The greatest emperor of the Byzantine Empire | Anthony Kaldellis and Lex Fridman
Anthony Kaldellis explains why Constantine I ranks as the greatest Byzantine Emperor despite his ruthlessness and murderous nature. His ranking is based on the consequential, world-history-changing decisions he made—particularly founding Constantinople and converting the empire to Christianity—rather than on personal likability or even competent administration alone.
Summary
In this excerpt from a conversation with Lex Fridman, Anthony Kaldellis discusses his ranking of Constantine I as the number one emperor in Byzantine history, drawn from his top 10 list created for The History of Byzantium podcast. Kaldellis clarifies that Constantine's top ranking is not based on personal character; Constantine was ambitious, ruthless, and murderous, executing family members including his own son Crispus and his wife without clear justification or public explanation. Notably, when Constantine executed Crispus—a competent and popular general—immediately after defeating Licinius, he provided no justification, which Kaldellis interprets as evidence the act was unjustifiable. Contemporary historians also avoided discussing Crispus after his execution, treating him as if he never existed. Despite these dark aspects of Constantine's reign, Kaldellis places him at the top because his decisions were extraordinarily consequential at a world-history level. The founding of Constantinople and the conversion of the Byzantine Empire to Christianity set the empire on an entirely new historical trajectory. Kaldellis articulates two distinct criteria for evaluating emperors: those who made earth-shattering, world-history-changing decisions (where Constantine stands alone), and those who performed their role competently and achieved results benefiting their subjects. He acknowledges the difficulty of juggling these different criteria into a systematic list and notes that historians typically avoid creating such rankings, though he found the exercise valuable for facilitating discussion of topics that might otherwise go unexplored.
Key Insights
- Constantine executed his own son Crispus and his wife without providing any public justification, and Kaldellis interprets the lack of explanation as evidence the acts were unjustifiable, since emperors typically publicize reasons when murdering family members
- Contemporary historians responded to Crispus's execution by erasing him from the historical record, treating him as though he never existed rather than documenting or justifying the murder
- Constantine's ranking as the greatest emperor is based not on competent administration or likability, but specifically on making consequential world-history-level decisions like founding Constantinople and converting the empire to Christianity
- Kaldellis uses two distinct evaluation criteria for emperors: those who made earth-shattering decisions (where Constantine is in his own league) and those who performed their role competently with positive results for subjects
- Creating rankings of historical figures, while not typical historian practice, allows exploration of topics and justifications that might otherwise remain undiscussed
Topics
Transcript
[0:02] So you you do a podcast Byzantium and Friends, but you're also a guest on podcast and I should mention you being a guest multiple times on the excellent The History of Byzantium podcast hosted by Robin Pierson. I highly recommend people listen to it to all of your appearances. You have a lot of really fascinating ones, but the reason I bring all that up is one of the episodes you do the fun thing of selecting the top 10 emperors of Byzantium. [0:33] And spoiler alert, everybody should go listen to the full list cuz you justify all the different options. But Constantine ends up in the number one spot. >> Yeah. >> And so can you…
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