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Hello everyone. And welcome to the history of Byzantium. Episode 10. Constantinople. If you noticed that the podcasts were unavailable for a couple of days this week, that's because you guys overloaded the servers that the podcasts were sitting on. I was forced to get my own dedicated server to handle the demand, so it should all be working fine now. And it's great to have so many of you listening.
Our walking tour of the Empire, which began in France and has moved east over the last couple of episodes, now arrives in the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople. As you know, the word Byzantine was a later construction by historians to denote the difference between the classical empire based on Rome and the medieval empire based on Constantinople. To some extent, Constantinople is more important to the history of Byzantium than Rome was a history of Rome.
Now, of course, that statement doesn't make sense in so far as the Roman Republic was very much a city state, and there would have been no Roman Empire without the eternal city. However, once the Empire was born, Rome slowly lost its importance within that empire. Nothing demonstrated this more clearly than Constantin's decision to build a new Rome on top of the old city of Byzantium. The history of Byzantium will essentially see the history of Rome played out in reverse. It begins with an empire spanning the European continent, followed by a slow contraction before ending when there is only one city left, Constantinople. But let's not get too sad about that right now. Boy, do we have a long way to go before we get there?
However, the point should be obvious. Constantinople is going to be absolutely central to our story, and so we'd better get to know the place. The origins of the original city of Byzantium are well known. So well known that historians agree they probably aren't true. The traditional legend has it that a certain bizaz from Maghara, a town near Athens, founded by Byzantium in 657 BC. Bizaz had consulted the Oracle at Delphi to ask where to build his new city, and the Oracle told him to find it, opposite the blind. As with most of the Oracle's instructions, this was vague and open to interpretation. When Bizaz sailed into the boss for us, he figured it out though. On the east, in shore, was the Greek city of Chalcedon. The founders of Chalcedon were clearly blind because they had overlooked the far superior location of Bizantium only two miles away. Bizaz, of course, founded his city on the western shore and named it Bizantium after himself. That's the legend anyway. We know there was a Greek city present from around the 7th century BC, but whether Bizaz was responsible for its founding, we just don't know.
The city had been pulled into the Roman orbit as the Empire had taken shape, but didn't really play a role in the history of Rome podcast until the year of the five emperors in 193 AD. During the ensuing civil war, the garrison at Bizantium supported the bid of Pesgenius Niger, which, as you know, meant that they were on the wrong side of a war which was to be won by Septimius Severus. Severus' men spent three years besieging Bizantium because the city was so hard to take by siege. When they finally got in, they sacked the place, and Severus had the walls torn down. However, before his time as Emperor was over, he had realised the strategic importance of the city and refounded it. This was the city that Constantine began to transform in the 320 AD.
As you probably know, Constantine made the decision to build a new Rome for three main reasons. One, because it would suit his massive ego, and to be fair, many emperors built new cities and named them after themselves, E.G. Adrianople. Two, because the strategic importance of Rome had dwindled to a relevance, and if Constantine was going to base himself somewhere, it needed to be closer to the frontiers than the Palatine Hill was. And three, because Rome was a pagan city, with a strong republican tradition, and seemed to Constantine old and dirty, with an elite whose ideas were very out of step with those in the East. In the East, many were more accepting of the divine monarchy and monotheistic ideas that were appealing strongly to the Emperor Constantine.
I suspect that geographic and strategic position of Constantineople is something most of you are familiar with. However, as it is so key to why the Byzantine Empire lasted for hundreds of years, I can't really pass it over. So I will try to keep this brief, but I need to make sure my ducks are all in a row.
In case any of you are still in doubt as to where Constantineople was, then just take a glance at last episode's map of the Balkans. The city was the last piece of European land on the shore looking over to Asia. I'm sure you can all appreciate the basic strategic advantage of this geographic position.
The city lies between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, and a sensible distance from both the Danube and Persian borders of the Empire. It's slap bang in the middle of a number of important trade routes, and allows easy access to the two most vulnerable frontiers. Even without the city's unique geography, it would be well placed as a central location within the Byzantine world.
However, the city does have some unique geography, which turns this central location into an impregnable fortress, and Constantine was definitely looking to build a fortress. His own time in office may have been relatively secure, but he had come to power after the crisis of the third century when marauding Germans had regularly plundered their way across the Empire. The new Rome needed to be somewhere that future Amperers could wait securely in until a storm had passed.
The amazing advantage which Constantineople was able to offer was that it was surrounded on three sides by water. Now any city in the corner of a peninsula would be surrounded on two sides by the sea, but where would this third side come from?
If you turn to the first image on this week's post at the history of Byzantium.wordpress.com or on the Facebook page, you will see a modern satellite image of the bossferus with a stand-ball visible as the southernmost piece of land on the European side. And as you can see, this side of the bossferus is just solid land running north to south, and then out of nowhere a small inlet of sea means that the very southernmost tip is now surrounded by water on three sides. This narrow inlet only four miles long is called the Golden Horn.
如果你去这周在history of Byzantium.wordpress.com或Facebook页面上的第一张图片,你会看到博斯普鲁斯海峡的现代卫星图像,其可见独立球台作为欧洲南端的一块土地。正如你所看到的,这一部分的博斯普鲁斯海峡只是从南向北延伸的坚实土地,然而,突然之间出现了一个小海湾,这意味着最南端的尖端现在被三面包围着水。这个只有四英里长的狭窄入口被称为金角湾。
The Horn is what turned Constantineople into such a uniquely placed city because now only one side of it needed defensive walls. This would give a besieging army very little room for maneuver and allow the city to be defended more easily by fewer troops. We will come back to those walls later, for now though you need to know something else about the Golden Horn.
Either side of the Horn, the land goes up steeply into hills. The northern side in particular was quite sharp, which meant that the Horn was protected from the wind. Its waters were therefore calm in all weather. The Horn was the greatest natural harbor known to antiquity. The city's oldest harbours, the Neorion and Prosphorion, were naturally built on this side, allowing the smoothest possible travel in and out of Byzantium. This allowed the Byzantine navy to always have a safe port from which to move out to attack any hostile fleet.
With this in mind, the other features of geography just continue to pile on in favor of the city's strategic location. As you can see from the satellite image, the boss for us is the narrow straight between Europe and Asia, running from the Black Sea down to the Sea of Marmara. The width of the straight varies between 3000 and only 700 meters, meaning the citizens of Byzantium could make life very difficult for any ships trying to pass through. This small distance also meant that the Byzantines could fairly easily hop over to Asia in no time at all.
You may remember back when Zeno was nearly overthrown, his general Islas was able to gather troops in Chalcedon, slip them over the waters at night and enter Constantinople to crush the rebellion. The Sea of Marmara is the small sea to the south of the city, which then has its own narrow straight, the Dardanelles, or the Helospont, which lead into the Aegean, check your map of the Balkans from last episode if in any doubt. This second straight provided an extra line of defense, another narrow channel where enemy ships would be vulnerable to attack. Once through the Dardanelles you would be in the Aegean and then finally out into the Mediterranean, so just getting to Constantinople in the first place could be a headache for an enemy navy.
Back to the city's immediate surroundings though, and once an enemy navy were near, the currents were hard to navigate without local expertise. You see the Black Sea is fed far more by rivers than the Mediterranean, and so has a greater surface current. This means the current running down through the Bosphorus could be quite fast and made it difficult for ships heading down that route to successfully land at Constantinople.
Interestingly, as a result of its inflow of rivers, the Black Sea is also less saline than the Mediterranean. So because of osmotic pressure, the current under the surface of the Bosphorus actually runs the other way, with the heavier Mediterranean waters pushing back up. This leads to a great deal of turbulence, which for inexperienced sailors could be a nightmare.
So with the Byzantine navy sitting on still waters, while their enemies struggled with the difficult conditions outside, the city was ideally placed to survive a siege. With enemy navy struggling to make an impact, the Byzantine ships could fetch supplies from other parts of the empire to resupply the city, and with access to land to the north through the Black Sea or just across to Asia or South to Greece, the city wasn't short of options. The final little advantage in Constantinople's favour was fish.
The Bosphorus provided large seasonal catches of tuna and macro, and enough sturgeon to make caviar a common food. And this meant that fish were plentiful and were a cheap source of food for the population, which was just another advantage, if an army were to cut off the supplies coming in land from Thrace.
So with all that in place, all Constantinople needed to become a fortress was large, imposing land walls, and man did they have them. As you may remember from episode 163 of the history of Rome, the Theodosian walls were built by the prefect Anthemius in fall 13, and hastily rebuilt after an earthquake in fall 47. First there was a moat 20 meters wide and 7 meters deep, then came the outer wall with 96 small towers, before you got to the inner wall with 92 large towers. Any attempt to storm these walls would leave an attacking army with a lot of climbing to do, all the while being fired on from above. In 439, walls were also built facing out to sea. Now even if the Byzantine navy was unable to stop an attack, yet another layer of wall was standing guard.
The strategic vision of Constantin was exceptional. He understood the lessons of the third century crisis. The empire's borders were going to be penetrated. The important thing was that the capital should not be able to fall. After his death, he was repeatedly proven correct. First the Goths, after Adrianople, then the Huns in 447, then Theodoric Strabo's Goths during Sino's reign, and finally Vitalian had all been in a position to storm the city. But each had taken a look up, up, up, up at those walls, and decided it really wasn't worth trying.
So we've got a picture of Fortress Constantinople. Now let's go in and see what life was actually like for the people living inside. You can now turn to the second image on this week's post. Again we are all in the dead of Constantinus Plaketus for this quite brilliant map. Check out his images on Wikipedia under the username C Plaketus. This map of Constantinople is described as from the Byzantine period, which means some features didn't exist in the sixth century, which we will be talking about today. Don't worry about that though. I will be pointing out what existed in Anastasia's day, and the great thing is, you can return to this map at any time as our story goes forward and find the sites you need. You will need to zoom in though, as it's a very large image. If you can't see the map right now, don't worry. I will paint you a word picture as we go.
When Constantin founded his new Rome, he wanted to make sure it had important similarities with the old one, for both PR and superstitious reasons. So the story was put about that the city had been founded on seven hills, just like Rome. However these hills were less easy to distinguish from one another as those in Rome, and so you required a cooperative imagination to see them. On the map you can see that the fourth, fifth, and sixth hills look essentially like one hill, but with three different peaks.
When Septimius Severus refounded the city, he built his major buildings on the same acropolis that the ancient Byzantines had done. This is near the first hill, in the far east of the city, overlooking the sea. When Constantin arrived, parts of the hippodrome and palace were already in place, and the great palace is where we will begin our tour.
When the emperors lived in Rome, they resided in the palace on the Palatine Hill. However, the great palace in Constantinople was on a different scale. The structure was huge, covering 100 hectares of land, and not visible on the map as one giant building, but lots of its smaller parts are labeled.
The main entrance to the palace was through the Chalque, or Brazen House, a grand entrance vestibule where guards would control access to the hundreds of people going to and from it every day. This made it a high traffic area, and as a result, just outside the gate, prostitutes supplied their trade. Once through the gate, you would see a sprawling collection of buildings and gardens connected by porticoed walkways.
The guards' quarters would appear first, the Chalarees were the official palace garden, or splendid uniforms to denote their rank. However, they were slowly becoming more of a ceremonial unit, designed to look good. Beyond them were the quarters of the Ex-Cubitors, who were the real Imperial Muscle. The Emperor Leo had founded this new unit and filled it with Isorians to help protect him from the power of Aspar and his German troops.
Beyond the guards lay the Delphax, a large courtyard, and opening onto it was the great dining room known as the Traclinium of the 19 couches, where foreign ambassadors would be entertained. Beyond that were the summer and winter Consistoriums, two adjoining buildings where the Emperor held meetings with the Senate and senior ministers. Although there was a Senate House, just outside the palace, any real decisions would be made here. The meetings in the Consistorium could function like a modern cabinet meeting, with the Emperor gathering key officials and senators to seek their approval or advice for his plans.
The historian Procopius made a rather brilliant comment about the Senate at this stage, though, saying they sat as if in a painting. Silent, though colourful, and without meaningful influence. During such meetings, the reverent silence outside was enforced by the silentries. You may recall that this was Anastasia's role before Ariadne chose him to become her new husband. Clearly proximity to the Emperor could be hugely valuable to one's career.
Moving further on, you would come to the Daphne Palace. Yes, a palace within a palace. The Daphne was Constantine's original palace complex, which had been rapidly expanded by later emperors. The Daphne was another series of buildings, terraces, porticos and gardens. Several of the 20 churches one could find within the Great Palace were here, along with the passageway which led to the Imperial Box in the Hippodrome. Beyond the Daphne was the Palace of Hormizdas. Yes, another palace. Essentially, this was the place where the emperors and their family would actually live.
Now, I've only scratched the surface of describing the Great Palace. I haven't even mentioned the indoor riding school and polo grounds. That's the Zikannisterion on the far east of your map. Huge thanks to listener Demetrios for helping me with the pronunciation. But I hope you're getting an idea of the sheer size and function of the place.
Daily, hundreds of supplicants, applicants, bureaucrats, soldiers, ambassadors, senators, servants, couriers, and suppliers would make their way in and out of the palace. From the Emperor, flowed all decisions and to him flowed all information and requests. The growth in bureaucracy to facilitate all of this is something I will cover in another podcast. It's worth saying now though that most senior officials and their families would move into the palace during their time in office. The Great Palace very much fulfilled Diocletian's aim of turning the emperors from the approachable pringyeps into the inaccessible dominus. The difficulty of reaching such a splendid royal figure clearly added to the prestige of the emperors and placed them above and out of reach of ordinary people.
Let's leave the emperors in their bubble and head out to the Chalk Gate. The gates opened onto the Augustean, a courtyard named after the Augusta, Constantine's mother Helena. You may remember that she became renowned as the first pilgrim to the Holy Land and a large statue of her now dominated the square. Triumphant arches and other statues also surrounded the space.
And looking out from the Chalk to the left stood the huge baths of Zooksipus, which had been begun by Severus and embellished by Constantine, who filled it with statues and other art taken from across the empire. To the right was the Church of Hagia Sophia, though not the one which stands today.
The first church on that site was built by Constantius II in 360. In 404 it burnt down and was rebuilt by Theodosius II, who gave it a timber roof, which in riot-happy Constantinople was just waiting for disaster. Directly across the square was the Million. This was another of Constantine's replications from Rome. The Million was a golden milestone, the symbolic center of the world, from which all distances would be measured.
If you crossed the Augustaion to the Million and looked left, you would now see the imposing structure of the Hippodrome, enlarged and endowed by Constantine, with as much splendor as he could, the structure would have dominated the skyline. It was said to have Rome for 100,000 people. When the city was dedicated in 330, there were 40 days of festivities, at the end of which the crowds filled the Hippodrome to watch a huge procession, including a massive statue of Constantine, which was carried around by soldiers in full ceremonial dress, carrying lighted tapers.
This kind of public emperor worship and interaction between sovereign and people was the key part of the life of the city. The Hippodrome became the only place where ruler and ruled could come face to face and communicate. This communication took different forms, one of which would be the kind of imperial celebrations and acclimations that the people were expected to give their rulers on certain occasions. Another, as we've already seen several times, was the chance for the people to express their disapproval of imperial policy.
This is where the deems came in. They had their own teams of applauders and chant-makers who were organized like any other professional guild. The seating reserved for the greens and blues was directly opposite the imperial box, so that they could make their chanting audible to this set of ears it was intended for. The emperor is also paid for most of the chariot racing and entertainment, which was a mark of imperial legitimacy.
It might sound odd that essentially hosting a sporting event could be a sign of your worth in a stirrool. However, the spectacle of 100,000 people gathered to watch something you've provided was a powerful political tool. This giant form of patronage also allowed the imperial staff access to the members of the deems who might represent social discontent and be able to help curb it. The emperors were expected to take sides and support one of the deems at the races. This would lead to much emotional reaction to winners and losers and the awarding of gifts or yet more acclimations of the emperor's greatness. It was a dangerous emotional cocktail as the many riots we've already covered in this podcast can attest. Anastasia's wisely to chose to favour the irrelevant red faction to try and avoid conflict. You'll recall that the red and white teams were essentially just parts of the blues and greens by this point.
The extent to which chariot racing became associated with imperial legitimacy is pretty interesting. The Samaritans in Palestine had revolted in 484 and declared themselves independent from the empire. Before they were put down, their leaders held chariot races for their people as a sign of their pretensions to sovereignty. Young men were often attracted to life in the deems. Once upon a time in Rome, the focus of a young man's life had been the gymnasium, but with the Christian focus on spiritual rather than athletic pursuits, interest in the gym had declined. Christian attitudes toward nudity and sexuality were influential in this regard.
The historian Menanda Protector wrote that he used to wrestle naked in the gym when he was young, but now looked back on it with shame. Young men no longer had the kind of public careers that Republican Rome would have offered them either. So the life of those in the deems would have seemed like the cool thing to do. Young blues and greens would galvanate about town wearing expensive and outlandish clothes, often wearing tight tunics to emphasize their muscled physiques, provocatively some would even dress like hunts, or cut their hair like them.
This apparently meant having the front of the head shaved and growing it longer at the back, which kind of sounds like a mullet, doesn't it? The attraction of the deems was also a result of the contraction of other available entertainments. Gladiotorial fights were gone in a Christian era, and as we've seen, Anastasia wasn't keen on wild beast fights or sensual stage dancing. There were four theatres in the city, but beyond mine and pantomime, tragedies and other plays were becoming rare. Christian theology, not philosophical productions, were the order of the day.
Back to our tour though, and past the million, you would be starting down the Messy, the high street of Constantinople. The road already existed when Constantin arrived, but he transformed it into a magnificent 25-meter wide road, lined with colonnades on either side.
The 600 meters or so between the Augusteon and the Forum of Constantin would have looked like a bazaar, with buying and selling going on everywhere. Traders would set up along the colonnades on each side of the road.
Your average shopkeeper might set up a stall or build a small wooden structure to display his wares. However, some became grand indeed, with marble facing, or two stories. We have reports of some structures turning fully into recognisably modern stores with glass windows and lighting.
The House of Lamps, which sold dyed silks, was so called because its windows were lit at night. The shops closest to the palace were the perfumers and spice merchants, so that the area would have a pleasant smell. Then came the silversmiths and money changes, and in the strictly hierarchical Byzantine world, there was a fairly clear pecking order amongst businessmen.
Silversmiths were clearly the aristocrats of this world, with cheese sellers, cobblers and weavers down at the bottom. From the history of Rome, we learnt that Diocletian encouraged every profession to form a guild, so that he could better regulate them, and constant inopal was full of them.
There were guilds of butchers, bakers, dyers, ship owners, tanners, perfume sellers, porters, market gardeners, potters, fishmongers, notaries, bankers, actors, and so on. Even the clackers, or chant makers in the hippodrome. These guilds were not strictly hereditary as they had been in the west, though as you would expect, sons often followed in their father's footsteps.
Many small businessmen practice more than one skill. A flute player might also make and repair instruments. A potter might be a weaver of goat hair. Whatever helped make ends meet. Once you'd walked those 600 metres, you would arrive at the Forum of Constantine.
Oval shaped and paved with marble, with a double colonnade surrounding it, a huge fountain and many statues, the legacy of the city's founder was not hard to see. In case you'd missed the point, at the centre of the Forum was a huge column, with a statue of Constantine on top. The statue showed the emperor with a metal halo, with sunbeams radiating from it.
The columns stood on a plinth which apparently contained the relics of the hatchet that Noah built the ark with, the baskets with which Christ fed the 5,000, Mary Magdalene's jar of ointment, and the figure of Athena brought back from Troy by Enneus. That must have been a big plinth. The stump of this huge structure still stands today, known as the burnt column.
The Forum was naturally used for business and commercial deals, and the original senate house was here. It also functioned as the main centre for the fur trade. Past the Forum, with the bakers and slave dealers, and then another few hundred metres on, was the Forum of Theodosius. The last ruler of a united empire, had built a second forum to help provide more public space for a growing city, and to glorify his regime while he was at it.
Self-consciously modelled on the forum of Trajan in Rome, there was a spiral column to mark Theodosius' victories over the Goths, and a triumphal arch to do the same. Although that got me thinking, what victories over the Goths? I guess Theodosius did slaughter all those Grahtungai in the Danube after telling them that they were safe to cross, but hey, Imperial propaganda doesn't necessarily have to reflect reality now, does it? Perhaps appropriately, Theodosius' forum was home to the swine market.
Beyond this forum, you come to the Philadelphia, another public square where the University of Constantinople sat. Founded in 425 by Theodosius II, there were 31 chairs for law, philosophy, medicine, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, rhetoric, and many others. The professors' salaries were paid for by the state.
At the Philadelphia on, the Messy forks. The southern branch would take you past the horse market, through two more forums and southward onto the Golden Gate. This was a triple gateway flanked by two great square towers which was the city's ceremonial entrance. This led to the Via Ignatia, which ran to Thessalonica, then to Derakium, and then to Italy. After 21 days on the road, you would reach Rome.
The northern branch would take you past the Constantiniani, another large public bathhouse. Then to the church of the Holy Apostles, built by Constantius II, besides the Imperial Mozzaleum, where Constantine and his successes were interred. Then you would travel onto the Adrianope, or Taurusius Gate, which led eventually to Singedunum, modern Belgrade.
Past the Constantinian walls in the west of the city, land was used largely for vineyards, vegetable gardens, and orchards. The most northern point in the city was the Palace of Blacanae, which Anastasia had built to give him an imperial residence on the opposite side of town. Up along this northern branch, you can see the aqueduct of valence, and then much further north, the sistens of Itius and Aspar.
Constantinople was a thirsty city, not just with its thousands of inhabitants, but also its baths and fountains. Bathing was not seen as a Christian virtue, even when the sexes stopped bathing together. The church taught that spiritual cleanliness was more important. Yet the bath-happy Byzantines continued to enjoy their bathing, and by the mid-fifth century there were eight public baths and 153 private ones in the city. For comparison though, Rome was said to have 11 public and 830 private baths at its height.
Unlike Rome, Constantinople was not blessed with good local sources of water. The city's river The Likus actually flows underground as it heads out to the sea. Hadrian had built an aqueduct to bring water to the city from the forest bordering the black sea to the north, but valence had needed something better. His aqueduct brought water from over 150 miles away in the mountains of Thrace. The water was stored in three open reservoirs and over a hundred underground systems, which eventually reached a capacity of over 1 million cubic meters. A complex underground drainage system helped channel wastewater out of the city. The long walls of Thrace were presumably intended to help defend this water supply. Some of the wealthiest houses actually had water piped in, and of course the Great Palace had its own water tanks, fed by Hadrian's aqueduct.
In order to help the city withstand siege, open-air systems were built to catch rainwater. One of the largest was the system of Itius, built in 421 on top of the 5th hill, and could hold around 250,000 cubic meters of water. The citizens of the capital still received the doll of bread, wine and oil as had been the custom in Rome. The number of recipients was set at 80,000, and we don't hear of calls for this to be increased. Usually at crossroads or other designated spots, there were high counters with steps leading up to them. There the rations were collected, although each recipient had to produce a bread ticket to prove that they were eligible. To avoid fraud, the person's name was checked against a list on a bronze tablet at each distribution point. The tickets could be sold though, or donated or inherited. A large portion of them ended up in the hands of the church, who would then help feed the poor.
The city's grain came from Egypt of course. About 1300 transport ships were docked back and forth to Alexandria, as often as they could between March and November. Both Julian and Theodosius had added harbours on the Sea of Marmara to facilitate this trade, and many grain stores were built to house it all, along with multiple bakeries to bake it.
If lack of fresh water was the first weakness of the city's position, then earthquakes were definitely the second. The city lies close to the boundary between the African and Eurasian plates, and so suffers frequent tremors. In an ancient world filled with superstition and some substandard construction work, this was not an ideal situation. Across the Golden Horn, you can see the suburb of Sikai, which Vatelian occupied during his attempt to take the capital in 515.
If you include Sikai and Chalsanon just across the boss for us as suburbs, it's possible that Constantinople housed half a million people around the time of Anastasia's rule. The population had been growing for some time, and showed no sign of stopping. It was said that all 72 languages known to man were represented in the capital. And while that may not be true, it was certainly a cosmopolitan place, which attracted the talented, the rich, and the poor from across the empire.
The common language and culture was of course Greek and Christian. There were still pagans living in the city, and Latin was still important in legal circles as it was required to debate Roman law. However Greek was spoken by all, and in anti-Christian stance wasn't likely to make you popular. There is of course so much more to say about Constantinople, but I've tried to stick to the important facts and hopefully made it clear how the new Rome differed from the old.
I will be talking more about the city soon. In two episodes time, I plan on surveying the church, the state, and the army, and this will naturally bring us back to the capital. It might make sense to handle that in the next episode, seeing us how we're here now, but I want to stick to a geographical tour. So in two weeks time, we hop across the boss for us and head into the eastern provinces and their neighbours. I think it makes sense to get a feel for every part of the empire before we talk about the institutions that governed and guarded them.
Before I go, I have a few housekeeping items. I recently found an email from a listener that I hadn't replied to, and I felt bad, as I try to reply to everything that comes my way. I just want to reassure you all that I do read every Facebook comment and message that comes in, and I really appreciate them. One message included a new iTunes image for the podcast. Someone kindly upgraded the image of Justinian that I use, and put the title of the podcast over it, which I really like. But now, I can't find that person's name. I assumed it had come in on email, but I can't locate it. So I'm so sorry to you, kind listener. Please remind me of your name, so you can get your proper thanks. And all of you, enjoy the new picture.
Finally, if you enjoy other history podcasts, then you might be interested in a Facebook group called History Podcasts, where podcast hosts and listeners are all now interacting about all things history and podcast. There are about 20 podcasts represented, so it's worth checking out. In fact, several fellow history podcasters recently got together and recorded a roundtable discussion of who the most influential figure in history was. So there's plenty going on. Thank you all so much for listening, and if you know anyone who enjoyed the history of Rome, do tell them about the history of Byzantium.