85
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 ...
47
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 ...
42
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, ...
31
Going beyond E.B. or Wikipedia:
The official website of the Hagia Sophia Museum (at its former domain, link now dead) stated
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 ...
28
According to The Met Museum website, the mosaic Emperor Justinian and Members of His Court measures 104 in. by 144 in. or 264.2cm by 365.8cm, which is 8ft 8in by 12ft. The same dimensions are given for the mosaic Empress Theodora and Members of Her Court.
Slightly less precise measurements of 8ft 8in by 12ft, or 2m 64cm by 3m 65cm are given in this source ...
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
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 ...
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 ...
25
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 ...
20
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 ...
20
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 ...
20
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 ...
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 ...
16
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
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
14
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 ...
13
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 ...
13
Questions about the historical accuracy of holy texts can get dicey, so I'll try to treat this like any other question.
First, I'm not an Islamic scholar, so I'm not going to try and work out whether the translation is "lowest land" or "nearest land", but just note there seems to be some contention about exactly what is meant in the ...
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
Lighter, Faster Cavalry.
The heavier the cavalry, the harder it is to maintain speed and perform sharp maneuvers. At the battle of Turin, Constantine used light cavalry with iron-tipped clubs to attack the flanks of Cataphracts. Ancient cavalry rode horses without Stirrups, meaning clubs or weapons with blunt force behind them stood a fair chance of knocking ...
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 ...
12
I'm not sure why @Spencer didn't post this as an answer, but I believe he is correct in his comment from Apr in 2018 (as is the more recent (June 2018) limited response from @Rob Crawford):
There is another snippet from the Madrid Skylitzes showing this same
thing on land, on top of a hill, while the boat rows away, depicing
Thomas the Slav fleeing to ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible