seangabb
Published 21 Jan 2022In this, the fifth lecture in the series, Sean Gabb discusses the progressive collapse of Byzantium between the middle years of Justinian and the unexpected but sterile victory over the Persian Empire.
Between 330 AD and 1453, Constantinople (modern Istanbul) was the capital of the Roman Empire, otherwise known as the Later Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Mediaeval Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire. For most of this time, it was the largest and richest city in Christendom. The territories of which it was the central capital enjoyed better protections of life, liberty and property, and a higher standard of living, than any other Christian territory, and usually compared favourably with the neighbouring and rival Islamic empires.
The purpose of this course is to give an overview of Byzantine history, from the refoundation of the City by Constantine the Great to its final capture by the Turks.
Here is a series of lectures given by Sean Gabb in late 2021, in which he discusses and tries to explain the history of Byzantium. For reasons of politeness and data protection, all student contributions have been removed.
(more…)
September 29, 2022
The Byzantine Empire: Part 5 – The Death of Roman Byzantium, 568-628 AD
September 20, 2022
The Byzantine Empire: Part 4 – Justinian, The Hand of God
seangabb
Published 1 Jan 2022Between 330 AD and 1453, Constantinople (modern Istanbul) was the capital of the Roman Empire, otherwise known as the Later Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Mediaeval Roman Empire, or The Byzantine Empire. For most of this time, it was the largest and richest city in Christendom. The territories of which it was the central capital enjoyed better protections of life, liberty and property, and a higher standard of living, than any other Christian territory, and usually compared favourably with the neighbouring and rival Islamic empires.
The purpose of this course is to give an overview of Byzantine history, from the refoundation of the City by Constantine the Great to its final capture by the Turks.
Here is a series of lectures given by Sean Gabb in late 2021, in which he discusses and tries to explain the history of Byzantium. For reasons of politeness and data protection, all student contributions have been removed.
(more…)
September 16, 2022
The Byzantine Empire: Part 3 – The Age of Justinian – Cashing in the Gains of the Fifth Century
seangabb
Published 7 Dec 2022Between 330 AD and 1453, Constantinople (modern Istanbul) was the capital of the Roman Empire, otherwise known as the Later Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Mediaeval Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire. For most of this time, it was the largest and richest city in Christendom. The territories of which it was the central capital enjoyed better protections of life, liberty and property, and a higher standard of living, than any other Christian territory, and usually compared favourably with the neighbouring and rival Islamic empires.
The purpose of this course is to give an overview of Byzantine history, from the refoundation of the City by Constantine the Great to its final capture by the Turks.
Here is a series of lectures given by Sean Gabb in late 2021, in which he discusses and tries to explain the history of Byzantium. For reasons of politeness and data protection, all student contributions have been removed.
(more…)
September 9, 2022
The Byzantine Empire: Part 2 – Survival and Growth
seangabb
Published 15 Oct 2021Between 330 AD and 1453, Constantinople (modern Istanbul) was the capital of the Roman Empire, otherwise known as the Later Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Mediaeval Roman Empire, or The Byzantine Empire. For most of this time, it was the largest and richest city in Christendom. The territories of which it was the central capital enjoyed better protections of life, liberty and property, and a higher standard of living, than any other Christian territory, and usually compared favourably with the neighbouring and rival Islamic empires.
The purpose of this course is to give an overview of Byzantine history, from the refoundation of the City by Constantine the Great to its final capture by the Turks.
Here is a series of lectures given by Sean Gabb in late 2021, in which he discusses and tries to explain the history of Byzantium. For reasons of politeness and data protection, all student contributions have been removed.
(more…)
September 3, 2022
The Byzantine Empire: Part 1 – Beginnings
seangabb
Published 1 Oct 2021Between 330 AD and 1453, Constantinople (modern Istanbul) was the capital of the Roman Empire, otherwise known as the Later Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Mediaeval Roman Empire, or The Byzantine Empire. For most of this time, it was the largest and richest city in Christendom. The territories of which it was the central capital enjoyed better protections of life, liberty and property, and a higher standard of living, than any other Christian territory, and usually compared favourably with the neighbouring and rival Islamic empires.
The purpose of this course is to give an overview of Byzantine history, from the refoundation of the City by Constantine the Great to its final capture by the Turks.
Here is a series of lectures given by Sean Gabb in late 2021, in which he discusses and tries to explain the history of Byzantium. For reasons of politeness and data protection, all student contributions have been removed.
(more…)
August 30, 2022
Barbarian Europe: Part 10 – The Vikings and the End of the Invasions
seangabb
Published 5 Sep 2021In 400 AD, the Roman Empire covered roughly the same area as it had in 100 AD. By 500 AD, all the western provinces of the Empire had been overrun by barbarians. Between April and July 2021, Sean Gabb explored this transformation with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
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May 27, 2022
The Crusades: Part 8 – The Rise of Venice
seangabb
Published 12 Mar 2021The Crusades are the defining event of the Middle Ages. They brought the very different civilisations of Western Europe, Byzantium and Islam into an extended period of both conflict and peaceful co-existence. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this long encounter with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
(more…)
May 17, 2022
History of Rome in 15 Buildings 09. The Arch of Constantine
toldinstone
Published 27 Sep 2018The many statues and reliefs from older monuments integrated into the Arch of Constantine – the focus of this ninth episode of our History of Rome – advertise the continuity of traditional Roman values into the fourth century. The Arch’s inscription, however, alludes to the religious revolution set in motion by the first Christian emperor.
If you enjoyed this video, you might be interested in my book Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants: Frequently Asked Questions about the Ancient Greeks and Romans. You can find a preview of the book here:
https://toldinstone.com/naked-statues…
If you’re so inclined, you can follow me elsewhere on the web:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorian…
https://www.instagram.com/toldinstone/To see the story and photo essay associated with this video, go to:
https://toldinstone.com/the-arch-of-c…
May 5, 2022
Belisarius: The Last Battle
Epic History TV
Published 29 Apr 2022Thank you to our video sponsor Displate. Get exclusive discounts on metal posters, including original EHTV artwork, using this link:
https://displate.com/epichistorytv?ar…Big thanks to Legendarian for Total War: Attila gameplay footage, check out his YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOI2…
Big thanks also to our series consultant Professor David Parnell of Indiana University Northwest, who you can follow on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/byzantineprof
Total War: Attila gameplay footage used with kind permission of Creative Assembly – buy the game here: https://geni.us/qDreR
Support Epic History TV on Patreon from $1 per video, and get perks including ad-free early access & votes on future topics https://www.patreon.com/EpicHistoryTV
🎨 Original artwork by Miłek Jakubiec https://www.artstation.com/milek
📚Recommended reading (as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases):
📖 Procopius, History of the Wars https://geni.us/L3Pgc
📖 The Wars of Justinian by Michael Whitby https://geni.us/Xxrd3
📖 Rome Resurgent by Peter Heather https://geni.us/ZFoU1
📖 The Armies of Ancient Persia: the Sassanians by Kaveh Farrokh https://geni.us/jMQo3z
📖 Late Roman Cavalryman AD 236–565 (Osprey) by Simon MacDowall https://geni.us/XMGl👕 Buy EHTV t-shirts, hoodies, mugs and stickers here! teespring.com/en-GB/stores/epic-histo…
🎶Music from Filmstro: https://filmstro.com/?ref=7765
Get 20% off an annual license with this exclusive code:EPICHISTORYTV_ANN“Rites” by Kevin MacLeod https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song…
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license#EpicHistoryTV #RomanEmpire #EasternRomanEmpire #Justinian #Belisarius #ByzantineEmpire
March 19, 2022
Belisarius: War & Plague
Epic History TV
Published 18 Mar 2022Download Endel here, first 100 downloads get 1 week of free audio experiences!
https://app.adjust.com/b8wxub6?campai…Big thanks to Legendarian for Total War: Attila gameplay footage, check out his YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOI2…
Big thanks also to our series consultant Professor David Parnell of Indiana University Northwest, who you can follow on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/byzantineprof
Total War: Attila gameplay footage used with kind permission of Creative Assembly – buy the game here: https://geni.us/qDreR
Support Epic History TV on Patreon from $1 per video, and get perks including ad-free early access & votes on future topics https://www.patreon.com/EpicHistoryTV
🎨 Original artwork by Miłek Jakubiec https://www.artstation.com/milek
📚 Recommended reading (as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases):
📖 Procopius, History of the Wars https://geni.us/L3Pgc
📖 The Wars of Justinian by Michael Whitby https://geni.us/Xxrd3
📖 Rome Resurgent by Peter Heather https://geni.us/ZFoU1
📖 The Armies of Ancient Persia: the Sassanians by Kaveh Farrokh https://geni.us/jMQo3z
📖 Late Roman Cavalryman AD 236–565 (Osprey) by Simon MacDowall https://geni.us/XMGl👕 Buy EHTV t-shirts, hoodies, mugs and stickers here! teespring.com/en-GB/stores/epic-histo…
🎶Music from Filmstro: https://filmstro.com/?ref=7765
Get 20% off an annual license with this exclusive code:EPICHISTORYTV_ANN“Rites” by Kevin MacLeod https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song…
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license#EpicHistoryTV #RomanEmpire #EasternRomanEmpire #Justinian #Belisarius #ByzantineEmpire #Romans #Ostrogoths
March 11, 2022
New Rome by Paul Stephenson
In The Critic, Daisy Dunn reviews a new history of the Eastern Roman Empire (called the Byzantine Empire by later scholars) that sounds quite interesting:
[Paul] Stephenson, a prolific scholar of Byzantium, has a wonderfully sharp eye for data and detail. His book examines the journey by which the Roman Empire progressed from being ruled from several different cities in the fifth century, among them Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Rome itself, to just Constantinople, home to Procopius, and the “New Rome” of the book’s title.
I sat down expecting a narrative history of the fall of Rome, but was pleasantly surprised to find a portrait of the changing empire populated by statistics and technical hypotheses of a kind one would usually encounter in a copy of the Economist. The first ten pages alone contain references to cosmogenic radionuclides, the Maunder Minimum and the Early Anthropocene. I confess I needed a dictionary.
It is hard to think of another historian who applies such a scientific approach to ancient history, except perhaps the Stanford professor Josiah Ober, who has applied political theory and modern economic modelling to information garnered from classical sources to equally eye-opening effect. The terminology is not off-putting because Stephenson proves able to weave it succinctly and fluidly into his account of how the Late Empire functioned.
Constantinople, formerly Byzantium, was the principal base of the emperors from Theodosius I (“The Great”) in the final quarter of the fourth century onwards. The city was beautified with a wide variety of art and architecture, including the famous Egyptian obelisk, the arrival of which in the late fourth century is seemingly as mysterious as the appearance of the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
[…]
Attempts to answer the time-old question of why Rome fell have been characterised in recent years by a new awareness of the role that factors including pollution and climate change played. Anyone who has shrugged at the suggestion that the weather had anything to do with the demise of such a mighty empire will, I think, come away from this book persuaded that climate change and natural disasters provide an important part of the answer. Far from being moralistic and attempting to apply the examples of the past as a warning, Stephenson lays down the evidence unemotionally, and lets it speak for itself.
The causes of change were not purely driven by human behaviour, though smelting and, even more so, heavy warfare in the era of invading Huns and Vandals, had a significant environmental impact. Pollen records reveal a dramatic decline in the growing of cereals in Greece by about 600AD and, from the seventh century, pollination was happening predominantly through nature rather than agriculture.
The root cause of this was the destruction of arable land following invasions and the decline in human settlements. Add to this diminishing sunlight — measurements of “deposited radionuclides” indicate a significant reduction of light between the midfourth and late seventh centuries — and we are looking at a radically different landscape in this period from that of the High Empire.
Natural disasters (or were they?) also played a part. The later fifth and early sixth centuries witnessed a number of major volcanic eruptions. Vesuvius, which famously buried Pompeii when it awoke from seven centuries of dormancy in 79AD, erupted in 472 and 512, bookending, as Stephenson notes, the overthrow of the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus.
February 7, 2022
Justinian I, 527-565: Wars
Thersites the Historian
Published 21 Sep 2017In this video, I look at the wars of conquest waged by the Emperor Justinian and explore whether or not these conflicts advanced the long-term interests of the Byzantine state.
February 5, 2022
City Minutes: The Roman Empire
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 4 Feb 2022The funny thing about Empire is that ~*Rome*~ includes far more than just the City of Rome. Spread out across every corner of the Mediterranean — and then some — Roman Civilization was always adapting to local circumstances and changing over time. Today we’ll look at 5 cities that show the diversity of just how much “Rome” could really mean in the days of the empire.
The Great Cities In History by John Julius Norwich, “A Wonder of the World – Ephesus” from The Great Tours: Greece and Turkey, from Athens to Istanbul by John R. Hale, “Ephesus”, “Leptis Magna”, “Roman Britain”, “Pompeii” from World History Encyclopedia https://www.worldhistory.org/ephesos/, https://www.worldhistory.org/Lepcis_Magna, https://www.worldhistory.org/Roman_Britain, https://www.worldhistory.org/pompeii/. “Ephesus”, “Leptis Magna” “London”, “Pompeii” from Britannica https://www.britannica.com/place/Ephesus, https://www.britannica.com/place/Leptis-Magna, https://www.britannica.com/place/Lond…, https://www.britannica.com/place/Pompeii. I also have a degree in Classical Studies.
Chapters:
0:00 — Rome
0:58 — Ephesus
2:00 — Leptis Magna
3:03 — Londinium
4:12 — Pompeii
5:17 — ConclusionOur content is intended for teenage audiences and up.
PATREON: https://www.Patreon.com/OSP
PODCAST: https://overlysarcasticpodcast.transi…
DISCORD: https://discord.gg/osp
MERCH LINKS: http://rdbl.co/osp
OUR WEBSITE: https://www.OverlySarcasticProductions.com
Find us on Twitter https://www.Twitter.com/OSPYouTube
Find us on Reddit https://www.Reddit.com/r/OSP/
January 15, 2022
Constantinople: The Capital of Eastern Rome
Thersites the Historian
Published 13 May 2020In this video, we look at the new capital city of the Eastern Roman Empire built by Constantine. We start out by briefly exploring the history of the Megarian colony of Byzantion and also how the city was patronized by the emperor Septimius Severus before looking at the late antique origins and medieval history of Constantinople.
Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/thersites
PayPal link: paypal.me/thersites
Twitter link: https://twitter.com/ThersitesAthens
Minds.com link: https://www.minds.com/ThersitestheHis…
Steemit/dtube link: https://steemit.com/@thersites/feed
BitChute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/jbyg…
January 5, 2022
History Summarized: The Ottoman Empire
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 5 Oct 2018Leave it to the furniture boys to pioneer a Comfort-First attitude towards Imperialism.
Join Blue in investigating the history of the Ottoman empire, and find out why “The Sick Man of Europe” is more than their nickname implies.
Further reading: Osman’s Dream by Caroline Finkel
Famous Turkish Song — Gunduz Gece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UcbH…
PATREON: www.patreon.com/OSP
MERCH LINKS:
Shirts – https://overlysarcasticproducts.threa…
All the other stuff – http://www.cafepress.com/OverlySarcas…Find us on Twitter @OSPYouTube!
