Empresses of Constantinople

For over a thousand years, the Byzantine Empire endured as the eastern heartbeat of Rome. And at the heart of Constantinople's throne sat women whose ambition, ruthlessness, and brilliance shaped the course of civilizations. This volume traces the remarkable dynasty of empresses who ruled from the fall of the western Empire to the twilight of Byzantium: Theodora, who rose from dancer to co-emperor, saving her throne with a speech that still crackles across the centuries; Irene, who blinded her own son to grasp the purple; Zoe, who married and murdered her way through four husbands while styling herself emperor in her own right. McCabe, with characteristic sharpness, strips away the incense and mythology to reveal the women behind the crown: their alliances, their cruelties, their startling modernity in a world of Byzantine complexity. A vital corrective to the forgotten half of imperial history.