title: People and Power in Byzantium: An Introduction to Modern Byzantine Studies (Dumbarton Oaks Other Titles in Byzantine Studies)
author: Alexander Kazhdan
description: An important contribution to the historical literature on the Byzantine empire. This book will whet the appetite of non-specialists to find out more about Byzantine society and Kazhdan has provided useful guidance on where to look. (<i>American Historical Review and the Journal of Hellenic Studies</i>)
zlib_text: This is an extract from:
  Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 55
  © 2002 Dumbarton Oaks
  Trustees for Harvard University
  Washington, D.C.
  Printed in the United States of America
  Published by
  Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
  Washington, D.C.
  www.doaks.org/etexts.html
  Issue year 2001
  Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot
  
  Death in Byzantium
  GEORGE T. DENNIS
  F
  or the Byzantines, as for us, the sun rises each morning and sets each evening. But
  they also believed that there would come one day, for each individual as well as for
  the whole of creation, which would not have an evening—the day without an evening,
  hJ ajne´spero" hJme´ra.1 And this may help us understand how the Byzantine people looked
  upon what we call death.
  There is one way in which we enter this world, but many ways in which we leave it.
  In reﬂecting on the deaths of emperors, Niketas Choniates observed that God does not
  like to direct human affairs in the same manner all the time but prefers some variety.2
  Thus one ruler is drowned, a