1453: The Conquest and Tragedy of Constantinople

About this episode

The episode discusses the fall of Constantinople in 1453, challenging the narrative of inevitability surrounding its conquest.

On May 29, 1453, the city of Constantine—Constantinople—ceased to exist. For over a millennium it had stood as a center of Roman political power, Greek learning, and the Christian faith. Now its walls were breached, its emperor lay dead among the defenders, and its inhabitants were carried off into slavery. Yet, as my guest Anthony Kaldellis argues, the city’s final resistance tells a different story from the one we often inherit. Its defenders did not regard their fate as inevitable. “Its fierce resistance at the end,” he writes, “stands as a final protest against narratives that would render it irrelevant… The Romans asserted a right to survive, and, by not surrendering, they refused to consent to their obsolescence.” In this conversation, we examine the fall of Constantinople not as a foregone conclusion, but as a close-run struggle shaped by contingency, miscalculation, and missed opportunities. Anthony Kaldellis is Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Classics and the College at the University of Chicago. A leading scholar of the later Roman Empire, his work focuses on Byzantine political culture, identity, and historiography. His most…

People in this episode

Host: Al Zambone

Guest: Anthony Kaldellis

Topics covered

• fall of Constantinople
• Byzantine history
• Roman Empire
• historical narratives
• political culture

Keywords

• Constantinople
• 1453
• Anthony Kaldellis
• Byzantine
• Roman Empire
• historical analysis
• siege

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: 1453: The Conquest and Tragedy of Constantinople

Places: Constantinople

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