Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium.

Episode 122.

Questions 5

Today the whole episode is dedicated to your 9th century questions about Byzantium.

But we've had so many come in that I'll have to deal with some next time in our recap

and preview episode.

Anyway, let's get cracking.

We've talked a lot about the state and the office holders which it employed and on

that topic, listener S asks whether the civil, military and religious bureaucracies represented

a deep state.

Uncapable of surviving even a violent regime change with a minimum of disruption to the

daily business of life.

I think that's a very perceptive question and largely I would say yes.

While the Romans hadn't developed a formal exam system as existed in China, there was,

as you know, a limited but very widely accepted education system.

And this was the one which taught Homer and Euripides and Aristophanes and various other

great authors.

It emphasized proper Greek and how to master rhetoric.

You would also learn scripture and those who pursued an ecclesiastical career had many

works by the Church fathers to read.

That syllabus of acceptable literature meant that men of the middle and upper classes

would all speak the same language as it were.

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