Okay.
So I was just like having a moment, so I'd like a rare treat I get to record at the table today because I'm alone in the flat for a change. And then outside I heard the dulcet tones of someone with the most London accent you ever heard in your life having a breakup over their mobile at the bus stop downstairs. I look, he doesn't deserve this. All he does is work. Okay, So first first point of order, Second point of order, What did she expect after the
week he just had? And I was like, part of me really wants to find out more about this, and part of me is like, sir, I need you to vacate the premises underneath my window.
Because absolutely not. We're including that. Including that in the audio for everything.
Is like, I don't fucking deserve this, Like, oh now cabage is upset. Look, it's all happening.
The cat got upsets, you know what did I expect? Also, this is great because she was sitting on my baffling clothes and I was like, well, I guess it's just gonna be echoing because she's a little princess, but wow, it's it's too much for her.
She doesn't. She doesn't like my fake lended accents. So there it is. Everyone's everyone's a critic.
I can't win.
I can't wait over here.
That's great, this good stuff?
Yeah, yeah.
Like it?
So I fucking love okay my best ever half of Well,
actually I heard the whole London conversation. Like, my first flat in London was over in London Fields, which was not like nice at the time, but it was like up and coming, and I lived in like one of these it used to be a warehouse but it was converted sort of things, and we had these doors that were like the wall of our bedroom that kind of opened onto the street, and people would kind of like basically it was just like being outside, like you could
hear everything. And this one night, a drunk couple who had been at a party across the street ended up having like a drunk confrontation right against said windows while also alternately leaning on.
Our doorbell over and over again.
And all I can remember is that repeatedly the guy was saying, well, I want to be your boyfriend, I want to be your boyfriend. I want to be your boyfriend, over and over again.
And homegirls did not say.
That she wanted to be his girlfriend. And I'm just sitting there at three in the morning in the dark.
Like, oh bro, it's not looking good. But I had I had to participate in the entire thing. And like that's London, baby.
Like you know, the big city. Yeah, the best city in the world.
Goddamn right, Like you're tired of London, You're tired of hearing the breakups from other people?
Oh man, I just that's yeah, that's delightful. Trying to think I've never trying to think I've ever heard like a really bad public breakup. I've heard like a really quiet one at like a at like a restaurant, and like two people and like they whispered and it was like, you know, we just I just don't think think we should. I think we should see other people as like okay, I understand, Like it was just like it was like maybe they were both over it. I don't know. I
was like, huh, well, all right, there you go. They finished their dinner, they paid and left. I don't know, you know, I mean, all right, well, all the breakups should be so amiable.
But then where am I going to get my entertainment from?
Luke? Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, you know, like those people leaning up against your doorbell, like I don't want to be your girlfriend. Okay, that's fine, all right, I'm going home, dang ding. I'm all right, I'll see you later. You think maybe we should get coffee sometime and you know, talk about this a little more, maybe sure our feelings. Oh yeah, I've been talking about therapist about it, and you know, I was just ringing and you're like, oh my god, just kill each other.
What is going please, like if you're gonna wake me up, at least like be juicy about it, you know, like that's odd saying.
Oh man, Yeah, I don't know. I'm never I don't think I've ever really had that, the experience of you know, like having like the next door neighbor who just like you know, argues all the time or just fucks like insanely loud or something like that. And yeah, it's.
Excuse two classics of the genre, yeah.
Related, you know.
Yeah, true, true, And it's just uh, yeah, you know that's I guess that's just the joys. Joys are living in the big city.
That vanity urbanity.
Yep. Yeah, yeah, I've never I've never lived in any place that had real population density.
So let's tell you what. It's a one.
It's a one, it's it's a thing. Yeah, speaking of a population density.
He's pro Yes, I love it.
Yeah, the first time I've ever successfully done his segue. Oh okay, all right, well yeah, let's talk about it, because the only thing that's left is just me talking about I don't know, fucking taroffs for like, oh god, kill me. No no, not not the tariffs. Not this.
We're not that kind of pod. Thank you.
Well, at least it's funny. At least it's funny. They've been put off. Now I guess everything is uh, you know, hunky dory. Again. They've been put off because I'm assuming that the guys in black hats, like actual capital C capitals showed up and we're like, hey, no, he was like, but they were like, hey, here's the thing.
No no, yeah, I'm like, where's the fucking deep state now?
Bro? Yeah? Like yeah, I don't I don't know. I don't know. You would think you would think we would get a junta or something out of this. I don't know. We'll see the free officers movement where whither the free officers movement could go a free officer's movement out of the American Army. Oh Jesus Christ, Uh yeah, okay, let's let's talk about uh Bazetium.
Let's do it.
Hello and welcome back to We're Not So Different podcast about how we've always been idiots, especially with tariffs. Should never never you can't. You can't trust people. You can't trust uh leaders with tariffs, you just can't. It's they you know, they start getting them and they start trying to use them for every thing, and all of a sudden, we're having conversations like it's eighteen seventy eight again and we're like, oh, I think the tariff should be extended. Well,
I don't. I'm going to form a political party against this. It is something called like the free uh No Tariff Group of fun loving you know whatever.
It'll be like the nights of something.
Yeah, and it'll somehow and some somehow you'll you'll stumble on the Wikipedia page or stumble across it in a history book and they'll be like, this group is actually one of the most influential because it paved the way for the formation of the you know, blah blah, and you're just like, huh, I well, yeah, all right, man,
the eighteen hundreds. Look, if we're going back to eighteen hundreds politics with the tariffs and stuff, you need to go back with like you know, the zany political the zany extremely specific political parties.
Do you know what if we're doing all that, I just want to bring the wigs back, just because I like saying the wigs.
The wigs. Yeah, the wigs.
So yeah, that's that's what I say.
Yeah, we we don't, we don't say it enough. Yeah, today we are once again talking about the big city of Constantinople. Before we got the got there, good god, before we get there, we got a quit. We got a couple of questions. Question from Olie Kant, what's the coolest historical text or artifact you've held?
Okay, so.
I didn't hold this but the week before last or was it last week?
I don't even know why this is fucking happening anymore. Week before last I.
Got to see the Dallas Apocalypse with mine eye. I was not allowed to touch it emphatically.
Saw the apocalypse.
Yeah yeah, so like the Dallas Apocalypse.
It's like spelt like deuce, but you say Dallas.
It's held at the bodily In and it's absolutely fucking incredible. It was made for Eleanor of ca Steel and Edward the second you know, one of those Edwards, and like it's absolutely fucking gorgeous, like so so incredible. And my friend Alison was allowed to touch it because she works for the bodily In. But even then, like her boss was in the room like looking at her, and I was allowed to gesture in its direction.
You were allowed to point at it and be like, look at that, and the boss was like, like, your finger got your finger got a little too close to the manuscript for that.
I guess for me, like I've got some nerdy answers to this, which is I've been able to work with some of the original Millich manuscripts, so that but that's like a personal one. And one of my very very favorite things that I ever did was during my masters. Like the reason you do the Medieval Studies Master's at UCL is because the Manuscripts and Documents course is really really good and you learn paleography really fast and you spend a bunch of time in the British Library looking
at manuscripts. And one of the big projects that we had to to was you had to write up a catalog description of a manuscript, and I chose this scruffy, old little bitch manuscript that was a series of like tiny little medical tracts, and I loved it because it was clearly somebody's like an ordinary ass medical guy who like wrote everything down himself and like it had you know, he was clearly borrowing things in order to copy them. He like cut things out or tore them or went
over them. And I just loved it so much because it was this direct link with something that's like a regular person had in the thirteenth century I think it was, and it was just I loved it. I loved her so much. I've held a Bronze age burial earn, which was really fucking cool.
That's cool. Yeah, you just stumbled upon that I was.
I was on a dig in More and uh, that's true.
To say I was on a date and I was like, wow.
Yeah, gentlemen, call me if you have Bronze age burial nerds. But I was on this dig in Moravia and it was hilarious because there was like two teams. There's the Czech team, which I occasionally got seconded to go work with. Which you much preferred to work with because they were like, fuck it, we're digging and they were like drinking sleeve ofvizza breakfast and stuff.
And then the American team were.
Like, oh, you had to cup the hole and then draw a picture of every layer of soil. So anyway, they're like, we're doing this for like a month and we don't get to the central burial.
And then the Americans are.
Like, okay, fuck it on the last day and they just go in with pick axes anyway, like after all of that, so that they could find the central burial ard And I'm like, great, guys, a really cool job.
But anyway, I got to hold that. Yeah, that was really Yeah.
That's one of the one of the quintessential, a quintessential distillation of America. Like, oh, you know, we have to be careful. And then when it doesn't work, because of course it wasn't ever going to work, we're just like, fuck.
It, nuke it.
Fuck it turns out you would have needed way more people and to probably pay them enough, like uh, never mind, get the pick EGGX.
Yeah, but it was cool.
And I'm glad I did it, and yeah, I think so that's definitely like the oldest thing I've held as well, so that was really cool.
Yeah, yeah, that's those are my answers.
I'm trying to think of the oldest thing I've ever held or touched, and I want to say it is an old shotgun that from like nineteen eight or so that my granddad left to me when he died. It doesn't work, it doesn't have a trigger or a firing mechanism because he's very old. But yeah, that, you know, being from America, not being a historian and not you know, being on any digs or anything, I haven't I haven't been privy to holding or touching a lot of very
old things. I've seen some I've seen, like you know, you know, like uh, stuff from you know, like four thousand and five thousand years ago, ancient Egypt and museums, but you know, they don't Unfortunately, they don't let me handle it, despite the fact that I promised repeatedly to be very careful.
Grandpappy's gun though, I can't believe you've got your grandpappy's gun.
I love that.
Oh man, if only he didn't. Yeah, suck. But yeah, it's a fun it's it's a it's a nice gun. It's in my garage. It's basically it. Yeah, you know, America is not. Yeah, we don't have any anything old here. Uh not really. I well, you know what, I have, uh touched some burial mounds, because there are some that you can just kind of go on top of in North Georgia. I've touched some of those from indigenous people. I'm sure they are We're much older than any of that.
But yeah, I don't think I've held anything, Ollie, Thank you for the question. Next we got one from Evelyn. He says, I am a writer trying to make a career out of it, and in pursuit of that goal, I've started down the path of creating internet content. Well I'm not. While I'm not an historian and I'm not trying to be one, my writing sometimes requires I understand the historical context of something so I can tie it
into what I'm discussing. The first few pieces were a bit informal and how they use sources, but I'm getting more serious and want to do a proper job of it. Do you have any thoughts on how a dedicated layperson might search for such historical context without access to university or academic infrastructure any I don't know, for your cheat databases or academic journals, you'd recommend websites or creators or you know anything like that.
Hell yeah, okay, So what you want to have in particular is the online medieval source book.
You could just google that. I think the fine people.
It's either so toughs is Perseus, which is that? But for like classical stuff online, Oh it's Foredom. It's Foredom Online Medieval source Book. They also have classical stuff.
It's so good.
It's got hella original texts from the medieval period broken down by category. So you know, if you're looking for something on the Crusades, or you're looking for something on gender, or you're looking for something you know, like what have you, they will have stuff up there and they usually have like maybe a little paragraph of contextualization as well. So this is like really really good in terms of getting
like online actual sources. And it's something that I use all the time and all of us medievalists use it all the fucking time.
Yeah.
And similarly Perseus, if you are looking for stuff that is a classical as.
I say, and you can just give that a google.
I think that it is often worth checking places like Jystore because they sometimes have things that are kind of like free up and it doesn't hurt to look to try out Google scholar and just like throw in what it is you're looking for and.
See what comes up.
And then you know, if you really hit a roadblock, send us an email and also see what I can dig out, you know.
So yeah, I would also suggest if you find the name of an article that you like, you can sometimes just Google like the complete names of articles and find places where it is listed for you know, you can just view it. You don't have to pay anything. It doesn't happen all the time, but it does work.
Oh god, I thing too that it just occurs to me that I really should say if you find an article and you don't have access to it, find out who the author is and email them and ask for it.
They will send it to you.
They'll just be like, oh, yeah, here's my pdf, Like you can you can read that. So they will be so excited that you want to read their article that they will be like hell yeah, they know that not everyone has just say like, look, I really want to read this article.
I don't have academic affiliation, and they will be like here, you go, like even when you have academic.
Affiliation, a lot of the time your school doesn't have access to everything. So you go, you go around begging people, and we are all down to send articles pretty much. So yeah, just absolutely feel free to google people and email them.
Yeah, if you're in America. I don't know how often they still do it, but I know that in some cases you can do lend lease things with libraries, so you can go in and request something and be like, you know, does any other library have it? And you know, if it's something, then you know they can, uh, you know they can they can send for it in some cases. I don't know how that works everywhere. I'm sure it's much different in the EU and in England and stuff,
but you know they some libraries here do that. Museums have a lot of good uh just info, like national libraries, national museums, the academy like the Academy of Science, the Academy of History like the the like national academies will have like their own texts and white papers and stuff
like that. And and you know, if you if you're really scrouching for something and you're you know, you're just you're trying to find a like very specific reference to you know, a specific detail, so you so you can use it, you know you can, you know, you don't you know, you don't have to use the whole white paper. Maybe it's not entirely on the thing you want, but you can pull that reference out and then you can
go chase that down and stuff like that. And I mean that as someone who does this like every week, where I have to kind of just scrounge around for these things and you know, use what I know and use what I can find, and stuff like scrounging references and links on Wikipedia is very useful. You should never fully trust Wikipedia because it is mostly done by just committed amateurs. And there's nothing wrong with that. Wikipedia is awesome,
very happy for it. But you know a lot of them are amateurs in the fields and lay people and that's fine. So you shouldn't fully trust it, and you should also think about like the sourcing it's going to have and stuff like that, because they are going to prize like government opinions, like official government opinions on things,
more than they will other stuff. But you know, you can use it for you know, finding these things and clicking around and just you know, looking stuff up, Like I just looked up the I forget how you say it, but the Douci Apocalypse or whatever, and like there are uh seven or eight links here, and you know, there's a link to a free article, another link to free article, Oxford Online Companion stuff like you know, it's you can do that. You know, I would, I would encourage that because it's helpful.
Yeah, absolutely, I guess.
Also another one to shout out here is the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive often has whole books. I use it all the time, like for things that are books that are out of copyright, which obviously a lot of the things that I'm working with are. So it's like I use things from the twenties all the time, right, And that's great. And so if often if you create an account, you can check it out for a couple of hours at a time. That's super super useful. I really recommend
using that. If you were looking for stuff very specifically about the history of medicine and science, I urge you to check out the Welcome Collection, which.
Is w E L L C O M E H.
They have lots and lots of online resources and they are really cool and also are really down for you to like use their stuff just as long as you credit them, So they really like that.
So there. They are a great resource as well.
Online articles love it. I wrote a scholarly legal article fucking seven years ago. Now I still get emails from the land set all the time about this new thing we've got, and I'm like, that's great, man, I am definitely not going to use that. I don't. I really don't know why I haven't unsubscribed. I guess I just think it's kind of funny. But yeah, like you know, there are places I asked. It is nice to be asked. Yeah,
you know, there are places to find this stuff. You just have to you know, you do have to scrounge, and you know, while we should have access to all of that anyway, you know, it's nice that there are ways to go about it and try to find stuff like that. Yeah, Evelyn, thank you very much for the question.
If you would like to ask us questions like this, you know, please subscribe to the Patreon Patreon dot com slash w NSDPOD two bonus episodes a month you get to ask us questions, add free versions of all the regular EPSOD you guys know the deal. Check it out, check check out us talking about the movie Medieval last week, Yes, certainly something. It was definitely a movie of something. Things happened, that's all. You know, what what what what were they? Who knows?
I don't know, I'm you know.
But we had fun, that's the main thing. Yeah, So check it out five dollars a month. It helps us out and it's really cool. Anyway, onto the main show. So last time we started our series on Constantinople by introducing the city. Why it became so important thanks to three factors, the vagaries versus geography, Constantine making it the capital of the Roman Empire in the Theodosian Walls. These three components were reaching necessary to make to make it
the greatest city of medieval Europe. Without one, it just wouldn't work. Sure, the geography in the surrounding land is fascinating and made for a perfectly defensible city location, but without Constantinople being made the capital of the Roman Empire, no one would care. It's hard to get to from any direction, and Byzanteon, the old Greek city that had once sit on that location was an off sacked ruin that lay on the border between the Greek and Persian worlds.
Even when the Romans stick control, the site lay dormant, just a trading post and minor hub for Black sea travel, with interesting geography a little more. But once it became the capital of what was then the world's largest empire, well then you have to go there because because you want to be in the president of the imperial court, or trade or religious functions, or military matters, or just
because And suddenly all roads begin leading to Constantinople. But if it was just those two factors alone, it still wouldn't have meant much. Without the walls, geography made it defensible, Constantine made it important, but the theaters and walls made it impenetrable. Without the walls, Constantinople and the Roman Empire would have been obliterated by any faction committed to the effort, the exact same fate suffered by Byzantion every few decades
in antiquity. Over one thousand years, any of these groups could have done the job. The Huns, the Avars, the Kievan russ the Bulgars, the assassinated Persians, the Umid and Abassid caliphates, the Mongols, the earlier Ottoman efforts or the armies of Western Europe. Any of those forces could have bypassed the natural defenses and to Constantinople and taking control of the medieval or the imperial capital if not for those walls. But that's the thing they did have. The walls,
and the capitol and the geography. All three factors came together. Over time. The city thrived and would do so as long as Constantinople remained the gravitational center around which the region orbited and was the gate tre gatekeeper of trade from North Africa, the Levant and most of Asia into Europe.
And that's what we're talking about today. Even as the Western Roman Empire collapse under wave after wave of barbarian invasions, Constantinople thrived, entering a golden age under Emperor Justinian the First less than two hundred years after its founding. These will be the mostly salad days for Constantinople, the good times when there was hope of expanding the Roman Empire to Italy once again, and while it was still considered the capital of Christianity and the great bulwark against the
spread of Islam into Europe. But all the prolonged unpleasantness of imperial decline really kicked into gear long before the prolonged unpleasantness of imperial decline really kicked into gear. So come along with us and see the many wonders and cultural landmarks that early medieval Constantinople has to offer. Feel the presence of God in one of her many sanctums inhale the sumptuous aromas wafting across the city from the
Spice District. Take in all the splendor before it comes crashing down next week, as the inexorable passage of time, the steady march of technological progress, religious schisms, and the rapidly shifting realities of medieval European politics all come together and spell disaster. So yeah, the series is going to last four to five episodes, depending on how swiftly we
move through things. Today will be focused on the fall of the wider Roman Empire, how Constantinople weathered the stormant thrived in a golden age for a while under just studying the First and his successors, becoming the second most populous city in the world. But all the wild cracks will be forming that will begin to break it apart, such as numerous religious heresies, the rise of Islam, and a budding rivalry with some cities on the Italian Peninsula.
Let's start with a fall of Rome. You know, everybody's favorite thing, Eleanor. When Constantinople was founded in three point thirty, the Roman Empire was still united and under the rule of one of its most accomplished emperors. But within one hundred and fifty years the Western Roman Empire will have collapsed. How did we go from the glorious new capital to a split empire and then only the Eastern Roman Empire so quickly?
Eastern Roman Empire don't fucking care, and they're the boss of you.
That's the short answer, I mean, yeah.
So the long answer to that, though, is basically, well, most of everything that is really kind of going on just moves to Constantinople. You know, you leave the patricians wallowing around in Rome. Rome itself had been in decline. You know, at this point in time, Rome is not actually the center of the Western Roman Empire. Ravenna is because Rome kind of sucks. You know, it's a great it's a great place to get malaria, et cetera, et cetera.
But you know, like plenty plenty of the Roman emperors were not that into Rome, you know, and they would.
Move other places.
You know.
Some of them are just more parapatetic because that's the way that they want.
Some of them are like I don't know, Hadrian, and they just got a hard on for Athens and they'd rather hang out there.
And you know, for quite some.
Time, all of the good shit's been happening over in Constantinople basically, and you do have two orbits of power. So you've got the emperors over in Rome, and it very much pleases the emperors over in Constantinople to have the emperors in Rome not be as.
Powerful as them.
You know, like they don't want them thinking that like they can I don't know, start border wars, or that they've got any tax claims, or that they can call for arms at any particular time. They just don't want them doing much of anything. And fundamentally, for quite some time, the emperors and indeed, like you know, the last emperor
quote unquote, but we're just Byzantine puppets. They were just like people that Conceptinople were like, uh yeah, this guy right, because it was just not as important and you could do that so they did, and.
Whoever, whoever the most powerful gall or vandal or whoever.
It was just like, oh, this general wants a job for his son, Okay, sure, yeah, put him in, Like I don't go fuck right, And you know, so they just didn't particularly care because they're like, provided I'm getting what I want and they stay out of my business,
I could just pop whoever I want in. And so you know when Rome quote unquote fall contest, Noble doesn't care, right, because they're like, well, there is no difference here to me other than the fact that, like I did not personally place you know, Clovis on the throne of Frankia. You know, I didn't personally like place Theodoric on the Roman throne. However, like I'm in pretty good contact with them. They seem to be interested in Christianizing, fight whatever, Like
it's no skin off my nose. That's not where our tax space is coming from. I just do not kill, kill care they probably kill.
I do not kill everything else.
I take that kiss on the mouth or.
Kill yep, shout out, shout, yeah.
You know they the empire, the Roman Empire split up after a while, and it just what what was there to hold the Western Roman Empire together because if home, the city wasn't as powerful anymore and it was Constantinople, so it had moved much further, much further east. Like how like how are they going to keep hold of the Iberian Peninsula, How are they going to keep hold of France of you know, Frankia and and and all. That's like, how are you how are you effectively going
to do that? And the answer is, unless you've got a lot of money or just like an amazing army, uh, you're probably not. And yeah, they just once it's split, you know, there's only a matter of time once it's split. Once the capital moved from Rome, I mean they were going to lose a lot of the empire anyway, because you you know, and then yeah, it's it's the thing of it is.
I mean we like to jack off about, you know, the Roman Empire at its height, because we're an expressly imperial society and that's important to us, right, Yeah, but it was kind of too big and and sort of difficult to administer, right, which is why it got kind of tapered off in the first place. Right, Like, it's it was much too difficult to kind of like really keep a handle on. And as far as Constantinople are concerned, well.
They got the good bit, right, they got the bit with all the.
People in it and most of the money, and like, you know, they're like, oh, we've got Egypt, and you know, for them as well, it's like when Western Rome starts to fall apart, they're like.
Oh sweet, does this mean we get Alger? Yeah? And I have a what are you? What's going on?
You know?
Right, Like so they're kind of just like eyeing up like those bits, and like does it suck to lose Spain well slash you know, Hiberia?
Yeah it does.
Yeah, like a lot of money, a lot of money came from there that that was a pretty good one. But also it's real far away girl, and so it's just sort of like, well, I got I got better things to be doing.
I gotta get down to the chariot races, you know, like I don't.
It's difficult to kind of like get our heads around how far away things are at the time. And like, granted, you can get across the Mediterranean as fast as you can do anything in the you know, early medieval world, but that doesn't mean that it's like you know, a day or something, right, you know, where they're not living in the future.
And you know, a lot of the way that we frame this and talk about this is always hopelessly modern, right we're like, oh, how cold you ever? Like, look the Roman Empire fault.
Well, they didn't see it like that, and they didn't think about it like that, and it just doesn't hold the same cachet for them as it does for us, because it's something that we made up after the fact, right, like that's that's history, baby, So they just don't see it in the way that we do.
Yep. Yeah. It's also like you can't you can't like force like the Vandals in North Africa to just be like oh yeah, sure when you're in Constantinople, like they like they are a people and they formed a kingdom, you know, like and it it lasted for some time, you know, like, you can't people weren't just like oh Constantinople said so well that you know, I better I better listen, Like they come on like it's not a
yeah yeah. In four seventy six, h the I don't even remember what he was odo Acer deposed Romulus Augustulus gave him a pension because he felt sorry for him because he was a boy, and sent the imperial insignia back to Constantinople and they were like, cool, well, I guess we just lost some tax revenue. Other than that, yeah, yeah,
it didn't seem to affect Constantinople very much. Though there there would be someone who will come along shortly who was very, very affected by this and didn't like it one bit. Yeah. At the time, you know, Christianity was kind of uh, you know, early Christianity was all over the place. Uh, the patriarch and Constantinople was much more important than anyone in Rome, regardless of whether they call
themselves popes or anything like that. And you know, it's just it's it's working itself out with it Arianism, and you know, they they got they gotta handle all that stuff they start. You know, it's just it's not as cohesive yet, and it's not monolithic. There's still a lot of Pagans, a whole lot of Pagans across the former
Roman Empire. And yeah, before we get to the Middle Ages and to Justinian uh eleanor let's uh, can you what are what are some of the unique or different aspects about the Byzantine Imperial Crown that you know, make it different from you know, what we might expect of other medieval empires.
Uh, it's still really in empire. Yeah, I guess, and I know that that seems obvious. But my point here being much in the way that the Holy Roman Empire is an empire, because they're controlling a lot of different
places that have different different cultures and different languages. The same thing is certainly going on over in Constantinople, and you know, you've got the court language of Greek, but not everyone is speaking Greek all over the place, you know, Like you still have some kind of like Latinis speakers down in Egypt obviously, Like you may have like Arabic things going on in you know, the Middle East. Like I don't know if you heard this, but it's a crossroad of cultures, right.
Like the Levine of contrast.
The Lanta Contra, the Levat has a lot of different things going on, right, a lot of different religions. So you've got the state religion of Christianity, which certainly exists over the top, but you also have like lots.
Of different people underneath who make up.
Your taxation base, right, and so this is one of the big differences between that and you know, kingdoms, because kingdoms are oftentimes just much smaller and it's kind of like about who you personally can kind of military power over, whereas the crowd of Constantinople has these extant bureaucratic systems in place that really mean that it is still a large locusts for I don't know, like tax dollars are still really going in and out of there.
They've got like a really.
A really intact legal center, you know, so it's sort of like the laws of the laws, and sure they can change, but it's like you know who to go to for court purposes, like you know who your governor is, right, you know, the way that things kind of kick up. Whereas over in Western Europe that stuff gets pretty you know, Lucy Goosey, right, you there's a lot more old in customary law. There's a lot more well this is just how we do things, and a lot less oh like
here here is the law. And indeed, you know, when you get further on in the medieval period, there'll be a big thing about kind of having the lex solica, you know, when they're like, oh, we've got the old Roman laws and we're gonna bring all of these back, right, Whereas in Constantinople they're like, nope, gunm ray here. And granted they built on them, they've changed them over time, but you certainly have this extant base that you're still
drawing from. So you know, like over in Western Europe, everybody's like, we're the successors of Rome.
We're the successors of Rome. Where the new Rome, and we're doing things this way.
In Constantinople, they don't have to do that because they are Rome. They just are like, that's that's just what it is, you know, And you.
Know, I do think it is one of these things.
And I know it's annoying when I'm always saying, like Eastern Rome, but really that's what they call themselves, and it's us trying to differentiate them for no particular reason when you have exit institutions.
Are really very very much still in place, which is what makes them.
Cool, right yeah, And I mean this is the reason. The reason that they they still called themselves the Roman Empire is the same reason that people accepted when the Holy Roman Empire came along and called themselves that, because like, if you wanted, if you wanted to be the successor of Rome, you could call yourself that, like as long as you like, you know, did things a certain way and you took on enough of an aspect of it,
or you're a legacy of it, like Constantinople. Yeah, sure, you're the Holy Roman Empire, You're the Secular Roman Empire, You're the you know, Easter, you know whatever.
It's just sure, yeah, road is.
An idea like yeah, you know, and I mean that's stupid. That's like a you know, from Gladiator or whatever.
But I mean and also, yeah, I was gonna say, shout, dream of Rome, what's up?
And by that, I mean you just call yourself Rome if you want and be imperial scumbags, which.
You know, which they did want to do.
They did, they did it. They did it with Gusto. Yeah. Uh yeah. The only things I would add Byzanti or Constantinople is at its height, it's going to have anywhere from five hundred to eight hundred thousand people in it, which means it is going to have utterly insane population density for a city at this time, probably the most dense population in the world. I don't it's either that or like Beijing. But yeah, it's so they are susceptible
to riots because everybody just lives so close together. And uh, this may be the only one of the only places you can say in the world. But under the right circumstances, if you know, a million things go your way and and and his and and fate shines upon you, a peasant could become the emperor of Constantinople. And uh, you know we know this because our boy, Justinian, his dad
was a swineherd. He was a peasant, and he grew up and became a military man, and he was given money by higher up guys to take over the uh to help buy support, and they took the kingdom, and and he took the money and was like, now I just buy support for myself and took the kingdom Cherius.
Nice, nice one, good job.
Yeah. And and they and uh people at Constantinople were like, all right, that's cool, Yeah, we're good with that. That works. I'm not you know, it wasn't egalitarian or anything by any means. It's the same uh medieval life. You know, power and balances everywhere else, but under one with one very glaring exception. You know, every every once in a great while. So I'm going to just be like, yep, you know, I'm I'm I'm the good I'm I'm gonna
do it. I'm gonna become, you know, the highest riser in history.
Yeah for sure.
Yeah. Uh so that brings us to Justinian. And look, I mean, I know there are you know, there are some fairly important people here, but Justinian is like he's one of the.
Big dog, big dog, he's.
You know, it's if you're gonna have you you you do want to have a golden age, and if you do, you want to have it last for a long time. But like Constantinople gets theirs, like they get their a one best emperor, like in five twenty seven. After that, it is only downhill. Now there are there are still some good ones in there. What oh sorry, I was.
Just say true. I just agree.
It's it's going downhill and then you know you'll get some good ones. You'll get to bazzle the first, to bazzle the second. Yeah, you'll, you know, you'll you'll get some of those, some of those. But like man, Justinian is the big dog. Look every like everything happens under him. So eleanor Justinian is like his his uncle was justin
the first who is emperor. Justinian takes over from him, and he just like he's got this buddy, his general Belisarius, who is gonna be like, you know, he's the Justinian is is the you know as the ruler, and Belisarius is just like his fucking mace that he's just going to like oh yeah.
Yeah yeah.
And it's like, so here is one of the ways that we can really see Constantinopa being like, I do not give a fuck about Western Rome, right, because you have both Sarius and he does this awesome job of just being like, oh, I have some barbarians taken over that nice I'm gonna kick your ass your mind now, right, So, like he conquers the Vandals in North Africa and it's like, yop, thanks having that like sweet ass taxation base.
Right.
He basically takes over the Ostrogoths who are down in Sicily and Dalmatia, And this is kind of like one of those classic ones because, to be honest, Sicily is way more often under the Greek sphere of influence than it is necessarily under the Latin sphere of fluids. So in many ways, that's kind of like a return to form, I would argue, but the Ostrogoths had taken it over for like fifty years, so they're like, okay, yeah, we're
gonna take that. Like they do kind of like get part of southern Spain back, which is how we get the name Spain because they start spawninga and so they're like, yeah, okay, look this is Roman again.
And hi, you know who Rome is? It is us in Constantinople, right, like you know.
And Belsarius also does a pretty good job kind of like establishing a border with the Sasanians who are over in Persia, which that's always going to be the bugbear, right, like the monkey on the shoulder for Eastern Rome.
Is always the Persians.
And you know you can understand why, you know, empire versus empire. That's just how these things.
Be, right.
So Belsarius does this awesome job of bringing lambs back under the sphere of Constantinople that are.
Like the good one, Like that's what you want, homie, like those He.
Took back the Egyptian grain base and allowed the grain dole to continue for another one hundred years in Constantinople, like it's it is like it is reventism. Definition of this is the definition of revengeism. Like they went back and they conquered as much of the old stuff as they could. They didn't get to the full extent they you know, they didn't get there, but they were taking they were taking it back for the glory of themselves.
I mean Roman, Yeah, well of Texas and I mean, well this is the thing.
Yeah, they didn't take the full thing back there. It's like very like, well, what's easy to administrate? Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, and where are we getting cash from? Right, And they're like, yeah, I don't need to go much further than southern Spain.
We're good. Yeah. So you take the part of southern Spain that's way that's very mountainous, it's way behind the Pyrenees. Like, you take that. You take the part of North Africa that is just along the coast, so you can kind of have it defended by navy. Italy is mostly you know, it is a lot of coastal so you can deal with that, and it's getting closer to your base and the Greek world. You know, you've already got that under your swaye. So it's like okay, now you've got like
the Roman Empire or light like the diet Roman Empire here. Yeah, because like you know, we we had to we had to shave a few calories. We had to cut off a little of fat. You know. You know, everybody, you know, you want some fats and marbling when you're when you got a nice cut of meat, but you know, sometimes a little too fatty. So I'm just gonna get rid of Spain, most of Spain and Portugal and France.
You know, but you know what, yeah, and like you know if everyone who like there's like, oh boooo, my precious Roman Empire, bitch, it's back.
It's back. So back for seventy four seventy six is gone by like five forty. They they they've got it. They they've got things pretty well. Five forty is like five fifty. But yeah, they they got it back. It is. You know, we're back, baby, you know, a little bit a little bit leaner, a little bit meaner, but you
know we're back. So yeah, that's uh Belisarius. And I mean they really do extend the whole like it is is impressive that they were even that they were even able to uh expand and administrate this New State for like a month or a year, like, because all of this travel to anything outside of like the very nearby regions has to be done via boat. You have to go all of it, ya boat, all of it you have, so you have to wait for the storms, You have
to wait for everything. And they were still able to administrate it for you know, I mean until the end of Justinian's rule at least, which is nice. But yeah, we've we've done an episode before, one of our Medieval Women episodes on Justinian's wife, Theodora her she's awesome. Uh, former sex worker who worked her way up, tried to make things later later in life, try to make things
better for sex workers. At one point to control kick Justinian and his advisors in the ass during the Nika riots and was like, look, I didn't get my way out of a fucking gutter and a bordello just to go back to that shit and they were like, oh, okay, yeah, I guess we'll stay around. And that happened really early. That happened in five point thirty two before all of the.
Revenge is I know, right, like girl girl had it on lock. Oh that's something I recommend you go check out on the Internet History's first book. I think that there's a version of The Secret History on there, and I'm obsessed with the Secret History.
Like I think Procopius is talking out of his ass. I do not.
Believe that, like Theodora was actually like doing sex shows where she was like having swans eat her out. I do not believe that to be true. But it's really funny and it's and it like tells you a lot about you know, it says a lot about society. I will say that, So treat yourself. Go check that out on Uh yeah, I think that. Yeah, I think that's on the Internet archive certainly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, it's it's just it's a lot of uh, it's a lot of He's getting the band back together. He's like, uh, you know, he's just he's he and his but he and Belsarus were doing coke and they were like, man, we should really, we should really get the Roman empower back together. Like, yeah, that would be so awesome. What if we did it? And then they finally and they followed through with it, and then you end up with the Roman empower back together.
As for yay, you know, why not? Why not?
Why not?
Right?
Like, I think that it's cute. It's cute and fun. I think that it's good. I like, I like this gang of plucky upstarts.
Yeah. But you know, Justinian then gets, you know, in addition to the the Nika riots and his wife being cool as fucking him being a wife guy, and their advanchism and Belisarius and all this, he gets the cool stories too. We've talked before in our Weird Medieval series about the secrets of silk, them stealing the secrets of silk via some monks, and that story is crazy, it's great. You should look at up. One of the best stories of the Middle Ages, regardless of how it happened, and
it's really cool. But he also gets this thing called the porphyrios, which is Greek for whale. And that is because for like most of his most of Justinian's reign, there was a giant ass whale that had somehow gotten into the Sea of Marmara and lived there. For where did it go? I saw it one second, lived there for like twenty something years. Could have been an orca, could have been like another type of whale. Orca kind of makes the most sense based on what I read.
For like the very large Orca for the geography and everything, and they basically think that like it was swimming through the Mediterranean and got into the Dardanelles and couldn't get back out.
I love I love this guy.
I'm like, yeah, little homie, little homie hanging out and by that I.
Mean huge homie.
Yeah, huge homey and like it would attack hips. He you know, couldn't. Procoba said he was like forty five feet long fifteen feet wide, so like that, you know, this is like, you know, it's a big fucking whale. It's a bit like the literal big fish in a small pond right here, I guess, you know, big mammal in a small pond. But like, you know, you get
this cool shit. And the thing about it was is that the people of Constantinople knew about it, and they like they feared this thing, like it was a known threat. You know, when when the waters are real churned up sailors sometimes would it sail because like they'd be like no, you know, it's like how in every batman moved they see the bat signal, and the criminals were like, not tonight, man,
it's not happening, like that's what it was. They saw the choppy waters, they were like, I'm not going near that goddamn whale man going out there. And it was such a it was such a thing that Justinian like had people study it and try to capture it, and never did. Towards the end of his reign, however, though poor portfolios, he was chasing dolphins and he got beached on the right outside the Bosporus in the Black Sea,
on on the northern coast of the Black Sea. And of course you know the people of Constantinople, they took this and stride. It was in the mud. It only kept sinking deeper, and the locals they got a mob together and they tried to kill it, and they went out there with axes and ropes, and he didn't do anything because their axes wouldn't break the uh, we didn't break the skin. Actually, they got ropes and wagons and they hauled the whale up the beach and they were
able to hack it into pieces. And some of them consumed the whale, I guess, to stake its power, and some of them just store the food. Anyway. Yeah, that's a sad end, but it I mean, yeah, this thing for like fifty years, just was like known like threat in the Sea of.
Mar no threat, fig.
Well, he was the Orca of his time, but much larger, you know, so we we salute this whale.
Yes, yep, yeah, we're not so different in that the orcas still attack our boats today. Good for them. We absolutely deserve it. We should not be out.
There get our asses.
Yeah. You know. The other big thing at the time was the plague of Justinian, which, now for a long time it had been debated whether it was a bubonic plague or not, but DNA evidence has now shown that it was indeed bubonic, and it wasn't the earliest outbreak. There are earlier ones, but it was one of the worst and would be a portent of things to come. It lasted for two months and killed like forty percent of the city's population.
Like yeah, ye annihilated the city. Yeah, it's definitely your Sydney of pastus. We have done testing, so we know that. Obviously, eight hundred years later or whatever, it has mutated pretty significantly.
Yeah.
Yeah, So the one that then gets into Europe is a bit more of a beast.
But one of the things that kind of happens with this particular outbreak is that Constantinople is super populated, but the rest of Europe isn't.
Yeah, yeah, yeah it there there's no city in your Europe that I can think of that had any kind of population, like a real population center. Paris wasn't a thing. It wasn't a big thing at this point, you know, like, yeah, it was just it was Constantinople and then and then a peninsula. That's it.
Yeah, that's it. Because so basically it's like.
Where you would be trading because you know, you're not going to be trading that much further in because all the money's in concerts Ople, and you get further out and the population is much less dense, so you just can't do like human and human transfer. The fleas aren't jumping off of you onto other guys, you know, things of this nature, and there's just like no one to trade with. So it just is much more compacted and it just kind of runs its course much sooner. But yeah,
it's a lot of people. Is it's still very horrifying. For Copius got it and lived, and he lived, He lived to hate another day, you know, which is just proof that like the purefires of.
Hating yep can help with anything, right.
So yeah, yeah, it during during Justinian's rule, the city was at least five hundred thousand, uh maybe as much as seven hundred thousand, and yeah, this knocked out forty percent of that. So it killed a lot of people. And that kind of was a prelude of issues to come because when they were lucky that this didn't happen later after the after the Arabs, I'm sorry, after the Rise of Islam and the Arab conquests and things like that, because they would have been in a lot more trouble.
Then Justinian dies, his successors, you know, try to keep it together. The city was ravaged, but you know it's you know, it's it's becoming the city that you know, you thought of, Like it is the the hippodromes there, the Hogey Sophia's, they're like the whole thing that they're basically getting the whole package together. But then in the early six hundreds we've talked about it before, of course, Mohammed found the religion of Islam down in the Levant
and this is who this is existential for Constantinople. Like the moment this happens, the it becomes existential because the Assassinids, they they they're very weak at this point, like the Persians, like the the better days of the Persians have run
their course and they're kind of winding up. You know, everybody hates the Zoroastrianism, which boo, that's right, and uh so they're about to fall so like they you know, they were kind of tottering and and the Byzantines could could deal with them as they would, but with with Islam, they're gonna yeah. Yeah, the Arab conquest is not uh, it's it's it's not good. They lose basically all their possessions in Africa and the Levant uh pretty quickly, and that means no more grain dole.
Yep, it's like that is out.
It's it's this perfect storm, right, and you know the first thing that you can say, like just very briefly in terms of why they are so ill equipped from this as well. In the first place, they are fighting like old style, like hello, we're the Roman army, would you like her line up in a line warfare? And the Islamic guys are like, no, we have a bunch of camels.
We are going to come and attack you. And then run off again, and.
They're like, no'll come back here and line up, like no, what do we do?
No and so, and then they just kind of like run off again.
So it's like it's much more like a gorilla warfare, which is incredibly effective. And you know, when you're fighting in big old deserts, it's great to be on a bunch of camels and running in and running out right, like works a treat.
The other thing is, you know Islam takes off.
People really really like it, and even if they don't like it, you know what they love not paying.
The jizia, right, which is the tax.
That non Islamic people have under Islamic governments. Right, So it's not like when Islam rises they're like at the point of a spear, oh you must convert. They're like, Hi, we're the new management. We'd love it if you didn't convert. Actually,
because someone around here has to pay taxes. And when you're Egypt and you've just been paying hella taxes to keep this other city going, you know, it sounds like a pretty good fucking deal, right, as Like, oh, so you're saying, if I like conver, then I am not gonna have to pay taxes. Yeah, and you're saying this is a form of monotheism. Uh huh oh yeah great, sign me up.
Right. Yeah, so that is.
A really really difficult thing for them to deal with just on a cultural level. Right, and then you know, as a result of this leads to Constantinople itself under c Yeah.
So yeah, we we you know, we we like to talk about the the sieges against Constantinople and who boy do they uh do the Caliphates love to besiege Constantinople. It is a right.
Turk lusts for Vienna and the caliphates lust for Constantinople.
This is a fact, all right, Okay, thank you, Yes.
It there are between six twenty six and like I don't know, like said, it's seven eighteen. There are count there there there are there are like six different sieges and then one of them where the Umi, where the Yumi has attacked it for five years. There was a siege like every year for five years during that period. And it's like they none of the you know, obviously none of them breached it, but like they this is not something where like where they gave Constantinople a break.
It was like even even even if all of their ships got destroyed. The uh they would be back with a new fleet in a year or two years. Like, it's just like it would not. It didn't. Yeah, there was no respite from it, and they weren't going to stop because that land was right there and that city was so important and valuable and it's like there it is. It's it's right there. That's the thing. And so they're just going to keep pushing and that's going to lead to everything else.
Yeah, completely, you know, it's very much a way to think about it is kind of like how you have Viking season up north like somewhere like like about towards the end tail end of this, right.
You're just like they're back and they're out there, okay, you know.
Yeah, it's they they actually get they actually get lucky because the the early caliphates fucking hated the Zoroastrians, like far far more than it was ever like an actual animating reason for Constantinople to attack them. They hated it, and they went in there and it got annihilated. When when when the Sasanians fell in the early so the century, who boy did they fall, and some of that land went to eastern Rome. But you know, most of it
was the caliphate. And yeah, the Constantinople is gonna get lucky because the Russian Caliphate uh falls apart in six sixty one, the Umiad Caliphate takes its place, but it took them a while to get everything into motion. And then in seven point fifty when the Umiad Caliphate falls apart, that's gonna give them a nice brief interregnum where they could you know, or are they gonna Are they gonna
do something nice? Are they gonna learn a bit about themselves? No, they're gonna do fucking iconoclasm.
Yeah, yeah, hell yeah.
But before we get there, it was also during this time that we get the first instance of Greek fire being used. In six twenty six, the Avars were attacking, and uh, they built a bunch of tall siege towers and they were ready to get out over the inner wall, and the Greek fire did not allow it. It did not work. They didn't work. Basically, that was an earlier, less potent version. The one that we all know in love is supposedly invented by a Jewish architect in who
lived in the region named Kalanikos. And yeah, they've used a siphon. They used grenades with it in it. They used you know, big ships full of it, like the whole thing, and it became just the biggest thing, and you know, the people feared it. They were like, no, I don't want this, I don't like it. I don't want to leave me alone. What is it like? Yeah, they didn't. They didn't want it. Basically, the four things about Greek fire that it burns on water and could
seem to ignite the surface of the water. It was a liquid substance and not a project not like a projectile. Uh. It was usually administered via like a siphon or a hose. So someone was pumping a bellows and then it would pump it into the hose and it was accompanied by loud boom and it was very smoky. So yeah, I don't know. They seem to do a good job with the wildfire and Game of Thrones. That's what it's. That's to me, that's what it was. Fucking Neon Green. I don't care.
We're just saying, yes, we're going with it.
Neon. Yeah, it's Neon green agent uh, not agent orange. Yeah, Neon Green, napalm. Yeah, that's freak fire in the early seven hundreds, the great Chain of the Golden Horn is built, and uh yeah, that is. That's a lot of the the defenses are basically in place. So now it's only time to watch them shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly. Uh, there will the Golden Age will flare up, and we'll
get a little bit more next week. But we're going to go out to stay talking about they decide to fight with the church and they did this iconoclasm thing and at the time East and West didn't have separate churches. But man, iconoclasm really didn't help them with people. It did not.
Yeah, yeah, okay, So like, okay, the thing that's annoying about iconoclasm as well is that we don't actually know that much about it.
Right, So you got the two sides. You've got either the icono jewels or the icono files.
Those are the two ones that we say, and they're the guys who like icons, and then there's the iconoclass and they're the ones who are like boo, no icon. Right, And it seems to be that this was a bit gendered, so like men would be like we're getting rid of all the icons. No more icons, and all the women like the minute that guy died be like, yeah, fuck you, I'm getting my pictures back out right, and we don't because you eventually have what we call like the triumph of what is it?
It's the.
Cool story Eleanor, but like the triumph of conformity and at the end and it is like you bring back all of the icons, they destroy all the stuff that the iconoclasts wrote about why it is they're doing it and we are just fucking guessing. We think maybe they're like, well, Islam seems to be doing really well and they don't do images, so maybe God does favor not doing images, so maybe we should stop doing images.
Maybe that's it. Some volcanoes go.
Off and maybe they're and like kind of ruined harvests and things like that and freak everybody out. So maybe they're like God is mad, so we got to get rid of icons. We don't know, like, we don't know what the fuck started them off. We just know that dudes will be all like, yeah, get rid of this, and women will be like fucking ignore that guy.
Right, yeah.
And this starts to with the church because the like over in Rome, the popes were still like not much of anything, We're.
Like, hey, guys, what are you doing?
And they're like getting rid of all pictures in Rome is like, well, I wish you wouldn't. And they're like, stand the fuck out of it, like I knows.
It's on your business.
And they're like, okay, well, I hope this doesn't begin a real lasting break in our two in our sphere and we suddenly break in happ and then we don't support each other, which allows us to be picked apart. Hopefully that's not a problem.
Probably that won't happen, Okay.
Okay, bye, and then you know, and then uh so you got iconic Lasm and that lasts until eight forty three, and it really did piss off a lot of Italians, like it pissed off like the City States, they didn't like it Rome, and like you know, uh, most people outside most people in the West of Europe what it was. We're probably it didn't seem to be a fans of iconic clasm. And the iconic class movement in the Western Catholic Church lasted uh negative seconds.
Yeah, there is like a short lived like buddy, like half the people don't want it in the easter.
Right, but yeah, yeah.
But the thing that people don't want in Constantinople either, is a Roman's say, thinking that they have any saying what's going on over here? And yeah, buddy, why don't you, uh, why don't you worry about yourself homeboy?
Like you know, we're we're doing just fine.
Why don't you, like, I don't know, build a church or something like what you why don't you like bring yourself up out of the muck?
Right? Yeah? And on that note, uh yeah, So in eight hundred maybe you've heard of it, there was this guy named Charlemagne, uh, little little known figure, and he was ceremonially crowned the only Roman emperor by a pope who was looking for an ally, you know, a normal political decision. And Constantinople, well, I don't think they like that very much. They they they Constantinople had problems with.
This, took it badly. I would say, yeah, yeah, they didn't.
They didn't like uh, any of this. They got really mad, and they got really mad when you know, the Italian city states were like, well, Charlettagne has this big army. I guess I'll just do what he says. And there and Constantinople's like, well, what the fuck is wrong with you? And uh, when you know it, this leads to the first little spat. It's just a little thing at this point, but it's gonna become a really big thing because mostly when you think about the downfall of Constantinople, you think
about gunpowder and Islam and the Ottomans within that. But there's another thing. It's a persistent death by a thousand cuts thing, and that is the city state of Venice. So in eight to nine, Venice recognized Charlemagne, which really pissed off Constantinople, and they sent a fleet to attack near the Venetian the Venetian Lagoon. But that fleet was defeated. Now, it wasn't immediately like a huge rift. They would you know,
they would form alliances and things like that. But as we'll see next time, a lot of the things that really damage Constantinople and really fuck with them, especially the Fourth Crusade, which is the big thing, is all because of Venice. That's not the that's not the that's not Islam, that's no gun gun powder not is not doing that. It was Venus being like, well, we got money, you guys got you guys got a lot of people that's cool. We got we got the cash.
Yeah, and it's like empire versus empire, right, like you know, the Venetians approximate an empire eventually, and so you come over here and you have slandered.
Uh, they're more.
Equitable Lagoon city.
They're doing they're doing the they're doing the money thing, the finger thing means the taxes. They're like yeah, like they're they're not it's they're not doing the Italian sign. They're just like money now now.
And so yeah, and it's this is going to be like you know, a butterfly flaps its wings, et cetera, et cetera.
Yeah, yeah, this, yeah, it really is. This is the butterfly flapping its wings. And uh, soon it will become a huge storm where Venus is. Where Venus owns con Santainnople so hard that they take the horses of Saint Mark from the top of the Golden Gate and take it. And they're still in Venice today.
Like it like yeah, which that's poor for I reckon that is. But but on the other hand, go off kings or like.
That is uh man, that that is that is some petty ye you know. On the one hand, uh you know, get over yourselves, your venice. You're not that special. On the other hand, that kind of pettiness.
Has just I like to celebrate it.
Yeah, it's so pretty like they're like, oh remember, like I like to think that the guy that took those horses down was like, this is for eight oh nine motherfuckers to come in here and bother my lagoon. Oh yeah, that's all we got time for today, folks. Next time, uh, we're gonna have what's known as the Macedonian Renaissance. We're gonna have Basil one, Basil two. The Golden Age is gonna flare up again, and then they're gonna ask for
help with the Crusades. And that's the beginning of the end, folks, because you can't come back from that. They're like, oh, we need help getting the Holy land in the Western Church is like, what's that you say? You need help? You can't do it all on your own. Oh okay, well yeah, what if we set up our own little outlet there. Maybe we could get our own black Sea trading hubs and bypass you what about that? Oh man? Those jerks anyway, Yeah, thank you very much for coming
to Constantinople with us. We hope you've had fun. It's a lot of like a lot of my new politics. But we did want to get to Justinian because he's a big deal, like the biggest deal deal we'll get. We'll get back to it next time. Thank you so much for listening, eleanor what is going on for you?
I started writing the blog. I keep threatening to write.
Today about why it's weird to talk about Magna Karta in the Temple.
Hopefully that will be up at the end of the week.
But otherwise you can find me on the socials trying not to be too doomer about things at as at going Medieval. Uh. You can check out the blog going hyphenmdieval dot com. And of course you can find my book The Once in Future Sex wherever books are sold for now, like presumably it'll get banned at some point in time, so I don't know.
I don't fucking know, dude, not in this house, that's all right.
Oh yeah, you can find me on the socials. Look is amazing. You know you can find me uh talking about stuff who knows what it is? Yeah, uh, and uh, you can find my ultra People's History of the Old Republic wherever you are listening to this podcast right now, but again, that's going to do it for us today. Thank you very much and we'll see you next time. Bye boy oh by