Hi everyone, Robin again, just a quick update to say what you're about to hear is the first of the Byzantine stories series.

A show within a show to find the interesting stories that don't appear in our podcast narrative.

This episode is for free as you can tell and if you want to hear parts 2, 3 and 4 you can now buy them at the history of Byzantium.com.

This is also the signal that the next narrative episode is now available also for sale. It is the fundraising episode.

If you're going to buy one podcast this year, please make it that one and support the podcast.

If you have any questions email me at the history of Byzantium at gmail.com or refer to the previous podcast where hopefully I explained what's happening with the sale.

For now, enjoy Byzantine stories.

Byzantine stories episode 1, John Chrysostom.

Part 1, welcome to Antioch.

We're going back in time to before the history of Byzantium, deep into the history of Rome.

We're going back to 350 AD to Antioch, one of the greatest cities of the Roman Empire.

This is before Kusro sacked the place and burnt it during Justinian's reign or the arrival of the plague.

In 350 AD it was a thriving metropolis, home to something like 150,000 people.

It was one of the great cities which Rome had conquered during its expansion, the former home of Alexander's generals, the capital of the Slyussid Empire, the end of the Silk Road, the largest city in the Levant, a city with a far greater reputation than Constantinople at this time.

It had been the headquarters of Roman administration in the east for centuries.

When emperors came to fight the Persians, they stayed in Antioch. Its royal palace was kept clean and tidy, waiting for their arrival.

The governor of Syria lived here. The master of soldiers for the east would often stay and his retinue would take up residence in the city, drinking and gambling when not on duty.

The administrators who taxed the eastern provinces worked here, messengers would pass through regularly heading back and forth to the new imperial capital, still being built on the boss for us.

Antioch was a stage on which transformations within the Roman world might take place, and in 350 AD a transformation was underway.

Only 13 years earlier, the emperor Constantine had departed this world, having made Christianity the dominant religion in the imperial pantheon.

We know that the followers of Christ were already well on the way to establishing their dominance over the Mediterranean, but at the time things seemed far less certain.

Constantine's son, Constantius II, now governed the eastern provinces, and he was a Christian despite his murderous relations with his family.

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