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Hello, this is our last program in the present run and we're going east.

In the middle of the fifth century with the barbarians at the gate, through the gate, and sacking

the city of Rome, the wide arch of the Rangian Empire finally began to fall or did it. In AD

395 the Emperor Theodosius had divided the vast Roman Empire between his two sons,

the northern and west European provinces was governed from Rome, but the Eastern Empire became

based on the Bosphorus in the city of Constantinople. And when Rome crumbled and the Dark Ages

are supposed to fall across Western Europe, the Eastern Roman Empire endured

with its ancient text, its classical outlook and its imperial society for another 1,000 years.

How did the Eastern Empire survive the fall of Rome? And why has it so often been sidelined and undermined by history and historians?

In today's program, we, like W.B. Yates, we'll sail the season and come to the Holy City of Byzantium. With me on this quest to the forgotten

empire is Charlotte Ruche, reader in classical and Byzantine Greek at Kings College London,

and author of The Making of Byzantine History. John Julius Norwich, author of a three-part history of Byzantium,

the early centuries, the apogee and decline and fall,

and Liz James, senior lecturer in the history of art at the University of Sussex,

and author of women, men and eunuchs in Byzantium.

Charlotte Roushe, let's begin at the beginning.

How did the Eastern Empire manage to survive for that thousand years when the West fell to the Goths in the middle of the fifth century? by that

the thousand years when the West fell to the Goths in the middle of the 5th century. Well, I'm always rather disappointed to think that the basic reasons may be

geopolitical because it would be much more fun if they were cultural. But I think a

fundamental reason is that when Constantine took the city of Byzantium, renamed it after himself, and made it the capital of the eastern half of the Roman Empire.

...