Lex Fridman Podcast

Podbit · Lex Fridman Podcast

#498 – Anthony Kaldellis: Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Rise & Fall of Empires

Explore episode Jun 30, 2026
History
2,200 Years in 5 Minutes

#498 – Anthony Kaldellis: Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, R… · Jun 30, 2026 History

From the kings of 753 BC through the Republic, the Principate, the Crisis of the Third Century, Constantine, and the Arab conquests, Rome never stopped being Rome. The three main crises — Arab conquests in the 630s, Seljuk Turk conquest of Asia Minor in the 1070s, and the Fourth Crusade of 1204 — were each swift and devastating, but most of the empire's history was slow, steady economic and territorial growth.

7m 48s

Where this was said

The Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire

At 11:05 · chapter starts 8:45

The conversation begins with its most provocative claim. Kaldellis insists that calling the Eastern Roman Empire 'Byzantine' is almost a form of cognitive dissonance — 'when you know something is the case, but you carry on as if it's not'. The empire never stopped calling itself Rome. Its subjects called themselves Romans. Its legal identity was Roman. The 'Byzantine' label, he explains, was a label applied by Western Europeans who wanted to exclude the Greek-speaking, Orthodox-Christian East from their cultural genealogy — first calling it the 'Empire of the Greeks,' then switching to 'Byzantine' for explicitly political reasons. Now, he argues, the field is moving toward recognizing the long Roman Empire as a single, continuous political entity stretching from antiquity to the 15th century. Lex frames this as a correction long overdue, setting up the chronological overview to follow.

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