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Or if you're listening on the Apple Podcasts app, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks. The center of Constantinople had been left gutted.

Among the many treasures destroyed in the inferno had been the Senate House and all the antique statues with which

Constantine had long previously adorned the Bath House. Their loss had obliterated precious

links with what was by now a very distant past. Yet in truth Justinian was pleased to see

them gone. The Senate House had always loomed too large over the Auguste on for his

tastes. Its replacement, so he decreed, was to be built on a much smaller scale.

The monuments that Justinian aimed to found upon the rubble of the old would be raised to the glory, not of the traditional gods of the

Roman people, but of something very different. A single omnipotent God.

Tom, who wrote that deathless prose?

It was a top historian.

Is it yourself?

It was.

Yes it was.

So that's in the shadow of the sword.

...