THE BEACONS ARE LIT! ANATOLIA CALLS FOR AID!

During the 9th century the Eastern Roman Empire deployed a beacon system allowing it to send warnings of danger from the border with the Arabs to Constantinople in rapid time.

How did this “Lord of the Rings” style system work?

🧵🧵 This system was likely “created by Leo the Mathematician, who devised a code for the interpretation of signals, and had two identical water clocks made for the terminal stations. His work took account of the difference in longitude and the time the signal needed for transmission”

In the 9th century the Emirate of Crete was raiding and enslaving people across the Aegean

One Roman admiral stepped up, Niketas Ooryphas!

He defeated the Saracens, taking harsh measures to ensure “they would think twice before sending an expedition against the Roman Empire.”🧵 Niketas had to deal with a raid heading towards the Sea of Marmara sent by the Emirate of Crete, a state which constantly terrorized the Aegean with raids targeting loot and slaves.

In this case the enemy “had advanced as far as the Proconnesos of the Hellespont.”

Even after Constantinople fell in 1453, some Christian resistance persisted in the Aegean against Ottoman expansion!

The Greek island of Rhodes was Sultan Mehmed’s next target in 1480.

However, the Knights Hospitaller bravely defended their fortress against Ottoman forces!🧵🧵 Sultan Mehmed II, the famous conqueror of Constantinople, had systematically removed many Christian powers.

The Genoese lost Galata, Roman remnant states in Trebizond and the Morea were extinguished. The southern Balkans were secure under Turkish rule.

But many islands weren’t!

The “Venice” of Late Antiquity

“Ravenna was built on sandbanks and wooden piles, with bridges over the many canals that flowed around and into the city, just like Venice in later centuries.”

How and why did the city of Ravenna became a Roman capital? 🧵🧵 Ravenna is “situated as not to be easily approached either by ships or a land army...A army cannot approach it at all; for the river Po ... and other navigable rivers together with some marshes, encircle it on all sides and so cause the city to be surrounded by water”

-Prokopios

What was it like to enter Constantinople through the land walls and make your way through the Queen of Cities?

“Perhaps the best way to appreciate the impact that Constantinople would have had is to follow the path that would have been taken by a visitor.”

A tour of the city 🧵 “Most visitors…came by land, and their first inkling of the city beyond would come when the towers of immense defensive Land Walls that stretched from the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmara came into view and barred any further progress.”

Hagia Sophia was “famously completed in just 5 years and 10 months…a lightning-fast project compared with the speed of construction of other monumental churches, such as Notre Dame de Paris, which took almost 200 years.”

It became “likely the largest building in the world.” 🧵 “In contemporary praise Justinian had surpassed every ruler, for he built ‘a universal temple for all the nations of the earth.’”

To this day his legacy is quite enhanced by the building, even if it no longer performs its original intended function.

The equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome is famous. However, the statue of Justinian in Constantinople dwarfed it!

“The horseman could have weighed more than 4425kg” whereas “the equestrian monument of Marcus Aurelius weighs ~2500kg.”

But, moving it was a challenge! 🧵 The scale was an issue when it came to moving it, and mounting it atop a column. The statue originally was of Theodosius, placed in the Forum of Theodosius.

This statue was reappropriated for use by Justinian. But, putting it atop a tall column was the biggest challenge.

The Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus (“Little Hagia Sophia”) is distinguished by its splendid interior, especially its carved decoration.

Though I saw no mosaics when I went, and the outside wasn’t the most stunning, the beautiful interior details captivate the viewer!

🧵🧵 The columns and carved details combine rather elegantly in this building

In the year 1200, the last recorded foreign visit to Constantinople with good details prior to the Fourth Crusade occurred.

St Anthony of Novgorod gives us priceless details as he described countless relics and treasures of the Hagia Sophia, many of which were lost in 1204! 🧵🧵 He recorded seeing the “chariot of Constantine and Helena, made of silver; there are gold plates, enriched with pearls and little jewels, and numerous others of silver, which are used for services on Sundays and feast days: there is water also…coming out of a well by pipes.”

Emperor John Tzimiskes “was one of the best military strategists in the empire’s history”

He impressively defeated a Rus-Bulgarian coalition, winning a “titanic war”

He deserves to be mentioned alongside Nikephoros Phokas or Basil II for the pinnacle of Eastern Roman power 🧵 The Rus invasion was a huge threat - not just an ordinary sea raid which could be dealt with using Greek fire. King Sviatoslav had greatly expanded his lands “with an army that included Magyars and Pechenegs, by early 970 he had overrun all of eastern Bulgaria to Philippopolis.”

The “longest water supply line from the ancient world” was that made for Constantinople!

It was “at least 2.5x the length of the longest recorded Roman aqueducts.” Constantinople was strategically perfectly located, but water was lacking and required engineering solutions 🧵🧵 It is an under-noticed Roman achievement: “At over 250km it is the longest water supply line known from the ancient world and it remains one of the greatest achievements of hydraulic engineering.”

The cisterns get a lot of attention, but the aqueduct deserves admiration!

The Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) is a legendary, spectacular, and inspiring building. It’s the greatest representation of the Eastern Roman legacy.

But there are actually several other churches with the same name.

Here is a thread of beautiful Hagia Sophias! 🧵🧵 The Hagia Sophia of Nicaea, in modern-day Iznik, Turkey. It’s an active mosque currently.

So many people incorrectly pretend as if Europeans invented conquest and imperialism. That’s the most Eurocentric view I’ve ever heard.

Conquest and exploitation is part of GLOBAL HUMAN history!

Here are 28 Examples of non-European empires 🧵🧵 Those who naively and incorrectly act like Europe is the only place or group of cultures that made empires and sought to conquer and exploit others are just factually wrong.

The rest of the world has their own very interesting history as well, maybe go learn about it!

The Roman Empire continued in the East, but in the West the barbarians had to fight to establish a new order.

The Franks would be a key player in medieval Europe, a defining moment was the battle of Vouille (507) where King Clovis pushed the Visigoths out of southern France!🧵 In 507AD Clovis, after consulting the magnates within his realm, decided to make war with the Visigoths. They were his main rival in the fragmented lands of what a century ago had been the Western Roman Empire.

A look at the map shows just how powerful the Visigoths were!

The Restorer of the World

Aurelian was an Emperor who only ruled 5 years but managed to put back together a fractured Roman world in that time.

He faced entrenched rebels in East and West, but in the end paraded his enemies Zenobia and Tetricus through the streets of Rome 🧵🧵 At the beginning of Aurelian’s reign in 270 he faced a situation where two rival Roman states had become established prior to his reign.

Zenobia of Palmyra ruled in the East, and in the Gallic Empire there was an Emperor named Tetricus who succeeded Victorinus in 271.

A prelude to the destruction of Constantinople in 1204 was the Norman sack of Thessaloniki in 1185AD.

Both Niketas Choniates and Eustathios of Thessaloniki recount the horrors the great Roman city endured.

It is a barbaric tale full of misdeeds, suffering, and humiliation 🧵🧵 The Norman invasion came at a time of immense imperial dysfunction in 1185. The Normans marched to Thessaloniki without challenge and besieged it on August 6.

David Komnenos mounted a bad defense, and the city fell on August 24.

Thousands would die.

Many underestimate how important military affairs were in Eastern Roman civilization, it was a society constantly at war!

The army wasn’t just a small part of Eastern Roman society - it was arguably the main focus and most important constituency of the emperor.

🧵🧵 It was “acclamation by the army, not coronation or inheritance” that “made a man emperor…Over eight centuries, despite losing a surprising number of battles, the army succeeded in preserving both itself and Byzantium.”

Much of the state existed to fund and maintain the army.

Allegedly the first king to embark on a crusade was King Sigurd of Norway who led his army by sea to Jerusalem, then Constantinople, and back by land all the way home in a remarkable journey.

Many of his men even joined the Varangians!

But how much of it is legend?

🧵🧵 An Anglo-Norman source known as the Gesta Regime Anglorum is the earliest source, from around 1125: The “king of Norway, in his early years comparable to the bravest heroes, having entered on a voyage to Jerusalem, and asking the king’s permission, wintered in England.”

Within a century of Justinian’s reign “much of the Eastern Roman Empire had unravelled. The issue that historians have long debated is whether Justinian…was in some sense responsible.”

“Had the emperor’s western forays led to a dangerous overexpansion?” 🧵🧵 It is a commonly debated topic. Justinian had brought the Eastern Roman Empire to its highpoint in retaking some of the Western provinces. However, “By the 580’s the empire had lost control over much of the Balkan Peninsula”

On May 8, 1058AD a group of barbarians suddenly burst into a church outside Constantinople, arrested the Patriarch Michael Keroularios during a service dedicated to the Feast of the Holy Archangels, and took him to Blachernae.

These were Varangians sent by the angry Emperor🧵🧵 Isaac I Komnenos had sent them. But why?

The Patriarch was challenging his authority “especially as Michael had made it amply clear that he regarded himself as a maker of Emperors at his own will; 'I have built you, stove, & I can pull you down if I like'” is attributed to him

“The church of the Mother of God in Athens was about to be recognized by the most powerful and victorious ruler in the Christian world.”

The Parthenon in Athens was a church for around a millennium!

It was special enough to attract the mighty Basil II who visited in 1018AD 🧵🧵 “The historian Ioannes Skylitzes…tells us that Athens was the destination of Basileios’ tour of Greece…the pace of this march was apparently leisurely, with time to admire the sites associated with the past generation of warfare…”