A new history of Byzantium reveals the inner workings of a late antique empire

This sounds fascinating. I almost want to get it just so I can learn what is meant by “The cursus publicus was hailed for its efficiency, at least until Justinian got his hands on it. “

A modern analog would be the USPS historically and what it's turned into under recent administrations, especially accelerated under DeJoy's administration.

Isn’t it wild that the Roman Empire lasted until the 1400s, only to finally fall to the Ottoman Empire?

But as the Empire fell, a large set of manuscripts were brought by the great Plethon to Cosimo d’Medici. Marsilio Ficino’s translation of Greek classics into Latin—like the complete works of Plato and the Hermetica—helped kindle the European Renaissance as we know it.

Imagine an analogous overlay much like you provided but continuous for such historical texts. That would be something. Like a Google translate from historical or cultural texts to your own contemporary culture, or a battery of footnotes.

On a tangent. The latest version of Candide on Gutenberg has such footnotes spread throughout to explain some obscure mentions in the text. An absolute recommender.

One thing to note is that the Greek works likely could not have survived medieval Europe if they had left Constantinople a lot earlier. There were two great advantages to renaissance scholars:

1. The works were still in their original Greek (rather than translations into Latin done long ago, or the translations from Greek to Arabic (and then to Latin) that came in through moorish Spain).

2. Religious attitudes allowed the works to be studied close to their original form. Early Christians were basically of the opinion that if a book disagreed with the bible it was heresy and should be destroyed, and if it agreed with the bible it was unnecessary and could be destroyed. That was less the case in the eastern side of the church and of course a big exaggeration too: there were old Latin translations of eg Plato however they had been quite bastardised to conform with Christian theology (I understand Aristotle was a little less bastardised as early Christian theology was itself quite Aristotelian). By the renaissance less bastardisation was required (if translating to Latin rather than the vernacular).

Without being transferred so late to the west, the works may never have made it to modern times in such a complete form.