Damn at least they got people on their boats unlike AoE4
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How could Byzantium call itself Rome if it broke away from it? The Roman Empire is where Rome is.
The Holy Roman Empire was the true Roman Empire whose emperors were crowned by the bishop of Rome. Byzantium were heretics.
Eastern roman empire was Greek more than anything.
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Because Roman identity worked that way.
They also didn’t break away from the western half. It’s a long story, but boiled down, the Roman Emperor Diocletian reorganized the empire to have two emperors to better manage Rome’s vast holdings. This went on successfully for a couple of centuries.
Imagine if another US capital was created in Los Angeles to better run things for everyone.
Over time the western Roman Empire faced tons of problems and was weakened until it fell apart. But the eastern one was fine, albeit unable to save its sister. 1000 years later it still existed. And its people were proud Romans just like Californians are proud Americans even if they have never been to Washington DC.
There’s all sorts of fascinating history out there.
Oh I see now. I think you may be injecting some weird edgy personal opinions into your history. I can’t help you like the people of the eastern Roman Empire, but perhaps I can help you decide to continue to learn about history. Good luck!
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The point is that Byzantium completely cut itself off from Rome and was undergoing such a powerful transformation that Rome and Constantinople became two completely different “worlds” that were separate cultural circles for Europe - Rome was the West, while Constantinople was the East. The Eastern Schism is the greatest symbol of this changes.
Byzantium raised the Slavs in the Orthodox religion and in their culture, the effects of which last to the present day - the division into Eastern Europe and Western Europe as two separate cultural circles was created precisely because of this.
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This is revisionist, you need to read up more on history before making these types of statements.
The idea of west vs east is something that happens very early on because of persian and greek warfare. That cultural clash goes on to echo continuously in history, but as far as Rome goes, Romans were always more than just Rome. The Roman identity grew to surpass their home city, and encompass the entire mediterranean, along side with much of the land that we consider to be western europe today.
But, it was only in the fourth century where they decided to move capitols to Constantinople. Would you consider this “cutting itself off from Rome”? They certainly did not view it that way. The tetrarchy that was established, was only policy to help further govern this vast amount of land. As goes with any giant state like this, it is always a logistical problem to not only lead but control the peoples within their borders, and different states have found different methods to maintain their power.
The head of power of the Roman state was no longer in Rome itself by the time that the western portion succumbed to the barbarian attacks. It was partly because of the leadership in the East that it ended up happening too, so trying to maintain this concept that the Roman state was only Rome itself is just stubborn and wrong. Romantizing their founding city is inappropriate in the given context. Beijing was not always the capitol of China either, and this applies to almost every country out there.
You can say that they did change from what we consider to be the classical Romans from antiquity; but Romans changed all the time. This nevertheless did not stop them from considering themselves as such; Romans.
You make it sound like Rome, the city itself, did not change while the Eastern Romans did. There was no “split” like you put it, and both portions of the empire went in different directions; the classical Romans you think of stayed in the past, but it does not delegitimize Constantinople whatsoever.
One of the things folks fall on when it comes to Romans and “the Byzantines”, is that they try to use religion as some kind of divider, ignoring that Christianity is by almost every definition a Roman religion in of itself. While its origins lies elsewhere, Christianity itself grew within the Roman Empire until they themselves legitimized and expanded it; the eastern portion of the Empire embraced it, and when they became the center of the state, they really personified it. The very idea that they became different entities, as if the “Byzantines” was born from ashes and nothing, is absurd, and that very idea is on the same lines as the revisionist germans used to prop themselves as true Romans, while ignoring the actual Roman state to the east.
The Byzantine Empire ( Greek name: Βασιλεία τῶν Ρωμαίων - Basileia tōn Romaiōn) is the term conventionally used since the 19th century to describe the Greek-speaking Roman Empire of the Middle Ages, centered around its capital of Constantinople.
About the Byzantines, that’s the name given by 16th century German publishers and printers to the Eastern Roman Empire, which had fallen under Turkish control. They were called that as a joke, as if they were an archeological relic to sell books about (“Find out it was the Byzantine empire, those Greeks who fell before the Ottomans, how pathethic”, "Chronicles of the Byzantine Empire, the empire you never heard of, (because we invented the name, hehe)). It’s as if now the United States was destroyed, and someone published an archeology book talking about the “Yankee Empire”, and since the name is shorter, we kept the nickname, but in reality, they were never called that.
If we go to the historical names, the Original Roman Empire DID SEPARATE into 2 parts, in the year 395 A.D., because Theodosius I divided it between his two sons, the West came to one of them (Western Roman Empire, capital : Rome), and to another the Empire in the East (Roman Empire of the East, Capital: Constantinople). Then they were two different empires, with different capitals.
However, the Western Roman Empire suffered greatly from the barbarian invasions (Campaign of Attila the Hun). Rome was sacked more than 5 times in less than 150 years:
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Plunder of Rome (387 BC), after the battle of Alia, which was victorious for the Gauls.
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Plunder of Rome (410, carried out by the Visigoths, commanded by Alaric I, after attacking the walls of the city.
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Sacking of Rome (455), second of the three sackings of Rome carried out by the barbarian peoples, who on this occasion (year 455) rose up in war against Petronius Maximus (who was Roman emperor for a few weeks, precisely in the year 455).
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Plunder of Rome (472), opportunity in which Ricimero appeared before Rome with an army of Germans, proclaiming Anicio Olibrio (the candidate that Ricimero and Genserico had previously supported) emperor; after a three-month siege, Rome was taken on July 1, 472, and then Anthemius was killed by Ricimero’s own hand. Rome was sacked and destroyed by Ricimero’s own soldiers.
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Plunder of Rome (546), sack of that city carried out by the Ostrogoths, commanded by the Gothic king Totila, during the Gothic War between the Ostrogoths and the Byzantine Empire.
After some of the looting, the new emperor or his retinue usually died, and between the time the new Caesar was elected, all the senators killed each other to occupy the throne. They got to a point where after the 5th sack of Rome in, the population was so upset with the new Caesar that they hanged him and his offspring. In the end the people totally distrusted the nobility and decided to “govern themselves” in city states. There the Italian city states were born.
However, the Eastern Roman Empire (aka: Byzantines) were not happy with the former cities of the Original Empire becoming independent, or a Goth making himself king of Italy, and invaded them. The Exarchate of Ravenna was then created, which was like the Viceroyalty of the Eastern Roman Empire in Italy, although Rome was no longer the official capital, it was the religious capital of Christianity.
The city of Rome in the long run, the former capital of the Empire, not having Caesar, was governed by the only one capable of doing so, the Pope. Technically, the Pope is not that he wanted to be Caesar, but that all the politicians had killed each other, and there was no one left to manage agriculture, trade, and other matters, since they were dead.
The exarchate of Ravenna lasted 300 years, until the islamic invasion of Rome (846). The Romans were not able to protect their exarchate, and it was only Charlemagne who defended them. That was why in theory the Pope gave himself the right to give the “charge of Caesar” to the succession of Charlemagne, after he defended the city from a Lombard attack, although that would be long after a forgery of Charlemagne himself. , which the Papacy later declared official.
The Romans were roasted, they had named a Frank “Caesar” and on top of that validated by the leader of the Church, the Pope. So, they never recognized him, but anyway, it didn’t matter, they could never recover Italy again, but another thing is that they tried.
About the more exact name for the Age II Civ Byzantines, but for AoE IV, I have the impression that it could be:
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“Eastern Rome”.- It was practically that after in 395 AD, Theodosius I separated the empire into 2 parts, the east for one and the west for others. That really is his start date.
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“Romans”.- Technically
they considered themselves the only Roman Empire that continued to exist after the destruction of the Eastern Roman Empire in 476 (when the last western roman noble die and nobody more try to claim the title of Caesar while the Goths or Lombard are in charge). In fact, the Emperors of Constantinople several times claimed the right to return to control Rome when it no longer had leaders of the Roman nobility, but they never allowed it, because Charlemagne, Frank Kingdom, Holy Roman Empires and Italian City States defend themselves. -
“Eastern Roman Empire”.- Technically, the call themselves as that, so I suppose this could be the best name for them.
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