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Radio War Nerd EP #449 — Belisarius, pt. 2 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-06-14 20:41:27
Imported:
2024-06
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Recorded: June 12, 2024

Here's part 2 of The War Nerd's Belisarius series. This episode, after Justinian consolidates power in Constantinople, he sends Belisarius to reconquer the western Roman Empire, first in North Africa, then the Italian peninsula, besting Germanic barbarians wherever he lands. You can guess how much good Belisarius's undying loyalty to Emperor Justinian does him in the end...

Further listening: RWN EP #447 — Belisarius, pt. 1 RWN EP #106 — Byzantine-Sassanid Wars, feat. Robin Pierson

Maps & Memes:

*Eastern Roman Empire & Belisarius's conquests

*Belisarius's march on Carthage vs the Vandals

*Belisarius's conquest of the Italian peninsula

*Witigis's siege of Rome, 537

*Memes

Music interlude by Brendon Anderegg. Check out music from his group Mountains here.

Total time: 1:27:50

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

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Comments

John Waaben

An epic story needs epic memes…..

William

So belesarius invented tank warfare

William

And horse archers from the steppe were the next iteration of the technical, after the chariot archers of olde

Isaac Suárez

Excellent episode. I totally agree about the weird anti Byzantine bias. My best guess for this neglect is that it stems from some old, linguistic and ecumenical divisions between the “East” and “West” of Europe. Classics developed among scholars of Latin and Ancient Greek- who tend to disdain later post Hellenic Greece (Koine Greek is used in Biblical scholarship, but it is not considered to be a particularly beautiful literary language- at best its middle brow if not outright common.) Later classicists probably inherited these linguistic and orientalist biases. I think another dimension is the awkwardness, from a west European and anglophone perspective, of the “legacy” of Byzantine culture. Western cultures tend to claim the Roman legacy and Latin language for their own- you can see it in republican politics and neoclassical aesthetics. It’s uncomfortable when folks complicate this form of “Romanness”- especially when that Byzantine “Roman” legacy is claimed by Russia and Orthodox Christianity (just consider the connotation of the word “Tsar” or “Despot”- both of which derive from Hellenized Roman Byzantine imperial and ecclesiastical language.) Westerners prefer to “other” Russia and Levantine culture- and thus avoid claiming the obvious common roots Western Europe shares with the “East.” In a way this ties back to the deep stigma westerners have for both Russia and Middle Easterners. Palestinians and Syrians are always coded as “Muslims”- and Russians (and eastern Slavs) are associated with “anti-Western” ideologies and traditions (“despotism” and “Communism” being the most obvious.) Few ever think of either Russians or Levantines as inheritors of the same Greco-Roman legacy as the “West.” The fact that Levatines have a large and ancient set of Christian communities, and that Russian statehood derives from the Roman Imperial tradition breaks too many brains.

Chance

(27:00) To highlight John's point about the value of horses, they were often a major component of peace treaties or tribute paid between Byzantines, Persians and Arabs. For instance during the first Fitna; Muʿāwiya desperately needed peace on his western border and to achieve this he negotiated an 'extremely generous' tribute with Constans II of one horse, one slave and 1,000 nomismata for each day of peace. The empire was dead broke but one gets the impression that the horses were just as (if not more) prized as the hard cash. Later, after breaking the siege of Constantinople and chasing the Arabs back to Syria (killing probably between 20,000-50,000), Constantine IV accepted annual tribute from Muʿāwiya of 216,000 nomismata, 50 slaves and 50 horses.

Damnboooi

Just a note about your comment on iconoclast orthodoxy: many scholars believe it didn’t merely share tenets of hating image worship with Islam but was directly inspired by Islam. It originated at a time when Islamic rulers were on an unbelievable winning streak while the Christians were taking L after L. People like emperor Leo III are thought to have looked at islams success and surmised “well I guess they deserve it for actually following the rules” and chose to imitate some of their pious practices in Christianity. Thus iconoclasty had a much weaker influence in the west where the threat or example of Islam was distant (at least until later reformers and influences in the west)

drizzly_november

That’s a common reaction in cultures on the losing end, “our enemies have the right idea! to beat them, we need to copy them!” Looking at those historical movements would be a great entry in the RWN annals of defeat.

theSmokingGun

I'm still emotionally devastated that you guys don't like Robert Graves. It can get esoteric, but his perspective on events is really just so fascinating to me. In a vacuum every single one of his deviations from the mainstream often seem like the logical conclusion one can draw from reading between the lines of what's available. It's something our sort is very used to.

Ivan Konstantinov

note on the name, we have the name Велизар (Velizar), meaning "arrow" in Greek, which seems related to Велизарий - Belisarius.

CR

There’s also certainly plenty of sectarian bias. Protestants have maligned Catholic Europe for half a millennium, but at least they followed most of the same precepts. THOSE GUYS to the east are basically pagans.

CR

Or doubling down on icons for the remaining Orthodox

CR

Do you have any opinions on Rome and Persia by Goldsworthy?

Isaac Suárez

This is correct, though I would add that the common scriptural tradition of Islam and Christianity played a role. In the Talmud/Old Testament, the rejection of “idol worship” and refusal to represent God in an imagery are recurring, core themes. Christians could also look to the Biblical Judges, and the legends of the ancient Kingdoms of Judah and Israel, and interpret them as “when we worship idols and create shrines, God stops helping us- maybe we should apply this lesson. It’s working pretty well for the Muslims!”

Nicknimh

I actually took an early medieval history undergraduate course recently, and there is some outdated historiography here in re: the "migration period." Historians today are very skeptical of the idea, influenced both by the contemporary sources and by 19th century nationalist/racist ideology, that the "barbarian tribes" were distinct ethnic groups in the modern sense. We *definitely* know that the Huns were a political group and not ethnic. That is, they were a bunch of people—with many languages, religions, etc.—conquered or won over by one king. There's a growing consensus that most or all of the barbarian "peoples" were like this to some degree. It might be more helpful to think of Childeric's Franks, for example, not as a kinship-based tribe or cultural-linguistic ethnic group, but as various warriors loyal to a particular warlord. There's also growing evidence to suggest that they didn't migrate in such great numbers as previously believed. Historians used to believe, for example, that the Anglo-Saxons essentially killed or expelled all the Romano-Celts (Manifest Destiny style); the evidence for this is that English contains almost no (literally less than ten) words from Brythonic. More recent genetic studies, reveal, however, that the English are mostly descended from the "Celts" who were already there, with maybe a quarter or third of their ancestry coming from Germanic migrants. Likewise with Anatolian Turks and Greeks, or various other examples. So actually it seems more like you had the conquered intermarry and take on the language and culture of the conquerors, rather than be physically displaced by them. Theodoric made specific laws to separate "Goths" and "Romans" into immutable, hereditary nations or castes with defined social roles, but in practice it was possible for Romans to become legally Gothic and vice versa, like how Han Chinese could become Qing bannermen. Historians also generally reject the idea that the Goths come from Scandinavia. This claim comes from Ostrogothic chronicles written under Theodoric, which were written centuries after the supposed event. Many, many, peoples have fictional traditions about coming from other places. Like how Israelites have the story of the Exodus and Joshua, but archaeology suggests that they were just one subset of the indigenous Canaanites. Or how both the Franks and Romans claimed to be descended from characters in the Illiad, or how everyone in Sudan is somehow descended from Muhammad or his companions. The Scandinavia origin is a myth, and we don't actually know where they came from or even if it makes since to speak of the Goths as an identifiable group that existed before their contact with the Romans. Finally, I want to point out that the idea of the western empire being "lost" in 476 is largely a retrospective invention of Justinian's court in the context of their "reconquest." People in Italy at the time of Justinian's birth would have considered themselves to be Romans living in the Roman Empire; Theodoric did all the rituals of an emperor and hosted games in the Colosseum. He, and maybe to some extent the Visigoths, acknowledged the emperor in Constantinople as his nominal suzerain.

Maxwell Brown

thanks for the write-up. that's super interesting

a clash of purple

I actually started watching Amphibia (the cartoon the meme John mentioned at the start of the show was referencing) recently, though it's been out for a while. Was not expecting to hear it referenced on RWN.

a clash of purple

You know, Annibale's amazing ability to hold forth on any conceivable subject at length makes a lot more sense if he's actually a Remembrancer.

K

I saw a rider-mounted Clydesdale walking toward me around a bend and immediately understood the historical impact of heavy cavalry. ***It's a psychological weapon***. I really can't wait for the episode John wants to do on the evolution of Cavalry in military history. I'm 6'4" and went for a run at a trail on a state park. Saw a woman mounted on the Clydesdale for a walk, about 40 yards away coming around a bend. I was absolutely awestruck. It looked ginormous, and with the rider it towered over me. The rider had a couple feet over me. The horse also had a massive chest and hooves. Instinctually I slowed the hell down and hugged the edge of the trail as deferentially as possible. I'm not unfamiliar with large animals, and I see modern trucks and heavy machinery every day. I've been to air shows. I've seen the Blue Angels. But with those modern machines you feel a sense that you can hide somewhere even if you can't run. But a large horse like a Clydesdale inspires something instinctual. You know it has its own intelligence and could not only run you down but follow you anywhere in open ground. I'll admit felt a genuine primal fear with that thing staring at me and casually walking toward me from across a field. I can't imagine being a 5'6" infantryman seeing a mass of heavy cavalry on the battlefield. I'm more impressed by that than by the Blue Angels.

Michael Salmon

Makes one think that belisarius maybe shouldn’t have been so obsequious and should have actually tried to do what his enemies accused him of trying to do