwater. Its economy was almost purely
agricultural with one or two ‘aristocratic‘ families hanging on, and for
the next two centuries it was a sad, little village huddled around the
Acropolis. The low point was the early 7th century when Heraclius
reorganized the empire along military lines. Needing a capital for the
province of Greece (Hellas), he bypassed Athens completely and chose
Thebes- a move which would have appalled any ancient Greek who fought at
the battle of Plataea.
But the 7th century also saw the city’s fortunes begin to recover. A
sign of this was that fact that Heraclius’ grandson Constans II (who
knew his Herodotus) spent the winter of 662 there on his way to Sicily.
He was on the search for a new capital- the last Roman emperor to
seriously consider moving back into the west. (He was attracted by the
virtual impregnability of the walled Acropolis) There were also
emerging signs of intellectual life. Theodore of Tarsus (who would be
Archbishop of Canterbury from 669-690) studied there, and Athens became a
haven for monks fleeing Iconoclastic persecution (thanks to the
availability of caves in nearby Mt. Penteli). The late 8th and early
9th centuries saw two Athenian women (Irene and Theophano) become
empresses- with one (Irene) even ruling as emperor.
By the end of the 9th century the population had expanded enough to
make Athens a true city again. The local bishop was promoted to
Metropolitan, and the city was finally made the seat of the Theme
(province) of Hellas. (You can see a vestige of this period on the
Acropolis today- one of the columns of the Parthenon has a carving
recording the death of the strategos (governor) Leo in 848) The next
three centuries saw a sustained period of growth- the ‘golden age’ of
Byzantine Athens. A tzykanion field was installed (an aristocratic game
related to polo), and Athenian merchants grew wealthy selling purple
dye and soaps. In 1018 Basil the Bulgar-Slayer visited specifically to
visit the Parthenon church. His presence (he may have cleared the ruins
of the nearby Daphne monastery and begun to build the magnificent dome
visible today) kicked off a rash of church building- most of the
surviving Byzantine buildings (Church of the Holy Apostles in the Agora,
Panaghia Kapnikarea, etc) date from this period.
The new wealth and prestige (and general isolation from the troubles
besetting the rest of the empire) led to feelings of independence. They
rose against the central government of Michael IV in the 11th century
and were brutally suppressed by an imperial army led by the Norse
adventurer Harald Hardrada. The city physically recovered quickly (a
12th century Arab traveler reported that it was well populated and
surrounded by rich country), but couldn’t escape the wider Byzantine
decline. Roger II of Sicily sacked it in 1147, and the new governor
sent in 1182 complained that it was filled with ‘uncivilized hordes
whose boorish accents took 3 years to learn’. In 1204 came the ultimate
humiliation when it was seized by crusaders. For the next 250 years it
was ruled successively by the French, Catalans, and Florentines. The
Athenians referred to the period of French and Catalan domination as the
‘ultimate slavery’ and things got so bad that Greek had to be
reintroduced in 1387. The Byzantines never regained control.
As for the Parthenon, it weathered the ages gracefully. The large
statue of Athena was probably removed to Constantinople in the third
century where it was set up in one of the public squares. In 360 it was
restored by Julian the Apostate in his quest to revive paganism and
probably remained a temple for some time after Theodosius’ decree of 379
which made Christianity the sole legal religion of the empire. As a
church, the Parthenon attracted both famous pilgrims and the donation of
relics. Outside of Constantinople, it probably had the most impressive
collection in the empire. (including a painting of Mary done by St.
Luke which gave the church its name, and a copy of the gospels written
on vellum by St. Helena) The 13th century Italian sightseer Niccolo da
Martoni left a breathless description- the magnificent marble carvings,
glittering mosaics, massive columns, and the seemingly endless
reliquaries. He also repeats a story (smacking of that time honored
tradition of local guide yarns) about the doors being made of the wood
from the gates of Troy.
Interestingly enough, the Parthenon was a church for longer than it
was a pagan temple, since it survived as such until the Turkish
occupation of Athens in 1456. As for the famous statue of Athena, that
lasted almost as long. It stood in Constantinople for almost a thousand
years until 1204. As the crusading army gathered outside the walls a
superstitious mob converged on the square where it was kept. Since the
statue happened to be facing the West it was blamed for attracting these
western barbarians and destroyed.
That of course, was only the beginning of the destruction.
