In the second half of the tenth century, Byzantium embarked on a series of spectacular conquests. By the early eleventh century, the empire was the most powerful state in the Mediterranean. Yet this imperial project came to a crashing collapse fifty years later, when political disunity, fiscal mismanagement, and defeat at the hands of the Seljuks and the Normans brought an end to Byzantine hegemony. By 1081, Byzantium's very existence was threatened. How...

Traces the history, society, culture, and lasting influences of the Byzantine Empire, which grew from the decaying Roman empire and ruled from Constantinople from the fourth to the end of the fifteenth century.

Describes Byzantium's battles against foreign threats, its internal conflicts, the return of iconoclasm in the ninth century, and the struggles between Anatolia's military aristocracy and the eunuchs of the capital.

John Julius Norwich tell the story of the Byzantine EMpire from its beginnings to the emergence of its only European rival, the Holy Roman Epire in AD 800.

Included are elaborate examples of Aegean costume, Doric and Ionic styles of dress for women, Greek and Roman armor, graceful and intricately arranged Roman togas, more. Ornate vestments of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Byzantine costumes are carefully described and portrayed as are styles of hairdressing, jewelry, and other decorative elements. 315 black-and-white illustrations.

Discusses the Roman Empire's rise to greatness as well as its eventual decline and fall brought about by increasingly dramatic military, economic, and social changes.

According to tradition, the First Crusade began at Pope Urban II's instigation and culminated in July 1099, when western European knights liberated Jerusalem. But what if the First Crusade's real catalyst lay far to the east of Rome? Countering nearly a millennium of scholarship, Peter Frankopan reveals the First Crusade's untold history.