The Beauty of the Purple
(1924)A romance of imperial Constantinople twelve centuries ago
A novel by William Stearns Davis
"The Beauty of the Purple: A Romance of Imperial Constantinople Twelve Centuries Ago" by American historian and author William Stearns Davis is a historical novel about the Byzantine Emperor Leo III (685 - 741), his humble origin, his astonishing rise to high command and then to Empire, of his battles by land and sea against the Saracens and of the unexpected discovery and terrific use of "Greek Fire" in the great siege of Constantinople.
This romance attempts to show forth something of the brilliancy, magnificence and teeming life of Christian Constantinople in an age when London and Paris were little better than squalid villages. It also tries to tell the story of the rise and the mighty deeds of Leo the Isaurian, that peasant youth who saved Constantinople and the Later Roman Empire from the Saracens, and thereby postponed for seven hundred years the extension of Moslem supremacy in the Near East. Historians are now well agreed that by his victorious defence of "New Rome" in 717-718 A.D., far more than by the repulse of the Saracen raiders by Karl Martel at Tours fifteen years later, Christian civilization was rescued from Islam, and that it did not come to pass (to quote Gibbon's famous words) that "the interpretation of the Koran was taught at Oxford, nor did her pulpits demonstrate the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mohammed."
Genre: Historical
This romance attempts to show forth something of the brilliancy, magnificence and teeming life of Christian Constantinople in an age when London and Paris were little better than squalid villages. It also tries to tell the story of the rise and the mighty deeds of Leo the Isaurian, that peasant youth who saved Constantinople and the Later Roman Empire from the Saracens, and thereby postponed for seven hundred years the extension of Moslem supremacy in the Near East. Historians are now well agreed that by his victorious defence of "New Rome" in 717-718 A.D., far more than by the repulse of the Saracen raiders by Karl Martel at Tours fifteen years later, Christian civilization was rescued from Islam, and that it did not come to pass (to quote Gibbon's famous words) that "the interpretation of the Koran was taught at Oxford, nor did her pulpits demonstrate the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mohammed."
Genre: Historical
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