The work under review is the third revised edition of Alexios Savvides’ volume on Trebizond that first came out in 2005. The book is suitable for a range of audiences: the author states that it is aimed at the general reader who is keen to learn about Trebizond, but the book also contains extensive annotation allowing for scholarly exploration of the topic. The volume is useful as a textbook for students taking a course on Trebizond, or even for scholarly readers who are non-specialists in Trapezuntine studies. The latter have recently become spoilt for choice.

For a long time, William Miller's Trebizond: The Last Greek Empire (1926) has been the go-to English-language overview on Trebizond used by scholars working on neighbouring areas of study.Footnote ¹ Nearly a century old, needless to say it is dated in terms of its bibliography and scholarly perspective. Another oft-cited study on Trebizond is Emile Janssens’ Trébizonde en Colchide (1969), which - along with Miller's work - is indebted to the ideas expressed in Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer's Geschichte des kaiserthums von Trapezunt (1827) and merely updates it in terms of scholarship.Footnote ² Anthony Bryer's The Society and Institutions of the Empire of Trebizond (1967) still constitutes an insightful introduction to Trapezuntine studies and has suffered little from the passage of time. As an unpublished doctoral thesis it is, however, inaccessible to most readers. Bryer's other seminal works, notably the Byzantine Monuments and Topography of the Pontos, constitute a milestone in Trapezuntine studies yet exceed the scope of the reader looking for a brief general introduction. Only in the last two decades has the need for an updated introduction to Trapezuntine history been addressed for the Greek and Russian readership.

In 1999, Vasileios Lymperopoulos published Ο Βυζαντινός Πόντος, which out of three recent introductory works is best suited for the general reader.Footnote ³ Lymperopoulos’ book covers a surprising variety of topics related to Trapezuntine history such as the life of Michael Panaretos or fourteenth-century factional rivalries. In 2007, Sergey Karpov's История Трапезундской империи (Istoriya Trapezundskoi Imperii) marked the apex of forty years of scholarship.Footnote ⁴ This monumental monograph synthesises Karpov's arguments, the most recent research on Trebizond and both a chronological and thematic overview of the Trapezuntine period and has recently been translated into Greek.Footnote ⁵ Savvides’ work fits between those by Karpov and Lymperopoulos. The author promises an overview of the history of the Trapezuntine period and the various scholarly issues associated with it, such as the foundation of the Trapezuntine polity or its relationship with Constantinople. This is an ambitious task for 150 extensively annotated pages of text and therefore, as expected, the analysis does not engage in depth with the present scholarly debates in Trapezuntine studies. The volume provides a well-rounded and up-to-date overview of the history of the Trapezuntine polity. The reader should not expect novel theories about questions such as the relationship between the Trapezuntine and Constantinopolitan rulers or political ideology. The author's perspective on the various questions addressed could have been more strongly articulated in the main text of the monograph. Savvides has published significantly on various topics related to the Middle and Late Byzantine periods, such as prosopography, and although references to his original research are included in the annotations, his contribution to Trapezuntine studies merits a greater emphasis. The deeper exploration of this late medieval polity can be undertaken by the avid reader through the extensive footnotes, appendices and bibliography, which form a useful resource.

The main text is divided into three chapters that approach Trapezuntine history through a selection of conventional dates. Chapter 1 discusses the foundation and establishment of the Trapezuntine polity in 1204-1297. The second chapter focuses on the fourteenth century as a period of the uneasy preservation and temporary heyday of the polity, in 1297-1390. The final chapter addresses the ‘seven decades of contest and diplomatic inconsistency’ in 1390-1461 and the demise of Trapezuntine rule. These chapters are followed by useful appendices including a list of the rulers, a survey of Trapezuntine authors, the family of the Tzanichitai and the practice of Trapezuntine marriage alliances. Each of these topics could be addressed in a depth beyond the scope of the current work. The book contains extensive reproductions of historical sources, such as Fallmerayer's rendering of Panaretos’ chronicle and colour plates of Trapezuntine coins and art. The reasons for the selection of this material are not explained in the main text nor do the reproductions contain references to their original publications. These additional materials would have worked better as textbook illustrations, in a more limited selection.

In addition to corrections of typographical errors, the additions to the third edition mainly consist of bibliographical additions, as was the case with the additions to the second edition. The emphasis on a Greek audience is evident in the forewords to the new editions and in the bibliographical notes, where literature published in Greece since the first edition are singled out. It would have been more useful for the author to include the significant number of international publications in Trapezuntine studies in the past decade, which has opportunely seen a surge of scholarly interest in the field.Footnote ⁶

The book is written in elegant yet easily readable Greek. Its translation into any language in which undergraduate or Masters level courses on Trebizond are available would be justified.