Byzantium: The Rome That Refused to Fall

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Byzantine Empire called itself Rome. Its citizens called themselves Romans. Its emperor held the title that Augustus had held. Its laws were Roman laws. Its language of government was Latin until the seventh century, when Greek — which had always been the spoken language of the eastern provinces — became official. The entity that modern historians call Byzantium would not have recognized the name: it was Byzantium only in retrospect, named by scholars for the ancient Greek city on whose site Constantine had built his new capital. To everyone who lived in it, from Constantine’s founding of Constantinople in 330 AD to the Ottoman conquest in 1453, it was simply Rome. That it had relocated, that the western half had collapsed, that Germanic kings sat in Ravenna and eventually in the city of Rome itself — none of this changed the self-conception of an empire that understood itself as continuous with Augustus.

Byzantine Empire on Ancient Rome

Byzantium: The Rome That Refused to Fall