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Byzantium Unbound
For a civilization that preserved its existence and integrity against overwhelming odds and contributed in captivating ways to the diversity of human culture, Byzantium is strangely one of the most maligned and misunderstood civilizations of the past. The way in which history has been carved up into periods has worked to its disadvantage, and Byzantium has been artificially cut off from its Roman roots. This book proposes a long view of Byzantium, one that begins in the early Roman empire and extends all the way to the modern period. It is a provocative thought-experiment which posits Byzantium as the most stable and enduring form of Greco-Roman society, forming a sturdy bridge between antiquity and the early modern period, as well as between East and West, and which sees the ancient Greek, Roman, and Christian traditions as flowing together. It offers a Byzantium unbound by other cultures and fields of study that would artificially cut it down to size.
- GenresHistory
128 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 2019
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98 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Kaldellis
35 books166 followersPh.D. University of Michigan, Department of History (2001)
Anthony Kaldellis’ research explores the history, culture, and literature of the east Roman empire from antiquity to the fifteenth century. An earlier phase of it focused on the reception of ancient Hellenic culture, for example on how authors conceived their projects in relation to classical models (Procopius of Caesarea, 2004), as well as the history of identities (Hellenism in Byzantium, 2007), monuments (The Christian Parthenon, 2009), and genres (Ethnography after Antiquity, 2013). A second phase brought to light the enduring Roman matrices of Byzantine life and thought, focusing on its political sphere (The Byzantine Republic, 2015) and ethnic identities (Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, 2019). He has translated into English the works of many medieval Greek writers, such as Prokopios, Genesios, Psellos, Attaleiates, and Laonikos Chalkokondyles. His own monographs have been translated into other modern languages, including Turkish, French, Romanian, Russian, and Greek. In 2019, he created the first academic podcast for his field, Byzantium & Friends. He has just published a new, comprehensive history of Byzantium, The New Roman Empire (2023), which embeds social, economic, religious, and demographic developments within a lively narrative framework.
Anthony Kaldellis’ research explores the history, culture, and literature of the east Roman empire from antiquity to the fifteenth century. An earlier phase of it focused on the reception of ancient Hellenic culture, for example on how authors conceived their projects in relation to classical models (Procopius of Caesarea, 2004), as well as the history of identities (Hellenism in Byzantium, 2007), monuments (The Christian Parthenon, 2009), and genres (Ethnography after Antiquity, 2013). A second phase brought to light the enduring Roman matrices of Byzantine life and thought, focusing on its political sphere (The Byzantine Republic, 2015) and ethnic identities (Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, 2019). He has translated into English the works of many medieval Greek writers, such as Prokopios, Genesios, Psellos, Attaleiates, and Laonikos Chalkokondyles. His own monographs have been translated into other modern languages, including Turkish, French, Romanian, Russian, and Greek. In 2019, he created the first academic podcast for his field, Byzantium & Friends. He has just published a new, comprehensive history of Byzantium, The New Roman Empire (2023), which embeds social, economic, religious, and demographic developments within a lively narrative framework.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 14, 2022
Don't you love it when a historian just opens a can of whoop-ass
February 25, 2020
Excellent explanation and encouragement to Byzantinists everywhere to make its history more accessible to the public.
I do agree with everything he says, but he doesn't go quite far enough. He needs to get Byzantinists to write in a way that accessible to the general public, not just to other academic historians. That means not using exotic (to the general public but apparently not to academics) words like prosopography and teleology. Maybe writing paragraphs that aren't half a page (or longer!) long.
Still, Kaldellis says what needs to be said. I wonder who is listening, though.
I do agree with everything he says, but he doesn't go quite far enough. He needs to get Byzantinists to write in a way that accessible to the general public, not just to other academic historians. That means not using exotic (to the general public but apparently not to academics) words like prosopography and teleology. Maybe writing paragraphs that aren't half a page (or longer!) long.
Still, Kaldellis says what needs to be said. I wonder who is listening, though.
July 13, 2022
Kaldellis defiende aquí la vigencia e importancia de la bizantinística, su integración dentro de la historia romana, su contribución fundamental a las clásicas y su delimitación frente a la intrusión de otras especialidades históricas (Como el medievalismo)
No es realmente un texto de historia pero es una buena introducción al estudio de la historia de los 'romioi' e incluye una amplia bibliografía para ampliar el conocimiento sobre el tema.
Kaldellis defends here the validity and importance of Byzantinism, its integration within Roman history, its fundamental contribution to the classics and its delimitation against the intrusion of other historical specialties (such as medievalism)
It is not really a history text but it is a good introduction to the study of the history of the 'romioi' and includes an extensive bibliography to broaden the knowledge on the subject.
October 12, 2025
Anthony Kaldellis’s "Byzantium Unbound" is a sharp and provocative reassessment of how the West has misunderstood the so-called Byzantine Empire. Across 128 pages, Kaldellis dismantles centuries of prejudice – what he calls "Roman denialism" – and argues that the people we label "Byzantines" were, in fact, Romans who maintained the institutions, language, and identity of Rome long after its supposed fall. The book traces the layers of "Byzantinophobia" from medieval propaganda and Renaissance contempt to Enlightenment caricatures and modern Orientalism. Each layer, he shows, distorted our perception of an empire that preserved classical learning, Roman governance, and Christian thought longer than any other civilization in history.
Beyond historiography, Kaldellis makes a larger point: Byzantium – or rather, East Rome – should not be treated as a relic of the Middle Ages, but as the continuation of Roman civilization itself. He challenges both classicists and medievalists to rethink their disciplinary boundaries, showing how much of what we know of antiquity survives only because Byzantine scholars copied, studied, and commented on ancient texts. "When you enter a library full of Greek and Latin classics," he writes, "you are walking through a Byzantine library."
This concise, argumentative essay reads like a manifesto for a new historical consciousness – one that reclaims Byzantium’s place in the Roman continuum and calls for a more integrated vision of European history. Together with the author’s "The Case for East Roman Studies" (published by the same press and conceived as its companion volume), this book forms a coherent whole that exposes the roots of the many prejudices embedded in the very term "Byzantium" – and explains why it’s time to abandon that label.
Beyond historiography, Kaldellis makes a larger point: Byzantium – or rather, East Rome – should not be treated as a relic of the Middle Ages, but as the continuation of Roman civilization itself. He challenges both classicists and medievalists to rethink their disciplinary boundaries, showing how much of what we know of antiquity survives only because Byzantine scholars copied, studied, and commented on ancient texts. "When you enter a library full of Greek and Latin classics," he writes, "you are walking through a Byzantine library."
This concise, argumentative essay reads like a manifesto for a new historical consciousness – one that reclaims Byzantium’s place in the Roman continuum and calls for a more integrated vision of European history. Together with the author’s "The Case for East Roman Studies" (published by the same press and conceived as its companion volume), this book forms a coherent whole that exposes the roots of the many prejudices embedded in the very term "Byzantium" – and explains why it’s time to abandon that label.
December 31, 2023
I got recommended this book at a conference. Given its short length and the recommendation, I think I might have been expecting more of an introduction or overview to Byzantine history, but that’s not really what this book is at all: it’s making an argument, and an argument that’s as much about the field of Byzantine studies as it is about the historical Byzantine Empire. Perhaps a quote from the introduction would help give an indication of the nature of this argument: per the author, the book is “a thought-experiment in seeing the ancient Greek, Roman, and Christian traditions as flowing together, without great ruptures, to form this one particular civilization, and only this one. It presents Byzantium as an unparalleled vantage-point from which we can look back to ancient history and forward to modernity, as well as west to the origins of Europe and east to the Islamic world, without great obstructions in one’s field of vision.”
Part of the aim in making this argument is to rebut what Kaldellis sees as flaws in both medieval and modern western understandings of Byzantium. These include what he calls “Roman denialism” (i.e., the attempt by medieval western Europeans to reject claims by the Byzantines to be a continuation of the Roman Empire), the medieval recycling of anti-Greek stereotypes in characterizing the Byzantines, and a persistent view through the early modern period and beyond of Greece as degraded or degenerated, a stand-in for the superstition and fanaticism that early modern and Enlightenment writers saw themselves as moving beyond. (Kaldellis notes both that Greece at this point had been restructured by the loss of autonomy under the Ottomans and that early modern European antiquity-seekers had a vested interest in depicting the Greeks as unworthy of stewarding their own cultural heritage.) There’s an interesting discussion here of the deliberate distinction drawn in the nineteenth century between a neutral Byzantine studies and the more politically charged “Greek,” associated with modern Greek nationalism and conflicts such as the Crimean War.
In general, there’s a lot here that we might call “inside baseball”—critiques of the historical frames used to study Byzantium, such as the division between “late antiquity” and “medieval” when it comes to the Roman Empire (or history more generally), or of scholars’ separation of Greek, Roman, and Christian elements in studying the Byzantines. He makes the point that much of what we have of ‘classical’ Greek literature is filtered through Byzantine writers and scribes and takes this pointed shot at classicists: “Well, it turns out that the house that classicists live in is a Byzantine house made from a careful Byzantine selection of ancient materials. Whatever they think Byzantium was, classicists need to start revising it quickly, and if they know nothing about it, then they need to start learning.” I’m not a classicist or a Byzantinist, but I do think this was a very useful read for medievalists or classicists of any stripe. A lot of what’s being critiqued isn’t individual misconceptions but larger frameworks, and the perspective Kaldellis offers is a useful one, particularly at a moment when terms such as the Global Middle Ages are enjoying heightened popularity in medieval studies and medievalists are seeking to explore connections between western Europe and the rest of the world. There’s perhaps a caution here that this quest, if not taken with care, can replicate the problematic exclusions or self-interested hierarchization of previous generations of scholarship.
Part of the aim in making this argument is to rebut what Kaldellis sees as flaws in both medieval and modern western understandings of Byzantium. These include what he calls “Roman denialism” (i.e., the attempt by medieval western Europeans to reject claims by the Byzantines to be a continuation of the Roman Empire), the medieval recycling of anti-Greek stereotypes in characterizing the Byzantines, and a persistent view through the early modern period and beyond of Greece as degraded or degenerated, a stand-in for the superstition and fanaticism that early modern and Enlightenment writers saw themselves as moving beyond. (Kaldellis notes both that Greece at this point had been restructured by the loss of autonomy under the Ottomans and that early modern European antiquity-seekers had a vested interest in depicting the Greeks as unworthy of stewarding their own cultural heritage.) There’s an interesting discussion here of the deliberate distinction drawn in the nineteenth century between a neutral Byzantine studies and the more politically charged “Greek,” associated with modern Greek nationalism and conflicts such as the Crimean War.
In general, there’s a lot here that we might call “inside baseball”—critiques of the historical frames used to study Byzantium, such as the division between “late antiquity” and “medieval” when it comes to the Roman Empire (or history more generally), or of scholars’ separation of Greek, Roman, and Christian elements in studying the Byzantines. He makes the point that much of what we have of ‘classical’ Greek literature is filtered through Byzantine writers and scribes and takes this pointed shot at classicists: “Well, it turns out that the house that classicists live in is a Byzantine house made from a careful Byzantine selection of ancient materials. Whatever they think Byzantium was, classicists need to start revising it quickly, and if they know nothing about it, then they need to start learning.” I’m not a classicist or a Byzantinist, but I do think this was a very useful read for medievalists or classicists of any stripe. A lot of what’s being critiqued isn’t individual misconceptions but larger frameworks, and the perspective Kaldellis offers is a useful one, particularly at a moment when terms such as the Global Middle Ages are enjoying heightened popularity in medieval studies and medievalists are seeking to explore connections between western Europe and the rest of the world. There’s perhaps a caution here that this quest, if not taken with care, can replicate the problematic exclusions or self-interested hierarchization of previous generations of scholarship.
May 9, 2025
Absolutely no punches were pulled in this deconstruction of the various external shallow understandings on Byzantium (ERE).
Professor Kaldellis is warrior in the fight to demonstrate the vital relevance of Byzantium in disciplines from classics to medieval studies.
Professor Kaldellis is warrior in the fight to demonstrate the vital relevance of Byzantium in disciplines from classics to medieval studies.
May 1, 2022
If all historiography were written this well...
May 26, 2024
A pithy, punchy, and remarkably concise explanation of what the Byzantine Empire was and was not and what it should be for modern interested parties.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews