Byzantium is just a sad place to read about. There's no mystique to them, they won no great victories. They were obsessed with Christ. They maintained a profitable maritime trade network upon which they grew fat and opulent. They had our equivalent of SJW purges from all the competing Christian sects which led to a fractured period of Iconoclasm. They have one historical epic piece of heroic literature which is about a mixed race soldier performing acts of capeshit heroism. They are the perfect picture of long slow decline.