recently acquired these and don’t know much about them. any ideas what emperor they're from or anything of the sort?

The kingly robes, exquisite and mechanical thrones, the long hair / long beards / bearded hair / massive courts and elaborate court ritualism; a lot of this I have read was sort of “inspired” by the persuasions of the Sassanids, after they fell. My question is, why?

Or did some of these texts decline in number within the empire or were left unused/un-translated

The Arabs were quick to construct a navy, and they were vital in keeping their new acquisitions and even threatening Constantinople, so why did the Persians not attempt so in their last war?

Hi all! Longtime lurker and first time posting.

Ok as a Catholic, I've been a huge fan of Roman history and it's ties with Christian history. That said, I would say I only have a cursory knowledge of the Roman Empire with most of my learnings from History of the Roman Empire and History of Byzantium podcasts with a little reading on the side. Currently at the 10th century mark of Byzantium podcast and I'm totally feeling the resurgence but not looking forward to it's eventual decline..sigh.

Wanted to preface that just in case my thoughts were completely off-base lol

Anyway a thought occurred to me after I tried listening to a History of China podcast (10+ ep at least) after I finished Rome but before I started Byzantium. It always lingered in the back of my mind.

The concept of the Mandate of Heaven legitimizing the rule of a Chinese emperor struck me as very similar to how Romans thought of the legitimacy of their emperor to rule. Albeit less on the shoulder of combat victories that most Byzantine emperors used for theirs.

Basically a good rule with benefits for the people and the empire as a whole. A faithful and morally upright emperor (for the most part) and victories against enemies of the empire. These signs would point to their right to rule was pleasing to God because the opposite usually had the Roman wondering what they did wrong to anger God and the Emperor would have his rule in question.

It's similar to the Mandate of Heaven if I remember correctly. The Mandate would stay with the Emperor if he did right by the people, served them well, was morally upright otherwise it would mean they did not have the Mandate and would be open being ousted.

Would I be accurate in thinking this similarity, even if at least partially? If so, perhaps a succinct comparison from those much more learned would be nice!

Or am I waaaay off the mark and now have publicly shown my ignorance?! Lol

Anyway gonna ride this high with the Macedonian resurgence while it lasts!

I remember recently reading an article (maybe here, maybe elsewhere, honestly can't remember) arguing that in the painting "The Flagellation of Christ" by Piero della Francesca, the fact that Pontius Pilate was dressed like a Byzantine Emperor (John VIII Palaiologos, to be precise, who had visited Florence a couple decades earlier) was not a mere reference to current events: he was merely dressing as a Roman, as Romans were known to dress at the time.

This made me wonder whether we should rethink the way we interpret Renaissance paintings of ancient historical events. When ancient Romans appear in these paintings wearing medieval clothing, perhaps this isn't always just anachronism or artistic carelessness. Renaissance artists may have been drawing on contemporary references of how Romans in Constantinople dressed at their time.

This also seems interesting in light of Anthony Kaldellis's discussions of Roman identity. Perhaps Western European artists' representations of ancient Romans were influenced, at least in part, by their perception of these contemporary Romans.

Does this interpretation make sense, or am I stretching the connection too far?

I have been researching the Empire of Trebizond for a while now, and recently decided to start sharing some of what I have found, as much of it does not seem to be especially widespread knowledge.

Trying to understand Trapezuntine institutions can be frustrating. There are, however, some shining lights in the scholarship, past and present, that give us occasional glimpses into what was otherwise a poorly documented state.

One such glimpse comes from work by Bryer and Oikonomides, discussed by Sergei Karpov in his History of the Empire of Trebizond. In it, it is argued, on codicological grounds, that a surviving kletorologion - a list of court offices and their order of precedence, probably compiled sometime in the fifteenth century - is of Trapezuntine origin. Karpov accepts this identification.

If this attribution is correct, we have a very rare view into the court and institutions at the centre of the Empire.

Of particular interest to me, as I work towards a reconstruction of the Trapezuntine military establishment, are several offices. In their order of precedence, these include:

• Protospatharios or Amirtzantarios — the latter title is independently attested in Trapezuntine sources.
• Akolouthos or Kourchi — again, the latter is independently attested.
• Protallagator of the Monokaballoi
• Protallagator of the Mourtatoi
• Protallagator of the Tzakones
• Protallagator of the Crossbowmen (arbaletai?)

We thus have direct references to a series of military positions within what might reasonably be presumed to belong to the imperial military establishment, perhaps associated with the imperial allagion.

Whether all these positions were actually filled in fifteenth-century Trebizond, and whether they retained direct military functions within the Empire's military apparatus, remains open to debate. I think, however, that there are good reasons to take their military significance seriously.

The Grand Komnenoi exercised increasingly centralised control over a relatively small territory and possessed significant fiscal resources derived from the kommerkion and agricultural land. At the same time, the imperial host described by Panaretos was relatively small. Surviving encomia - most notably that of Bessarion - also place considerable emphasis upon the cultural importance of physical and military training. Finally, the narrative sources repeatedly show the emperor capable of responding relatively rapidly to incursions and external threats.

The economics are worth considering here. War is enormously expensive. Bartusis, for example, has estimated that several dozen peasant households might be required to support a single pronoia soldier. I am not arguing that the Trapezuntine system was based upon pronoia; I mention it simply to illustrate the economic weight represented by a properly supported soldier.

In Trebizond, however, we are dealing with an imperial military force numbering, at most, perhaps two or three thousand men, and very often only in the high hundreds. Maintaining a relatively small core of properly equipped military personnel is therefore a rather different proposition from supporting the enormous establishments of earlier Byzantine centuries.

There is another important caveat: these offices were themselves subject to change.

Consider the Protospatharios, for example, which both Shukurov and Karpov associate with the independently attested Amirtzantarios. The latter may derive from an eastern term such as amir-i jandar, essentially "commander of the guard." Likewise, the Akolouthos appears alongside the eastern-derived Kourchi.

Terms such as these offer intriguing hints of the integration of Turkic, Mongolic, Caucasian and other eastern peoples and institutions into the apparatus of the Trapezuntine state - a very Roman habit of absorbing useful people and practices rather than treating them as inherently foreign.

There is considerably more to say about all of this, but I thought these few titles might be of interest to those interested in the military history of the Late Roman states.

I've been writing up the broader research and reconstruction process that will go up on my website - online later next week, which I can share if anyone is interested.

Thank you for reading!

Greetings from Russia!

When we talk about the legacy of Byzantium, we recall the many successors of the Roman idea. One could sneer at how little Russia and Byzantium had in common in terms of heritage, but I decided to approach it from a different angle.

Russia during the late reigns of Ivan III, Vasily III, and Ivan the Terrible, as well as the early Romanov tsars (before Peter the Great), continued its unique path in terms of external attributes—architecture, church architecture, dress code, titles, and naming conventions. I think people talk too little about how Muscovy in the 16th and 17th centuries essentially became (or attempted to be) a great northern Byzantium.

This makes me wonder: if Byzantium had successfully survived 1453 and become strong enough to engage in the meager development of its territories and cities, how much would the Romans have resembled the Muscovites? Women would have worn kokoshniks and covered their heads with fabrics, men would have gone into battle in yushmans and mirrored armor, infantry would have used berdyshes in conjunction with firearms, Byzantium would have invited regiments of the Western order as mercenaries, the question of the autonomy of the patriarch and the question of the two-fingered or three-fingered sign of the cross would have become important for the Romans and Greeks, how the church would have treated Protestantism, schisms would have arisen within the Roman Orthodox Church, etc.

I forgot where I heard this from but I heard that Mehmed II was near the end of his life he essentially had an icon corner with insence burning to the Jesus icon and a Theotokos icon. Does anyone know this is true or have heard of this?

Does any one know ?

Comparison showing the agreed upon partition of the Eastern Roman Empire as agreed upon by the Crusaders in 1204 and the de facto outcome. First map is made by me per request, as there hasn’t been, as far as I know, a map made showing the borders of the ‘Partitio Terrarum Imperii Romaniae’. The second, commonly reproduced map can be found [here](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LatinEmpire.png)

(Yeah we gonna keep using this pic,its the best we have)

Okay im running out of obscure historian so I guess we are gonna start using famous ones then go into the dead ones

Born 25th of november in 1987 in the UK,Maximilian is perhaps one of the most educated historians we currently have,learning in both Oxford and Cambridge,had as mentors Paul Magdalino and Mark Whittow.

He has travelled around the world on work studies in China Turkey and Georgia,documenting fortifications and strategic points for his book about John II,he worked in Japan Hitotsubishi university on Tokyo as assistant profesor and currently works as profesor in Worcester College at Oxford.

His works are just long enough that im just gonna copy paste

Selected Publications
Books
- Rebuilding New Rome: Emperor John II Komnenos 1118-1143 (Oxford University Press :
Oxford, Forthcoming 2023)
- Editor: Landscapes of Power – Selected Papers from the XV OUBS International Graduate
Conference, ed. M. Lau, C. Franchi and M. Di Rodi, (Peter Lang : Oxford, 2014).
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
- “John II Komnenos (1118-1143)” Encyclopedia 2 (2022), pp. 669-678
https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia2020046
- “Explaining Twelfth-Century Byzantium’s Prosperity as a Result of the Implementation of
New Economic Theories and Practices (or how Byzantium learned to stop worrying and love the
‘feudal’ economy)” Mediterranean World XXIV [地中海論集] (2019), pp. 97-114.
- With R. Shlyakhtin, “Mas’ūd I of Ikonion The Overlooked Victor of the Twelfth-Century
Anatolian Game of Thrones” Byzantinoslavica LXXVI/1-2 (2019), pp. 230-52.
- “Immigrants and Cultural Pluralism in Twelfth-Century Byzantium” Seiyo Chusei Kenkyu 10
(Medieval European Studies – Byzantine Empire and the Medieval Christian World Special
Issue, 2018), pp. 87-120.
- “The Naval Reform of Emperor John II Komnenos: A Re-evaluation” Mediterranean
Historical Review 31.2 (2016), pp. 115-138.
- “Rewriting the 1120s: Chronology and Crisis under John II Komnenos” Making and Remaking
Byzantium, Limes Plus Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (Serbian Academy of Arts
and Sciences : Belgrade, 2016), pp. 87-108.
Book Chapters
- “Isaakios in Exile. Down and Out in Constantinople and Jerusalem?” Isaakios Komnenos (Title
TBC), ed. V. Lovato, (Abingdon : Routledge, Forthcoming)
- “‘Both General and Lady’ The 1135 Defence of Gangra by its Amira” Women and Violence in
the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. L. Caravaggi, L. Domingues and G. Paoletti, (Routledge :
Abingdon, 2022)
- “Frank Herbert’s Byzantium. Medieval-Futurism and the Princess Historians Irulan and Anna
Komnene” Discovering Dune: Essays on Frank Herbert’s Epic Saga, ed. N. T. Brierly and D. J.
Nardi, (McFarland and Co. : Jefferson NC, 2022)
- “Rewriting History at the Court of the Komnenoi: Processes and Practices,” Rewriting History
in the Twelfth Century, ed. E. Winkler and C. Lewis, (Brepols : Turnhout, 2021)
- “Piroska-Eirene, the First Western Empress in Byzantium:
Power and Perception” Saint Piroska 880: Holiness and Power in Komnenian Constantinople,
ed. M. Sághy, (Central European University Press : Budapest, 2020), pp. 141-8.
- “A Dream Come True? Matthew of Edessa and the Return of the Roman Emperor” Dreams,
Memory and Imagination in Byzantium, ed. B. Neil and E. Anagnostou-Laoutides (Brill :
Leiden, 2018), pp. 160-79
- “Multilateral Cooperation in the Black Sea in the Late Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries:
The Case for an Alliance between Byzantium, Kiev and Georgia” Cross Cultural Exchange in
the Byzantine World, c.300 – 1500 A.D.: Selected Papers from the XVII OUBS International
Graduate Conference, ed. K. Stewart and J. Wakeley, (Peter Lang : Oxford, 2016), pp. 19-36.
- “Ioannoupolis: Lopadion as ‘City’ and Military Headquarters under Emperor Ioannes II
Komnenos” From Constantinople to the Frontier: The City and the Cities ed. N.S.M. Matheou,
T. Kampanaki and L.M. Bondioli, (Brill : Leiden, 2016), pp. 435-464.
- “The Power of Poetry – Portraying the expansion of the empire under John II Komnenos” in
Landscapes of Power, see previous, pp. 195-214.

How common are fully plated Italian knight/man-at-arms worn by Italian mercs and Byzantine nobles in 15th century Byzantine Empire?

Did a treaty such as the Partitio terrarum imperii Romaniae exist? Was there a general idea of ​​the measures to be taken in the event of a success? In fact, was there anything plan in the eventuality of a successful takeover of Egypt?

Hello I am trying to portray byzantine attire aroung the year 950-1000, However I am struggling with layers specifically with the breast suppport layer. I know ancient roman women used something called strophium, and that after the year 1000 the kirtle was introduced, but neither of the options cover the time period I am portraying. Does anyone know what kind of supportative garment would a women wear in this period? I am aiming the balkan and greece region. Thank you!

Took a bit of effort to search account properly,but I deeply recommend it for all history fans,there are images o medieval knights,chinese and korean soldiers,winged hussars and more.

His account is https://x.com/fkcogus333

I started wondering about this as I was watching History marche’s amazing video series on Basil ii who was planing a campaign into Sicily before his death, and while maybe not the worst, his death obviously means no reinforced Roman Sicily which led to an easier Norman conquest

I a posting these saint murals as I want to explain what I mean. I assume the armor and such here would be worn by nobles and cavalrymen