In the Footsteps of Rome: A History of Europe in Late Antiquity

Enewald said:

Who is this dirty separatist leading the secession?

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Sadly, I never did take notes on who was the leader of Nicaea when prepping for this chapter on the developments of the Byzantines perspective.

Dr.Livingstone said:

Do you have the Lux Invicta DLC?

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Oh heaven's no! I do not entertain such "alternative history" especially when the a-historicism is completely unforgiveable from my historical perspective. I mean, how the ERE would be "anti-Christian" is beyond me, and the eastern Mediterranean was the epicenter of Christianity by the second half of the second century and had come to dominate all the major urban Roman cities: Corinth, Athens, Constantinople, Nicaea, Aleppo, Jerusalem, and Alexandria by the third century. Plus the Roman "Cults" never had much power in the east. Steven Hijmans article "The Sun Which Did Not Rise in the East" (1996) shattered the old notions that the Cult of Sol Invictus had significant influence in the east, and on that aside, as someone who sort of "specializes" in the Cult religions, I have serious misgivings with "popular" keyboard warriors spewing laughable claims about the Cult Religions that no scholar accepts, like the idea the Mithraism goes back to the 6th or 5th century BCE and is a forerunner to Christianity, the earliest archeological records uncovered shows that the Cult emerged in the second half of the First Century, found along the Rhine River cities under the Roman Empire. The rise of internet revisionism by emotional bloggers is a serious threat to the proliferation of true historical knowledge, especially since many of us from an academic POV believe "they" are winning. Just like the conservative blogosphere's obsession with "Sharia" Law. If they actually studied Islamic Law and history, as I just barely covered in concentrated studies, they would know that Sharia Law is nothing more than the laws that govern a particular land/country: Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc., all have different versions of "Sharia" which is not the monolithic entity that certain bloggers who shall not be named claim. :glare:

I understand the popularity of such a-historicism but I mean, as a historian, it would at least have to follow some sense of plausibility for me to consider (like the isolationist movement in the USA coming to power in 1940 and not getting involved in WWII and thereby allowing the plausibility of Germany's victory, which is still debatable, but the isolationist movement was so strong in 1940 that revisionist historians who I shall not name have even come up with the idiotic dribble that FDR and the pro-war lobby staged America's entry into WWII to counter their influence, like the "America First" Lobby). The Sassanids would have never been able to stop the expansion of Islam either...

As I always say, history only gets one run.

stnylan said:

Well, Basil didn't want an easy life I am sure.

I can't off the top of my head how much civil discord Basil I had to deal with irl - but I seem to recall there was some? Or am I mis-remembering?

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Basil I did face a lot of civil discontent during his reign, but his ability to win over the rebellious factions paved the way for the historical Macedonian Renaissance.

tnick0225 said:

Byzantium always seems to be plagued by rebellion in the game lol.

Not sure how things will work with the new RoI mechanics thrown in as I have yet to play a game with all the latest features still trying to finish my two pre-RoI games.

But anyways shall be interesting to see if Basil can quell the rebellion. I take it you're playing as Italy though right? Can't remember if I'd asked that already lol.

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I started as Italy, but when I realized that playing as a single dynasty was going to create "gaps" in the planned direction of the AAR content (I wouldn't be able to really write about any other kingdom or empire except for blanket statements like, "These two countries went to war, this side won") I decided to jump play and every few years, I rotated to a new nation that I wanted to talk about for the AAR. I actually played as the Byzantines during this episodic civil war, after having played as Italy first. Then I moved to the Abbasids.

NACBEAST said:

To the above, as a History and Poli Sci major, indeed. About the only a-historical take I'd accept on the notion of Islam not advancing past Arabia would be if the Justinian Plague never swept across the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid Empire. Bubonic Plague has a way of shifting history decisively in one direction or the other.

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That, and if the Byzantine-Sassanid Wars never occurred either (or to the horrific level that it did). It was like two championship boxers having just gone 14 rounds, then the upstart new contender (the Arabs) emerged and gave one good face shot to the Byzantines and Sassanids and down they fell. However, the Byzantines were better able to cope with the situation seeing that they didn't fall like the Sassanids. As an economist, it is widely believed that the plague laid the foundation for the future industrialization of Western Europe, while the plagues that swept through the Mamluk Empire in the 14th century, which destroyed the textile industry, set the Middle East backward in economic development. I wrote a paper on that last year. I mean, according to the Mamluk sources, the Textile worker industry fell from 15,000 workers to less than 700!

Dr.Livingstone said:

Ah, my apologies. I mixed up Luc Invicta with the Legacy of Rome dlc.

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I have no idea what DLCs I have tbh. I don't play Ck2 that often and all those dlcs that I have have simply clicked "check" to be included whenever I start the game!

Chapter 4: Crisis in the Byzantine Empire






The Nicaean Civil War (870-873) was one of the great tumultuous events ever to transpire in the history of the Byzantine Empire. The resistance to the coronation and reign of Basil I was the principle factor in the chaos that swept through the empire during the beginnings of his reign, indeed – civil strife was often rampant during the ascension of a new dynasty particularly when rebellious dissidents and conservative and reactionary aristocrats, to use modern political terminology, felt threatened by the emergence of a “new” emperor; especially someone like Basil who came from the peasantry and was perceived as not having the best interests of the Roman nobility.

In addition, rebel factions like the Paulicians, a heretical sect of gnostic Christians, like the iconoclasts, reemerged. It was clear to Basil that dealing with heretical Christians, civil dissidents, and outright political rebels would dominant his rule. After emerging the victor in a war against Muslims in Sicily, the Byzantine army was re-assembled in Greece to prepare itself for a military showdown the rebels and Nicaean soldiers, who had already beaten back the first attempt of the Byzantine army to cross over into Asia Minor and quell the rebellion.

The speed at which Basil set out to confront the rebellious and fractured nature of the empire is something at which to marvel at. Well knowing that he was surrounded by enemies who could just as quickly take advantage of the crisis within the Byzantine Empire, and despite early setbacks, Basil personally set out to lead the army and cross over into Asia Minor after the first failed attempt Nicomedia, the new Byzantine push was a simple and yet ingenious plan.

Naturally, the Nicaeans and the rebels in Asia Minor posed a greater threat than the rebels in Greece and the Balkans, thus, it was necessary in Basil’s eye to destroy the greater threat first, rather than score a quick and decisive victory against the weaker forces of the civil war and rebellion. At Claudiopolis, a city in Asia Minor that was named after the Roman emperor Claudius (it was a very common practice in the Greco-Roman world to name cities after rulers). By contrast, the rebels believed that another military victory over the Byzantine would secure their gains and bring Basil to the negotiating table.

The Byzantine Army in the late ninth century was probably the best equipped and best trained military force in the world of Late Antiquity. Although they had been defeated in the Levant and North Africa, and on the seas, by the upstart Arabs, they still possessed one of the few standing armies in the world that was professionally trained and funded from the imperial treasury. Unlike the armies of Western Europe that were raised by feudal levies in times of crisis, although the Byzantines certainly employed this practice as well, the standing army of the Byzantines harkened back to their Roman days. Although the army itself was nowhere near the prowess and strength of the Roman legions of the republican era, nor even the Byzantine army that Belisarius commanded to bring down the Vandals and Ostrogoths in his campaigns of restoration, the Byzantine army was still much feared and respected by friends and enemies alike.

Wearing lamellar armor, which was a mobile and flexible light armor that had the service ability of medium armor, and often armed with spears, the Byzantine army had transformed itself as a power on bridge of west and east to be a mobile and flexible eastern army capable of fighting in the fast and open fields of Asia Minor, but armed heavily enough to contend with the strength and force typified by the Western successor kingdoms. Properly, one could view the Byzantine army of Basil as a ‘jack of all trades’ type of military force. They were not the expert light raiders and swift fighters like the Sassanids of old or the Arabs of new. They were not the expert heavy fighters of the Barbarian successor kingdoms. They were, however, competent to be able to fight both styles of warfare with their standard equipment, which proved their genius of being able to fight two styles of warfare, and two styles effectively, with one universal form of equipment.

The Byzantine army was split along the east-west divide. They possessed heavy units like the Kataphractoi, heavy horsemen that were copied from the Sassanid heavy horse tradition to counter this crushing threat in cavalry warfare. Also, the Byzantines possessed mostly lighter horse, soldiers armed with bows and a spear for close-quarters fighting to counter the horse archers of the Sassanids and later the Arabs. Their infantry was also built upon these lines, with soldiers armed with the aforementioned lamellar and spear able to function as a mobile medium infantry able to keep pace with lighter infantry used by the Sassanids and Arabs, but equipped heavily enough to sustain an attack from the aggressive and forward-assaulting Westerners.

This was Basil’s great advantage when marching toward Claudiopolis in Asia Minor to fight the Byzantine rebels. While the rebels, more or less, possessed a singular fighting force of persons simply armed to the teeth, the Byzantine army’s professional training and structure gave them a major advantage. Although this training and structure had failed at Nicomedia, that could be attributed to poor leadership and organization more than poor training.

Sometime in the Spring of 871, the Byzantine armies lined up opposite of the rebel armies outside of Claudiopolis. Using their horsemen to great advantage, the Byzantines quickly broke the few rebel horse in their arm. The Byzantines, who had managed to become one of the most feared archery force in the world, again, because eastern warfare demanded this shift, rained an ungodly storm of iron death onto the rebel front ranks as the Byzantine infantry closed in for the final blow. Within a few hours of fighting, the rebels had broken and were fleeing the field, and it is in the retreat that the most casualties in battle are often taken, and this is the time to unleash the cavalry.

Byzantine horsemen ran down their opponents, having broken the rebel cavalry wing, the rebels had no effective force to screen their retreat and the flight turned into a slaughtering. Half of the rebel casualties were taken during the flight, and with over half their numbers lost, the Byzantine victory was complete. Two days later, Basil I marched into Claudiopolis and was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd, happy to have seen law and order restored to this region.

However, Basil then shifted westward to deal with the threats created in Greece. The Greek rebels were marching on Constantinople, and while the Theodosian Walls had protected the city before, Basil wasn’t keen to take any chance in allowing the jewel of civilization, and the envy of the western world to fall into the hands of pretenders. Although, by this time, it is also true to say that another eastern city, Baghdad, was becoming the new Constantinople as that city was becoming the beacon of learning and enlightenment which would spark the Islamic Golden Age (See Chapter 6).

Enewald said:

The Muslim conquest of Sicily is quite weird. Somehow it took them almost 200 years, which meant 200 years of gradual Byzantine losses.
Good to see Sicily reconquered.

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I never said the Byzantines re-took Sicily. In the post before this I wrote that they concluded a peace in order to respond to the civil wars. They were winning, but I switched from Italy to Byzantium after the fact. By "Win" I meant that the Byzantines had won their war, even if they got nothing out of it territory wise. Sorry for the confusion.

NACBEAST said:

It is interesting to see how three different variations of the Bubonic Plague had three different, startling effects. The Plague in the 1400s, like you said, set the economy of the Middle East back, the Black Death helped make possible the advancement of the European economy past Feudalism, while the Justinian Plague weakened the Byzantine Empire to the point where, combined with the wars with the Persians, an upstart empire was able to get in some solid victories and take over vast territories from the good old Romans.

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Nature has a way of influencing the direction of history. The influence of nature upon history is dearly overlooked. I mean, I read a pretty amazing book about the Little Ice Age and how that helped to lay the foundations for the eventual French Revolution, which begets the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars since French agricultural production was on the decline. I was still struck by how devastating the plagues of the 1400s were on Egypt and the Middle East. I mean, the Mamluks were struck by 7 plagues in a span of 50 years. That's pretty brutal...

MelonMan678 said:

This is awesome writing. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread.

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Thank you. I just wish my publishers would think the same thing!

Dr.Livingstone said:

I always found it unfortunate how you could not have naval battles in CK2. What's the point of the Bosporus if you can't stop armies from crossing? I any case, great update as usual, and it's nice to see Sicily in the hands of the Empire once more.

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Apropos Sicily, see my response to Enewald.

I think it's odd too that there is no naval combat mechanic in CK2. For the Mediterranean, it should be included just for historical accuracy!

NACBEAST said:

Yeah, the lacking of naval action is weird. I mean, for the rest of Europe fine, naval engagements weren't exactly a big thing. But for the Eastern Roman Empire? Hell, we define a version of napalm as "Greek Fire" for how iconic it was.

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Sure, navies in Western Europe don't become important until the Late Middle Ages but especially not until the Age of Discovery, but as you mention, naval warfare brought the rise and fall of the great powers of the Mediterranean throughout history. First Carthage, then Rome, then the Byzantines, then the O.E. I was a bit disappointed when I learned that naval combat was not included, although, to a certain degree, I was not all that surprised since when people think "Middle Ages," they don't necessarily have naval combat on their mind.

stnylan said:

Decisive action brings it's own rewards. I do like the remembrance that although the Empire of this time might be thought to have fallen, it was still quite beyond most everything else. I am partially thinking of the descriptions of Luitprand and his general gobsmacked tone when he talks of Constantinople.

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I'll have to read Luitprand then. Having done so much work on the empire's last years as of late, I've been reading a lot of material from Europeans, even in the beginning of the 15th century when the "empire" only had a single city to its name (that little despotate of the Morea doesn't really count), many Europeans thought the Byzantines were still in a position of strength and that the Turks could easily be repelled back into Asia Minor. Naturally, Varna and then Constantinople all in the span of 9 years shattered that wrongly-held belief.

Chapter 4: Crisis in the Byzantine Empire




The walls of Constantinople were the most impregnable bastion of defensive engineering ever devised in human history. For nearly one millennium, the walls were never penetrated, with only a few exceptions. The Theodosian walls, as they became known after being built by the Emperor Theodosius, were a marvel of engineering and mathematic skill and feat in Late Antiquity.

Constantinople, while being in a good defensible position, was also situated on an active fault line that often resulted in terrible earthquakes and other natural disasters. During Attila’s reign of terror across Europe, the walls were destroyed by a series of earthquakes, and with Attila moving toward the city – it seemed like nothing would be able to stop the terrifying Hun from sacking the city. In a record 60 days, the walls were repaired and a second line of walls, backing the first with a moat in between, were also constructed whereby when Attila appeared, the walls stood pristine and even more impregnable than before. Throughout its history, the walls of the city were struck and ruined by earthquakes, but the Byzantines used an unique sediment that would sway with the earthquakes to relieve some of the stress to the walls, yet another marvel of ancient engineering.

As Basil was returning from his victories in Asia Minor, he felt confident that the walls of the city would hold up against any attack. The rebels in Greece knew that their window of opportunity was closing, and closing fast. The rebels amassed an army of about 2,000 and were marching east out of Bulgaria headed for the city of Constantinople, but were intercepted by the Byzantine Army with much speed and haste.

At the small Bulgarian village of Klokotnitsa, nearly 4,600 Byzantine soldiers stood against 2,000 rebels. Basil organized his army in a traditional military style, with infantry at front, cavalry held on the flanks, his archers in rear, and himself (and his personal guard) in reserve. The rebels lined up in a similar fashion, hoping to withstand the brunt of the Byzantine attack. During the formation of the armies, the Byzantine captain of the horse – Michael Katakalon, noticed the weak cavalry arm of the rebels and reorganized all the Byzantine horsemen onto the left flank of the Byzantine army and started the battle by attacking the much smaller and divided rebel cavalry arm. Just like at Claudiopolis, the rebel cavalry was routed in quick fashion and it paved the way for the infantry to move in and begin the horrible slaughter that followed.

The battle was a terrible display of the warfare that had come to dominate Late Antiquity and the early medieval period. Less a display of the military skill of maneuvering than in the past, the two sides simply had at one another and the stronger of the two sides would inevitably emerge victorious. The rebels, without an effective cavalry wing to protect their flanks, were soon pinned by Byzantine infantry and cavalry simultaneously and were eventually routed from the field, losing the vast majority of their force – some 1500 dead and wounded and captured. During the rebel flight from the field, the Byzantine cavalry rode down their enemies, with some accounts stating that many hundreds were crushed by the weight of the horses – essentially trampled to death by the tanks of ancient world. When later archeologists explored the battlefield, they found skulls crushed – evidence of this horrible death.

The destruction of the rebel army was complete, and Basil swiftly moved west to curb the rebellious areas back into control. Over the next two years, the Byzantines were engaged in a war of attrition, essentially, as they slowly restored order to the rebellious lands, executed the traitorous nobles who had risen up against the emperor, and ultimately levelled the strong hand of oppressive justice onto those who had taken up arms against the imperium.

The struggle against Basil I seemed to be finally contained, and with order restored, the Byzantines began a period of reform and renaissance. Basil was a great patron of the arts, and himself was somewhat a scholar – the ideal of the philosopher king of Plato.

The late Renaissance in Italy often gets attention as being the grand rediscovery of classical knowledge. Today, this view is generally no longer accepted. The Macedonian Renaissance of the late ninth and tenth century equaled the same level of artistic capability, classical learning, and general interest in humanist philosophy. Not only were great works of art produced, but new buildings – large in size and beautiful in concept, like the Magnaura, were constructed.

The longstanding view that culture is rooted in religion is evidenced from this period of renaissance in the Byzantine Empire. While there were alternative works of art produced, they almost always were of a religious nature. And with the ending of the Iconoclasm, the Macedonian Renaissance also marked a resurgence in the creation and implementation of icons for, and in, the Orthodox Church. Magnificent paintings and icons, often depicting the Virgin Mary and her son – Jesus of Nazareth, tended to be the focus of this new period artwork.

In addition, while the Platonic Academy was closed under Justinian, neo-Platonic philosophy experienced a brief revival in the theological works of Orthodox churchmen. This marked the climax of the integration of Hellenistic philosophy into Christian theology, something that later Protestants would claim to be evidence of the Catholic Church (which was not exempted from this integration) and the Orthodox Church’s apostasy. This too, would also become a major issue of debate in the Islamic World (see Chapter 6) where more conservative Sunnis claimed that the Islamic clergy had been tainted by Pagan philosophy and could no longer be trusted.

I should take the time to point out, that unlike the fundamentalism found in Protestantism, the Latin and Eastern church traditions have always stated that truth could be found in non-Christian religions. It is from this tradition that the Church incorporated otherwise “Pagan” philosophy into their theology – for example, the Aristotelian notion of single God is evidence enough that the Greek philosophers, in particular, had some understanding of the truth of God but simply lacked the materialistic revelation found in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Greek Atomism, and the Platonic understanding of the eternal soul, were also included as being fundamental truths shared by Christians and Greek Pagans. As a matter of fact, the Christian belief in the eternal soul is rooted entirely in the Greek Hellenistic philosophical tradition.

Before order comes chaos. The Nicaean Civil War served as the chaos before the restoration of order under Basil. The Byzantine victory, not only served as the re-implementation of political and economic order and hegemony in the Eastern Mediterranean, for the time being at least, but it also served as the beginning of the Macedonian Renaissance, a period of high culture and learning that rivalled the Italian Renaissance four centuries later. In the stereotypical “dark ages,” the flames shined exceptionally bright in Constantinople (not to mention it also shown brightly, perhaps even brighter, in Baghdad, see Chapter 6 and an in the cathedrals and monasteries of Western Europe – who were also experiencing a great philosophical and theological revival in the aftermath of the fall of the Roman Empire).

stnylan said:

Before was chaos, but perhaps entropy wins out in the network.

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I'm not sure the people, even the great minds of this era, understand entropy and thermodynamics yet!

Enewald said:

And also Damasq, Chang'an, Cairo and Cordoba shone quite brightly.
Can't wait until money-hungry Paradox one day release China expansion for Ck2.

Now with the rebellion crushed, let the rofltstomping begin. Crete, Cilicia, Coloneia, Cyprus, Magna Graecia.

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Cairo, more like Alexandria (again), but Cairo too if I were to get to the Mamluks, which I'm not since this is going to end with the end of Late Antiquity, and I'm of the camp that it ends sometime in the 10th century or beginning of the 11th (a complete incorporation of the Early Medieval Period!)

Although Cordoba will and the Umayyads in Spain will be covered, eventually...

As for the Byzantines, I'm not playing them as them anymore! Moved on to the Abbasids afterward...