Concept

Byzantine Empire

Overview

The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, it endured until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. The term 'Byzantine Empire' was coined only after its demise; its citizens used the term 'Roman Empire' and called themselves 'Romans'.

During the early centuries of the Roman Empire, the western provinces were Latinised, but the eastern parts kept their Hellenistic culture. Constantine I (r. 324–337) legalised Christianity and moved the capital to Constantinople. Theodosius I (r. 379–395) made Christianity the state religion and Greek gradually replaced Latin for official use. The empire adopted a defensive strategy and, throughout its remaining history, experienced recurring cycles of decline and recovery.

The Byzantine Empire reached its greatest extent under the reign of Justinian I (r. 527–565), who briefly reconquered much of Italy and the western Mediterranean coast. A plague began around 541, and a prolonged warfare with Persia placed fiscal and military strain on the empire, contributing to political and strategic challenges in the decades that followed. In the 630s and 640s the Arab conquests defeated Byzantine field armies in Syria and Egypt, resulting in the permanent loss of those provinces to the Rashidun Caliphate. In 698, Africa was lost to the Umayyad Caliphate, but the empire stabilised under the Isaurian dynasty. It expanded once more under the Macedonian dynasty, experiencing a two-century-long renaissance. Thereafter, periods of civil war and Seljuk incursion resulted in the loss of most of Asia Minor. The empire recovered during the Komnenian restoration, and Constantinople remained the largest and wealthiest city in Europe until the 13th century, when it was overtaken by Paris.

The empire was severely fragmented in 1204, following the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade; its former territories were then divided into competing Greek rump states and Latin realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the reconstituted empire wielded only regional power during its final two centuries. Its remaining territories were progressively annexed by the Ottomans in a series of wars fought in the 14th and 15th centuries. The fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 brought the empire to an end.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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The race, indeed, that survived, as it has been before observed, were a set of unlettered mountaineers, who had heard the names only of the ruling people in the land, and very little about their deeds. The names they out of affection gave to their children, though unacquainted with the virtues and laws of those before them, except through certain dark rumours concerning them; and being themselves and their children…
Plato, The works of Plato
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Many also fell in naval engagements at the Hellespont, after having in one day taken all the ships of the enemy, and defeated them in other naval engagements. And what I call the terrible and desperate nature of the war, is that the other Hellenes, in their extreme animosity towards the city, should have entered into negotiations with their bitterest enemy, the king of…
Plato, The dialogues of Plato in five volumes, Vol. 2
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The empire of Russia is the largest in the whole globe, extending from west to east upwards of two thousand common leagues of France,[1] and about eight hundred in its greatest breadth from north to south. It borders upon Poland and the Frozen Sea, and joins to Sweden and China. Its length from the island of Dago, in the westernmost part of Livonia, to its most eastern limits, takes in near one hundred and seventy…
Voltaire, The History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia
Close in meaning to Byzantine Empire; the term itself is not named.
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Byzantine Empire

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