Word: byzantium
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Russian centres of Alma Ata and Sergiopol, on Russia's new Turk-Sib railroad. Over this Silk Road, then called the Imperial Highway, some 2,000 years ago camel caravans, loaded with silk, jade and lacquer, plodded their way to Samarkand, where the goods were shipped to Byzantium, Tyre, Rome. Seven centuries ago Marco Polo pushed his way down the Silk Road from the West to reach the court of Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan, and gazed upon a civilization which surpassed that of his native Venice. Year ago 700,000 coolies with new China fervor and old China tools...
...another section tried to trespass on its territory. They littered the narrow streets with their droppings, were eternally underfoot, made the night loud with their yapping. But it was part of the Turks' religion to be kind to animals, and the dogs had been there since Constantinople was Byzantium...
...back in the Tower before a warm fire the Vagabond pores over the travels of that wily Spanish knight, Pero Tafur, who saw the corruption and all the false show of Byzantium eighteen years before it was taken. It was not the glittering, splendid luxury which dazzled the minds of the West...
...knows just where the Colossus of Rhodes stood, that great bronze statue once spanning the harbor mouth which was one of Philo of Byzantium's Seven Wonders of the World. It was built by Charles of Lindus in 280 B. c., crashed in an earthquake 56 years later. For 880 years bronze fragments of it littered the harbor of Rhodes. Finally in 656 A. D. the tidy Saracens after capturing the island sold the remnants to a junk dealer, who carted them away on 900 camels...
...portraits of the great folk at the courts of Ferrara, Mantua, and Milan. Although small in scale, through the accuracy of modelling and characterization, they partake of the qualities of monumental works of art. One is apt to remember the sharp profile of Paleologus in the fantastic dress of Byzantium, the appropriately gentle likeness of Cecilia Gonzaga, and the strangely fascinating head of Leonello d'Este. We may see side by side the first proofs in lead and the later casts in bronze, in every case chased by the master's own hand...