Today, we’re talking Vikings in Byzantium with special guest Robin Pierson of the History of Byzantium podcast. What were these big-bearded warriors doing standing next to beardless eunuchs? And why were both Vikings and eunuchs entrusted with such important positions?
Be sure to support the show at www.patreon.com/deadideaspod to get your portrait drawn!
Music and graphic design by Rachel Westhoff. Maps, pics, references and more at http://www.deadideas.net.
Time/place: Byzantine Empire, 324-1453 BCE
Dead Idea: Court Eunuchs
Co-hosts: Nick and Anna
Main Sources
Agathias. “The Histories.” Translated by Walter de Grutyer, 1975.
Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=Wp92bUzuMoQC&q
Berger, A., Ed. & Trans. (2013). Accounts of medieval Constantinople: The Patria. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 24. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Blöndel, S. (1978). The Varangians of Byzantium. Benedikz, B. S., Trans. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Browning, Robert. Justinian and Theodora. Praeger Publishers, 1971.
Evagrius Scholasticus. “Ecclesiastical History, Book Four”. Translated
by E. Walford, 1846.
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/evagrius_4_book4.htm
Kaldellis, A. (2017). A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Norwich, John Julius. A Short History of Byzantium. Vintage Books, 1999.
Procopius. The Secret History. Translated by G.A. Williamson and Peter
Sarris. Penguin Classics, 2007.
Procopius. History of the Wars, Books I-II and VII-VIII. Translated
into English by H.B. Dewing. Harvard University Press, 1996.
Ringrose, K. (2003). The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rosen, William. Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of
Europe. Viking, 2007.
Rowland, M. R. (2014). “Eunuchs and Sex: Beyond Sexual Dichotomy in the Roman World.” Dissertation. University of Missouri-Colombia.
Tougher, S. (2008). The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society. New York: Routledge.