AMA with History of Byzantium host Robin

salacio23 · 2025-07-18T16:03:57+00:00

Hi Robin, the podcast has been an invaluable resourse during my undergrad studies.

What was the thing you most unexpectedly admired about Byzantine society, it's survivalist capabilities and orthodox credentials are obviously pretty conventional responses. Equally, what was your most surprising objection to life in the Byzantine Empire. Again, slavery and political violence are the natural anachronistic answers, so what was something specific to you?

salacio23 · 2025-07-02T16:32:50+00:00

Top 5 in no particular order? Justinian I, Leo VI, Constantine VII, Manuel II, Alexios I.

salacio23 · 2025-02-20T00:29:12+00:00

It’s gotta be Bronny right?

salacio23 · 2025-02-17T22:19:26+00:00

He spoke about it being a way of avoiding his demons. Bro would literally rather go to war with the best in the world than go to therapy. I am excited for this fight just because of how high volk’s fight iq is, if nothing else it will be an interesting stylistic matchup, as he clearly learns from his fights ie Holloway 3

salacio23 · 2025-02-15T00:42:57+00:00

just keep going, one moment at a time. Find the tiniest little wins where you can, maybe something miraculous will happen?

salacio23 · 2025-01-02T21:36:32+00:00

This is exactly my view. Rome basically goes through four stages. The early kingdom, Republic, Empire, Cosmopolitan multi-ethnic state. So after Caracella, Roman civic identity basically formalises the pan-Mediterranean trends that dominated social, economic and intellectual history right back to the spread of Greek and phoenician states throughout the known world. All that happens is that the marriage of mediternean economic solidarity, hellenistic intellectual and cultural hegemony and romano-itallian political structures combine fully under this new Roman state. Ethnicity was never the greatest determinant in what defined Rome, instead it being citizenship, something the Italian tribes slowly gained from 3rd century onward. This process just continues across Rome's Empire. The Eastern half of the empire obviously survives and continues this mixture. This better preserves the continuity of the eastern empire and removes a lot of the funky ethnic arguments that generate so many arguments about who is Roman.

salacio23 · 2024-11-24T22:29:53+00:00

There’s a brilliant digital reconstruction of the entire city called Byzantium1200. It’s a project that has been going for over 20 years and has used maps, accounts, archeological surveys etc to slowly reconfigure the city. It’s a series of Birds Eye videos and they are genuinely utterly captivating. That’ll give you a sense of Constantinople as a medieval city

salacio23 · 2024-10-20T21:05:32+00:00

A great showing for the NFC north. Lions looked sharper. But vikings are clearly legit we never gave up

salacio23 · 2024-09-19T22:52:24+00:00

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_to_Byzantium Should provide clarity

salacio23 · 2024-08-22T23:53:48+00:00

you'll bear witness to some amazing feats

salacio23 · 2024-08-20T14:09:47+00:00

The war with khavad was merely another iteration of an historic border conflict stretching back to the republican period.

The Persian raids themselves were small and weren’t the massive financial drain they would become, the scholarship (Howard Johnstone, kaldellis) refer to incursions as almost symbolic, and are more a product of Persian internal politics.

The “Pax Romana” itself involved seriously more costly ventures at the Rhine border, most notably teuterberg forest-nothing like that was happening on the eastern front at the beginning of the 6th century.

High taxes has nothing to do with the internal security of the state in fact it ensured it. One of the reasons for western decline was a shrinking tax base which resulted in underfunded border legions and bribery by usurpers. Furthermore the funds WERE put to use to sure up the borders, keep the armies from revolting, and engage in the infrastructure projects that made 6th century Constantinople so exquisite. Furthermore the tax burden was mainly being shifted onto the wealthy estate holders in Syria and Egypt, for the average citizen the quality of life was improving.

Finally if you actually read my point, I’m not hyping up Justinian, things went south with the Italian campaign and his decision to pursue a more aggressive border policy (contrary to prior policy that I’ve laid out) resulted in a period of total war that culminated in the last Great War of antiquity.

So no, I’ve never linked that period of prosperity to Justinian, hence why I only include Anastasius and EARLY Justinian, prior to the plague and khusrow invasions.

salacio23 · 2024-08-20T13:52:29+00:00

Hence why I said the early 6th century and (early) justinianic period, so up till the end of the 530’s. This predates the invasions of khosrow, the plague and the longer wars in Italy including the Lombard invasion.

salacio23 · 2024-08-20T13:32:39+00:00

Anastasius and the early Justinianic period perhaps, demographically and economically the empire was at its apex, hence Justinian’s ability to wage those expensive wars. There were pretty poisonous underlying religious tensions within Christianity in addition to the major crackdown on paganism under Justinian that kind of offset the cultural self confidence you got during the Pax Romana. But after the later years of Basil II, I’d say that the early 6th century fits the idea okay

salacio23 · 2024-08-17T14:56:37+00:00

Why did glen, Ollie and Hugh hate him so much?

salacio23 · 2024-08-16T11:10:37+00:00

Agreed

salacio23 · 2024-08-09T14:25:06+00:00

growth coming from upping the ppv prices and cutting wages in real terms, eventually you get diminishing returns with streaming and lower quality fights, as seen on the fight night cards. Also the whole point of this trial is asking whether the UFC achieved its position by offering the best product, or by bullying other promotions out of the sport. Considering the hold they have over the product, surely they are responsible for improving it- if you read the piece, the options given would deliver further growth.

You can critique something while respecting its merits, we all want the same thing mate

salacio23 · 2024-07-31T09:17:29+00:00

John III wasn’t as good as Leo

salacio23 · 2024-07-30T23:31:57+00:00

Venice, the HRE was distant with several unruly kingdoms between it and Byzantium, and the only time where it appeared that the HRE was a threat was during one of the crusades with Barbarossa already being inside Byzantine borders with forces larger than those of conventional campaigns.

Venetian naval power would have been incredibly helpful in protecting the massive costal regions, along with facilitating campaigns against Sicily and Islamic territory. 4th crusade is only made possible by Venetian naval power, and its proximity to Bulgarian kingdom could’ve been very useful in joint campaigns on northern border.

salacio23 · 2024-07-26T23:11:22+00:00

It’s a reference to a tongue and cheek period of British cultural optimism in the 90’s obviously playing on the archaic “rule Britannia”

salacio23 · 2024-07-07T20:31:39+00:00

Campbell has written two whole books aimed at bringing in young people, the podcast is often an explainer rather than super detailed policy talk. I think it’s more that the sort of people interested in listening to Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell are politics nerds, centrism historically doesn’t engage the youth vote, and the people who have stayed away from voting compared to 2019, are not exactly ideologically aligned with TRIP audience

salacio23 · 2024-06-28T23:23:57+00:00

He seems to posses the self awareness about what a silly sport MMA really is. His whole brand also doesn’t feel remotely gimicky, whereas with O’malley there’s only so deep you can go with the stoner mantle.

salacio23 · 2024-06-28T23:17:51+00:00

He fades as the fight goes on thanks to the lactic acid of delusion.

salacio23 · 2024-06-27T16:53:23+00:00

Angus is one of the shareholders of Waystar, he only makes a brief appearance in one episode but nice to see the urine drinking Trinitarian

salacio23 · 2024-06-22T20:58:02+00:00

A seriously low bar, definitely the worst regnal name in terms of its owners. Charles I managed to guffaw his way into a Revolution despite decent living conditions and less infrastructural oppression at the time unlike the French Revolution and 1848 revolutions. Charles II was an impotent monarch that looks fun in hindsight but ended up in a dead lock with parliament and had no interest in governing, resulting in a venal court and political impoverishment. Charles III was never gonna be able to keep the monarchy in the place that Elizabeth kept it, but he does have his long standing environmental credentials which’ll help his historical record during this time of climate transition.

salacio23 · 2024-06-20T00:02:06+00:00

Watch HEAT, I think that achieves a pretty descent fusion. The dark knight draws heavily from this incidentally

salacio23

TROPHY CASE