Free Republic

Five gold coins from the time of Justinian the Great were found during archaeological excavations in the Trojan village of Debnevo, dariknews.bg reported.The coins were scattered on the floor of a burned-out dwelling from a later period. This was announced by Assoc. Dr. Stiliyan Ivanov from the National Historical Institute with a museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, who led the archaeological expedition exploring the fortress “Kaleto” above the village...The owners left all the inventory in the dwelling - two iron sickles, iron tools, a belt buckle, three bronze rings, various sized ceramic vessels, from which it can be...

This quote is taken from an exhortation by the Roman general Belisarius in AD 533 to his troops as they set out on the great campaign to wrest north Africa from the Vandals. The setting is the beach at Abydos, a city set on a promontory projecting into the Hellespont between the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara. Having left Constantinople by ship shortly before, Belisarius and his army had landed at Abydos to collect an additional load of cavalry mounts. Before they could set sail again, however, the wind died and left the fleet becalmed. Several days of...

I left off the previous post considering what might have happened if Belisarius had accepted the imperial diadem of the Western Empire when it was offered to him at the end of the first war in Italy in AD 540. Could he have remained on the throne? How would Justinian have reacted? Did Belisarius have the diplomatic and administrative skills to manage the Western Empire? Would his men have remained loyal to him and willing to advance his military goals abroad? In a best-case scenario that's perhaps not too far-fetched, the answer is yes, Belisarius could certainly have ruled...

"Whoever of you has hopes of setting foot in Rome without a fight is mistaken in his judgment. For as long as Belisarius lives, it is impossible for him to relinquish this city."~Belisarius to the Gothic envoys in AD 537 The above quote is taken from The History of the Wars by the late-Roman historian, Procopius of Caesarea. To set the scene, envision the grand Gothic army of over 100,000 mail-clad warriors newly arrived at their camps about the walls of Rome. Within the walls, Belisarius and his paltry force of less than 6,000 men could barely defend a fraction...

In March of the year AD 538, the late Roman general, Belisarius, pulled off one of the most incredible feats in military history: he successfully defended the massive city of Rome—with its 12 miles of circuit walls—with a scant 5,000 soldiers, against a vast army of Goths that outnumbered his own some 15 or 20 to 1. Indeed, by the time the Gothic King Vitiges broke up the siege after twelve frustrating months, it had become unclear which side was the besieged and which was the besieger. Unable to prevent the Romans from bringing in supplies or leaving the city...

When Justinian secured the so-called "Eternal Peace" with the Persians in AD 532 after the Battle of Daras, it is likely that he realized that the peace on his eastern frontier would not actually be perpetual. But he probably thought it would last longer that seven or eight years. In any event, the emperor made the most the respite, gathering his substantial forces from the east which had previously been on station to face down the Persian menace, and readying them for a thrust to the West. His first target was the Vandal Kingdom which had ruled Roman Africa for...

In the 6th century AD, during the reign of Emperor Justinian, the Roman Empire experienced an extraordinary resurgence, reconquering lands - including Italy, North Africa and Rome itself - that had been lost to the 'barbarians' a century before. Leading these campaigns, a brilliant Roman general named Flavius Belisarius - a skilled tactician, inspirational leader, pragmatic and humane. This is the story of those campaigns, as recorded by Procopius, an eyewitness to many of them, as well as other ancient historians, texts, and archaeological remains. Rome Strikes Back: Belisarius and the Wars of Justinian (ALL PARTS) | 2:14:46Epic History TV...

The sixth century historian Procopius, in both his History of the Wars, and The Secret History, mentions a sea monster--a gigantic whale--named Porphyrios that dwelt in the Bosporus Strait and the Black Sea, and which terrorized the shipping lanes around Constantinople for about fifty years, and which causes significant headaches for the Emperor Justinian & the Roman navy. Our information is fairly limited, but what can we say about this real life Moby Dick?SOURCES:The Secret History, ProcopiusThe History of the Wars, ProcopiusA Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities, KaldellisPinned by The Historian's CraftPorphyrios: The Sea Monster that Terrorized the Late Roman Empire3:51...

The Hagia Sophia, a Byzantine-era religious building in Istanbul, Turkey, was reportedly damaged last week when heavy cleaning equipment cracked the marble floors. It is just the latest incident in recent years that has seen the site damaged. The Hagia Sophia, constructed by the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I between 532 and 537, served as the largest Christian cathedral in the world until Constantinople was taken over by the Ottoman Empire in 1453. It was then turned into a mosque and subsequently into a museum by Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1935. Considered one of the most important religious...

There are several people alive that can personally attest to being eyewitnesses of the Vatican possessing Temple vessels, including the Menorah candelabra.ransomnote: at the link, a beautiful photo in the article.Pretend for a moment that the Vatican has in its possession some sacred and precious relics that were originally in the Herodian Jewish Temple located in Jerusalem 1,950 years ago.If you were the pope living in the 14th century and could verify this fact, would you not ask yourself how indeed such Jewish artifacts had come to your residence in the first place?After some digging around (no pun intended), you...

...bubonic plague may have reached England before its first recorded case in the Mediterranean via a currently unknown route, possibly involving the Baltic and Scandinavia...The Justinianic Plague is the first known outbreak of bubonic plague in west Eurasian history and struck the Mediterranean world at a pivotal moment in its historical development, when the Emperor Justinian was trying to restore Roman imperial power.For decades, historians have argued about the lethality of the disease; its social and economic impact; and the routes by which it spread. In 2019-20, several studies, widely publicised in the media, argued that historians had massively exaggerated...

Today is the feast day of Neoplatonic philosopher and Christian theologian Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius), author of The Consolation of Philosophy, and according to tradition martyred in 524 or 525, or possibly 526, by the Ostrogothic king Theodoric. Well, maybe. We know roughly as much about why Boethius was killed as when or how. We do know that he came from a line of prominent Romans (including a couple of popes back there, depending on who you count as “pope”), was himself consul in 510, and his sons were rather astonishingly joint consuls in 522. At that time he...

Federico De Romanis, "Comparative Perspectives on the Pepper Trade." ...compares quantitative data and other accounts of the pepper trade in Roman and Early Modern times and finds many broad similarities. Through his reading of both Roman and Early Modern European sources, De Romanis establishes that the Romans must have used both large and small ships carrying a very high proportion of pepper in their cargoes on the voyage from India. On the basis of recent readings of the Muziris papyrus, he argues that the Hermapollon, a large Roman ship, carried about 620 tons of pepper. De Romanis also considers the...

1500 years ago a pungent world plague nearly exterminated the human race! Thomas Short wrote: “from 562 A.D. a plague raged for 52 years the like of which has never been seen before or since!” Conventional wisdom maintains this worldwide plague began in Ethiopia and was carried by ship-born rats to Europe and beyond. With our new knowledge of bacteria and viruses being carried by vectors far above the Earth this theory of deployment has been questioned. Our pertinent scrutiny asks not only what caused this exterminating plague, with its incredible and unmatched virulence, but whether some parallel catastrophic events...

Another large-scale mosaic of a seraphim has been uncovered on the ceiling of Agia Sophia in Istanbul. The 6-winged angel of God was revealed when scaffolding set up 7 years ago to assist in restoration was finally dismantled, reports the Orthodoxia News Agency. Another of the four mosaics was uncovered in 2009. It had been hidden under plaster and metal for 160 years. The last person to see the mosaic was Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid and Swiss architects Guiseppe and Gaspare Fossati, who directed renovations at Agia Sophia from 1847 to 1849.

Moscow, July 6, Interfax - The Russian Orthodox Church has spoken against transformation of the Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Istanbul, which currently has the museum status, into a mosque. "There must be no return to the Medieval Period. We live in a multipolar world, a multi-confessional world, and feelings of believers must be respected," head of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion said in the Church and the World program of the television channel Rossiya 24. He admitted that modern Turkey had a predominantly Muslim population but said "there is no deficit of mosques" in Istanbul,...

Many have claimed the Justinianic Plague (c. 541-750 CE) killed half of the population of Roman Empire. Now, historical research and mathematical modeling challenge the death rate and severity of this first plague pandemic... White and Mordechai focused their efforts on the city of Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire, which had a comparatively well-described outbreak in 542 CE. Some primary sources claim plague killed up to 300,000 people in the city, which had a population of some 500,000 people at the time. Other sources suggest the plague killed half the empire's population. Until recently, many scholars accepted this image...

Click above for a video excerpt from The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius describing a personal encounter with the dreaded Plague of Justinian. The thought of pandemic troubles many souls these days. It is well to keep in mind that as bad as things may seem with regard to the deaths caused by the COVID-19 virus, we are not even within shouting distance of the type of utter and absolute societal devastation caused by the typical catastrophic historical plague. One of these epic pestilential events was the so-called Plague of Justinian of the mid-to-late 6th century AD. Erupting in AD 542,...

The life of Belisarius, the greatest military commander of the Roman Empire, came to a close in early March AD 565. Considering how much detail we have of his middle life and military career thanks to his secretary, the historian Procopius of Caesarea, we possess comparatively very little information about his final days. The chronicler John Malalas, writing perhaps 10 years after Belisarius's death, provides some of the only reliable notices of the hero's last acts, beginning with the plot against Justinian which was hatched in AD 562 and in which Belisarius was implicated as a co-conspirator. Malalas offers the...

<p>"Archaeologists in Israel have discovered a massive compound dating back to the Byzantine era, which was used for “industrial-scale” production of wine and olive oil.</p> <p>The site at Ramat Bet Shemesh about 19 miles west of Jerusalem contains an oil press, wine press and colorful mosaics, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority.</p>