The History of Byzantium

This picks up right where history of Rome leaves you. I mean who wants to be stuck watching a train crash only half way complete? I want to see the complete train crash start to finish!! Of course the train is the Roman Empire and the crash is the 1000 year long slow mo toe stub into a face plant fall

One of my favorite podcasts ever. I’ve listened through its entirety sever times, and to parts of it 4 or 5 times over. It’s been a huge comfort through the years. Robin presents Byzantine history in such depth and color, all while keeping the narrative fun and compelling. This pod is the reason I’m now obsessed with this time period and this empire

I hope you continue the story under the Ottoman Empire.

This is one of my favorite podcast ever. For so long I have wanted to learn more about the history of Byzantium but could find the time, now I can hear this masterpiece while walking around or even training. I highly recommend it. Thank you to the author!

The history here is great. In the same way as its antecedent History of Rome by Mike Duncan, Robin Pearson does a great job of weaving this complex history into a tight narrative. In order to do this, there are a couple of stylistic and content choices that leave a little to be desired. In general, the treatment of the complex nature of developing eastern Christianity (as distinct from the Latin-West more generally encountered by the English-speaking world) is sparse and, at times, betrays a modern and dismissive bias. As reception and history told at different times are inevitably going to vary this can easily be forgiven, although given the large and prominent contingent of Greco-Christians in the UK where this was recorded, it does seem like a bit more research, in the form of interviewing or consulting these resources, could have been done. Far more egregious is the utterly atrocious pronunciation, especially of Greek. In some ways this continues the legacy of History of Rome which often struggled pronouncing Latin and fumbled completely the times Greek came into the narrative. But here a simple dive into the pronunciation of names which is included in most of the history book sources referenced would have eliminated the most obvious blunders. Getting the complex nature of Greek vowels and their shift from classical to modern pronunciations is understandably, and even correctly, set aside. But the constant barrage of Ha-dgee-a Sophia or Tsh-alcedon when a seriously basic search (even typing them into Google translate for Modern Greek) can correct those, is incredibly annoying. So in all, a fantastic podcast that picks up right where History of Rome left off, but with some semantic and content laziness that keeps it from being an all time great listen, at least for those of certain backgrounds.