Anthony Kaldellis

Kaldellis grew up in Athens before moving to the United States, where he completed his undergraduate degree and PhD at the University of MichiganUniversity of MichiganThe University of Michigan is a university founded in Detroit in 1817 that moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1837; it is governed by a statewide-elected Board of Regents and also has campuses in Dearborn and Flint.Open the full entry.⁠[1]

In 1994 he received B.A. degrees in philosophy and in history from the University of Michigan.⁠[2]

In 1998 he published a translation and commentary of Genesios’ On the Reigns of the Emperors; in 1999 E. J. Brill published his first monograph, The Argument of Psellos’ Chronographia.⁠[3]

He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2001.⁠[4]

That year he joined the Department of Classics at The Ohio State University as assistant professor, becoming associate professor in 2006 and professor in 2007, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of History; from 2015 to 2022 he chaired the classics department.⁠[2]

In 2004 the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania, commonly called Penn, is a private research university and Ivy League member in Philadelphia. It traces its origins to a 1740 charity-school project; Benjamin Franklin proposed his academy in 1749, classes began in 1751, and a 1791 merger established the institution under its present name. Penn has 12 schools, with undergraduate education concentrated in arts and sciences, engineering, nursing and Wharton. Enrollment totaled 29,384 in fall 2025, and the fiscal 2025 endowment was $24.81 billion. As of October 2026, J. Larry Jameson was president, with his term scheduled to end on June 30, 2027.Open the full entry Press published his Procopius of Caesarea: Tyranny, History, and Philosophy at the End of Antiquity. Reviewer William Fahey wrote that the book challenges the standard view of Procopius as a poor imitator of classical historians, stressing his elaborate compositional structure, use of quotation and intertextuality, and irony deployed for ideological purposes.⁠[5]

In 2009 Cambridge University Press published The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens. Reviewer Nassos Papalexandrou summarized its argument as being that the classicizing outlook prevalent since the eighteenth century has obscured the Parthenon’s history as a Christian church and pilgrimage site, and called the book bold and provocative, often polemical in tone.⁠[6]

In 2013 the University of Pennsylvania Press published Ethnography after Antiquity, which was shortlisted for the 2014 Runciman Award.⁠[3]

In October 2014 the first volume of his translation of Laonikos Chalkokondyles’ The Histories appeared as volume 33 of the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, making the entire text available in English for the first time; the fifteenth-century historian chronicled Ottoman expansion from the early 1300s to 1464.⁠[7]

In December 2014 the companion study A New Herodotos appeared as the first book-length investigation of Laonikos, arguing that he was instrumental in shifting his people’s self-definition from Roman to the Western category of Greek.⁠[8]

In 2015 Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry Press published The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome; reviewer Spyros P. Panagopoulos wrote that it opens anew the discussion of Byzantine political ideology.⁠[9]

The University of Chicago classics department describes a second phase of his research that brought out the enduring Roman matrices of Byzantine life and thought, focusing on the political sphere (The Byzantine Republic, 2015) and ethnic identities (Romanland, 2019).⁠[4]

In 2017 Oxford UniversityUniversity of OxfordThe University of Oxford is a university in Oxford, England, where teaching existed in some form by 1096; it describes itself as the oldest university in the English-speaking world and is organised as a federal system of the university and dozens of self-governing colleges.Open the full entry Press published Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood: The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, 955 A.D. to the First Crusade, which examines Byzantium’s rapid expansion and subsequent contraction in the tenth and eleventh centuries.⁠[10]

Reviewer Andrew Montiveo noted that the book is divided into three parts, on conquest and consolidation, new enemies and the return of politics, and collapse, and called it informative and accessible for general enthusiasts.⁠[11]

The same year saw The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, co-edited with N. Siniossoglou, which won a 2018 PROSE Award for single-volume reference.⁠[3]

In 2019 he published Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium. Reviewer Michael Goodyear summarized it as arguing that the Byzantines held a Roman identity centered on their homeland Romanía and that Roman was itself an ethnicity, using case studies of how outsiders were assimilated into Romans.⁠[12]

The same year he created the first academic podcast for his field, Byzantium & Friends.⁠[13]

In June 2020, then professor and chair of classics at Ohio State, he appeared on The Medieval Podcast with Danièle Cybulskie to discuss Byzantium, its place in history and in academic departments, and why the field is worth studying.⁠[14]

On July 21 that year he and Dimitris Krallis of Simon Fraser University recorded Byzantine Relics and Greek Lives, the first podcast episode of the university’s SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies, discussing some two hundred years of modern Greek engagement with East Roman history and culture.⁠[1]

In 2022 he became a professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Chicago.⁠[2]

After his departure Mark D. Fullerton served Ohio State’s classics department as interim chair for an academic year and was then appointed chair for a four-year term.⁠[15]

In 2023 he published The New Roman Empire, a comprehensive history of Byzantium.⁠[4]

Reviewer Leonora Neville described the book as a comprehensive political history of the East Roman empire running from Diocletian’s political reforms in the 280s to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, and summarized one of its main arguments as being that the polity flourished because enough people believed that supporting the government was in their interest.⁠[16]

That year Cambridge University Press also published The Field Armies of the East Roman Empire, 361–630, written with Marion Kruse. Reviewer Philip Rance explained that the authors find no conclusive evidence for the five-army scheme of the Notitia dignitatum before the early 440s and redate its eastern part to the 440s, and called the book resolutely provocative in its revisionism.⁠[17]

Effective July 1, 2024, he was named Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Classics and the College at the University of Chicago, one of 31 faculty members who received distinguished service or named professorships that year.⁠[13]

In 2026 the University of Chicago Press published his 224-page Phantom Byzantium: Europe, Empire, and Identity from Late Antiquity to World War II. Reviewer Michael Grünbart wrote that the book asks whether Byzantium is a historically given object or rather a scholarly construct, a phantom, with the concept of appropriation running through its first chapters.⁠[18]

That year Oxford University Press published the 352-page 1453: The Conquest and Tragedy of Constantinople. The publisher says the book reconstructs the siege day by day from eyewitness testimony in Latin, Italian, Greek, Russian and Turkish, argues that the defense was hardly a lost cause, and weighs the fall’s impact on conquerors, conquered and world history.⁠[19]

He appeared on episode 498 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description calls him a historian of the Roman Empire and author of The New Roman Empire; topics included 2,200 years of Roman history, power and civil war, the Edict of Caracalla, the Crisis of the Third Century, Constantine and Christianity, the fall of the Western Roman Empire, eunuchs and taxes, Justinian’s wars of conquest, the Arab conquests, why the Roman empire survived so long and lessons from history.⁠[20]

As of October 2026 Byzantium & Friends, which he hosts, was releasing episodes twice monthly as conversations with experts on Byzantium and neighboring fields, and had published 161 episodes.⁠[21]

Personal website: Public link: https://kaldellispublications.weebly.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[20]

The Ohio State University: Official website: https://www.osu.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[15]

University of Chicago: Official website: https://www.uchicago.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[13]