80
Most people at the time did not think the Roman Empire had fallen -- it's only from five hundred or a thousand years later that we can conclude that it did. Both points of view are reasonable.
What happened around 476 is that the Western part of the Roman Empire was lost to central control. This was not the first time it had happened -- consider the Gallic ...
47
The Early Middle Ages were not kind to Rome, and the long destructive war to recapture it didn't help things. By the time the dust settled, Rome had practically ceased to exist as a major city, with population estimates ranging from less than 50,000, to a tenth that*
The rest of the peninsula didn't do much better. According to McEvedy and Jones, Italy was ...
45
According to this MA thesis, the Byzantine armies had a number of overall advantages, but it does not follow that their commanders were especially skilled at one-to-one combat. Forcing individual Byzantine commanders to fight duels was an effective Arab strategy to exploit this weakness. (EDIT: As mentioned by @MarkC.Wallace in the comments, the Mubarizun ...
43
No, they did not try to move their capital to Rome, but the Emperor Heraclius at one point--around 620 or so when the war against Persia was going very badly--did consider moving the capital even farther west to Carthage (not quite as strange as it sounds since his father had been exarch of Africa and it had been the power base from which he had seized the ...
38
I'd say that historically, the ideology in Russia meant it preferred to compare itself to Byzantium, probably similarly to the way you can hear the US is compared to Rome.
This was, and still probably is, based on these facts:
Russia has (and had even more) cultural ties to Greece and Byzantium: Christianity came to Russia from Greece, with majority of ...
34
Religion is a great cultural differentiator. People have been killing each other for many millenia, with a preference for targeting other people who belong to a distinct "culture", a rather loose term. From the outside, the god(s) people worship are quite easy to work out; if they are not the same as yours, then these people are "foreigners".
Historically, ...
27
I did not watch the YouTube video, but based on your description, it seems to be presenting a garbled account of history.
Constantine XI did not will his titles way, but his brother Thomas Palaiologos claimed the imperial title after his death. Thomas briefly ruled the Byzantine remnants in the Peloponnese, but fled to Italy ahead of an Ottoman invasion in ...
26
Going beyond E.B. or Wikipedia:
The official website of the Hagia Sophia Museum states
The first church [at the H.S. site] was constructed by Emperor Konstantios [i.e. Constantine's son] (337-361) in
360. The first church was covered with a wooden roof and expanded vertically (basilica) yet was burned down after the public riot that
took place in 404 ...
26
I think the other answer misses some crucial distinctions.
Culture
The culture of the Seljuks was non-Greco-Roman; the same applies to their language. A good summary of who they were comes from Gibbon (Chapter 57):
Since the first conquests of the caliphs, the establishment of the Turks in Anatolia or Asia Minor was the most deplorable loss which the ...
19
You are right, the name Hellenes means “pagans” in the New Testament, and was consequently abandoned by Greek Christians, who preferred to call themselves “Romans”. The term Hellene was revived by the Greek philosopher Giorgios Gemistos Plethon in the 15th century as part of his endeavour to replace Christianity by the “Religion of the Hellenes”. It was ...
19
Muslim trader presence certainly existed in the Byzantine Empire.
I'd split my answer into three parts:
Documented Facts:
Quoting from the main source:
Muslim presence in the Eastern Roman Empire can be traced back to very foundation of Islam in the 7th century but at some later point the Muslims were regarded as a quasi community and appropriate ...
19
John VI Kantakouzenos
John VI Kantakouzenos, who reigned from 31 March 1347 to 10 December 1354, is the emperor who comes closest to meeting your criteria. He was deposed by his co-emperor John V Palaiologos (for whom he had earlier acted as regent), adopted the name Joasaph Christodoulos and wrote a History:
After he had been forced to retire, Emperor ...
19
According to the Wikipedia article on Constantine XI Palaiologos, no.
Despite the increase in emperors with the same name during the Middle Ages, such as the several Michaels and Constantines, the practice was never introduced. Instead, the Byzantines used nicknames and patronymics to distinguish rulers of the same name. Thus, the numbering of Byzantine ...
17
The Byzantine empire was a continuation of the older Roman empire in the East but it was gradually transformed into a different political entity. Meaning:
The original Roman empire used Latin as an official language, as expected, while Byzantium was Greek-speaking
They basically inherited the Roman legal system from the Roman empire.
They considered ...
15
The Fall of Constantinople had a negligible effect on the launching of the Age of Discovery, school textbooks notwithstanding. It was well under way a generation earlier, due to the perfection of the caravel in Portugal under Prince Henry the Navigator and the explorations he launched down the coast of Africa. The Madeira Islands had been rediscovered in ...
15
They looked in England, but nothing came of it.
During the Greek War of Independence, a commission investigated Cornwall, England for descendants of the Palaiologan dynasty. Supposedly, a certain Theodore Palaiologos of Pesaro in Italy died there in 1636. The Ferdinando Palaiologos mentioned in the question was one of his sons, and he died at Barbados on 3 ...
15
The critical factor all these answers leave out: The Black Death.
The Plague of Justinian swept through the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires a few generations before Islam. On the Byzantine side, the reduction in manpower available for warfare was near 90%. The damage to the economies of both empires made it unlikely they'd rebuild the population losses ...
15
Warren Treadgold, one of the most eminent scholars on the Byzantine Empire puts it simply as follows:
Modern historians have called this empire "Byzantine" because it was ruled not from Rome but from Constantinople, the former Byzantium
Hieronymus Wolf was the earliest known historian to use the name of the Byzantine Empire's capital to refer to the ...
14
Byzantine Empire was not formally a hereditary monarchy. There was no law which regulated inheritance in Byzantine Empire.
Nevertheless the offsprings of the imperial family sold the right to claim the throne to Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, Spanish monarchs. This was inherited by Charles V, Holy Roman emperor. Yet he never styled himself a ...
14
Andrew Wheatcroft's The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe contains the argument that both the Habsburg Empire (in the West) and the Ottoman Empire (in the East) considered themselves to be successors of the Roman Empire by the 17th century.
Wheatcroft points out that both empires ascended almost in parallel: Frederick III ...
14
There was a certain amount of natural antagonism between the west and the Byzantines. Part of this was religious: They belonged to different sects of Christianity, and thus often viewed each other as little better than heretics or Muslims. Another part was commercial. What little commerce the west had was in direct competition with the Byzantines, whose ...
14
Long lasting wars between Sassanians and Byzantine empire had made cripple armed forces of both of them and made their borders vulnerable.
Lakhmids were acting as a buffer state between nomad Arabs and Persia. But Khosrow II made them into neutral force practically. the practice made Iran's southern border more vulnerable.
Kavadh II massacred a lot of ...
13
Just a hint, according to Greek wikipedia entry (which cites this book), the Patriarch wrote Ῥωμαῖοι - Rhōmaîoi in the letter.:
Οι δύο δυνάμεις ολόκληρου του σύμπαντος, η δύναμη των Σαρακηνών και
αυτή των Ρωμαίων, ξεχωρίζουν και ακτινοβολούν όπως τα δύο μεγάλα
φωτεινά σώματα του ουράνιου θόλου. Γι'αυτόν και μόνο τον λόγο θα
πρέπει να ζήσουμε μαζί ...
12
Because they were too busy trying to keep the Arabs from capturing Constantinople (in the 700s) and forcing them out of Anatolia (after that).
If they had managed that, I'm sure it would have gotten on the agenda. But the Islamic forces remained too strong.
12
Case for Italy, the Vatican, or both
Italy was the place where the Roman Empire originated and Rome is located. They still speak a language directly descended from Latin. Rome was the most important city throughout the Middle Ages, and the Pope usually was the one with a monopoly on conferring the imperial title. Also, to become Emperor, it was usually ...
12
As @Mark points out, the Empire was too large to be efficiently managed from a single central point in the 4th century: at that time, the complete area consisted of provinciae, full of Roman citizens who had to be protected (no client state to serve as buffer), and the external borders were under high demographic pressure ("barbarians" on the other side of ...
12
It's probably a representation of the awning or tent that would have covered the Captain's berth at the stern of the vessel. The Wikipedia article on the Galley shows some other representations.
This model of a 16th century Maltese galley shows the awning at the stern quite clearly:
Source: Wikipedia
as does this 15th century representation of a Venetian ...
11
There are several answers to that question; various authors have favoured one or another, but it is probable that the fall of the Western Roman Empire was due to their combination.
From a geostrategic point of view, the stability of the Roman Empire was guaranteed by the legions: strong but not numerous forces, able to intervene in many places thanks to ...
11
In addition to Anixx's answer, check out Andreas Palaiologos - the oldest newphew of Constantine (the last emperor). Looks like he sold his "rights" to the Byzantine throne twice, both to France and Spain. And his younger brother sold them to... gasp... the Ottomans. Well, they had to get some money for high living.
Which brings us to another aspect: Mehmed ...
11
"Cultural decline" is questionable. There is no objective criterion to judge and compare different cultures. There was art and architecture, and you can never say that the art of one culture is inferior to that of another.
But decline of science is a fact, and it happened on the whole territory of the former Roman empire, both in the West and in the East, ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
