Byzantium: The Lasting Legacy of Rome and the Walls of Constantinople

This episode of "Fall of Civilizations" delves into the remarkable thousand-year survival of the Byzantine Empire, tracing its origins as the Eastern Roman Empire and its enduring legacy after the collapse of the West. The narrative begins with The'o Gautier's 1852 journey to Istanbul, highlighting the melancholic beauty of the city's ancient ruins, particularly the legendary walls of Constantinople, and posing the central question of how such a mighty fortress could fall. Host Paul Cooper sets the stage by promising to explore Byzantium's role as a bridge between continents and ages, its unbroken Roman heritage, and the ultimate story of its impregnable walls being breached.

The podcast provides a deep historical and geological context, starting with the cataclysmic Zanclean Flood that formed the Mediterranean Sea 5.3 million years ago, and a similar, though smaller, Bosphorus flood that created the Black Sea 7,500 years ago, potentially inspiring the myth of Noah's Flood. It then transitions to the rise of the Roman Empire, its organizational prowess, military expansion, and self-sustaining economic model that led to its dominance over the entire Mediterranean by 70 AD. A critical turning point is identified in the Antonine Plague of 165 AD, a devastating pandemic that weakened the empire, leading to political instability, the violent reign of Commodus, and subsequent civil wars.

In response to the empire's decline and internal strife, Emperor Diocletian's division of the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western halves in 285 AD, establishing the Tetrarchy, is presented as a desperate attempt to restore order. However, this system failed, leading to further civil war, from which Constantine emerged victorious, converting to Christianity and reuniting the empire. Constantine's pivotal decision to establish a new capital at Byzantium, renaming it Constantinople, is detailed. The strategic advantages of this location—controlling the Bosphorus Strait, the Golden Horn harbor, and its defensible wedge shape—are thoroughly explained, drawing on the ancient legend of Byzas and the Oracle at Delphi.

The episode concludes by detailing the ambitious construction projects undertaken by Constantine and later Emperor Theodosius II, who built the formidable Theodosian Walls. These triple-layered fortifications, designed to protect the rapidly expanding city, were a direct response to the increasing dangers faced by the empire, particularly the mass migrations from the Eurasian steppes and the shocking Sack of Rome in 410 AD by Alaric's Goths. The accounts of St. Milania the Younger and St. Jerome vividly portray the devastation and despair that gripped the Western Empire, underscoring Constantinople's determination to avoid a similar fate 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 and bathed by the fancy of the painter and the brilliancy of the gaslights in a radiance purely celestial.

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

how could the mighty walls of such a fortress City ever have fallen how could a city that had once been at the center of the world now be home to such a scattering of rubble and ruin and what in all the world had happened to the great legacy of Byzantium

I want to explore how this civilization suffered the loss of its western half and continued the unbroken legacy of Rome right through the Middle Ages.

This channel is thought to have carried more than two hundred billion litres of seawater every second or as much water as a thousand Amazon rivers reaching speeds of up to 90 miles an hour.

Rome succeeded because it excelled at organization mass production and military expansion.

who would have believed that mighty rome with its careless security of wealth would be reduced to such extremities as to need shelter food and clothing.

we have resolved that it is fitting that my rule and the power of my kingdom be transferred and transmuted to the regions of the east and that in the province of Byzantium on an excellent site a city be built in my name and my rule be established there.

you must set sail and search for the land opposite the city of the blind.

everything balances on a Razors 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 thus Rome beautified for 1,200 years became a ruin.

The horn which is close to the Byzantium city wall resembles a stag's horn into these young fish stray and then are easily caught because of their number and the force of the current and the narrowness of the inlets they are so tightly confined that they are even caught by hand providing the Byzantium and the Roman people with a considerable income.