Looking for another book about Hungary, which exercises me no end as of late, today I came across a book about the Balkans in the Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Century.[1] At about fifty pounds sterling, it cost me a mint, but the time and place were just right for my taste at present. As I was walking out of the bookstore, I briefly reflected on the shift of my historical interest the last year or so. I used to be concerned with the fall of Rome, and now I am edging closer to our era. Only then I focused on the last year in my new book’s subtitle: 1204. But that is when Constantinople fell into Venetian hands during the Fourth Crusade, I realized. It took it another two-hundred and fifty years to fall into Turkish hands, but Byzantium as a power was as good as finished by the beginning of the Thirteenth Century. In other words, I am still reading about the fall of Rome. As well as some of its consequences, including the arrival of Slavs and Hungarians. I am still on track, I reassured myself. Mine is a vast subject, anyhow.

Footnote

1. Stephenson, Paul, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900-1204, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.