For some time, I have been following podcast called the History of Byzantium Podcast, which covers the lengthy history of the Eastern Romans from 5th century all the way to the fall in 1453, a thousand years later.

“Wait!” you might be wondering, “didn’t the Roman Empire fall in the 4th century to barbarian invasions?!”

Yes, and no.

The reforms of Emperor Diocletian after the Crisis of the Third Century had essentially split the Roman empire into two, smaller more manageable empires:

The small Greek town of Byzantion (Byzanitium in Latin) became increasingly important after Emperor Constantine made it his new capitol, renaming it after himself (Constatinople).

In any case, when the Roman Empire fell, it was only the Western half, which was the less prosperous, less populous half anyway. The eastern half was able to bribe or drive out the hordes, and kept going.

In fact, it kept going until 1453. Over the course of 1,000 years, it gradually changed, losing its Latin influences and becoming increasingly Greek in nature, but until the 4th Crusade, there never was a break in the Roman Empire of the East. Professor Anthony Kaldelis pointed out that Greek people continued to identify themselves as “Roman” even into 20th century during Ottoman times, and even the Ottomans referred to Greece as the Sultanate of Rûm (Rome). Historians use the term “Byzantine” to describe the Eastern Roman Empire, but Romans in the East never used this term. They called themselves “Romania” or “Rome”.

Was it even Roman anymore? Western purists would assume “no” because Rome the city wasn’t part of the empire, but even before the 4th century, Rome had ceased to be the the center of the Empire as the Western half administered things from Ravenna or other cities. Further, Latin was never technically the official language of the Roman Empire (as in, “by law”). Greek and Latin co-existed, and Greek speakers always outnumbered the Latin-speaking ones because of the influence of the earlier Hellenistic period (for example in Roman Egypt).

Further, the Republican aspects of the Empire kept going in Eastern half many centuries later. This concept of res publica wasn’t the same as modern English “republic” (never was), as in a specific system of government, but instead was used to describe “Rome” the polity. When the first emperor, Augustus, took over as the princeps (“first among equals”), the term res publica was still widely used to describe Rome, and kept going through the Byzantine era using the Greek equivalent politeia (πολιτεία). The Emperors during the Byzantine era were still installed and overthrown in the same way the earlier Emperors had been.

As Anthony Kaldellis demonstrates, Emperors were always subject to popular will, just as the old Republican consuls had been, and nothing really changed in the Byzantine era. Thus, the res publica of Rome was a continuous spectrum from the earliest days of the republic to the 15th century.

All this is to say that, when we speak of the “Fall of the Roman Empire”, in reality, only some of the Empire fell in the 5th century. The rest, amazingly, kept going. Constantinople was for centuries one of the largest cities in the world, and the Theodosian Walls were never thrown down until the invention of modern cannon warfare.

Like any empire, the Eastern Romans had periods of growth and decline, and as the neighbors gradually caught up in terms of technology and military skill, Constantinople’s power steadily waned. In the days of Julius Caesar, Rome was so far ahead of the Gauls and other neighbors, it was easy to steamroll them, but by the time of Alexios Komnenos, the Eastern Empire faced many complex and powerful enemies, and there’s just only so much a society can do in that scenario. As the host of the podcast explains, the chessboard was very crowded.

So, if you’d like to know more about the Eastern Romans, not Byzantines, please check out the podcast above.