1/ Bettany Hughes - Byzantium Unearthed
http://thebox.bz/details.php?id=56043
Historian Bettany Hughes begins a series that uses the latest archaeological evidence to learn more about the empire of Byzantium and the people who ruled it.
1x01 08-10-2008
Bettany learns how treasures found in the empire's capital, modern-day Istanbul, reveal much about the life and importance of a civilisation that, whilst being devoutly Christian and the inheritors of the Romans, was also exotic and eastern.
1x02 15-10-2008
Bettany examines the public and private life of the Byzantines. Women had unprecedented power in the Empire, as did the mysterious 'third sex' of eunuchs. But, in this part Roman, part fundamentalist Christian state, dangerous political factions would keep the blood of political dynasties flowing.
1x03 22-10-2008
Bettany ventures to the eastern edge of the empire, where the new religion of Islam first gained a foothold.
For nearly a thousand years the empire made war and peace with the Muslim countries to its south and east. However, the fatal blow to Byzantium came not, as is widely thought at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1453, but by from the Christian west 250 years earlier.
2/ I, Caesar - Six Part Series (1997)
http://thebox.bz/details.php?id=21798
Justinian: the last Caesar
Justinian was born a Serbian peasant and was in some ways the last Roman Emperor. He was the last to conquer (or in his case, reconquer) territory, and the last to see the Empire produce great literary, artistic and architectural achievements. Perhaps he is most famous for the Justinian Code, a compilation and standardization of the Roman legal tradition that influences Western legal traditions to this day. A fine legacy, but by the time he died, the Roman Empire was already fading. |
