Constantinople’s rulers still saw the riches of worlds flow into their hands, and Constantinople grew and flourished in consequence. The supreme urban achievement in antiquity was the life of a parasite, drawing wealth from landholdings tilled by peasants or, for the courtier, from taxes. With few cities and many...
Emperors kept Constantinople at the center of imperial ambition for I,6OO years. In the fifth century, Theodosius II surrounded it with walls worthy of a mighty realm. They ran in two lines (mostly still standing), nearly four miles long, the inner one about sixteen feet thick at the base...
Everything we know about Justinian similarly veils him in his robes of state and hides him in his palace. The scandalous stories that circulated about Theodora (we’ll whisper about them shortly) all point back to her forgotten early life, not to the palace days, when she was equally invisible—that...
Maximin Daia ate like a pig, snuffling and slobbering over his meat and wine, but no one seemed to pay any attention to him. When the meal was finished, he pushed himself away from the table and wiped his greasy mouth with a brawny, haircovered forearm.“What did you say...
“I’m a cub too,” he admitted.“But with the best blood in your veins of any of them, you can be sure of that. By the way, how old are you?”Twenty, Constantine said, adding a good two years to his real ageSo? Crocus raised his eyebrows. “I would not have...
As a cadet, his equipment consisted of a pair of rough tunics for training and a supply of loin cloths and cotton shirts as undergarments, leaving his own clothing for wear otherwise. Heavy sandals with wooden soles were provided as foot gear, while a round helmet sufficed to ward...
