Episode 313 - A Roman Comic Book with Marco Cappelli

Hello everyone and welcome to the History of Byzantium, Episode 313, a Roman comic book with Marco Copelli. Today I'm going to tell you about a Roman history comic book which made me cry. was a big surprise to me, I rarely get to enjoy books or graphic novels about Roman history.

My brain is so full of Byzantium that I'm not really able to take in more history in my spare time. But this was so good and brought to life such a profound moment of change that I found myself in tears at the end of it.

Unexpectedly, so needless to say this comic book, Amianus, the Twilight of an era, gets a very strong recommendation from me. to newbeers.live.nubes.live to pick it up in physical or digital form in English, Italian or Latin. So what is this? Why am I talking about a comic book on the podcast? It comes from Marco Coppelli,

a fellow history podcaster whose podcast story, Detalia is a history of Italy in Italian. So if you You happen to be listening to this and speak Italian, you have a whole treasure trove of history content waiting for you. As he'll explain in our interview Marco wanted to convey, the amazing change which took

place in Italy in the sixth century. Now you will remember that century pretty well, because it began with the Goths in charge of Italy under King Theoderick who in many ways preserved the culture of the late Roman Empire.

His death was followed by Justinians, invasions and the disastrous decades long war which followed, including the bubonic plague breaking out, the Franks invading for no particular reason, and finally the Lombards descending into Italy shortly after Justinians death, an incredibly bleak time for those who had to live through it and a profound change, essentially from one world

to another. Marco, some of this all up on his podcast as you can imagine, but felt that words couldn't quite do justice to the change which people lived through. And so, Amianus, the Twilight of Inura, was born. It's not quite the graphic novel you might expect. It doesn't focus on the wars, or Bellassarius on the walls of Rome, as, you know, most comic books might. It focuses instead

on one family and one villa as it goes through all these incredible changes. I will let Marco tell you the rest of the story. Marco Copelli, welcome back to the history of Byzantium. It's such a pleasure, as you know I'm a fan, so it's always an honor to be here. Well as I was talking in our introduction the last time we spoke to you with three years ago,

And technically I was against on your show but I did I put it out on on on the history of Byzantine feed but for people who may have forgotten can you remind the listeners who you are and about your podcasts? Yeah of course not everyone can listen to my podcast because it's in Italian it's called the story detail. It's it's it's very similar in former teoris in the sense that I start in a

certain point which is the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and I always go forward. Now the original plan was to talk about just the history of Italy as the name says, but at the end since there are not as many history podcasts in Italian as there are in English, I tend to cover most of Mediterranean history. So the Byzantine Empire or Roman Empire as it should be universal

called is featuring very prominently. Actually, usually it's the part of my listeners like the most, but I also have, for example, the Franks or the Visigots or the Arabs for what it matters.

Anything that really I can realistically squeeze in connected to this theory of Italy. So I also put a bit of England, when Gregory the Great sent mission to evangelize the the Britons. So something like that.

So anyway that and I have about 170 episodes under my belly and I'm currently in the 8th century. So Lombards and Romans splitting Italy. And just for those who may not be able to listen but curious, how do you cover Italy in the eight century given the land is divided between several different states?

Well, it's a problem that will only get worse. In reality, I mean it takes effort to make a coherent narrative. I try to make it a bit and I know you're a TV critic. A bit like a TV series, you know, like Game of Thrones,

where you have multiple characters, and you touch at the right moment, each character, but not randomly so that it forms a coherent narrative. So I'll jump to Constantinople because,

Leo the Third is leading the Siege against the Arabs, but then that has an effect in Italy, because somebody rebels in Sicily against Leo the Third, because they think that the Roman Empire is about to collapse.

And then the Lombard King attacks Ravana because, of course, the Roman Empire is too busy and then the Pope intervenes in order to block Lippern the Lombard King. So it's all trying to woven the narrative.

it's not easy, I will say, but I guess I hope it's doable. Yeah, well that is one of the things I've taken for granted is just having one point of view. It makes life easy and when you have to tackle a period like that, I can imagine it's a lot more work. So I hope some of my listeners can enjoy your approach

and report back to me on how much they enjoy it. I should have just mentioned in passing in case anyone, it is interested you've just been to Turkey on a tour. So this is an option for any Italian speaking listeners

to the history of Byzantium. Yeah, it was fantastic. I, I, I, I, I, I, I shamefully, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, let's say, it's called the Inspire by the tour of by Zansium and I thought, yeah, this is something I need to do. Um, so, so, actually with the same, uh, tour guide organization, uh, and, um, it was absolutely

fantastic everybody loved it. As you say they do in your tour I hope we live the we live up to the to the example you said but yeah visiting together I'll say visiting together is Istanbul and Kapa doke that's where we went with people that share a passion is definitely a different experience. It's different from, you know, your visiting places with your

family and friends and it's different from visiting places with a group of random