3.3 The Eastern Roman Empire—Byzantium

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE, Roman culture continued in the East in Constantinople. These people considered themselves Roman, but the differences we have already seen became cemented until they were something very different from the Rome of Antiquity. To differentiate, historians have given this civilization the name Byzantine, a reference to the ancient Byzantium. As you read reflect on the development not only of the Byzantine Empire, but in the 7th century CE, of another major monotheistic religion co-adjacent to the Eastern Roman Empire.

The eastern half of the Roman Empire survived for 1,000 years after the fall of the western one. It carried on most of the traditions of Rome and added many new innovations in architecture, science, religion, and learning. It was truly one of the great civilizations of world history. And yet, as demonstrated in everything from college curricula to representations of ancient history in popular culture, Byzantium is not as well represented in the contemporary view of the past as is the earlier united Roman empire. Why might that be? The answer is probably this: like the western empire before it, Byzantium eventually collapsed. However, Byzantium did not just collapse, it was absorbed into a distinct culture with its own traditions: that of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. More to the point, the religious divide between Christians and Muslims, at least from the perspective of medieval Europeans, was so stark that Byzantium was “lost” to the tradition of Western Civilization in a way that the western empire was not. Even though the Ottoman Empire itself was a proudly “western” civilization, one that eagerly built on the prosperity of Byzantium after absorbing it, there is a centuries-long legacy of distinguishing between the Byzantine – Ottoman culture of the east and the Roman – European medieval culture of the West.

Byzantine civilization’s origins are to be found in the decision by the emperor Constantine to found a new capital in the Greek village of Byzantium, renamed Constantinople (“Constantine’s city”). By the time the Western Empire fell, the center of power in the “Roman” empire had long since shifted to the East: by the fifth century CE the majority of wealth and power was concentrated in the eastern half of the empire. The people of Constantinople and the eastern empire did not call it “Byzantium” or themselves “Byzantines” – they continued to refer to themselves as “Romans” long after Rome itself was permanently outside of their territory and control.

After the fall of the Western Empire, the new Germanic kings acknowledged the authority of the emperor in Constantinople. They were formally his vassals (lords in his service) and he remained the emperor of the entire Roman Empire in name. At least until the Byzantine Empire began to decline in the seventh century, this was not just a convenient fiction. Even the Franks, who ruled a kingdom on the other end of Europe furthest from the reach of Constantinople, lived in genuine fear of a Byzantine invasion since the treaties they had established with Constantinople were full of loopholes and could be repudiated by any given emperor.

Why was it that the West had fallen into political fragmentation while the East remained rich, powerful, and united? There are a few major reasons: first, Constantinople itself played a major role in the power and wealth of the East. Whereas Rome had shrunk steadily over the years, especially after its sacking in 410 CE and the move of the western imperial government to the Italian city of Ravenna (which was more easily defensible), Constantinople had somewhere around 500,000 residents. That can be compared to the capital of the Gothic kingdom of Gaul, Toulouse, which had 15,000, which was a large city by the standards of the time for western Europe! Not only was Constantinople impregnable to invaders, but its population of proud Romans repeatedly massacred barbarians who tried to seize power, and they deposed unpopular emperors who tried to rule as military tyrants rather than true emperors possessing sufficient Roman “virtue.”

“Starting the Byzantine Empire.” Tracing Constantinople. Films on Demand. 2010. Through “Byzantine: An Organizational Heritage.” Tracing Constantinople. Films on Demand. 2010. 6:40.                 

The East had long been the richest part of the empire, and because of its efficient bureaucracy and tax-collecting systems, much more wealth flowed into the imperial coffers in the East than it did in the West. Each year, the imperial government in Constantinople brought in roughly 270,000 pounds of gold in tax revenue, as compared to about 20,000 in the West. This made vastly better-equipped, trained, and provisioned armies possible in the East. Furthermore, the West was still dominated by various families of unbelievably rich Roman elites who undermined the power, authority, and financial solvency of the Western imperial government by refusing to sacrifice their own prerogatives in the name of a stronger united empire; in the East, while nobles were certainly rich and powerful, they were nowhere near as powerful as their western counterparts.

There is another factor to consider, one that is more difficult to pin down than the amount of tax revenue or the existence of Constantinople’s walls. Simply put, Roman identity – the degree to which social elites, soldiers, and possibly regular citizens considered themselves “Roman” and remained loyal to the Empire – seems to have been stronger in the East than the West. This might be explained by the reverse of the “vicious cycle” of defeat and vulnerability previous described regarding the West. In the East, the strength of the capital, the success of the armies, and the allegiance of elites to Rome as an idea encouraged the continued strength of Roman identity. Even if poor farmers still had little to thank the Roman state for in their daily lives, their farms were intact and local leaders were still Roman, not Gothic or Frankish or Vandal.

Lastly, the East enjoyed a simple stroke of good luck in the threats it faced from outside of the borders: the barbarians went west and Persia did not launch major invasions. The initial Gothic uprising that sparked the beginning of the end for the West was in the Balkans, but the Goths were then convinced to go west. Subsequent invasions from Central Europe were directed at the West. Even though the Huns were from the steppes of Central Asia, they established their short-lived empire in the West. Eastern Roman armies had to repulse threats and maintain the borders, but they did not face the overwhelming odds of their Western Roman counterparts. Finally, despite Persia’s overall strength and coherence, there was a lull in Persian militarism that lasted through the entire fifth century.