Byzantine Empire at its greatest extent, 565
reparations! I demand reparations from the Byzantine Mutual Insurance group. They didn’t pay off leaving my ancestors holding the haversack.
It is amazing with the nonstop warfare and constantly changing boundaries across all the centuries that anybody quarried stone, sculpted it, transported it and built anything. It seems like the destroyers must have outnumbered the builders.
I marvel that, before commercial paper, plans could be drawn by draftsmen, communicated to far-away quarrymen, the stones provided to sculptors, the building ornaments and decorations created, and sent by ship to their destination. Letters of credit must have been used somehow to pay the distant workers.
The history of this part of the world is so complex and so confusing, especially when you bore down to small regional and local areas in the podcasts referenced on the “Byzantine Empire” link you provided.
What do you get?
Another day older
Deeper in debt
SunkenCiv,
Thank you for the post. I almost always read your fascinating posts, but just don’t comment as I have nothing to contribute.
Unlike the knuckle-draggers who have been mercifully spared from the ravages of intelligence or intellectual curiosity.
Thanks for posting!
Spolia - Genoa has some fascinating example of buildings made up of parts and pieces of such remnants used is ballast in ships coming back from the eastern med.
Re: Justinian’s court chronicler wrote a book cataloging Justinian’s extensive building projects
Is this the 565 AD version of “shovel ready” stimulus?
