Quotes About History

The situation facing Byzantium in the mid-1090s was not so much desperate as catastrophic.

The previous year, Philip had married for the seventh time

not even this was enough to prevent a Persian expeditionary force from fighting its way through Anatolia towards the capital in 615.

the last great dynasty of Byzantine emperors, the Palaiologoi, to rule from Constantinople.8

Thousands of those who had fought alongside the Macedonians were sold into slavery.

writing the greater part of his History and trying to make sense of it all.

Constantinople had been saved, and with it the Greek-speaking Roman Empire.

Urban formally announced what would become the First Crusade in the town of Clermont Ferrand

this victory, eleven hundred years later, was bringing them together as never before in their new identity as Christians.

Heraclius entered Persia from the north and the Sassanid Empire imploded.

Chosroes was murdered by his own side early in 628.

The basic technology of writing had been known for at least two thousand years already—nothing new about that.

The whole of the Middle East, up to the River Tigris, was returned to Roman rule.

Crete is home to an advanced civilisation that will be dubbed 'Minoan'

In 260 CE, the emperor Valerian was taken prisoner, along with much of his army, while campaigning against them.

the island's legendary king, Minos, when its remains are discovered three and a half millennia later.

One of the first Greek words to be recognised in Linear B was represented

A mere forty years after the death of Basil II, Byzantium found itself faced with new and aggressive enemies on all sides during the 1060s:

The Minoans at this time had spread their influence right across the southern Aegean.

previous centuries by the Phoenicians living on the Levantine seaboard.

mere forty years after the death of Basil II, Byzantium found itself faced with new and aggressive enemies

in the Eastern Harbour of Alexandria. These include statues of Egyptian gods

Seljuk Turks in the east, Normans in the west, and in the north the latest nomadic groups

already more than a thousand years old before anyone ever lived on this bare stretch of desert shore.