A Byzantine ivory icon of Christ between the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist
Icon with the Deesis, mid-900s
Marked Constantinople

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Byzantium

The eastern half of the Roman empire, ruled from Constantinople, lasted a thousand years after the west fell. It called itself Roman, spoke Greek, built Hagia Sophia, and fell to the Ottomans in 1453.

Place
Constantinople · Ravenna · Hagia Sophia · TrebizondEurope, The Middle East
Laid out as
An empireOne power across a long stretch of time: how it grew, held together, and came apart.
Lessons
7 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. INew Rome
  2. IIJustinian and Theodora
  3. IIIHagia Sophia
  4. IVThe plague of 541
  5. VGreek fire
  6. VIIcons and their breakers
  7. VII1453

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Justinian I
  • Theodora
  • Basil II
  • Anna Komnene
  • Constantine XI

Objects

  • The Ravenna mosaics
  • Gold solidi
  • Icons from St Catherine’s, Sinai

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

AD 330 to 1453. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?