Hagia Sophia, the largest church in the world in what was once the capital of the Byzantine Empire (Istanbul)

How a Peasant Became Emperor of Rome

From humble beginnings to the world’s most powerful ruler

By the turn of the 9th century, the Byzantine Empire had experienced nearly 200 year of steady decline. Once the most powerful state in Europe, the empire had been reduced to control of Anatolia and small parts of modern Greece and Italy due to a combination of infighting and territorial expansions of the…