Byzantines
Article
Byzantines is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 06, 2021 and February 05, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “e Byzantines worried about Ottoman cannons”; “Byzantines and Persians were both exhausted from fighting each other”; “Byzantines might have taken it when they sacked Carthage”. It most often appears alongside Carthage, OpenAI, Persians.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: August 06, 2021
- Last seen: February 05, 2026
Appears In
Related Pages
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- Carthage (2 shared issues)
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- OpenAI (2 shared issues)
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- Persians (2 shared issues)
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- Rome (2 shared issues)
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- Zvi (2 shared issues)
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- 4o (1 shared issues)
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- 60 Minutes (1 shared issues)
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- @MattZeitlin (1 shared issues)
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- @MMJukic (1 shared issues)
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- @Poltfan69 (1 shared issues)
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- @tenobrus (1 shared issues)
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- @TheMidasProj (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Maybe the real lesson here is that we should only worry about the most medium-term of risks? That way we can accuse the people worrying about nearer-term risks than we are of being like Byzantines worried about fireworks, and the people worrying about longer-term risks than we are of being like Byzantines worrying about nukes - whereas we ourselves are clearly most like Byzantines worried about Ottoman cannons.
Early Islamic Arabs taking over the Middle East: Devereaux doesn’t mention this, except for a half-sentence with no content in the Ibn Khaldun section. How do you forget this one in a piece about the Fremen? Charitably, perhaps we should ignore this since the Byzantines and Persians were both exhausted from fighting each other.
45: Where is the original menorah from the Second Temple? We know the Romans took it when they sacked Jerusalem. We think the Vandals took it when they sacked Rome, and brought it to their capital of Carthage. The Byzantines might have taken it when they sacked Carthage, and maybe brought it back to Jerusalem? After the Persians sacked Jerusalem in 614, the trail goes completely dark, although there are the usual legends that it was hidden away, to be returned in the age of the Messiah (or something). Other people say it never left Rome, and is still hidden somewhere in the Vatican.
Inline links: Where is the original menorah from the Second Temple?