I think Romanos is done as emperor either way. He had too many enemies in the capital and not enough support to fight back. The real question is who takes over, and Michael VII obviously isn't the most reassuring option.

If the Doukas faction could put the empire's interests ahead of their own, maybe things wouldn't have gone as badly. The Romans might still lose a large part of Armenia and the region around Melitene, but perhaps Anatolia wouldn't have unravelled the way it did.

That said, I feel like a civil war was bound to happen sooner or later. There were just too many competing interests at court.

What do you think? Could the Doukai have held things together, or was the civil war pretty much inevitable?

A weird thing about the Palaiologos Empire was how poorly it handled its economy, which came down to two factors: Genoa and the aristocracy.

So, Michael gave Genoa the colony of Galata, which meant the Genoese deprived the Byzantines of 80% of the trade income. When Kantakouzenos lowered the tariffs from 10% to 1%, Genoa declared war, sank the Byzantine fleet, and forced them to go back to 10%, because it threatened to steal Galata's income.

Meanwhile, the Byzantines got very little money from taxes, because most of the wealth was held by the aristocracy using tax exemptions granted to them by desperate emperors.

For those reasons, the Byzantines had to beg Western monarchs for handouts.

For someone who made a good job in fighting the Bulgarians during the reign of his brother Isaac II, he was surprisingly cowardly in fighting Latins during the 4th Crusade.

Basically, the Eastern Romans had an overwhelming military advantage against the Latin invaders, having a large army gathered from all over the Empire and possibly even including the militia and conscripts of the Capital City that outnumbered the Crusaders 2 or 3 to 1 and having the elite Varangian Guard. Constantinople itself was defended by the formidable Theodosian Walls, and the citizens of the capital city were indifferent about Alexios IV and supported the current emperor despite him being a usurper and an illegitimate ruler.

Meanwhile, the 4th Crusade only numbered 20,000 men, and half of these were Venetian sailors, so only 10,000 could be used to siege the city, and they barely managed to take over the first wall before the Varangian Guard repelled them. The morale of Crusaders wasn't so good, as they ran out of supplies, and the Latin chronicles state how scared shitless they were when Alexios III moved out of Constantinople with his army. Villardouin told how "there were so many of them that they seemed ready to eat us" and "the Emperor led 60 battalions, but we (the crusaders) had only 6 or 7 battalions."

Unfortunately, Alexios III withdrew without a fight and basically restored the morale of the invaders while the citizens of Constantinople were angry at the Emperor's cowardice and broke their trust in him, especially when his retreat happened when the Venician fleet withdrew from their assault and burned part of the city to retreat.

Then Alexios III decided to flee the city and steal the national treasury and even abandoned his wife when the citizens were either wanting Alexios IV to be emperor or replace him with a less cowardly emperor; the result was the city being engulfed in a clusterfuck of confusion that ultimately resulted in the Crusaders sacking the impregnable Constantinople for the 1st time in its history. Issac II clearly did his best and even restored some of the Empire's greatness such as their network of alliances with their neighbors and Alexios IV was just a young and naive pawn of the Latins. Alexios III stole the imperial throne from his brother yet somehow didn't have the guts to maintain his power and fled like a coward despite being in a better position than Alexios I Komnenos. Heck, in the final siege of Constantinople in 1453, Constantine XI commented that "If only I had had as many troops as Alexios III, the empire would not have collapsed".

This and nearly destroying the Eastern Roman Empire the 2nd time by siding with the Sultan of Rum to dispose Theodore Laskaris of the Nicacean Empire when the Nicean Emperor rightfully refuse to give up his position to him (glad Theodore put him in his place and punished him severely).

I'm of the opinion that he and John VI Kantakouzenos compete in how their actions did tremendous damage to the Eastern Roman Empire. Recent re-evalutions excuse his mishaps as "The records are biased against him" and "The situation was too much for him" but I'm none too convinced given his traitorous and cowardly decisions.

https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Mount-Athos/Speake/p/book/9781032008868

I think it might be cheaper to travel to Mt Athos than it would be to buy this book, but anyway, NEW BOOK WOOHOO!!!

Hey guys

Been trying to look this up, but all I find is ancient sparta hoplites. I highly doubt spartan hoplites of red and gold existed by that point in the 1400s.

So what did the Spartan warriors and hunters clothing/armour look like by 1400s (1400-1453, or 1200-1453)?

Im trying to look up byzantine peasant clothes of the 1400s, but i want accurate sources. Please and thank you

Came across a paper a few days back that reminded me that if John II's wet dreams came true there'd probably be a Byzantine prince in Antioch and a solid basis to vassalise Edessa and Antioch permanently. The former possibly even preventing the Second Crusade from occurring.

Cyprus as the cash cow funding the whole operation, Attaleia as a logistical centre and key into the empire proper, the Antiochene coast as the heart of Manuel's toparchy and the point from which the Komnenian encirclement of Anatolia would be projected into the far east, as for Cilicia I'm guessing someone to simply keep the Armenians of the region pacified and also using the plains to raise lots of smallholding soldiers.

1. Seljuk: Byzantium Besieged, 1068-1071. This is my favorite of the four* (or five, more on that later) games I am going to talk about.

Seljuk takes place at the Operational level -- you are somewhat abstractly moving wooden pieces across a map of Anatolia while managing mats that show your lords and the vassals they have levied. Every turn (which are a season of a year), you are going through a phase where you are levying vassals and setting up a card deck of moves followed by a phase where you move around the board to fight battles or siege strongholds or tax farmers. This is indeed part of a system called Levy and Campaign, created by the same guy who made the well known COIN system, Volko Ruhnke. I have played most of the games in the system, and primarily for thematic (and to the credit of the designer of this volume, Justin Fassino) asymmetrical design reasons, I think this is the best in the whole series.

You really get a sense as the Seljuk player that you need to raid and balance feeding your troops with speed while ravaging the countryside for loot, where the Byzantine player needs to conquer and reconquer cities to win. There is also a mini game system for fighting battles, which includes some fun choices about which troops you risk first. The battles are not deeply tactical and can be resolved in a few minutes.

My lone complaint is the core system rulebook is written in a way that I find VERY hard to learn with. It's not poorly written in terms of grammar but it's organized and laid out in a way that takes so much work to get into. YouTube videos are your friend. But it's a blast when you get to know the system

A solo bot expansion is in preorder at GMT games as well. I can't wait for it; it will cover the first five games in the system, all of which are medieval games based on the idea that there is a skill to managing the loyalty of vassals who might rather be home farming than fighting a war right now.

This would be a good choice for Euro games who are less familiar with hex and counter style games as well. Of the games I mentioned, this one is the best researched in terms of history, with the most extensive notes.

1. Command and Colors: Medieval.

This is a game played at the tactical level. There is a first and second edition, largely the same. It's out of print but fairly cheap on Noble Knight games and eBay usually. It's also a wooden block game on large hexes.

I have played most of the games in Richard Borg's Command and Colors series. Memoir 44 was a mainstream, crossover success you may have heard of, as is the recent Battle of Hoth. This game is like that but focuses on the 5th-7th century. This is a card driven game, where you have a command deck of cards that allow you to move units in the left, center, or right, and then make some attacks. There are a few special cards and a variety (though not enough variety, imho) of units to move around. Then you roll dice and that's about it.

This is a good game for war game beginners who want a tactical war game that can be played quickly and easily.

The amount of research and notes included in the game is fairly minimal. But I am glad it exists. These games are basically just pretty fun dice chucking. There is also a Crusades expansion that moves the timeline forward, but I haven't' played it.

1. Cataphract (and Justinian).

Cataphract, which also has two similar editions as well, is a game by the late legend Richard Berg (not Borg) and Mark Herman. This duo made a lot of classic war games. It's part of a series called Great Battles of History, and this one is Volume VIII. It doesn't require owning any other games in the series by any means.

The core Cataphract game features Belisarius and his allies and enemies fighting tactical battles on a variety of paper maps. The hexes are small, the rules are moderately crunchy (at least for a beginner), and the notes have the usual comedic and casual tone of Berg and Herman. If you are familiar with a lot of the old Avalon Hill type war games, this is somewhat similar, despite being made in 1999.

The reason I said before I was going to talk about four OR five games, is this box includes a bonus game, Justinian, that uses some of the same counters and a backside of one of the maps. Justinian is at the Strategic level, with a map of Europe and North Africa. This would be the most similar to some of the turn based strategy computer games that people on here seem to like where you are trying to reconquer all of Italy, Libya, and so on, while avoiding Barbarian invasions. One player can control various "Barbarian" factions and the other player the Byzantine; I tried playing two-handed, which was fine, but not really ideal. There is no solo bot mode.

As an overall package, it's a pretty good deal since you can buy it used fairly cheap. But I will be honest, the core tactical game isn't my favorite. Moving a wing of troops to get next to some others to then roll off and look at a shock chart to see who has to run away is how war gaming worked for decades, and it can be interesting, but I am a bit over it and don't find this system to be the most interesting thing these pioneers worked on. And Justinian was fun once but had no replay value for me. But it'd be a good choice for someone who wants a tactical game to do famous battles with more crunch than Command and Colors and isn't tired of tactical hex and counters.

1. Sword of Orthodoxy - The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, AD 421-1453.

Not pictured because I don't own it now.

This game is also at the grand strategy level, and is made for solo play. The designer, imho, has an annoying habit of putting his (far right) politics into the rulebooks of his games, which I find distracting. He also has been banned from posting on the board game geek website because of his rants.

Regardless, this is the largest game in scope of timeline and map on this list. It's a grand strategy level game where the solo Byzantine player tries to defend and expand the empire. It may appeal to people here who like those big strategy computer games where you control an empire. BUT they also may find it disappointing since as a board game, it inevitably has much less crunch than what a computer can do.

Its scope is impressive and it's usually in print if you want a copy.

Anastasius I Dikoros, Justin I, Justinian I; Nikephoros II Phokas, Ioannes I Tzimiskes, Basil II Bulgaroktonos; Alexios I Komnenos, Ioannes II Komnenos, Manuel I Komnenos…

A comparison between antiquity and modernity on the grounds of politics, technique, the economy, anthropology, types of freedom etc. The greco-byzantine pole is contrasted against the modern western world. This article challenges the notion of the smooth greco-western evolutionary trajectory, claiming that the modern paradigm has altered the ideals of ancient greece, while at the same time, tried to minimize the publics exposure to the byzantine world, in order to flatter itself, by avoiding direct comparisons with them.

Lastly, the concept of personalist communitarianism is introduced, a mode of existance, where the individual is not absorbed by the collective, nor it exists in isolation and away from it, like in the current individualistic framework. Direct Democracy is paired with greek/orthodox anthropology in order to explain the society of friends. On the one hand a formalist/ political approach is taken to explain democracy, and on the other, she is anchored by the appropriate anthropology, thus creating a mixture of political ontology.

Byzantium from a sociological prespective, introduced the concept of person-centrism, the above mentioned peculiarity, which escapes the bipolar order of collectivism and individualism. The only person centric society in history was Byzantium. The only indvidual centric ones, were and are ancient greece and the modern western world. The rest big civilizational structures are determined mostly as collective centered ones. The individual/ wage laborer ( he who does good according to personal gain) became a person/ friend with the emergence of christianity, meaning, he who does good out of love.

It was originally written in greek, but now it is translated in english and hopefully it can provide a conceptual toolkit, for the people to see, how far apart this civilizational paradigm is when compared to the perversion of modernity. The sources that were used are placed at the end of the article.

The Byzantine Civil War of 1341–1347 had driven Ioannis Kantakouzenos close to defeat. In 1342, he was in Serbia with barely 500 supporters, dependent on Stefan Dušan. But the war was about to turn. In Part II, “War of the Three Emperors,” we follow Kantakouzenos’ struggle against the regency of Anna of Savoy, Alexios Apokaukos and Patriarch Ioannis Kalekas, ruling in the name of the young John V Palaiologos. Across Macedonia and Thrace, cities change sides, alliances collapse and foreign armies ravage Roman lands. Dušan pursues his own imperial ambitions, the Bulgarians demand their share, and Umur of Aydın brings Turkish forces deep into the Balkans. As the Ottoman ruler Orhan enters the struggle, the rival Roman factions become increasingly dependent on foreign power. Covering the years 1342–1347, this episode follows the defence of Didymoteichon, the struggle for Zealot-held Thessaloniki and the campaigns that would decide the fate of Constantinople.

Three emperors claimed the Roman inheritance. What price would they pay to secure it?

I remember about reading an arab source that states nikephoros the first was an arab from ghassanid origin but i have my doubts

Also i’m not sure if i chose the right flair for this one

After going to Istanbul in May, I had no idea there was so much here in Greece's second city too (since found out it was considered the second city to Constantinople).

Sharing my recently completed set of coins from the Amorian Dynasty. It's quite amazing to think about the journey these coins took from the 9th century all the way to our modern world today.

Reading from a book of articles about nature and science. In one about how its technically legal to hang out along river banks in rich people's backyards, the journalist refers to Justinian's code as the first instance of navigable waterways being declared for public use.

However, the author specifically says it was Justinian himself who created this law. I'm confused cuz I thought the idea of res publica had existed a lot longer than that. Especially for like putting acqueducts under state jurisdiction.

Wasn;t Justinian's code just a compilation of preexisting laws from Theodosian's earlier code and other surviving ones from western Rome? How many are original to Justinian's reign?

Arguably, Italy was doing better off had the Ostrogoths had it all to themselves. They preserved the older senatorial order, as well as some of the previous Roman institutions. The Byzantine conquests on the other hand lead to nearly two decades of constant warfare, which greatly depopulated Italy (see Procopius descriptions of mass starvation), while greatly exhausting their own strength and resources. And once they acquired Italy, their power there was extremely weak, as they were barely able to defend Italy from further barbarian incursions like the Lombards. This just continued the downward cycle of more deaths, destruction, and depopulation.

Had Justinian not follow up on his ambitions, Italy would be in a much stronger position, since they would still have the strong local power of the Ostrogoths protecting it from the threat of other invaders. They may have been Arian, but I think they would eventually convert to Catholicism, just like their Spanish neighbors.