Books by Anthony Kaldellis

Byzantium has long been regarded by many as one big curiosity - decadent, degenerate, superstitious, theocratic, effeminate. With its tales and trivia - ranging across religion, bureaucracy, food, theatre, medicine, xenophobia, warfare - this book will confirm some of these prejudices, but also open eyes to the life of this extraordinarily interesting civilization.

Scholars have long claimed that the Eastern Roman Empire, a Christian theocracy, bore little resemblance to ancient Rome. Here, Anthony Kaldellis reconnects Byzantium to its Roman roots, arguing that it was essentially a republic, with power exercised on behalf of, and sometimes by, Greek-speaking citizens who considered themselves fully Roman.

In this companion to the two-volume Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library translation of The Histories by Laonikos Chalkokondyles, Anthony Kaldellis explores the ethnic dynamics that undergird the Histories, which recount the rise of the Ottoman empire and the decline of the Byzantine empire, all in the context of expanding western power.

A major new study of the last great historian of classical antiquity.