Byzantium: The Thousand-Year Epic of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Rise of Constantinople (Part 1)

This episode delves into the remarkable thousand-year survival of the Byzantine Empire, tracing its origins as the eastern half of the Roman Empire and its enduring legacy after the fall of the West. It begins with a vivid account of Théophile Gautier's 1852 visit to Istanbul, where he observed the ruins of Constantinople, reflecting on the vanished grandeur of a city that once stood as the center of the world. The narrative then plunges into deep pre-history, describing the cataclysmic Zanclean flood that formed the Mediterranean Sea 5.3 million years ago, and a similar, though smaller, inundation that created the Black Sea and the Bosphorus Strait around 7,500 years ago. These geological events profoundly shaped the geography that would later become crucial to the Roman and Byzantine Empires.

The podcast details the rise of Rome, its military expansion, and its financially self-sustaining conquest of the Mediterranean world, establishing an empire that stretched from Scotland to the Sahara. This golden age, marked by emperors like Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, was abruptly shattered by the Antonine Plague in 165 AD, a devastating pandemic that weakened the empire, decimated its population, and contributed to its political instability and decline. The subsequent period saw civil wars and the rise of corrupt emperors like Commodus, leading to the empire's internal decay and the eventual decision by Emperor Diocletian in 285 AD to split the vast territory into Western and Eastern halves, governed by the tetrarchy system.

The focus then shifts to Emperor Constantine, who, after reuniting the empire and converting to Christianity, made the pivotal decision to establish a new capital in the East. He chose the ancient Greek trading city of Byzantion, strategically located at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, controlling vital trade routes between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Renamed Constantinople, or Nova Roma, the city underwent an immense building project, featuring grand public works like the Augustaeum, Senate House, Imperial Palace, Hippodrome, and Baths of Zeuxippus, all designed to rival Rome itself. Constantine also initiated the construction of formidable city walls, setting the stage for the city's future growth and defense.

The episode culminates with the increasing dangers faced by the young capital. By the early 5th century, the city had outgrown Constantine's initial walls, prompting Emperor Theodosius II to embark on an even more ambitious project: the construction of the multi-layered Theodosian Walls. This monumental defensive system was a direct response to the escalating threats from migrating peoples from the Eurasian steppes and the shocking news of the Sack of Rome by the Goths under Alaric in 410 AD. The fall of the Western capital underscored Constantinople's vulnerability and solidified the determination to make it an impregnable fortress, a testament to the Eastern Empire's resolve to survive and preserve the Roman legacy.

This view is so strangely beautiful that it is hard to credit its reality or to believe that it is anything but one of those theatrical scenes prepared to illustrate some Eastern fairytale.

I do not suppose that there is in the world a ride more austerely melancholy than upon this road which extends for nearly a league between a cemetery and a mass of ruins.

The thousand tendrils of parasitical plants had sustained the stone which would otherwise have fallen. The line of walls raised to the sky its battered profile, draped with ivy and gilded by time.

The world's ocean burst into the Mediterranean and thundered in a raging torrent down a series of waterfalls that dropped for more than a kilometer.

On the ninth day, a young man had a slight cough. On the tenth day the cough became stronger and with it he brought up scabs.

Everything balances on a razor's edge and the state needs the assistance of god and the emperor to crush that danger which has been troubling the Roman Empire for so long.

A barbarian storm of which prophecies long ago spoke fell upon Rome, and it did not even spare the bronze statues in the forum. Plundering with barbarian madness, it destroyed everything.

Who would believe that Rome, built up by the conquest of the whole world, had collapsed, that the mother of nations had become also their tomb?