Is the Byzantine Empire a continuation of the Roman Empire?


  • Total voters
    35
Status
Not open for further replies.
The Byzantine Empire was a new phase of the Roman (Empire), as the Principate, Republic, Kingdom and Dominate had been before. It had a good run, until either failing in 1204 or moving on to basically a Palaiologos Kingdom (of 'Rome').

France is (at minimum) continuous since Philippe Auguste, but the French Republic was vastly different than the Kingdom of France Philippe had created, and Vichy France was a nice limbo until De Gaulle resurrected France, but it's all still France. Sure, it shares the capital (well Vichy not so much), so it has a bit more continuity than Byzantium has straight from Augustus or Romulus, but there's also layers inbetween that make Byzantium the same state.

Nothing stops you from discussing just Byzantium, though, or just the classical Romans, if you want to. It's somewhat fuzzy where it transits, exactly, and it's possible to group them together, but noone's gonna be surprised if you call Basil II a Byzantine or Augustus a Roman.

So, in other words, the question is still stupid even if I think the answer isn't actually no.
 
Rome was an heir to the Greek invention of the concept of 'polity', the state as a corporate being whose existence is separate from its members, a 'whole greater than the sum of its parts'. As long as there was a state made up of and supported by a people calling themselves Romans, it was a Roman state. In a very important way it is a centralization of tribal identity. If those people are direct descendants of others who considered themselves Romans, who supported a state called Roman, those people are members of the same state.

This is true of the Byzantines. It is not true of any of the other claimants. Their rulers may have claimed the title, but they never had Romans acclaiming it to them.

The Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, or at least of the Carolingian Empire, have some level of claim here, having ruled an area filled with people who considered themselves Romans, but there is a definite break in continuity when the city of Rome was ruled by someone other than Roman Emperors. This means that, while you can consider the HRE a Roman empire, to an extent, it was not that Roman Empire that Augustus worked to build.

Simple as. Without a coherent idea of why a state remains the same state once the last member of a founding generation dies, you can't argue that the Sweden of 1900 is the same as the Sweden of today. With one, you can understand why it is.
 
A useful analogy I have found for this is whether you consider modern Germany to be a continuation of Prussia. The similarities are there. Germany no longer has any of the core territories that comprised Prussia, yet the cultural, political and historical influence of Prussia on modern Germany is very clear. This despite Adenauer's post-war explicit denunciation of 'Prussian influence' (I believe also matched by the DDR).

Countries evolve over centuries, and the Roman Kingdom under Tarquin was vastly different to the Principate under Augustus. The Byzantine period was a distinct and vastly different phase from those earlier periods of Roman history, but it was still Roman. Admittedly they were Roman with a big caveat, which is why I'm not hostile to this question being asked because, I think, it is a valid debate though I err on the 'yes' side.

The real difficulty with this question is because the Byzantines lost. If there had been a lasting reconquest of the Empire, the loss of Rome in 476 would simply be called a temporary dynastic collapse by modern historians.
 
Last edited:
I really don't get why I can't answer "yes" to this question when it is frankly the only answer I can give...

What we call the Byzantine Empire is basically the Eastern Roman Empire. After Theodosius split the Empire between his sons in 395 AD, you had two emperors ruling: one in Ravenna in the West (Rome was a symbolic capital) and one ruling in Constantinople in the East. Sure, as the centuries went the Byzantine Empire diverged more and more from what it had been during Antiquity... But that's because countries do not remain static in their institutions. We can hardly say that XIIth Century France is the same as modern-day France for example: yet no one is going to say they're not the same country.
 

Oceano

Banned
Because there wasn't a word for "yes" in Classical Latin.

In Classical Latin, "No" means "You're gonna get raped anyway but I want to be defiant"

Would someone really do that? Just spread Frankish heresy on the Internet?

Not only they would, there are entire sites dedicated to it!

http://www.catholic.org/

All the frankish heresy you could want, need or have!

They believe that, *GASP* The Bishop of Rome is the supreme head of Christendom, above the other members of the Pentarchy!

Can't have some bishop calling himself that, next he will call himself Vice-Roy of God, too! And infallible, even!

I don't pay my tribute and send my sons to serve in the army so some latin barbarian can declare himself above the Emperor and the Patriarch.

I heard they don't even bathe there and all these heretics stink!
 
I'm not sure if the choices were a typo or a joke.

Legally the answer is "yes" and it also should be noted that the only people who called the empire "Byzantine" were their Frankish enemies.

(...)

Not entirely, since that would be a bit anachronistic, AFAIK it dates from era of Enlightenment. To be sure, when the 'Franks' (basically the Roman Catholic West) and the 'Byzantines' (Rhomanoi, the Greek Orthodox East) were at odds (they weren't always enemies), they would refer to them as the Empire of Constantinople (not entirely incorrect, but it deliberately ignored the Roman heritage) or the Empire of the Greeks (which given the fact that they spoke Greek, is another way to avoid Roman heritage). The 'Byzantines' had their own derogatory terms for the West. They weren't always used, but when they were, it gives an indication of the diplomatic climate (the tone would be milder during better periods).
 

Red Orm

Banned
A useful analogy I have found for this is whether you consider modern Germany to be a continuation of Prussia. The similarities are there. Germany no longer has any of the core territories that comprised Prussia, yet the cultural, political and historical influence of Prussia on modern Germany is very clear. This despite Adenauer's post-war explicit denunciation of 'Prussian influence' (I believe also matched by the DDR).

If Prussia conquered up to Estonia, then lost its homelands, Latvia, and Lithuania, then began speaking Estonian and using the Estonian alphabet, then maybe your example would make sense. Or if we were talking about the Teutonic Order, because it became Prussia, all the original lands were lost, except you made it that Germany spoke French or Italian instead of German.
 
The double NO is fully OK. Because there is just one reasonable answer: NO!

Something like the Byzantine Empire did never exist. Same with ERE and WRE. Actually the roman empire was never divided. These are all modern inventions. The roman empire founded by Romulus existed as Roman Empire and nothing else until the Fall of Constantinople (perhaps even abit later). So something like a continuation or a successor of the roman empire is legally impossible.
 
Something like the Byzantine Empire did never exist. Same with ERE and WRE. Actually the roman empire was never divided. These are all modern inventions. The roman empire founded by Romulus existed as Roman Empire and nothing else until the Fall of Constantinople (perhaps even abit later). So something like a continuation or a successor of the roman empire is legally impossible.
I would argue that the Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire have an existence in the geographic sense: the Emperor in Rome ruled the West while the Emperor in Constantinople ruled the East. But yeah, past 395 AD, the Roman Empire was basically a diarchy with two co-emperors, kind of like what had already been seen under the Tetrarchy. And the Byzantine Empire is basically the Roman Empire post fall of Rome.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top