Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium.

Episode 86, The Byzantine Republic with Antonychal Delus

Today we have a fascinating interview with Professor Antonychal Delus, the author of the book

The Byzantine Republic.

Now Professor Codeles is someone I've quoted on the podcast before.

It was his book Hellenism in Byzantium that was a major source for episode 41, who is a Byzantine.

And it was that book that gave us the great story of the child in 1904, saying,

we are Romans to the Greek soldier.

Professor Codeles works at Ohio State University and has translated numerous Byzantine texts.

The Byzantine Republic, as you might be able to tell from the title, is making the case

for the survival into Byzantine times of something of the Roman Republic in past.

Now I'm leaving that deliberately vague because you need to listen to the whole interview

to get the full context of what he's arguing.

I think you will enjoy this a lot.

It is a long interview, about now and ten minutes, but you'll get a lot from it.

Before we begin, let me just add a couple of things for context.

Professor Codeles has Greek ancestry and was in Athens at the time of recording.

And it was a few days before the Greek referendum back in July 2015 on whether to accept bailout

terms being offered by the European Central Bank.

The book was published back in February 2015, but while the book was being written, the

events of the Arab Spring of 2011 were fresh in his mind, so that may help explain why

those events are used to make comparisons with Byzantium.

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