Transcript [00:00] - We're talking about a society that was right in the middle [00:04] of one of the main corridors of empire building and new religions [00:08] in the world. This is the most dangerous neighborhood that you can possibly live in. [00:13] - 26 emperors were murdered in a period of 50 years. [00:18] - Yes. It's tremendous instability. [00:21] - Almost all were of these emperors were generals, and almost all were [00:24] murdered by their men. So civil war was the norm, hyperinflation, economic crash, [00:31] plus there's a plague. There's just a lot of chaos. [00:34] - Here's why I don't think the Eastern Roman Empire is a military [00:38] dictatorship. Even though, again, the emperors control the armies, [00:43] and the armies themselves will often have a say in, [00:48] Who becomes emperor, like through the civil wars that we mentioned. The reason [00:52] why I don't think it's a military dictatorship is because [00:55] they almost never, very, very, very rarely use the army as an instrument of social [01:03] control. Sometimes these eunuchs were extremely competent [01:07] like Narses, Justinian's general, who defeated the Goths in Italy in this [01:11] massive battle. Like, this guy was a total hardass. And he's this little [01:15] old man. He was- he was very old, and he was tiny, and he was a eunuch, and the Goths [01:19] laughed at him, but he had the last laugh. [01:24] - The following is a conversation with Anthony Kaldellis, a [01:28] historian of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire. [01:35] This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the [01:39] description, where you can also find links to contact me, [01:43] ask questions, give feedback, and so on. And [01:47] now, dear friends, here's Anthony Kaldellis. [01:52] You've described that the Byzantine Empire is the Roman [01:56] Empire, that calling it the Byzantine Empire is an invention of [01:59] historians writing long after the empire has collapsed, [02:04] that the people of that time considered themselves Romans, and that [02:08] the so-called Byzantine Empire never actually existed, that it was, [02:12] in every legal and cultural sense, the Roman Empire [02:15] continuing unbroken. So let's get our terms right in the grand historical context. [02:24] What is the Byzantine Empire, and why should we just call it the Roman Empire? [02:28] - So Lex, the burden of proof is on those who would assert that what we've been [02:32] calling the Byzantine Empire is something other- [02:35] ... than the Roman Empire, because all of our sources are very clear about this. And we've known about [02:39] this. We've always known about it. It's almost a form of cognitive dissonance, right? [02:42] It's like when you know something is the case, but you carry on as if it's not. [02:47] So the Eastern Roman Empire, this is the direct continuation [02:51] of the ancient Roman Empire in the East, right? Everybody knows the Western Empire [02:54] fell in the fifth century. [02:57] And for many conceptions of Western history, that was sufficient. Like, that's when [03:01] we just called it. The Roman Empire fell in the fifth century. [03:05] And we kinda, yeah, we kinda know that the eastern half survived, but we don't wanna include [03:09] that in our cultural genealogy. And so we kinda pretend that it became [03:12] something else. But in fact, it called itself the Roman Empire. Its subjects were [03:16] Roman citizens. They called themselves Romans all the way down through to the end and [03:20] beyond. So there are a number of reasons why Western Europeans wanted to [03:25] think that the Eastern Empire is something different, and those reasons have [03:30] created these models where [03:32] They were, they called it Empire of the Greeks for 1,000 years, then they switched to Byzantine [03:36] Empire for very political reasons. Now that's collapsing. [03:40] So we're now moving into a phase where we have the long Roman Empire. We, [03:44] we recognize that the history of the Roman state, the Roman polity, [03:48] is something that lasts an extraordinarily long time. [03:51] Very unique almost in history, from antiquity, [03:55] like the archaic period, down to the 15th century. [03:59] - I think it would be really nice to actually look [04:01] just for a brief moment at the grand scale of the, [04:05] the full Roman state as it lasted for over 2,200 years. [04:11] - Yeah. [04:11] - So its founding, 753 BC, to let's say the fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD. [04:21] So can we try to give a big picture overview of everything that happened? [04:25] - Okay, so first we have a period of the kings. This is almost legendary, from [04:29] like the eighth century BC down to around 510 BC. [04:34] So this is when Rome is ruled by a series of local kings. [04:37] The kings are expelled, and the republic, or what we call the republic, [04:41] is instituted, and this is a regime that's governed by mostly [04:45] an aristocracy, but with cooperation from the [04:49] people of Rome. In various ways, the arrangements change over the [04:53] centuries. So that lasts for about five centuries. [04:56] And then we have the end of the republic in the era of Julius Caesar and [05:00] Augustus Caesar, when the civil wars lead to the creation of an imperial monarchy... [05:05] ...right, under Augustus. So that's, we date that roughly either, [05:10] yeah, 27 BC, something like that. And thereafter, it is an [05:14] imperial monarchy for the next millennium and a half. [05:17] Very broadly, we can divide that into two phases, one where the [05:21] center of power is in Rome, and one where it's in Constantinople. [05:26] And, you know, we can debate the dates of when that transition takes place. [05:30] These big transitions usually take place over long periods of time. They're not, like, [05:34] very sudden. So that's the big picture. Kings, republic, imperial monarchy. [05:42] - The Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire. [05:46] - Yes. [05:46] - And then the West and East Roman Empire. [05:49] - Yes. [05:50] - Uh, and then maybe what are the different terms that we could be [05:53] using for the Byzantine Empire, including Byzantium? [05:59] Is it also fair to say the Late Roman Empire? [06:03] - So Late Roman Empire we use for both east and west, starting [06:07] around the reign of Diocletian maybe, even a bit earlier, so during the third [06:11] century AD. And that goes down to maybe the early seventh century. So that [06:16] period we call Late Roman Empire. And [06:20] if you ask me to define its principal characteristics, it would probably [06:23] be the tax system and the administration, the bureaucracy... [06:27] ...of the later Roman Empire is that that comes from mostly [06:30] Diocletian and Constantine's reforms. [06:32] - And Diocletian was in the 3rd century. [06:35] - Yes, 284 to 305 AD. Yes. A very important reformer. [06:39] - And we'll talk about it, but let's just do this whirlwind, and hopefully there'll be [06:43] automagical images somewhere overlaid, but- [06:46] - Okay. [06:46] - So in 753 BC, Rome, a small city state, is founded, and in 509 BC, the kings are [06:54] overthrown, and the Roman Republic is born. 390 BC, the Gauls sack Rome, and this, I [07:02] believe, among other events throughout its history, is a formative [07:06] trauma that hardens Rome's security obsession. [07:10] It turns out, throughout its history, people want to [07:14] attack from different directions, and so you have to defend. So [07:19] there's two wars, as we're actually saying off mic. There's two kinds [07:22] of military operations. One is wars of conquest and expansion, and one is [07:31] more defensive. And we'll talk about how the military [07:34] changes throughout its history to allocate more effort to one versus the other. [07:40] In 264 to 146 BC, the Punic [07:44] Wars and the survival against Hannibal transform Rome into a Mediterranean [07:48] superpower. Then like you mentioned, Caesar in 49 to 31 BC, [07:55] Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon to assassination of Caesar to [07:59] the Battle of Actium, and then the Civil War dismantles [08:03] the Republic and concentrates power in a single ruler, Octavian, AKA Augustus, the [08:10] first Roman emperor, let's say. Then 27 BC, Augustus founds the Principate, [08:17] really low-key monarchy. And so officially, that ends the [08:21] Republic, and then that begins, 27 BC to 180 AD, the Pax Romana, which is a [08:28] period of relative peace and stability. And a lot of the emperors we know of, [08:32] the sexy, popular emperors all come from that period. [08:36] Marcus Aurelius, who I'm a big fan of, from that period. Then that [08:40] takes us to 284 AD, the guy we mentioned, [08:43] Diocletian, who rebuilds the state. Emperors drop the first citizen mask, [08:49] this perception of the way, and we'll talk about this, the persona that's [08:52] presented by the state. 312 AD, Constantine defeats Maxentius at the [09:00] Milvian Bridge to become the sole ruler of the western half of the empire, and then [09:04] founds Constantinople in 330 AD. East and West are split in 395 AD. Visigoths [09:12] sack Rome in 410 AD. The West falls at 476 AD as the last Western [09:20] emperor is deposed. And then we sort of focus more on the East Roman Empire with [09:27] 527. In the 6th century, Justinian's reign. [09:31] In the 7th century, Heraclius defeats Persia and then loses against [09:35] the Arabs. There's the Arab conquest continuing in the 7th [09:39] century. In the 8th the Arab siege of Constantinople fails. [09:46] There's the Macedonian dynasty in that you [09:50] have an excellent book about. And then the Crusades, [09:54] and then eventually leading to Constantinople falling in 1453 AD. [10:02] As a person who understands the full journey of it with [10:06] a focus on East Roman history, is there obvious glaring [10:10] holes or incorrect things in what I just said? [10:14] - No, nothing incorrect. I would say if you wanted to produce a sort of [10:20] very swift timeline of its history, it's obviously important to focus on the [10:28] moments when lots of territory was [10:32] lost to foreign invaders, and these are actually three main [10:36] moments. There's the Arab conquests in the [10:39] 630s. This is a decade. In a decade, that war was lost. It is the Seljuk Turk [10:47] conquest of Asia Minor, modern Turkey, in the 1070s, [10:53] and that was very swift and partly reversed afterwards, but only partly. [10:59] And then there's the Fourth Crusade, 1204, when the armies from [11:03] mostly France sack, conquer Constantinople, and dismember the empire as [11:07] much as they could. It didn't last that long. The Romans managed to [11:11] regroup and recover but those are the three main crisis points. They are very swift, [11:18] but they cause incredible damage. [11:22] For all the rest of its history, it is a state and [11:25] society that is generally sort of consolidating, you know, regrouping, [11:33] and generally engaged in slow but steady economic growth, territorial expansion on a [11:41] small scale, but steady. [11:43] Uh, so we can talk about this. It's... I think it's an important thing [11:47] to keep in mind about the big picture, that the defeats were swift [11:52] and kind of, you know, terrible. But most of its history is one of slow growth. [12:00] - There's some traumatic events that have a big impact, but a [12:04] lot of the developments we'll talk about it might [12:08] seem or feel like there's a particular moment [12:12] when those developments or changes in the way the government or the military is [12:15] structured arise, but really it's a gradual process. [12:18] - Exactly. [12:19] - And so that's the tension we have to be constantly dancing with. [12:21] - Yeah, so as historians, this is a point of method, and it's very important. There [12:25] are moments when, like, individuals with a great deal of power [12:30] make choices that impact everybody else and have, you know, long-term [12:33] consequences downstream. [12:36] Constantine's conversion to Christianity, for example, right? [12:39] Not something that anybody could have or did predict. Okay. [12:44] Otherwise, most of the developments that we identify by [12:48] specific dates, like you mentioned 395, the division of the eastern and the western [12:52] empires, those are conventional dates that we use to actually capture what is in [12:57] fact a much longer process. There was no split between the two [13:01] halves. It was one among many [13:04] allocations of jurisdiction to, like, one son and another son in the east and the [13:08] west. The two halves were subsequently reunited, then they kind of [13:13] divided again among different emperors. It's just a process, [13:17] and so we sometimes use fixed dates for what is in fact a process. Or for [13:22] 76, the fall of the Western Empire, that's just the last date. It's [13:25] actually a very long process that took decades. [13:29] Right? So that's just something to keep in mind, that sometimes we're talking about processes, [13:32] sometimes we're talking about very discrete events with long-term consequences. Yeah. [13:37] - Maybe an impossible question for a Roman state that lasted [13:41] over 2,200 years, but is there a kind of through [13:45] line, a thread, a soul that runs through the entire history of the Roman [13:49] Empire? As you said, it's a slow [13:52] transformation and evolution. But if we dare call the whole [13:56] thing Roman, Rome, the Roman state- [14:00] - Yes [14:00] - ... is there some aspect, some characteristics that run through the whole thing? [14:05] - I think so, yes. By the way, you know the metaphor of the Ship of Theseus? [14:10] Okay. So in case the audience doesn't know it, this is when there's a ship, and it's, you know, [14:14] at sea, and over time, like, every component of that ship [14:18] is replaced with some other component, so that by the end of the story, it [14:22] has none of the original parts. But it's, like, in a [14:26] certain sense still that ship because of the story, right? The... Okay. [14:30] So Roman history is different from, let's say, Greek history [14:34] or Christian history, right? Christian history is the story of a religion. It can be [14:38] in any country, among any ethnic group. It's here, there, right? It's everywhere. [14:43] But you still have histories of Christianity. [14:45] It's the same with, like say, Greek culture- [14:48] ... or your Greek literature, right? It's not a function of a particular [14:52] state. Ancient Greeks were famously never united in a state. [14:56] But it's people who culturally accept that [15:00] tradition as their kind of elite prestige culture and engage [15:04] with Homer and Plato and so forth. And they can be anywhere. [15:08] Roman history is not like that. Roman history is very specifically the history of a [15:13] state or a political community. And so this is the [15:16] community of the Roman people, the Roman citizens. And it [15:21] is in gradual evolution, but at no point is there a rupture in that [15:24] history such that its members would ever think that something [15:28] dramatic had changed, and that they're no longer part of that [15:32] story. So in the same way as the ship I just mentioned, [15:36] in other words, it's the narrative that you tell about it where the changes that [15:40] take place to it make sense only when you see them within the context of that story. [15:45] It's the same with Roman history. Yes, there are changes. Like, eventually [15:49] everything changes. But it happens so gradually that it doesn't [15:53] seem that way to anyone living in it. [15:56] And so the narrative of the history of the Roman [15:59] people is what holds all of this together. [16:02] - How important is it that, so you mentioned Greek culture. So a lot [16:06] of my friends who are Greek are extremely proud of being Greek. [16:10] There's certain cultures that are proud. [16:12] - Sure. [16:13] - And it's not a momentary ephemeral thing. It feels [16:17] like a thing that has lasted for many generations. [16:20] - Oh, yeah. [16:20] - And so that is an engine that propagates through [16:23] time that carries that culture forward. And so does [16:27] a similar thing apply for the Roman Empire in a different way? Maybe [16:31] because you say it's a political kind of community, that means a set of ideals. [16:36] And we'll talk about, because those ideals become even more [16:40] concretized and explicit, I think, through the East Roman [16:44] Empire, because one of the things you talk about is that the [16:48] citizens of the empire are kind of all connected, that they are— [16:53] ... engaged in this whole sort of machinery. Anyway, that's a complicated way [16:57] of asking, is there some elements that Greek [17:01] pride, dare I speak, is there some kind of Roman pride that propagates the thing? [17:06] - Oh, there totally is. You can find authors and historical agents who definitely [17:13] display this or talk about it. But we don't want to make that [17:17] the center of the story or the basis for any analysis because... So what you're [17:21] observing in your Greek friends is also the result of modern nation building, [17:25] is it's the result of modern systems of education, and sort of national identities, [17:29] and these are fostered and created through all kinds of media and [17:32] institutions. It's just a different situation altogether. What you [17:36] find in ancient republics or medieval states is more something like a consensus [17:45] to be ruled, to be, to rule and to be ruled in this particular political community. [17:50] Now, some members of it may definitely, and in fact did have this kind of pride. I'll [17:54] give you an example. So there's an ambassador in the sixth century, and he's concluding [17:58] a deal with the Persians. And you know, the Persians are skeptical [18:02] cause, you know, Romans can't always be trusted. But this guy says to them, he says, [18:06] and let me just tell you, you're making a deal here with the Romans. [18:10] The Romans. The name should say it all." [18:13] Like, you, okay, and you get a sense that this is, he's expressing a certain pride in, like, [18:17] being a bearer of the Roman tradition and speaking for the emperors and the Roman Empire. [18:21] I mean, that's, for him, this was something very, very momentous. You find these kinds of [18:25] examples, so these people exist. But I wouldn't want to make that the basis [18:28] for like an analysis of how the society works as a whole. [18:34] For the most part, it was something like a consensus where, you [18:38] know, subjects or citizens, however you want to call them, they agree to— [18:44] let's say be taxed and be ruled by political authorities because of what [18:48] they get in return, and there's this kind of understanding of a [18:52] mutual set of responsibilities. And [18:55] my concern, among other things, is to try to explain how this [18:59] society held together for so long. Pride, yes, among some people, definitely. You [19:06] find it in the sources. But sources are, texts are written by [19:09] literate, you know, usually elites. So this is a small part [19:13] of the population. We can't automatically extend their attitudes to everybody else. [19:18] So in dealing with everyone else, we have to work with different kinds of materials, different kinds of [19:22] assumptions. We can't just posit that they're just proud of being Roman. [19:26] They could have been. We don't know that, though. We can see other sorts of things [19:30] about them. Like, for example, did they pay their taxes? Did they try to rebel and [19:34] leave the empire? So those are the kinds of things that I look for. [19:37] - Pride is one component, but there could be other explanations and factors [19:43] that explain what motivates a soldier to defend the capital, for example. [19:49] Like, what motivates a [19:53] particular person to pay the taxes. And then this is something that we'll [19:57] definitely talk about. But just to linger at the big picture, [20:01] if the Romans from the different periods met, [20:06] how different would they be from each other? Like, if I [20:10] brought to you... This is one of those, you know, there's like- [20:12] - Yes, yes, [20:12] - ... blind taste tests you can do with food. [20:14] - Yes. Pepsi and Coke. [20:16] - Pepsi and Coke. [20:17] - Yes. [20:17] - If I brought you a Roman from the kingdom period, [20:22] the republic period, the early imperial period- [20:27] - I mean, I get asked this in a much more radical form, which is like if you take someone [20:31] from, like, around 1453 who's a Roman and a subject of this Roman, [20:35] and compare, and, and, you know, compare him or have him meet, you know, [20:39] in your imagination with someone from the ancient republic. Like, how- [20:42] - Yeah, [20:42] - ... could they find any kind of agreement on what it means to [20:46] be Roman and recognize each other as belonging to that polity? This, this [20:50] is a very difficult thing to... Like, now, I can point to a [20:54] number of things that they would find eventually. And, you know, [20:58] if you told them, "Yo, you're both Romans, you're both from this long history, now you have [21:02] to find, you know, what you have in common," I think they could find things. But [21:06] before we talk about those, if you wanna get into it, [21:09] let's just say that the question can even be posed [21:13] about Romans who live at the same time. I mean, if you take a [21:17] senator from the age of Cicero and someone from the [21:21] slums of Rome, who's maybe the son of a slave [21:25] who was brought from the East by some general a generation ago, [21:30] and put them in a room and say, "Now, you discuss. You're [21:34] both Romans. What do you have in common?" They might have trouble in coming up with something. [21:38] Right? So let's not minimize the sheer [21:41] diversity of experiences and sort of life experiences [21:45] of Romans who are living at the same time. [21:49] The important thing is that a change is always happening, and [21:53] from my standpoint this change is sort of [21:57] cumulative, so it results in Greek-speaking Orthodox [22:00] Christian Romans in Constantinople who at first [22:04] sight might have little to do with Latin-speaking, you [22:08] know, non-Christians or worshiping the ancient gods, Romans from a [22:12] republic in Rome. And those are very, very different situations, and no [22:16] doubt they would look and seem foreign to each other, right? The [22:20] question is, why do we assume that someone like Hadrian, right, an emperor from the [22:25] second century sort of a very cosmopolitan figure [22:29] who travels around the empire with his Greek lover and, [22:33] you know, writes poems and has a Greek beard and, you know, loves Greek culture and [22:40] has much to do with someone from the Middle Republic who's, you [22:44] know some warrior who's chasing down cattle from the Samnites. I [22:48] mean, and yet the way we understand history is that, oh no, those belong together. [22:53] Hadrian and this ancient Roman from the fourth century BC. [22:58] But not Hadrian and someone, you know, an emperor a few [23:02] centuries later who's just like him, bilingual in Greek and Latin, who's [23:06] ... kinda cosmopolitan, who, you know, reads the same stuff, [23:10] because we posit this rupture between Roman and Byzantine. [23:15] - One of the ways we can try to analyze this is, for example, looking at [23:18] a very specific role in society across time. So we can look at soldiers, [23:26] how they solve violence, for example. That's one way. [23:29] So you're making me realize that we can just take 1,000 [23:33] different professions and positions in society and really [23:36] specifically look at what the experience of the world was like. [23:41] And so one of them is the view on violence, [23:47] Across time. And, and then the other is the view on the role of the, [23:54] the government- ... across time. [23:57] - That's an excellent way of putting it. So take soldiers, for example. They swear an oath. [24:01] Right? Now, we don't have the oath for every given period. [24:05] We have some approximations of it, some hints of what it contained, but we know that Roman [24:09] soldiers swore an oath like, throughout all of the centuries of the [24:13] empire. Sometimes they might add, like, a Christian formula [24:17] to it. Sometime before that, not. But they swore basically to protect the [24:25] republic or depending on what term they used or the [24:28] empire or the emperor. And this is something that they would have [24:32] recognized very quickly. Like, if, if they met each other over [24:36] time and said, "Hey, what was your oath like?" And they recited it this would have made much sense [24:40] to them, right? [24:41] Or take, for example, a woman who runs a business, right? From any century of the [24:47] empire. It, it would have been, especially the later you go, the, the more so, [24:53] that this woman is enabled to do this by virtue [24:56] of Roman law. Of certain, you know, Roman law of [25:00] property and inheritance and, and marriage, but [25:03] also regulations regarding who can do what and what [25:07] kinds of properties women can handle and under what circumstances. [25:11] This is something that Roman women had in common that many other cultures did not. [25:16] So I'll give you an example. So for example, in the 10th, [25:20] 11th century, there are Jewish women who live in the Eastern Roman Empire- [25:26] ... who realize that they have more rights in Roman courts than in [25:31] rabbinical ones, and they take their disputes to the Roman courts. [25:37] Now, the thing is that for the Romans, these are property matters- [25:40] ... not religious matters. But for the rabbis, these are religious matters. But the [25:44] Roman courts trump the Jewish courts- [25:47] ... in the empire, right? And so you end up with a situation where Jewish women have more [25:50] rights- [25:52] ... than Jewish women do elsewhere, because where Roman law is not operative. [25:56] And there you go. Right? Like, these things matter, right? And that's a [26:00] function of imperial law. [26:02] - And this, this would be an interesting actually interplay between the law [26:07] and religious institutions- ... Throughout the East- ... uh, Roman Empire. [26:13] So you argue that even though the personality of the various emperors varied, [26:17] as we'll talk about, and as they're often venerated, [26:21] celebrated, criticized, talked about, [26:24] the late Roman Empire was projecting a persona to its [26:27] citizens that was consistent throughout its history. [26:31] Can you describe what you mean by this and describe the different detailed [26:35] characteristics of this persona? [26:36] - Yes. So this persona, it's what the governments or the emperor, the court, and the [26:44] spokesman, the bureaucracy want their subjects to think, [26:49] This whole thing is about. Like, how is power being used, why, and for whom, right? [26:56] And they do so in laws that [27:00] they promulgate throughout the empire. Sometimes they have these laws read in [27:04] church, for example, or posted publicly. They're definitely eager to [27:07] have them communicated to as many people as possible. [27:11] But they're also a function of imperial rhetoric so the way [27:15] you praise an emperor, the way you talk about an emperor. You find this [27:18] language in petitions, so this is a hugely important [27:22] glue for this society, is that anyone could [27:26] basically petition the authorities for let's just say just about anything. [27:30] That's not technically true, but there's a lot of petitioning going [27:33] on. So, you know, if you think something's wrong or you've been [27:37] treated unjustly, you can petition local officials, even [27:41] imperial officials. You can petition the emperor, you can... Right? And the [27:45] expectation is that that petition will be read, addressed, and answered. It might not [27:49] be answered in the way that you want, but it will be answered. [27:52] And those responses contain this language also, right? So these are [27:56] the different media through which the emperors are broadcasting this [28:00] persona, and that persona is what? Basically, that the [28:04] authorities are responsive to the needs of their subjects, [28:08] that they are often accountable. In other words, they understand [28:12] that they are exercising public power, [28:16] and that their mandate is to exercise it solely for the [28:19] benefit of their subjects. They keep saying this. Um, [28:23] so renouncing any kind of private interest. In other [28:26] words, "We're not doing this for our benefit," say the [28:30] authorities. "We're doing this for your benefit." [28:33] Also that they're proactive. So the emperors are constantly [28:36] saying that, "We're planning ahead. [28:40] We're trying to foresee what problems you might have, and we are solving [28:44] them at, before you experience them." [28:46] And that they are also working very hard. So hardworking. In fact, [28:51] the one of the cliches that they keep using is sleepless. The emperors [28:54] keep saying that, "I'm losing sleep over this. I'm not sleeping at night because [28:58] I'm just worrying so much about your problems and how to solve them." Justinian, [29:02] for example, was publicly known as the sleepless emperor, and not [29:06] because he was a demon whose head floated around in the palace on its own, [29:10] which some people [29:12] - That's the thing? [29:12] - It was a thing, yes. [29:14] - Okay. [29:14] - That's a whole thing. [29:15] - But sleepless in terms of worked so hard- [29:17] - Yes. [29:17] - ... there's no time to sleep. [29:19] - He was a workaholic. That is conceded by even his enemies. [29:24] All night he was up just hauling officials in at any old hour to [29:27] talk about whatever, you know, wars and architecture and laws and the [29:31] religion and theology and whatever. So the emperors are projecting this image, right? [29:36] So that's what I call the persona. [29:38] Tireless effort to work on behalf of subjects, to do so responsibly, [29:45] to be responsive and accountable. In other words, [29:49] if some of my officials breaks the law or oppresses [29:53] you, I'm giving you instruments, like legal [29:56] instruments, by which to hold them to account. [29:59] So that's the persona. It's very consistent, [30:03] And I think it's part of the mechanism of tying the society [30:07] together. In other words, if subjects think that their emperors are like this, [30:11] right, they're more likely to agree to the consensus of essentially paying taxes. [30:17] - And you draw this distinction between rhetoric and action, [30:21] what the authorities say and what they actually do. So when you say [30:25] persona in the modern times, some of that could be reframed as propaganda- [30:30] - Yeah. [30:30] - ... for example. And propaganda implies that the rhetoric, [30:36] that there's a big gap between the rhetoric and the [30:40] action. And one of the things you said you took away from reading Machiavelli is that [30:43] we should judge people not by what they say, but by what they do. [30:48] So how much of the Roman Empire's government of what they espoused [30:52] was merely rhetoric, and how much was true in how they acted? [30:56] - Yes. This is a key lesson I took from reading Machiavelli, and [31:00] I found this a very insightful way of thinking about politics, and [31:05] I would recommend that anybody kind of practice this way of looking at the world, [31:09] right? People and states and, you know, powerful people can say [31:12] anything they want to. At the end of the day, what matters is what they actually do. [31:18] And this doesn't mean that what they say is [31:21] irrelevant, even if it's discordant with what they do. But nevertheless, [31:27] In the case of the East Roman state, [31:31] so my research suggests that the emperors and the authorities [31:35] were generally sincere in what they said. In other words, [31:39] I have found that they generally did what they said they were going to do overall. [31:46] Not perfectly, obviously. And of course, these are human beings we're talking [31:50] about. The, right, the human societies, there was a lot of, you know, [31:54] corruption, and you name it. Abuse- [31:56] ... of course. Of course there is. But overall, I think that there was [32:00] a sufficient level of understanding that the emperors [32:04] are in fact doing this, and they were actually incentivized to do this. We can talk [32:08] about how. Because they were also in a pretty vulnerable situation too, so they [32:14] needed their subjects to be relatively content on this front. [32:18] - Isn't this surprising to you? So, you know, from the [32:22] outsider point of view, Roman emperors, even in the East Roman Empire, [32:29] technically have a lot of power. [32:33] You can even say in some cases absolute power, and yet [32:37] they seem to be awfully worried ... to make everybody in the empire happy. [32:44] What explains that? Like what, what explains the small [32:48] gap between rhetoric and action in the East Roman Empire? [32:52] - A number of things, but ultimately it is that there is no right to the throne. [32:57] And this is a function of the Roman matrix of politics here. In other words, [33:03] So here's a bit of a paradox. [33:06] What we call the Roman Republic was the most imperialistic [33:10] phase of Roman history. Like this is when the Romans did most of their conquering. [33:15] What we call the empire is much less imperialistic in this way. [33:19] That's much more defensive in its approach, right? And yet our [33:22] terms are a little mismatched in that way. The empire is more a function of the, [33:30] That it has an emperor rather than it is engaged in imperialism. [33:36] And that emperor emerged out of the republic. [33:40] But emerged out of the republic in a very strange way. In other words, [33:44] not as a dynasty that created the [33:48] state. So for example, if you think of the Ottoman Empire, many other empires, [33:52] they... The whole thing existed because this dynasty engaged in conquest and- [33:57] ... was successful in creating the state, and so the dynasty was like at the heart of the [34:01] state. But that's not at all the case in the Roman [34:05] Empire. The emperor is a figure who emerged within a [34:09] republic, and in order to create peace after the [34:13] civil wars, those emperors had to, for a long time, kind of [34:16] pretend that they were not what they really were. Um, basically, you know, [34:23] continuing to flatter the idea of a republic that is, you know, that has a [34:27] first citizen maybe. "Oh, no, no, I'm not a king. I'm just, I [34:31] have this office and that office and that office." [34:33] "Whatever the Senate has given me." Now, we understand that's a facade, but the [34:37] fact that they had to create this facade at all is very important. [34:40] - Can we actually just linger on that? [34:41] I mean, how much of this... 'Cause you said they had to create this facade. [34:45] - Yeah. [34:46] - Did Augustus, who started the whole thing, the first emperor of Rome, [34:53] did he have to act that way? 'Cause he kept acting like he's not an absolute- [34:59] - Yes [34:59] - ... monarch, and he could have gone hardcore, destroy the Senate, just full [35:07] hardcore rule, dictatorship. [35:09] - Well, then how does he govern then? [35:11] - Uh, so he wants to be an effective governor. [35:13] - Oh, yeah. [35:13] - And he also wants to not be overthrown. [35:16] - Exactly. Because, you know, just because you ended one civil war [35:20] doesn't mean that there's not going to be another. [35:22] You have to create a consensus such that people don't want to have another civil war. [35:26] If he did what you said, which he in theory could have done, [35:30] but that would've just led to more wars, right? So the [35:34] problem is that the emperors, even those who come to power through violence, they [35:37] can't prevent other people from trying to come to power through violence [35:41] because like I said, no one has a right to the throne. [35:45] - We should also say one more thing where, [35:49] dare I carefully say this, but it seems like riots and civil wars [35:56] is a feature, not a bug of the system. [35:59] - Yes. [35:59] - This is a different thing that we have to the modern day, [36:03] is because the threat of a civil war, a violent civil war where you [36:07] overthrow the government and there's just a lot of- [36:11] ... death and struggle for power is always a threat. [36:15] That's another incentive that, I guess the stick, not the carrot, but [36:19] the stick for the emperor to behave. [36:22] - Yes. It's the main one. In other words, just take the, [36:26] the thousand years that I study. There's something like 120 civil wars. [36:31] Now, these are usually very swift. They're over quickly, [36:35] and they're never about ideology. So they're not like modern civil wars. [36:40] Right? It's about slavery or the rights of kings or whatever. No, no, no. They're [36:44] solely about who has the power. [36:47] All sides have the same ideology. They talk about, you know, the [36:50] responsibility of government in the same way, right? They're just competing over [36:54] who's the best man to do the job. [36:57] Right? And so once you have that situation... And it might not be a [37:00] civil war, it could be a palace coup, it could be a kind [37:04] of fighting in the capital- [37:06] ... something like that. Once everyone's taken their side and you have a winner, [37:10] that's the emperor, And you often overthrow the previous regime. I'll give you some [37:16] statistics. Something like 46% of the emperors of [37:20] Constantinople are overthrown through violence. 46%. And that's almost half. [37:25] Right? So that's a huge, that's a huge number, which means that every emperor [37:29] is vulnerable and insecure, and they know it, [37:32] right? So what they have to do is make sure that that doesn't happen to them, [37:36] and the way to do that is not by arresting [37:40] and executing everybody you think might be a threat or just generally behaving [37:44] like a, you know, a Caligula or a Nero. That will just get you killed. [37:48] Like, they know this. So the best way to avoid that [37:52] fate is to actually do the things that will make [37:56] people happy so that they don't support a rebel if a rebel [38:00] decides to appear. And sometimes rebels would appear. [38:03] There's a kind of convention in Constantinople, like if you... Sometimes you [38:07] you think, "Hmm, that emperor's pretty unpopular and I think I can overthrow him." What you would [38:11] do is you would march down the center boulevard- [38:15] ... And, you know, you'd have your people just call the [38:19] populace of Constantinople out to rally, to you know, maybe go to [38:23] Hagia Sophia, the, the church, and just create a big crowd and call for the [38:27] deposition of the emperor and, you know, maybe that would hap- And sometimes it did, [38:31] and sometimes it didn't, and the rebel or wannabe rebel would sort of [38:35] proceed down the Mese, the boulevard, and people would just [38:39] gradually just disappear, and then he'd be left alone- [38:43] ... and go up to Hagia Sophia as seeking asylum. Right? So that's a bid. [38:49] That's someone making a bid for the throne, and it just goes disastrously bad. [38:53] Other times, the people come out 'cause they hate the emperor, and they drag the emperor out and cut his nose off or [38:57] whatever. So emperors are [39:01] constantly trying to prevent that from happening, and the best way to do [39:05] that is through goodwill. [39:07] - I'm trying to load in that kind of world 'cause it's a different [39:11] world than we live in today. [39:13] - Yes. [39:14] - There's a constant inner workings of policy development inside government. [39:20] - Yes. [39:21] - But the check on power is, like, literal, like, we will murder you. [39:27] - Yes, it depends on the period. Sometimes murder you, sometimes blind you, [39:31] sometimes cut your nose off, but there were periods- [39:33] - Thank you for the nuance [39:35] - ... No, there were periods that were more civilized. We'll just basically, you'll get retired to a [39:38] monastery. [39:39] - Right. [39:40] - Okay. You're right. So here's what elections do. [39:43] Elections give a government a mandate for, I don't know, four or five years, [39:48] and during that period, you may be unpopular, but you're legitimate, [39:53] right, because of the institutions. [39:55] Whereas in Constantinople, we don't have those kinds of institutions. [40:00] We have instead an ongoing referendum. [40:04] We just call it a perpetual referendum, right? [40:07] And in fact, the emperors are, they're conducting opinion polls in a sense [40:11] because they appear in public. When they appear in public, everyone is [40:15] expected to cheer and chant acclamations, right, like, [40:19] Slogans. Right? So you have 100,000 people in the Hippodrome [40:23] all chanting, you know, "Worthy" or "Many years for you, Augustus" or something [40:27] like this. And if that happens, it's great. But if you appear in the Hippodrome and people are, [40:31] like, sullen or if the chanting is a bit tepid or if they're booing, [40:37] then you know something's wrong, right? [40:39] So you gotta find out what's wrong. It could be something like the grain [40:42] supply is, you know, not working or [40:46] whatever. And so emperors are desperate to fix those problems. [40:49] - And the Hippodrome is this big gathering place in [40:53] Constantinople, which I guess a lot of people gathered [40:57] at and did this kind of cheering or not cheering based on policy and- [41:01] ... and whether the emperor is popular or not. This was democracy. [41:07] Uh, I apologize to use that term, but- [41:09] ... in our conception of what that means, because what do we mean by [41:13] democracy in the modern day is that the people somehow have a [41:16] connection to who leads and how they lead, [41:20] and this is, the Hippodrome was that connection between the people and the leaders. [41:26] - Yes. Now, we can talk about modern democracy if you, if you want. That's a, that's a, [41:30] I have, I have my own views about- [41:32] ... modern democracy, and, and, you know, how it works and how [41:36] it doesn't and, anyway, whether it is democracy, in fact, 'cause there are other models of [41:40] democracy like- [41:41] ... ancient Athenian democracy, which is a whole other thing. But you're right. [41:45] So it's not just in the Hippodrome. It's wherever people assemble in large [41:49] numbers. So this could be military mustering grounds, [41:53] right? So the army. The army is also the Roman people in a way, and the- [41:57] in some cases, the most decisive part of it, right? So if an [42:01] army gathers together and they decide they want a different emperor, [42:04] that's serious, and that can happen out in the provinces too. That doesn't [42:08] necessarily have to happen in Constantinople. There's also Hagia [42:12] Sophia, so the people gather in the church, or they gather in [42:16] public spaces like the Forum of Constantine. [42:19] So this can happen anywhere where a large number of people can gather, [42:24] and it's, I don't know if you wanna call it a democracy as such [42:28] but it is definitely a form of popular, mm, let's say [42:32] consultation and a testing of consensus. [42:36] I'll give you another example. So in the 1190s, the emperor, and it's Alexius III, [42:42] he's being threatened by the German emperor. German emperor's basically, "You, you, you pay me a bunch of money or [42:46] I'll invade." Just straight up extortion. [42:49] - Yeah. [42:50] - Um, and Alexius decides, "Okay, I'm gonna gather this money. I'm gonna [42:54] impose these taxes." [42:55] And he gathers the people in the Hippodrome, and he says, "You know, we're gonna have the German [42:59] tax." He called it the German tax. And there's such an uproar [43:04] in the Hippodrome against this that he was like, "Uh, that [43:08] wasn't my idea. I don't know where that came from. No, never mind. We're not gonna have the German [43:12] tax." Fortunately, the German emperor died and, and nothing ever happened, [43:17] but it gives you a sense of how emperors, like, literally can backtrack when they see that the [43:20] people are against something in a matter of policy, right- ... like tax policy. [43:24] So yeah, there was this give and take. [43:28] So institutionally, the emperor might look absolute, as [43:32] you called him earlier. In practice, no. No. The ones that did that didn't end well. [43:40] - And we should say, going to Perplexity here, the Hippodrome of Constantinople [43:44] was the main stadium and social center of the Byzantine capital, [43:49] used primarily for chariot racing and imperial ceremony, [43:53] and today survives in Istanbul's Sultanahmet district. [43:57] And the reason I looked this up, I wanted to see how many people. Shaped as [44:01] a long U-shaped race course with a central barrier [44:05] and tiered seating, it may have held from roughly thirty [44:09] thousand up to a hundred thousand spectators, [44:13] though exact capacity is debated because archaeological remains are limited. [44:18] That's a lot of people. [44:19] - Thirty thousand is definitely a pretty un- underestimate. [44:22] The Hippodrome is still there. I mean, you can see it from, it's like satellite photos. [44:26] The shape of it is still there. [44:28] And actually some parts of the built, the, the Sphendone, the, the sling [44:32] around the southern side is still there. You can walk around it. And it's right [44:36] next to the palace. In other words, emperors didn't have to go far. Now, [44:41] sometimes there are events for replacing an emperor. So say the emperor dies in [44:45] his sleep, and there's no heir. This happens in 491, for example. [44:51] And so the people gather in the Hippodrome in order to have a [44:54] discussion with the court about whom to appoint. Now, in those kinds of contexts, it's [44:58] entirely possible that there are people also in the, the arena, [45:03] like not just in the stands. I think some military units might [45:07] have just been arrayed there rather than in the stands. So you can get more people [45:11] than what we project might fit in the stands, because they're not having the races [45:15] on that day. [45:16] - We should say, so like, I think the thing that was emphasized in the first paragraph is the, [45:20] the athletic events and the entertainment events, right? Like the [45:24] imperial ceremony. But there is a sort of a political gathering [45:28] was also popular. The Hippodrome was not just for sport. It [45:32] was where emperors appeared before the people, where acclamations, [45:36] public punishments, and political demonstrations took place, and where the [45:40] rival circus factions, blues, greens, reds, whites, [45:44] became powerful social and sometimes paramilitary forces. [45:48] And this goes on and on and on. So this was a place- [45:51] - Oh, it's a very important place. Yeah, [45:52] - ... for people to speak to the leader. [45:55] - Yeah. Vent sometimes. Even insult them. [45:58] - Yeah. This is fascinating. I mean, it's human civilization. It's converged [46:02] towards a mechanism that has clearly worked, because [46:06] for the empire in the East, stood [46:10] for a thousand years. So it's, it's fascinating. We as humans, [46:16] throughout our history, we try to figure out, okay, how do we, [46:22] figure out how to govern [46:25] large collections of humans in a way that they're represented, in the [46:29] way that they don't riot, they don't rebel. [46:33] Um, in the way that we flourish together as a [46:37] people, all this, all this kind of stuff. [46:39] So this is a real... The East Roman Empire is a real [46:42] study of something that seemed to have worked. There are [46:46] lessons there even for the modern times, I think. And modern times, [46:50] again, is very early human civilization. [46:54] - From a certain standpoint, yes, we are still early in- [46:57] - Trying to figure it out [46:58] - ... trying to figure it out. [46:59] Yes. Now, mind you, I'm not advocating for this type of social [47:03] organization and government. What I'm trying to do as a historian [47:07] is understand how and why it survived [47:11] and also to find the ways that it worked, because it [47:15] did work. We know that much. We have to start from that. It survived. It [47:18] was resilient. There was a lot of, [47:21] you know, give and take in the exercise of power, and I want to understand the [47:25] mechanisms of that. [47:27] - So if we can, before we go to Emperor Constantine the [47:31] First and the founding of Constantinople, can we look at some [47:36] maybe seminal events that led up to some of the [47:40] topics we'll be talking about? So one of them maybe tell me if this is [47:44] not as interesting as I think it is, but the Edict of Caracalla, in 212 AD. So this [47:52] is where, [47:54] You described that starting with Augustus in the early imperial period, government [47:58] saw itself as a protector of the Roman citizens, [48:02] which is a minority of the people living in the, in the Roman [48:06] Empire. It doesn't consider the, the provincials. [48:11] And then you described that the Edict of Caracalla, that [48:14] extended full Roman citizenships to basically all, [48:20] free inhabitants of the Roman Empire. So [48:24] what is it? Why was it done? Why is it important? [48:28] And how did it change the Roman Empire? [48:30] - Right. I agree with you that this is, in fact, a very important... It's [48:34] a, it's a real turning point in a sense, but it also is part of a process. [48:40] So for various reasons, the Roman polity tended to bestow its metropolitan [48:49] citizenship, that is, Roman citizenship, on its allies, [48:54] and eventually in time, on many people that it had conquered. [48:59] And it had various mechanisms for doing so. It could bestow block grants. [49:03] Sometimes it allowed its generals to bestow citizenship on people [49:07] they thought would, you know, would be necessary [49:11] players for controlling local societies. Sometimes they even [49:14] allowed foreign cities to, like non-Roman cities, to [49:18] decide who would get Roman citizenship by [49:22] basically electing them to certain kinds of offices. Like they, they outsourced a lot of this. [49:26] And so you have over time the steady growth of a [49:30] Roman community of citizens who are not all in Rome, and [49:34] who are not all of Roman origin, whatever that means, but they, they were not descended from [49:38] people who were from Rome. [49:40] And this proceeds, you know, it expands, it expands, it expands. [49:44] By Caracalla's time, so early third century AD, [49:48] we can estimate that maybe at, at most, a [49:52] third of the free citizens of the empire are [49:56] Roman citizens. Everyone else has local citizenship, like you're [50:00] Alexandrian or Athenian or, or whatever. And with... You're subject to those laws. [50:05] This emperor, Caracalla, now that's his nickname. His reigning name is Marcus [50:09] Aurelius Antoninus. [50:12] So just like Marcus Aurelius, it's sa- same name two generations later. [50:15] - Some badass names for emperors, by the way. I don't know if it's the chicken or [50:19] the egg, but just... some epic names. [50:22] - They've been remembered that way, and so we read that back into the name— [50:25] - Yes, that's true. [50:25] - ... and absolutely, yes. [50:26] - But anyway, Caracalla. Yeah. [50:28] - Yeah, so he issues this edict in 212 called the [50:31] Constitutio Antoniniana, named after him. Some people at the [50:35] time called it the Divine Decree, [50:37] which basically extended citizenship to everybody. Now, we don't know exactly why [50:41] he did so. We can guess [50:44] the reasons that he said he did so, and this was for religious [50:48] reasons. In other words, he wanted people to go to the temples and pray and [50:54] give thanks to the gods for him, for his survival out of a coup. [51:01] Which is whatever. And it's [51:05] possible that there was some kind of religious motivation here, and he wanted [51:09] everybody to do so as Roman citizens to honor the Roman gods and something like [51:13] that. Other historians at the time said he did it for tax reasons. [51:17] We don't know exactly. There might even have been [51:21] a kind of ideology of a unified community across [51:25] the empire playing in his, if not in his mind, in that of [51:29] the jurists, that is the legal advisors that he had. So that's possible. But [51:35] less interesting than his motivations, more interesting are the [51:42] consequences of this— ... and what it tells us about the Roman community. So [51:47] imagine a situation where, like, no modern empire has ever done this really, right? [51:55] When what's significant about the Roman case is that not only did they extend [51:59] citizenship to everybody, but they meant it. This is something that had teeth. In [52:02] other words, it meant that the rights and opportunities that were available to [52:06] Roman citizens, say, in the Roman Senate at Rome— [52:10] ... are now available to everybody. And within a generation, you have a situation [52:17] where, like, all of the emperors are provincials, [52:21] right? All the most powerful people in the empire are from the provinces. [52:25] - This is, like, mind-breaking, mind-blowing. This is incredible. [52:29] The fact that the Roman Empire was able to do this, and it stuck. [52:33] - They did it, and they meant it. [52:34] - And they meant it. They implemented it. It was real. [52:37] That's, that tells you, that's an important thing that tells you a [52:41] lot of information about the populace of the Roman Empire. [52:45] That the, the fact that it stuck, that the government meant it, [52:49] that the system encouraged, incentivized the government to mean it. [52:54] It's incredible. [52:54] - Yeah, and there's a law of citizenship, and it, basically it says something like, [52:58] "Anyone born within the Roman Empire is a Roman citizen." [53:01] And the Roman jurists and policymakers who were behind, [53:06] This had some very interesting ideas about, you know, creating this kind of [53:09] community. Look, like, imagine if, I mean, it's almost [53:13] impossible to, to imagine, but the, the British at the [53:17] time of the peak of the empire bestowed British citizenship on [53:21] everyone, including in India, and, like, [53:25] suddenly made positions of power in London available to [53:29] people from India, like, including the throne. Like, it's just unthinkable. [53:34] And that has to do, you know, with race and colonialism and all kinds of things, right? [53:38] But not in the Roman Empire. So we have a situation where [53:42] the emperors are all from the provinces. The most powerful officials are [53:46] all from the provinces. And so a century later, [53:50] when Constantinople is created, this is, it's created, [53:54] right, like, in, in the Bosporus, so, like, where modern Istanbul is, [53:58] in the Eastern Roman Empire. It's created within the preexisting Roman [54:02] context, right? It doesn't bring Romanness to the East. It's already there. [54:07] And so it's not such a leap to create a center of Roman power [54:11] in the East because of that. [54:13] - And you've helped put together a book on the history of intellectual thought in the East Roman Empire. [54:17] But this is the interesting thing here, and I can ask that many [54:21] times, but let me ask it here also, is the great man, the [54:25] great woman view of history. [54:28] Were there, like, Thomas Jefferson or those types of characters in the meetings [54:34] as they're executing on the edict or developing [54:38] the edict? Is that important, or is it more about the system and the culture and [54:42] just uh— [54:44] ... is it, how important was it? 'Cause this seems like a revolutionary idea, and when [54:48] we think about the American Revolution and the, the founding documents, it seems [54:52] like a few individuals— [54:55] ... were really critical about the wording of things, and then words matter [54:59] because those words create the reality, and then it propagates through time. [55:03] - Yeah. For the edict, I suspect that yes, there were a few people who were behind [55:07] it, and quite possibly jurists, that is Roman legal scholars. [55:11] And, and 212 is in an age of very important [55:15] Roman legal scholars Ulpian, for example, and others. [55:20] But we just don't have those... We, we have- ... minutes of the meetings for the- [55:24] ... American Revolution. [55:25] Not only do we not know who was in the room, we don't actually even have the whole [55:29] edict. We have a papyrus fragment, this is a piece of ancient paper— [55:33] ... that's mostly torn and mutilated, and we have, like, a bit of a [55:37] paragraph from it. [55:39] Um, in Greek, not even the Latin original. And it's kind of torn, [55:43] but it actually preserves the key clause. Right? And that's, [55:48] that's all we have of the original. We have contemporary sources that [55:52] mention it, we have legal documents, but nothing like a, [55:56] Like we can talk about the people involved in it. Or even [56:00] how it was immediately implemented. Like, suddenly we know everyone in the [56:04] provinces, like, there's this explosion in the number of people called [56:08] Aurelius, because that was his Roman family name. [56:13] Um, and so when you acquired citizenship from that edict, you became an Aurelius. [56:18] Right? And there are lots of Aurelii suddenly all over the place. Like, we can see it [56:21] immediately. Uh, but we can't actually see the implementation. [56:26] - But your instinct says that individuals were very important [56:31] in the development of that idea and execution of it. [56:33] - Probably, yeah. Yeah. Even though it's part of a long-term process [56:37] of expanding Roman citizenship, this was a, an explosion, not just an expansion. [56:43] - And then you said that one of the important aspects about this edict is [56:47] that giving equal rights to provincials [56:51] was one of the things that helped deal with the [56:53] crisis of the third century, and was the thing that, [56:57] I think you said, quote, "sapped discontent from the [57:01] relevant populations," which then minimized the probability of uprisings. [57:07] - Well, now that's a very long-term process. [57:09] Now, the third century is chaos, there's a crisis, it's a mess, right? [57:13] So what follows the edict is quite a few decades of unrest. [57:20] - Okay, let's put it in mildly. [57:21] Let's talk about the crisis of the third century, where [57:25] 26 emperors were murdered in a period of 50 years. [57:30] - Yes. It's tremendous instability. [57:33] - So there's civil wars nonstop. Almost all were, [57:37] of these emperors were generals, and almost all were murdered by their men. [57:42] So civil war was the norm, hyperinflation, economic crash, plus there's a plague- [57:48] ... from 249 to 262 AD, which is a pandemic, possibly smallpox or Ebola. It [57:56] killed up to 5,000 people a day in Rome alone, devastating the [58:00] tax base and army recruitment pool. And the empire [58:07] fractured into three pieces, but then Emperor, [58:10] Aurelian miraculously reconquered them in a period of five years. [58:16] So just a lot of chaos. It deserves the name, the Crisis of the Third Century. [58:20] - Yeah, it's a perfect storm. Yeah, I mean, you have a crisis of imperial legitimacy. [58:24] Basically, the army's proclaiming emperors left and right. In an odd sense, [58:30] ironically, this is in part because there are now a lot more [58:33] stakeholders in the Roman tradition, right? There's all of these provincial armies, [58:37] and they're appointing their generals as rival emperors. [58:41] But you also have a serious uptick in foreign invasions. [58:47] In the north, you have the creation of the Sasanian Persian or [58:51] Iranian Empire in the east, and this was very, very bellicose. [58:55] So lots of foreign defeats. Armies are defeated by [58:59] you know, like, quote, "barbarian enemies." You have eventually [59:03] inflation, and you have plague. And so under the pressure, right, of all of those [59:09] forces, it almost fell apart. Now, it didn't actually. [59:14] Inevitably, there are also historians who downplay the crisis. Of course, [59:18] right, like, and legitimately so, right? We must push back against every of these [59:22] characterizations. [59:23] - 26 emperors died, bro. What do you- [59:25] - That's just the emperors. That's just the emperors. We should be [59:29] - I'm sorry. In 50 years. [59:31] - Yeah. [59:31] - Every other year, emperor dead. [59:33] - Yeah, that's- [59:34] - Civil war [59:34] - ... that's political instability at the top, right? But what- [59:38] - Right, that's not- [59:39] - ... what are the l- the lives of most people? [59:40] - Sure. [59:40] - So if you go to Egypt, for example, which is kind of out of the... Right? [59:45] What's going on there? How are people living there? And we can see how people are living in Egypt [59:49] because we have all these papyrus documents from Egypt. [59:52] - That's true. [59:53] - And for the most part, they don't seem to be experiencing a crisis. [59:56] - I mean, this is something you talk about. Constantine, as we'll get to him, [59:59] is one of the most murderous leaders in all of human [60:03] history, if you consider his own family. But [60:07] if you're living in the provinces, you know, there's... He's not- [60:13] - Oh, yeah, yeah. [60:14] - ... he's not that murderous. [60:15] - No, no, no, he's perfectly fine. Yeah, yeah. [60:16] - So it's very important to actually remember about what the actual experience of [60:20] the average citizen of the empire is like. Fair. Okay, so but how... Maybe there's [60:27] more we could say about the crisis. And then of course, the, the [60:31] crisis is in part resolved by Diocletian as [60:35] he does a hard reset on the structure on the Roman system of [60:38] government. So maybe you could speak a little bit more to the crisis that's [60:42] important for us to understand, and how Diocletian solves the crisis in 284 AD. [60:48] - Right. So again, these are processes rather than specific events. [60:52] - Sure. [60:53] - So for example, you mentioned that the empire kind of breaks into pieces. [60:57] - Yes. [60:57] - And we have what's called sometime the Empire of the Gauls. [61:02] Gaul are modern France and sort of Britain, for a while are, for [61:06] a decade and a half or so, are kind of like this little separatist- [61:09] empire. So what's interesting about that is that this was [61:13] not an attempt to break away from the empire. In other words, [61:17] it's not some discontent provincials who are just tired of Roman [61:21] rule and wanna break away and do their own thing. No. [61:26] This is actually just a, it's an attempt by, [61:30] provincial generals to take the throne, and do so to rule the entire [61:34] empire. It doesn't work. They get only as far as the provinces that they take. [61:38] And the only way that they know to set up a state is to make it a Roman state. [61:43] Right? Like, that's the total of their political imaginary is like, "Well, [61:47] we're just gonna do a Roman thing here." [61:50] And maybe we'll get, you know, we'll reunite the [61:53] empire ourselves, or as happened, Aurelian, that is someone from the other [61:57] side, will reunite the empire. But it's always a Roman model. Like, there's, [62:01] it's almost like there's no alternatives by this point. So that's interesting. [62:07] What Diocletian does essentially is, [62:11] The, the way I characterize it sometimes is that he [62:15] turns the problem into its own solution. [62:18] In other words, the problem is too many emperors or wanna-be emperors. [62:21] Because there's just more going on. Like, one emperor can't deal with all these problems [62:25] along the frontiers, with all the political problems. [62:29] So what he does is he deputizes some of his colleagues, people he was on [62:33] very good terms with from the army. These are all Illyrians. They're from... By the way, [62:37] for a few centuries, the emperors are all from this region of the former [62:41] Yugoslavia that's the size of Scotland. Like, that's where they all come from. [62:44] - Well, what explains that? [62:46] - Uh, the army. [62:47] - Ah. [62:47] - These are military men. Sometimes hard-drinking military men. [62:51] Very good at their job like Aurelian, you mentioned, right? So there's a series of [62:55] Illyrian emperors who [62:58] restore stability. And the reason why there's so many Illyrian [63:02] emperors is because they worked their way up through the ranks of the army. And, [63:06] you know, the regions of Yugoslavia in, at that time are sufficiently, [63:11] you know, economically underdeveloped that there's a strong incentive for, [63:16] for young men to go join the army because, you know, it's a living. [63:21] Um, and so Illyrians become, like, kind of the backbone of the [63:25] Roman army, and they're described as these, you know, tough Roman conservative [63:29] types. I mean, these are, you know, these are, these are tough [63:33] military guys. I say that to draw a contrast between, say, [63:37] Hadrian, whom I mentioned earlier- [63:39] ... you know, who was a much more sophisticated, artsy, poetic, [63:43] cosmopolitan emperor. [63:44] - Sure. [63:44] - Also a hard-ass. You did not wanna mess with Hadrian. But, [63:49] These guys from the third century are military men through and through. Like, their whole [63:52] careers are in the army. And they have, like, the military stubble. [63:57] They've got these thick necks. [63:59] They look angry. They've got their hands on their swords. Like, they're not [64:03] projecting an image of sort of- [64:04] - Yeah. [64:04] - ... calm and sophisticated, you know, bum-bum, you know. [64:08] - So, military men. [64:09] - Yeah, yeah, yeah. [64:10] - ... military men from Aurelian. [64:11] - Yep. So Diocletian gets a gang of them together. They, eventually there are [64:15] four. We call this the Tetrarchy. Um, and he basically allocates them to various, [64:22] um... This wasn't any kind of hard division of the empire. [64:26] Basically, it was a collaborative project. They each [64:30] went wherever they were needed. [64:31] - Uh, was it, is it fair to say that there was four administrative zones? [64:36] He allocated each one to a zone? [64:38] - Broadly. I'd say more military zones. [64:40] - Okay. [64:41] - Um, so the administration tends to operate, it kind of humming along in the [64:45] background wherever these emperors happen to be, right? This is a, [64:49] We're talking about a period of big government now. So Diocletian creates a [64:53] larger government, possibly a larger army, and in order to pay for that, you need more [64:57] systematic and effective taxation- [64:58] - Mm-hmm. [64:58] - ... which means you need more census, you need more bureaucracy, you need more collect... [65:02] You know? So it is an era of bigger government. [65:05] - So just to linger on that point- [65:07] - Yeah. [65:07] - ... is it fair to say that Diocletian created the deep state? Quote, "deep state." [65:11] So the tax collectors, the, the logistics, [65:15] the thing that you've kinda hinted at, which is the separation of the civil and the [65:19] military layer of society. [65:21] - So the concept of a deep state, I've had discussions about that [65:26] with experts who work on the idea of the deep state, and I'm [65:29] not sure that I would characterize the Roman Empire that [65:33] way, in part because while you do have big government, you do have bureaucracy, you [65:37] have, you have bureaucrats who are buried in various echelons, and you [65:41] know, nobody knows exactly what they're doing and things like that, [65:44] you know, I have not come across the idea of some sort of [65:48] sinister elements, you know, who are working within the administrative apparatus to [65:54] undermine the emperor. [65:58] Like, from a distance occasionally, you might get glimpses of this kind of thing. [66:02] Diocletian, for example, once complained that, "Nobody ever tells me anything." In other words, like, [66:06] he's so removed- [66:07] ... in part from the realities of what's going on on the ground that he, [66:11] felt sometimes he'd lost touch. But I don't find this kind of idea of of [66:17] undermining imperial power from within the bureaucracy. [66:21] - Yeah, I think the, one of the ways to explain that is because, so, you [66:25] know, in the modern day, [66:27] democracy in quotes, there's a kind of temporary nature to the leader at the top. [66:32] So it's incentivized the deep state to form. [66:35] That, so the deep state thinks of themselves as a thing that [66:38] propagates long-term periods of time, and then the [66:41] leader is a very ephemeral short, short-term thing. [66:45] - Yeah. [66:45] - With a, with an emperor, technically- [66:47] ... you can go for a long time, so it's best to be integrated deeply. [66:51] With, the bureaucracy should be integrated with the leader. It makes sense. [66:55] - Yeah. But also, [66:56] - Fair enough [66:57] - ... also in, in, in modern social thought or, or fear is that the deep state might [67:03] be undermining, say... [67:04] - Undermining, yeah [67:05] - ... the democracy itself rather than, right, rather than... It can cut both ways. [67:09] - But there is a bureaucracy. There is a big government. [67:13] - Absolutely. Yeah. [67:14] - There's a big machinery. [67:15] - Yeah, compared to before. [67:17] - Before. [67:17] - Yes. [67:18] So Diocletian creates these larger bureaucratic structures, and these are the ones that define [67:22] the society that I study. So as a specialist, I focus on [67:26] the period after him mostly. [67:29] But he implemented those to solve a lot of these problems. [67:33] He was mostly successful. So in terms of generating revenue from [67:37] a much more troubled and kind of precarious situation in sustaining large [67:43] armies and putting down these rebellions and usurpations. And he was [67:50] generally successful at doing that. [67:53] So he created the model that they kept for the next, Well, three centuries or more. [68:00] - But a lot of the elements of that model lasted even beyond that, right? [68:04] - Yeah, like universal taxation. I'll give you an example. Up until then, [68:09] Italy was exempt from taxes. Italy was the land of the conquerors. The conquerors don't pay [68:13] taxes to themselves. The conquerors live off the taxes that others pay, [68:17] right? So Italy was this big tax haven, right? [68:22] Diocletian, Galerius, you know, his guys, these guys are from [68:25] Illyria. They're from the Balkans. [68:27] Like why is Italy tax-free exactly, you know? That doesn't make any sense. It's a [68:31] very, very wealthy, prosperous part of the world, and so, no, they [68:35] tax Italy. So now, like, not only do all Romans have the same citizenship and [68:39] the same law, they all have the same tax system, [68:43] and the Diocletianic tax code, as it were, it's not a code, it sounds like [68:47] a flat tax, which for us sounds regressive. [68:51] But by those stand- by the standards of that time, it's actually kind of [68:55] progressive in a way. [68:56] - Right. [68:57] - It means that, like, even- [68:58] - Right. [68:58] - ... elites paid, like, the same, right? Yeah. [69:01] - So how much of all of this, everything we'll talk about in the, in [69:06] the coming centuries is all about taxation? [69:08] - I think it's huge. Taxation is the heart of it. [69:12] - So I mean, the functioning, the success, the flourishing of a society, [69:17] the way the government works, the way the people are represented, all of it has to do, [69:21] all the civil wars and everything, it feels like taxation is at the core. [69:25] - Yes. Yeah. If you asked me to put my finger on one factor, it would be that. [69:30] - So the taxation system, that feels like the early [69:34] framework for the East Roman Empire. [69:37] - It did create a more sort of homogeneous framework, for sure. [69:40] By the end of the third century, it's pretty much in place. What [69:44] Diocletian does is a universal census, [69:48] and this is continued by his successors. So every [69:52] taxable asset in the empire is censused. And so you can now start to have a budget. [69:59] - Now, there is some element, and then you push back against that, [70:03] some element of Diocletian where he legally limited social and class mobility in [70:10] part for the taxation system, and made it, in many [70:14] cases, illegal to move and illegal to quit your job. For [70:17] example, as I read to guarantee the food [70:21] supply and land tax, farmers were legally forbidden from [70:25] moving away from the land they worked, so the state always knew who to [70:29] tax. And then for soldiers, sons of veterans were [70:32] legally obligated to serve in the army to maintain troop numbers. [70:38] You argue that these were tax enforcement [70:42] mechanisms, not a rigid caste system, and so in practice, the [70:46] empire remained a society of high mobility. [70:50] - This is a complicated matter. [70:51] So let's talk, for example, about soldiers. It's probably [70:55] the case that most soldiers' sons were expected to succeed them. Like most [71:02] professions where you have an apprenticeship, the son will usually [71:06] succeed, right? There are a number of other [71:10] professions that were kind of guild-like in nature like for example, shipping. [71:15] Uh, where there were considerable assets involved in order to [71:21] secure contracts for insurance purposes for the ships and so forth, [71:25] and it made sense for those assets to be, you know, passed from father to son. In other [71:29] words, and with them comes the obligation to [71:32] continue in that line of work. Some of these things are inherently, sort of [71:40] hereditary, and I don't think most people would have objected to it. [71:44] The farmers is probably the only case [71:48] where it might have actually involved some coercion. There was [71:52] a category of farmers, and we don't know how many of them, who were, [71:56] for fiscal purposes, bound to the land. [72:00] This doesn't mean they couldn't leave the land, like physically. No one's preventing them from leaving. [72:03] But they were fiscally responsible for providing the taxes or rents or [72:07] whatever because the state wanted to have a secure [72:11] revenue stream from, say, those lands. And if... Anyway, it's, it's one of these [72:15] complicated situations. This did create some limitations on, [72:19] on those people. And it's a topic of current research, [72:23] these bound farmers, as it were, [72:25] who are tied to the land. It's more of a... You know, someone put it that, [72:29] you know, most of the time it's people who own the land, and in [72:33] this arrangement, it's the land that owns the people. [72:36] - But you're saying the bigger picture thing is that there was mobility. [72:39] - Oh, there's considerable mobility. [72:40] - So, so class mobility- ... and physical mobility- [72:42] ... meaning people moved a... And we'll see this as from the West into the [72:46] East and Constantinople and all this kind of stuff. [72:48] - Oh, yeah. There's tons of mobility. [72:50] No, no, this is not a society where people are bound really, [72:54] to... We, like, we don't find anybody who's, who's like, "Ah, I [72:59] I really don't want to be a soldier. But my father was a soldier, and I'm obligated to be [73:03] one." Like- ... like, we just don't hear those kinds of complaints- [73:06] of people who don't want to be a so- Why wouldn't you want to be a soldier in the Roman Empire? [73:09] I mean, it's got tremendous perks. [73:11] - Right. Right. So can we just linger on the why is it that Diocletian [73:17] was able to stabilize the empire? It's like, you [73:21] know, the crisis of the third century really threatened to tear apart everything. [73:25] So why did some of these things that we talked about stabilize? [73:30] - Well, Aurelian had already united the empire territorially. [73:33] So this is right before Diocletian. [73:36] And what Diocletian did was put in place a system that [73:39] reduced the number of rebellions. Simply by having four big guys with [73:43] four armies, they managed to put out all of those fires, or most of them. [73:48] And once you have stability, and he also beat the Persians, I [73:52] mean, Galerius did so starting to beat back foreign [73:56] invasions, that creates a framework for economic stability. People need [74:02] To, you know, if they're going to invest in, like, land reclamation [74:06] or expand production, they need to know that, you know, [74:10] foreigners aren't gonna come rampaging through, marauding through the, you know, stealing their [74:14] cattle and, you know, enslaving them and taking them off to work on [74:17] agricultural farms in Mesopotamia. Like, they need to know this. [74:20] And if you provide that context of stability, the economic growth, the [74:24] demographic growth will return. And Diocletian created that kind of, that context. [74:30] - So that takes us to Constantine but first a quick bathroom break, if I can. [74:35] - Sure. [74:36] - Quick ten-second thank you to our sponsors. Check them out in the description. It really [74:40] is the best way to support this podcast. Go to [74:42] lexfridman.com/sponsors. And now, dear friends, [74:47] back to our conversation about the Eastern Roman Empire. [74:52] All right, we're back, and let's talk about Constantine [74:56] and Constantinople. Let's go to the rise of the East Roman [75:00] Empire. Who was Constantine? Tell me about his rise [75:04] to power and the founding of Constantinople in 330 AD. [75:08] - Sure. So Constantine was the son of one of Diocletian's colleagues, [75:12] so he comes from within the system. [75:15] And the system was actually designed to be non-hereditary. In other words, [75:20] the senior emperors would retire, the junior ones would move up to the senior [75:24] position, and then they would recruit two new ones. [75:27] And they tried to skip the dynastic element. So, [75:31] so it would be kind of, let's just say, kinda meritocratic, not [75:35] whose son, you know, you were. Constantine was a son. He was passed over, [75:39] but the armies liked him. He was actually quite competent. [75:43] And so there's a series of civil wars among all of these [75:47] successors of Diocletian, and Constantine emerges as the winner. [75:51] There are periods when there are quite a few of them. There are, like, six at a time, but they gra- [75:55] they gradually dwindle down to one. So [75:59] yeah, it's as long as you have the quarterfinals, semifinals, and then the final [76:03] war, and Constantine emerges in 324 as the sole [76:07] ruler of the entire Roman Empire. So that's who he is. He's [76:11] definitely an insider, very, very competent [76:14] general at civil war. And he gradually moves eastward. [76:20] So as he's conquering his rivals, who are often [76:23] his father-in-laws or his brother-in-laws, because these people are all [76:27] intermarried, and they have alliances, and they fall out. It's one of those kinds of [76:30] situations. He moves eastward, and by the time he defeats his [76:34] last rival, this uh, an emperor called Licinius, in 324 he's in the East. And [76:42] Licinius had his headquarters or one of his headquarters at [76:45] this town called Byzantium. Byzantium is a [76:49] city right where Constantinople was founded. [76:53] And it is at exactly the point where Europe meets Asia, so on the Bosporus. [76:59] And it's a very strategic location. It always had been, right? So whoever controls the straits of [77:03] the Bosporus, yeah, we don't need to explain how important that is. [77:07] And Constantine decides to create a city named after himself, [77:11] Constantinople, on that spot, Byzantium. So Byzantium [77:14] essentially ceases to exist as a city and is replaced by Constantinople, [77:20] AKA New Rome. So it's pretty clear that right from the beginning, [77:24] Constantine intended this to be a kind of branch [77:28] office of Rome in the East, a kind of copy and paste of Rome [77:33] in the East, and it's a plan that his successors continued, right? Now, [77:39] there are a number of other cities in this, [77:43] Let's say in the generation or two before this, [77:47] that were also treated as sort of quasi-Romes. Basically, [77:51] there was this historian in the third century who said, "Well, wherever the emperor [77:54] is, that's Rome," right? 'Cause emperors are now itinerant. [77:58] They're no longer staying at Rome. They're mostly on the frontier, and [78:02] Constantine is one of these frontier emperors. They will sometimes visit Rome, maybe once or [78:06] twice, maybe once a decade, you know, something like this. [78:10] So Rome becomes something that can be sort of copied [78:14] and pasted in other parts of the empire, and a bunch of other cities get [78:17] called, you know, a New Rome, an Other Rome, an [78:21] Alternative Rome, My Rome. And Constantinople [78:25] is the last and most successful of those. [78:28] - So maybe can you speak geographically the importance of Constantinople? It's an interesting [78:32] place 'cause it- [78:35] ... when you're talking about a land so large as the West and the East, with [78:39] enemies, with threats from all kinds of different directions, the [78:43] location where the emperor sits is important. [78:46] - Very. So look at Rome, [78:49] right? So it's right in the middle of Italy, right in the middle of the Mediterranean. [78:53] Very safe location in a way, but it's very far from the frontiers. [78:57] And this is a period when emperors need to be with the armies, right? [79:01] They're not senatorial emperors who are sitting in Rome having meetings with [79:05] senators. They are military emperors who are marching along the frontiers, [79:11] mostly with generals rather than civilian administration. [79:15] So they're doing their job. Like, this is the hard [79:19] work. They're slogging through the mud of winter campaigns, right? [79:24] Uh, they're not just sitting in a palace enjoying themselves when they could. [79:28] But Rome just becomes inconvenient because of that. And if you [79:32] look at Constantinople, it is [79:36] kind of halfway between the Danube frontier and the Euphrates frontier. [79:42] So if you want to prioritize the East or treat it as an equal part of [79:46] the Roman Empire, as these emperors all did. In fact, [79:50] almost all emperors who had a choice about whether they would stay in the East [79:54] or stay in the West chose the East. There's only one who [79:58] chooses the West, and that's Valentinian later in the fourth century. All the others [80:02] understand that the East is where it's at. [80:04] And Constantinople is right between the Danube and the Euphrates. These are two major frontiers. [80:09] And so it allows emperors to move between the two. [80:13] And also look at its location north, south, east, west, right? So [80:16] north, south, it is the node between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, [80:22] right? And east, west, it's precisely where Europe meets Asia, [80:26] right? And because there's a break there, so there's a Bosporus, the [80:30] Sea of Marmara, the Hellespont, the Roman Empire during the civil [80:34] wars, it would tend to break there. [80:38] And you would have one emperor on one side in Asia, and you would have another emperor on the other [80:41] side. And this just kept happening. And [80:45] Constantinople ultimately functions as a kind of clamp that unifies this whole area, [80:53] so basically the Balkans and Asia Minor and Syria as a kind of unit, [81:00] right? And, you know, what is a new Rome? A new [81:04] Rome is, among other things, a new senate, right? And Constantine and his successors [81:11] recruit this new senate for the new [81:15] Rome. So we're talking about maybe two and a half thousand, 3,000 [81:19] men, you know, at, at, at its peak, and these are all [81:22] recruited from all of these areas. You know, some come from Rome, [81:26] but others come from the Aegean region, from Asia Minor, [81:30] Eastern Mediterranean. So these are the wealthiest people, [81:34] usually most well-connected elites from the whole Eastern Mediterranean, [81:38] and they come together and form a new purpose, common purpose in Constantinople. [81:43] And the empire never breaks there again. [81:46] Right? So it, it holds together this part of the world. The [81:49] breaking point now, interestingly, moves to the Adriatic, [81:53] right? So when, in 395, we talked about East and West kind of splitting. [81:57] It breaks at the Adriatic 'cause Constantinople is now holding that whole [82:01] Eastern world together. 'Cause all of these elites, they now, they're [82:05] invested in it. They're literally investing in it. They have to invest in it in order to be [82:09] senators in Constantinople. [82:11] So that's kind of one of the functions that it, that it performs, a strategic function. [82:15] There's a political function. There's also a cultural one, but you know, we can talk [82:19] about that, too. But that's what you see there on that map, the northwest, east, [82:23] south. [82:24] - So just to linger on it, so you do a podcast, [82:28] Byzantium and Friends, but you're also a guest on podcasts, and I should mention [82:34] you being a guest multiple times on the excellent The [82:38] History of Byzantium podcast hosted by Robin Pierson. I [82:42] highly recommend people listen to it, to all of your appearances. You have a lot of really [82:45] fascinating ones. But the reason I bring all that up is one of the episodes, [82:50] you do the fun thing of selecting the top 10 emperors of Byzantium, and [82:58] spoiler alert, everybody should go listen to the full list 'cause you [83:02] justify all the different options. But Constantine ends up in the number one spot. [83:09] And so can you just add a little bit more depth why he [83:13] would be in your number one spot- [83:15] - Yes [83:15] - ... now that we're talking about him? [83:17] - Yes. It's not because I sort of like him as a person, right? I mean- [83:21] ... as you said, he was pretty murderous. [83:23] Right? All those wars, so clearly ambitious, murderous, ruthless, basically. [83:30] - Can you actually speak to the murderous aspect? He seemed to have murdered a [83:34] lot of people in his family. [83:36] - Yes, that's because what we call his family were also [83:40] alliances of convenience that he made on the way to the top. [83:44] And when those alliances or, you know, those, you [83:48] know, those wives or those fathers-in-law were no longer convenient or, [83:52] or turned against him, he had no hesitation in [83:56] removing them. But he's also, you know, he [84:00] gets a little extra bonus because he also murdered his own son, Crispus, who was- [84:05] ... apparently a very competent and popular kind of general, and we don't know why. [84:11] He executes Crispus soon after defeating Licinius, [84:15] and then follows it up with the murder of his wife- [84:18] ... not Crispus' mother, and we don't know why. The funny thing is that when [84:22] emperors do this sort of thing, if there's any kind of remotely, like, a [84:26] good reason, they'll blast it through all of the media, right? Like, "Crispus [84:30] was rebelling against me," or whatever. There's nothing. [84:34] He doesn't even try to justify it, which means it must have been something [84:38] unjustifiable- Like, I don't know. I can't process it. [84:41] - And also, I read that the historians of the time would [84:45] just ignore that that happened. [84:47] - Yes. Well, sort of. So [84:51] when Crispus is alive, it's all, like, praising Crispus as, "Oh, [84:55] Constantine, you great emperor, and your wonderful son who will..." whatever. [84:58] And then Crispus is executed, and he just disappears from the, like- [85:01] ... they never talk about him. [85:02] - Yeah. Actually, as another side to a side, I think you mentioned, [85:09] Whether it's on your podcast or elsewhere, that if, if you had [85:13] to have a beer with any of the emperors, that you probably wouldn't. [85:17] So it's not like some of the most impactful, some of the [85:21] most influential and great emperors that we talk about, [85:25] they might not be very pleasant people. [85:28] - So let's set aside whether you'd like to have a beer with these people. The reason I put [85:32] Constantine at the top of the list is because the decisions that he made were so [85:36] consequential, just important, and [85:40] for the most part, not bad decisions. So I couldn't not put him at the [85:49] top of the list. The, you know, the creating [85:52] Constantinople and converting to Christianity and setting the empire on a path [85:56] to conversion, these are major, like, world history level decisions. [86:02] Right? Now, not many emperors do that. In fact, Constantine is in, [86:05] like, his own league when it comes to those kinds of decisions. [86:09] My other criteria for top emperors were basically those who did the job well, [86:16] right? Not making, you know, these kinds of earth, you know, shattering [86:20] decisions or, you know, world history changing decisions, but just [86:24] who performed the role competently with [86:28] results that impacted the lives of their subjects for the better. [86:33] So those are the other criteria that I used. [86:35] It's difficult to juggle these different criteria, right, in order to create a [86:39] systematic list. And by the way, we, historians generally don't do these kinds of things. [86:43] But you said it's fun. It is fun. [86:45] - It was fun. It was fun. [86:45] - And it allows you to talk about certain things that you might not otherwise do. [86:50] So yeah, that's why Constantine was at the top. [86:53] - So you mentioned Christianity. That was one other big component of his [86:57] rule. What was the role of Christianity in, in Constantine's life, [87:02] in the lives of the citizens of the new Roman Empire? [87:08] - At this stage, Christianity doesn't have a role. It actually took the emperors... [87:13] When the emperors took it on board, that is, they made it a part [87:17] of the imperial system, then it began to acquire a role [87:21] within the system. Previously, it had imagined itself as having its [87:25] own history, like not necessarily part of the [87:28] empire or affiliated with imperial power. But [87:32] after Constantine, it does acquire a role. [87:34] - And so actually, one way to ask that question, which is fascinating, 'cause you said that there's [87:38] like, there's Rome, and then there's like cultures like, [87:43] or traditions like Christianity, or being Greek, that kind of thing. [87:51] So, one of the ways to ask this question is does Christianity [87:55] triumph over Rome, or did Rome capture Christianity? [87:58] - Right. Yes. That's a— [88:00] - Which is the mechanism? [88:04] - I would lean more toward the second. In other words, that the religion was [88:07] co-opted by the imperial system. Now, there are many areas in which [88:11] that's not the case and where the opposite happens, so I'm not going to be absolute about it, [88:15] but I think it's very important to recognize that because [88:19] Christianity generates this narrative of triumph- [88:22] ...right, which modern historians perpetuate, [88:26] and it's framed in very particular ways. In other words, that Christianity triumphs over the [88:30] ancient religions. Right? So displacing Zeus and Apollo and all of [88:35] that, and animal sacrifice is gone, and like, that's because Christianity [88:39] triumphs, and that's a very narrow way of looking at it. In other words, you pick your [88:43] enemy, and then you can defeat that enemy, right? [88:46] But if you look in the other direction, there's, like, the Roman imperial state, and you [88:50] cannot say that Christianity either triumphed over it or [88:53] even tamed it or anything. It actually became part of it. [88:56] in many ways that, you know, determined its history for [89:00] centuries and, in fact, down to today. [89:03] So this is very different, for example, from the history of Islam. [89:07] So Islam comes into existence without a [89:11] preexisting state to receive it and take it on board. It [89:15] creates its own state, right? So the Muslim armies, [89:19] they conquer this empire, and then they have to sort of govern it. [89:23] They think according to whatever Islamic principles. The Quran doesn't say anything about [89:27] running an empire. [89:29] So that creates a completely different society, right, where, like, [89:32] Islam is a, is really a primary kind of identity and, [89:36] like, drives a lot of developments. But Christianity comes into [89:40] existence within a very well-developed society and, and [89:44] political system. Now, here's the thing. [89:46] We don't know exactly how many Christians existed in the time of Constantine. [89:50] Well, we speculate maybe 10% of the empire. That might be very [89:54] high, right? But even if it's 10%, it's [89:57] not a lot, and these are not, like, elites for the most part. Maybe [90:01] middle, you know, what we loosely call middle class, [90:06] a few elites, a few slaves, like this kind of thing. [90:10] Mostly urban, and keeping in mind, most of the population is rural. [90:14] Right? So pockets of concentrated, you know, [90:18] Christian groups in cities. That's what we're talking about. Not terribly [90:21] politically powerful. [90:22] - So Constantine's conversion to Christianity and moving the empire towards Christianity is [90:26] not something where it's a gigantic majority of the people- [90:30] ... or it's a political convenience because it's the elites. It's something else. [90:34] I mean, it's, I mean, a pretty revolutionary decision, I would say. [90:38] - Exactly. Now, there used to be theories that Constantine did this for, like, [90:42] pragmatic, cynical reasons, that he, like, wasn't a true Christian or anything, but there [90:46] was some kind of political gain to be had here. But I have never [90:50] read a convincing account of what exactly that political gain is. [90:54] We now know that there are fewer Christians. They were not [90:58] that influential. You can make an argument that bishops are a kind of [91:02] convenient social influencers, you might say. Like, you can use those. [91:06] They're not a threat to your position. [91:08] Right? So a bishop is not gonna try to take the throne. [91:11] So they're not dangerous political operatives in that way. But they [91:15] do have some influence over sectors of society, and so that might be [91:18] a... Okay, I see that, but I don't quite see the [91:22] argument for, like, going full Christian, [91:25] Just to get the support of some bishops, who actually pretty quickly turn out to be, [91:29] some of them, more trouble than they're worth. [91:31] Anyway, so I have not yet seen a convincing [91:35] like, political argument for Constantine's decision, which means that you then [91:39] fall back on a personal explanation that he did this [91:43] because he was a believing Christian, right? And he came out, [91:47] You know, in support of the religion that he held, and that's kind of [91:51] where most scholars are today. Though, I gotta tell you, [91:55] historians are very uncomfortable about personal choice, like explaining [91:59] history in terms of these kinds of personal choices. [92:02] Because Constantine's conversion is like, it's massive. It [92:06] opens the door. It incentivizes so many people to also convert. [92:11] 'Cause Romans will generally do what their, you know, rulers [92:15] will tell them. If we've mentioned Hadrian a few times [92:19] Hadrian's, he had this lover, Antinous, Greek boy from Bithynia, [92:23] who died in an accident in Egypt, whatever, and Hadrian said [92:27] Basically that Antinous should be regarded as a god throughout the empire. [92:31] And he was. We have, like, more statues and busts of Antinous from all of [92:35] these temples all over the empire than I think of anyone else except Hadrian. [92:39] So yeah, if, if the emperor says, like, "This is a person who's a god now, you know, put [92:43] statues of him everywhere," they will. [92:45] And when Constantine comes out in favor of Christianity, you know, suddenly people [92:49] discover that, oh, this is an interesting rite. It's got the support of the emperor. [92:53] - So one of the things here, going to the Perplexity, Constantine's conversion to Christianity is [92:57] usually dated to 312 AD, [93:01] Linked to a visionary experience before the Battle of the Milvian [93:04] Bridge. Do you believe that vision, that he had this religious experience before the [93:12] Battle of the Milvian Bridge? Here it says, "But historians debate [93:15] both its nature and its sincerity." [93:18] - Well- [93:18] - Do you believe the sincerity of that experience? [93:20] - Before we even get to the sincerity- [93:22] ... is the problem of the sources. This is reported by authors writing later [93:25] in the aftermath of a victory when the emperor... Like, [93:29] one of them had a dinner conversation with the emperor a few decades later, and he [93:33] said, "Well, let me tell you about the Milvian Bridge." And it's like, okay, I'm not gonna believe that. [93:36] I'm not gonna take that at face value, rather. [93:38] It's a much more complicated... You know, this is how the emperor [93:42] wants things to be remembered. [93:43] That's different. Also, Constantine tended to have a lot of religious visions. [93:47] He had had religious visions of Apollo before Christ, and we have [93:51] sources that talk about that, too, that he went to this temple in Gaul, and Apollo appeared to [93:55] him in the form of light. Okay, Constantine has a religious vision every time [93:59] he kind of wants to shift policies. And his, like, [94:03] profile. Like, when he wanted to break away from his other emperors [94:07] who used to go for the, like, they went for this kind of Jupiter/Hercules model. [94:11] And he shifted to an Apollo model. This is a branding. This is emperors doing [94:14] branding. [94:15] - So we should say that, as you've described, Constantine is a [94:19] pragmatist. He's very pragmatic. [94:22] - Yeah. [94:22] - But you're saying it's fair to believe, based on the
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