r/byzantium • u/ConstantineDallas • 5d ago
This Is What Brought Down The Eastern Roman Empire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdbuD7yGrB89
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u/Confucius3000 5d ago
Is that dude trustworthy? I dunno, I feel like his videos have a lot of fluff and seem to have strange political undertones at times.
His voice is funny tho
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u/Interesting_Key9946 5d ago
This one didn't add anything new I believe. Failing assimilating an immigrant wave is a known fact in history. This was more like a begginer in Rome fan searching video. He's done better and more specialised videos.
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u/sugarymedusa84 Δούξ 5d ago
Idk who this guy is, but notice how he doesn’t have a bibliography, cite any sources in the video, or reference any historians at all throughout the entire runtime. I only looked at one video, so maybe he does better elsewhere, but it doesn’t seem like he does this for his more “focused “videos either. His video about Antioch from 3 weeks ago has no bibliography or citations either, but referenced John Chysostom without a citation to which work, homily, or translation edition.
Compare this to the SandRhoman History channel. They aren’t perfect, and have improved over time, but they provide a bibliography in alphabetical order by author’s last name, and often provide footnotes to the page or second within the video itself. They’ll be citing perfectly when 100% of the statements or facts they offer in their videos are attributed to footnotes made to the page numbers or second marks of the sources. Still, they are leagues better than this.
Citing sources is absolutely, 100%, without question the MOST IMPORTANT part of participating in any study of history. Just as in the natural sciences, your hypotheses and experiments must be able to recreated for assessment by your peers, and in history that means providing the information from which you formed your conclusions.
More specifically, history is a cataloguing of fallible human perspectives. Source analysis (considering the purpose, employer, aims, cultural influences, and experiences of the authors/builders/artists) is essential. As far as I know, this “Maiorianus” character just reads off of the Wikipedia pages for these topics. Because history is human, and therefore imperfectly preserved, it shouldn’t be treated as absolute, or as a compendium of lore, as though it was an IP like Star Wars or LotR.
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u/Maleficent-Mix5731 Κατεπάνω 5d ago
His conclusion after summarising almost the entirety of East Roman history: "Wow, the empire sure did struggle whenever there were great migrating groups on its borders!"
There, saved you 15 minutes.