A Roman state that never thought of itself as “Byzantine”
The word “Byzantine” is a later label. The people who lived in this state called themselves Romans, and their rulers saw themselves as the direct continuation of the Roman Empire. The name comes from Byzantion, the ancient Greek town on the site where the emperor Constantine dedicated a new capital in 330, Constantinople. Western scholars of the 1500s popularized “Byzantine” as a way to separate this Greek-speaking Christian state from the ancient empire. Historians still use it because it is convenient, but it is worth remembering that nobody in Constantinople would have used it.
The empire’s political power rested on a few durable things: a well-placed capital, a tax system that could pay for professional forces, a court that turned titles and ceremony into loyalty, and a religious order in which the emperor held a central, though contested, role.
From late antiquity to Justinian
When the western half of the Roman world fragmented in the 400s, the eastern half survived. The fall of Rome in the West is traditionally dated to 476, but in the East the emperor simply kept ruling. The Roman successor kingdoms in Italy, Gaul and Spain were new powers; Constantinople remained an old one.
The reign of Justinian (527-565) is often treated as a peak of ambition. His generals recovered parts of North Africa, Italy and southern Spain, which are commonly described as an attempt to restore the old empire. His legal commission compiled a vast body of Roman law, and the Justinian code became one of the most influential legal texts in European history. He also rebuilt the city’s great church after riots in 532. The costs were heavy, though, and plague and renewed war with Persia strained the state in the decades after his death.
Survival in the 600s and 700s
The 600s were the most dangerous century. A long war with Sasanian Persia ended with Emperor Heraclius winning back lost territory in the 620s, but the state was exhausted. Within a few years Arab armies took Syria and Egypt, two of the richest provinces. What remained was a smaller state centered on Anatolia, the Balkan coast and parts of Italy and Sicily.
This smaller empire reorganized itself. Provinces called themes combined military command with civil government, and soldiers were often supported by land. Constantinople survived major Arab sieges, in the 670s and again in 717-718, helped by its walls and by a naval incendiary weapon usually called Greek fire. The details of how that weapon worked are not fully known.
The 700s and early 800s were also marked by iconoclasm, a bitter dispute over whether holy images should be used in worship. Icons were officially restored in 843. The argument shows how closely politics, religion and imperial authority were tied, a theme that also runs through religious iconography in the wider medieval world.
Recovery and the high point
From the later 800s the empire went on the offensive. Under rulers of the Macedonian dynasty, it regained ground in the Balkans, Syria and the Mediterranean islands. Basil II (reigned 976-1025) is remembered for his long campaigns against Bulgaria, which ended in the annexation of that kingdom around 1018. At his death the empire was probably the strongest Christian state in the Mediterranean region, with a stable gold coinage and a large, well-organized administration.
Its influence also spread through missions and diplomacy. Missionaries carried Orthodox Christianity and a Slavic alphabet northward, and the conversion of Rus later tied Kyiv to Constantinople’s church.
The turning point after 1071
Power is easier to build than to keep. After Basil II, the central government was weakened by quarrels among rival aristocratic families, and by changes in who controlled the army. In 1071 the Battle of Manzikert saw the emperor captured by Seljuk Turks, and in the following years Turkish groups moved into much of Anatolia, the empire’s main recruiting and tax base. Historians debate how decisive one battle was compared with the civil wars that followed it, but the loss of central Anatolia was a lasting blow.
A new dynasty, the Komnenoi, stabilized the state from 1081. It made deals with Italian trading cities and dealt with the arrival of western armies during the Crusades, which brought both opportunity and suspicion. Relations with the Latin West worsened over the 1100s.
1204, restoration and the long ending
In 1204 a crusading army diverted to Constantinople and captured the city. The empire fragmented into rival Greek successor states, and Latin rulers held the capital until it was recovered in 1261. The restored state was never again a great power. It was smaller, poorer and surrounded by rivals, among them Serbia, Bulgaria, Venice, Genoa and, increasingly, the Ottomans.
During the 1300s the Ottomans expanded across Anatolia and then into the Balkans, and the empire’s emperors were often reduced to seeking help abroad or accepting tribute. A union of the churches agreed in 1439 to win Western aid had little lasting effect. By the middle of the 1400s the state was little more than the city of Constantinople and a few territories around it. The final siege in 1453 is covered in its own article.
What made the state last so long?
Historians offer several explanations, and they do not all agree on the weighting:
- Constantinople’s geography and its triple line of land walls made it very hard to take.
- A money economy and a salaried bureaucracy gave emperors resources that many Western rulers lacked.
- Diplomacy, gifts and titles often achieved what armies could not.
- The state was flexible. It repeatedly reorganized after disasters instead of simply collapsing.
None of this prevented decline, but it helps explain why an empire so often described as finished was able to recover again and again before the end.