Anthony Kaldellis: Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Rise & Fall of Empires | Lex Fridman Podcast #498
In a Nutshell
The Eastern Roman Empire was a direct, continuous continuation of the Roman state from 753 BC to 1453 AD, surviving over 2,200 years through institutional resilience, universal citizenship, taxation, and a republican ideology under monarchical rule. Its longevity stemmed from mechanisms that kept emperors accountable—civil wars, public acclamations, and the need to maintain popular consent—rather than internal decay or cultural rupture. Major crises like the Arab conquests, Seljuk invasions, and the Fourth Crusade caused severe territorial losses, but the empire repeatedly regrouped until cumulative external pressures eliminated its strategic depth.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
The Eastern Roman Empire is the direct continuation of the ancient Roman Empire in the East. All historical sources are clear about this fact. The Western Empire fell in the fifth century, but the eastern half survived and continued to call itself the Roman Empire. Its subjects were Roman citizens who identified as Romans through to the end of the empire.
Western Europeans wanted to think that the Eastern Empire was something different for political reasons. For 1,000 years they called it the Empire of the Greeks, then later switched to calling it the Byzantine Empire. This view is now collapsing as historians recognize the history of the Roman state as a continuous polity lasting from antiquity down to the 15th century.
The Roman state lasted from its founding in 753 BC to the fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD, spanning over 2,200 years. The sequence of regimes includes:
- The Roman Kingdom (753 BC to around 510 BC), ruled by local kings
- The Roman Republic (509 BC onward), governed by an aristocracy with cooperation from the people, lasting about five centuries
- The Roman Empire beginning with Augustus around 27 BC, following civil wars and the transition from the republic
The imperial monarchy phase lasted for the next millennium and a half. The center of power shifted from Rome to Constantinople over a gradual transition period.
The term Late Roman Empire applies to both east and west, starting around the reign of Diocletian (284 to 305 AD) and extending to the early seventh century. The principal characteristics of this period are the tax system and the administration or bureaucracy, which came from Diocletian's and Constantine's reforms.
In 390 BC, the Gauls sacked Rome, a formative trauma that hardened Rome's security obsession. Throughout its history, Rome faced attacks from different directions and had to defend itself. There are two kinds of military operations: wars of conquest and expansion, and defensive operations.
The Punic Wars (264 to 146 BC) transformed Rome into a Mediterranean superpower after surviving against Hannibal. Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (49 BC) through the assassination of Caesar to the Battle of Actium (31 BC) led to civil wars that dismantled the Republic and concentrated power in Octavian, later known as Augustus.
From 27 BC to 180 AD, the Pax Romana represented a period of relative peace and stability. Emperors from this period include Marcus Aurelius. In 284 AD, Diocletian rebuilt the state and emperors dropped the first citizen mask. In 312 AD, Constantine defeated Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge to become sole ruler of the western half. He founded Constantinople in 330 AD. East and West were split in 395 AD. The Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 AD. The West fell in 476 AD when the last Western emperor was deposed.
In the sixth century, Justinian reigned. In the seventh century, Heraclius defeated Persia but then lost against the Arabs, with Arab conquests continuing. In the eighth century, the Arab siege of Constantinople failed. The Macedonian dynasty followed. The Crusades eventually led to Constantinople falling in 1453 AD.
There are three main moments when significant territory was lost to foreign invaders:
- The Arab conquests in the 630s, lost in a single decade
- The Seljuk Turk conquest of Asia Minor in the 1070s, swift and only partly reversed afterward
- The Fourth Crusade in 1204, when armies mostly from France sacked and conquered Constantinople and dismembered the empire
These defeats were swift and caused incredible damage. For most of its history, the empire was engaged in slow but steady economic growth and territorial expansion on a small scale.
Some developments occur through gradual processes rather than sudden moments. The division of eastern and western empires in 395 AD is a conventional date capturing a longer process. There was no clean split; it was one among many allocations of jurisdiction to different sons, with subsequent reunifications and re-divisions.
The fall of the Western Empire in 476 AD is also just the last date in a long process that took decades. Constantine's conversion to Christianity is an example of a discrete event with long-term consequences that could not have been predicted.
Roman history is the history of a specific state or political community, not a religion or culture that can exist independently. It is the history of the Roman people and Roman citizens. At no point is there a rupture where members would think something dramatic had changed and they were no longer part of that story.
The Ship of Theseus metaphor applies: every component may change, but the narrative of the history of the Roman people holds everything together. Changes happen so gradually that they do not seem dramatic to those living through them.
Roman pride existed among some people. An example from the sixth century involves an ambassador concluding a deal with the Persians who stated: "you're making a deal here with the Romans. The Romans. The name should say it all." This expressed pride in bearing the Roman tradition.
However, pride should not be made the center of analysis. For the most part, there was a consensus where subjects or citizens agreed to be taxed and ruled by political authorities because of what they received in return, based on mutual responsibilities.
At any given time, Romans had vastly different life experiences. A senator from the age of Cicero and the son of a slave brought from the East might have trouble identifying common ground despite both being Romans. Changes over time were cumulative, resulting in Greek-speaking Orthodox Christian Romans in Constantinople who at first sight might have little in common with Latin-speaking Romans from the republic who worshiped ancient gods.
Hadrian, a second-century emperor who was bilingual, cosmopolitan, and engaged with Greek culture, has more in common with later emperors than with warriors from the Middle Republic, yet traditional periodization separates them.
Soldiers throughout the centuries swore an oath to protect the republic, empire, or emperor. This oath remained recognizable across time, sometimes with Christian formulas added later. Roman law enabled women to run businesses through regulations on property, inheritance, and marriage. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Jewish women living in the Eastern Roman Empire took property disputes to Roman courts rather than rabbinical ones because Roman courts granted them more rights.
The imperial persona refers to what the government, emperor, court, bureaucracy, and spokesmen want subjects to think about how power is being used, why, and for whom. This persona is communicated through laws promulgated throughout the empire, sometimes read in church or posted publicly. It also appears in imperial rhetoric and the language used to praise emperors. Petitions to authorities served as an important mechanism connecting subjects to power.
Emperors broadcast a specific persona through multiple media including petitions, which subjects could submit with the expectation that they would be read, addressed, and answered. These responses contained consistent language conveying that authorities are responsive to subjects' needs, often accountable, and understand they exercise public power solely for the benefit of subjects. The authorities repeatedly stated they were renouncing private interest, claiming "We're not doing this for our benefit, we're doing this for your benefit." Emperors also projected being proactive, constantly stating they were planning ahead, foreseeing problems, and solving them before subjects experienced them. They emphasized working very hard, using the cliche of being sleepless, claiming they were losing sleep worrying about subjects' problems and how to solve them. Justinian was publicly known as the sleepless emperor because he was a workaholic who stayed up all night hauling officials in at any hour to discuss wars, architecture, laws, religion, and theology.
The persona projected tireless effort on behalf of subjects, responsible exercise of power, and responsiveness and accountability through legal instruments allowing subjects to hold officials accountable if they broke the law or oppressed people. This persona was very consistent and served as a mechanism for tying society together, as subjects who believed their emperors operated this way were more likely to agree to paying taxes. A key lesson from reading Machiavelli is that people and states can say anything, but what matters is what they actually do. Research on the East Roman state suggests emperors and authorities were generally sincere in what they said and generally did what they said they were going to do overall, though not perfectly and with instances of corruption and abuse. There was a sufficient level of understanding that emperors were doing this, and they were incentivized because they were in a vulnerable situation and needed subjects to be relatively content.
Despite having significant or even absolute power, emperors were concerned with making subjects happy. The explanation lies in there being no right to the throne, which is a function of the Roman matrix of politics. There is a paradox that the Roman Republic was the most imperialistic phase of Roman history when Romans did most conquering, while what is called the empire was much less imperialistic and more defensive. The emperor emerged out of the republic in a strange way, not as a dynasty that created the state like the Ottoman Empire where the dynasty was at the heart of the state. The Roman emperor emerged within a republic and had to pretend for a long time that they were not what they really were, continuing to flatter the idea of a republic with a first citizen, claiming "I'm not a king, I'm just holding offices the Senate has given me." Augustus had to act this way because he wanted to be an effective governor and not be overthrown, since ending one civil war did not prevent another from occurring.
Riots and civil wars were a feature of the system, creating a constant threat of violent overthrow. This served as an incentive, or stick, for emperors to behave. In the thousand years studied, there were approximately 120 civil wars, usually swift, never about ideology, and solely about who had power. All sides had the same ideology and competed over who was best to do the job. Once a winner emerged as emperor, they often overthrew the previous regime. Statistics show 46% of emperors of Constantinople were overthrown through violence, meaning every emperor was vulnerable and insecure. The best way to avoid this fate was not by arresting and executing potential threats or behaving like Caligula or Nero, but by doing things that made people happy so they would not support rebels. There was a convention in Constantinople where someone might march down the central boulevard with supporters calling the populace to rally at Hagia Sophia and call for the emperor's deposition. Sometimes this succeeded and sometimes failed, with the wannabe rebel left alone seeking asylum. Other times people would drag the emperor out and cut his nose off.
The check on power was literal violence, including murder, blinding, or cutting off the nose, though there were periods where the consequence was retirement to a monastery. Unlike modern elections that give a government a mandate for four or five years during which unpopularity does not remove legitimacy, Constantinople had an ongoing perpetual referendum. Emperors conducted opinion polls by appearing in public where everyone was expected to cheer and chant acclamations such as "Worthy" or "Many years for you, Augustus." If chanting was tepid or people booed, emperors knew something was wrong and sought to fix problems like grain supply issues.
The Hippodrome was the main stadium and social center of Constantinople, shaped as a long U-shaped race course with a central barrier and tiered seating that may have held from roughly thirty thousand up to one hundred thousand spectators. It was used for chariot racing, imperial ceremony, and political gatherings where emperors appeared before the people, acclamations occurred, public punishments took place, and political demonstrations happened. The rival circus factions (Blues, Greens, Reds, Whites) became powerful social and sometimes paramilitary forces. Emperors did not have to travel far since the Hippodrome was right next to the palace. The Hippodrome was not just for sport but served as the connection between people and leaders, a place for people to speak to the leader, vent, and even insult them. In the 1190s, Emperor Alexius III faced extortion from the German emperor demanding payment or invasion. Alexius gathered people in the Hippodrome to announce the "German tax" but backed down immediately when there was such an uproar against it. The German emperor later died and nothing happened, but this demonstrated the give and take where emperors could backtrack on policy when facing popular opposition.
Popular consultation could occur at military mustering grounds where the army, as the Roman people and sometimes the most decisive part, could gather and decide they wanted a different emperor. This could happen in provinces, not just Constantinople. People could also gather at Hagia Sophia or public spaces like the Forum of Constantine. When an emperor died without an heir, as in 491, people gathered in the Hippodrome to discuss with the court whom to appoint, and military units might be arrayed in the arena itself, allowing more people than the stands could hold. Institutionally the emperor might look absolute, but in practice the ones who behaved that way did not end well.
The East Roman Empire survived a thousand years, representing a mechanism that worked for governing large collections of humans with representation, preventing riots and rebellions, and enabling collective flourishing. As a historian, the goal is to understand how and why it survived, find the ways it worked, and understand the mechanisms of give and take in the exercise of power, starting from the fact that it survived and was resilient.
The Edict of Caracalla in 212 AD was a turning point and part of a process. The Roman polity tended to bestow metropolitan citizenship on allies and eventually on many conquered peoples through mechanisms including block grants, allowing generals to bestow citizenship on useful local players, and allowing non-Roman cities to decide who received Roman citizenship by electing them to certain offices. By Caracalla's time in the early third century AD, at most a third of free citizens of the empire were Roman citizens, with everyone else having local citizenship such as Alexandrian or Athenian and being subject to those laws. Caracalla, whose reigning name was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, issued the Constitutio Antoniniana extending citizenship to everybody. Some called it the Divine Decree. The stated reason was religious, wanting people to go to temples and pray and give thanks to the gods for his survival out of a coup, though other historians at the time said he did it for tax reasons. There might have been an ideology of a unified community across the empire among his jurists.
The consequences are more significant than the motivations. No modern empire has done this, and what is significant about the Roman case is that they extended citizenship to everybody and meant it, with real teeth. Rights and opportunities available to Roman citizens in the Roman Senate at Rome became available to everybody. Within a generation, all emperors were provincials and all the most powerful people in the empire were from the provinces. The law of citizenship stated that anyone born within the Roman Empire is a Roman citizen. The Roman jurists and policymakers had ideas about creating this kind of community. When Constantinople was created a century later in the Bosporus at the site of modern Istanbul, it was created within a preexisting Roman context. Romanness was already there in the East, so creating a center of Roman power in the East was not such a leap.
The edict granting universal Roman citizenship in 212 AD was likely developed by a small group of individuals, possibly including jurists and Roman legal scholars such as Ulpian. However, unlike the American founding documents where meeting minutes and full texts survive, only a torn and mutilated papyrus fragment in Greek preserves the key clause of the original Latin edict. Contemporary sources mention it and legal documents reference its effects, but the people involved and the immediate implementation process remain unknown.
The effects of the edict are visible in the historical record through an explosion in the number of people named Aurelius, as new citizens took the emperor's Roman family name. This demonstrates that the edict represented an explosion rather than gradual expansion of citizenship, even though it built upon a long-term process of extending Roman citizenship.
Granting equal rights to provincials helped address the Crisis of the Third Century by reducing discontent among provincial populations and minimizing the probability of uprisings. However, the edict was followed by decades of unrest rather than immediate stability.
The Crisis of the Third Century featured tremendous instability with 26 emperors murdered over 50 years. Almost all emperors were generals killed by their own men, making civil war the norm. Additional factors included hyperinflation, economic collapse, and a plague from 249 to 262 AD, possibly smallpox or Ebola, that killed up to 5,000 people daily in Rome alone and devastated the tax base and army recruitment pool. The empire fractured into three pieces before Emperor Aurelian reconquered the territories in five years.
The crisis represented a perfect storm combining a crisis of imperial legitimacy, with provincial armies proclaiming rival emperors, increased foreign invasions including the rise of the bellicose Sasanian Persian Empire in the east, inflation, and plague. Under these pressures, the empire nearly collapsed, though some historians legitimately downplay the severity of the crisis for average citizens.
The experience of average citizens during the crisis varied significantly by location. In Egypt, papyrus documents reveal that most people did not appear to be experiencing a crisis despite the chaos at the imperial level. This distinction between the lives of emperors and the experiences of provincial populations is important for understanding the period.
The Crisis of the Third Century was resolved in part by Diocletian through a hard reset of Roman government structures beginning in 284 AD. The empire's fragmentation, such as the Empire of the Gauls comprising modern France and Britain for about fifteen years, was not an attempt by discontented provincials to break away from Rome. Instead, it represented provincial generals attempting to seize the throne and rule the entire empire using Roman political models, as they had no alternative political frameworks.
Diocletian addressed the problem of too many emperors and would-be emperors by turning the problem into its own solution. He deputized colleagues from the army, all Illyrians from the region of the former Yugoslavia roughly the size of Scotland, who had risen through military ranks. These Illyrian emperors restored stability through military competence. For several centuries, emperors predominantly came from this region because young men joined the army for economic opportunity in an underdeveloped area, making Illyrians the backbone of the Roman army and described as tough, conservative military types.
Diocletian established the Tetrarchy with four emperors allocated to different military zones rather than creating a hard division of the empire. The system was collaborative, with emperors going wherever needed. This era featured bigger government with a larger bureaucracy and army, requiring more systematic taxation through expanded census and collection mechanisms.
Diocletian created larger bureaucratic structures that defined the society of the later Roman Empire. While these structures involved extensive government machinery and bureaucracy, they do not fit the modern concept of a deep state, as there is no evidence of sinister elements within the administration working to undermine the emperor. Diocletian himself once complained that nobody ever told him anything, indicating he sometimes felt removed from ground-level realities.
Unlike modern democracies where temporary leadership incentivizes a permanent bureaucracy to form independently, emperors could rule for extended periods, making integration between bureaucracy and leadership more practical.
Diocletian implemented universal taxation that eliminated Italy's previous exemption. Italy, as the land of the conquerors, had not paid taxes, but Diocletian and his Illyrian colleagues from the Balkans saw no reason for this wealthy region to remain tax-free. The Diocletianic tax system was a flat tax that, by contemporary standards, was somewhat progressive because elites paid the same rate as others.
Taxation represents the heart of imperial functioning, with success, flourishing, government operations, and civil conflicts all connected to revenue collection. The Diocletianic system created a more homogeneous framework with a universal census of all taxable assets, enabling proper budgeting.
Diocletian legally limited social and class mobility in certain areas for taxation enforcement. Farmers could be bound fiscally to the land to guarantee food supply and land tax revenue, though this did not physically prevent movement. Sons of veterans were obligated to serve in the army to maintain troop numbers. These measures were tax enforcement mechanisms rather than a rigid caste system, and the empire retained considerable mobility in practice.
Many professions operated on hereditary principles similar to apprenticeships, where sons succeeded fathers, particularly in guild-like occupations such as shipping where assets needed to pass between generations for insurance and contract purposes. The bound farmers represent a more coercive category, though research continues on how many people this affected and the exact nature of these arrangements.
Aurelian had already reunited the empire territorially before Diocletian. Diocletian reduced rebellions by having four major military leaders with four armies capable of suppressing uprisings. He and his colleagues, including Galerius, also successfully pushed back foreign invasions, particularly against the Persians. This created stability that enabled economic and demographic growth, as people could invest in land and production without fear of foreign raids.
Constantine was the son of one of Diocletian's colleagues and rose within the Tetrarchic system, which was designed to be non-hereditary with senior emperors retiring and junior ones advancing while recruiting new colleagues based on merit rather than family. Constantine was initially passed over but gained army support and emerged victorious from civil wars among Diocletian's successors, becoming sole ruler of the entire empire in 324 AD.
Constantine gradually moved eastward during his campaigns and defeated his final rival, Licinius, whose headquarters included the town of Byzantium on the Bosporus where Europe meets Asia. Constantine founded Constantinople, named after himself and also called New Rome, on this site in 330 AD, replacing Byzantium. From the beginning, he intended Constantinople to serve as a branch office of Rome in the East, a copy and paste of Rome that his successors continued developing.
Constantinople's location proved strategically superior to Rome for the needs of the later empire. Rome sat safely in the middle of Italy and the Mediterranean but was distant from frontiers where military emperors needed to operate with their armies. Emperors of this period were itinerant military leaders rather than senatorial figures remaining in Rome.
Constantinople positioned emperors halfway between the Danube frontier and the Euphrates frontier, allowing movement between these two major borders. The city served as the node between the Black Sea and Mediterranean to the north and south, and precisely where Europe meets Asia to the east and west. During civil wars, the empire tended to fracture along the Bosporus, Sea of Marmara, and Hellespont, making control of this strategic location essential.
Constantinople functioned as a kind of clamp that unified the Balkans, Asia Minor, and Syria as a single unit. A new Rome included a new senate, with Constantine and his successors recruiting approximately two and a half to three thousand men at its peak. These senators were drawn from Rome, the Aegean region, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean, representing the wealthiest and most well-connected elites from across the Eastern Mediterranean. They formed a new common purpose in Constantinople, and the empire never broke apart again in that region.
The breaking point moved to the Adriatic in 395 when East and West split, because Constantinople was now holding the entire Eastern world together. These elites became invested in the system, literally investing in it to become senators in Constantinople. This served a strategic function, a political function, and a cultural function.
Constantine ranks number one among Byzantine emperors not because of personal likability—he was ambitious, murderous, and ruthless—but because the decisions he made were extraordinarily consequential for world history. Creating Constantinople and converting the empire to Christianity were major decisions that few emperors could claim. Other criteria for top emperors included performing the role competently with results that improved subjects' lives, even without making earth-shattering decisions.
Constantine murdered family members because what historians call his family were actually alliances of convenience made on the way to power. When those alliances or wives or fathers-in-law were no longer convenient or turned against him, he removed them without hesitation. He murdered his son Crispus, a competent and popular general, shortly after defeating Licinius, followed by the murder of his wife. No justification was ever provided through imperial media, which suggests the acts were unjustifiable.
Contemporary historians praised Crispus while he lived as Constantine's wonderful son and heir, but after his execution, Crispus simply disappeared from historical accounts and was never mentioned again.
Constantine's decisions were so consequential that he belongs in his own league. Creating Constantinople, converting to Christianity, and setting the empire on a path to conversion were world history level decisions. Historians generally do not create rankings of emperors, but such exercises allow discussion of topics that might otherwise be overlooked.
At this stage, Christianity had no role within the imperial system. It imagined itself as having its own history independent of the empire. Only after emperors incorporated Christianity into the imperial system did it acquire a role. The question of whether Christianity triumphed over Rome or Rome captured Christianity leans toward the second interpretation: the religion was co-opted by the imperial system.
Christianity generates a narrative of triumph over ancient religions, displacing Zeus and Apollo and eliminating animal sacrifice. This framing is narrow because it selects a particular enemy to defeat. In the other direction, Christianity did not triumph over or tame the Roman imperial state. Instead, it became part of that system in ways that determined its history for centuries.
This differs from the history of Islam, which came into existence without a preexisting state to receive it. Islam created its own state. Muslim armies conquered empires and then governed according to Islamic principles, though the Quran contains no guidance on running an empire. This created a society where Islam functioned as a primary identity driving developments. Christianity emerged within an already well-developed society and political system.
The number of Christians in Constantine's time is unknown but speculated to be around 10% of the empire at most, possibly much lower. Most were not elites but middle class, with a few elites and slaves. Christianity was mostly urban, while most of the population was rural, creating pockets of concentrated Christian groups in cities. Christians were not terribly politically powerful.
Constantine's conversion was not driven by a gigantic majority or by political convenience among elites. It was a revolutionary decision. Older theories suggested pragmatic or cynical motives, but no convincing account of political gain has been established. Christians were few and not influential. While bishops might serve as convenient social influencers who posed no threat to the throne, they quickly proved troublesome. The absence of a convincing political argument leads to the conclusion that Constantine acted as a believing Christian who came out in support of his religion.
Historians are uncomfortable explaining history through personal choices, yet Constantine's conversion was massive. It opened the door and incentivized others to convert, as Romans generally followed their rulers.
Hadrian declared his deceased lover Antinous, a Greek boy from Bithynia who died in an accident in Egypt, to be a god throughout the empire. More statues and busts of Antinous exist from temples across the empire than of anyone except Hadrian himself. This demonstrates that when an emperor declared someone a god and commanded statues to be erected, people complied.
Constantine's conversion is dated to 312 AD and linked to a visionary experience before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. Historians debate both the vision's nature and Constantine's sincerity. The sources reporting this were written later by authors after victory, including one who had a dinner conversation with the emperor decades later. These accounts reflect how the emperor wanted events remembered rather than objective reporting.
Constantine had multiple religious visions. He experienced visions of Apollo before Christ, including one at a temple in Gaul where Apollo appeared in the form of light. Constantine had religious visions whenever he wanted to shift policies or change his imperial branding, moving from a Jupiter/Hercules model to an Apollo model.
Constantine was pragmatic and not a hardcore Christian throughout. He was a spiritual, religious person who thought about religions generally and converged toward Christianity. He had ideas about what constituted good religion versus bad religion. He remained pragmatic by not wanting to alienate too many subjects, sometimes being coy or elusive depending on his audience. When speaking to Christians, he mentioned Christ. In general laws addressed to everyone, he referred only to good religion.
Even while supporting the church and institutionalizing it within the imperial system, Constantine erected statues of himself resembling Apollo in Constantinople. The focal point of Constantine's Constantinople was the Forum of Constantine, featuring a very tall column with a colossal gilded statue of Constantine approximately eight meters tall. The statue was a repurposed Apollo, visibly naked with rays emanating from the head. Everyone recognized it as Apollo, showing Constantine in the guise of his former patron god while still being Christian Constantine, sending multiple messages simultaneously.
Romans called the emperor divine, though this was not based on hard theology. If pressed, they would not claim the emperor was literally a god. The concept remained mushy. In contexts where emperors proclaimed their majesty, they emphasized divinity, while more personal contexts like baptism might involve greater humility.
The conversion process was gradual and took a very long time. A majority Christian society probably did not exist until the fifth century, possibly early to mid-fifth century. A solidly Christian society, where non-Christians comprised only 10-15%, did not emerge until the early sixth century. This represents a half-millennium process after Jesus.
It took about two centuries after Constantine to make the Roman Empire truly Christian. Conversion remained very slow, reaching perhaps 10% under Constantine, then gradually larger groups joined, even if only nominally, until the sixth century when society was overwhelmingly Christian.
Conversion occurred through incentives and disincentives. Bishops received funds to distribute charity and help communities in distress, maintaining lists of widows and others they supported. Emperors and wills granted land to the church for social policy work. Disincentives included laws increasingly restricting traditional religion: animal sacrifices were banned, then practices like tying ribbons to make wishes or visiting sacred trees were prohibited as nefarious or magical. Restrictions gradually increased, preventing non-Christians from holding high offices or creating problems with wills.
Christianity succeeded because it developed forms appealing to different constituencies. An intellectual side involving theology and quasi-philosophical engagement drew intellectuals. Public ceremony and ritual aspects organized communities and cities through processions and festivals replacing ancient ones. An initiatory aspect through baptism involved learning a creed and offered the prospect of personal afterlife. Christianity integrated itself into court language, power structures, and the army, where soldiers swore oaths to the Trinity. This manifold diversity positioned Christianity in streets, courts, armies, churches, texts, and books, making it highly adaptable.
Christianity makes exclusive claims that one's own beliefs are true and others are false and even evil, possibly inspired by Satan. This is inherently divisive. Ancient religions tended not to produce this kind of conflict, identities, or wars, and were not primary drivers of history. With exclusive claims, communities consolidate strong identities but also alienate other groups, creating conflict.
Christianity functions as both a polarizing and unifying force simultaneously in Eastern Empire history. It cannot be definitively characterized as more unifying or divisive.
Tension and conflict may serve as mechanisms for society to figure itself out, determining what people want or what constitutes truth. The narrative Christianity tells itself involves defending one original truth against evil heretics attempting to corrupt it. In reality, truth evolved through controversies. Often people did not know they held certain beliefs until after fights concluded and winners established positions that then became the beliefs they always held.
Many Christian theologians branded as heretics and sometimes exiled did not intend harm. They often stated what they thought everyone believed, only to be accused of heresy from places like Alexandria, triggering fights they might win or lose. Many were well-intentioned or had no intention of starting conflict, though some always wanted to start fights.
The society identified itself increasingly with what it saw as orthodoxy, meaning correct belief. Orthodoxy is the conventional name, today called Greek Orthodoxy. Religion formed an essential part of the culture. As a historian, attempting to test models by treating religion and culture as independent variables proves difficult because they are hard to disentangle.
To the degree this was a successful society historically, its religion contributed to that success and played a role in it. This came at a cost, as things that matter have costs that people are willing to pay. At the very end, they faced a choice between Catholicism and Western rule, requiring compromise on faith, or rule by Muslim Turks, where they would not compromise their faith. Some explicitly preferred Turkish rule because the Turks would respect their identity.
Religion interacts with taxation and government functions but operates primarily as a cultural layer rather than the engine of society. Models for understanding Byzantine society should avoid assuming religion explains everything. Roman identity exists separately from Orthodoxy, and state operations function pragmatically with religion intersecting mainly at the level of terminology and vocabulary rather than actual functioning.
When asked whether one is Roman or Christian, the answer is both, though these identities overlap rather than being identical. Christians existed who were not Romans, including Bulgarians and Rus, and Romans did not automatically regard them as Roman based on shared Christianity. Romans were aware of pre-Christian Roman history through weekly church celebrations of martyrs killed by Roman emperors, demonstrating that Roman and Christian categories did not overlap perfectly.
Different contexts emphasized different aspects of identity. Some individuals functioned primarily as politicians with minimal attention to Christian matters, while others devoted themselves entirely to Orthodoxy and monasticism. The society also contained a Greek cultural element, with Greek language and literature. People could combine these three elements—Roman, Christian, and Greek—in various ways, or pursue purist approaches in one direction. This combination made Byzantine society unique as the only society that was simultaneously Roman, Christian, and Greek.
Removing taxation, religion, or the Greek language component would fundamentally change what the empire was, making counterfactual analysis about success difficult since all elements were deeply integrated.
The East Roman Empire represents one of history's most successful empires in terms of duration and stability in a densely populated region. A forthcoming book will systematically analyze the factors behind this longevity.
Constantinople grew from approximately 25,000 people to 500,000 within two centuries. This growth rate exceeded what demographic reproduction within the city itself could achieve. Immigration from the provinces, primarily Greek-speaking regions including Greece and Asia Minor, drove the expansion.
Ancient cities functioned as death traps due to disease density, losing roughly 1-3% of population annually. Maintaining even stable population required continuous immigration. Constantinople's dramatic growth therefore demanded substantial provincial inflows.
Constantine required approximately 2,500 senators to reside in Constantinople. Each senator brought a household including staff, slaves, and dependents. Conservative estimates suggest 30 people per household, yielding roughly 75,000-100,000 people from senatorial households alone.
Constantine also established provisions for up to 200,000 people to receive grain dole, creating additional incentives for migration. The grain came from Egypt, representing a diversion of resources from Old Rome to New Rome. North Africa and Sicily continued feeding Rome, preventing starvation there.
Diverting resources signaled shifting imperial priorities toward the East. Some senators relocated from Rome. The East was positioned as an equal parallel Roman world.
The Western Roman Empire ended in 476 AD when the last Western emperor was deposed. The Visigoths had sacked Rome in 410 AD. Contributing factors included nonstop civil wars, weak emperors, economic crisis with shrinking tax base and rising army costs, loss of key provinces especially North Africa, reliance on contracted barbarian troops, cascading invasions amplified by Hun pressure, and the East-West split.
Barbarian armies from outside the empire applied increasing pressure during the fifth century. When the Roman state failed to suppress them and instead settled them or allowed them to take provinces, such as the Vandals in North Africa, the state lost tax revenues from those territories. Reduced resources meant fewer armies to handle subsequent barbarian waves. Previous barbarian groups who had settled declared independence and could not be suppressed, creating a self-reinforcing cycle.
These groups could defeat Roman field armies in battle and then seize territories, removing revenues needed to recruit replacement forces.
The Goths crossed the Danube in 376, leading to the Battle of Adrianople where one and a half field armies were annihilated and Emperor Valens died. The resulting four-year war ended in a truce where neither side achieved victory. For the first time, Romans accepted a quasi-independent Gothic army within imperial territory, creating unprecedented tensions.
Geography provided the East with defensive advantages. Without naval capacity, Goths could not cross from Thrace or western Balkans to plunder Asia Minor's prosperous provinces. Invaders remained confined to the Balkans and eventually moved westward toward Italy's greater resources. The East could fall back on either European or Asian provinces depending on threat direction.
Constantinople's fortifications created an impregnable command center. Reinforcements could be called from either side of the empire. Local communities chose to maintain loyalty to the Roman state rather than siding with invaders, restoring ties with Constantinople once threats passed.
The Roman Empire did not collapse and give birth to a separate Byzantine Empire. Instead, the center shifted from West to East. By the 430s, Constantinople was codifying Roman law in Latin for the West. In the sixth century, Justinian reconquered portions of the West and recodified Roman law on a larger scale. Roman law as known today derives from East Roman versions preserved in Constantinople.
Thrace, previously considered a backward province, became the heart of the Roman world under Justinian. Rome itself became a provincial backwater with wolves roaming the Forum.
The East Roman government divided into civilian and military branches, with the church functioning plausibly as a third governmental institution. The military recruited, organized, equipped, paid, and led soldiers. Paper strength ranged from 100,000 at minimum to approximately 250,000 at peak, representing substantial commitments for a medieval society. Soldiers and their families formed part of a military-economic complex.
The military served primarily defensive purposes, though offensive campaigns occurred, notably under Justinian.
The civilian administration's primary task involved generating funds to pay the army, the state's largest budget item. This required asset censuses and taxation systems. Multiple tax bureaus maintained records. A legal branch resolved disputes involving the imperial fisc. Additional functions included legal regulation through courts and judges, issuing laws, and maintaining records.
Separate bureaus handled diplomacy and palace staff management. The palace operated as a massive institution. Major churches like Hagia Sophia maintained hundreds of staff requiring payment through endowments. The imperial household similarly required dedicated endowments, necessitating administration of earmarked lands.
Rather than a formal tax code, the system operated through exemptions granted via petition to the emperor or officials. Monasteries, wealthy individuals, court-connected persons, and struggling villages could request relief for specific years or taxes due to poor harvests or barbarian raids. Emperors periodically discovered officials granting unauthorized exemptions and conducted purges to cancel them.
By the eleventh century, documentation reveals monasteries, villages, and high officials holding multiple exemption documents, creating an increasingly complex system.
Eunuchs served as household staff managing the emperor's personal sphere, including the bedchamber, palace organization, banquets, and wardrobe. Their constant proximity to the emperor enabled them to influence decisions and facilitate access for petitioners, making them targets for bribery.
Eunuchs absorbed public frustration when petitioners failed to obtain desired outcomes from court. More significantly, emperors used eunuchs to prevent bureaucratic displacement. Eunuchs typically originated outside the empire or as former slaves, lacking connections to powerful family networks. Their dependence on the emperor ensured loyalty. Emperors sometimes placed eunuchs in charge of armies to maintain personal control over military matters.
Eunuchs served as a deliberate counterweight to established power networks. Emperors would place eunuchs, sometimes drawn from the imperial wardrobe, in command of armies or high offices precisely because they stood outside the normal chains of patronage and kinship. This prevented any single network of generals or aristocrats from consolidating unchecked power.
Narses, Justinian's general, exemplifies the competence some eunuchs achieved. Despite being elderly, small in stature, and mocked by the Goths, he defeated them in a decisive battle in Italy.
Eunuchs could not propagate bloodlines, which made them dependent solely on imperial favor rather than on building family dynasties. While many were enslaved and castrated as children against their will, some families in regions such as Caucasia and Persia deliberately castrated sons as a strategy for placing them at court. Paphlagonia in northern Asia Minor produced several such families that treated eunuch service as a calculated path to influence.
Powerful eunuchs existed already under the Julio-Claudian emperors in Rome; the senatorial class consistently resented them.
No evidence supports the existence of truly isolated peasant communities unaware of the emperor or disconnected from state institutions. The notion that rural populations lived unaffected by Constantinople is a myth. Every piece of arable land had been censused for centuries; villages could not remain hidden.
Tax collection occurred approximately three times per year and encompassed not only coin and payments in kind but also services and military recruits. This created a dense institutional matrix binding communities to the state. Churches further integrated populations through the liturgical calendar, organizing time and communal life according to state-sanctioned structures. Coins circulated widely, reinforcing economic and administrative connectivity.
Taxation served as the primary mechanism binding the empire together. Layered on top were the economy, coinage, and the church. Sermons routinely included prayers for the emperor, reinforcing ideological unity.
The East Roman state lacked any native Greek term equivalent to the modern concept of "empire." Official language referred to the basileia (monarchy) of the Romans, the politeia (polity) of the Romans, or simply Romania. The term politeia translated the Latin res publica, understood as the common affairs of a political community regardless of regime type.
Cicero could envision the res publica governed by a king, senate, or democracy. The Romans continued using this terminology under emperors, viewing the ruler's role as service to the polity.
An empire, in the modern sense, typically arises when one group conquers and rules others. Romania did not fit this pattern for most of its history; Roman citizens largely governed themselves through their own institutions. Occasional conquests created imperial relationships with groups such as Slavs, Bulgarians, or Muslims in northern Syria, but these remained limited and did not transform the state's fundamental character.
The state is best described as a monarchic republic: a res publica governed by a monarchical regime. The emperor was expected to serve the polity, an expectation less common in purely dynastic empires lacking republican origins. Executive institutions were monarchical, yet the underlying ideology remained republican.
Although emperors controlled the armies and civil wars sometimes determined succession, the Eastern Roman Empire was not a military dictatorship. The army was almost never deployed as an instrument of internal social control. Soldiers were recruited from and lived among local villages, and the army's understood purpose was protection of the Roman people.
This restraint contrasts with many modern regimes that risk regime change when ordering troops to fire on civilians. Only Justinian notably used military force against his own population.
Justinian reigned from 527 to 565. He and his uncle Justin I originated from poor agricultural communities in the western Balkans. Justin rose through military ranks to become emperor; Justinian's activities before approximately age 38 remain unknown, though he possessed knowledge of Roman law and Christian theology.
Justinian married Theodora, a former sex worker, a union that required legislative change because senators were normally prohibited from marrying individuals from such professions. He deliberately surrounded himself with talented individuals regardless of social class or reputation, including disreputable figures who delivered results.
Justinian appointed a committee, notably including the jurist Tribonian, to compile Roman law into the Corpus Juris Civilis. This codification remains the principal source for Roman law studied today. Its systematic structure of persons, things, and actions, together with rules on property, contracts, family, and inheritance, influenced later civil-law systems across Europe.
Justinian regarded homosexual acts as immoral and punishable, even linking them to natural disasters such as earthquakes. Enforcement, however, was not systematic; no inquisition or social police existed. Scandals might trigger action, but authorities did not actively monitor private conduct. Despite harsh official views, everyday practice was often relatively humane in its non-intrusive character.
Adultery and other sexual offenses drew stricter attention under Justinian.
Justinian believed God authorized him to reconquer lost western provinces, interpreting success as divine favor. He intervened opportunistically in the Vandal, Ostrogothic, and Visigothic kingdoms. While North Africa proved economically viable, Italy endured decades of warfare and never fully recovered its fiscal capacity. Southern Spain yielded similarly uncertain returns.
Disbanding units meant to defend Constantinople and overextending resources left successors facing heightened threats. Conquest alone did not guarantee lasting benefit; sustainable administration and economic viability mattered more.
Justinian's value as a leader is measured by whether he implemented lasting change and stable institutions that benefited his subjects long-term. Some achievements were offset by major strategic failures. To send armies west for conquests, he stripped the east of defenses, allowing the Persians to destroy Antioch, a major strategic failure that cannot be excused by conquering North Africa at the cost of surrendering Syria.
Justinian rebuilt Constantinople and reconstructed the Hagia Sophia after he and his soldiers set fire to it during the Nika insurrection. In that event, the people of the capital rose up against him, leading to about 10 days of street fighting. He ordered his armies to slaughter the protesters, leaving more than 30,000 dead. Much of Constantinople burned in the process. His building projects, including the Hagia Sophia, are considered among his great achievements. The monument is a magnificent church and a fascinating subject of study.
The good and bad aspects of Justinian's reign are mixed in equal measure.
The Plague of Justinian, also known as the 541 AD plague, was bubonic plague caused by Yersinia pestis. Some historians claim it killed half the population and ruined the empire, but this maximalist position of 50% mortality is viewed skeptically. A 50% death rate would have brought society to a logistical halt.
The plague lasted roughly two centuries, coming and going as an endemic disease. It broke out in Constantinople and other cities in 541 and spread. Recent laboratory science has isolated the pathogen, moving beyond previous guesswork. However, laboratory findings do not determine mortality rates or historical impact, which require traditional historical analysis.
The real impact would include a shrinking tax base, inability to recruit armies, and massive social dislocation, similar to the Black Death in 14th-century Europe. Yet this did not occur in the 6th century. Justinian continued waging war on four or five fronts simultaneously, with no pause in the narratives of those wars, no impact on taxation or courts, indicating a much more moderate effect than 50%.
Justinian left the empire overextended. His successors faced problems on many more fronts with fewer military forces concentrated in the Eastern Roman homeland. This made the center vulnerable, leading to raids into the Balkans and a vicious cycle. The plague had some impact, but Justinian left his successors in a very difficult situation.
Heraclius did not make the top 10 emperors list. He took over the Roman Empire on the verge of extinction, with Persians at the gates and an empty treasury. He was not entirely free of blame for the inherited situation, as he was partly responsible for it.
Heraclius was a rebel and usurper. Rome and Persia went to war around 602. The Persian shah Khosrow II shifted from raiding to a policy of conquest. The Roman Emperor Phocas, himself a usurper with a military background, faced rebellion from Heraclius, whose base was in North Africa around Carthage.
A civil war lasted three years from 608 to 610. Heraclius's rebellion diverted Roman armies from the Persian front, giving the Persians a massive advantage. Fighting in Egypt ravaged that previously unharmed province. The Persians made tremendous gains in the east. Heraclius took Constantinople, executed Phocas, and became emperor, but now faced a much worse situation than before the rebellion.
Heraclius is sometimes lionized, with a medieval Western tradition viewing him as the first crusader for reconquering Jerusalem from the Persians and restoring the True Cross. Modern admirers continue this tradition of seeing him as a heroic holy warrior. From a critical standpoint, the assessment is a complete wash.
Heraclius defeated the Persians, receiving full credit, though Turkish allies from Central Asia were likely the major component of his final success. He held the Persians off and ultimately defeated them, but then lost everything to the Arabs. The Persian War ran from 602 to 628, while Arab conquests occurred in the 630s and 640s.
The war was costly initially only for the Romans. Persia conquered the eastern provinces of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, causing loss of revenue. Persians began raiding into Asia Minor. This pattern foreshadowed what the Arabs would do decades later: conquering Syria, Palestine, and Egypt before raiding Asia Minor. The Persian invasion served as a prelude to the Arab phase of East Roman history.
Heraclius took about 15 years to get organized. He defeated the Persians through spectacular campaigns in the east, striking into the Caucasus region and then Mesopotamia rather than directly confronting armies in Asia Minor or the siege of Constantinople in 626. Both empires were left in shambles by these wars, enabling the Arabs to conquer them quickly.
Heraclius called in Turkish allies for a campaign through Mesopotamia, which caused a coup in Persia and the death of Khosrow.
Persian shahs traditionally sought manpower for Mesopotamian agricultural estates and specialized craftsmen through raiding. Under Khosrow II, the Sassanians pursued the idea that the Persian Empire should extend to the Mediterranean as it had in Achaemenid times. For the Romans, the war was desperate survival, as they knew it could end the Roman state.
The initial goal of Arab Muslim warfare was to unify Arabia so all Arabs would be Muslim and united into a religious state. When they struck out against Rome and Iran, obvious reasons included facing two very weak opponents on their doorstep. The Arabs attacked from a direction neither empire had prepared to defend, as Arabia had never been seen as a source of conquering armies. Both empires had been destabilized by their massive war, leaving them low on manpower and resources. The outcome was almost inevitable.
The Arabs stripped away the richest provinces of the Roman Empire, particularly Egypt. Without Egyptian grain, Constantinople's population declined dramatically over the following decades.
The empire survived this low point through a painful, slow process taking centuries. First came stopping the bleeding and holding the line, which took decades. By the 660s and 670s, the Romans began beating the Arabs on land and at sea. Investment in fleets followed, eventually including Greek fire, the flamethrowers.
Greek fire was a state secret whose preparation and components remained hidden. It was possibly deployed through a heated pressurized container with a spigot and nozzle, spewing flaming napalm that continued burning even on water. It was used against Viking raids on Constantinople in the 940s and 1040s. Greek fire also existed in hand grenade form as clay containers with fuses, most effective against siege engines.
The armies were pulled back into Asia Minor for defense and fortification. A wrenching administrative readjustment was required to pay, support, and feed the soldiers, eventually producing a different strategic logistical system. The empire became a smaller, harder core that was very militarized.
The second Arab siege of Constantinople occurred in the early eighth century. It failed due to competent leadership under Leo III, a usurper who seized power at a moment when the Roman elites may have preferred a capable leader. The city was very well prepared. Leo had Bulgar allies who had recently crossed the Danube. He used Greek fire strategically and deployed his fleet to contain the Arabs, causing them to starve and wear down. The siege was well executed from a military perspective.
All elements including walls, navy, weather, and diplomacy contributed, deployed astutely. Leo ruled another 20-some years, and his son continued the Isaurian dynasty.
Iconoclasm concerned whether sacred images and icons should be venerated or destroyed, carrying major political and theological stakes. Leo III's dynasty tried to limit or remove images from churches, but the policy ultimately failed. The opposing view that images were appropriate and helpful in Christian worship prevailed. Churches gradually filled with icons, which became characteristic of Orthodox devotion.
This internal religious conflict was socially overblown. Popular interest was not found in research. Only a small number of emperors, bishops, abbots, and monks, perhaps 100-200 people, were seriously invested. The writers of the sources never mentioned popular uprisings over icons in Constantinople. When emperors changed policy, almost everyone fell into line without seeing the issue as central. The pro-icon position ultimately won and filled the churches.
By the 10th century in the Macedonian era, the empire recovered, becoming wealthy and culturally confident. Under emperors like Basil II, it expanded again. The period from 955 AD is covered in the book Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood: The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, 955 AD to the First Crusade.
In 955, new military leadership was appointed, and the Romans resumed conquest, especially in Cilicia, northern Syria, Cyprus, the Caucasus, and eventually Bulgaria. This was followed by a generation of stability and prosperity.
The empire then faced a triple attack from Seljuk Turks from the east, Pechenegs from the north over the Danube, and Normans in southern Italy. Under this pressure, the expansionist imperial state buckled and entered another crisis similar to the seventh century, surviving by the skin of its teeth before rebuilding into a prosperous, wealthy, and powerful state.
The traditional view attributes the 11th-century crisis to internal moral decay and civilian emperors neglecting the army. Kaldellis argues instead that external pressures were decisive: the simultaneous three-pronged attack by Normans in the west, Pechenegs (nomadic horsemen) in the north, and Seljuk Turks in the east. The Normans introduced a new type of Western warfare focused on grinding enemies down and functioned as terrorists. The Seljuk Turks brought vast manpower reserves from Central Asia and effected both demographic and ecological transformation by converting agricultural land in Asia Minor into pasturage.
When societies face sudden problems, historians instinctively assume internal structural flaws caused failure. This assumption stems from the "decline and fall" model that primes observers to see internal decay. Kaldellis proposes an alternative: a society without serious structural flaws can be overwhelmed by unforeseen external challenges it could not realistically prepare for.
The end of the Macedonian dynasty, which had lasted roughly two centuries, created political destabilization. New emperors, often childless older men, lacked dynastic legitimacy and bought political support through exemptions, cash, and titles. This spending created budget shortfalls precisely when armies needed to be raised against multiple threats, compounding fiscal pressure.
Roman crises are discrete, short-lived exogenous shocks rather than oscillations. They include sudden external challenges causing massive territorial loss. The Romans consistently regrouped, held a line, consolidated, and eventually achieved reconquest and regrowth. This pattern repeated throughout history except during the final collapse.
Kaldellis argues the society should be defined by its centuries-long periods of endogenous regrowth, consolidation, and stabilization rather than brief external crises. The internal organization primed the polity for steady, gradual growth. The book in progress focuses on explaining this longevity and resilience rather than centering external shocks.
Short histories of Byzantium jump from highlight to highlight, emphasizing dramatic moments such as Justinian's reign or major crises while omitting the institutional and ideological machinery operating in the intervals. These accounts fail to show how institutions and ideologies connected events across time. The New Roman Empire attempts to illuminate these connecting mechanisms.
Irreversible decline began between 1300 and 1350. Loss of Asia Minor to the Turks by roughly 1300 eliminated the ability to draw resources from both European and Asian wings, confining the empire to Europe. Subsequent civil wars, Serbian expansion, and the Black Death prevented recovery. In 1300 the remaining territory was a narrow Balkan corridor comparable in size and revenue potential to England; after a rebel emperor surrendered half the territory to the Serbs, the position became untenable.
The Turks required another century after the 1340s to capture Constantinople because Timur (Tamerlane) invaded from Central Asia, defeated the Turks, and fragmented their empire, granting the Romans a temporary reprieve until around 1400.
Foreign invasions that could not be absorbed caused progressive territorial loss until no strategic depth remained. The empire had previously coped with many invasions; the decisive factor was cumulative loss that eliminated fallback resources.
No significant separatist movements existed among Roman provincials across 1,200 years. Bulgaria alone sought independence and achieved it in 1185 after earlier conquest in 1018. The center never lost its ability to tax territories; peasant uprisings and agricultural rebellions did not occur. Roman warlords never attempted to carve out independent territories. These failure modes, common in other empires, were absent.
The empire occupied one of the world's most dangerous corridors for empire-building and new religions, unlike stable peripheral states such as Portugal, Japan, or Britain. Its survival despite location demonstrates the strength of its internal structures.
Two factors maintained cohesion. First, authorities made sustained efforts to persuade subjects they ruled on their behalf and generally acted accordingly. Second, a tightly unified Roman and Orthodox identity created solidarity against external non-Roman, non-Christian enemies. The alternatives were perceived as worse.
Effective governance requires both rhetoric claiming to represent the people and corresponding action. Rhetoric alone is insufficient, yet it carries independent power by propagating unifying ideals. An example from academic administration contrasts a dean who simply announces program cuts with one who affirms shared commitment to the programs, acknowledges the budget constraint, and promises restoration when funds allow; the second approach generates greater compliance and consensus.
Aristotle advised tyrants that the most effective way to appear as legitimate, benevolent rulers is to actually obey the laws and serve subjects' interests rather than merely claiming to do so.
Institutions that serve the majority of subjects, even when costly, benefit ruling classes through long-term stability. The Romans built durable physical infrastructure such as roads and durable institutional infrastructure such as the Christian Church. Modern foreign policy risks legitimacy loss when rhetoric diverges from action; the military-industrial complex can widen this gap by combining lofty stated goals with profit motives in weapons production.
Wars are extremely costly on every front and every measure. The same lesson was learned in the Vietnam War, which was such a disaster that the United States had to abandon the conscript army and switch to a professional army. It took so long to be able to wage empire wars again because of the sheer damage the Vietnam War did to the credibility of the military leadership in the country. This never happens in Constantinople. You can be criticized for losing a war, but the army is not used in that way.
Some of this has to do with the functioning of democracy, the temporary nature of leaderships, and that they are very short-sighted because of the nature of the elected position or the executive. There is no right answer. Democracy is wanted, with leaders who can be ejected every four or five years, including their teams of experts and policy designers, and that comes at a cost too. There is no advocacy for being ruled by kings, monarchs, or emperors.
Roman Empire, ancient Greece, societies before that, and societies after that including the present are very different, so applying the lessons of history must be done carefully. Intellectually, during the grad student period when postmodernism was alive and well, it was very common to find colleagues who did not believe there was such a thing as human nature. They believed that the parameters of human psychology have considerable variation but within certain norms, and that all of human history is essentially a series of incommensurate slices of difference that could not be compared across periods.
The view that human history consists of incommensurate slices is problematic. Agreement exists with Thucydides that more or less human beings are going to act in similar ways. They love, they hate, they have ambitions, and they are incompetent. The whole range of diversity, the whole gamut of human types, can be found in any group of about 20 or 30 people. Culture then comes in and tweaks things in all kinds of weird ways. Culture modifies and sets the dials, but the dials go from one to 10 for most people.
Every once in a while a few folks come along, whether Steve Jobs with a turtleneck or some guy with a weird mustache or with a funny hat, and those can turn the tides of history. Occasionally yes, but they are ultra skilled at the right time and the right moment. Cultural systems or ideologies are not so effectively totalitarian that they colonize the mind of every person and turn everyone into a clone. People can sometimes think for themselves or think outside the box. The mind remains open to that possibility when encountering historical agents.
A million years from now the history of life on Earth will be written. It is difficult to project or predict anything like a year from now. It is easier to think in terms of numbered phases of significantly different phases of human history. There have probably only been three phases so far. The first is the hunter-gatherer period, which lasted for the majority of human history so far. The second is the agricultural revolution, when surpluses began to be produced that created more complex societies.
The third phase is the industrial, now technological revolution, which can be thrown into the same bucket. This is modifying the parameters of what human beings can do and possibly be. These are seen as very distinct phases in many ways, though all involve human beings but in very different contexts. The question is whether there will be a fourth phase.
There will pretty surely be a fourth phase. When people look back at the third phase, they will see whether humans are still the same as them or something completely different. Looking back at Romans or Greeks or any period in history, the technological capabilities and materials available at that time are visible, but families, armies, burying the dead, and other continuities remain recognizable.
Tools and technology increasingly allow deep modification of what it means to be human through genetic engineering and brain-computer interfaces. As the brain is understood more, things can be modified and expanded. Artificial intelligence can expand the knowledge base and the intelligence of the human mind. One possibility is that the human mind is actually incredibly special to the degree that, at least with the tools available this century, the level of general intelligence that humans have cannot be accomplished or achieved.
One of the things that might be figured out in stage four is that the thing that makes humans special is not intelligence or any of the things valued by each other, but actually consciousness, and consciousness is the thing that is very difficult to engineer. The common thing from hunter-gatherers to before the Industrial Revolution and after is that humans are still the same. Humans still feel like something to be alive, and that may be an important component of what makes falling in love, fearing each other, suffering, and the full range of the human condition and human experience possible. Technology may not be able to replicate or modify that.
Very possibly humanity destroys this whole thing. For the first time in human history the tools exist to destroy everything.
There are a lot of challenges faced. As a historian, other periods are seen that were far more difficult when people could have far more easily given up hope, and sometimes did. This is not seen as one of those periods. There are major issues like the uncertain future of technologies, but these are solvable problems to a certain degree. If elites can be reined in, a lot of these problems can be fixed.
Growing up during the Cold War in the 1980s, there was a pervasive sense that nuclear war could happen at any time and annihilate everything. Popular culture of the 1980s was upbeat, cheerful, and naive with no correlation to that fear. Moving into the 1990s after the Cold War ended, everyone was depressed and the music got whiny. There is no correlation. A pervasive sense of hopelessness or despair does not always match the objective situation. There is so much happening that is good all the time.
This period of human history, the late 20th century and the 21st century, will be seen as the flourishing of humans. By most measures of human flourishing, things are going pretty good. The amount of sheer misery is probably objectively decreasing every year. Problems are also being created that will cause misery down the road, but overall there is no reason to despair and not have hope. Things are okay and can be done better.
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