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Episode 336 - 10 Influential East Romans with Anthony Kaldellis. Part 2

January 14, 2026·1 hr 11 min·5 clips

Psellos's history uses cinematic techniques to dissect emperor's insecurities better than any ancient writer.

1. The History of Byzantium episode 336 is the second part of an interview with Professor Anthony Kaldellis on ten influential East Romans who shaped Byzantine culture outside the political narrative. 2. Professor Kaldellis is a classics and Byzantine studies scholar who has written extensively on Psellos and translated several Byzantine historians, including what he describes as the historian of the fall of Constantinople. 3. The episode covers five figures: Photius (born around 810), Michael Psellos (born around 1017), Anna Komnene (daughter of Emperor Alexios, writing in the 12th century), Eustathius of Thessaloniki (born 1115), and Plethon, also known as George Gemistus (born 1355). 4. Kaldellis selects Photius not primarily for his Bibliotheca — nearly 300 reviews of ancient texts that preserve knowledge of lost works — but because he stands in for the Orthodox-Catholic controversy, the central fault line in East-West Christian relations down to the present. 5. He argues the rupture should be called the Nicholas Schism rather than the Photian Schism, because in every case it was Pope Nicholas who initiated excommunication of the Patriarch of Constantinople. 6. Kaldellis describes Photius as resembling a competent university dean who cultivated institutional allies, generally aligned himself with the emperors, and has been unfairly demonized in Catholic scholarship as an arch-villain whose evil caused the schism. 7. For Michael Psellos, Kaldellis singles out the Chronographia as off the charts compared to anything in ancient historiography — describing it as cinematographic, with Psellos explicitly directing the reader's gaze between scenes and constructing psychological portraits of emperors through moments of doubt, fear, and insecurity rather than enumerated events. 8. He quotes Psellos writing 'now we leave the couple in their amorous embraces and we move to the different tableau' as an example of the narrative self-consciousness that no ancient historian — including Suetonius or Tacitus — achieves. 9. Kaldellis identifies Psellos's philosophical agenda as injecting Neoplatonism into Byzantine intellectual life, describing how Psellos would formally disclaim Proclus then proceed to interpret scripture entirely through Proclus. 10. He notes that Psellos claimed to have revitalized learning single-handedly — a claim Kaldellis calls probably not entirely true but acknowledges was not entirely false, given the wave of 12th-century authors who cite and praise him. 11. Anna Komnene is included because the Alexiad is intrinsically good enough to have survived and be read more widely today than when written — not merely because of its author's identity. 12. Kaldellis recommends Leonora Neville's Oxford book on Anna Komnene as the work that finally explained the 'whiplash' quality of the Alexiad — the abrupt shifts between hard military history and emotional laments for long-dead family members, which he frames as Anna navigating competing gender obligations. 13. He notes that Anna's patronage of philosophers produced commentaries on Aristotle by Eustratus of Nicaea and others, which became important in the transmission of ancient philosophy to the West. 14. Eustathius of Thessaloniki, born 1115, is included as the exemplar of classical scholarship: his commentaries on the Iliad and Odyssey run to roughly 4,000 and 2,000 pages respectively, and Kaldellis suggests no modern scholar has read everything Eustathius wrote. 15. Kaldellis highlights Eustathius's moment of resistance to Emperor Manuel Komnenos, who wanted to ease conversion for Muslims by removing the requirement to condemn Allah — Eustathius opposed this at a meeting and left it at that, unlike other Byzantine churchmen who wrote angry treatises. 16. Plethon, born George Gemistus around 1355, is Kaldellis's final choice: a layman and near-certain non-Christian who operated a school at Mystra and advocated replacing Christianity with a reformed Platonic civic ethics as the only path out of Ottoman domination. 17. Kaldellis explains that Plethon took the name Plethon because it alliterates with Plato (Platon in Greek) and means something similar to his birth name Gemistus, meaning 'stuffed' or 'full.' 18. Plethon traveled with Emperor John VIII to the Council of Florence, where he connected with Leonardo Bruni and other Italian humanists; his students included Bessarion, who became a Catholic cardinal and created the Greek library in Venice. 19. The interview format is conversational and clearly aimed at listeners who have followed the full History of Byzantium narrative, with Robin frequently connecting figures to episodes already covered and Kaldellis offering reading recommendations at the end of each entry. 20. Listeners interested in Byzantine intellectual history, the history of classical scholarship, and the transmission of ancient philosophy to the Renaissance will find this episode closely suited to their interests.

As heard by us

A careful conversation about Byzantine culture, historical portraiture, and why some figures outlast the throne.

Anthony Kordelis broadens the discussion beyond the political arc and toward five East Romans who shaped Byzantine culture in other ways, starting with Photius.

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Why you'd press play

If you want Photius, East Romans, and a calm conversation about how historians build character portraits, press play.

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