The Roman Empire That Continued: Byzantium

Most history books will tell you that the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century CE. However, this would have come as a great surprise to the millions of people who lived in the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages. This medieval Roman Empire, which we usually refer to today as the Byzantine Empire, began in 330 CE, when Constantine, the first Christian emperor, moved the capital of the Roman Empire to a new city called Constantinople. He founded it on the site of the ancient Greek city Byzantion.

When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 and the Empire’s western provinces were conquered by barbarians, Constantine’s eastern capital remained the seat of the Roman emperors. There, generations of emperors ruled for the next 11 centuries.

Continuity with the classical Roman Empire gave the Byzantine Empire a technological and artistic advantage over its neighbors, whom the Byzantines considered barbarians. In the ninth century, visitors from beyond the frontier were astonished by the graceful stone arches and domes of the imperial palace in Constantinople. A pair of golden lions flanked the imperial throne. A hidden organ made the lions roar as guests fell to their knees, and golden birds sang from a nearby golden tree. Medieval Roman engineers even used hydraulic engines to raise the imperial throne high into the air.

Other inherited aspects of ancient Roman culture could be seen in emperors’ clothing, from traditional military garb to togas, and in the courts, which continued to use Roman law. Working-class Byzantines also had lives similar to those of their ancient Roman counterparts. Many farmed or practiced a specific trade, such as ceramics, leatherworking, fishing, weaving, or silk manufacturing.

However, the Byzantine Empire did not simply rely on ancient Rome. Its artists innovated, creating vast mosaics and ornate marble carvings. Its architects constructed numerous churches, including Hagia Sophia, whose dome was so high that people said it hung from a chain connected to heaven. The Empire was also home to great intellectuals such as Anna Komnene. As an imperial princess in the twelfth century, Anna devoted her life to philosophy and history. Her account of her father’s reign is historians’ foremost source for Byzantine political history during the time of the First Crusade.

Another scholar, Leo the Mathematician, invented a system of beacons that ran across the Empire, through what is now Greece and Turkey. Stretching more than 700 kilometers, the system allowed the edge of the Empire to warn the emperor of invading armies within one hour of spotting them at the border.

But these advances could not protect the Empire forever. In 1203, an army of French and Venetian Crusaders made a deal with Alexios Angelos, the son of a deposed emperor. Alexios promised the Crusaders vast riches and support in exchange for helping him retake the throne from his uncle. Alexios succeeded, but after a year the population rebelled, and Alexios was deposed and killed.

His unpaid army then turned its aggression against Constantinople. The soldiers lit massive fires that destroyed countless works of ancient and medieval art and literature and left about one-third of the population homeless. The city was reclaimed 50 years later by the Roman Emperor Michael Palaiologos, but his restored Empire never regained all the territory the Crusaders had conquered.

Finally, in 1453, Ottoman Emperor Mehmed the Conqueror captured Constantinople, bringing the Roman Empire to a conclusive end. Despite the Ottoman conquest, many Greek-speaking inhabitants of the Eastern Mediterranean continued to call themselves Romans until the early twenty-first century.

The term “Byzantine Empire” was not used until the Renaissance. For Western Europeans, the Renaissance involved reconnecting with the wisdom of antiquity. The existence of a medieval Roman Empire suggested that some Europeans had never lost touch with antiquity, so Western Europeans wanted to draw clear lines between the historical periods. To distinguish the classical, Latin-speaking, pagan Roman Empire from the medieval, Greek-speaking, Christian Roman Empire, scholars renamed the latter group the Byzantines. Thus, the Byzantine Empire was named about 100 years after it had fallen.