BYZANTIUM: The Empire that Never Existed

By YouveBeenGreeked | Some Random Thoughts. | 4 Mar 2025

Ah, the Roman Empire - well and truly, my intellectual, mental and spiritual comfort zone. And maybe when time travel becomes a thing, my physical comfort zone too.

It's often regarded as one of humanity's peaks, at least for its time, encompassing over five million square kilometres - nearly two million square miles - achieving the centuries-long period of internal peace known as the Pax Romana, trading with states as far away as Scandinavia, China, Arabia and Sub-Saharan Africa, constructing aqueducts, straight paved roads, heated floors, steam-operated automatic doors, vending machines, libraries, grand temples, glass, its legal system, language, art and architecture... Rome very much laid the foundation for world history to come.

Its collapse in the fifth century AD is equally as compelling - how such a grand civilisation once deemed immortal could fall entirely, leaving only its conceptual and ruined traces behind but vanishing altogether. Economic incompetency, barbarian invasions, succession crises, civil wars, plague - many of the things that would end many other grand civilisations hit Rome in the end, and hit hard. Rome's fall is usually associated with the beginning of the European Dark Ages, where education, life expectancy and scientific advances were reversed for the next few centuries until the Renaissance of the fourteenth / fifteenth century. Men today still think about the Roman Empire, and it's not hard to understand why: for all its flaws, it was a marvel of human achievement for its time, and its fall serves as a lesson for all civilisations after it.

BUT, the big plot-twist of the Fall of Rome in the fifth century is that, well, it DIDN'T; the empire had been politically divided into two halves - East and West - by the end of the third century after decades of civil war and internal strife - one man simply wasn't enough to rule an empire so big, grand and yet, by that time, unstable. So reforms were made and multiple emperors ruled the empire at once from different cities across the empire. The city of Rome wained in power, but the capital was soon moved elsewhere, Eastward to Thrace: "Nova Roma" or "New Rome" would soon take on a new name, after its founder, emperor Constantine the Great: "The City of Constantine", or in Greek: "Constantinopolis" - Constantinople, modern Istanbul. As Rome's first Christian ruler, the empire would slowly adopt a new Christian identity, with the supreme ruler of the church in Rome - the Pontifex Maximus - taking on a far more important role as the position evolved into what we now know as "The Pope".

After reunifying the empire once more, Constantine left the empire to his many sons. Divided once more, it would be united again by emperor Theodosius the Great in 395 AD, and when he died months later, his two sons would rule one half of the empire each again. It's from this date, 395, that many historians generally attribute the beginning of the end for the Roman Empire, for in 476 AD, Rome's last Western Emperor would be overthrown in the new Italian capital of Ravenna, ending Roman rule in Western Europe altogether.

But the Eastern half survived, and thrived, for another THOUSAND YEARS. Constantinople was still the capital city of the empire, and the rich eastern world would allow it to prosper. But the Roman Empire was very much missing its Rome, pushing emperor Justinian to attempt to regain the lost Western lands in the mid-sixth century. Largely successful, his generals reclaimed North-West Africa, the Western Balkans, southern Spain and, yes, Italy itself. Ravenna and Rome were reclaimed for a couple of centuries, but the Eternal City was in great disrepair, a shadow of its former self. Not long after Justinian's death, Italy was invaded by the Germanic tribe, the Lombards (where we get "Lombardy" from) but Rome and other major cities remained in imperial hands.

With growing pressure elsewhere, from the Slavs and Bulgarians from across the Danube, the Persians in the East and the new Islamic Caliphates from the south, more and more territory began falling from Roman hands. Eventually, the Pope, seeing Italy being warred over and destroyed by the warring Romans and Lombards, declared "The Exarchate of Ravenna"'s independence from the empire, laying the foundations for the Papal States and today's Vatican City.

The Lombards proved a powerful force, who came to seek the city of Rome for themselves by the late 700's AD. With the Roman Empire's power waining, and with an Empress on the throne in Constantinople, the Pope sought military aid from the most powerful empire of the time: The Franks, in what is now modern-day France and Germany. Their King, Charles the Great or "Charlemagne", came to the Pope's aid and conquered the Lombards. As a reward, the Pope crowned Charlemagne in Rome on Christmas Day 800 AD as "Holy Roman Emperor". This obviously wasn't well received news from the imperial throne in Constantinople, and tensions rose between the Eastern Patriarch in Constantinople and the Western Pope in Rome.

These tensions boiled over in 1054, when the two churches split from one another altogether, forging two entirely separate Christian churches in what is known as "The Great Schism": the Eastern, Greek speaking Orthodox Church and the Western, Latin speaking Catholic Church would now struggle to maintain great relationships from here on out.

This split couldn't have come at a worse time, as the new emerging Turkic empire of the Seljuks emerged onto the scene in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) after defeating the Romans in battle at Manzikert in 1071, claiming a vast portion of the Roman Empire. As a result, Roman emperor Alexios I called the West for aid.

Pope Urban II, sort of, answered the call, and instead of sending a handful of mercenaries to reclaim Asia Minor for the Romans, twenty-thousand armed men, promised with a reward of eternity in Heaven, were sent on the First Crusade in 1095 to reclaim... Jerusalem and the Holy Land... not really the original plan, but the Crusaders were successful, taking Jerusalem in 1099 and establishing the Crusader States of Jerusalem and Antioch amongst others.

Three Crusades later, another was called against the Muslim Caliphate in Egypt to reclaim the once-Christian city of Alexandria in 1202. Setting sail from Venice, led by Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo, their crusade was met with a side quest from deposed Roman Emperor Isaac II promised the Crusaders a bounty of money in exchange for support of him reclaiming the throne of Constantinople. The mission was a success, but Isaac did not have the money he promised. So, thousands of money-hungry Crusaders were left aside a rich, civil war-ridden city that happened to be the greatest city in the world at the time... the sack of Constantinople in 1204 saw the empire divided and looted by the Crusader states, much of its territory divided between the Latin powers.

Eventually, one of the empire's rump states would come to reclaim power and retake Constantinople (by luck, when the city gates were left open one day, but hey). But it's clear that the once multi-continent-spanning empire was a dying entity, and soon a resurgence of the Bubonic Plague, further civil wars and the new rising Ottoman Sultanate would finish the empire off. On the 29th of May, 1453, left with minimal allies and support, Constantine XI led the Romans in one last charge against the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II outside the walls of Constantinople, dying amongst his soldiers. The Roman empire finally fell...

So why the Hell am I telling you this? And what's with the title of this article? And what is "Byzantium"?

Byzantium was a Greek city founded in the 8th century BC - it's the city that Constantine would found a new city atop of that would become known as Constantinople, and when the Ottomans took over, it would come to be known in time as "Istanbul", a Turkish play-on Constantinople that essentially means "into The City".

The Eastern Mediterranean of antiquity and the early Medieval period was a very Greek-speaking area, ever since the Eastern conquests of Alexander the Great and his successors in the fourth century BC. Greek language and culture dominated this area, so much so that when Rome conquered Greece and the Greek east, it was very much said that Greek culture "conquered" Rome, and while Rome was taking on a Christian identity, it had also been taking on a more Greek identity. By the early seventh century AD, Greek would even become the empire's new official language, with Latin being more of an academic language - a complete reversal of the days of Julius Caesar and Augustus.

Bear with me...

Given that Rome was founded in the mid 8th century BC, and Constantinople fell in 1453 AD, Roman history is essentially over 2,000 years! To help conceptualise this a little easier, historians often divide Roman history into two periods: "Ancient Rome" and "Medieval Byzantium". The Roman Empire of the Medieval Era is thus often dubbed "The Byzantine Empire", in reference to its more Greek identity and the capital city of Constantinople once being known as Byzantium. It's an easy way of splitting the empire from its ancient, pagan, Latin-speaking, Mediterranean-spanning, Italian-centred days, from its Medieval, Christian, Greek-speaking, Aegean-spanning, Balkan-centred days.

However, what do you do if you're a powerful ruler of a powerful state that isn't the official Roman Empire of the time of the "Byzantines"? Well, if you're the Pope or Charlemagne in 800 AD, you crown your ally as "Holy Roman Emperor".

or if you're Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, you dub yourself as "Kayser-i Rûm", or "Caesar of Rome", seeing your conquest as you carrying on the Empire's legacy in a new, Turkic and Islamic form.

Or if you're the Orthodox Christian state of Moscow, Russia, you claim that since you're the remaining head of the Orthodox Church, you are now the successor to the Roman Empire, with your rulers being dubbed "Tzars", from "Caesars". Or if you're Greek, you claim to be the successor to the Romans based on your eastern language and proximity to Istanbul / Constantinople, or if you're Italian you claim to be Rome's successor because of Italy and Rome itself... the list goes on and on: Bulgaria, Serbia, Spain, even FINLAND... and, yes, the USA because they're powerful like Rome once was... ew...

The point is, several states throughout history have made one claim or another to being the successor to the Roman Empire, and since the decades after Constantinople's fall in 1453, the term "Byzantine Empire" was coined by scholars, in large part to delegitimise the Empire from, well, itself, simply because it was no longer based in Rome and wasn't the old, Latin, Pagan power of Antiquity it once was.

Yes, I'm biased in my love for the Roman civilisation, but I truly believe I'm speaking truthfully when I say this: there was no Byzantine Empire, Byzantium was not the Second Roman Empire, and there has been no Third Roman Empire after 1453 - Byzantium wasn't the "successor" to the Roman Empire, it WAS the Roman Empire. Its language, religion, laws and cultural norms may have changed, but given 2,000 years that would go for any civilisation. And for comparison, when the Austrian House of Habsburg - from Habsburg Castle - lost Habsburg castle, they were still known very much as the Habsburg's. So why doesn't this apply for Rome? I think mainly because of how big, powerful and influential the Roman Empire was - every state in history looks back fondly on the Roman Empire, so being loose with "Roman" allows others to claim to be some sort of successor to it. There isn't anywhere near as much of a desire for people to claim to be the successor to the Habsburg's like they would say for the Romans.

It's very much a "Ship of Theseus" issue: if a ship's oars are replaced, is it the same ship? And when its sail, hull and crew are replaced, is it still the same ship? With the Roman Empire, when its language is replaced, its religion, borders, capital city... is it still the same empire?

But in summary, I don't mind the term "Byzantine" or "Byzantium" - I use it sometimes - as long as all of this is understood and it is only used to quickly divide Rome between its Ancient and Medieval ages, and not to delegitimise the Eastern Empire of Constantinople. The Empire was still very much alive, just with several new coats of paint.

Anyway, go and do something productive like watching paint dry. I'm off.

Ciao.