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1:35

History isn't black and white, yet

1:37

too often it's presented as such.

1:40

Grey History, The French Revolution is

1:42

a history podcast dedicated to exploring

1:45

the ambiguities and nuances of

1:47

the past.

1:48

The current season is focused on the French

1:50

Revolution, and

1:51

despite being some 60 episodes

1:53

in, we're

1:54

only just starting the infamous

1:56

Reign of Terror. So if you're

1:59

looking for your next... next long-form, binge-worthy

2:01

history podcast, presented in

2:03

a similar style to the history of Byzantium,

2:07

check out Grey History, the French Revolution

2:09

today. That's G-R-E-Y.

2:21

Hello everyone and welcome to the history

2:23

of Byzantium, episode 274, the 10

2:26

worst emperors with

2:30

Antony Caudelius. Back

2:34

by popular demand, Professor Caudelius

2:36

is here to give us his 10 worst emperors.

2:39

Can you believe the generosity of this man,

2:42

to come back and indulge us in more subjective

2:45

frivolity? We will also

2:47

talk about the nature of bad emperors and

2:49

why there was no Byzantine Caligula.

2:52

So there is very serious analysis

2:54

behind the fun. Just

2:56

in case you're randomly sampling this podcast for

2:58

the first time, Professor Caudelius

3:00

works at the Department of Classics at

3:02

the University of Chicago. He's written

3:05

several books on vital topics for understanding

3:07

Byzantine history and has a forthcoming,

3:10

complete history of Byzantium coming

3:12

out later this year, which we

3:14

will be talking to him about nearer

3:16

the time. We covered the 10

3:18

best emperors in episode 265 of

3:21

this podcast. One

3:24

note for those with sensitive ears, there

3:26

is one word of profanity in

3:29

this interview, but you'll get

3:31

a moment's warning before it comes. Apart

3:34

from that, it's all good clean stuff. I'll

3:36

be back at the end to do some housekeeping,

3:39

but for now, here's the interview.

3:44

Professor Antony Caudelius, welcome back

3:46

again to the History of Byzantium podcast. Thank

3:49

you for having me here, Robin. So we're going to be trash

3:51

talking some emperors today, right? Yes, exactly.

3:54

Professor Caudelius is incredibly

3:56

generous to us here on the podcast by agreeing to

3:59

combat the

3:59

back and have another frivolous

4:02

exercise of fun. And

4:06

he again is the man best place to do this because

4:08

he has just completed a new history of

4:10

Byzantium and we will be talking to him

4:12

again on more serious topics in

4:15

a few months time. So

4:18

I'm going to ask you to do again what

4:20

we did with the 10 Bast Empress, which is you

4:23

define your criteria

4:25

and then take us from 10 to 1. So

4:28

over to you. We'll do that.

4:31

Now before we do that, I should

4:33

say that talking about bad emperors

4:37

is somewhat different than talking about good ones.

4:40

And I don't mean that just the difference

4:42

between good and bad. I mean that in terms of how

4:44

historians approach the past,

4:47

it is much easier

4:50

to make the case that someone

4:52

actually was a good emperor, this is

4:54

a rehabilitation than

4:56

the reverse.

4:58

That's just the climate of scholarship

5:00

today. And this

5:02

is especially the case with Byzantium,

5:05

which is a civilization that has been

5:07

undergoing a very long rehabilitation.

5:09

In a certain sense, this is kind of what we're all trying to do

5:11

is move it out of that enlightenment

5:14

picture of a sort of decadent,

5:16

exotic, mysterious decline

5:19

and fall kind of state

5:21

to what it was. And actually,

5:23

your project is probably one

5:25

of the biggest, just in terms of popular

5:28

appeal, biggest rehabilitations of Byzantium,

5:31

even if you were just

5:34

normalizing it, which is important by itself,

5:36

right? Even if you're just doing that.

5:39

So I kind of wanted to ask you first,

5:41

like how you feel about the

5:44

kind of embeddedness of rehabilitation

5:47

in our project, while

5:49

also talking about periods

5:52

of decline, dysfunctions and

5:55

bad emperors, because those come up. Let

5:57

me tell you that

5:58

at conferences, I saw sometimes like we'll

6:01

get called out. Like, why

6:03

are you calling that? Like, let's say

6:05

late 12th century. Why are you calling

6:08

that appear to decline? Like we shouldn't be

6:10

using that word because it's been used against

6:12

our field and et cetera, et cetera. And I mean, I

6:14

understand the concern, but

6:16

like, okay.

6:19

Come on. So anyway, so I kind

6:21

of wonder, you know, like, is

6:24

there a kind of perpetual rehabilitation

6:26

machine that will in the end

6:28

make everything look good?

6:30

Or is like, under what circumstances are

6:32

we allowed to talk about things as being bad?

6:35

As I kind of wonder if you have a kind of

6:37

rule of thumb about this.

6:40

A really interesting question. And I don't often think about

6:43

what I do in

6:46

terms of the wider field or whatever. I mean,

6:49

I definitely see my role as more more

6:54

like entertainment than academia,

6:58

because I'm not usually

7:01

coming up with insights of my own.

7:04

I'm reporting on the

7:06

work of academics. And

7:08

it's

7:09

interesting because obviously in a lot of your work,

7:12

you will respond to what

7:14

the previous generation or even the generation

7:16

before that of academics have established that

7:18

sort of bled out into the wider

7:21

world as common knowledge. And

7:23

I sort of react against what

7:25

you find on YouTube videos

7:27

or Wikipedia summaries that has bled into

7:30

the

7:30

country. So I am to

7:32

some extent doing a little bit of that where you're

7:35

trying to explain things, but yeah.

7:37

I

7:40

suppose in general, it's impossible to

7:42

escape, isn't it? There is a kind of

7:45

John Julius Norwich version

7:48

of Byzantine history that a lot of listeners do

7:51

know that he's received

7:53

wisdom. And I do end

7:55

up pushing back against that. And

8:00

My own, my own sense is always kind of battling

8:02

between things that could

8:05

have made a difference and things that couldn't

8:07

have made a difference. You know, if an emperor is, executes

8:10

the previous regime and then carries on ruling,

8:13

more or less as they did before, I

8:15

will tend to say that reputation

8:17

for cruelty is a reaction from the time from

8:20

the people who took over after him. It's not really relevant

8:22

to how he governed. Whereas

8:24

I think there are some emperors who

8:27

genuinely changed

8:29

the nature of how things were

8:31

functioning in a way that then has long term consequences.

8:35

But yeah, it's,

8:37

it's, I have no problem making

8:39

moral judgments because I feel what I'm doing is less serious.

8:43

Oh, okay. Well,

8:46

that opens up a whole other discussion that we

8:48

can have, because in a certain sense,

8:50

moral judgments, I think are the most serious. And

8:54

you know, look at how

8:56

contemporary politics anywhere,

8:59

like it's impossible to not

9:01

have a moral response to some of the things that are

9:03

going on. And we take it for granted

9:05

that

9:06

we're authorized and in fact, even

9:09

required to react

9:12

in moral terms to things that are happening.

9:14

And yet somehow as scholars were supposed to be

9:17

completely neutral and like, no, no, no.

9:20

And I'm not entirely convinced that that distinction

9:22

is appropriate. But anyway, it's interesting that you would

9:24

mention entertainment because

9:26

I imagine that that

9:29

might actually

9:30

create a temptation to lean in

9:34

to the kind of atrocity stories and

9:36

wild reports and things like that,

9:39

which like I did in the cabinet of curiosity's

9:41

book, just for fun, exactly

9:44

as you said, for fun, because if we can't

9:46

have fun with this stuff

9:47

too, like what's the point anyway? All

9:51

right. So I'm

9:54

going to kind of frame

9:56

this discussion with two

9:58

quotations.

9:59

The first is in a book

10:02

on the, it's from a book on the Hittites. This

10:04

is Krebber Breis' Life and Society in

10:06

the Hittite World. There's a time when I was

10:08

like,

10:09

I did a deep dive into Hittites, and

10:12

he oddly uses a lot of Byzantine

10:14

references in talking about the Hittites like

10:17

Born in the Purple and things

10:19

like this.

10:20

And there's this one passage where he says, and I quote,

10:23

the succession of grotesque monsters

10:26

who occupy the throne of Byzantine. And

10:30

he says, the Hittites weren't like that at all. They,

10:33

most of their emperors are pretty decent people.

10:36

And I thought, well, a number of expletives

10:39

came into my mind and I wrote to him and

10:41

I said, which ones

10:43

do you have in mind? Because

10:45

I can think of some grotesque monsters, but

10:48

not a succession of them.

10:50

And he never responded.

10:54

Okay. So my

10:56

view of

10:57

most of these emperors, and we have like 100 of

11:00

them or something,

11:02

is that they were all pretty

11:04

hardworking, generally

11:08

sincerely trying to do what

11:11

was good for their subjects.

11:13

The majority

11:15

of them could have had much easier lives

11:17

as emperors if they did less, and

11:20

they tried to do more.

11:21

And that's true about most of them.

11:24

Now,

11:27

on the other hand, we

11:29

have, you know, Garrison Keeler's Lake

11:31

Wobegon, where all of the children

11:33

are above average?

11:35

Right. Okay. So

11:38

we have situations where if you

11:40

look at any individual emperor, you're always

11:43

trying to see

11:44

things as he or she did and

11:46

kind of make the best case. And this is the,

11:49

this kind of ingrained rehabilitation

11:52

project that we're all engaged in.

11:54

Like that is a recommendation.

11:57

That is, and that is a recommendation.

11:59

All the students are way

12:02

at the top of their class. All right. So

12:06

that's how it's kind of a function of the genre, in other words,

12:08

is to make everybody look good.

12:12

Okay. So obviously reality

12:14

is somewhere in between and no one

12:16

would agree

12:19

that all of their bosses have been fine,

12:22

upstanding, efficient managers

12:24

that, like, no, that

12:27

all presidents in the U.S. have been

12:29

good. No.

12:31

So we've got some real nasty

12:36

people here.

12:39

And so, you know,

12:41

let's go through them.

12:44

Now,

12:44

the standard is roughly the same

12:46

as that which I used for the good emperors.

12:49

And so I'm going to be prioritizing

12:51

people who really did

12:54

harm to the polity

12:56

through their actions or inactions,

12:59

whether through policy or just incompetence.

13:02

So I'm not terribly

13:05

concerned about people who might have been

13:08

dumb and there

13:10

were some or just cruel

13:13

if it didn't really affect

13:16

things too much. So

13:19

there are a couple of, well,

13:22

normally lists have honorable mentions. So this

13:25

is going to be dishonorable mentions. I'm

13:27

just going to mention these quickly and get them out of the way

13:30

because people might expect

13:32

them to be on the list. But there

13:34

are reasons why I didn't put them and here's

13:36

briefly why. So one is valence.

13:42

This is the emperor who in the fourth century lost the battle

13:44

of Adrianople.

13:46

Tip of the hat to

13:48

Noah Lenski who wrote an excellent book

13:50

on valence and rehabilitated

13:53

him. Persuaded by it.

13:56

The Battle of Adrianople, while completely

13:58

disastrous, is...

13:59

Like this one moment where

14:02

he made a bad decision that a lot of

14:04

people could have made that decision,

14:06

he was generally not

14:09

a, he was not a

14:11

admirable person in any way. He

14:13

had no extraordinary qualities, but he did his

14:15

job pretty conscientiously.

14:18

And even

14:19

as a military leader, he was okay until

14:21

that point. So that's just one bad

14:24

decision that

14:25

I wouldn't want to put him on a list because of that,

14:27

despite the chaos that

14:29

it created. A

14:31

couple of others are pretty much the same

14:36

that is with each other. And

14:38

these are Irene, right?

14:41

The first one who restored the icons and

14:43

Justinian the second.

14:46

And they're similar in the following ways. They

14:48

both seem to have been unusually

14:51

cruel individuals. Irene

14:55

famously blinded her son

14:57

leading to his

14:58

death, eventually,

15:00

and had all kinds of other people

15:02

like whipped and executed, including women

15:04

was like incredibly cruel.

15:06

Justinian, lots of stories about

15:08

him doing that.

15:10

And they both kind

15:13

of failed in a lot of their

15:15

major policies. Like they had

15:18

major policies, especially

15:20

territorially,

15:22

and they didn't work out.

15:24

Irene's in particular, a bunch

15:26

of failures.

15:27

Now having said that, and for

15:30

these reasons, both of them were deposed, actually

15:32

three times between the two of them, right?

15:34

But I don't

15:37

think that they caused any real lasting damage.

15:40

And

15:41

that's not the only criterion here. I think they

15:43

both had good organizational

15:46

qualities and they had plans

15:49

that like look good. They just

15:51

didn't work out because battles

15:53

were lost, like things like that. And

15:56

battles, there's a kind of

15:59

role of the...

15:59

the dice situation there.

16:01

So I think that had some

16:04

of the outcomes there been better, they

16:06

would have been remembered much

16:08

better than they were.

16:09

So I was reluctant to put them on there. Can

16:12

I jump in at that point? Yes. Because

16:15

I've made a short list, so I'm just ticking them

16:17

off. And

16:18

what I like about that is, I

16:20

think you're making a judgment on valence there that

16:24

battle is a chancy affair, as sort

16:26

of comes up in Byzantine history. And so

16:28

perhaps there is a difference between him and other

16:31

emperors who face similar disasters that

16:33

we're saying

16:34

ultimately, it was a bad

16:36

decision, but he didn't foolhardly

16:40

march into a 10 to one against

16:43

him situation. Similarly, Irene,

16:45

I was thinking of her when I said I take,

16:47

because I think of the podcast as less serious,

16:50

I said

16:51

killing your own child is inexcusable,

16:54

that to me there isn't a political rationale

16:57

for that.

16:58

Because we don't get the sense that her son

17:00

was

17:01

going to destroy

17:03

Constantinople, it's like where she had to act against

17:05

him. But again,

17:07

as you said, that doesn't really make a

17:10

huge difference to the rest of her reign or

17:12

the governing of the empire.

17:15

So yeah, and Justinian II saying, I

17:17

mean, if Justinian II had invited

17:20

the Bulgars to sack the city, to

17:22

get him back on the throne, then we would be saying,

17:24

well,

17:25

that's an action of selfishness that damages

17:27

the

17:28

state. So anyway, I thought those

17:30

were interesting examples. Right,

17:33

and we

17:34

don't know what Constantine VI was

17:36

really like, maybe he was.

17:38

But also, you can

17:40

see in the church councils that they organized,

17:43

this is both Justinian II and Irene, that

17:47

they actually had, what

17:49

today politicians would call a vision.

17:52

And it's not insignificant.

17:55

I mean, I think it reveals leadership

17:59

capacity.

17:59

that

18:00

they need to be recognized for.

18:03

So anyway, so there we are.

18:05

All right. So shall we dive into

18:08

it then?

18:09

Yes, who is number 10? All right.

18:11

So number 10

18:14

is Michael the fifth. This

18:18

Okay, let's remind people. So this is

18:20

yes, the this is the post-bazzled second period

18:23

where Zoe is marrying

18:26

one person after another. And this is

18:28

the nephew of

18:30

Michael the fourth whom

18:33

Zoe adopts in

18:35

order for there to be a succession.

18:38

Now Zoe had married Michael the fourth

18:40

who comes from this nobody family in Papagonia.

18:43

Michael because he was very good looking,

18:46

which

18:47

I guess counts.

18:49

We're going to come across some other very

18:51

good looking people. All right.

18:54

And Michael the fourth actually turned

18:56

out to be pretty competent. And so was

18:58

the rest of his family except for this guy.

19:00

And this guy, again,

19:03

we shouldn't spend too much time on because he also

19:05

didn't do too much harm. He was

19:08

so incompetent that he got himself, as

19:10

it were, voted out of office very

19:13

within months,

19:14

because he basically did every self-destructive

19:17

thing you can imagine to undermine

19:19

your own regime. You

19:21

know, he owed his position entirely

19:23

to his uncles,

19:25

Michael the fourth and all of his

19:28

brothers, whom he then immediately proceeded to

19:30

castrate and to

19:32

Zoe,

19:33

whom he immediately proceeded to expel from

19:35

the palace, angering the people of the city

19:37

who rose up

19:39

and did away with him. They

19:41

blinded him.

19:42

So this is just a self-destructive

19:44

idiot.

19:45

And I can see no redeeming qualities

19:48

in him. Like it doesn't seem that he had

19:50

a plan to do anything. It wouldn't

19:53

have had enough time to implement it if

19:55

he did.

19:56

One can say

19:59

that he kind of destabilized

20:02

the political scene,

20:04

you know, by doing what he did, by getting

20:06

the people to rise up, he kind of unleashed

20:08

a force

20:09

that then came back to trouble, you

20:12

know, consent to no politics for some

20:14

time. And I'm not one

20:17

who will

20:18

deny that the people of Constantinople

20:20

should play a role here, but

20:23

getting them worked up about something like this,

20:25

like you just resentment against Zoe, you want

20:27

to exile her from the palace. Like, what's that about? She's

20:30

a perfectly harmless person, Zoe. And

20:32

anyway,

20:33

so this guy makes it onto

20:35

the list just for being an incompetent

20:37

idiot and good that they got

20:40

rid of him quickly. And he

20:42

was one of the examples in the

20:44

Byzantine Republic of

20:46

sort of how the political system actually works. That

20:51

he's clearly taking the position that, well, I'm Emperor, you

20:53

must do what I say.

20:55

And if you alienate all

20:57

the other constituents in

20:59

the polity, you find out quickly that you

21:01

can't do that. So exactly. Yeah.

21:04

You have to

21:05

keep as many

21:07

people friendly to you as possible.

21:10

And what with the

21:13

family's lack of any kind

21:15

of pedigree or, you know,

21:18

history and politics that

21:21

he had no natural allies. Anyway.

21:24

All right. So you move on to number

21:26

nine. Yes. This is one

21:28

that possibly you and

21:30

your audience will not expect.

21:33

This is Justin the first. OK,

21:37

interesting. So Uncle

21:39

of Justinian. So

21:42

and the person who gave us Justinian. And that's

21:44

not why he's on the list. All

21:48

right.

21:48

Why is just so this is

21:51

he ruled from five eighteen to five twenty

21:53

nine. He was old

21:55

at that time, had a military career. Procopius

21:58

says he was illiterate.

22:00

don't care about any of that.

22:02

Procopius also says that Justin

22:04

was just kind of there, and

22:09

that he says specifically he did neither any

22:11

good nor any harm to the polity of the

22:13

Romans.

22:15

I think Procopius is wrong here,

22:18

and part of the reason he's wrong is

22:20

because he's not talking about ecclesiastical history,

22:23

and I think that Justin was a disaster

22:26

of an emperor specifically because

22:29

he exacerbated

22:31

the ecclesiastical schism between

22:34

those who accepted the Council of Chalcedon

22:36

and those who didn't,

22:38

and did so in a brutal way.

22:40

So to give a sense of the context

22:43

here, his predecessor Anastasius,

22:45

who your

22:48

audience will recall was kind of at the top

22:50

of our list, toward the top of our

22:52

list of the best emperors, had

22:54

managed to keep the peace

22:57

somewhat in the church between

23:00

the supporters and the opponents

23:02

of the Council of Chalcedon,

23:05

though the balance was beginning to tip

23:07

toward the anti-Calcedonians toward

23:09

the end because at that time they really

23:12

were more dynamic.

23:14

And Justin comes along and he's a hardcore

23:16

Chalcedonian,

23:18

and not just that, for some reason,

23:20

possibly because his family was Latin

23:23

speaking from the Western Balkans,

23:25

he wanted to placate Rome.

23:28

And Rome's position was,

23:31

it's not enough for bishops

23:33

in the East to agree with Chalcedon,

23:35

which Rome thought was their

23:37

thing because of Pope Leo's

23:39

tome, which got read into the Acts of Chalcedon

23:42

as doctrine.

23:44

Not only do you have to agree with Chalcedon,

23:47

but you have to have agreed with

23:50

Rome all along about

23:52

which bishops to not recognize

23:54

in the East. So if Constantinople recognizes

23:57

Chalcedon, but has diplomatic meetings.

24:00

or relations with bishops

24:02

of Alexandria and Antioch who don't

24:04

like Calcedon and Rome says they're bad

24:07

You also have to say they're bad and break off

24:09

relations with them. So Rome is taking his maximalist

24:12

stance on Following

24:15

its line and Justin does exactly

24:17

that and he unleashes a persecution

24:19

in the East

24:21

Which targets not only people who

24:23

don't accept Calcedon,

24:25

but everyone who don't who doesn't

24:28

sign a document that was written in Rome

24:31

about their like subordination to the Roman

24:33

position and

24:34

removed from their local

24:36

churches diptychs like the commemorations

24:39

any Bishops who

24:41

had been seen as deviant from this regard

24:43

and this just created chaos

24:47

It was so bad like whole

24:49

communities were uprooted monasteries were

24:51

closer to torture

24:53

There's all

24:54

kinds of gross stuff going on like having

24:56

lepers roll around in these people's beds

24:59

like this kind of thing and

25:00

It drives

25:02

this wedge into the church as this fragile

25:05

balance that Anastasia said created was destroyed

25:07

and

25:09

No one was able to put it back together

25:11

again

25:12

Justinian tried he tried afterwards

25:15

He tried persecution. He tried dialogue.

25:17

He tried flattery. He tried bribery.

25:19

He tried everything

25:21

it failed and

25:22

Justin

25:23

with the help of the young Justinian at the time

25:26

was the one who destroyed it

25:28

And so he and it got

25:30

so bad that even Justin had to pull back

25:32

a little bit afterwards and like tell the Pope

25:35

I can't do all of these things that you

25:37

want. I've tried

25:38

anyway, so

25:40

For splitting the church apart and creating

25:43

this terrible division

25:45

Justin gets put on the list

25:47

Yeah, very good. I think This

25:49

was all like at the beginning of the podcast So for

25:51

some listeners 10 years ago But

25:53

when they read your book, it will become much

25:56

clearer because sort of the past century

25:59

and prison been trying

26:01

to keep the peace and find a middle ground and

26:04

in various ways. And I

26:06

had forgotten how

26:08

how much that how much

26:10

Justin's actions were divisive. I mean, do

26:12

you think it's possible that if

26:14

Anastasia said had a more competent nephew or

26:17

you know, what have you, there would have

26:19

been a new ecumenical council

26:21

that would sort of have lent more

26:24

monophysite if that's the right time, you know, more

26:28

appeasing those Eastern churches and

26:30

that's the direction things would have moved in. So

26:34

I don't think that an ecumenical council would

26:37

have resolved these problems necessarily because

26:39

ecumenical councils

26:41

are by themselves kind of divisive

26:44

events that is they they tended

26:46

to have to produce winners and losers. And

26:49

that's not the best way to resolve issues.

26:52

What I think would have resolved the issues

26:55

is more time passing. That is kind of

26:58

because the conflict was driven not

27:00

so much by theological,

27:04

you know,

27:05

differences.

27:07

It was actually driven more by narratives

27:10

that is stories about, you know, your community

27:12

did this to our to this guy on our

27:14

side and

27:15

no, but you did this to our guy. And

27:18

no, we're martyrs. No, we're martyrs. And

27:20

I think they needed time for these kinds

27:22

of things to just die out so

27:25

that, you know, a generational

27:28

a generation of quiet. And

27:30

then you can find some kind of formula

27:32

because during the sixth century,

27:34

they actually often did

27:37

manage to find a formula that they could

27:39

agree on. But they couldn't then see

27:41

past the narratives. And

27:44

Justin just, you

27:45

know, gave them more narratives and made it worse.

27:48

So that's what I think would have helped.

27:52

And we are going to talk a lot more about that

27:55

in a month's time or whatever you when we talk

27:57

about the book so that but that is a preview

27:59

of a very.

27:59

very interesting aspect of the book.

28:02

And the history was entered that I have

28:04

not adequately covered on the podcast. So

28:07

we'll leave that there. Who

28:11

is it number eight? Okay,

28:13

number eight is the opposite of Justin

28:15

in the sense that it's someone that everyone is expecting

28:17

to appear on this list. And that is focus.

28:20

Okay, so 602 to 610. And so this is

28:27

the first successful military

28:29

usurper in the Eastern Empire, like

28:31

since, well, since Constantine.

28:34

And he overthrew my

28:37

breakios or Maurice.

28:39

And it, it

28:40

created real problems,

28:43

especially with Persia. So this

28:45

is the overthrow of Maurice gave

28:47

the Persian Shah that kind of pretext

28:50

to invade and start conquering the Eastern provinces.

28:53

Focus is also sort of

28:56

his memory is tarnished in the sources

28:59

that came later that was written later as kind

29:01

of a bloodthirsty tyrant.

29:04

And

29:05

much of his reign, he was bogged down

29:08

in the civil war with Heraclius, which

29:10

is a very destructive civil war

29:13

that in particular destroyed Egypt,

29:15

one of the few places of the empire that

29:17

had not yet been ravaged by war.

29:20

So his reign was pretty bad. Now,

29:27

here's why he's so low on the list.

29:29

And tip of the hat here

29:32

to David Ulster, who wrote a book,

29:35

not rehabilitating focus, but

29:37

putting a lot of this into perspective. So

29:39

the negative

29:44

tradition about focus is clearly a piece

29:46

of propaganda by Heraclius and his

29:48

successors. And sometimes

29:51

you can just catch them in the act, like they're

29:53

taking one event, splitting it up into

29:55

pieces and distributing them across

29:57

years that it looks like focuses execute

29:59

people left and right, whereas it was

30:02

just one big conspiracy against him,

30:04

a real conspiracy, and he put it down

30:06

in

30:07

the usual bloodthirsty way of suspicious

30:09

paranoid emperors. Okay, he

30:12

wasn't alone in that. Focus

30:15

also can't reasonably

30:18

be blamed for how Khusra II

30:20

responded to the... That

30:22

was such a weird response anyway,

30:25

and

30:25

it had to do with the systemic

30:28

insecurities of the Persian regime. Khusra

30:30

himself was in a very,

30:33

very weak situation, and he used

30:35

the Roman War

30:37

to consolidate his

30:40

command of the armies and the aristocracy.

30:42

I

30:43

don't think any Roman could have

30:45

seen that, especially not like a centurion

30:48

or whatever he was on the Danube.

30:50

Actually, I think recently I read that this

30:53

business about him being a centurion is

30:55

probably part of the propaganda

30:58

that Khusra was probably a much higher

31:00

ranked officer with better education

31:02

and so forth,

31:03

which you can see in some of the actions

31:06

that he knows how to do stuff,

31:09

that just a common soldier wouldn't have.

31:11

So that is probably also a little bit of propaganda.

31:16

Anyway, however, he

31:18

does not seem to have been a very good

31:20

emperor or a good politician.

31:22

He did lose ground to the Persians.

31:26

His regime was disruptive

31:28

enough that it instigated

31:31

or

31:31

induced this revolt by the Heraklii,

31:34

and that was a very destructive war. His

31:37

lieutenants were very destructive

31:40

themselves in how they tried to put it down.

31:42

So overall, this

31:46

is a bad emperor who

31:48

did some real damage,

31:51

I think, even if he can't

31:53

necessarily be blamed for it all. So

31:55

there you have it.

31:56

Yeah, even in my

31:59

very basic knowledge,

31:59

of the subject when I got to

32:02

focus, I understood that

32:04

if you're someone who has no contacts

32:07

at the Capitol, let's say, you

32:09

are going to execute everyone in a conspiracy because

32:11

if you're

32:13

Zimmeskis taking over from focus and

32:15

you know everyone

32:16

and you know who's the threat and who isn't, you can say,

32:18

I'm going to be kind and let someone

32:21

go because I know what they're capable of. If you don't know anyone,

32:23

you're going to say, kill everybody because I don't know

32:25

who I can trust and who's going to try this again.

32:28

Yeah,

32:29

exactly. That

32:32

is an excellent comparison. And

32:35

Zimmeskis can afford to be diplomatic

32:38

and conciliatory because he

32:40

knows how the whole system works. He knows all

32:42

these people and they know him. But

32:46

outsiders are much more insecure.

32:49

Anyway, absolutely.

32:52

So who's number seven? Number

32:54

seven. This is Konstantin

32:57

the 10th Zukas. Yes.

33:00

Okay. Now, I will

33:03

admit

33:04

that I have possibly put

33:06

him higher on the list

33:09

than I might otherwise have because

33:11

I have paid a lot of attention to

33:13

this period.

33:15

And I think he's kind of like this mystery

33:18

black box, his reign

33:21

that gets us from,

33:23

you know, the Roman Empire

33:25

in the 11th century kind of holding

33:27

its own against all of these

33:30

various threats that are coming at it. Mormons,

33:32

Seljuks,

33:34

Petroneggs, kind of having

33:36

a handle on it to just falling

33:38

apart. Can I remind the

33:40

listeners where we are? Yes. Just

33:43

for those who've forgotten. So

33:46

after Konstantin Monomakos,

33:49

who is Zoe's last choice

33:52

for the throne. And as you say, the

33:54

problems are now appearing. Petronegg

33:57

war, Seljuks incursions and so on. Isaac

34:00

Cominoss, is that right? Take

34:03

so have I got the name? I forget which Cominoss takes

34:06

over.

34:06

Well, there's so versus Theodore

34:09

as always. Yes, then then it's

34:11

yes, then it's Isaac Cominoss, Isaac, the

34:13

first Cominoss for a couple of years. He

34:15

was a military emperor. He

34:18

marches around, you know, that the army

34:20

seemed to be

34:21

doing their job.

34:24

And in those years, 1057 to 1059,

34:28

you don't really get people like freaking

34:30

out. Yeah. And

34:33

then you have,

34:35

you know, he is kind

34:37

of

34:38

weirdly persuaded to retire

34:41

somehow. It's a weird story. Anyway, we don't need to get

34:43

it. And he or someone,

34:46

you know, around or behind him, Celos

34:49

wants us to think that it was

34:50

Celos,

34:52

hand picks Constantine

34:54

the 10th or Constantine Dukas to succeed

34:56

him. And the transition

34:58

is peaceful.

35:01

Now, this Constantine

35:04

claims at one point, this isn't a Georgian

35:06

saint's life, that he had a military

35:08

background. But I

35:11

could find no record of his military

35:14

career anywhere. I

35:16

don't know

35:17

what he did or thought he did,

35:20

but he certainly didn't have a distinguished

35:22

military career because none of it appears.

35:25

And the major fault

35:28

of this guy is that

35:31

he prioritized his

35:33

political survival in Constantinople

35:36

over the armies at

35:39

a time when he really

35:41

needed to be spending money on the armies.

35:44

Instead,

35:45

their sources are pretty consistent that he cut

35:48

back on military spending.

35:50

And so there was a loss

35:52

of a lot of elite units and other

35:55

units weren't equipped properly

35:58

and so forth. In order to use

36:01

that money to make everyone

36:03

around him in the capital happy by

36:05

paying their salaries fully,

36:09

because there had been some cutbacks, because there were

36:11

some budget deficits, so there had been some austerity

36:13

under Isaac I,

36:15

and he reverses that and

36:17

starts paying everybody out,

36:20

because he freaked out

36:22

at this major conspiracy against him in

36:24

the first few years of his reign,

36:27

which one which actually involved a very funny plot.

36:29

They were someone who

36:31

was going to cause a commotion at a

36:33

shrine when the emperor was scheduled

36:35

to go and pay his respects to a saint

36:38

somewhere near Constantinople and go on

36:40

the imperial barge.

36:41

And they were going to cause a commotion, they're like, oh, there's

36:43

a plot, there's a whatever, there's an ambush. And

36:46

the emperor would rush down to the docks

36:48

and get onto a boat that

36:51

the conspirators had arranged would then just

36:53

dump him in the sea.

36:55

But he got on the wrong boat. And

36:59

he said, okay, take me to the palace. And

37:01

meanwhile, the boat with the conspirators came up

37:03

and said, no, come on to our boat. And he's like,

37:05

no, I'm gonna get on to your boat. Anyway,

37:08

and then anyway, the whole thing unraveled. And

37:11

there's this big conspiracy.

37:13

And he didn't want to punish people

37:15

nearby executing them, because he wanted to

37:17

be a kind of mild and merciful emperor,

37:19

because he was, you know, anyway,

37:22

he was pious and all of that.

37:24

But he freaked out. And he thought, oh, wait, these people

37:26

really don't like me or I'm weaker and vulnerable.

37:28

So I'm just gonna pay them to be happy. And he did. And

37:31

they

37:32

were. But meanwhile, things collapsed. So

37:34

this is when the Seljuks take Ani,

37:37

which was a an Armenian possession in the

37:39

east.

37:40

And as far as I can tell, he

37:43

did not even send a response arm.

37:46

You know, he had been persuaded by a local

37:49

by a notable they're like, look,

37:52

I'll handle the defenses of the place. And you don't even

37:54

have to pay me. I'll just milk the province

37:57

like typical outsourcing and.

38:00

He failed and

38:02

constantly didn't even respond.

38:04

Why? You have major armies, use

38:06

them. Anyway, and so at the

38:08

end of his reign, when Romanos

38:10

Leo-Yenys comes along after a while,

38:14

he has

38:16

to get the armies back into shape in

38:18

order to wage these wars against the Turks. So I

38:20

think that

38:22

this is a period when the army really

38:24

loses a lot of operational capability

38:28

and the defenses along the frontiers

38:31

begin to decay. And so, I'm

38:34

going to blame him for that.

38:36

And sort of narratively, it seems odd

38:38

because Isaac is presented

38:40

as representing the military

38:44

in sort of saying, we're

38:46

tired of inadequate civilian

38:48

rule. Exactly. And

38:51

you would think he would nominate someone

38:55

who was equally vigorous

38:57

or competent. And I

38:59

think you said at the time that this is in

39:01

classic Byzantine fashion where we have a gap in the sources.

39:05

We don't know enough to know exactly what was going

39:07

on. Yep.

39:09

So the way I put it was, if I

39:11

could have the budget sheets of any emperor

39:14

of all of them, it would be this guy's.

39:17

Just to see what he was doing. Yeah.

39:21

And so we just don't know what the

39:24

armies of the East were thinking about early

39:27

Seljuk raids. Like,

39:29

we know a lot of their responses, but were they thinking, well, this

39:31

is the new paradigm.

39:33

We're going to have to chase these people

39:35

around the edge of the plateau and try and ambush

39:38

them or whatever. Or if they were getting

39:40

mixed signals about how

39:42

much effort they were meant to put in or what have you, we're

39:44

sort of left in the dark.

39:47

We

39:50

don't know. OK,

39:52

number six. Number six is

39:55

Andronikos the first cominos. OK,

39:58

so it would be.

39:59

would be higher on my

40:02

list, I imagine. Yeah.

40:06

So let me explain why I put him here. So

40:09

this is the cousin of Manuel

40:11

I Cominhasa, 12th century.

40:14

And when Manuel dies in 1180,

40:18

he leaves an underage heir

40:20

and son, Alexios II.

40:22

And to make a long and complicated story

40:25

short, Andronicus I Cominhasa, who

40:27

is an old man by this point,

40:29

well, older, he maneuvers his

40:32

forces and allies, stages

40:35

a series of coups, marches on the Capitol,

40:38

instigate some riots

40:40

and massacres, and eventually

40:42

becomes the protector

40:44

of this young heir. Eventually

40:47

blinds and murders him, and disposes of the

40:49

body, and kind of usurps the throne.

40:53

Now, where

40:57

to even begin with this guy? So

41:00

in his previous life, so before

41:03

he did all of this stuff, he was

41:05

a notorious

41:06

member of the Komnenian aristocracy,

41:12

after the emperor, probably the most famous

41:14

person on the scene,

41:16

in part because he was extraordinarily

41:19

good looking and charismatic.

41:21

He was a seducer of many, many

41:24

married women, right? So notorious

41:27

affairs

41:28

was troublemaker,

41:31

had gotten, had

41:33

really botched some of Manuel's

41:35

schemes, had to flee the empire at times,

41:38

wandered around the Near East and Turkish

41:40

Asia Minor, just making contacts and

41:42

friends, like an adventurer, right? Like

41:45

you could really write the

41:46

Netflix series about this guy's life,

41:49

right?

41:51

And yet for all of his undeniable

41:54

charm, and abilities,

41:57

like dramatic escapes,

41:59

and things like that, that he

42:01

was pretty bad as a general

42:03

and an organizer. Like he just kept losing

42:05

battles when he was, you

42:08

know, appointed to, you know, take

42:10

care of some problem situation in the frontier.

42:13

And so it seems

42:15

like his skills were like the wrong

42:18

ones. He was, he was a charmer,

42:20

that he could really get people on his side.

42:23

And he had,

42:26

certainly he had this kind of deep resentment

42:28

against Manuel and wanted to kind of

42:31

tear Manuel's whole system apart.

42:33

Even though he had,

42:37

while at the same time, he had a kind

42:39

of very strict sense of justice.

42:41

And so he wanted

42:43

the imperial bureaucracy to work

42:46

efficiently and fairly.

42:48

Okay, so let's get to what

42:51

exactly he did.

42:52

Um, so

42:54

the major fault with Andronicus

42:57

is that he tore Manuel's system apart.

42:59

He like disassembled

43:02

this very intricate and

43:04

carefully built system of

43:06

alliances and personal connections

43:09

that kept the Roman polity

43:12

in a kind of

43:14

equilibrium with its neighbors

43:17

in which it could still

43:20

pretend or even actually sometimes be

43:22

the dominant partner.

43:24

But this was something that required a lot

43:27

of investment in

43:28

diplomacy and,

43:30

you know, occasional military action.

43:32

It was a very carefully calibrated

43:35

balance.

43:36

And Andronicus just ruined

43:39

it. And so it's,

43:41

it's no wonder that the system just begins

43:43

to fall into pieces, beginning

43:47

during his reign, which is very brief, 1183 to 1185,

43:51

but certainly afterwards, it just collapsed.

43:54

He also

43:56

terribly exacerbated the

43:58

tensions with the Latins.

44:00

Because one of his pitches when he was marching

44:03

on Constantinople was to

44:04

persuade the population

44:07

of the

44:09

city that the Latins in the city

44:11

were secretly scheming

44:14

to become the powers behind the throne,

44:16

because

44:17

the regency of Alexis II that he

44:19

was trying to undermine had

44:21

a Latin member. And

44:23

it was like there were Latins in it and behind

44:25

it and whatever.

44:26

And he whipped up the people of Constantinople

44:29

into this bloody frenzy

44:31

and they murdered thousands of Latins resident

44:33

in the city. Not Venetians because Manuel had expelled

44:36

those already,

44:37

but all of the others.

44:38

And this event was so traumatizing

44:41

for many people in the West

44:43

that both in Dronicus, but also

44:46

kind of the Romans and the Greeks

44:48

in general

44:49

were, you know, began

44:51

to be seen with hatred and hostility,

44:54

whereas Manuel had

44:57

somehow managed to charm and appease them and

44:59

throw money at them and whatever.

45:01

So that was terrible.

45:03

And Dronicus also had a paranoid

45:05

punitive regime.

45:07

So lots of blindings and amputations

45:10

and things like that.

45:12

So he just created terror and

45:15

even imagined

45:18

collective punishment,

45:20

just to keep everybody in line. Right.

45:23

So he threatened. I don't think he did this, but he

45:25

threatened that like if a member of a family

45:27

did

45:28

came after him or conspired that he would

45:30

kill them all and stuff like that.

45:33

And so, you know, in a certain sense,

45:35

he was a kind of grotesque monster, especially

45:37

when you think that so he's someone in his like 60s

45:41

and he marries the French

45:43

child bride that had been brought from for

45:45

Alexis II. This is Agnes of

45:48

France or Anna, and she's like 15 or

45:51

something.

45:52

And even Honyates who's writing about

45:54

all this thinks that that's,

45:56

you know, today we'd call it creepy, but it's

45:58

just grotesque.

46:00

And, you know, and he continued to have

46:03

all these courtesans around and all of

46:05

that and, and wore this hat that was like

46:07

a pyramid anyway. Okay.

46:09

He had good qualities too,

46:12

and we have to stress those. So and

46:14

Konyatis admits this, that his,

46:17

his administration was, was fair,

46:20

and it cracked down on abuses by officials.

46:24

So we even know from

46:26

people in the provinces, like

46:28

Michael Konyatis. This is the historian Nikita's

46:31

brother in Athens.

46:33

He thought that Andronicus' governors

46:35

were like the best. And in later

46:37

regimes, he would say things like,

46:39

ah, well, we didn't like Andronicus, but could we have

46:42

some more governors like that? Why

46:44

are you sending us all these people?

46:46

So he did seem to have

46:49

a kind of just and fair administration.

46:51

So to his credit,

46:53

but otherwise, a lot

46:55

of damage.

46:57

Yeah. I mean, you

47:01

know, my, my assessment at the

47:03

time was kind of because we talked

47:05

about, you know, do you blame Valens for, for

47:07

losing a battle? But I kind

47:09

of hold Andronicus responsible to some

47:12

extent for his own downfall,

47:14

because I kind of got to the point where I said

47:16

it would have been better for the Romans, at least

47:19

if Andronicus had died

47:21

and his sons had taken over. So there was

47:24

a sense of

47:25

it's still a Komnenian regime, even if he

47:27

sort of terrorized the rest of the aristocracy.

47:31

At least that would have had a sense that

47:34

there's a continuity

47:36

and the state sort

47:39

of begins to fall apart very

47:41

quickly when

47:43

Isaac Angelos' sort of first attempts

47:46

to stabilize things fail.

47:47

And so people, you know, ask, well, you know, what's

47:50

going on with the state and everything? Why is everything falling

47:52

apart? And my feeling was what, as you were saying, he's

47:54

unpicked what Manuil's done, and then he

47:56

gets himself and his own family blown

47:58

up. So now,

47:59

has any legitimacy or any sense of

48:02

authority. And

48:04

so, you know, it's, it's,

48:07

where do we say an emperor is bad when they get overthrown?

48:11

Do we blame

48:13

Maurice for focus's rise?

48:15

You know, that's one of those factors in

48:17

weighing up someone's reign. And I very much felt

48:20

Andronicus had he been

48:22

more efficient in his terror

48:25

would have survived. And that would have at least given

48:28

some benefit to the state if assuming his

48:30

sons were a bit more sane.

48:32

I don't think he needed to be so

48:35

murderous or paranoid.

48:37

He was very popular

48:40

at the beginning of his reign.

48:42

And you're

48:43

exactly right. His son,

48:45

especially his son, Manuel,

48:47

was also very popular. And by

48:50

all appearances, very effective and decent guy

48:52

who stood up to his father often

48:55

and counsel and said, no, let's not do that. That's a terrible

48:57

idea. Let's not do that.

49:00

And

49:01

but, you know, again, the system kind

49:03

of self corrects when you when emperors start

49:05

to do this, they,

49:07

they get overthrown. And his, his

49:09

overthrow was

49:11

the most bloody

49:13

and brutal in all of his,

49:17

well, all of Roman history. I mean, he was

49:19

literally torn apart,

49:21

bit by bit by

49:23

the by the populace over the

49:25

course of days. And he was just

49:27

hanging someone, they'd cut bits off of them. And it

49:29

was terrible.

49:31

Yeah. And Konyati says,

49:34

even though I don't miss him, I didn't

49:37

like the thought that people can do this to

49:39

an emperor. It's

49:41

not a good site for the state that people

49:43

think this is okay to do. Anyway,

49:46

yeah.

49:47

Who is sorry, yes. No,

49:50

I'm thinking maybe I should have put him higher on the left.

49:53

It's difficult, isn't it? Because it's that thing of if the

49:55

Fourth Crusade sails to Egypt,

49:58

and doesn't

49:59

to Constantinople, we wouldn't

50:02

necessarily connect his,

50:04

yes, the bad part of

50:06

him with the serious consequences. So anyway,

50:08

that's right.

50:11

So who is number five?

50:14

Number five is Andronicus

50:16

the second Paleologus.

50:18

Right. You won't get any pushback

50:21

from me because I have not covered this. I

50:24

see. Yes, no, because you've reached Fourth

50:26

Crusade and after.

50:27

So this

50:30

is one of the longest reigning

50:32

emperors, 1282 to 1328. Right. That

50:35

is almost 50 years.

50:44

And, you

50:46

know, had co reigned with his father earlier, this

50:48

is Michael, the eighth, paleologus, the

50:51

one who took back Constantinople from the

50:53

Latins.

50:54

So Andronicus is not

50:57

a bad person, not at

50:59

all. He

51:02

was very, very patient. He

51:04

had to put up with a lot of,

51:10

you know, religious zealots,

51:13

and he was very patient with them.

51:15

He his response to almost

51:18

every situation was to say, I'm

51:20

very, very sorry. It's my fault. I take

51:22

responsibility.

51:24

You know, what can I

51:26

do to make it better? Right.

51:29

He had he had

51:31

mistresses, didn't get along with his wife,

51:34

whatever. So we

51:37

have to give him all of this.

51:40

He was politic in the

51:42

sense that,

51:44

you know, he could read the room.

51:46

He knew which way the wind was blowing. So, for example,

51:49

he immediately terminated his father's

51:51

persecution of the anti unionists.

51:54

So Michael, the eighth had kind of enforced

51:57

union with Rome, Church Union

51:59

on his

51:59

people with some pretty violent

52:02

persecution

52:03

in order to stave off more

52:05

attacks from the West. It was kind of this deal

52:08

with the papacy, you know, you enforce

52:10

union, the

52:11

papal supremacy on Constantinople

52:15

and we will hold, I don't know,

52:17

Charles of Andrew or whatever, right, will

52:19

keep his leash tight.

52:21

And

52:23

that could hold

52:25

that whole agreement had fallen apart. Charles

52:28

was kind of out of the picture and Andronicus

52:30

immediately disavowed all

52:32

of that union, which he had signed in the, you

52:35

know, as his father's co-emperor. And

52:38

so that made

52:39

him acceptable

52:41

to all of his subjects in the way that Michael wasn't. Okay.

52:44

So what's the problem with Andronicus? Well, in

52:47

a sense, he was responsible

52:50

for losing Asia Minor.

52:52

I mean, not to put too fine a point

52:54

on it, but it was his fault.

52:56

So this is when there

52:59

has been this kind of

53:01

order in Asia Minor, like

53:03

an order of stability, I mean, a kind of balance

53:06

of power, where the Romans are

53:08

holding on to the northwest corner, you

53:10

know, what they had gained with the First Crusade,

53:12

you know, during the First Crusade.

53:14

And, you know, they have it

53:16

very well defended.

53:18

And the subjects are kind

53:20

of keeping order in the interior.

53:23

And Constantinople and the subjects

53:26

normally have this kind of understanding

53:28

of kind of maintaining the peace. But

53:31

the Seljuk order had been disrupted

53:34

and eventually kind of destroyed by the Mongols.

53:37

And the Mongols created this very weak

53:40

order in Asia Minor, which

53:42

allowed a lot of these Turkmen

53:44

tribes to come in and disrupt things.

53:47

And they just kind of moved

53:50

on, kept going west and began to

53:52

found all of the Emirates that

53:54

we're familiar with from early Ottoman

53:57

history, right, like Idene

53:59

and Mendeshe.

53:59

and Karaman and so forth. The

54:02

Ottomans were one of those.

54:05

All right. Now, these

54:08

groups are coming in and they're testing the defenses.

54:12

And unfortunately, our sources here are pretty bad

54:14

in the sense

54:15

that Pachimeri is our main historian.

54:18

Doesn't give us quite the information

54:20

that we need, whereas the Ottoman

54:22

sources are much, much later and kind of legendary.

54:25

And you can kind of see vaguely what

54:27

they were up to, but it's difficult to do

54:30

a proper analysis.

54:31

And Ronikas, he

54:34

didn't neglect this. It's not a

54:36

case like Constantine X, where he's just not

54:38

doing his job,

54:40

but he's doing it very poorly. So

54:44

here are two of the main problems.

54:46

He's not trusting his commanders because

54:49

he's very insecure.

54:50

And so he

54:52

keeps appointing and then recalling

54:55

them, or deposing them,

54:57

punishing them, blinding a couple.

55:00

And so they start to get paranoid.

55:02

So if you're now appointed to deal with the situation

55:05

there, you're looking over

55:07

your shoulder all the time. And so some

55:09

of his commanders just kind of left to

55:12

run back to the court to

55:13

prove that they were loyal before

55:16

they were arrested and blinded or whatever.

55:19

And so he creates the situation

55:21

where it's impossible, even

55:24

if it were militarily possible,

55:26

to fend off the Turkmen tribes.

55:28

And there's

55:29

some pretty good reasons to think that it was.

55:33

His policy

55:35

was the one that caused that

55:37

to fail. And

55:40

then he made the biggest

55:42

mistake of that whole period,

55:45

which was to hire this group of Catalan

55:47

mercenaries to solve the problem.

55:51

And he

55:52

should have known better than

55:54

to do that.

55:55

The Romans had had so many

55:58

bad experiences.

55:59

with hiring Western

56:02

mercenary companies, they

56:04

should have known that this would have turned on them. And

56:08

people did, but he did it anyway.

56:11

And this was just one of the biggest

56:13

disasters in East Roman history.

56:16

They were disloyal, they were greedy,

56:18

they gobbled up all of his money. They

56:21

destroyed not only

56:23

Asia Minor and lots of cities there, but

56:25

then when they moved to Thrace, they attacked him,

56:28

they moved on, destroyed the areas around

56:30

Thessaloniki.

56:31

And eventually they wandered off

56:34

and conquered Athens from

56:37

where they continued to terrorize Greece

56:39

and the Aegean for the next 70 years or

56:41

something. The Catalans at that time were just

56:44

the worst. And

56:47

so he made the bad

56:50

situation worse.

56:52

And

56:54

one of his responses to them, which maybe

56:58

kind of worked, was to basically

57:00

freeze agriculture in Thrace for

57:02

a couple of winters to starve

57:04

them out.

57:06

And it kind of worked, they had to move

57:08

on. Nobody wanted them. They were hoping

57:10

that now people will come out in it.

57:13

But it was just

57:15

a disaster for Constantinople. They went through

57:18

some really, really bad time. So

57:21

for mishandling

57:24

the defensive Asia Minor and losing it,

57:27

and for the Catalan company

57:29

contract,

57:31

he's on the list. That

57:34

sounds hard to argue against.

57:37

Right. So who

57:40

is at number four?

57:43

Isakios II, Angelos.

57:46

Okay, wow.

57:50

Yeah, so two, three, and four,

57:52

it's hard to rank them because they're bad

57:55

in such different ways. You

57:58

know, there's a limited number. of

58:00

ways in which you can be good, but there's like an infinite

58:03

number of ways you can be bad.

58:06

All right. This guy, so

58:10

this is the sequel to Andronicus,

58:12

the first Comninos we were talking about. All right.

58:15

So he ruled 1185 to 1195. And he actually had

58:17

a pretty heroic

58:20

rise

58:23

to the throne. And, you

58:26

know, Andronicus sends one of his

58:28

arrest executioners to his house

58:30

and the guy's like, okay, I

58:32

mean, what a guy got to lose now.

58:34

And they're like cleaves his head open with a sword

58:37

and then gallops through the city

58:39

on his horse, waving the bloody sword

58:42

and calling the people to Aghia Sophia

58:44

to, you know, mount a resistance. I

58:48

think, okay, I

58:50

can work with this material. This is great stuff.

58:53

Okay.

58:55

And the people come out, they're sick

58:57

of Andronicus, they rally behind

58:59

him. So you have to picture like,

59:02

he's not an emperor at this point, but he's

59:04

like huddling near the altar

59:07

in Aghia Sophia with like thousands

59:09

of people around him so that soldiers can't

59:11

get to him without cutting through the crowd.

59:13

And like no emperor really wants to do that. And

59:16

anyway, the thousands gather and okay,

59:19

very dramatic and all that. But

59:21

after that, Oh man.

59:24

Okay. This guy

59:26

is, is almost comically

59:28

incompetent. Like sometimes

59:31

I just want to laugh. Um,

59:34

okay. How do I, how do I even know

59:36

where to start? So he is active

59:39

and energetic. Like he's always

59:42

going out on campaign and trying to

59:44

do things. He's rarely ever successfully.

59:47

Um, so he's pretty incompetent when

59:49

he's in charge of things. And

59:52

he is paranoid

59:55

and blinds so many

59:57

people

59:58

that it becomes like, a thing, like

1:00:02

public opinion was beginning

1:00:04

to turn against him because he

1:00:07

had blinded so many people for like

1:00:09

no good reason. And actually, it's

1:00:11

one of the reasons why his own brother, Alexis

1:00:14

III, overthrew

1:00:16

him and blinded him. And

1:00:18

it was the only person Alexis III blinded, like

1:00:22

this is significant, right? I think

1:00:24

it was part of the problem. So his

1:00:27

brother didn't do that because it made

1:00:29

so many people angry.

1:00:31

So much so that it authorized his own usurpation.

1:00:33

Okay,

1:00:34

to make matters worse, Izakios

1:00:37

keeps appointing blind generals to

1:00:39

lead campaigns. Like,

1:00:43

I'm okay. I

1:00:45

mean, I get it, you know, like, I don't know,

1:00:47

disability rights or something or whatever, like,

1:00:49

it's,

1:00:50

I don't know what he's thinking here, but

1:00:53

they lose battles for

1:00:55

the reasons you would expect.

1:00:58

Also,

1:01:00

he it's during his

1:01:03

reign that the like, the

1:01:05

core territories begin to fall away.

1:01:08

Well, core territories at

1:01:10

any rate,

1:01:11

Bulgaria. So what

1:01:13

for what seemed to be pretty trivial

1:01:15

reasons, like he wasn't willing to make

1:01:18

some little concession to this

1:01:20

pair of brothers that approached

1:01:22

him,

1:01:23

which probably

1:01:25

just for a paranoia or something. They raised

1:01:29

a rebellion

1:01:32

that seemed to be a kind of joint

1:01:34

project of the blocs and the Bulgarians

1:01:37

and kind of reconstituted the Bulgarian

1:01:39

Empire.

1:01:40

And so this is a huge

1:01:42

chunk of territory. And not only that, a

1:01:44

major preoccupation for

1:01:48

Izakios at a time when he had

1:01:50

many, many other problems

1:01:52

to deal with.

1:01:55

So this

1:01:56

is a major loss of territory

1:01:58

for no particular

1:01:59

particularly good reason

1:02:02

and to

1:02:04

add to all the rest,

1:02:05

he lost the fleet.

1:02:08

He literally lost it in the sense that he sent

1:02:10

it to Cyprus and he didn't do anything.

1:02:12

And

1:02:13

this, one of these

1:02:14

kind of pirate

1:02:17

admirals, this Margaritone, this guy who's

1:02:20

at large in the Mediterranean just came by and there

1:02:22

are all these empty ships and he's like, I'll take those.

1:02:24

Thank you. And he just took them away.

1:02:26

So Manuel had like a significant

1:02:29

Mediterranean fleet

1:02:30

and his I guess lost that too.

1:02:33

In addition to which

1:02:35

he seems to have been a delusional idiot

1:02:38

in the sense that he's the

1:02:41

only one of these emperors who

1:02:43

actually believed or seems to have

1:02:45

believed

1:02:47

the nonsense stories about apocalyptic

1:02:50

last emperors who will go to Jerusalem

1:02:52

and whatever. For

1:02:55

the most part, that stuff was just like

1:02:57

theological entertainment. It

1:03:00

was, I don't know, it's like

1:03:02

a rapture movie or something like

1:03:04

you watching that. Okay. Yeah.

1:03:06

But this guy seemed to have actually believed it in

1:03:08

the sense that he made policy decisions

1:03:12

based on prophecies

1:03:15

about him being like this glorious

1:03:18

emperor who will reconquer everything, whatever.

1:03:21

Paul Magdaleno has actually written about that. I

1:03:24

personally

1:03:24

don't think that hardly

1:03:27

anybody believed this stuff in

1:03:31

the long East Roman history, but

1:03:33

he did.

1:03:34

And partly based on those beliefs,

1:03:37

he mishandled

1:03:40

the passage of the Third Crusade and specifically

1:03:43

the armies of Friedrich Barbarossa. This

1:03:47

massive army, by the way, the

1:03:49

army that Barbarossa led through the Balkans

1:03:51

might have just been the largest army

1:03:54

that had been there since I don't know, Trajan.

1:03:57

Huge thing. And I'm

1:03:59

no fair. fan of Crusaders. But

1:04:03

just like following the German's

1:04:06

path and just the nonsense

1:04:08

that Isakios was doing

1:04:11

and the frustration, like he

1:04:13

put obstacles up for the passage

1:04:16

of the army and just constantly annoyed them

1:04:18

and irritated them and changed his,

1:04:21

you know, his approach to things from week to

1:04:23

week without

1:04:26

having like a plan. Okay, so you're aggravating

1:04:28

them. So what are you going to do? Are you going to go

1:04:30

out and defeat them? And like, what's your plan

1:04:32

here? There was no plan. So he

1:04:34

just badly handled that.

1:04:37

There was no reason for it. Barbarossa had

1:04:39

no interest in taking Constantinople until

1:04:42

he was aggravated to the point of

1:04:44

almost no return by Isak's court.

1:04:47

And all he had to do is like ferry them across

1:04:49

as quickly as possible. Just get them

1:04:52

out. And yeah,

1:04:55

it's so bad. So I think that

1:04:58

that experience did almost

1:05:00

as much to aggravate the Latins

1:05:02

against Constantinople as Andronicus

1:05:05

is, you know, massive wealth, the

1:05:07

massacre of the Latins in 1182. So for

1:05:10

all those reasons,

1:05:12

Isakios two thumbs down.

1:05:14

So this

1:05:17

is this is the first one where I would attempt to

1:05:19

mount some defense. Go

1:05:21

for it. And I think this is this gets into

1:05:24

your question of where does academia

1:05:26

meet entertainment, because I made the moral

1:05:28

judgment that

1:05:30

Andronicus

1:05:34

is accepted by everyone, it seemed

1:05:36

to me, of

1:05:39

the younger generation as a suitable

1:05:42

replacement for Manuil because of his

1:05:44

seniority.

1:05:46

You know, that well, if we if we have

1:05:48

to choose amongst ourselves, we'll end up having a civil war.

1:05:50

So why don't we accept someone, you know, so

1:05:52

he's and he wants to be Emperor and he

1:05:55

then goes around terrorizing

1:05:56

people and making poor decisions.

1:05:59

Whereas I I kind of said

1:06:01

when he

1:06:03

is standing there the day after the coup has

1:06:05

succeeded, he must be thinking, I didn't

1:06:07

even want to be emperor three days ago.

1:06:09

So this is against my will. I've had no training.

1:06:12

I've had no prior experience,

1:06:14

as far as we know, of being a military commander

1:06:17

or a governor in any serious way.

1:06:20

So I'm kind to

1:06:22

him in that sense that he's learning on the job.

1:06:25

I will concede that point. That

1:06:28

he tries to put Manu Weel's

1:06:30

coalition back together. He tries to get

1:06:33

the Hungarians back on side and apologize

1:06:36

to the Latins and so on.

1:06:39

And what

1:06:43

he does, he does. So I mean, I suppose I'm

1:06:45

kind to him in that sense. But

1:06:50

yeah, it's the lack of success. So I had a very

1:06:52

impassioned listener email

1:06:55

me to say, I thought you were unkind

1:06:57

to Iskang loss because I said ultimately you

1:07:00

he kept failing. And he said, well,

1:07:02

he was so unlucky, you know, with the Bulgarian

1:07:04

revolt and Vranas and

1:07:06

so on.

1:07:08

And I said, well, the line

1:07:11

that comes to mind is Billy

1:07:13

Zane and Titanic, you know, in

1:07:15

the kind of who says a real man makes

1:07:17

his own luck in a very sort of look how I'm

1:07:19

an arrogant person. But I kind of said, well, you

1:07:22

have to win a battle. You have to defeat

1:07:24

the Bulgarians one way or another,

1:07:27

or you are just going to keep

1:07:28

failing. But I suppose,

1:07:31

again, the population of Constantinople

1:07:33

is now kind of

1:07:34

harder to manage because Andronicus has

1:07:37

seemingly empowered kind of mob

1:07:40

bosses. We get this vague

1:07:43

sense of things becoming

1:07:45

harder to manage for the elite. So yeah,

1:07:47

I suppose I was sympathetic to Isaac. I certainly didn't make

1:07:49

a case that he was a good emperor. Sure.

1:07:53

So you're right, things are harder

1:07:56

to manage

1:07:57

under him, because

1:08:00

He doesn't

1:08:02

have that kind of prestige.

1:08:04

He doesn't come in with the right experience. He

1:08:06

doesn't have all the connections.

1:08:09

And

1:08:10

he's surrounded by increasingly

1:08:14

more dangerous people.

1:08:17

Like he's swimming in a pool of

1:08:19

larger sharks. The Third Crusade

1:08:22

was just a order

1:08:24

of magnitude different from the

1:08:26

Second.

1:08:27

The Bulgaria

1:08:31

breaking away is just not

1:08:33

the same as like some Dalmatian provinces

1:08:36

or even Cyprus. That's right on your

1:08:38

doorstep. And these are people

1:08:40

who can

1:08:43

and did tell a narrative of

1:08:45

their own independence from the

1:08:47

Romans and end of the period of oppression

1:08:50

and so forth.

1:08:52

And he's a weaker player in the

1:08:54

aristocracy. He didn't even want to be emperor. It's not like

1:08:56

he came to power through some coalition of

1:08:58

generals or courtiers who would back him

1:09:01

once that happened. So you're exactly right.

1:09:03

He has a lot of disadvantages going

1:09:05

in.

1:09:06

But

1:09:08

you know, here's the thing. You think, OK, well,

1:09:10

you know, abdicate

1:09:11

and give this throne to Vranas

1:09:13

or someone you know can do it.

1:09:16

But I suspect that he wasn't

1:09:19

aware of his own limitations,

1:09:21

which is why he was taken in by all of

1:09:24

these

1:09:24

of charlatan prophets that were, you know,

1:09:27

anyway,

1:09:28

he didn't know his limitations.

1:09:30

And and that's that at that

1:09:33

time, that's a disaster. Yeah.

1:09:36

OK,

1:09:37

so we're down to the top three.

1:09:40

Yeah, they're like I said, between two

1:09:42

and four. The order is kind

1:09:44

of arbitrary.

1:09:46

So number three is

1:09:48

the son of the Sakios Angelos, and

1:09:50

this is Alexios the fourth, Angelos. Yes.

1:09:53

This is an easy case to make. This

1:09:55

is we're in the domain now of straight

1:09:58

up treason.

1:09:59

This is a hugely irresponsible

1:10:03

young aristocrat

1:10:05

who allowed

1:10:08

himself to become a

1:10:10

pawn

1:10:11

of the people who wanted to divert

1:10:13

the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople.

1:10:15

And he willingly allowed that

1:10:18

to happen. Not only that,

1:10:20

he helped to make it happen

1:10:23

by giving them all these promises that

1:10:25

he knew he couldn't fulfill,

1:10:27

but that would get him on the throne. And once they're,

1:10:29

whatever, we'll figure it out. So

1:10:32

this is the first person on

1:10:34

our list who's an actual traitor,

1:10:37

in the sense of inviting armed aggression

1:10:40

against your own people in

1:10:42

order to personally benefit from it

1:10:44

without having a plan or the ability

1:10:47

to handle that situation,

1:10:50

which is in fact exactly what we see

1:10:53

when he gets put

1:10:55

on the throne by the Crusaders in 1203

1:10:58

and is completely unable to either

1:11:00

fulfill these promises to

1:11:02

them

1:11:03

or manage his own people,

1:11:06

perhaps, for example, in leading a

1:11:08

resistance to them or doing anything. And

1:11:12

so

1:11:14

in terms of the

1:11:16

negative consequences,

1:11:22

in terms of inflicting sheer negative

1:11:24

consequences on his own

1:11:26

people, this one

1:11:29

is the worst. Of all of

1:11:31

them, he's the worst. The only reason I didn't

1:11:33

put him at number one is because I'm not entirely

1:11:35

sure that he was

1:11:37

in control of what he was doing. I think

1:11:39

he was a pawn of the

1:11:41

clique,

1:11:44

and marshals of champagne

1:11:46

and people like that

1:11:48

who were following

1:11:50

in a long tradition,

1:11:52

Norman tradition, et cetera,

1:11:54

of just using puppet Romans to

1:11:57

disguise what they were actually up to. So

1:12:00

this is just a pretext. Oh,

1:12:03

do we have a Roman we can put on the throne? Yeah, okay,

1:12:05

get this guy.

1:12:07

So there had been others like him

1:12:09

before who were treated as historical footnotes.

1:12:12

This is one of those footnotes that jumped into the

1:12:14

main text.

1:12:16

Yeah, no, I can't

1:12:19

argue with you. It's disastrous.

1:12:22

And it seemed like

1:12:25

if he hadn't been overthrown, he

1:12:28

might have invited Latins

1:12:30

in to start garrisoning the city in

1:12:33

order to protect himself. So

1:12:35

the city might have been sacked peacefully.

1:12:39

Eventually, the Latins would have just occupied

1:12:42

Vlokir and I and then slowly

1:12:44

been invited further into the city, started taking

1:12:47

stuff themselves. I mean, it could have

1:12:50

turned into some kind of horrific street

1:12:52

fighting incident anyway. So there was no good end to

1:12:56

that. Nobody

1:12:58

wanted him as emperor. No one wanted his

1:13:01

blind father to come back and be emperor.

1:13:03

Nobody wanted any of this.

1:13:05

Anyway, this

1:13:08

is something that

1:13:10

we'll talk about more. We

1:13:13

talk about the fourth crusade in the other

1:13:15

episode. Absolutely, sad, sad

1:13:17

news. So we're

1:13:19

down to

1:13:21

number two. All right, this is a

1:13:23

tricky case. This is Michael VII's Dukas,

1:13:26

the son of Constantine X

1:13:28

Dukas. Okay.

1:13:30

Now, I should say that

1:13:33

we have excluded minors

1:13:37

from this list, obviously. We're

1:13:39

not gonna put children on this list. But

1:13:41

the thing is that Michael VII was an adult during

1:13:46

his reign, except that

1:13:47

for all intents and purposes, he

1:13:50

wasn't, he was just treated as a child

1:13:52

by everyone.

1:13:53

And I think this is one of these guys who probably

1:13:55

didn't even wanna be emperor.

1:13:58

And apologies for jumping in just to remind people.

1:13:59

While Romano's Theo Yennies is off

1:14:02

at Mansekert, this is who is back

1:14:05

home with Romano's his wife, his

1:14:07

mother in the capital. Yes,

1:14:10

so he is the son of Constantine

1:14:13

the 10th Dukas. He had been

1:14:15

kind of

1:14:16

not destined for the throne

1:14:18

but designated by his father for the throne

1:14:20

eventually.

1:14:22

He's a complete non-entity. There's

1:14:26

very little that one can even say about him

1:14:29

because he

1:14:30

was just basically being handled by

1:14:34

people at his court.

1:14:36

So when we're talking about him, we're

1:14:38

really talking about those people.

1:14:40

So this is the Dukas faction,

1:14:43

especially his uncle Yennies Dukas

1:14:46

was, you know, he's a very powerful, the Kessar

1:14:49

and Caesar, a very powerful guy at the court. The

1:14:51

only thing we really know about Michael the 7th is

1:14:53

that Celos had taught him how to write

1:14:55

poems

1:14:57

and none of which survive. So

1:14:59

we can't even judge him on that. Okay.

1:15:02

So this

1:15:05

regime

1:15:07

took a number of

1:15:09

disastrous decisions

1:15:12

that

1:15:14

they knew would be bad

1:15:16

for the sort of polity as a whole,

1:15:20

but were necessary

1:15:22

to secure their own ascendancy in the political

1:15:25

system.

1:15:26

And specifically, this is one of the worst

1:15:28

decisions ever made in the

1:15:30

whole of East Roman history, which

1:15:33

is a decision to wage a war against

1:15:36

Romanos the again, it's a civil war

1:15:38

right after the defeat at Mansekirt.

1:15:41

Right? Because the defeat

1:15:43

at Mansekirt was not

1:15:46

itself like

1:15:48

a military catastrophe in the sense of

1:15:50

losing armies and soldiers that sort

1:15:53

of cripples you militarily. It was not.

1:15:56

Nor were the terms of it that bad

1:15:59

as far as we can understand them, the

1:16:01

term, you know, Arpistan gave very

1:16:03

generous terms, like, I think he wanted

1:16:06

like, give me Vaspora Khan, one of these Armenian

1:16:08

principalities in the east, pay me some

1:16:11

money, maybe there was a marriage alliance or

1:16:13

something like that. And

1:16:15

it looked like, okay, you know,

1:16:17

maybe it was survivable.

1:16:20

But

1:16:21

he was then forced to fight the civil war

1:16:23

against the Dukas faction.

1:16:25

And that just tore everything apart.

1:16:28

Not only did it tear apart the agreement,

1:16:31

like, which, which might have preserved

1:16:34

some kind of stability in, you know, Roman

1:16:36

control of Asia Minor,

1:16:38

but it diverted all of the forces

1:16:40

available at the time into a

1:16:42

civil war and not to fight against

1:16:44

the Turkmen that started boring in

1:16:47

when the, you know, apparently

1:16:50

there were no longer any defenses, the

1:16:52

Romans weren't keeping any agreement with

1:16:54

the Sultan or whatever.

1:16:56

So this was just a disaster.

1:16:58

And it was that civil war

1:17:00

in the aftermath of Manzic hurt

1:17:03

that

1:17:04

cost,

1:17:06

Asia, Romans, Asia Minor,

1:17:09

all

1:17:11

of it. You

1:17:11

know,

1:17:13

as your audience knows, Alexis

1:17:15

Cominosa in the, in the,

1:17:17

in the First Crusade, they managed to win back

1:17:20

a good part of the Western lands

1:17:24

afterwards, but it was during

1:17:26

the 70s, 1070s that Asia Minor is

1:17:28

lost. And

1:17:31

as it's being lost, the regime

1:17:33

continues to play this

1:17:36

dirty politics.

1:17:39

In the following sense, and

1:17:41

this is something I'm not entirely sure about, but it's

1:17:44

not as if

1:17:45

the Romans didn't have any armies. They apparently

1:17:47

had pretty serious armies, but in the Balkans.

1:17:51

Now, there was a strategic reason to

1:17:53

keep them in the Balkans, even while you're losing

1:17:56

Asia Minor, specifically,

1:17:58

you don't know when the Normans are going to invade.

1:17:59

They were pretty sure that Robert Giscard

1:18:02

was going to invade. So you need to have

1:18:04

some defense forces there. There had just

1:18:06

been another Bulgarian

1:18:09

or Bulgarian wannabe uprising. And so

1:18:11

they had to put that down and did. So

1:18:14

there were reasons to not strip

1:18:16

the Balkans of armies in order

1:18:18

to send them off and reclaim or pacify

1:18:21

Asia Minor

1:18:22

in the aftermath of the Civil War.

1:18:24

But they didn't use any of those armies. And

1:18:28

my suspicion is that the Dukas

1:18:31

family did not want

1:18:34

any of the sort of Vrienios,

1:18:36

Vasilakis, Tarchagnotis

1:18:39

types. So these Balkan-based

1:18:42

generals,

1:18:43

some of them were pretty badasses.

1:18:45

They didn't want them either coming through Constantinople

1:18:48

or to give them the

1:18:52

opportunity to save Asia Minor and

1:18:54

then rebel against the regime.

1:18:56

So they were using these scrap forces,

1:18:59

just cobbling together these weird

1:19:01

little armies and sending them off one after

1:19:03

another into Asia Minor, all of which

1:19:06

were defeated. And

1:19:08

then they make

1:19:09

the same ultimate

1:19:11

disastrous decision we

1:19:13

talked about in the case of Andronicus II,

1:19:16

which is to hire mercenaries to do it, in this

1:19:18

case, Normans. They knew,

1:19:20

they must have known what that would have done.

1:19:23

So the Normans immediately set about starting, you

1:19:25

know, creating their own little state there too.

1:19:28

Another disaster.

1:19:29

So this regime

1:19:32

ended

1:19:33

the history of Roman Asia Minor,

1:19:36

which went back to

1:19:39

over a thousand years.

1:19:44

And for that, I don't

1:19:46

know, they get put up here in

1:19:48

second place. I

1:19:51

suppose the only pushback is that it's

1:19:54

a regime rather than an individual. We

1:19:57

assume Michael is not making all these decisions himself.

1:20:01

That's right. In fact, there was a moment

1:20:03

when during the reign

1:20:05

of Romanos Leo Yannis, when

1:20:08

Michael's mother

1:20:10

wants

1:20:11

to proclaim Romanos emperor,

1:20:13

and

1:20:14

the Dukas family is like

1:20:17

balking at that. And

1:20:19

the Varangian guards

1:20:21

were like, well,

1:20:23

like they were caught in a bind here. Like, what

1:20:25

do we do? Our job is to protect the emperor. The emperor

1:20:27

is Michael VII, like nominally.

1:20:29

And Michael comes about and says, no, no, it's okay,

1:20:31

guys. It's okay. He can be emperor.

1:20:33

Like, I'm like, I don't want to deal with this

1:20:35

stuff.

1:20:36

You do it. So it's possible that this

1:20:38

guy's like, you know, complete non- He's

1:20:41

happy writing his poems.

1:20:44

He also got to marry a

1:20:46

very, very beautiful Georgian

1:20:49

princess,

1:20:51

Maria. She's called Alaniya.

1:20:53

She's not from Alaniya. She's Georgian.

1:20:55

Like in a

1:20:57

famous beauty of the time. And

1:21:00

even when he

1:21:03

was deposed after so

1:21:05

many civil wars,

1:21:07

nobody cared enough about him to even

1:21:09

blind him or even confine him in a monastery.

1:21:12

They just made him a bishop.

1:21:15

And Ataliati says, yeah, he was kind of fit to

1:21:18

be a bishop. They're

1:21:19

like, nobody cared about him.

1:21:22

So we're not blaming this guy.

1:21:24

He's just in the wrong place. Yeah.

1:21:28

I don't think he could have even, he could have even have done

1:21:30

anything about this. Yeah. But

1:21:33

so yeah, that regime, terrible.

1:21:36

Yeah. No, well, that's pretty, that's

1:21:38

pretty unarguable.

1:21:41

Which brings us to number one. All right.

1:21:44

I'm looking at my list of potential

1:21:47

candidates. Okay. No.

1:21:49

All right. Who would have got- I'm

1:21:51

not sure this guy's on your list. Ah.

1:21:57

But he's one of the few that infuriates.

1:21:59

me. In fact, no, he's the

1:22:02

only one who infuriated me

1:22:04

when I was going through the sources and writing

1:22:07

the history of his activities.

1:22:09

Just

1:22:10

drove me mad.

1:22:12

This is Ioannis the sixth catakuzinus.

1:22:16

Right.

1:22:17

John the sixth catakuzinus. All right. So

1:22:19

he's a 14th century guy, 1347 to 1354.

1:22:25

All right.

1:22:26

Though he lived for a very long time

1:22:28

after that,

1:22:30

he lives, I think, into the 1390s. He was

1:22:32

like in his late 80s and as a monk

1:22:34

with the name of Yowasov, but he never, he was

1:22:37

always like in politics after

1:22:39

he abdicated. He abdicated in 1354

1:22:43

because his reign is a disaster. Now,

1:22:46

by the mid 14th century, okay,

1:22:51

so there's much less left,

1:22:54

but we're judging these guys in the

1:22:58

framework that they were operating

1:23:01

in. So

1:23:05

he came to power by

1:23:09

this very, very wealthy guy,

1:23:12

lots and lots of military experience,

1:23:15

very good diplomat,

1:23:19

claimed he even knew Italian and Turkish

1:23:22

himself. Oh, by the way,

1:23:25

later as a monk, he wrote a

1:23:28

massive history of his times

1:23:30

and especially of his reign,

1:23:32

which is in very

1:23:35

flowing, easy to read, addict

1:23:37

Greek. It's really good prose.

1:23:40

It's not spectacular literary

1:23:42

style, but if you want

1:23:45

to read something that's comprehensible and lucid

1:23:47

and very, very clear and precise,

1:23:49

he's a great historian for that.

1:23:52

Okay.

1:23:53

And so you're not only having

1:23:55

to contend with

1:23:57

himself as emperor, but also with

1:23:59

himself as historian. Okay.

1:24:03

So he did the worst

1:24:05

thing. So we're also in the area of treason

1:24:07

here.

1:24:09

He came to power through a

1:24:11

civil war that basically

1:24:14

he instigated. There

1:24:17

was a regency that

1:24:19

he was part of to handle

1:24:22

the state while the

1:24:24

heir to the throne was a minor. This

1:24:27

is Ioannis V, Pa'leh Loros.

1:24:30

And Ioannis V

1:24:32

had a regency which consisted of his mother,

1:24:34

the patriarch and Katakuzinos. And

1:24:38

it's not exactly clear how

1:24:41

it got started, but he basically

1:24:43

went to war against the other members of the regency

1:24:47

in order to...

1:24:48

Well, and this is the thing, he kept claiming

1:24:51

that he's doing this for the heir, not

1:24:53

for himself. All right. And

1:24:55

nobody wanted it. Like this is a key thing

1:24:57

to remember. It's not like there was some swelling of

1:25:00

support for Katakuzinos. He had some

1:25:03

aristocratic support. He had some soldiers,

1:25:05

but at this one time he was just down

1:25:07

to 500 men.

1:25:10

And he makes a deal

1:25:12

with Serbia to help him,

1:25:14

this Stefan Dushan. Serbia is a rising

1:25:17

power at this time.

1:25:19

And he knew exactly

1:25:22

what the Serbians were going to do because Dushan

1:25:24

told him, which was to take

1:25:26

basically half the empire.

1:25:29

And in exchange for support to

1:25:31

gain the throne in Constantinople, he

1:25:34

said, okay.

1:25:37

And that's exactly what happened.

1:25:39

What happened? Exactly what Dushan told him would

1:25:41

happen. He took all of Macedonia and Greece.

1:25:46

All right. So these are predictable losses

1:25:48

to Serbia that are caused by this guy's ambition.

1:25:52

Okay. If that

1:25:54

isn't bad enough, he's the

1:25:56

guy who introduces Turks into the Balkans

1:25:59

to use as mercenaries. And

1:26:02

he introduces them in fairly large numbers

1:26:04

in order to fight his civil wars, because like I said, there

1:26:06

wasn't that much support for him among Romans,

1:26:08

so he had to keep hiring foreign

1:26:11

help, and the Turks had plenty

1:26:14

to give. But the thing is

1:26:16

that the Turkish soldiers weren't just content

1:26:18

to,

1:26:19

you know, be hired for a season

1:26:21

and then go back.

1:26:23

Often they just stayed. I don't

1:26:25

know, this looks good. Or

1:26:27

they went out on raids of their own,

1:26:29

like freelancing on the side. And

1:26:33

to make matters worse, like I'll just give you

1:26:35

a sense of how symbolically

1:26:38

perverse this was.

1:26:41

There was money being collected at this time to

1:26:43

repair a year Sophia, which had been damaged,

1:26:45

and the dome had been damaged in an earthquake.

1:26:48

And like all these Christian people

1:26:50

were sending money, and in particular, there's some money

1:26:52

that came from Rus, or Russia, Muscovy, and so

1:26:54

forth. And it was believed

1:26:57

that, and I believe this, that

1:26:59

Katak Musunos was using this money to pay

1:27:01

for his Turkish mercenaries,

1:27:05

instead of repairing a year Sophia.

1:27:08

So basically,

1:27:09

he's fighting a war to establish

1:27:12

himself in Constantinople, while

1:27:14

turning the rest of the empire

1:27:17

over to Serbs and Turks to fight

1:27:19

it out.

1:27:20

And from that point on,

1:27:23

like for the last century,

1:27:26

East Roman history is just Turks

1:27:28

fighting it out with Serbs, Bulgarians,

1:27:30

you know, whatever, Crusaders who show

1:27:33

up, whatever.

1:27:35

Okay, to make matters

1:27:38

worse, even when

1:27:40

he gains the capital, he's still indecisive

1:27:43

about establishing his own dynasty and

1:27:46

displacing the Palaiologi. He keeps

1:27:48

claiming that he's doing all of this for the

1:27:50

Palaiologi, all of whom are

1:27:52

opposed to him, right?

1:27:54

And it's like he,

1:27:57

he, he's wishy-worchy

1:27:59

about this all the time.

1:27:59

the way to the end.

1:28:01

And in the end, he decides,

1:28:03

okay, I'm going to make my son Emperor and I'm going

1:28:05

to break with the Paliologi somewhat,

1:28:08

which just results in more civil wars.

1:28:11

Okay, it's it's a disaster.

1:28:13

He creates this precedent that perpetuates

1:28:15

civil wars.

1:28:18

Um, I really like this. Can

1:28:20

I use profanity on the podcast? Yeah,

1:28:23

sure. This this motherfucker drove

1:28:25

me insane. Because

1:28:28

I'm also reading his history at the same

1:28:30

time. And

1:28:32

it's so distorted. It's

1:28:35

so anyway, you

1:28:37

want to strangle him because it's also very nicely written.

1:28:39

So it's kind of like this

1:28:40

totally love hate relationship. Anyway,

1:28:42

so here's one of the ways in which

1:28:45

he's messed with our heads ever since.

1:28:49

He claims that in these civil

1:28:51

wars, he was

1:28:53

supported by, well, I'm

1:28:55

going to put it in modern terms, by like

1:28:58

the upper class, the aristocracy, and

1:29:00

his enemies were supported by like the

1:29:02

lower classes, you know, from

1:29:04

peasants to,

1:29:06

you know, sailors and dock workers and whatever.

1:29:10

And based on that,

1:29:12

modern history, you can imagine what

1:29:14

like Marxist or Marxist adjacent historians

1:29:16

in the 20th century did with that.

1:29:19

They created this whole narrative

1:29:21

of class conflict. Like here,

1:29:24

we got it. We found it. Finally,

1:29:26

we found explicit class conflict

1:29:29

that

1:29:29

we can now point to and write make

1:29:31

make this a Marxist story.

1:29:35

And it's totally not that he

1:29:38

basically all he's saying is that his supporters

1:29:40

were the better type, and his enemies

1:29:42

were supported by the worst type. First

1:29:45

of all, it's not true. We can we

1:29:47

can fact check this, like all the

1:29:49

way down. And it's just totally not true.

1:29:51

He was supported by a small circle

1:29:53

of aristocrats. Yes.

1:29:55

But the vast majority of the upper

1:29:57

classes supported the Pally Logie

1:30:00

as did the vast majority

1:30:02

of Romans in every social class. It's

1:30:04

just like nobody liked him. But, you

1:30:06

know, he turned this into this whole narrative,

1:30:09

which created, are you familiar with the

1:30:11

zealots of Thessaloniki? It's

1:30:13

a story I've heard, yeah. Yeah, it's

1:30:15

largely fiction. It's

1:30:20

not true at all. Yes,

1:30:22

there was this, it was like a political party

1:30:24

in Thessaloniki, they were called the zealots. They

1:30:26

had no platform of socioeconomic

1:30:29

grievances or change.

1:30:31

They were led by, you know, the

1:30:34

usual types. And

1:30:36

they had no control over the people of Thessaloniki.

1:30:39

Like, it's just, anyway, but he's turned it into

1:30:42

this, like, you know, savage,

1:30:44

unwashed masses were coming for my guys

1:30:47

who were like proper gentlemen. And he's

1:30:49

a disconceited asshole. Anyway, so fortunately,

1:30:51

that

1:30:54

whole story has kind of been dismantled too.

1:30:58

So we know that this is him just, you know, just

1:31:00

being having a class bias.

1:31:04

And so this is a guy who's

1:31:07

the connections here are very, very clear, in

1:31:09

fact, even in his own work,

1:31:10

his own ambition

1:31:13

led to

1:31:16

foreign gains.

1:31:17

Serbia, he introduces the Turks,

1:31:20

the Turkish inroads in the Balkans, and their

1:31:23

growing presence after that,

1:31:24

largely due to him. Right. Interesting,

1:31:27

he's an interesting personality. Like, he's

1:31:30

not a, he's not a

1:31:32

monster in this sort of conventional, like

1:31:35

the kind of Andronicus, the first, or even

1:31:37

just any in the second kind of way, like not that

1:31:40

he's in fact, kind of weak and indecisive

1:31:42

when it comes to taking charge of things all

1:31:45

the time. But when it comes to selling

1:31:47

out, you know, his own country for

1:31:49

his own gain.

1:31:51

Anyway, frustration.

1:31:54

So

1:31:55

that's my number one.

1:31:57

Very good. And there's a very consistent through

1:31:59

like. I'd say, and your choices in terms

1:32:01

of the damage done to the state,

1:32:04

the damage done in terms of losses of

1:32:07

territory or just loss of position, which

1:32:10

is yeah, is a very consistent

1:32:13

with with the with your book, really,

1:32:15

I would say, in terms of, you

1:32:18

know, the the office of Emperor. You

1:32:20

aren't the king, it's not your it's

1:32:22

not your territory to deal with as you

1:32:25

desire. It is the common ownership

1:32:28

of everyone. So when you act selfishly,

1:32:30

you are being about Emperor.

1:32:32

Right. This isn't about their individual virtues,

1:32:34

necessarily, or, you know, whether they play

1:32:36

the part,

1:32:38

it's, you know, it's, it's a results

1:32:40

oriented position.

1:32:42

And, you know,

1:32:45

their own people, you know,

1:32:47

kind of issued their verdict

1:32:49

in in deposing a lot of these guys,

1:32:52

or killing them, or

1:32:54

writing about them afterwards in very

1:32:56

negative terms. So,

1:32:59

yeah,

1:33:00

the Roman system does self

1:33:02

correct a little bit after

1:33:04

these people like, you know, a focus

1:33:07

is followed by an Heraclius, right,

1:33:09

whatever.

1:33:11

But

1:33:13

when you're the wrong guy, at

1:33:16

the wrong time, and

1:33:18

you can cause incredible

1:33:20

damage, that's, that's the levers

1:33:23

of power, make small differences,

1:33:26

they amplify them. And so you

1:33:28

end up doing a tremendous amount of damage.

1:33:31

And this is one of the kind

1:33:34

of even systemic weaknesses of the

1:33:36

whole system, that

1:33:37

in a weak moment, a bad person can

1:33:39

just blow the whole thing up.

1:33:41

Yeah.

1:33:43

Fantastic, very good top 10. Again,

1:33:45

no one will have predicted that. And there

1:33:48

will be feedback. So can I run through

1:33:51

the people I wrote down? No,

1:33:53

yes, for very brief comment. So

1:33:55

I

1:33:56

wrote down some people who would never make a top 10

1:33:58

list, but I, they're historically,

1:33:59

reputation. Arcadius

1:34:02

and Theodosius II, not

1:34:04

bad empress, but just disinterested, would

1:34:06

that be would that be fair? I

1:34:08

mean, they allowed better men to make decisions

1:34:10

for them, maybe. Exactly. Arcadius called

1:34:13

the jellyfish by

1:34:15

one author of his time. Yes,

1:34:17

they were non-entities, but

1:34:21

they, well, Arcadius cycled

1:34:23

through a number of them.

1:34:24

But ultimately, so this

1:34:27

was a, Arcadius lived through

1:34:29

some rough times.

1:34:30

Ultimately, the system settled

1:34:32

into a stable equilibrium, and they

1:34:35

found the right people who

1:34:37

put the Eastern

1:34:39

Empire on very, very good foundations

1:34:41

for the fifth century, specifically

1:34:43

political class types like Prefect Anthemius

1:34:46

and so on.

1:34:47

So in the end, those two people

1:34:50

wisely stepped back

1:34:52

and let

1:34:53

their bettors do the work.

1:34:56

Yeah, absolutely. Amusingly,

1:35:00

I thought Michael III, there's probably

1:35:04

no truth in the story, but the idea

1:35:06

that you would elevate a friend of yours

1:35:08

to be Emperor and then your friend kill you,

1:35:10

that I just thought, well, if there's any truth

1:35:12

in that, that would be bad. That would be bad. I'm

1:35:14

pretty sure, but I cannot explain.

1:35:16

I can't explain that soap opera,

1:35:20

but Michael III has been successfully

1:35:23

rehabilitated, in

1:35:24

my view. If you look at the actual

1:35:27

record, he's actually a pretty

1:35:29

good Emperor, or at least

1:35:30

he's presiding over an

1:35:33

administration that does the right things,

1:35:35

but that business was, I

1:35:38

can't understand it. Fortunately,

1:35:41

his murderer

1:35:41

and successor

1:35:44

is also a pretty good Emperor, so

1:35:47

no harm done if you're watching things

1:35:49

from street level. So

1:35:51

that was Basil I should have said, obviously,

1:35:54

in theory killed his friend. So

1:35:58

more seriously, maybe, these these

1:36:00

last three. Basiliskus.

1:36:03

So this is the

1:36:05

start of the podcast,

1:36:08

manages to, I forget, manoeuvre

1:36:10

Zeno out of

1:36:12

Palace, kicks him out,

1:36:14

he runs to Isoria, he then

1:36:16

makes one terrible decision after another after

1:36:18

another after another and Zeno comes back. Yes.

1:36:22

I mean, I suppose brevity is why he's not making

1:36:24

the list.

1:36:25

Yes. So this is a few months. And also,

1:36:28

he received such immediate

1:36:31

and dramatic pushback

1:36:33

to his decisions that ultimately

1:36:36

he had very little impact. He

1:36:40

immediately rescinded those orders. Basiliskus

1:36:43

did more damage before he was Emperor

1:36:45

as the Admiral sent to take North

1:36:48

Africa. Yes.

1:36:50

And it's amazing that he managed to

1:36:53

show his face in public again after that.

1:36:55

Yeah. But yeah,

1:36:58

I mean, I just found his

1:37:00

historical impact to be too small.

1:37:02

I thought about him, but

1:37:05

yeah, I mean, people will have to read the book to remind

1:37:07

themselves, but his career is astonishing.

1:37:09

You would think this is made up to embarrass someone,

1:37:11

isn't it? Because everything he does, he does wrong.

1:37:15

Nicky Forrest, the first,

1:37:17

so takes over from Irene,

1:37:20

seems like actually a very competent

1:37:22

and interesting Emperor, but manages

1:37:26

to get himself ambushed,

1:37:28

killed,

1:37:29

an army devastated when

1:37:31

he could in theory have ended

1:37:34

Bulgaria,

1:37:36

maybe, or seriously hamper Bulgarian.

1:37:38

He could have. Now, it's

1:37:40

interesting you should mention him because that

1:37:42

defeat is the reason why I didn't put

1:37:44

him on the top 10 list. Okay.

1:37:47

But it wouldn't have been

1:37:49

enough to, it's not enough for me to

1:37:52

put him on the worst 10

1:37:55

because his

1:37:56

reorganization

1:37:59

the administration and the finances

1:38:02

was so fundamental

1:38:06

for the upward trajectories

1:38:08

that both the state and the Roman economy

1:38:10

took after that.

1:38:12

I

1:38:15

think he's someone who did a lot of good,

1:38:18

despite that defeat. That's an embarrassing

1:38:20

defeat. And

1:38:22

for the life of me, I can't understand why

1:38:24

he didn't post centuries in the,

1:38:28

I don't get it. But

1:38:30

the narratives also don't make sense. I mean, armies

1:38:32

don't just do that kind of thing.

1:38:35

I don't know how that defeat happened, but

1:38:37

you know, it is debited

1:38:39

to him. But

1:38:41

otherwise, I think

1:38:43

he was a very efficient and even wise

1:38:46

administrator.

1:38:48

It's one of those where I'm making

1:38:50

very subjective judgments, where I might say,

1:38:52

well, valence went into battle

1:38:54

with a good army.

1:38:56

These things happen.

1:38:57

Whereas Nikki Forrest has to be held responsible

1:39:00

for the incompetence of,

1:39:02

you know, whatever. But as I said, that's so subjective.

1:39:05

And that's based on.

1:39:06

Yeah, based on very little real knowledge.

1:39:09

Yeah, but you're right. I think what went wrong

1:39:12

with valence

1:39:13

wasn't his stuff that happens

1:39:15

in a thicker battle.

1:39:17

What went wrong with Nikki Forrest

1:39:19

was something that a general could, I think,

1:39:21

have prevented. So

1:39:24

the last one is one

1:39:27

that I held

1:39:29

on to, I suspect erroneously for a long

1:39:31

time. And your book, this

1:39:34

was the way you corrected this idea,

1:39:37

which is Justin the second.

1:39:40

So it takes over from Justinian. Justinian

1:39:43

has for

1:39:44

all his faults,

1:39:46

seemingly been very correct in saying it's

1:39:49

worth paying a

1:39:50

piece with Persia. It's worth paying a big price,

1:39:53

because there's no benefit to war with Persia.

1:39:56

And Justin the second restarts the war

1:39:58

immediately in a kind of.

1:40:00

this is how I'll win

1:40:02

legitimacy and military success and so on. And

1:40:04

I always looked at that and thought

1:40:06

that was completely unnecessary and began,

1:40:09

you know, the process by which we get to the

1:40:12

rise of Islam and everything else. Now I would

1:40:15

again, not to jump into discussing your

1:40:17

whole book, but I think you make a case that probably

1:40:19

that individual decision is much less important

1:40:22

than the overall world geostrategic

1:40:25

situation that probably would have tipped into

1:40:28

another war anyway. Would that be fair?

1:40:31

Yeah. And he's not just

1:40:34

recklessly starting wars,

1:40:36

though you can see it that way in retrospect.

1:40:39

He was actually building

1:40:42

alliances that were quite

1:40:45

far-reaching.

1:40:47

And

1:40:49

in other words, it was one of those kinds

1:40:51

of Justinianic things where you're like, you're

1:40:54

taking a short-term

1:40:56

risk

1:40:58

and incurring damage now

1:41:01

in order to build something

1:41:03

bigger later that

1:41:06

has a reasonable chance of positioning

1:41:08

you better later on.

1:41:10

And I think he was trying to do that. I

1:41:14

don't think he was as good as Justinian

1:41:17

at doing it,

1:41:18

but

1:41:19

not all of the parts of his plan collapsed. I

1:41:23

mean, the alliances with the Turks were

1:41:26

major. And

1:41:29

anyway, like his immediate

1:41:31

losses were also not as great as

1:41:35

has been made out. Like you can reach

1:41:37

a more balanced understanding of what he's doing.

1:41:40

You

1:41:40

know, plus at some point

1:41:42

during his reign, he begins to suffer from

1:41:44

a debilitating mental illness that is

1:41:47

difficult to diagnose, but we

1:41:49

have very, very detailed descriptions of it.

1:41:53

So he had

1:41:56

lucid moments and dark moments, and he would

1:41:58