I am at beautiful High Point University, to give 3 talks in 3 days:
1. The Destruction of Italy in Late Antiquity: How, Why, and Who?
2. The Practice and Challenge of Researching Ancient and Medieval History.
3. Byzantium and the First Crusade: Opportunities Realized and Lost.

"I understand we are surrounded, by both Blues and Greens we're hounded, oh the tumult from inside the Hippodrome!

This purple shroud is mine to lose, but dear, it's also the color, I'll wear no other, it's also the color of a bruise."

Lyrics from new, original music about Theodora. 👀

I am making the pilgrimage to Leeds next week to speak about a topic to which I have given a lot of thought lately: that at least some in formerly Roman North Africa and Italy *wanted* Justinian's restoration, and that modern scholars too often ignore them. I expect debate!

Unboxing the paperback of Belisarius & Antonina! On sale now. Particularly proud of this one because it's my first book ever to come out as a paperback. 🥹

When I get this kind of email from Quality Matters, of all organizations, I know the end is nigh for us. Kind of speechless, actually. Use AI to generate our course content, QM? Really?

Belisarius & Antonina is getting a paperback edition! Release date is May 15th. Priced at $19.99. Here's a sneak peak of the new back cover with some praise for the book.

This Friday the inimitable Florin Curta will be speaking on Zoom. Title is "Imperial borderlands to the north and to the west of the Black Sea, 6th to early 7th centuries." Michael Decker and yours truly will offer comments. Join us!

This is grim.

"Alexander at the Tomb of Cyrus the Great" by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. Spotted today at @artinstitutechi.bsky.social.

At this time of year, I like to imagine that the 2nd verse of "O Come, All Ye Faithful" was written by St. Nick after he slapped the heresiarch Arius at Nicaea:
"God of God, Light of Light,
lo, He abhors not the Virgin’s womb;
Very God, begotten, not created."

“Nowadays,when the affairs of the cities no longer include leadership in wars or acts ofalliances, what opening for a conspicuous and brilliant public career could ayoung man find? There remain the public lawsuits and embassies to the emperor.” - Plutarch, ca. 100 AD

I will be presenting at IMC Leeds this coming July! Title: "Longing for Roman Restoration in 6th-Century Africa and Italy." There will be plenty of loud crowing about Roman identity in the paper. Hope to see many of you there!

My students and I have explored these events in detail through a role playing game this semester. The game is "The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 BCE," a part of the Reacting to the Past consortium. I highly recommend it.

In 403 BC, the citizens of Athens passed a remarkable resolution: "We will remember past offenses no more." It is noteworthy that this followed a devastating Spartan siege of the city, a pro-Spartan oligarchy that killed 1,500 without trial, and a civil war to restore democracy.