The Splendid Corpse of Byzantium

Today, the very name of Byzantium is known to many readers only thanks to W.B. Yeats, who used it as a blank canvas on which to project his poetic fantasies.

The title of "Sailing From Byzantium" (Delacorte, 336 pages, $22), Colin Wells's smart and accessible new history, pays homage to Yeats's famous poem, "Sailing to Byzantium," which makes "the holy city" a metaphor for the eternal realm of art:

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

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