英语听力：Byzantium-The Lost Empire 拜占庭：失落的帝国-11（在线收听） |
But Simon was a nutter. Simon had tremendous presence like an emperor. He sat still and silent, and in his contest between flesh and the devil, it seemed to most people, that he was beyond touch. And there he was, on his pillar, half way between heaven and earth, a perfect man to settle disputes. So they used Simon. The farmers of Syria would come here when they were in arguments, and he would settle one against the other. The Bedouin, the Arab Bedouin came to see him, too. The emperor used to come to see him. And always he acted as a balance in society, such a terrifying balance that if he cursed somebody from the top of his pillar, a rock would explode next to the unfortunate individual. So Simon, it was a vital element in this new Christian Empire, an element which somehow had taken the old stern order of Roman Age and left it half way between Heaven and Earth. In the eastern Mediterranean, in the warm heartland of the pagan world, the first Christian Empire, the Empire of Byzantium, found its balance. It was a good life, a rich life, and there was peace in plenty.
You know, it always strikes me as funny when people talk about the fall of the Roman Empire. After all, standing here in Constantinople, it just got richer and richer and richer, didn’t fall at all. I suppose really it’s because Rome fell, in fact Rome didn’t fall, it just got poor. Constantine had moved the capital from the great old cities in the west to here in the east. And with him moved the government, the generals, the artists, and the architects, everybody who made the empire moved with him. So in 475, that’s 25 years after these walls were finished, the last Roman Emperor of the West, a young man, a junior Emperor, sent the crown back here to Constantinople to new Rome. This was a new city.
Now I suppose really, the story about the fall of the Roman Empire, that’s the western Empire, was really invented in the Renaissance by the popes, who really wanted to get the idea of a pagan empire falling and a Christian empire of the west rising. There are good propagandas like Raphael and Michelangelo to buzz on their way. But the truth is, the real truth is, that old Rome, ancient Rome, had been modeled on the great cities of the east, on Antioch and Alexandria, world’s great marvel cities. So when you say Rome fell, it didn’t fall at all, it simply went back home again.
After the last emperor of the west resigned, Byzantium lost most of its European provinces. Only for a century then, by the year 555, brand new Byzantine armies had ruthlessly reconquered some of them. And in northern Italy of Ravenna, they left triumphant decorations in this church as their memorial.
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| 原文地址：http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/wenhuabolan/2008/340490.html |