3. Troubles

Bettany Hughes ventures to the troubled borders of this massive empire.

The beginnings of the ideological and religious fault line (still with us today) began at the eastern edge of the Byzantine Empire as the new Islamic religion gained a foothold.

For nearly 1,000 years the empire made war and peace with the Muslim countries to its south and east. But the fatal blow to the Christian empire came not, as is widely
thought, at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1453, but from the Christian west 250 years earlier.

Historian Bettany concludes her series using the latest archaeological evidence to rediscover an almost entirely forgotten empire and the people who ran it.

The Byzantine Empire lasted for more than 1,000 years and at its height covered a million square miles of the globe.

Producer: Philip Sellars

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 2008.