About this ebook
For three days, soldiers who had sworn to liberate Jerusalem pillaged Constantinople instead. Eight centuries of Roman rule ended in fire and blood. Every witness believed they had seen civilization die.
They were wrong—but salvation came from the most unlikely source imaginable.
Theodore Laskaris was nobody's idea of a savior. A minor aristocrat with no army and a contested claim to the throne, he fled across the Bosphorus as Latin conquerors divided the spoils. The Byzantine Empire—heir to Caesar Augustus, guardian of Greek learning—appeared finished forever.
What happened next ranks among history's most astonishing comebacks.
From a single city in Asia Minor, surrounded by enemies, Theodore built a functioning Roman state from nothing. He defeated the Latin armies that had sacked Constantinople, negotiated with the Seljuk Sultan while fighting Turkish raiders, and preserved the institutions that defined Byzantine civilization. When he died in 1221, the empire everyone thought dead stood ready to reclaim its stolen capital.
Drawing on Byzantine chronicles, Latin crusade accounts, and modern scholarship, this biographical study reveals how Theodore accomplished what seemed impossible: he brought Rome back from the dead.
This is Byzantine history as you've never encountered it. The gripping true account of how one man's refusal to surrender saved an entire civilization.
The fall of empires is common. Their resurrection is not.
