Hello everyone, today's episode is about the legacy of Byzantium. We're a little ahead

of schedule with this question, as we still have 400 years of narrative to go, but three

different kickstarter backers asked about this, and so that's what we're taking a look at

today. Obviously this is a huge topic, and there is a passionate dispute still raging

about who isn't descended from the Byzantines and some of their neighbours. And even a cursory

glance at the literature surrounding it leads you down many rabbit holes, so let's try and

stay focused on the specifics of each listener's question, and remember that I am giving you

my opinion based on the studying I have done so far.

Okay, listen a pf asks what is the legacy of the Byzantine Empire, what has it left in its

wake that influences us today? When I think about that question, my mind expects the answer to be

about small specifics, a piece of technology like the fork or an innovation in writing, like the

minuscule text. We could trace their origins to Byzantium and then conclude that the Empire

bequeathed it to posterity, but I'm not taking that approach today. Whenever I explore an aspect of

Byzantine culture in detail, I end up having to go back further than by Byzantium itself to the Roman

Empire as a whole or onto the Hellenistic era and even to ancient Greece. Now of course,

Byzantium did innovate in ways that are still affecting us, but untangling credit for particular

ideas or concepts can be a joyless task. To me, the simpler answer to this question is that

Byzantium existed for over a thousand years. Most of that time, it occupied a significant amount

of territory and was a model of government and settled living for many of its neighbors.

And on that simple measure, Byzantium had a massive influence on world history and that influence

still affects us today. Regardless of how you feel about the following, I think all of them can be

attributed in part to the existence of the Empire and specifically to the founding of Constantinople.

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