Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So I was just like having a moment, so I'd
Speaker 2: like a rare treat I get to record at the
Speaker 2: table today because I'm alone in the flat for a change.
Speaker 2: And then outside I heard the dulcet tones of someone
Speaker 2: with the most London accent you ever heard in your
Speaker 2: life having a breakup over their mobile at the bus
Speaker 2: stop downstairs. I look, he doesn't deserve this. All he
Speaker 2: does is work. Okay, So first first point of order,
Speaker 2: Second point of order, What did she expect after the
Speaker 2: week he just had? And I was like, part of
Speaker 2: me really wants to find out more about this, and
Speaker 2: part of me is like, sir, I need you to
Speaker 2: vacate the premises underneath my window.
Speaker 3: Because absolutely not. We're including that. Including that in the
Speaker 3: audio for everything.
Speaker 1: Is like, I don't fucking deserve this, Like, oh now
Speaker 1: cabage is upset. Look, it's all happening.
Speaker 2: The cat got upsets, you know what did I expect? Also,
Speaker 2: this is great because she was sitting on my baffling
Speaker 2: clothes and I was like, well, I guess it's just
Speaker 2: gonna be echoing because she's a little princess, but wow,
Speaker 2: it's it's too much for her.
Speaker 1: She doesn't. She doesn't like my fake lended accents. So
Speaker 1: there it is. Everyone's everyone's a critic.
Speaker 3: I can't win.
Speaker 1: I can't wait over here.
Speaker 3: That's great, this good stuff?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Like it?
Speaker 2: So I fucking love okay my best ever half of Well,
Speaker 2: actually I heard the whole London conversation. Like, my first
Speaker 2: flat in London was over in London Fields, which was
Speaker 2: not like nice at the time, but it was like
Speaker 2: up and coming, and I lived in like one of
Speaker 2: these it used to be a warehouse but it was
Speaker 2: converted sort of things, and we had these doors that
Speaker 2: were like the wall of our bedroom that kind of
Speaker 2: opened onto the street, and people would kind of like
Speaker 2: basically it was just like being outside, like you could
Speaker 2: hear everything. And this one night, a drunk couple who
Speaker 2: had been at a party across the street ended up
Speaker 2: having like a drunk confrontation right against said windows while
Speaker 2: also alternately leaning on.
Speaker 1: Our doorbell over and over again.
Speaker 2: And all I can remember is that repeatedly the guy
Speaker 2: was saying, well, I want to be your boyfriend, I
Speaker 2: want to be your boyfriend. I want to be your boyfriend,
Speaker 2: over and over again.
Speaker 1: And homegirls did not say.
Speaker 2: That she wanted to be his girlfriend. And I'm just
Speaker 2: sitting there at three in the morning in the dark.
Speaker 1: Like, oh bro, it's not looking good. But I had
Speaker 1: I had to participate in the entire thing. And like
Speaker 1: that's London, baby.
Speaker 3: Like you know, the big city. Yeah, the best city
Speaker 3: in the world.
Speaker 2: Goddamn right, Like you're tired of London, You're tired of
Speaker 2: hearing the breakups from other people?
Speaker 3: Oh man, I just that's yeah, that's delightful. Trying to
Speaker 3: think I've never trying to think I've ever heard like
Speaker 3: a really bad public breakup. I've heard like a really
Speaker 3: quiet one at like a at like a restaurant, and
Speaker 3: like two people and like they whispered and it was like,
Speaker 3: you know, we just I just don't think think we should.
Speaker 3: I think we should see other people as like okay,
Speaker 3: I understand, Like it was just like it was like
Speaker 3: maybe they were both over it. I don't know. I
Speaker 3: was like, huh, well, all right, there you go. They
Speaker 3: finished their dinner, they paid and left. I don't know,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, all right, well, all the breakups
Speaker 3: should be so amiable.
Speaker 1: But then where am I going to get my entertainment from?
Speaker 3: Luke? Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, you know, like
Speaker 3: those people leaning up against your doorbell, like I don't
Speaker 3: want to be your girlfriend. Okay, that's fine, all right,
Speaker 3: I'm going home, dang ding. I'm all right, I'll see
Speaker 3: you later. You think maybe we should get coffee sometime
Speaker 3: and you know, talk about this a little more, maybe
Speaker 3: sure our feelings. Oh yeah, I've been talking about therapist
Speaker 3: about it, and you know, I was just ringing and
Speaker 3: you're like, oh my god, just kill each other.
Speaker 2: What is going please, like if you're gonna wake me up,
Speaker 2: at least like be juicy about it, you know, like
Speaker 2: that's odd saying.
Speaker 3: Oh man, Yeah, I don't know. I'm never I don't
Speaker 3: think I've ever really had that, the experience of you know,
Speaker 3: like having like the next door neighbor who just like
Speaker 3: you know, argues all the time or just fucks like
Speaker 3: insanely loud or something like that. And yeah, it's.
Speaker 2: Excuse two classics of the genre, yeah.
Speaker 1: Related, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, true, true, And it's just uh, yeah, you know
Speaker 3: that's I guess that's just the joys. Joys are living
Speaker 3: in the big city.
Speaker 1: That vanity urbanity.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, yeah, I've never I've never lived in any
Speaker 3: place that had real population density.
Speaker 1: So let's tell you what. It's a one.
Speaker 3: It's a one, it's it's a thing. Yeah, speaking of
Speaker 3: a population density.
Speaker 1: He's pro Yes, I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the first time I've ever successfully done his segue.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, all right, well yeah, let's talk about it,
Speaker 3: because the only thing that's left is just me talking
Speaker 3: about I don't know, fucking taroffs for like, oh god,
Speaker 3: kill me. No no, not not the tariffs. Not this.
Speaker 1: We're not that kind of pod. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Well, at least it's funny. At least it's funny. They've
Speaker 3: been put off. Now I guess everything is uh, you know,
Speaker 3: hunky dory. Again. They've been put off because I'm assuming
Speaker 3: that the guys in black hats, like actual capital C
Speaker 3: capitals showed up and we're like, hey, no, he was like,
Speaker 3: but they were like, hey, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: No no, yeah, I'm like, where's the fucking deep state now?
Speaker 3: Bro? Yeah? Like yeah, I don't I don't know. I
Speaker 3: don't know. You would think you would think we would
Speaker 3: get a junta or something out of this. I don't know.
Speaker 3: We'll see the free officers movement where whither the free
Speaker 3: officers movement could go a free officer's movement out of
Speaker 3: the American Army. Oh Jesus Christ, Uh yeah, okay, let's
Speaker 3: let's talk about uh Bazetium.
Speaker 1: Let's do it.
Speaker 3: Hello and welcome back to We're Not So Different podcast
Speaker 3: about how we've always been idiots, especially with tariffs. Should
Speaker 3: never never you can't. You can't trust people. You can't
Speaker 3: trust uh leaders with tariffs, you just can't. It's they
Speaker 3: you know, they start getting them and they start trying
Speaker 3: to use them for every thing, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: we're having conversations like it's eighteen seventy eight again and
Speaker 3: we're like, oh, I think the tariff should be extended. Well,
Speaker 3: I don't. I'm going to form a political party against this.
Speaker 3: It is something called like the free uh No Tariff
Speaker 3: Group of fun loving you know whatever.
Speaker 1: It'll be like the nights of something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it'll somehow and some somehow you'll you'll stumble
Speaker 3: on the Wikipedia page or stumble across it in a
Speaker 3: history book and they'll be like, this group is actually
Speaker 3: one of the most influential because it paved the way
Speaker 3: for the formation of the you know, blah blah, and
Speaker 3: you're just like, huh, I well, yeah, all right, man,
Speaker 3: the eighteen hundreds. Look, if we're going back to eighteen
Speaker 3: hundreds politics with the tariffs and stuff, you need to
Speaker 3: go back with like you know, the zany political the
Speaker 3: zany extremely specific political parties.
Speaker 2: Do you know what if we're doing all that, I
Speaker 2: just want to bring the wigs back, just because I
Speaker 2: like saying the wigs.
Speaker 3: The wigs. Yeah, the wigs.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's that's what I say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we we don't, we don't say it enough. Yeah,
Speaker 3: today we are once again talking about the big city
Speaker 3: of Constantinople. Before we got the got there, good god,
Speaker 3: before we get there, we got a quit. We got
Speaker 3: a couple of questions. Question from Olie Kant, what's the
Speaker 3: coolest historical text or artifact you've held?
Speaker 1: Okay, so.
Speaker 2: I didn't hold this but the week before last or
Speaker 2: was it last week?
Speaker 1: I don't even know why this is fucking happening anymore.
Speaker 1: Week before last I.
Speaker 2: Got to see the Dallas Apocalypse with mine eye. I
Speaker 2: was not allowed to touch it emphatically.
Speaker 3: Saw the apocalypse.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so like the Dallas Apocalypse.
Speaker 1: It's like spelt like deuce, but you say Dallas.
Speaker 2: It's held at the bodily In and it's absolutely fucking incredible.
Speaker 2: It was made for Eleanor of ca Steel and Edward
Speaker 2: the second you know, one of those Edwards, and like
Speaker 2: it's absolutely fucking gorgeous, like so so incredible. And my
Speaker 2: friend Alison was allowed to touch it because she works
Speaker 2: for the bodily In. But even then, like her boss
Speaker 2: was in the room like looking at her, and I
Speaker 2: was allowed to gesture in its direction.
Speaker 3: You were allowed to point at it and be like,
Speaker 3: look at that, and the boss was like, like, your
Speaker 3: finger got your finger got a little too close to
Speaker 3: the manuscript for that.
Speaker 2: I guess for me, like I've got some nerdy answers
Speaker 2: to this, which is I've been able to work with
Speaker 2: some of the original Millich manuscripts, so that but that's
Speaker 2: like a personal one. And one of my very very
Speaker 2: favorite things that I ever did was during my masters.
Speaker 2: Like the reason you do the Medieval Studies Master's at
Speaker 2: UCL is because the Manuscripts and Documents course is really
Speaker 2: really good and you learn paleography really fast and you
Speaker 2: spend a bunch of time in the British Library looking
Speaker 2: at manuscripts. And one of the big projects that we
Speaker 2: had to to was you had to write up a
Speaker 2: catalog description of a manuscript, and I chose this scruffy,
Speaker 2: old little bitch manuscript that was a series of like
Speaker 2: tiny little medical tracts, and I loved it because it
Speaker 2: was clearly somebody's like an ordinary ass medical guy who
Speaker 2: like wrote everything down himself and like it had you know,
Speaker 2: he was clearly borrowing things in order to copy them.
Speaker 2: He like cut things out or tore them or went
Speaker 2: over them. And I just loved it so much because
Speaker 2: it was this direct link with something that's like a
Speaker 2: regular person had in the thirteenth century I think it was,
Speaker 2: and it was just I loved it. I loved her
Speaker 2: so much. I've held a Bronze age burial earn, which
Speaker 2: was really fucking cool.
Speaker 3: That's cool. Yeah, you just stumbled upon that I was.
Speaker 1: I was on a dig in More and uh, that's true.
Speaker 3: To say I was on a date and I was like, wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gentlemen, call me if you have Bronze age burial nerds.
Speaker 2: But I was on this dig in Moravia and it
Speaker 2: was hilarious because there was like two teams. There's the
Speaker 2: Czech team, which I occasionally got seconded to go work with.
Speaker 2: Which you much preferred to work with because they were like,
Speaker 2: fuck it, we're digging and they were like drinking sleeve
Speaker 2: ofvizza breakfast and stuff.
Speaker 1: And then the American team were.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, you had to cup the hole and then
Speaker 2: draw a picture of every layer of soil. So anyway,
Speaker 2: they're like, we're doing this for like a month and
Speaker 2: we don't get to the central burial.
Speaker 1: And then the Americans are.
Speaker 2: Like, okay, fuck it on the last day and they
Speaker 2: just go in with pick axes anyway, like after all
Speaker 2: of that, so that they could find the central burial
Speaker 2: ard And I'm like, great, guys, a really cool job.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I got to hold that. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: really Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's one of the one of the quintessential, a quintessential
Speaker 3: distillation of America. Like, oh, you know, we have to
Speaker 3: be careful. And then when it doesn't work, because of
Speaker 3: course it wasn't ever going to work, we're just like, fuck.
Speaker 1: It, nuke it.
Speaker 2: Fuck it turns out you would have needed way more
Speaker 2: people and to probably pay them enough, like uh, never mind,
Speaker 2: get the pick EGGX.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it was cool.
Speaker 2: And I'm glad I did it, and yeah, I think
Speaker 2: so that's definitely like the oldest thing I've held as well,
Speaker 2: so that was really cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's those are my answers.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think of the oldest thing I've ever
Speaker 3: held or touched, and I want to say it is
Speaker 3: an old shotgun that from like nineteen eight or so
Speaker 3: that my granddad left to me when he died. It
Speaker 3: doesn't work, it doesn't have a trigger or a firing
Speaker 3: mechanism because he's very old. But yeah, that, you know,
Speaker 3: being from America, not being a historian and not you know,
Speaker 3: being on any digs or anything, I haven't I haven't
Speaker 3: been privy to holding or touching a lot of very
Speaker 3: old things. I've seen some I've seen, like you know,
Speaker 3: you know, like uh, stuff from you know, like four
Speaker 3: thousand and five thousand years ago, ancient Egypt and museums,
Speaker 3: but you know, they don't Unfortunately, they don't let me
Speaker 3: handle it, despite the fact that I promised repeatedly to
Speaker 3: be very careful.
Speaker 2: Grandpappy's gun though, I can't believe you've got your grandpappy's gun.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 3: Oh man, if only he didn't. Yeah, suck. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a fun it's it's a it's a nice gun.
Speaker 3: It's in my garage. It's basically it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: America is not. Yeah, we don't have any anything old here.
Speaker 3: Uh not really. I well, you know what, I have,
Speaker 3: uh touched some burial mounds, because there are some that
Speaker 3: you can just kind of go on top of in
Speaker 3: North Georgia. I've touched some of those from indigenous people.
Speaker 3: I'm sure they are We're much older than any of that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't think I've held anything, Ollie, Thank
Speaker 3: you for the question. Next we got one from Evelyn.
Speaker 3: He says, I am a writer trying to make a
Speaker 3: career out of it, and in pursuit of that goal,
Speaker 3: I've started down the path of creating internet content. Well
Speaker 3: I'm not. While I'm not an historian and I'm not
Speaker 3: trying to be one, my writing sometimes requires I understand
Speaker 3: the historical context of something so I can tie it
Speaker 3: into what I'm discussing. The first few pieces were a
Speaker 3: bit informal and how they use sources, but I'm getting
Speaker 3: more serious and want to do a proper job of it.
Speaker 3: Do you have any thoughts on how a dedicated layperson
Speaker 3: might search for such historical context without access to university
Speaker 3: or academic infrastructure any I don't know, for your cheat
Speaker 3: databases or academic journals, you'd recommend websites or creators or
Speaker 3: you know anything like that.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, okay, So what you want to have in
Speaker 2: particular is the online medieval source book.
Speaker 1: You could just google that. I think the fine people.
Speaker 2: It's either so toughs is Perseus, which is that? But
Speaker 2: for like classical stuff online, Oh it's Foredom. It's Foredom
Speaker 2: Online Medieval source Book. They also have classical stuff.
Speaker 1: It's so good.
Speaker 2: It's got hella original texts from the medieval period broken
Speaker 2: down by category. So you know, if you're looking for
Speaker 2: something on the Crusades, or you're looking for something on gender,
Speaker 2: or you're looking for something you know, like what have you,
Speaker 2: they will have stuff up there and they usually have
Speaker 2: like maybe a little paragraph of contextualization as well. So
Speaker 2: this is like really really good in terms of getting
Speaker 2: like online actual sources. And it's something that I use
Speaker 2: all the time and all of us medievalists use it
Speaker 2: all the fucking time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And similarly Perseus, if you are looking for stuff that
Speaker 2: is a classical as.
Speaker 1: I say, and you can just give that a google.
Speaker 2: I think that it is often worth checking places like
Speaker 2: Jystore because they sometimes have things that are kind of
Speaker 2: like free up and it doesn't hurt to look to
Speaker 2: try out Google scholar and just like throw in what
Speaker 2: it is you're looking for and.
Speaker 1: See what comes up.
Speaker 2: And then you know, if you really hit a roadblock,
Speaker 2: send us an email and also see what I can
Speaker 2: dig out, you know.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I would also suggest if you find the
Speaker 3: name of an article that you like, you can sometimes
Speaker 3: just Google like the complete names of articles and find
Speaker 3: places where it is listed for you know, you can
Speaker 3: just view it. You don't have to pay anything. It
Speaker 3: doesn't happen all the time, but it does work.
Speaker 2: Oh god, I thing too that it just occurs to
Speaker 2: me that I really should say if you find an
Speaker 2: article and you don't have access to it, find out
Speaker 2: who the author is and email them and ask for it.
Speaker 1: They will send it to you.
Speaker 2: They'll just be like, oh, yeah, here's my pdf, Like
Speaker 2: you can you can read that. So they will be
Speaker 2: so excited that you want to read their article that
Speaker 2: they will be like hell yeah, they know that not
Speaker 2: everyone has just say like, look, I really want to
Speaker 2: read this article.
Speaker 1: I don't have academic affiliation, and they will be like here,
Speaker 1: you go, like even when you have academic.
Speaker 2: Affiliation, a lot of the time your school doesn't have
Speaker 2: access to everything. So you go, you go around begging people,
Speaker 2: and we are all down to send articles pretty much.
Speaker 2: So yeah, just absolutely feel free to google people and
Speaker 2: email them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you're in America. I don't know how often
Speaker 3: they still do it, but I know that in some
Speaker 3: cases you can do lend lease things with libraries, so
Speaker 3: you can go in and request something and be like,
Speaker 3: you know, does any other library have it? And you know,
Speaker 3: if it's something, then you know they can, uh, you
Speaker 3: know they can they can send for it in some cases.
Speaker 3: I don't know how that works everywhere. I'm sure it's
Speaker 3: much different in the EU and in England and stuff,
Speaker 3: but you know they some libraries here do that. Museums
Speaker 3: have a lot of good uh just info, like national libraries,
Speaker 3: national museums, the academy like the Academy of Science, the
Speaker 3: Academy of History like the the like national academies will
Speaker 3: have like their own texts and white papers and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. And and you know, if you if you're
Speaker 3: really scrouching for something and you're you know, you're just
Speaker 3: you're trying to find a like very specific reference to
Speaker 3: you know, a specific detail, so you so you can
Speaker 3: use it, you know you can, you know, you don't
Speaker 3: you know, you don't have to use the whole white paper.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's not entirely on the thing you want, but
Speaker 3: you can pull that reference out and then you can
Speaker 3: go chase that down and stuff like that. And I
Speaker 3: mean that as someone who does this like every week,
Speaker 3: where I have to kind of just scrounge around for
Speaker 3: these things and you know, use what I know and
Speaker 3: use what I can find, and stuff like scrounging references
Speaker 3: and links on Wikipedia is very useful. You should never
Speaker 3: fully trust Wikipedia because it is mostly done by just
Speaker 3: committed amateurs. And there's nothing wrong with that. Wikipedia is awesome,
Speaker 3: very happy for it. But you know a lot of
Speaker 3: them are amateurs in the fields and lay people and
Speaker 3: that's fine. So you shouldn't fully trust it, and you
Speaker 3: should also think about like the sourcing it's going to
Speaker 3: have and stuff like that, because they are going to
Speaker 3: prize like government opinions, like official government opinions on things,
Speaker 3: more than they will other stuff. But you know, you
Speaker 3: can use it for you know, finding these things and
Speaker 3: clicking around and just you know, looking stuff up, Like
Speaker 3: I just looked up the I forget how you say it,
Speaker 3: but the Douci Apocalypse or whatever, and like there are
Speaker 3: uh seven or eight links here, and you know, there's
Speaker 3: a link to a free article, another link to free article,
Speaker 3: Oxford Online Companion stuff like you know, it's you can
Speaker 3: do that. You know, I would, I would encourage that
Speaker 3: because it's helpful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I guess.
Speaker 2: Also another one to shout out here is the Internet Archive.
Speaker 2: The Internet Archive often has whole books. I use it
Speaker 2: all the time, like for things that are books that
Speaker 2: are out of copyright, which obviously a lot of the
Speaker 2: things that I'm working with are. So it's like I
Speaker 2: use things from the twenties all the time, right, And
Speaker 2: that's great. And so if often if you create an account,
Speaker 2: you can check it out for a couple of hours
Speaker 2: at a time. That's super super useful. I really recommend
Speaker 2: using that. If you were looking for stuff very specifically
Speaker 2: about the history of medicine and science, I urge you
Speaker 2: to check out the Welcome Collection, which.
Speaker 1: Is w E L L C O M E H.
Speaker 2: They have lots and lots of online resources and they
Speaker 2: are really cool and also are really down for you
Speaker 2: to like use their stuff just as long as you
Speaker 2: credit them, So they really like that.
Speaker 1: So there. They are a great resource as well.
Speaker 3: Online articles love it. I wrote a scholarly legal article
Speaker 3: fucking seven years ago. Now I still get emails from
Speaker 3: the land set all the time about this new thing
Speaker 3: we've got, and I'm like, that's great, man, I am
Speaker 3: definitely not going to use that. I don't. I really
Speaker 3: don't know why I haven't unsubscribed. I guess I just
Speaker 3: think it's kind of funny. But yeah, like you know,
Speaker 3: there are places I asked. It is nice to be asked. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, there are places to find this stuff. You
Speaker 3: just have to you know, you do have to scrounge,
Speaker 3: and you know, while we should have access to all
Speaker 3: of that anyway, you know, it's nice that there are
Speaker 3: ways to go about it and try to find stuff
Speaker 3: like that. Yeah, Evelyn, thank you very much for the question.
Speaker 3: If you would like to ask us questions like this,
Speaker 3: you know, please subscribe to the Patreon Patreon dot com
Speaker 3: slash w NSDPOD two bonus episodes a month you get
Speaker 3: to ask us questions, add free versions of all the
Speaker 3: regular EPSOD you guys know the deal. Check it out,
Speaker 3: check check out us talking about the movie Medieval last week, Yes,
Speaker 3: certainly something. It was definitely a movie of something. Things happened,
Speaker 3: that's all. You know, what what what what were they?
Speaker 3: Who knows?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm you know.
Speaker 3: But we had fun, that's the main thing. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: check it out five dollars a month. It helps us
Speaker 3: out and it's really cool. Anyway, onto the main show.
Speaker 3: So last time we started our series on Constantinople by
Speaker 3: introducing the city. Why it became so important thanks to
Speaker 3: three factors, the vagaries versus geography, Constantine making it the
Speaker 3: capital of the Roman Empire in the Theodosian Walls. These
Speaker 3: three components were reaching necessary to make to make it
Speaker 3: the greatest city of medieval Europe. Without one, it just
Speaker 3: wouldn't work. Sure, the geography in the surrounding land is
Speaker 3: fascinating and made for a perfectly defensible city location, but
Speaker 3: without Constantinople being made the capital of the Roman Empire,
Speaker 3: no one would care. It's hard to get to from
Speaker 3: any direction, and Byzanteon, the old Greek city that had
Speaker 3: once sit on that location was an off sacked ruin
Speaker 3: that lay on the border between the Greek and Persian worlds.
Speaker 3: Even when the Romans stick control, the site lay dormant,
Speaker 3: just a trading post and minor hub for Black sea travel,
Speaker 3: with interesting geography a little more. But once it became
Speaker 3: the capital of what was then the world's largest empire,
Speaker 3: well then you have to go there because because you
Speaker 3: want to be in the president of the imperial court,
Speaker 3: or trade or religious functions, or military matters, or just
Speaker 3: because And suddenly all roads begin leading to Constantinople. But
Speaker 3: if it was just those two factors alone, it still
Speaker 3: wouldn't have meant much. Without the walls, geography made it defensible,
Speaker 3: Constantine made it important, but the theaters and walls made
Speaker 3: it impenetrable. Without the walls, Constantinople and the Roman Empire
Speaker 3: would have been obliterated by any faction committed to the effort,
Speaker 3: the exact same fate suffered by Byzantion every few decades
Speaker 3: in antiquity. Over one thousand years, any of these groups
Speaker 3: could have done the job. The Huns, the Avars, the
Speaker 3: Kievan russ the Bulgars, the assassinated Persians, the Umid and
Speaker 3: Abassid caliphates, the Mongols, the earlier Ottoman efforts or the
Speaker 3: armies of Western Europe. Any of those forces could have
Speaker 3: bypassed the natural defenses and to Constantinople and taking control
Speaker 3: of the medieval or the imperial capital if not for
Speaker 3: those walls. But that's the thing they did have. The walls,
Speaker 3: and the capitol and the geography. All three factors came together.
Speaker 3: Over time. The city thrived and would do so as
Speaker 3: long as Constantinople remained the gravitational center around which the
Speaker 3: region orbited and was the gate tre gatekeeper of trade
Speaker 3: from North Africa, the Levant and most of Asia into Europe.
Speaker 3: And that's what we're talking about today. Even as the
Speaker 3: Western Roman Empire collapse under wave after wave of barbarian invasions,
Speaker 3: Constantinople thrived, entering a golden age under Emperor Justinian the
Speaker 3: First less than two hundred years after its founding. These
Speaker 3: will be the mostly salad days for Constantinople, the good
Speaker 3: times when there was hope of expanding the Roman Empire
Speaker 3: to Italy once again, and while it was still considered
Speaker 3: the capital of Christianity and the great bulwark against the
Speaker 3: spread of Islam into Europe. But all the prolonged unpleasantness
Speaker 3: of imperial decline really kicked into gear long before the
Speaker 3: prolonged unpleasantness of imperial decline really kicked into gear. So
Speaker 3: come along with us and see the many wonders and
Speaker 3: cultural landmarks that early medieval Constantinople has to offer. Feel
Speaker 3: the presence of God in one of her many sanctums
Speaker 3: inhale the sumptuous aromas wafting across the city from the
Speaker 3: Spice District. Take in all the splendor before it comes
Speaker 3: crashing down next week, as the inexorable passage of time,
Speaker 3: the steady march of technological progress, religious schisms, and the
Speaker 3: rapidly shifting realities of medieval European politics all come together
Speaker 3: and spell disaster. So yeah, the series is going to
Speaker 3: last four to five episodes, depending on how swiftly we
Speaker 3: move through things. Today will be focused on the fall
Speaker 3: of the wider Roman Empire, how Constantinople weathered the stormant
Speaker 3: thrived in a golden age for a while under just
Speaker 3: studying the First and his successors, becoming the second most
Speaker 3: populous city in the world. But all the wild cracks
Speaker 3: will be forming that will begin to break it apart,
Speaker 3: such as numerous religious heresies, the rise of Islam, and
Speaker 3: a budding rivalry with some cities on the Italian Peninsula.
Speaker 3: Let's start with a fall of Rome. You know, everybody's
Speaker 3: favorite thing, Eleanor. When Constantinople was founded in three point thirty,
Speaker 3: the Roman Empire was still united and under the rule
Speaker 3: of one of its most accomplished emperors. But within one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty years the Western Roman Empire will have collapsed.
Speaker 3: How did we go from the glorious new capital to
Speaker 3: a split empire and then only the Eastern Roman Empire
Speaker 3: so quickly?
Speaker 2: Eastern Roman Empire don't fucking care, and they're the boss
Speaker 2: of you.
Speaker 1: That's the short answer, I mean, yeah.
Speaker 2: So the long answer to that, though, is basically, well,
Speaker 2: most of everything that is really kind of going on
Speaker 2: just moves to Constantinople. You know, you leave the patricians
Speaker 2: wallowing around in Rome. Rome itself had been in decline.
Speaker 2: You know, at this point in time, Rome is not
Speaker 2: actually the center of the Western Roman Empire. Ravenna is
Speaker 2: because Rome kind of sucks. You know, it's a great
Speaker 2: it's a great place to get malaria, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But you know, like plenty plenty of the Roman emperors
Speaker 2: were not that into Rome, you know, and they would.
Speaker 1: Move other places.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Some of them are just more parapatetic because that's the
Speaker 1: way that they want.
Speaker 2: Some of them are like I don't know, Hadrian, and
Speaker 2: they just got a hard on for Athens and they'd
Speaker 2: rather hang out there.
Speaker 1: And you know, for quite some.
Speaker 2: Time, all of the good shit's been happening over in
Speaker 2: Constantinople basically, and you do have two orbits of power.
Speaker 2: So you've got the emperors over in Rome, and it
Speaker 2: very much pleases the emperors over in Constantinople to have
Speaker 2: the emperors in Rome not be as.
Speaker 1: Powerful as them.
Speaker 2: You know, like they don't want them thinking that like
Speaker 2: they can I don't know, start border wars, or that
Speaker 2: they've got any tax claims, or that they can call
Speaker 2: for arms at any particular time. They just don't want
Speaker 2: them doing much of anything. And fundamentally, for quite some time,
Speaker 2: the emperors and indeed, like you know, the last emperor
Speaker 2: quote unquote, but we're just Byzantine puppets. They were just
Speaker 2: like people that Conceptinople were like, uh yeah, this guy right,
Speaker 2: because it was just not as important and you could
Speaker 2: do that so they did, and.
Speaker 3: Whoever, whoever the most powerful gall or vandal or whoever.
Speaker 2: It was just like, oh, this general wants a job
Speaker 2: for his son, Okay, sure, yeah, put him in, Like
Speaker 2: I don't go fuck right, And you know, so they
Speaker 2: just didn't particularly care because they're like, provided I'm getting
Speaker 2: what I want and they stay out of my business,
Speaker 2: I could just pop whoever I want in. And so
Speaker 2: you know when Rome quote unquote fall contest, Noble doesn't care, right,
Speaker 2: because they're like, well, there is no difference here to
Speaker 2: me other than the fact that, like I did not
Speaker 2: personally place you know, Clovis on the throne of Frankia.
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't personally like place Theodoric on the
Speaker 2: Roman throne. However, like I'm in pretty good contact with them.
Speaker 2: They seem to be interested in Christianizing, fight whatever, Like
Speaker 2: it's no skin off my nose. That's not where our
Speaker 2: tax space is coming from. I just do not kill,
Speaker 2: kill care they probably kill.
Speaker 3: I do not kill everything else.
Speaker 1: I take that kiss on the mouth or.
Speaker 2: Kill yep, shout out, shout, yeah.
Speaker 3: You know they the empire, the Roman Empire split up
Speaker 3: after a while, and it just what what was there
Speaker 3: to hold the Western Roman Empire together because if home,
Speaker 3: the city wasn't as powerful anymore and it was Constantinople,
Speaker 3: so it had moved much further, much further east. Like
Speaker 3: how like how are they going to keep hold of
Speaker 3: the Iberian Peninsula, How are they going to keep hold
Speaker 3: of France of you know, Frankia and and and all.
Speaker 3: That's like, how are you how are you effectively going
Speaker 3: to do that? And the answer is, unless you've got
Speaker 3: a lot of money or just like an amazing army, uh,
Speaker 3: you're probably not. And yeah, they just once it's split,
Speaker 3: you know, there's only a matter of time once it's split.
Speaker 3: Once the capital moved from Rome, I mean they were
Speaker 3: going to lose a lot of the empire anyway, because
Speaker 3: you you know, and then yeah, it's it's the thing
Speaker 3: of it is.
Speaker 2: I mean we like to jack off about, you know,
Speaker 2: the Roman Empire at its height, because we're an expressly
Speaker 2: imperial society and that's important to us, right, Yeah, but
Speaker 2: it was kind of too big and and sort of
Speaker 2: difficult to administer, right, which is why it got kind
Speaker 2: of tapered off in the first place. Right, Like, it's
Speaker 2: it was much too difficult to kind of like really
Speaker 2: keep a handle on. And as far as Constantinople are concerned, well.
Speaker 1: They got the good bit, right, they got the bit
Speaker 1: with all the.
Speaker 2: People in it and most of the money, and like,
Speaker 2: you know, they're like, oh, we've got Egypt, and you know,
Speaker 2: for them as well, it's like when Western Rome starts
Speaker 2: to fall apart, they're like.
Speaker 1: Oh sweet, does this mean we get Alger? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: I have a what are you? What's going on?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Right, Like so they're kind of just like eyeing up
Speaker 2: like those bits, and like does it suck to lose
Speaker 2: Spain well slash you know, Hiberia?
Speaker 1: Yeah it does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a lot of money, a lot of money
Speaker 2: came from there that that was a pretty good one.
Speaker 2: But also it's real far away girl, and so it's
Speaker 2: just sort of like, well, I got I got better
Speaker 2: things to be doing.
Speaker 1: I gotta get down to the chariot races, you know,
Speaker 1: like I don't.
Speaker 2: It's difficult to kind of like get our heads around
Speaker 2: how far away things are at the time. And like, granted,
Speaker 2: you can get across the Mediterranean as fast as you
Speaker 2: can do anything in the you know, early medieval world,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't mean that it's like you know, a
Speaker 2: day or something, right, you know, where they're not living
Speaker 2: in the future.
Speaker 1: And you know, a lot of the way that we
Speaker 1: frame this and talk about this is always hopelessly modern,
Speaker 1: right we're like, oh, how cold you ever? Like, look
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire fault.
Speaker 2: Well, they didn't see it like that, and they didn't
Speaker 2: think about it like that, and it just doesn't hold
Speaker 2: the same cachet for them as it does for us,
Speaker 2: because it's something that we made up after the fact, right,
Speaker 2: like that's that's history, baby, So they just don't see
Speaker 2: it in the way that we do.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah. It's also like you can't you can't like
Speaker 3: force like the Vandals in North Africa to just be
Speaker 3: like oh yeah, sure when you're in Constantinople, like they
Speaker 3: like they are a people and they formed a kingdom,
Speaker 3: you know, like and it it lasted for some time,
Speaker 3: you know, like, you can't people weren't just like oh
Speaker 3: Constantinople said so well that you know, I better I
Speaker 3: better listen, Like they come on like it's not a
Speaker 3: yeah yeah. In four seventy six, h the I don't
Speaker 3: even remember what he was odo Acer deposed Romulus Augustulus
Speaker 3: gave him a pension because he felt sorry for him
Speaker 3: because he was a boy, and sent the imperial insignia
Speaker 3: back to Constantinople and they were like, cool, well, I
Speaker 3: guess we just lost some tax revenue. Other than that, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it didn't seem to affect Constantinople very much. Though there
Speaker 3: there would be someone who will come along shortly who
Speaker 3: was very, very affected by this and didn't like it
Speaker 3: one bit. Yeah. At the time, you know, Christianity was
Speaker 3: kind of uh, you know, early Christianity was all over
Speaker 3: the place. Uh, the patriarch and Constantinople was much more
Speaker 3: important than anyone in Rome, regardless of whether they call
Speaker 3: themselves popes or anything like that. And you know, it's
Speaker 3: just it's it's working itself out with it Arianism, and
Speaker 3: you know, they they got they gotta handle all that
Speaker 3: stuff they start. You know, it's just it's not as
Speaker 3: cohesive yet, and it's not monolithic. There's still a lot
Speaker 3: of Pagans, a whole lot of Pagans across the former
Speaker 3: Roman Empire. And yeah, before we get to the Middle
Speaker 3: Ages and to Justinian uh eleanor let's uh, can you
Speaker 3: what are what are some of the unique or different
Speaker 3: aspects about the Byzantine Imperial Crown that you know, make
Speaker 3: it different from you know, what we might expect of
Speaker 3: other medieval empires.
Speaker 2: Uh, it's still really in empire. Yeah, I guess, and
Speaker 2: I know that that seems obvious. But my point here
Speaker 2: being much in the way that the Holy Roman Empire
Speaker 2: is an empire, because they're controlling a lot of different
Speaker 2: places that have different different cultures and different languages. The
Speaker 2: same thing is certainly going on over in Constantinople, and
Speaker 2: you know, you've got the court language of Greek, but
Speaker 2: not everyone is speaking Greek all over the place, you know,
Speaker 2: Like you still have some kind of like Latinis speakers
Speaker 2: down in Egypt obviously, Like you may have like Arabic
Speaker 2: things going on in you know, the Middle East. Like
Speaker 2: I don't know if you heard this, but it's a
Speaker 2: crossroad of cultures, right.
Speaker 3: Like the Levine of contrast.
Speaker 2: The Lanta Contra, the Levat has a lot of different
Speaker 2: things going on, right, a lot of different religions. So
Speaker 2: you've got the state religion of Christianity, which certainly exists
Speaker 2: over the top, but you also have like lots.
Speaker 1: Of different people underneath who make up.
Speaker 2: Your taxation base, right, and so this is one of
Speaker 2: the big differences between that and you know, kingdoms, because
Speaker 2: kingdoms are oftentimes just much smaller and it's kind of
Speaker 2: like about who you personally can kind of military power over,
Speaker 2: whereas the crowd of Constantinople has these extant bureaucratic systems
Speaker 2: in place that really mean that it is still a
Speaker 2: large locusts for I don't know, like tax dollars are
Speaker 2: still really going in and out of there.
Speaker 1: They've got like a really.
Speaker 2: A really intact legal center, you know, so it's sort
Speaker 2: of like the laws of the laws, and sure they
Speaker 2: can change, but it's like you know who to go
Speaker 2: to for court purposes, like you know who your governor is, right,
Speaker 2: you know, the way that things kind of kick up.
Speaker 2: Whereas over in Western Europe that stuff gets pretty you know,
Speaker 2: Lucy Goosey, right, you there's a lot more old in
Speaker 2: customary law. There's a lot more well this is just
Speaker 2: how we do things, and a lot less oh like
Speaker 2: here here is the law. And indeed, you know, when
Speaker 2: you get further on in the medieval period, there'll be
Speaker 2: a big thing about kind of having the lex solica,
Speaker 2: you know, when they're like, oh, we've got the old
Speaker 2: Roman laws and we're gonna bring all of these back, right,
Speaker 2: Whereas in Constantinople they're like, nope, gunm ray here. And
Speaker 2: granted they built on them, they've changed them over time,
Speaker 2: but you certainly have this extant base that you're still
Speaker 2: drawing from. So you know, like over in Western Europe,
Speaker 2: everybody's like, we're the successors of Rome.
Speaker 1: We're the successors of Rome. Where the new Rome, and
Speaker 1: we're doing things this way.
Speaker 2: In Constantinople, they don't have to do that because they
Speaker 2: are Rome. They just are like, that's that's just what
Speaker 2: it is, you know, And you.
Speaker 1: Know, I do think it is one of these things.
Speaker 2: And I know it's annoying when I'm always saying, like
Speaker 2: Eastern Rome, but really that's what they call themselves, and
Speaker 2: it's us trying to differentiate them for no particular reason
Speaker 2: when you have exit institutions.
Speaker 1: Are really very very much still in place, which is
Speaker 1: what makes them.
Speaker 3: Cool, right yeah, And I mean this is the reason.
Speaker 3: The reason that they they still called themselves the Roman
Speaker 3: Empire is the same reason that people accepted when the
Speaker 3: Holy Roman Empire came along and called themselves that, because like,
Speaker 3: if you wanted, if you wanted to be the successor
Speaker 3: of Rome, you could call yourself that, like as long
Speaker 3: as you like, you know, did things a certain way
Speaker 3: and you took on enough of an aspect of it,
Speaker 3: or you're a legacy of it, like Constantinople. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: you're the Holy Roman Empire, You're the Secular Roman Empire,
Speaker 3: You're the you know, Easter, you know whatever.
Speaker 1: It's just sure, yeah, road is.
Speaker 3: An idea like yeah, you know, and I mean that's stupid.
Speaker 3: That's like a you know, from Gladiator or whatever.
Speaker 2: But I mean and also, yeah, I was gonna say, shout,
Speaker 2: dream of Rome, what's up?
Speaker 3: And by that, I mean you just call yourself Rome
Speaker 3: if you want and be imperial scumbags, which.
Speaker 1: You know, which they did want to do.
Speaker 3: They did, they did it. They did it with Gusto. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah. The only things I would add Byzanti or
Speaker 3: Constantinople is at its height, it's going to have anywhere
Speaker 3: from five hundred to eight hundred thousand people in it,
Speaker 3: which means it is going to have utterly insane population
Speaker 3: density for a city at this time, probably the most
Speaker 3: dense population in the world. I don't it's either that
Speaker 3: or like Beijing. But yeah, it's so they are susceptible
Speaker 3: to riots because everybody just lives so close together. And uh,
Speaker 3: this may be the only one of the only places
Speaker 3: you can say in the world. But under the right circumstances,
Speaker 3: if you know, a million things go your way and
Speaker 3: and and his and and fate shines upon you, a
Speaker 3: peasant could become the emperor of Constantinople. And uh, you
Speaker 3: know we know this because our boy, Justinian, his dad
Speaker 3: was a swineherd. He was a peasant, and he grew
Speaker 3: up and became a military man, and he was given
Speaker 3: money by higher up guys to take over the uh
Speaker 3: to help buy support, and they took the kingdom, and
Speaker 3: and he took the money and was like, now I
Speaker 3: just buy support for myself and took the kingdom Cherius.
Speaker 1: Nice, nice one, good job.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And and they and uh people at Constantinople were like,
Speaker 3: all right, that's cool, Yeah, we're good with that. That works.
Speaker 3: I'm not you know, it wasn't egalitarian or anything by
Speaker 3: any means. It's the same uh medieval life. You know,
Speaker 3: power and balances everywhere else, but under one with one
Speaker 3: very glaring exception. You know, every every once in a
Speaker 3: great while. So I'm going to just be like, yep,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm I'm I'm the good I'm I'm gonna
Speaker 3: do it. I'm gonna become, you know, the highest riser
Speaker 3: in history.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Uh so that brings us to Justinian. And look,
Speaker 3: I mean, I know there are you know, there are
Speaker 3: some fairly important people here, but Justinian is like he's
Speaker 3: one of the.
Speaker 2: Big dog, big dog, he's.
Speaker 3: You know, it's if you're gonna have you you you
Speaker 3: do want to have a golden age, and if you do,
Speaker 3: you want to have it last for a long time.
Speaker 3: But like Constantinople gets theirs, like they get their a
Speaker 3: one best emperor, like in five twenty seven. After that,
Speaker 3: it is only downhill. Now there are there are still
Speaker 3: some good ones in there. What oh sorry, I was.
Speaker 1: Just say true. I just agree.
Speaker 3: It's it's going downhill and then you know you'll get
Speaker 3: some good ones. You'll get to bazzle the first, to
Speaker 3: bazzle the second. Yeah, you'll, you know, you'll you'll get
Speaker 3: some of those, some of those. But like man, Justinian
Speaker 3: is the big dog. Look every like everything happens under him.
Speaker 3: So eleanor Justinian is like his his uncle was justin
Speaker 3: the first who is emperor. Justinian takes over from him,
Speaker 3: and he just like he's got this buddy, his general Belisarius,
Speaker 3: who is gonna be like, you know, he's the Justinian
Speaker 3: is is the you know as the ruler, and Belisarius
Speaker 3: is just like his fucking mace that he's just going
Speaker 3: to like oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's like, so here is one of the ways
Speaker 2: that we can really see Constantinopa being like, I do
Speaker 2: not give a fuck about Western Rome, right, because you
Speaker 2: have both Sarius and he does this awesome job of
Speaker 2: just being like, oh, I have some barbarians taken over
Speaker 2: that nice I'm gonna kick your ass your mind now, right, So,
Speaker 2: like he conquers the Vandals in North Africa and it's like, yop,
Speaker 2: thanks having that like sweet ass taxation base.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: He basically takes over the Ostrogoths who are down in
Speaker 2: Sicily and Dalmatia, And this is kind of like one
Speaker 2: of those classic ones because, to be honest, Sicily is
Speaker 2: way more often under the Greek sphere of influence than
Speaker 2: it is necessarily under the Latin sphere of fluids. So
Speaker 2: in many ways, that's kind of like a return to form,
Speaker 2: I would argue, but the Ostrogoths had taken it over
Speaker 2: for like fifty years, so they're like, okay, yeah, we're
Speaker 2: gonna take that. Like they do kind of like get
Speaker 2: part of southern Spain back, which is how we get
Speaker 2: the name Spain because they start spawninga and so they're like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: look this is Roman again.
Speaker 1: And hi, you know who Rome is? It is us
Speaker 1: in Constantinople, right, like you know.
Speaker 2: And Belsarius also does a pretty good job kind of
Speaker 2: like establishing a border with the Sasanians who are over
Speaker 2: in Persia, which that's always going to be the bugbear, right,
Speaker 2: like the monkey on the shoulder for Eastern Rome.
Speaker 1: Is always the Persians.
Speaker 2: And you know you can understand why, you know, empire
Speaker 2: versus empire. That's just how these things.
Speaker 1: Be, right.
Speaker 2: So Belsarius does this awesome job of bringing lambs back
Speaker 2: under the sphere of Constantinople that are.
Speaker 1: Like the good one, Like that's what you want, homie,
Speaker 1: like those He.
Speaker 3: Took back the Egyptian grain base and allowed the grain
Speaker 3: dole to continue for another one hundred years in Constantinople,
Speaker 3: like it's it is like it is reventism. Definition of
Speaker 3: this is the definition of revengeism. Like they went back
Speaker 3: and they conquered as much of the old stuff as
Speaker 3: they could. They didn't get to the full extent they
Speaker 3: you know, they didn't get there, but they were taking
Speaker 3: they were taking it back for the glory of themselves.
Speaker 1: I mean Roman, Yeah, well of Texas and I mean,
Speaker 1: well this is the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they didn't take the full thing back there. It's
Speaker 2: like very like, well, what's easy to administrate? Yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah yeah, and where are we getting cash from? Right,
Speaker 2: And they're like, yeah, I don't need to go much
Speaker 2: further than southern Spain.
Speaker 3: We're good. Yeah. So you take the part of southern
Speaker 3: Spain that's way that's very mountainous, it's way behind the Pyrenees. Like,
Speaker 3: you take that. You take the part of North Africa
Speaker 3: that is just along the coast, so you can kind
Speaker 3: of have it defended by navy. Italy is mostly you know,
Speaker 3: it is a lot of coastal so you can deal
Speaker 3: with that, and it's getting closer to your base and
Speaker 3: the Greek world. You know, you've already got that under
Speaker 3: your swaye. So it's like okay, now you've got like
Speaker 3: the Roman Empire or light like the diet Roman Empire here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because like you know, we we had to we had
Speaker 3: to shave a few calories. We had to cut off
Speaker 3: a little of fat. You know. You know, everybody, you know,
Speaker 3: you want some fats and marbling when you're when you
Speaker 3: got a nice cut of meat, but you know, sometimes
Speaker 3: a little too fatty. So I'm just gonna get rid
Speaker 3: of Spain, most of Spain and Portugal and France.
Speaker 2: You know, but you know what, yeah, and like you
Speaker 2: know if everyone who like there's like, oh boooo, my
Speaker 2: precious Roman Empire, bitch, it's back.
Speaker 3: It's back. So back for seventy four seventy six is
Speaker 3: gone by like five forty. They they they've got it.
Speaker 3: They they've got things pretty well. Five forty is like
Speaker 3: five fifty. But yeah, they they got it back. It is.
Speaker 3: You know, we're back, baby, you know, a little bit
Speaker 3: a little bit leaner, a little bit meaner, but you
Speaker 3: know we're back. So yeah, that's uh Belisarius. And I
Speaker 3: mean they really do extend the whole like it is
Speaker 3: is impressive that they were even that they were even
Speaker 3: able to uh expand and administrate this New State for
Speaker 3: like a month or a year, like, because all of
Speaker 3: this travel to anything outside of like the very nearby
Speaker 3: regions has to be done via boat. You have to
Speaker 3: go all of it, ya boat, all of it you have,
Speaker 3: so you have to wait for the storms, You have
Speaker 3: to wait for everything. And they were still able to
Speaker 3: administrate it for you know, I mean until the end
Speaker 3: of Justinian's rule at least, which is nice. But yeah,
Speaker 3: we've we've done an episode before, one of our Medieval
Speaker 3: Women episodes on Justinian's wife, Theodora her she's awesome. Uh,
Speaker 3: former sex worker who worked her way up, tried to
Speaker 3: make things later later in life, try to make things
Speaker 3: better for sex workers. At one point to control kick
Speaker 3: Justinian and his advisors in the ass during the Nika
Speaker 3: riots and was like, look, I didn't get my way
Speaker 3: out of a fucking gutter and a bordello just to
Speaker 3: go back to that shit and they were like, oh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess we'll stay around. And that happened really early.
Speaker 3: That happened in five point thirty two before all of the.
Speaker 2: Revenge is I know, right, like girl girl had it
Speaker 2: on lock. Oh that's something I recommend you go check
Speaker 2: out on the Internet History's first book. I think that
Speaker 2: there's a version of The Secret History on there, and
Speaker 2: I'm obsessed with the Secret History.
Speaker 1: Like I think Procopius is talking out of his ass.
Speaker 1: I do not.
Speaker 2: Believe that, like Theodora was actually like doing sex shows
Speaker 2: where she was like having swans eat her out. I
Speaker 2: do not believe that to be true. But it's really
Speaker 2: funny and it's and it like tells you a lot
Speaker 2: about you know, it says a lot about society. I
Speaker 2: will say that, So treat yourself. Go check that out
Speaker 2: on Uh yeah, I think that. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 2: on the Internet archive certainly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, it's it's just it's a
Speaker 3: lot of uh, it's a lot of He's getting the
Speaker 3: band back together. He's like, uh, you know, he's just
Speaker 3: he's he and his but he and Belsarus were doing
Speaker 3: coke and they were like, man, we should really, we
Speaker 3: should really get the Roman empower back together. Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that would be so awesome. What if we did it?
Speaker 3: And then they finally and they followed through with it,
Speaker 3: and then you end up with the Roman empower back together.
Speaker 3: As for yay, you know, why not? Why not?
Speaker 1: Why not?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Like, I think that it's cute. It's cute and fun.
Speaker 2: I think that it's good. I like, I like this
Speaker 2: gang of plucky upstarts.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But you know, Justinian then gets, you know, in
Speaker 3: addition to the the Nika riots and his wife being
Speaker 3: cool as fucking him being a wife guy, and their
Speaker 3: advanchism and Belisarius and all this, he gets the cool
Speaker 3: stories too. We've talked before in our Weird Medieval series
Speaker 3: about the secrets of silk, them stealing the secrets of
Speaker 3: silk via some monks, and that story is crazy, it's great.
Speaker 3: You should look at up. One of the best stories
Speaker 3: of the Middle Ages, regardless of how it happened, and
Speaker 3: it's really cool. But he also gets this thing called
Speaker 3: the porphyrios, which is Greek for whale. And that is
Speaker 3: because for like most of his most of Justinian's reign,
Speaker 3: there was a giant ass whale that had somehow gotten
Speaker 3: into the Sea of Marmara and lived there. For where
Speaker 3: did it go? I saw it one second, lived there
Speaker 3: for like twenty something years. Could have been an orca,
Speaker 3: could have been like another type of whale. Orca kind
Speaker 3: of makes the most sense based on what I read.
Speaker 3: For like the very large Orca for the geography and everything,
Speaker 3: and they basically think that like it was swimming through
Speaker 3: the Mediterranean and got into the Dardanelles and couldn't get
Speaker 3: back out.
Speaker 1: I love I love this guy.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, little homie, little homie hanging out and
Speaker 2: by that I.
Speaker 1: Mean huge homie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, huge homey and like it would attack hips. He
Speaker 3: you know, couldn't. Procoba said he was like forty five
Speaker 3: feet long fifteen feet wide, so like that, you know,
Speaker 3: this is like, you know, it's a big fucking whale.
Speaker 3: It's a bit like the literal big fish in a
Speaker 3: small pond right here, I guess, you know, big mammal
Speaker 3: in a small pond. But like, you know, you get
Speaker 3: this cool shit. And the thing about it was is
Speaker 3: that the people of Constantinople knew about it, and they
Speaker 3: like they feared this thing, like it was a known threat.
Speaker 3: You know, when when the waters are real churned up
Speaker 3: sailors sometimes would it sail because like they'd be like no,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like how in every batman moved they
Speaker 3: see the bat signal, and the criminals were like, not tonight, man,
Speaker 3: it's not happening, like that's what it was. They saw
Speaker 3: the choppy waters, they were like, I'm not going near
Speaker 3: that goddamn whale man going out there. And it was
Speaker 3: such a it was such a thing that Justinian like
Speaker 3: had people study it and try to capture it, and
Speaker 3: never did. Towards the end of his reign, however, though
Speaker 3: poor portfolios, he was chasing dolphins and he got beached
Speaker 3: on the right outside the Bosporus in the Black Sea,
Speaker 3: on on the northern coast of the Black Sea. And
Speaker 3: of course you know the people of Constantinople, they took
Speaker 3: this and stride. It was in the mud. It only
Speaker 3: kept sinking deeper, and the locals they got a mob
Speaker 3: together and they tried to kill it, and they went
Speaker 3: out there with axes and ropes, and he didn't do
Speaker 3: anything because their axes wouldn't break the uh, we didn't
Speaker 3: break the skin. Actually, they got ropes and wagons and
Speaker 3: they hauled the whale up the beach and they were
Speaker 3: able to hack it into pieces. And some of them
Speaker 3: consumed the whale, I guess, to stake its power, and
Speaker 3: some of them just store the food. Anyway. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: a sad end, but it I mean, yeah, this thing
Speaker 3: for like fifty years, just was like known like threat
Speaker 3: in the Sea of.
Speaker 1: Mar no threat, fig.
Speaker 2: Well, he was the Orca of his time, but much larger,
Speaker 2: you know, so we we salute this whale.
Speaker 3: Yes, yep, yeah, we're not so different in that the
Speaker 3: orcas still attack our boats today. Good for them. We
Speaker 3: absolutely deserve it. We should not be out.
Speaker 1: There get our asses.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know. The other big thing at the time
Speaker 3: was the plague of Justinian, which, now for a long
Speaker 3: time it had been debated whether it was a bubonic
Speaker 3: plague or not, but DNA evidence has now shown that
Speaker 3: it was indeed bubonic, and it wasn't the earliest outbreak.
Speaker 3: There are earlier ones, but it was one of the
Speaker 3: worst and would be a portent of things to come.
Speaker 3: It lasted for two months and killed like forty percent
Speaker 3: of the city's population.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, ye annihilated the city. Yeah, it's definitely your
Speaker 2: Sydney of pastus. We have done testing, so we know that. Obviously,
Speaker 2: eight hundred years later or whatever, it has mutated pretty significantly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the one that then gets into Europe is
Speaker 1: a bit more of a beast.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that kind of happens with
Speaker 2: this particular outbreak is that Constantinople is super populated, but
Speaker 2: the rest of Europe isn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah it there there's no city in your
Speaker 3: Europe that I can think of that had any kind
Speaker 3: of population, like a real population center. Paris wasn't a thing.
Speaker 3: It wasn't a big thing at this point, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was just it was Constantinople and then and then
Speaker 3: a peninsula. That's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. Because so basically it's like.
Speaker 2: Where you would be trading because you know, you're not
Speaker 2: going to be trading that much further in because all
Speaker 2: the money's in concerts Ople, and you get further out
Speaker 2: and the population is much less dense, so you just
Speaker 2: can't do like human and human transfer. The fleas aren't
Speaker 2: jumping off of you onto other guys, you know, things
Speaker 2: of this nature, and there's just like no one to
Speaker 2: trade with. So it just is much more compacted and
Speaker 2: it just kind of runs its course much sooner. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a lot of people. Is it's still very horrifying.
Speaker 2: For Copius got it and lived, and he lived, He
Speaker 2: lived to hate another day, you know, which is just
Speaker 2: proof that like the purefires of.
Speaker 1: Hating yep can help with anything, right.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, it during during Justinian's rule, the city
Speaker 3: was at least five hundred thousand, uh maybe as much
Speaker 3: as seven hundred thousand, and yeah, this knocked out forty
Speaker 3: percent of that. So it killed a lot of people.
Speaker 3: And that kind of was a prelude of issues to
Speaker 3: come because when they were lucky that this didn't happen
Speaker 3: later after the after the Arabs, I'm sorry, after the
Speaker 3: Rise of Islam and the Arab conquests and things like that,
Speaker 3: because they would have been in a lot more trouble.
Speaker 3: Then Justinian dies, his successors, you know, try to keep
Speaker 3: it together. The city was ravaged, but you know it's
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's becoming the city that you know,
Speaker 3: you thought of, Like it is the the hippodromes there,
Speaker 3: the Hogey Sophia's, they're like the whole thing that they're
Speaker 3: basically getting the whole package together. But then in the
Speaker 3: early six hundreds we've talked about it before, of course,
Speaker 3: Mohammed found the religion of Islam down in the Levant
Speaker 3: and this is who this is existential for Constantinople. Like
Speaker 3: the moment this happens, the it becomes existential because the Assassinids,
Speaker 3: they they they're very weak at this point, like the Persians,
Speaker 3: like the the better days of the Persians have run
Speaker 3: their course and they're kind of winding up. You know,
Speaker 3: everybody hates the Zoroastrianism, which boo, that's right, and uh
Speaker 3: so they're about to fall so like they you know,
Speaker 3: they were kind of tottering and and the Byzantines could
Speaker 3: could deal with them as they would, but with with Islam,
Speaker 3: they're gonna yeah. Yeah, the Arab conquest is not uh,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's not good. They lose basically all their
Speaker 3: possessions in Africa and the Levant uh pretty quickly, and
Speaker 3: that means no more grain dole.
Speaker 1: Yep, it's like that is out.
Speaker 2: It's it's this perfect storm, right, and you know the
Speaker 2: first thing that you can say, like just very briefly
Speaker 2: in terms of why they are so ill equipped from
Speaker 2: this as well. In the first place, they are fighting
Speaker 2: like old style, like hello, we're the Roman army, would
Speaker 2: you like her line up in a line warfare? And
Speaker 2: the Islamic guys are like, no, we have a bunch
Speaker 2: of camels.
Speaker 1: We are going to come and attack you. And then
Speaker 1: run off again, and.
Speaker 2: They're like, no'll come back here and line up, like no,
Speaker 2: what do we do?
Speaker 1: No and so, and then they just kind of like
Speaker 1: run off again.
Speaker 2: So it's like it's much more like a gorilla warfare,
Speaker 2: which is incredibly effective. And you know, when you're fighting
Speaker 2: in big old deserts, it's great to be on a
Speaker 2: bunch of camels and running in and running out right,
Speaker 2: like works a treat.
Speaker 1: The other thing is, you know Islam takes off.
Speaker 2: People really really like it, and even if they don't
Speaker 2: like it, you know what they love not paying.
Speaker 1: The jizia, right, which is the tax.
Speaker 2: That non Islamic people have under Islamic governments. Right, So
Speaker 2: it's not like when Islam rises they're like at the
Speaker 2: point of a spear, oh you must convert. They're like, Hi,
Speaker 2: we're the new management. We'd love it if you didn't convert. Actually,
Speaker 2: because someone around here has to pay taxes. And when
Speaker 2: you're Egypt and you've just been paying hella taxes to
Speaker 2: keep this other city going, you know, it sounds like
Speaker 2: a pretty good fucking deal, right, as Like, oh, so
Speaker 2: you're saying, if I like conver, then I am not
Speaker 2: gonna have to pay taxes. Yeah, and you're saying this
Speaker 2: is a form of monotheism. Uh huh oh yeah great,
Speaker 2: sign me up.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, so that is.
Speaker 2: A really really difficult thing for them to deal with
Speaker 2: just on a cultural level. Right, and then you know,
Speaker 2: as a result of this leads to Constantinople itself under
Speaker 2: c Yeah.
Speaker 3: So yeah, we we you know, we we like to
Speaker 3: talk about the the sieges against Constantinople and who boy
Speaker 3: do they uh do the Caliphates love to besiege Constantinople.
Speaker 3: It is a right.
Speaker 2: Turk lusts for Vienna and the caliphates lust for Constantinople.
Speaker 1: This is a fact, all right, Okay, thank you, Yes.
Speaker 3: It there are between six twenty six and like I
Speaker 3: don't know, like said, it's seven eighteen. There are count
Speaker 3: there there there are there are like six different sieges
Speaker 3: and then one of them where the Umi, where the
Speaker 3: Yumi has attacked it for five years. There was a
Speaker 3: siege like every year for five years during that period.
Speaker 3: And it's like they none of the you know, obviously
Speaker 3: none of them breached it, but like they this is
Speaker 3: not something where like where they gave Constantinople a break.
Speaker 3: It was like even even even if all of their
Speaker 3: ships got destroyed. The uh they would be back with
Speaker 3: a new fleet in a year or two years. Like,
Speaker 3: it's just like it would not. It didn't. Yeah, there
Speaker 3: was no respite from it, and they weren't going to
Speaker 3: stop because that land was right there and that city
Speaker 3: was so important and valuable and it's like there it is.
Speaker 3: It's it's right there. That's the thing. And so they're
Speaker 3: just going to keep pushing and that's going to lead
Speaker 3: to everything else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, completely, you know, it's very much a way to
Speaker 2: think about it is kind of like how you have
Speaker 2: Viking season up north like somewhere like like about towards
Speaker 2: the end tail end of this, right.
Speaker 1: You're just like they're back and they're out there, okay,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's they they actually get they actually get lucky
Speaker 3: because the the early caliphates fucking hated the Zoroastrians, like
Speaker 3: far far more than it was ever like an actual
Speaker 3: animating reason for Constantinople to attack them. They hated it,
Speaker 3: and they went in there and it got annihilated. When
Speaker 3: when when the Sasanians fell in the early so the century,
Speaker 3: who boy did they fall, and some of that land
Speaker 3: went to eastern Rome. But you know, most of it
Speaker 3: was the caliphate. And yeah, the Constantinople is gonna get
Speaker 3: lucky because the Russian Caliphate uh falls apart in six
Speaker 3: sixty one, the Umiad Caliphate takes its place, but it
Speaker 3: took them a while to get everything into motion. And
Speaker 3: then in seven point fifty when the Umiad Caliphate falls apart,
Speaker 3: that's gonna give them a nice brief interregnum where they
Speaker 3: could you know, or are they gonna Are they gonna
Speaker 3: do something nice? Are they gonna learn a bit about themselves? No,
Speaker 3: they're gonna do fucking iconoclasm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 3: But before we get there, it was also during this
Speaker 3: time that we get the first instance of Greek fire
Speaker 3: being used. In six twenty six, the Avars were attacking,
Speaker 3: and uh, they built a bunch of tall siege towers
Speaker 3: and they were ready to get out over the inner wall,
Speaker 3: and the Greek fire did not allow it. It did
Speaker 3: not work. They didn't work. Basically, that was an earlier,
Speaker 3: less potent version. The one that we all know in
Speaker 3: love is supposedly invented by a Jewish architect in who
Speaker 3: lived in the region named Kalanikos. And yeah, they've used
Speaker 3: a siphon. They used grenades with it in it. They
Speaker 3: used you know, big ships full of it, like the
Speaker 3: whole thing, and it became just the biggest thing, and
Speaker 3: you know, the people feared it. They were like, no,
Speaker 3: I don't want this, I don't like it. I don't
Speaker 3: want to leave me alone. What is it like? Yeah,
Speaker 3: they didn't. They didn't want it. Basically, the four things
Speaker 3: about Greek fire that it burns on water and could
Speaker 3: seem to ignite the surface of the water. It was
Speaker 3: a liquid substance and not a project not like a projectile. Uh.
Speaker 3: It was usually administered via like a siphon or a hose.
Speaker 3: So someone was pumping a bellows and then it would
Speaker 3: pump it into the hose and it was accompanied by
Speaker 3: loud boom and it was very smoky. So yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't know. They seem to do a good job with
Speaker 3: the wildfire and Game of Thrones. That's what it's. That's
Speaker 3: to me, that's what it was. Fucking Neon Green. I
Speaker 3: don't care.
Speaker 1: We're just saying, yes, we're going with it.
Speaker 3: Neon. Yeah, it's Neon green agent uh, not agent orange. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Neon Green, napalm. Yeah, that's freak fire in the early
Speaker 3: seven hundreds, the great Chain of the Golden Horn is built,
Speaker 3: and uh yeah, that is. That's a lot of the
Speaker 3: the defenses are basically in place. So now it's only
Speaker 3: time to watch them shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly. Uh,
Speaker 3: there will the Golden Age will flare up, and we'll
Speaker 3: get a little bit more next week. But we're going
Speaker 3: to go out to stay talking about they decide to
Speaker 3: fight with the church and they did this iconoclasm thing
Speaker 3: and at the time East and West didn't have separate churches.
Speaker 3: But man, iconoclasm really didn't help them with people. It
Speaker 3: did not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, So like, okay, the thing that's annoying
Speaker 2: about iconoclasm as well is that we don't actually know
Speaker 2: that much about it.
Speaker 1: Right, So you got the two sides. You've got either
Speaker 1: the icono jewels or the icono files.
Speaker 2: Those are the two ones that we say, and they're
Speaker 2: the guys who like icons, and then there's the iconoclass
Speaker 2: and they're the ones who are like boo, no icon. Right,
Speaker 2: And it seems to be that this was a bit gendered,
Speaker 2: so like men would be like we're getting rid of
Speaker 2: all the icons. No more icons, and all the women
Speaker 2: like the minute that guy died be like, yeah, fuck you,
Speaker 2: I'm getting my pictures back out right, and we don't
Speaker 2: because you eventually have what we call like the triumph
Speaker 2: of what is it?
Speaker 1: It's the.
Speaker 2: Cool story Eleanor, but like the triumph of conformity and
Speaker 2: at the end and it is like you bring back
Speaker 2: all of the icons, they destroy all the stuff that
Speaker 2: the iconoclasts wrote about why it is they're doing it
Speaker 2: and we are just fucking guessing. We think maybe they're like, well,
Speaker 2: Islam seems to be doing really well and they don't
Speaker 2: do images, so maybe God does favor not doing images,
Speaker 2: so maybe we should stop doing images.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's it. Some volcanoes go.
Speaker 2: Off and maybe they're and like kind of ruined harvests
Speaker 2: and things like that and freak everybody out. So maybe
Speaker 2: they're like God is mad, so we got to get
Speaker 2: rid of icons. We don't know, like, we don't know
Speaker 2: what the fuck started them off. We just know that
Speaker 2: dudes will be all like, yeah, get rid of this,
Speaker 2: and women will be like fucking ignore that guy.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah.
Speaker 2: And this starts to with the church because the like
Speaker 2: over in Rome, the popes were still like not much
Speaker 2: of anything, We're.
Speaker 3: Like, hey, guys, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: And they're like getting rid of all pictures in Rome
Speaker 2: is like, well, I wish you wouldn't. And they're like,
Speaker 2: stand the fuck out of it, like I knows.
Speaker 1: It's on your business.
Speaker 3: And they're like, okay, well, I hope this doesn't begin
Speaker 3: a real lasting break in our two in our sphere
Speaker 3: and we suddenly break in happ and then we don't
Speaker 3: support each other, which allows us to be picked apart.
Speaker 3: Hopefully that's not a problem.
Speaker 1: Probably that won't happen, Okay.
Speaker 3: Okay, bye, and then you know, and then uh so
Speaker 3: you got iconic Lasm and that lasts until eight forty three,
Speaker 3: and it really did piss off a lot of Italians,
Speaker 3: like it pissed off like the City States, they didn't
Speaker 3: like it Rome, and like you know, uh, most people
Speaker 3: outside most people in the West of Europe what it was.
Speaker 3: We're probably it didn't seem to be a fans of
Speaker 3: iconic clasm. And the iconic class movement in the Western
Speaker 3: Catholic Church lasted uh negative seconds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is like a short lived like buddy, like
Speaker 2: half the people don't want it in the easter.
Speaker 3: Right, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: But the thing that people don't want in Constantinople either,
Speaker 2: is a Roman's say, thinking that they have any saying
Speaker 2: what's going on over here? And yeah, buddy, why don't you, uh,
Speaker 2: why don't you worry about yourself homeboy?
Speaker 1: Like you know, we're we're doing just fine.
Speaker 2: Why don't you, like, I don't know, build a church
Speaker 2: or something like what you why don't you like bring
Speaker 2: yourself up out of the muck?
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah? And on that note, uh yeah, So in
Speaker 3: eight hundred maybe you've heard of it, there was this
Speaker 3: guy named Charlemagne, uh, little little known figure, and he
Speaker 3: was ceremonially crowned the only Roman emperor by a pope
Speaker 3: who was looking for an ally, you know, a normal
Speaker 3: political decision. And Constantinople, well, I don't think they like
Speaker 3: that very much. They they they Constantinople had problems with.
Speaker 1: This, took it badly. I would say, yeah, yeah, they didn't.
Speaker 3: They didn't like uh, any of this. They got really mad,
Speaker 3: and they got really mad when you know, the Italian
Speaker 3: city states were like, well, Charlettagne has this big army.
Speaker 3: I guess I'll just do what he says. And there
Speaker 3: and Constantinople's like, well, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Speaker 3: And uh, when you know it, this leads to the
Speaker 3: first little spat. It's just a little thing at this point,
Speaker 3: but it's gonna become a really big thing because mostly
Speaker 3: when you think about the downfall of Constantinople, you think
Speaker 3: about gunpowder and Islam and the Ottomans within that. But
Speaker 3: there's another thing. It's a persistent death by a thousand
Speaker 3: cuts thing, and that is the city state of Venice.
Speaker 3: So in eight to nine, Venice recognized Charlemagne, which really
Speaker 3: pissed off Constantinople, and they sent a fleet to attack
Speaker 3: near the Venetian the Venetian Lagoon. But that fleet was defeated. Now,
Speaker 3: it wasn't immediately like a huge rift. They would you know,
Speaker 3: they would form alliances and things like that. But as
Speaker 3: we'll see next time, a lot of the things that
Speaker 3: really damage Constantinople and really fuck with them, especially the
Speaker 3: Fourth Crusade, which is the big thing, is all because
Speaker 3: of Venice. That's not the that's not the that's not Islam,
Speaker 3: that's no gun gun powder not is not doing that.
Speaker 3: It was Venus being like, well, we got money, you
Speaker 3: guys got you guys got a lot of people that's cool.
Speaker 3: We got we got the cash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like empire versus empire, right, like you know,
Speaker 2: the Venetians approximate an empire eventually, and so you come
Speaker 2: over here and you have slandered.
Speaker 1: Uh, they're more.
Speaker 2: Equitable Lagoon city.
Speaker 3: They're doing they're doing the they're doing the money thing,
Speaker 3: the finger thing means the taxes. They're like yeah, like
Speaker 3: they're they're not it's they're not doing the Italian sign.
Speaker 3: They're just like money now now.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, and it's this is going to be
Speaker 2: like you know, a butterfly flaps its wings, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this, yeah, it really is. This is the
Speaker 3: butterfly flapping its wings. And uh, soon it will become
Speaker 3: a huge storm where Venus is. Where Venus owns con
Speaker 3: Santainnople so hard that they take the horses of Saint
Speaker 3: Mark from the top of the Golden Gate and take it.
Speaker 3: And they're still in Venice today.
Speaker 2: Like it like yeah, which that's poor for I reckon
Speaker 2: that is. But but on the other hand, go off
Speaker 2: kings or like.
Speaker 3: That is uh man, that that is that is some
Speaker 3: petty ye you know. On the one hand, uh you know,
Speaker 3: get over yourselves, your venice. You're not that special. On
Speaker 3: the other hand, that kind of pettiness.
Speaker 1: Has just I like to celebrate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so pretty like they're like, oh remember, like
Speaker 3: I like to think that the guy that took those
Speaker 3: horses down was like, this is for eight oh nine
Speaker 3: motherfuckers to come in here and bother my lagoon. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: that's all we got time for today, folks. Next time, uh,
Speaker 3: we're gonna have what's known as the Macedonian Renaissance. We're
Speaker 3: gonna have Basil one, Basil two. The Golden Age is
Speaker 3: gonna flare up again, and then they're gonna ask for
Speaker 3: help with the Crusades. And that's the beginning of the end, folks,
Speaker 3: because you can't come back from that. They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: we need help getting the Holy land in the Western
Speaker 3: Church is like, what's that you say? You need help?
Speaker 3: You can't do it all on your own. Oh okay,
Speaker 3: well yeah, what if we set up our own little
Speaker 3: outlet there. Maybe we could get our own black Sea
Speaker 3: trading hubs and bypass you what about that? Oh man?
Speaker 3: Those jerks anyway, Yeah, thank you very much for coming
Speaker 3: to Constantinople with us. We hope you've had fun. It's
Speaker 3: a lot of like a lot of my new politics.
Speaker 3: But we did want to get to Justinian because he's
Speaker 3: a big deal, like the biggest deal deal we'll get.
Speaker 3: We'll get back to it next time. Thank you so
Speaker 3: much for listening, eleanor what is going on for you?
Speaker 1: I started writing the blog. I keep threatening to write.
Speaker 2: Today about why it's weird to talk about Magna Karta
Speaker 2: in the Temple.
Speaker 1: Hopefully that will be up at the end of the week.
Speaker 2: But otherwise you can find me on the socials trying
Speaker 2: not to be too doomer about things at as at
Speaker 2: going Medieval. Uh. You can check out the blog going
Speaker 2: hyphenmdieval dot com. And of course you can find my
Speaker 2: book The Once in Future Sex wherever books are sold
Speaker 2: for now, like presumably it'll get banned at some point
Speaker 2: in time, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't fucking know, dude, not in this house, that's
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you can find me on the socials. Look
Speaker 3: is amazing. You know you can find me uh talking
Speaker 3: about stuff who knows what it is? Yeah, uh, and uh,
Speaker 3: you can find my ultra People's History of the Old
Speaker 3: Republic wherever you are listening to this podcast right now,
Speaker 3: but again, that's going to do it for us today.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 3: Bye boy oh by