Empire of Trebizond

I, I wrote it very specifically to, like, capture a historical vibe, but I, I hope that it is, like, however much you are, like, really engaging with, like, the history of it, like, I, I hope you just have a fun time reading it.

I, I hope you get taken on a little journey on this boat sailing from Trebizond, uh, back to Venice because it was such a, a, a labor of love to, to put this together, and, and revise it, and revise it, and holy fuck, keep revising it over so many years.

Uh, and I am beyond pleased, uh, with the form it finally took.

And I hope that you are excited for future bullshit uh, I do, uh-

Perhaps you are proud that your brotherhood has defended the faith.

You cooked your doughnuts over the fires of burning Turkish towns of Sinope and Trebizond.

True for you.

and you ate them and now they pain you and on your own fields the wily german plants potatoes you buy them from him eat them for the good of your health and praise but with whose blood was the land sprinkled that grew the potatoes oh that's a trifle so long as it's good for the garden very proud you are that we once destroyed poland very true indeed poland fell but fell on top of us so your fathers shed their blood for moscow and for warsaw and left to you their sons their fetters and their glory part three to the very limit has our country come her own children crucify her worse than the poles how like they draw off her righteous blood they would you see enlighten the maternal eyes with everlasting fires lead on the poor blind cripple after the spirit of the age german fashion fine go ahead show us the way let the old mother learn how to look after such children show a way for this instruction don't worry good motherly reward will be the illusion fades from your greedy eyes glory shall you see such glory as fits the sons of deceitful sires to study then my brothers think and read learn from the foreigner despise not your own who forgets his mother him god will punish foreigners will despise him nor admit him to their homes his children shall as strangers be nor shall he find happiness on earth i weep when i remember the deeds of our fathers deeds i cannot forget heavy on my heart they lie half my life i'd give could i forget them such is our glory the glory of ukraine so read then that you may see not in dream but in vision all the wrongs that lie beneath yon mighty tombs ask then of the martyrs by whom when and for what were they crucified embrace then brothers mine the least of your brethren that your mother may smile again smile through her tears give blessings to your children with hard toiler's hands with free lips kiss them when they are washed and clad forget the shameful past and the true glory shall live again the glory of the ukraine and clear light of day not twilight gloom shall gently shine love one another my brothers i pray you i plead end of section sixteen recording by tracks bangalore india

Strabo, a native of the Pontic city of Amasea himself, noted though how the groundwork of the later Roman annexation of Asia was essentially laid out by Aquilius, and the gradual changes that followed suit would be chronicled as we move forward into the narrative.

The most immediate and obvious consequence of the war was the formal dissolution of the Adelaide Kingdom and the permanent establishment of a Roman presence in Asia Minor, which would persist until the fall of the Trebizond to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II in AD 1461.

Greek and Roman authors reflected upon the decision with a mix of feelings.

The system put into place by the Adalids was a well-oiled machine and produced a great deal of income for both the kingdom and now the republic.

In the west, the despotate of Epirus held parts of modern Greece and Albania.

In the north-east, the Black Sea port of Trebizond went its own way, and in Anatolia, just across the Bosphorus from the old capital, the continuity empire of Nicaea was set up.

One of the reasons why the fundamentally unstable Latin Empire lasted as long as it did was that these continuity Roman states didn't find any common cultural cause.

They weren't banding together to restore what had been lost.

Trebizond pretty much did its own thing, while Epirus and Nicaea were as likely to be fighting each other as they were to be fighting the occupying Latins or the ambitious invasions of the Bulgarians.

But by the 1250s, it was the Empire of Nicaea that was coming out on top in that struggle.

The Latin Empire, under Baldwin II, had been reduced to little more than the city of Constantinople by this stage.

And so this is after the capture of Constantinople by the armies of the Fourth Crusade.

The Romans regroup in a number of places, three most prominently, Western Asia Minor, Epirus, and Trebizond.

And those three engage in a competition over who will reconstitute the Roman state as a kind of unified political space.

And the one that wins out is Nicaea, the city of Nicaea, Northwest Asia Minor, in Greek, Nicaea.

How do the Palaeologans obstruct our view of the last graves?

So for me, it really was a process of discovery for myself to understand realize that people in power have made self-fashioning and rewriting the recent and distant past as a part of the way in which they fashion their public identity.

And coming to understand some of the ways that Michael VIII Peleologos did this during the first few years of his reign, and then subsequently, allowed me to see some of these actions as intentional in order to distance himself and his dynastic, his new dynasty from the court that actually gave him safe harbor, that allowed him to kind of elevate himself in offices and funded in all the ways you can think of using that word, his ability to actually successfully usurp the throne, right? This wasn't a throne he usurped from the grand Comnenian Trebizond.

This wasn't a throne he usurped from, you know, the people in Arta.

So that was the main way they identified themselves.

Now, also in regard to, um, retaining, uh, the Romeyka dialect in that area in Turkey, the northeast part of Turkey close to the Black Sea, I would say that as we also see historically, the Empire of Trabzon or the Empire of Trebizond was the very last one that fell to Ottomans due to the geographical isolation of the region.

So similarly, I would say that because of the isolation of the region, the Pontic Greek communities were dominant in the region.

That's absolutely correct.

Instead, it's time for me to get ready for the great siege that's coming.

And Heraclius, bleeding from the lip, still in his scarlet boots, took his last army and rode north to the Black Sea where they'd winter at Trebizond and reflect on one of the most remarkable campaign seasons ever.

in the history of Rome.

Three Persian armies sent to destroy him, two broken at Tigranocurt, one humiliated at Aliovit, and now the royal boar calling him an anvil from the far bank of the river.

The ghost army is undefeated, and the war is about to get even bigger.

Because after the Soros River, from Trebizond, Heraclius makes a decision that would change everything.

I mean, some wanted him to go south.

Let's take this fight to Persia.

Others are small, intimate, occupied by a handful of monks who live in conditions that have not changed significantly since the medieval period.

The oldest of the currently occupied monasteries, Great Lavra, was founded in 963 CE by Athanasius the Athonite, a monk from Trebizond who received support from the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II Phocas.

That founding date, 963, makes Great Lavra older than the University at Bologna, older than Oxford, older than the Magna Carta, older than the Crusades, older than the schism between the Eastern and Western churches.

It means that monks have been praying on this peninsula, in these buildings or their predecessors, continuously, without interruption, for over a thousand years.

Other parts of the empire were likewise in revolt against the new Caesars.

The governors of Trebizond, without changing their titles at first, became sovereigns of their province, and laid the foundations of their later empire.

A power not less formidable sprang up in Empirus, and had its center within the walls of that city of Durazzo which is especially associated with the history of Beaumont.

The conquerors were now to feel the effects of feudal subordination, which was only another name for real anarchy.