Was reading Kaldellis’ “New Roman Empire” and he made the argument that Julian can be considered the first true “Byzantine” emperor: born in Constantinople, inherited a disastrous war against the Persians, spoke Greek as his first language… I’m not sure if I agree but curious to hear thoughts.

Greatest Byzantine Emperor-Generals

1. Constantine I: again, he could be swapped with 2 and 3! Undefeated in battle, almost always outnumbered, he fought his way to becoming emperor masterfully and was one of the greatest Roman/ Byzantine generals of all time.
   
2. Ioannes II: a master of combined arms warfare - using his light cavalry and shock Varangian infantry to remarkable effect at Haram (combined with a riverine flotilla) and Beroia. The best of the Komnenoi by far and surely one of the greatest medieval generals of all time. The combo of sieges, long front lines and pitched battles plus the perfect record is why he beats Basileios II for me.
   
3. Basileios II: these big three are completely interchangeable honestly. I’ve put Basileios third simply because the top two were undefeated in battle, whereas Trajan’s Gate complicates his record somewhat: that and he was a very cautious and conservative commander unwilling to take risks - even Xiphias’s flanking manoeuvre at Kleidion unsettled him. That being said, Basileios is the uber soldier emperor and could be ranked higher on anyone else’s list.
   
4. Nikephoros II: a brilliant general whose reforms to the kataphraktoi were arguably what created the Macedonian military resurgence. He doesn’t make top three simply because the extent of his conquests are more limited than theirs.
   
5. Ioannes I: one of the best Byzantine soldier emperors, but many of his successes are sieges and drawn out campaigns with long front lines rather than pitched battles. The lack of range is what caps Tzimiskes at 5, I think.
   
6. Herakleios: this was such a hard call and I hate myself for it, but the reality is that by the end of his reign the Arabs had trounced him militarily and he knew it. If he had dropped dead right after his Persian campaign, he might even make number one: because that dark ages blitzkrieg was unbelievably good.
   
7. Leo III: again, not higher due to our lack of knowledge but what we know is extraordinary. From defeating a massive Umayyad force at Akroinon to the 717 siege, the ramifications of his victories through history are monumental.
   
8. Konstantinos V: low because our knowledge of his tactical and strategic brain is so low, but clearly a very capable and aggressive leader.
   
9. Alexios I: I’m putting him ninth purely because of how much he lost. And he lost a heck of a lot. However… Kalavrye, his sheer tenacity and eventual learning of Norman tactics to defeat Bohemond makes him a very strong contender. The others are just stronger.
   
10. Maurikios: a highly skilled general, clearly, and his Strategikon alone puts him in the top ten. But the failure to pay his troops and forcing them to winter when they didn’t want to was a military failing, not an imperial one.

I understand that succession is a big one but failing that, what else could have been done?

I am of the opinion that perhaps leaving the Armenian statelets as client states instead of annexing them might have been one of the better options for prolonged integrity in Anatolia. From what I have read, it seems like neutering those areas and spreading Armenians around Anatolia did a lot to stifle the pre-existing safeguards the empire had in the east.

Hi! I'm doing a visual development project for school inspired by/set in the Byzantine Empire (still narrowing down a specific century) and was hoping this sub would have recommendations for books, websites, museum collections, ect. that have good, historical visuals of clothes, architecture, and objects from that period. It can be either photos of real artifacts/architecture/art or modern illustrations based on research.

I've already tried to do some research online and looked through a couple museum's collections and am planning to go to my local libraries, but thought I'd reach out here to see if anyone has any recommendations since I'm not super familiar with the period. Thanks in advance!

See also: The published article in the journal Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies.

Paschal calendar for the years 532-646

Perhaps it is because of the Constantinople-centric nature of the state, but the areas outside the capital are kind of fuzzy to me in the economic department. Like you usually hear that Western Anatolia and the Peloponnese are usually among the wealthiest areas, but the former is a large region with vague borders, and a wealthy region does not mean a wealthy population. So which regions had the wealthiest subjects?

Source of the picture here. Source of the info here

Hi guys, I want to get a tattoo of the last known words of Constantine XI. I want to make sure this text doesn't have any mistakes. I asked a few people and they all confirmed it's accurate, but I just want to be 100% sure. Thanks!

In a sea of scholars increasingly adopting the label "Byzantine" to describe the eastern Roman empire in the later 19th century, Irish historian John B. Bury (1861-1927) stood out as perhaps the earliest objector to the term.

In his own studies, he avoided imposing modern racial, cultural and geostrategic biases upon later Roman history and simply respected the evidence presented in the primary sources. Thus he side-stepped the western obsession over denying the Romanness of the eastern empire. He was thus far superior to his contemporaries and his works hold up better than any of those produced by them.

There is no period of history which has been so much obscured by incorrect and misleading titles as the period of the later Roman Empire... The import of that period is so constantly misunderstood and its character misrepresented... The old Roman empire did no cease to exist until the year 1453... This essential fact is obscured as far as the language is able to obscure it by applying the name "Byzantine" or the name "Greek" to the Empire in its later stages... No "Byzantine Empire" even began to exist; the Roman Empire did not come to an end until 1453"

- A History of the Later Roman Empire from Arcadius to Irene (395 AD to 800 AD), 2 vols. 1:v-viii

Unfortunately, Bury failed to persuade his peers and the long standing belief that Byzantium was anything but Roman prevailed up until relatively recent times.

I feel like the legacy of foreign ruling elites who migrate elsewhere is always a controversial subject as to which modern nation‘s historiography can embrace and polish them as their ”own”. Varangians were Eastern Vikings which is a culture and civilization that has been claimed by modern Scandinavians. However the modern states of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus were likewise founded and named after by these very Vikings who also gave them foundational origin myths and a long lasting royal dynasty, the Rurikids.

Which group has more basis for associating themselves with these Nordic venturers?

I'm asking this since in the Renaissance and even beforehand you start to see Western Europeans really idealize and idolise their Roman heritage to the point they would even dress like them on some special occasions. Was this just a Renaissance thing, or did this also happen in Eastern Rome?

I got another question what was the most useless job in the byzantine bureaucracy