#498 – Anthony Kaldellis: Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Rise & Fall of Empires

Choose wisdom, my friends—and yes, the joke about everyone thinking about Rome kind of fits today; Anthony Kaldellis is here, and I want to start bold: if people in the so‑called Byzantine world called themselves Romans and ran the Roman state, why shouldn’t we just call it the Roman Empire?

The burden is on anyone denying it, because every source treats the eastern polity as the Roman Empire, with Roman citizens who never stopped using that name, so we should think in terms of a very long Roman story that runs unbroken into the fifteenth century.

Give us the wide shot: kings, then a republic, then emperors—how should we frame that sweep?

There’s a legendary era of kings, a long aristocratic republic, then an imperial monarchy that shifts its center from Rome to Constantinople over time, with transitions that feel slow rather than sharp.

I rattled off a whirlwind timeline from city‑state to Caesar and Augustus, Pax Romana, Diocletian, Constantine, the western collapse, Justinian, the Arab conquests, the crusades, and finally 1453; what’s the big emphasis you’d add?

Three sudden shocks matter most for losses: the Arab conquests in the seventh century, the Seljuk takeover of Asia Minor in the eleventh, and the Fourth Crusade in 1204, while much of the rest is slow consolidation and modest growth.

So we’re dancing between headline moments and long processes, right?

Exactly; some pivots like Constantine’s conversion are discrete, but many supposed “splits,” like 395 or the western fall in 476, are shorthand for drawn‑out changes.

Is there a through line—a soul—that runs across two millennia of Romans?

Think Ship of Theseus: the Roman story is the life of a political community, not a roving culture like Greek literature or Christianity, and its members always saw themselves inside the same narrative even as parts changed.

We see Greek pride span centuries; was there a similar Roman pride that kept the machine moving?

You can hear pride in elite voices, like a sixth‑century envoy boasting that “the Roman name says it all,” but cohesion rests less on nationalist feeling and more on consent to rule and be ruled in return for justice, protection, and recourse.

Would Romans from distant eras recognize each other as Romans at all?

Experiences were wildly diverse even within one century, so of course a Latin pagan from the republic would look alien to a Greek‑speaking Orthodox Roman in Constantinople, yet we oddly accept Hadrian as “Roman” while drawing an artificial line against his very similar eastern successors.

Let’s compare roles across time—soldiers or merchants—and see what holds.

Soldiers across centuries swore oaths to protect the state and ruler, and Roman law empowered economic actors—like women who could litigate property claims, with some Jewish women preferring Roman courts over rabbinical ones because the imperial system gave them firmer rights.

You argue the late empire broadcast a consistent public image; what was that persona?

Through laws, court rhetoric, and constant petitioning, emperors presented themselves as responsive, accountable, proactive, and tireless—literally losing sleep over subjects’ problems—and they offered legal tools to check abusive officials, which helped sustain tax consent.

Strip the words from the deeds—how big was the gap between message and reality?

Judging by outcomes in a Machiavellian way, they generally tried to act as claimed, not perfectly, but incentives were strong because emperors were exposed.

Exposed how, if they held near‑absolute power on paper?

No one had a right to the throne, the imperial role grew out of a republic that hated kings, so rulers needed a veneer of shared rule and real buy‑in to avoid triggering another round of violence.

Civil strife feels like a feature of the system, a constant stick that kept emperors in line.

Across the millennium I study there are roughly one hundred twenty civil wars and nearly half the Constantinopolitan rulers are toppled, so smart emperors courted goodwill while reading public mood in mass venues rather than ruling by terror.

So the hippodrome and other gathering places acted like a rolling check on power.

Think of an ongoing plebiscite: acclamations in the hippodrome, musters in the army, or crowds in Hagia Sophia could cheer, sulk, or erupt, and emperors sometimes reversed policies on the spot, like the late twelfth‑century “German tax” that was dropped after an uproar.

The hippodrome sat beside the palace, could pack huge crowds, hosted ceremonies and punishments, and even saw emperors made or unmade; it was politics, not just sport.

You can still trace its footprint, and in succession crises you might have troops on the floor and citizens in the stands while the court negotiated a new ruler.

This feels like a durable way to link rulers and ruled, with lessons for modern governance even if our systems differ.

I am not advocating the model, but as a historian I want to understand why it endured and how its feedback loops kept it resilient.

Zooming out before Constantine, how did the edict of Caracalla in 212 change everything by granting citizenship so broadly?

Citizenship had been widening for centuries, and Caracalla’s decree extended it to nearly all free inhabitants—whatever his motives, the key is that it was real, with rights that soon lifted provincials into the top ranks.

It’s striking that it stuck, down to people across the provinces taking the name Aurelius as new citizens.

By birth within the empire you were Roman, which makes later eastern “Romanness” unsurprising and shows how unlike modern empires this one opened its highest offices to outsiders.

Was that leap the work of singular minds or a system finding its next step?

Likely a few heavyweight jurists shaped it, but evidence is thin—we have a torn Greek papyrus with the crucial clause and then the on‑the‑ground proof of rapid take‑up.

Then came the third‑century storm—runaway succession fights, inflation, plague, and the empire splitting before Aurelian pulled it back together.

Legitimacy cracked as provincial armies made emperors, invasions surged, and disease hit, though daily life in places like Egypt could remain oddly steady amid the churn at the top.

How did Diocletian steady the ship after all that?

He turned too‑many‑emperors into policy by forming a college of rulers—tough Illyrian soldiers—who shared military burdens, expanded state capacity, ran universal censuses, and built a tax machine that even put Italy on the rolls.

So not a hidden “deep state,” but a bigger, visible one—and taxation sits at the core of everything from stability to war‑making.

Right; if I had to name one pillar, it is taxation, backed by a census that finally let the state budget in a consistent way.

Weren’t people locked into roles to keep that fiscal engine humming, or was mobility still real?

Some professions ran in families and a subset of farmers were fiscally tied to plots, but this was enforcement more than caste, and overall mobility—geographic and social—remained significant.

Bring us to Constantine: who was he, how did he win, and why plant a new Rome at the Bosporus?

An insider from the tetrarchic world, passed over but backed by the army, he fought through rounds of civil war to sole rule in 324, then refounded Byzantium as Constantinople, a deliberate twin of Rome in a strategic choke point.

Make the geography case for Constantinople.

It sits between Danube and Euphrates, between Black Sea and Mediterranean, and at the seam of Europe and Asia, and with a new senate drawn from eastern elites it clamped the East into one political unit so the fracture line shifted west.

You once ranked emperors and put Constantine first—why does he top your list?

Can we talk about the darker side of Constantine—the killings in his own family—and how writers of the time handled that?

Many of those relatives were political alliances, and when they stopped being useful or turned on him, he eliminated them, including his talented son Crispus and later his wife; there was no public justification, and then Crispus simply vanishes from praise-filled records.

I rank Constantine first not because he was likable, but because his choices reshaped the world: founding Constantinople and setting the empire on a Christian path are history-scale moves.

You’ve said Christianity’s rise is pivotal—did Christianity conquer Rome, or did Rome absorb Christianity?

More the latter: the imperial system co-opted the faith, which then evolved inside state structures, unlike Islam which built its own state from scratch; Christians were likely a small, mostly urban minority when Constantine turned toward them.

So his conversion was bold, not just chasing a majority; and about that famous vision before the Milvian Bridge—do you find it sincere?

I’ve never seen a convincing political payoff for going fully Christian, so the simplest read is personal conviction, though historians dislike pinning history on inner motives.

Sources about the vision are late and shaped by memory and messaging; he’d had visions tied to Apollo before, and he was skilled at religious branding when shifting policy.

He spoke differently to different audiences—Christ to churchmen, “good religion” to everyone else—while also posing as Apollo atop a column in his new capital; imperial divinity in Rome was always a bit fuzzy.

Walk us through how Christianity actually spread—this was slow, right?

Very slow: not a clear majority until the fifth century and only truly dominant by the sixth, pushed by incentives like church charity and pulled by bans and penalties on older rites and by officeholding tied to Christian status.

What made it so effective at scaling across the empire?

It offered many on-ramps—learned theology for elites, public ritual and festivals for cities, initiation and afterlife hope for individuals, and a language that fit the court and the army, where soldiers now swore by the Trinity.

Yet Christianity also creates rifts; did it ultimately help or hurt the empire?

Exclusive truth claims forge strong communities and sharp conflicts at once, and doctrines often settled only after fights, with winners retroactively defining what had “always” been believed; many so-called heretics thought they were stating the common view.

It sounds like religion sits atop a more mechanical engine—taxation, law, and administration—that keeps the state running.

Exactly; I resist explaining everything through faith, because Roman identity and the state’s day-to-day operations were highly pragmatic and often ran on their own terms.

If you asked people over centuries whether they were Roman or Christian, could they choose?

They were both, but not the same thing—there were non-Roman Christians and pagan Romans in memory—and the culture uniquely let people lean Roman, Christian, or Greek in different mixes.

How did Constantinople jump from roughly twenty-five thousand to half a million people in two centuries?

Not natural growth—cities were demographic sinks—so it was mass in-migration, seeded by thousands of senators with large households and supercharged by a vast grain dole; Constantine even redirected Egyptian grain from old Rome, signaling where the future lay.

On the Western collapse, was it mainly civil wars and money trouble meeting barbarian pressure?

A vicious loop: defeats and settlements cost provinces and tax revenue, shrinking armies and inviting more losses; the East had advantages—sea barriers, an unassailable capital, later even flamethrowers—and, crucially, communities that kept reattaching to Constantinople when crises passed.

So the empire did not die and rebirth; the center slid east, and the West withered.

Precisely: the East codified Roman law for the West in the fifth century, then Justinian reconquered swaths of Italy and issued the law that shaped later Europe, even as Rome itself became a backwater compared to Constantinople.

Zooming out, how did government actually work in the East?

A large standing military absorbed most spending, while a civilian apparatus surveyed assets, taxed them, ran courts and diplomacy, and managed endowments for the palace and great churches.

I’m guessing taxes got intricate and the bureaucracy kept growing, like an ancient IRS.

The system ran on case-by-case exemptions, which multiplied into a tangle of privileges until emperors had to sweep them away and start over, only for the web to regrow.

Why were eunuchs so central in the palace and beyond?

They controlled access to the emperor and could be deployed to cut across elite networks, even commanding armies; lacking heirs and often outsiders, they depended on imperial favor, and while many were enslaved as boys, some families deliberately produced eunuchs to place at court.

So they had real clout, and the old aristocracy hated it.

It’s an old Roman pattern—eunuchs rise through proximity and loyalty, and senators grumble.

You’ve argued there were no truly isolated peasants outside the system.

Right; frequent tax demands, services, recruits, coinage, the calendar, parish life, and weekly prayers for the emperor bound even remote villages into imperial rhythms.

We keep tossing around kingdom, republic, empire, and monarchy, so what’s the best label for the East Roman state, and why does “monarchic republic” fit?

Empire is misleading here; their own terms were basileia for rule and politeia for the commonwealth, a translation of res publica that didn’t imply anti‑monarchy, and they called the state Romania, not an empire in our modern, conquest‑over‑others sense.

People also use empire to mean a superpower, like calling the United States an empire, even without an emperor.

Right, the field uses empire out of habit even when it clearly doesn’t fit, so what matters is being clear about the reality the term points to.

So, why “monarchic republic” for this world?

They saw themselves as a Roman commonwealth governed by a monarch whose duty was to serve the polity, which makes it a monarchy running on a republican baseline.

Given the army’s clout, was it a military dictatorship when a general sat on the throne?

I wouldn’t call it that; armies mattered in successions and civil wars, but rulers almost never used troops to police society, partly because soldiers were locals seen as protectors, not enforcers.

Leaders often do turn armies on their people, so that long restraint is striking.

Ordering soldiers to fire on citizens can backfire, as modern cases like Mubarak showed, so wise rulers avoided that gamble.

There is one glaring exception, and it brings us to Justinian.

Reigning from 527 to 565, a nephew of Justin I from humble Balkan roots, Justinian’s early life is a blank, but he knew law and theology, married Theodora despite social taboos, picked talent over pedigree, and he’s so mixed that I could argue him into either best or worst lists.

Beyond conquest, he overhauled law; how deep did that codification go?

His team, led by Tribonian, distilled Roman jurisprudence into the Corpus Juris Civilis, which underpins civil‑law traditions and shaped durable ideas about property, contracts, and sovereignty.

The codes read like the template for private law and family rules, so what was their view on same‑sex relations?

Justinian pushed harsh punishments and extreme rhetoric, yet day‑to‑day the state didn’t run morality patrols; scandals drew penalties, but private life was largely left alone, sex work was legal, and he even changed the law to marry Theodora.

On war, he reconquered but seems to have overstretched; how do you weigh that?

He read victories as divine approval and seized moments well, but campaigns ravaged provinces and hollowed the eastern defenses—North Africa was a win; Italy and parts of Spain were sinks that cost more than they returned.

You tend to score leaders on the welfare and durability they create, not on sheer acreage taken.

Exactly; he built institutions and also broke some, and the Nika revolt shows the contrast—he crushed it with mass bloodshed that burned the city, then raised Hagia Sophia in its place.

What about the plague that bears his name?

It was Yersinia pestis, but I doubt the apocalyptic numbers; wars, taxation, and courts roll on in the sources without a noticeable pause, suggesting serious losses but not a society‑stopping collapse.

So he set up a volatile seventh century; what’s his legacy in that sense?

He left a strained core and exposed frontiers; the plague mattered, but successors also inherited a map and army posture that were hard to sustain.

Heraclius took over in the middle of disaster and yet he’s not on your list; why?

He rose as a usurper whose revolt diverted forces and wrecked Egypt, then after years he brilliantly broke Persia—likely with crucial Turkic help—and immediately lost those gains to the Arabs, so to me the ledger balances out.

Walk us through that war.

Persia seized Syria, Palestine, and Egypt and raided Asia Minor; after a long regroup, Heraclius struck the Caucasus and Mesopotamia, triggering a coup that killed Khosrow II, and both empires emerged so drained that Arab conquests became swift.

What were each side’s motives, including the early caliphates?

Sasanian goals shifted from raiding and manpower to reviving a Mediterranean reach, the Romans fought for survival, and early Muslims unified Arabia then hit two exhausted, unprepared neighbors from a direction they hadn’t fortified.

And losing Egypt stripped the empire’s pantry.

Yes, without Egyptian grain Constantinople’s population shrank markedly.

How did the state stop the bleeding, and tell us about Greek fire.

By contracting to Asia Minor, rebuilding logistics, and defending with Greek fire—a jealously guarded, likely pressurized incendiary that burned even on water, used by fleets and in small grenades, and later torched Viking raids.

Why did the second Arab siege fail in the early eighth century?

Leo III prepared the city, coordinated fleet and Greek fire, leveraged Bulgar allies, and starved the besiegers; that competence, not luck, anchored a new dynasty.

Then comes iconoclasm, a huge fight over images that shaped churches for centuries.

The pro‑image side ultimately filled churches with icons, but my research suggests only a small elite truly obsessed over it, while most people followed whatever policy the emperor set.

Your book covers the tenth‑century revival and the eleventh‑century shock; you argue the crash was driven more by outside blows than by internal decay.

From 955 a new command revived expansion into Cilicia, northern Syria, Cyprus, the Caucasus, and later Bulgaria, and then a three‑front storm—Seljuk Turks, Pechenegs, and Normans—forced a crisis that I see as chiefly the product of converging external pressure.

I do not see terminal rot so much as a society hit by shocks no one could have forecast. Taking on Norman heavy cavalry, steppe horsemen, and the Seljuks at once while juggling fragile succession and cash-for-support politics would crack almost any premodern state.

Do you see real cycles, or sudden hits followed by recoveries?

Not cycles. Short, external crises forced retreats, then long stretches of holding a line, rebuilding, and often retaking ground, every time but the last, which is why I define the place by its homegrown stability.

What do historians miss when they jump peak to peak?

Highlights are easy; the connective tissue is hard. I press a view of a monarchy hemmed in by broad participation, a Roman identity that becomes ethnic, and the everyday institutions and ideas that tie people to the state.

We tried to live in those valleys today, and it shows the machine.

You only see it if you take the time.

When does the East hit the point of no return, and why?

Early fourteenth century. Losing Asia Minor cut off a main reservoir, then civil wars, Serbian expansion, and the Black Death drained resilience; around 1300 it still had revenues on the order of England, but after a rebel handed big tracts to the Serbs the recovery path closed, and only Timur’s blow to the Ottomans delayed the end until 1453.

What killed it at root?

Relentless invasions. Each loss trimmed the fallback space until there was nothing left to regroup with.

Without the big invasions, could it have lasted much longer?

Yes. Beyond Bulgaria’s breakaway, there were no mass secessions, no partitions by warlords, no tax collapse; the center kept governing and collecting, which is rare in imperial history.

Why did it cohere so well, even with constant grumbling?

Two pillars held it up. Rulers worked to persuade and largely act as guardians of the common good, and a shared Roman and Orthodox identity made foreign rule look worse, while open complaining was safe and part of the bargaining.

So words and deeds both matter.

Framing changes consent. If you credibly say we are in this together, you win compliance in a way a blunt order never will, and as Aristotle implies, the surest way to look like a lawful, benevolent ruler is to be one.

What carries to today, including America’s role abroad?

Build institutions for the long haul, explain the costs, and serve the many, not just the moment; the Romans did that with roads and the church. In Byzantium the army mostly defended subjects as advertised, while modern states can run opaque strategies that widen the gap between lofty talk and messy action, which we saw in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Those gaps were costly, and short terms in democracies can push short-sighted policy.

Vietnam wrecked the draft’s legitimacy and delayed overseas ventures, which shows how slow credibility is to rebuild. I am not arguing for monarchs; every regime trades stability for accountability in its own way.

Across eras, what in us stays the same?

Human motives sit in familiar ranges, a point Thucydides grasped; culture turns the knobs, it does not change the species. Now and then, a rare person at the right moment can bend the arc.

Where are we in the grand arc, and what might come next?

I see three big phases so far: foragers, farmers, and the industrial to digital turn that is stretching what humans can do. A fourth may arrive as we modify bodies and minds, but looking back we would still recognize the essentials.

Maybe consciousness is the stubborn core, or maybe our new tools end it all.

That was eloquent. I am impressed.

What gives you hope?

Past eras were rougher, and ours is manageable if we can check narrow elites and steer technology. The Cold War felt apocalyptic yet life went on, which reminds me mood and risk often diverge while real gains keep stacking.

By many measures this era is a human high point.

Global misery seems to shrink year by year even as we create new risks. There is no reason to despair, only reason to do better.

Anthony, this was a joy. Thank you for the work and for the whirlwind tour.

Thank you for having me and for giving my field and this civilization a wider audience. That service matters, and I am grateful.

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Anthony Caudellas. Support this podcast, and I will leave you with words from Benjamin Franklin.