The enemies of the Roman Empire who almost destroyed it | Anthony Kaldellis and Lex Fridman

In this conversation, Kaldellis explores the Byzantine Empire's history through the lens of cyclical patterns of crisis and recovery. He describes how the empire, after a period of defensive warfare, experienced a 10th-century renaissance under the Macedonian dynasty, with emperors like Basil II leading expansionist campaigns into Syria, Cyprus, the Caucasus, and Bulgaria. This prosperity was followed by an 11th-century crisis driven by simultaneous external threats: the Seljuk Turks from the east (who brought vast reserves of manpower and caused demographic/ecological transformation of Asia Minor), Pecheneg horsemen from the north, and Norman knights from the west—a three-pronged attack no medieval state could realistically withstand.

Kaldellis challenges the traditional historiographical approach that attributes Byzantine decline to internal moral decay and neglect of the military by civilian emperors. He argues this reflects a methodological bias rooted in the "decline and fall" model that primes historians to seek internal flaws. Instead, he contends that exogenous (external) shocks caused the territorial losses and crises, not structural weaknesses. He acknowledges internal problems existed—particularly the end of the Macedonian dynasty's two-century rule, which created political instability as insecure emperors without dynastic legitimacy spent heavily on political support, creating budget pressures—but maintains these were secondary to external pressures.

Kaldellis advocates for a fundamental reframing of how we understand Byzantine history. Rather than defining the society by its brief crises, he argues we should focus on the internal mechanisms—institutions, ideologies, and economic structures—that enabled centuries-long periods of recovery, consolidation, and steady growth. He criticizes "peak-to-peak" histories that compress 1,200 years into short books, jumping from highlight to highlight (Justinian's reign, crises) without explaining the interconnecting mechanisms in the valleys between peaks. His approach in his book "The New Roman Empire" deliberately illuminates these institutional and ideological foundations to show how people's lives were tied to broader historical trajectories.

Kaldellis also introduces revisionist ideas about Byzantine identity and governance, including the concept of a "monarchical republic" where emperors faced broader political participation and Roman Republican traditions persisted, and the idea that Byzantine identity was more ethnically Roman than previously understood. He concludes that understanding long-lived societies requires examining the structural foundations that enabled resilience, not just the dramatic moments of crisis or triumph.