12 Byzantine Rulers

The podcast I have listen to is by Lars Brownworth.  The Lars Brownworth podcast is part the Smithsonian lecture about Byzantium.  Lars goes over the 12 rules or the Byzantine Rulers, Diocletian, Constantine, Julian, Zeno, Justinian, Heraclius, Irene, Basil, Basil II, Alexius, Isaac, and Constantine XI.  Each episode is up to 20-25minutes, The most interesting to me was Emperor, Diocletian and Julian. Diocletian had to deal with the succession, as not born it to a royal family. He went onto to dismantle the civil war in the Byzantine Empire.  He had split the empire peacefully with out blood and war. He had decided to have co emperor with Maximus.  Diocletian had retired from ruling the empire, and retried to the countryside. He also, wanted Maximus to retire as well, which he did. Diocletian had become a cabbage farmer.  Julian was another one I thought it was interesting he was not a usual emperor. He was very sky and quite awkward as well he did not approve of the Catholic religion.  He wanted the empire to return to the Pagan way of thinking. He was the last ruling relative of Constantine. Julian wanted to restore the Pagan religion and would not persecute the Christians; he wanted them to converted by themselves.  The podcast really helped understand about the rules of the Byzantine Empire, and somewhat dose in-depth of how each ruler came to power and also, lost power as well.  Also one can find a lot more podcast on iTunes as well, which can lead you the smithsoan or any other source one can want.