Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium, episode 333, The Bachelorhood of

Basil II with Mark Masterson.

Welcome back to the podcast.

I hope you're recovering from 1453.

Before we talk about what happened after the fall of Constantinople,

I have a few very interesting interviews for you on a variety of different topics.

And we begin today on the 1, 1000th anniversary of the death of Basil II. Yes, Basil died on the 10th of December 1025 and several listeners prompted me

to mark this special day with an episode about one of Byzantium's greatest

emperors. I'm sure Basil needs little introduction or reintroduction, one of the longest

re-reigning and most successful Roman emperors in history. During his decades on the throne,

he maintained and expanded the eastern conquests of his

predecessors, while also conquering Bulgaria and blinding quite a few people. Most infamously,

though, Basil never married. An almost unprecedented decision for a ruler of any state.

We discussed all the possibilities at the time,

and concluded that most likely Basil made that decision for political as well as personal reasons.

Having spent the first 25 years of his life under the thumb of different men and women, and having faced two

serious attempts to overthrow him, he seems to have decided to concentrate all power in his

own hands, going so far as to sacrifice his own family life.

In the 21st century, we would naturally wonder if homosexuality was part of the equation,

though even if it was, it would not explain everything. Hadrian, for example, made his affair

with Antinous very public, but was still married to a woman. But if attraction to men was part of Basil's

makeup, it could offer a clue as to how he was able to live without a wife, or why no female

...