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Radio War Nerd EP #447 — Belisarius, pt. 1 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-05-31 19:33:14
Imported:
2024-05
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Content

Recorded: May 29, 2024

The War Nerd escapes the NZ cold with the story of one of the greatest under-appreciated military commanders ever: Belisarius. (The irl Byzantine Belisarius, not the Warhammer B-.)

First — we briefly discuss the latest out of Ukraine & Gaza...

At 15:52 — we begin Belisarius, with background on the Roman Empire's division, heavy cavalry, the Sassanids, Belisarius, Justin and Justinian, the Battle of Dara, through the Nika Riots.

*Maps & Images

*Roman Empire split

*Belisarius' heavy cavalry

*Battle of Dara

 

Books mentioned:-Belisarius (two books), by Paolo Belzoni-Count Belisarius, by Robert Graves-Belisarius: The Last Roman General, by Ian Hughes-The Generalship of Belisarius, by Major Anthony Brogna

Total time: 1:09:13

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

*

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

Files

Comments

NYCM&AHole

Why so Beliserious? ::heath ledger joker voice::

Stewart Smith

Is the production company named for him?

theSmokingGun

Has anyone read the Robert Graves book? Count Belisarius?

MC

If HBO Rome ever came back, that Justinian period would make for excellent TV

JoR

Perfect birthday gift, a John and Mark only episode AND it's historical. Throw back to 2015 and the first 50 episodes or so 🙏. Nothing against guests but these are always the best episodes

John Waaben

I feel like John would rock with the Plague God Nurgle from 40k

Schaeffer Mallory

Having grown up in an Antiochian Orthodox Church (very strange phenomenon here in the south) I too was a Byzantium Head and was the designated contrarian in high school world history class

Michael

We get a Byzantine episode right after the John Brown episode? We’re truly blessed.

Ellen Harold

I became interested in Belisarius after seeing the Russian movie about General Zhukov. Although the legend of him being blinded and reduced to begging by Justinian before being called back to win more wars, although blind, the subject of many paintings, is now considered just that—a legend. Anyway, Europe was nominally under Byzantine rule until the 9th century, when the Byzantines failed to protect their western possessions against Islamic invasions. It was then that the Western church began to differentiate itself so markedly from Eastern theology, art, and architecture, anointing Charlemagne (no mean military leader) as revived Roman emperor.

No

I visited Ravenna recently, Belisarius is on the wall mosaic with Justinian in San Vitale Basilica. Byzantines had the best aesthetic hands down, John is right, not enough Byzantine fans out there

No

If anyone wants a swineherd to byzantine emperor simulator I highly reccomend Mount and Blade Bannerlord

William

Does it feel like you Dunedin know this place you used to call home?

Mark Sheffield

Recommend The Life of Belisarius, by Lord Mahon.

Clammy_Damp

I would for sure fuck with “Radio Court Intrigue Nerd”

Dave Dolle

I needed this episode.

Christopher Small

Couple issues to comment on: Probably the bigger issues why the Eastern Romans/Byzantines didn't get more attention from Western European historians was, first, hostility due to religious and political schisms. The Greek Orthodox church was an alien thing to Western Christendom by the late middle ages, and reports from the Crusades generally gave people the impression that the Byzantines were duplicitous and decadent (the Byzantine experience had left them similarly jilted, to say the least). Second WAS the language barrier, but of medieval monks, rather than 19th century headmasters. Greek was a notorious blind spot for medieval scholars to the point that "this part is greek and cannot be translated"/"it's all greek to me" was ubiquitous in book margins. The gap closed somewhat in the Renaissance, as the exodus of Greek scholars/clergy/text to the west opened led to some attempts at religious reconciliation and translations, but by that point all the path dependencies were already well set. Also, gotta ding John for repeating the now discredited "Adrianople and the dawn of cavalry" myth. The Goths at Adrianople were overwhelmingly infantry, and most historians agree the cavalry wasn't nearly as decisive as was once thought. Moreover, Rome had already been shifting towards cavalry by the point. First because Emperors had started using a mobile cavalry as their own personal armies during the Crisis of the Third Century to help plug holes in their frontiers/check potentially unroyal provincial generals. And second, more encounters with steppe nomads in the 4th-5th century just made it more practical, to the point that the Byzantine armies were heavily employing Hunnic tactics in their early period.

Neil Y

A classic war nerd ep. The current events eps are very much appreciated but these episodes are what make War Nerd War Nerd. Thanks!

Neil Y

Thanks for the corrections! I think we all benefit from them. Don't want to be that guy but sources would be appreciated, if anything just to further our learning.

Lo

I’m inordinately pleased that you mentioned the 40k Belisarius if only to disclaim him/it

Lo

Brecher is one billion percent an acolyte of The Grandfather

Nico

Byzaboos, rejoice!

Quinn

Agreed lol it was very nice to get a break from pure despair and hear john gush over cool history

Alex Muir

Stirrups! Why hasn't anyone mentioned how important the invention of stirrups allegedly was to making cavalry a true game changer in the battles of Late Antiquity? Being able to stand up in the saddle meant you could bring your mace or sword down with more force... Did the Huns or the Goths introduce them to Europe? In any case they were standard equipment by the time the emperor Maurice wrote the Strategikon, late C6th. All this comes up in the excellent "History of Byzantium" podcast...

burrito bronson

Radio war nerd needs a warhammer crossover

xnfec

I read it when I was a lot younger and really enjoyed it. I tried it again when I was older and found it slow going - but I found the same with Dune. Grave's books are not super long generally. though Belisarius and the Milton book are longer. They are usually a couple of hundred pages. He covers a lot of periods of history and his books are usually a reflection of his view of history. He has written about the English Civil War (war of the three kingdoms) in Wife to Mr Milton, about the American War of Independance (the Sargeant Lamb books), the early Iron Age - Homers Daughter and Jesus - King Jesus. The military side of things may not be a great interest of his, though he was a WW1 veteran (Goodbye to all that), but he does go into Belisarius's training of his troops and also mentions the Plumbata darts as I recall. Really though, he is very good at giving you a flavour of the time. He was very well read and classically trained. The Milton book was very slow as I recall - and long - but in the beginining he describes a 12th Night Party which I found really good and thought was the best part of the book. His daughter wrote a memoir of her upbringing with him in Deja, Mallorca which was fascinating in its own right.

xnfec

I believe Gallienus was the one who first started converting the legions to more mobile, mounted troops.

Raphael Brieger

Small nitpick: John referred to the Byzantine/Hun bows as compound bows, but compound bows are the hightech contraptions with pulleys and modern materials. The historic bows are called composite bows, since the bow limbs are a composition of horn on the side facing the shooter, wood in the center, and sinew on the side facing the target.

Christopher Small

Sure. The point on greek get's touched on in Ross King's The Bookseller of Florence, which has a lot of good info on the process of copying medieval manuscripts and the transfer of greek texts in the early renaissance (here's also a wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graecum_est,_non_legitur). The point about Adrianople goes back to T. S. Burns, ‘The Battle of Adrianople, a reconsideration,’ which questioned the narrative about calvary, and they seem to have won the argument that it's become a bit of a common disclaimer when people recount the battle. I think Mike Duncan touches on it in his History of Rome episode on the battle, for example. Mike also gets into the use of mobile calvary armies in the Crisis of the Third century. The 'The Byzantine Art of War' and the History of Byzantium podcast give a pretty good accounting of how the use of calvary was adopted by the early Byzantine period. As a bit of a bonus, the latter also has an episode on the Arab conquests which notes that, similar to Adrianople, the Rashidun army at Yarmuk was also predominantly infantry. Long term shift to calvary notwithstanding, Roman armies got their shit wrecked by rag tag foot armies at a lot of decisive points

PW

Snuffed out by Barbarians just like the Western Empire. *YAWN*

Nathan Dwelley

You guys should have Anthony Kaldellis on the show to discuss his new book : The New Roman Empire

Ben H

As xnfec commented, Count Belisarius is slow but an interesting and easy read (if you are okay with some diversions and wandering). Doesn’t compare to I, Claudius of course. I read Count Belisarius as a teenager and then I more recently got it as a 2.99 kindle deal and was totally worth it for that price.

Ellen Harold

R. Graves‘ “Goodbye to All That” is considered one of the best books about WW 1 and “I Claudius” is amazing.

Jason Thompson

Great episode. I would honestly love to hear more about horses and ancient melee/ranged weapons and stuff. This is where Dungeons & Dragons tragically (?) splits from wargaming: sure, in D&D a longsword does more damage than a short sword and a composite bow is better than a shortbow or whatever, but (increasingly over the last 40 years) it is really about individual escapist heroism so your 9th level guy can be naked with a dagger and still probably kill 20 cataphracts.

Hans Anders

Although Dutch fancy schools teach both Latin and Greek, the Greek is used for Homer, not Byzantium. I think Constantinople is just a bit too ‘oriental’ to be a true Roman Empire in the western mind.

Nosreffej

Sign me up to listen to the War Nerd horses episode!

CR

You guys are obviously not fans of Mike Duncan and Robin Pierson.

CR

I assume there’s sufficient linguistic drift that it’s “too hard” to bother with. Like olde English

CR

Yes. I would say it’s ironic but the man knew how to dominate the television battle space.

CR

That’s basically The History of Rome, History of Byzantium, and Revolutions.

CR

NERD!

CR

All to say: Yes, we need a goddamn Warhorse episode or series

CR

Murder Hobos

CR

We’re not lucky enough to die in global thermonuclear war, but in the meantime, I will not be sad when NATO troops officially die in Ukraine (as opposed to the ones who’ve been dying covertly for years). I actually admire Russian restraint. If the U.S. was getting bombed internally, Lviv would be glassed already. They can’t destroy Kiev because they have to live with their cousins long after this is over, but wiping out that nazi stronghold is no loss.

Nomad22

Hell yeah! I can't describe how excited I was when I saw this topic appear in my feed. The whole Late Antiquity period is so fascinating to me. When I was kid I somehow read through Asimov's histories of Rome and the Dark Ages. He barely mentioned the East Roman Empire after the fall, so it blew my mind when I learned that the Eastern half continued for a thousand years afterward and even reconquered Italy and North Africa. The Romans' lack of stirrups figured prominently in his explanation for the empire's defeat, but I always found it strange that the Romans somehow managed to reverse engineer Carthaginian ships and figure out naval warfare when they controlled just Italy but couldn't manage the same for a simple stirrup when their empire controlled the entire Mediterranean. The answer, from what I came to understand, lay in changes to Roman society regarding the status of soldiers and the type of people who served. During the Republican period Roman armies transformed from consular armies manned by landowners fulfilling obligations to the Roman state to paid armies loyal to their commanders (and patrons). That change culminated in the creation of the institution of the what we know of as the Empire (really the Principate and Dominate), which gradually outgrew first Rome and then all of Italy until it became seen as an alien force to the Italians, which by then were somewhat of a backwater compared to the rest of the empire. During that period the composition of Roman armies changed as well. After Caracalla extended Roman citizenship to everyone in the empire in 212, emperors started needing to pay their troops more because the incentive of citizenship to those who joined had disappeared. Along with that, Roman armies gradually started filling with "barbarians" of German descent. The subsequent switch to Germanic kings in Italy after 476 really just made official a trend that started hundreds of years before, probably after the 3rd century crisis. It helped that those kings in theory pledged loyalty to the Emperor in Constantinople. In several places I've read that Justinian's war to reconquer Italy actually ended this fiction and hastened the final collapse of Roman authority, official or unofficial, over the former western half of the empire. I'm not sure if that's not just subsequent historians hating on Justinian, though. He's often blamed for overextending the Empire and contributing to the catastrophic losses of territory to the Persians and later the Arabs.

John Hieronymus

If you all want to do a series on horses and war an English historian H. G. W. Davie gave an excellent overview of horses and logistics from the 18th century up until world war 2 on the eastern front for world war 2 tv on YouTube that was extremely informative about all of the work of breeding and developing draft horses and wagons. Might be worth having him on to talk.

Kiel Cone

Finally! Some ERE appreciation.

Kiel Cone

I’d love to hear about Emperor Maurice campaigning north of The Danube and slaughtering tens of thousands of Avars.

Kiel Cone

I mean it didn’t help that Justinian was too much of a prick to rebuild Italy’s aqueducts after his conquest. And not waiting to integrate a reconquered North Africa back into Rome’s economy before moving on Italy. Even after taking back Italy they never stationed enough troops to deal with f-ing Normans. And plague rly hurt the empire from the mid 6th to 8th centuries. And Nicropolis screwed the pooch over repopulation after not building a camp while exiting Bulgar territory and getting turned into a drinking cup.

Kiel Cone

They had Robin Pierson on to explain the Final War between Heraclitus and The Persian Empire.

Kiel Cone

“Cough” Macedonian Dynasty “cough”

Nomad22

The justification I always read was that Italy simply wasn't worth the investment. Which raises the question: Why try to reconquer it in the first place except as an ideological exercise? And really, the Empire wasn't doing much of anything for its subjects outside of Constantinople following Justinian apart from taxing them, which I'm sure didn't help when the Persians and later the Arabs came calling. Strangely, a similar process seemed to occur following East Roman expansions in the 9th and 10th century when nobles in Anatolian provinces fought against central authority, which I presume included taxation. It really seems like there were unresolvable tensions in the system that caused inevitable crisis and collapse when stretched too far. And, I hope the hosts cover the climatic event and plague that occurred during Justinian's reign. That's probably the wildest part of the entire story; although, the final climatic war with the Persians and the Arab conquests then subsequent sieges of Constantinople were pretty crazy as well - notable enough to probably inspire a certain famous 20th century western fantasy trilogy as well as countless derivatives. In all, its pretty remarkable the East Romans survived as long as they did.

PW

Well said.

Michael Salmon

I love going back to medieval/ancient history! Continuing on the cavalry theme, maybe after belisarius and the early east Roman kataphrachtoi, maybe an episode on the Huns or mongols? Or even timur! John you like bringing up the Caracole at rocroi so maybe a deep dive into the 30 years war? Or a good Czech guest to talk about the Hussite wars, those wagon fortresses have always been fascinating to me

Alex

The “court intrigue nerd” podcast is what reading Dale is like

Trazdat

The conventional wisdom on the Blues and Greens seems to be that the Blue were higher class and more orthodox, and the Greens were lower class/craftsmen and more likely to be Monophysite heretics. Justinian and Theodora were aligned with the Blues, but her family were Greens, which aligns with her low origins and heretical sympathies. Obviously it’s not that simple though even to the extent those generalizations are accurate.

James

I agree with those who believe USA does not want Ukraine to win. I think US is doing a reprise of their “dual containment” strategy where they helped both sides during the Iran-Iraq war to see as much damage as possible done to both sides.

James

That US did this during Iran Iraq war is settled history. To paraphrase that character in Lord of War they wanted both sides to lose. I have been to Ukraine and seen for myself that the majority of Ukraine was linguistically and culturally in the Russian sphere of influence. Once all the fighting aged Ukrainian males are killed Ukrainian females will be encouraged to marry Western European men and their children will be raised into a different culture and sphere of influence.

James

“According to ISW, Ukraine will not be able to fully utilise the F-16 until the end of 2025 at the earliest.” The US wants to prolong the war not see Ukraine win it.

Ezra de Leon

I think religion plays a role too. Although they mostly became Protestants, Western European intellectuals still saw the Greek Orthodox tradition as lacking legitimacy, such that they could see themselves as the true descendants of Ancient Greece (over actual contemporary Greeks).

grey

Not sure if their plans will survive a biden defeat.

THEKILLERWHALE

I must disagree that emphasizing the pre-fall Roman Empire over it's Byzantine predecessor is somehow arbitrary. The fall of the Roman Empire marked the fall of the Mediterranean basin as a single unified economic entity. The Byzantine was a strong Mediterranean empire but at no point could they claim to unify the sea and build the kind of complex regional economic specialization that was found during the peak Roman years.