It seems there's a lot of interest for Byzantine History on HN, that's fantastic! My friends and I have run a book club for the past four years on Ancient History with focus on the Eastern Roman Empire.<p>Most books we read were kind of dry. Here's a list of books I found readable and engaging if you want to delve deeper:<p>* <i>Byzantium</i> trilogy by Norwich. If you don't want to get all three, I suggest getting <i>The Apogee</i> (2nd volume). Fantastically readable and solid historical work with a generous side of gossip.<p>* <i>Alexiad</i> by Anna Komnene. Written around 1140 after Anna was deposed to a convent, this biography of her father, Alexios, has an immediacy that history books cannot match. The end will probably bring you to tears.<p>* <i>Anecdota (Secret History)</i> by Procopius. For pure titillation factor cannot be beat! Severe attack against Justinian, Theodora, Belisaurus, and his wife Antonina. "Severe" is an understamenet really, here's Procopius on Theodora's depraved youth:<p><pre><code> On the field of pleasure she was never defeated. Often she would go picnicking with ten young men or more, in the flower of their strength and virility, and dallied with them all, the whole night through. When they wearied of the sport, she would approach their servants, perhaps thirty in number, and fight a duel with each of these; and even thus found no allayment of her craving. Once, visiting the house of an illustrious gentleman, they say she mounted the projecting corner of her dining couch, pulled up the front of her dress, without a blush, and thus carelessly showed her wantonness. And though she flung wide three gates to the ambassadors of Cupid, she lamented that nature had not similarly unlocked the straits of her bosom, that she might there have contrived a further welcome to his emissaries.
</code></pre>
So, she fit the full Messalina archetype. Full text available at Fordham (<a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/procop-anec.asp" rel="nofollow">https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/procop-anec.asp</a>). Here's an interesting paper on the depiction of Theodora in the Secret History (<a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/classics/files/classics/2004-09.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.mcgill.ca/classics/files/classics/2004-09.pdf</a>)<p>* <i>Chronographia</i> by Michael Psellos covers the reigns of 14 emperors and empresses in a 100 time period