Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Byzantium


San Vitale, Ravenna: The Emperor Justinian and his Court (c. 547 CE)

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

- W. B. Yeats, "Byzantium" (1932)

Rise of Empires: Ottoman: The Fall of Constantinople (2020)


Every now and then you run across a genuinely exciting documentary series on Netflix. One such was "Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan" (2021), a dramatic and informative - albeit blood-soaked - account of the unification of Japan by various warring daimyō (or clan-lords) over the period from 1551 to 1616.

Another was "Rise of Empires: Ottoman." The first series of this Turkish docudrama told the story of the siege and fall of Constantinople in 1453. The second - even more gripping, if somewhat gruesome - instalment of six episodes outlined the bloody conflict between Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror and his childhood companion Vlad the Impaler, culminating in the 1462 Ottoman invasion of Wallachia.

If you want to know who a bit more about Vlad than the fact that he was the original for Bram Stoker's Count Dracula, this is the place to go. Trigger Alert: if anything, he was even more terrifying in the flesh than in fiction ...


Steven Runciman: The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (1965)
Steven Runciman. The Fall of Constantinople 1453. 1965. Cambridge University Press. London: Readers Union Ltd., 1966.
The other day I picked up a copy of Steven Runciman's classic account of the siege, The Fall of Constantinople. Sir Steven Runciman (1903-2000), one of the strangest people ever to adorn the profession of history, specialised in the subject of the Eastern Roman empire before and after the era of the Crusades, as you'll discover if you look into the pages of his biography, Outlandish Knight:


Minoo Dinshaw: Outlandish Knight (2017)
Minoo Dinshaw. Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman. 2016. Penguin Books. London: Penguin Random House UK, 2017.
His magnum opus, the three-volume History of the Crusades (1951-54), remains the most elegant and lapidary account of the period despite the seventy years that have passed since its appearance.


Steven Runciman: The History of the Crusades (3 vols: 1951-54)
Steven Runciman. A History of the Crusades. 3 vols. 1951-54. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
  • The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1951)
  • The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100-1187 (1952)
  • The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (1954)
Admittedly, it has its rivals. Notably, a spirited single-volume account of the first three Crusades by the almost equally eccentric and glamorous Russian-French novelist-historian Zoë Oldenbourg.


Zoë Oldenbourg (1916–2002)
Zoë Oldenbourg. The Crusades. 1965. Trans. Anne Carter. Pantheon Books. New York: Random House, Inc., 1966.
The question remains: what is it about Byzantium? Why does it arouse such intense passions in people even now, nearly six centuries after its fall?

I suppose it might be because it still remains a bit of an unknown quantity for most readers. Rightly or wrongly, we all have some kind of mental image of the Romans and their Empire (slaves, togas, the forum, the legions, SPQR).

We also have certain select vignettes of the Ancient Greeks: Socrates and Plato arguing in the agora at Athens, swift Greek triremes defeating the Persian fleet at Salamis - even, perhaps, the last stand of the 300 at Thermopylae ...
Tell them in Sparta, passer-by
That here, obedient to their will, we lie.
- Simonides of Ceos
Or perhaps you prefer Lord Byron?
The mountains look on Marathon —
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dream’d that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians’ grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.

Joshua Reynolds: Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
Edward Gibbon. The History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire. 1776-88. Ed. Betty Radice & Felipé Fernández-Armesto. 8 vols. London: Folio Society, 1983-90.
  • The Turn of the Tide (1983)
  • Constantine and the Roman Empire (1984)
  • The Revival and Collapse of Paganism (1985)
  • The End of the Western Empire (1986)
  • Justinian and the Roman Law (1987)
  • Mohammed and the Rise of the Arabs (1988)
  • The Normans in Italy and the Crusades (1989)
  • The Fall of Constantinople and the Papacy in Rome (1990)
But what about Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire? It doesn't help that the most celebrated historian to have written on the subject, Edward Gibbon, had an intense prejudice against the Byzantines, and seized every possible chance to disparage them in his epic, immensely influential history of the long decline of Rome and its empire.

Nor has anything comparable been written in their defence. W. B. Yeats adored them, of course. I quoted above from his great poem "Byzantium", but there's also the earlier "Sailing to Byzantium" (1927) to consider:
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Lady Ottoline Morrell: Yeats at Garsington (1930)
[l-to-r: Walter de la Mare, Georgie Yeats, W. B. Yeats, unknown]


Yeats was, admittedly, a bit of a weirdo. He spent much of his youth studying magic with the self-appointed Magi of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but it was the spirit messages he received at a series of séances with his newly married wife Georgie Hyde-Lees on their honeymoon which inspired him to construct a whole theory of history based on repeating cycles (or "gyres").

This led him to the conclusion that medieval Byzantium was the apex of all human cultures, and - presumably - to his (alleged) desire to spend eternity as a golden clockwork bird on a tree-branch.

These ideas also led him to write great, resonant poems, such as "The Second Coming" ("what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"). Beyond that, though, it's hard to say to what degree he actually believed in his theories, despite the immense detail devoted to the subject in his prose work A Vision (1925 / 1937).


Clara Molden: John Julius Norwich (1929-2018)
John Julius Norwich. A History of Byzantium. 3 vols. 1988-1995. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990-1996.
  • The Early Centuries (1988)
  • The Apogee (1991)
  • The Decline and Fall (1995)
It wasn't, in fact, until the last decades of the twentieth century that Byzantium received anything like the historical treatment it deserved. Popular historian John Julius Norwich decided to bite the bullet and try to produce a three-volume history to stand alongside Runciman's earlier work on the Crusades.

Did it redress the balance? Not really, no. Norwich is no Runciman. But he's a very accessible writer, who's written illuminating books about Venice, the Norman conquest of Sicily, and a variety of other Mediterranean events and personages. His history of Byzantium (also available in abridged form in a single volume) is a fine addition to the bibliography of the subject.


Robert Graves: Count Belisarius (1938)
Robert Graves. Count Belisarius. 1938. London: Cassell & Co. Ltd., 1962.
Which is, of course, immense. In fact, so many books touch on various aspects of Imperial Byzantium's thousand-year history, that it can be hard to know where to begin.

If in doubt, start off with an historical novel can be good advice on such occasions. After the immense success of I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1935), maverick English poet Robert Graves attempted to repeat the trick with a book about the great Byzantine general Belisarius (500–565).

Just as the Claudius books were largely based on the surviving writings of Roman historians Suetonius and Tacitus, so this new one was inspired by Procopius's History of Justinian's Wars and Secret History.


Procopius: The Secret History (1966)
Procopius. Works. Trans. H. B. Dewing, with Glanville Downey. 7 vols. 1914-1940. Loeb Classics. London: William Heinemann / Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1978 & 1979.
  • History of the Wars, Books I & II. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1914 (1979)
  • History of the Wars, Books III & IV. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1916 (1979)
  • History of the Wars, Books V & VI. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1919 (1968)
  • History of the Wars, Books VI.16-VII.35. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1924 (1979)
  • History of the Wars, Books VII.36-VIII. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1928 (1978)
  • The Anecdota or Secret History. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1935 (1969)
  • Buildings / General Index to Procopius. Trans. H. B. Dewing, with Glanville Downey. 1940 (1971)
Procopius is unique among Classical historians in that as well as writing a long, tediously official history of Justinian's wars in Persia and Italy, he also left behind a scurrilous volume of scandalous gossip about the Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora - allegedly a circus performer and even prostitute before she became an Empress - the Secret History.

Graves takes full advantage of this material, and compiles a spirited yarn about the virtuous Belisarius, betrayed by his own wife Antonina as well as the corrupt Imperial couple who employed him to clean up their mistakes for so long.

Is Procopius's backstairs gossip all true? Who knows? Perhaps not the stuff about Justinian transforming into a hairy demon when he thought he was unobserved - but a lot of the rest sounds uncomfortably plausible. However, some contemporary historians have advanced a rather different reading of the Secret History:
... it has been argued that Procopius prepared the Secret History as an exaggerated document out of fear that a conspiracy might overthrow Justinian's regime, which — as a kind of court historian — might be reckoned to include him. The unpublished manuscript would then have been a kind of insurance, which could be offered to the new ruler as a way to avoid execution or exile after the coup. If this hypothesis were correct, the Secret History would not be proof that Procopius hated Justinian or Theodora.
- Wikipedia: Procopius
Speaking for myself, that sounds to me like one of those perverse hypotheses historians like dreaming up to avoid the obvious conclusions already sanctioned by other scholars - a bit like the one about how the poet Ovid just pretended to have been banished to the Black Sea by the Emperor Augustus, but instead just sat in his house at Rome and wrote poems about being in exile.

In other words, given the tone of his invective, the chances that the author of the Secret History actually admired Justinian and Theodora are about as likely - in my humble opinion - as the possibility that Q-Anon was actually right about Pizzagate, and Donald Trump really was divinely ordained to combat demon worship in Washington D.C.

John Masefield. Byzantine Trilogy. London: William Heinemann, Ltd., 1940-47.
Mind you, Justinian and Theodora do have their admirers. British Poet Laureate John Masefield, in his two historical novels Basilissa and Conquer, portrayed the Empress Theodora as a kind of distant cousin of Wallis Simpson - a potential breath of fresh air for a moribund court and royal family. She can do little wrong in his eyes (though Justinian does come across as a bit of a wimp).

The final volume in his trilogy (and the last novel he ever wrote), Badon Parchments, presents the story of King Arthur's victory over the Saxons at Mons Badonicus through the eyes of some official Byzantine observers, sent by the authorities of the Eastern Empire to observe, and - if possible - encourage this new manifestation of Roman fighting spirit.


William Rosen: Justinian's Flea (2006)
William Rosen. Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire and The Birth of Europe. 2006. London: Pimlico, 2008.
A no less absorbing, and considerably more accurate picture of the Byzantine Empire at its apogee under Justinian, is given by William Rosen's account of one of the very worst outbreaks of plague ever to afflict the human race - and its possible influence on both the rise of Islam and of an independent Europe.

Isaac Asimov. Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970.
However, if that sounds like a bit of a fun bypass, you could do worse than check out either SF writer Isaac Asimov's focussed and informative short history of the "Forgotten Empire", or - for a more recent view - Aussie Radio personality Richard Fidler's travel book Ghost Empire.

Fidler attempts to recount certain picturesque events from the history of Byzantium in a series of rather stilted dialogues with his young son. It's a surprisingly successful formula, and gives a good basis for further reading - just like its even more beguiling follow-up Saga Land (2017), about the wondrous world of the Icelandic Sagas.


Richard Fidler: Ghost Empire (2016)
Richard Fidler. Ghost Empire. 2016. ABC Books. Sydney: HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty Ltd., 2017.

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David Talbot Rice: Byzantine Art (1968)


  1. John Julius Norwich (1929-2018)
  2. Zoë Oldenbourg (1916–2002)
  3. Steven Runciman (1903-2000)
  4. Byzantine Historians
  5. History & Travel


Books I own are marked in bold:

John Julius Norwich (1929-2018)

John Julius Norwich
[John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich]
(1929–2018)

  1. [with Reresby Sitwell] Mount Athos (1966)
  2. The Normans in the South, 1016–1130 [aka 'The Other Conquest'] (1967)
    • Included in: The Normans in Sicily: The Normans in the South, 1016-1130 & The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194. 1967 & 1970. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.
  3. Sahara (1968)
  4. The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130–1194 (1970)
    • Included in: The Normans in Sicily: The Normans in the South, 1016-1130 & The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194. 1967 & 1970. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.
  5. Great Architecture of the World (1975)
  6. Venice: The Rise to Empire (1977)
    • Included in: A History of Venice. 1977 & 1981. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003.
  7. Venice: The Greatness and Fall (1981)
    • Included in: A History of Venice. 1977 & 1981. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003.
  8. A History of Venice (1982)
    • A History of Venice. 1977 & 1981. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003.
  9. [with Suomi La Valle] Hashish (1984)
  10. The Architecture of Southern England (1985)
  11. Fifty Years of Glyndebourne (1985)
  12. A Taste for Travel (1985)
  13. Byzantium: The Early Centuries (1988)
    • Byzantium: The Early Centuries. 1988. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990.
  14. The Normans in Sicily (1992)
    • The Normans in Sicily: The Normans in the South, 1016-1130 & The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194. 1967 & 1970. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.
  15. Byzantium; vol. 2: The Apogee (1992)
    • Byzantium: The Apogee. 1991. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993.
  16. Byzantium; vol. 3: The Decline and Fall (1995)
    • Byzantium: The Decline and Fall. 1995. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
  17. A Short History of Byzantium (1997)
  18. [with Quentin Blake] The Twelve Days of Christmas (1998)
  19. Shakespeare's Kings: the Great Plays and the History of England in the Middle Ages: 1337–1485 (2000)
  20. Paradise of Cities, Venice and its Nineteenth-century Visitors (2003)
    • Paradise of Cities: Nineteenth-century Venice Seen through Foreign Eyes. London: Viking, 2003.
  21. The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (2006)
    • The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean. 2006. London: Vintage Books, 2007.
  22. Trying to Please [autobiography] (2008)
  23. The Popes: A History [aka 'Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy'] (2011)
  24. A History of England in 100 Places: From Stonehenge to the Gherkin (2012)
  25. Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History (2015)
  26. Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe (2016)
    • Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe. London: John Murray (Publishers), 2016.
  27. France: A History: from Gaul to de Gaulle [aka 'A History of France'] (2018)

    28. Edited:

  28. Christmas Crackers: Being Ten Commonplace Selections 1970-1979 (1980)
  29. Britain's Heritage (1983)
  30. The Italian World: History, Art and the Genius of a People (1983)
  31. More Christmas Crackers, 1980-1989 (1990)
  32. Oxford Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Art (1990)
  33. Venice: a Traveller's Companion (1990)
  34. Still More Christmas Crackers, 1990-1999 (2000)
  35. Treasures of Britain (2002)
  36. The Duff Cooper Diaries (2006)
  37. The Great Cities in History (2009)
  38. The Big Bang: Christmas Crackers, 2000–2009 (2010)
  39. Darling Monster: The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to Her Son John Julius Norwich (2013)
  40. [with Quentin Blake] The Illustrated Christmas Cracker (2013)
  41. Cities That Shaped the Ancient World (2014)
  42. A Christmas Cracker: being a Commonplace Selection (2018)


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Zoë Oldenbourg

Zoë Oldenbourg
[Зоя Сергеевна Ольденбург]
(1916–2002)

    Fiction:

  1. Argile et cendres (1946)
    • The World is Not Enough. 1946. Trans. Willard A. Trask. 1948. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964.
  2. La Pierre angulaire (1953)
    • The Cornerstone. 1953. Trans. Edward Hyams. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1954.
  3. Réveillés de la vie (1956)
    • The Awakened. Trans. Edward Hyams (1957)
  4. Les Irréductibles (1958)
    • The Chains of Love. 1958. Trans. Michael Bullock. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1959.
  5. Les Brûlés (1960)
    • Destiny of Fire. 1960. Trans. Peter Green. 1961. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
  6. Les Cités charnelles, ou L'Histoire de Roger de Montbrun (1961)
    • Cities of the Flesh, or The Story of Roger de Montbrun. Trans. Anne Carter (1962)
  7. La Joie des pauvres (1970)
    • The Heirs of the Kingdom. 1970. Trans. Anne Carter. 1971. Fontana Books. London: Wm. Collins., 1974.
  8. La Joie-souffrance (1980)
  9. Le Procès du rêve (1982)
  10. Les Amours égarées (1987)
  11. Déguisements [short stories] (1989)

    12. Non-fiction:

  12. Le Bûcher de Montségur, 16 mars 1244 (1959)
    • Massacre at Montségur: A History of the Albigensian Crusade. 1959. Trans. Peter Green. 1961. Phoenix Giant. London: Orion Books Ltd., 1998.
  13. Les Croisades (1965)
    • The Crusades. 1965. Trans. Anne Carter. Pantheon Books. New York: Random House, Inc., 1966.
  14. Catherine de Russie (1966)
    • Catherine the Great. 1966. Trans. Anne Carter. Preface by Arthur Calder-Marshall. Women Who Made History. Geneva: Heron Books, 1968.
  15. Saint Bernard (1970)
  16. L'Épopée des cathédrales (1972)
  17. Que vous a donc fait Israël ? (1974)
  18. Visages d'un autoportrait (1977)
  19. Que nous est Hécube ?, ou Un plaidoyer pour l'humain (1984)

    20. Plays:

  20. L'Évêque et la vieille dame, ou La Belle-mère de Peytavi Borsier, pièce en dix tableaux et un prologue (1983)
  21. Aliénor, pièce en quatre tableaux (1992)


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Sir Steven Runciman (1903-2000)

Steven Runciman
[Sir James Cochran Stevenson Runciman]
(1903-2000)

  1. The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus and His Reign: A Study of Tenth-Century Byzantium (1929)
  2. A History of the First Bulgarian Empire (1930)
  3. Byzantine Civilization (1933)
  4. The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy (1947)
  5. A History of the Crusades, Volume One (1951)
    • A History of the Crusades. Vol. 1: The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. 1951. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
  6. A History of the Crusades, Volume Two (1952)
    • A History of the Crusades. Vol. 2: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100-1187. 1952. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
  7. A History of the Crusades, Volume Three (1954)
    • A History of the Crusades. Vol. 3: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades. 1954. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
  8. The Eastern Schism (1955)
    • The Eastern Schism: a Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches during the 11th and 12th Centuries. 1955. Panther History. London: Panther, 1970.
  9. The Sicilian Vespers (1958)
    • The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century. 1958. A Pelican Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960.
  10. The White Rajahs: A History of Sarawak from 1841 to 1946 (1960)
  11. The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (1965)
    • The Fall of Constantinople 1453. 1965. Cambridge University Press. London: Readers Union Ltd., 1966.
  12. The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence (1968)
  13. The Last Byzantine Renaissance (1970)
  14. Orthodox Churches and the Secular State (1971)
  15. Byzantine Style and Civilization (1975)
  16. The Byzantine Theocracy: The Weil Lectures, Cincinnati (1977)
  17. Mistra: Byzantine Capital of the Peloponnese (1980)
  18. The First Crusade (1980)
  19. A Traveller's Alphabet: Partial Memoirs (1991) ISBN 9780500015049

    20. Secondary:

  20. Dinshaw, Minoo. Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman. 2016. Penguin Books. London: Penguin Random House UK, 2017.


    Anna Komnēnē [Comnena] (1083–1153)

  1. The Alexiad. Trans. E. R. A. Sewter. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.

    2. Procopius of Caesarea (c.500–c.565)

  2. Works. Trans. H. B. Dewing, with Glanville Downey. 7 vols. 1914-1940. Loeb Classics. London: William Heinemann / Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1978 & 1979.
    1. History of the Wars, Books I & II. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1914 (1979)
    2. History of the Wars, Books III & IV. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1916 (1979)
    3. History of the Wars, Books V & VI. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1919 (1968)
    4. History of the Wars, Books VI.16-VII.35. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1924 (1979)
    5. History of the Wars, Books VII.36-VIII. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1928 (1978)
    6. The Anecdota or Secret History. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1935 (1969)
    7. Buildings / General Index to Procopius. Trans. H. B. Dewing, with Glanville Downey. 1940 (1971)
  3. The Secret History. Trans. G. A. Williamson. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966.
  4. The Secret History. c.550 CE. Trans. G. A. Williamson. 1966. Introduction by Philip Ziegler. London: The Folio Society, 1990.

    5. Michael Psellos / Psellus (c.1017/18-c.1078)

  5. Fourteen Byzantine Rulers: The Chronographia of Michael Psellus. Trans. E. R. A. Sewter. 1953. Penguin Classics. 1966. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.


  1. Asimov, Isaac. Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970.
  2. Burckhardt, Jacob. The Age of Constantine the Great. 1852. Rev. ed. 1880. Trans. Moses Hadas. 1949. A Vintage Book V-393. New York: Random House, 1967.
  3. Byron, Robert. The Station. Athos: Treasures and Men. 1928. Introduction by Christopher Sykes. A Phoenix Press Paperback. London: The Orion Publishing Group Ltd., 2000.
  4. Byron, Robert. The Road to Oxiana. 1937. Introduction by Bruce Chatwin. London: Picador, 1981.
  5. Dalrymple, William. From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium. 1997. Flamingo. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998.
  6. Fidler, Richard. Ghost Empire. 2016. ABC Books. Sydney: HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty Ltd., 2017.
  7. Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire. 1776-88; 1910. Ed. Betty Radice & Felipé Fernández-Armesto. 8 vols. London: Folio Society, 1983-90.
    1. The Turn of the Tide. Ed. & with an introduction by Betty Radice (1983)
    2. Constantine and the Roman Empire. Ed. & with an introduction by Betty Radice (1984)
    3. The Revival and Collapse of Paganism. Ed. & with an introduction by Betty Radice (1985)
    4. The End of the Western Empire. Ed. & with an introduction by Betty Radice (1986)
    5. Justinian and the Roman Law. Ed. & with an introduction by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (1987)
    6. Mohammed and the Rise of the Arabs. Ed. & with an introduction by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (1988)
    7. The Normans in Italy and the Crusades. Ed. & with an introduction by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (1989)
    8. The Fall of Constantinople and the Papacy in Rome. Ed. & with an introduction by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (1990)
  8. Hodgkin, Thomas. The Barbarian Invasions of the Roman Empire. ['Italy and her Invaders,' 1880-1899]. Introduced by Peter Heather. 8 vols. London: The Folio Society, 2000-3.
    1. The Visigothic Invasion. 1880. rev. ed. 1892 (2000)
    2. The Huns and the Vandals. 1880. rev. ed. 1892 (2000)
    3. The Ostrogoths, 476-535. 1885. rev. ed. 1896 (2001)
    4. The Imperial Restoration, 535-553. 1885. rev. ed. 1896 (2001)
    5. The Lombard Invasion, 553-600. 1895 (2002)
    6. The Lombard Kingdom, 600-744. 1895 (2002)
    7. The Frankish Invasion, 744-774. 1899 (2003)
    8. The Frankish Empire. 1899 (2003)
  9. Hallam, Elizabeth, ed. Chronicles of the Crusades: Eye-Witness Accounts of the Wars Between Christianity and Islam. 1989. Godalming, Surrey: CLB International, 1997.
  10. Hill, Rosalind, ed. Gesta Francorum et Aliorum Hierosolimitanorum. Nelson’s Medieval Texts. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1962.
  11. Joinville & Villehardouin. Chronicles of the Crusades: The Conquest of Constantinople / The Life of Saint Louis. Trans. M. R. B. Shaw. 1963. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
  12. Rice, David Talbot. Byzantine Art. 1935. A Pelican Book. 1954. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.
  13. Rosen, William. Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire and The Birth of Europe. 2006. London: Pimlico, 2008.
  14. Wilmot-Buxton, E. M. The Story of the Crusades. 1910. Told Through the Ages. 1912. London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1927.


San Vitale, Ravenna: The Empress Theodora (c.540s CE)



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