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Phantom Byzantium

Europe, Empire, and Identity from Late Antiquity to World War II

Anthony Kaldellis

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English
University of Chicago Press
10 April 2026
How the West appropriated aspects of the eastern Roman empire while portraying it as inferior.

Unveiling the ideological foundations of Byzantine studies, Phantom Byzantium is a pioneering survey of western European perceptions of the eastern Roman empire (also known as Byzantium) spanning late antiquity to World War II. Through ten chronological chapters, Anthony Kaldellis makes the case that western Europe gradually formed its identity by adopting prestigious cultural elements from the eastern empire but simultaneously portraying the east as inferior. The West modeled its Roman imperial style on Constantinople while minimizing the latter as Greek rather than Roman; appropriated a host of Christian traditions from the east while casting the east as schismatic, heretical, or treacherous; and, during the Renaissance, used classical Hellenic philology from Greek scholars before marginalizing them as unworthy bearers of that tradition. This orientalizing impulse worked to buttress western exceptionalism and resulted in the fictitious construction of ""Byzantium"" as Europe's evil doppelgänger, embodying the worst versions of traditions fundamental to European identity and casting the region as despotic, superstitious, and degenerate.

Explaining the creation, history, and functions of the ideological construct of Byzantium in the western imagination and European self-fashioning, this book has critical implications for contemporary views of European history.
By:  
Imprint:   University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm,  Spine: 23mm
Weight:   481g
ISBN:   9780226847139
ISBN 10:   0226847136
Pages:   240
Publication Date:  
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Further / Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Anthony Kaldellis is professor of classics at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium, and he is the host of the podcast Byzantium & Friends.  

Reviews for Phantom Byzantium: Europe, Empire, and Identity from Late Antiquity to World War II

“Once again, Kaldellis has forced us to rethink much of what we thought we knew—in this case, the millennium-long role of Western Europe in the concept of ‘Byzantium.’ Kaldellis demonstrates that ‘Byzantium’ was a project of European self-fashioning, a way for Western elites to claim for themselves the Hellenistic, Roman, and Christian past while denying those same legacies to the peoples we call the Byzantines. This is an innovative but accessible study that showcases a scholar with an extraordinary command of the sources.” -- George E. Demacopoulos, Fordham University “With his important and extremely exciting Phantom Byzantium, Kaldellis continues to redefine the field of Byzantine Studies. Kaldellis builds admirably on his project to provide a comprehensive critique of the centuries-long denial of the Roman identity belonging to the people modern scholars call Byzantines. He explores how western European superiority, notions of imperialism, and racism came together in the early twentieth century to create peculiarly dismissive attitudes among Byzantinists toward the texts, artworks, and people they study.” -- Edward Watts, University of California San Diego


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