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What Did the Eastern Romans Call Themselves? - The Politics of Naming the Eastern Roman Empire | Sleepy Facts About History · Sleepy Facts About History

0:04
Welcome to Sleepy Facts About History. The Roman
0:13
Empire did not end when the western provinces
0:15
fragmented in the 5th century. The eastern half,
0:19
centered on Constantinople, continued for another
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thousand years, collecting taxes, enforcing Roman
0:26
law, and marching under Roman standards. Yet
0:31
today, We almost exclusively call this enduring
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state the Byzantine Empire, a name its inhabitants
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never used and a term that only emerged centuries
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after the empire fell. This episode explores
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why we call these people Byzantines, what their
0:49
actual self -understanding was, and what our
0:52
modern naming choices reveal about who gets to
0:55
claim historical legitimacy. I wanted to understand
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why a label invented by 16th century scholars
1:02
effectively erased a thousand years of Roman
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identity. The people of Constantinople considered
1:08
themselves Romans, a continuity reflected in
1:12
their coins, their legal codes, and their chronicles.
1:16
As we examine the political tensions that arose
1:19
after Charlemagne's coronation and the estrangement
1:22
that followed the Fourth Crusade, It becomes
1:24
clear that Western Europe had specific political
1:27
and religious reasons for dismissing the Easterners
1:30
as merely Greeks. Exploring this history reveals
1:34
how terminology can quietly decide whose claims
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appear legitimate and whose identity deserves
1:40
recognition. They called themselves Romans. Their
1:47
quines proclaimed them Romans. Their laws were
1:51
issued in the name of Rome. Yet we insist on
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calling them Byzantines, a name they never used
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and a judgment we rarely examine. Imagine standing
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in the streets of Constantinople in the year
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900. Above you rise the Theodosian walls, built
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five centuries earlier and still defining the
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city's western edge. They are stone ramparts
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wide enough for chariots to pass along their
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summit. punctuated by towers that watch over
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the approach from the Thracian plain. In your
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hand, perhaps, a small bronze coin bearing the
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emperor's portrait on one face and the Greek
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legend Basileus Tun Romerion on the other, emperor
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of the Romans. The people around you call themselves
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Romans. Their emperor is the Roman emperor. Their
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laws are Roman laws. Their army... is the roman
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army they live in the roman empire which they
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sometimes simply call romania and they have never
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heard anyone call it the byzantine empire that
3:02
name does not exist for them it is not their
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name it is ours and the question this episode
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asks is simple why do we call them something
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they never called themselves And what does that
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naming choice reveal or conceal about who they
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actually were? The Roman Empire did not end when
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the western provinces fragmented in the 5th century.
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What happened was more administrative than apocalyptic.
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The empire had been divided between east and
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west for practical reasons long before any collapse.
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The eastern half, with its capital at Constantinople
3:40
since 330, simply continued. Its tax collectors
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still collected Roman taxes. Its judges still
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applied Roman law. Its soldiers still marched
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under Roman standards. The emperor in Constantinople
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still claimed authority over the entire Roman
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world, even when much of the West no longer answered
4:02
to him. We can see this continuity in tangible
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form. In the 6th century, emperor justinian ordered
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the compilation of roman law into the codex justinianus
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a massive work issued in latin and presented
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as the law of the roman empire copies were made
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consulted and recopied for centuries even as
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greek became the dominant spoken language of
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the eastern mediterranean latin remained the
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language of law and official record It was a
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threat connecting the Constantinople of 900 to
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the Rome of Augustus. The inhabitants of this
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eastern realm spoke Greek in their daily lives,
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as people in the eastern Mediterranean had done
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for centuries under Roman rule. But Greek had
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never stopped anyone from being Roman. Roman
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identity had always been broader than the Latin
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language or the Italian peninsula. To understand
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where our modern label comes from, We need to
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go back further, to a Greek settlement called
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Byzantium. This was a modest city on the European
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shore of the Bosporus, founded by colonists from
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Megara in the 7th century BCE. It had the strategic
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advantage of controlling the passage between
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the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, but it was
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not particularly distinguished among Greek colonial
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cities. What changed its fate was the decision
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of Constantine I, the Roman emperor who had already
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transformed the empire's relationship with Christianity,
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to establish a new imperial capital on this site.
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In 330, he formally dedicated the re -founded
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city, naming it Constantinople after himself.
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The ancient name Byzantion did not disappear
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entirely. It survived in literary and antiquarian
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usage, the way older names sometimes linger alongside
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newer ones. But the city was Constantinople,
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the new Rome, and the empire was the Roman Empire.
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No one in the medieval East seems to have thought
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of calling the state the Byzantine Empire. That
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simply was not how they understood what they
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were. The real shift in naming came from outside,
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and it came gradually. From the early Middle
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Ages onward, Western European writers began referring
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to the Eastern Empire in ways that denied or
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qualified its Roman identity. This was not merely
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a matter of geography or language. It was deeply
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political. In 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne,
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the Frankish king, as emperor in Rome. This created
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a rival claim to the Roman imperial title. one
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based in the West and aligned with the less in
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church. The Eastern Romans saw this coronation
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as illegitimate, a usurpation by barbarians who
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had no right to the ancient title. The Westerners,
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increasingly, saw the Easterners as Greeks rather
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than Romans, as inhabitants of a Greek empire
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centered on Constantinople rather than as the
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true heirs of Rome. The language of Greekness
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became a way of denying Roman legitimacy. This
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estrangement deepened over the following centuries.
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The religious split between the Eastern and Western
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churches, conventionally dated to 1054, reinforced
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the sense of separation. But the decisive rupture
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in Western perception came with the Fourth Crusade
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in 1204. Crusaders who had set out to recover
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Jerusalem instead sacked Constantinople, installing
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a Latin emperor and a Latin patriarch. The Eastern
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Roman world was divided between competing Greek
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successor states until the restoration of the
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Empire in 1261. For Western observers, this episode
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confirmed a narrative in which the Easterners
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were treacherous Greeks who had failed to support
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the Crusade properly, whose empire was a corrupt
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shadow of ancient Rome, and whose capital was
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legitimately subject to conquest by true Christians.
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Western sources increasingly used terms like
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Empire of the Greeks or Empire of Constantinople,
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avoiding the Roman designation that the Easterners
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themselves insisted upon. The neighbors of the
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Eastern Empire used different names again, and
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these names revealed their own political and
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cultural frameworks. Arabic sources often called
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the empire Rum, Rome. reflecting the early Islamic
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world's recognition of the state's Roman continuity.
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This usage persisted in Ottoman Turkish as well,
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long after the conquest of Constantinople. Slavic
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peoples adopted terms derived from Rome or Greek,
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depending on their particular contacts and traditions.
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What each name reveals is instructive. acknowledged
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a continuity that Western Europeans were increasingly
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eager to deny, while Empire of the Greeks performed
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the opposite work, stripping the Easterners of
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their Roman claim. There was no neutral objective
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label that everyone agreed upon. Each name placed
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the state within a particular mental map of the
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world, with particular consequences for who could
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claim legitimacy. The modern label Byzantine
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Empire emerged after the empire itself had fallen.
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When Mehmed II conquered Constantinople in 1453,
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he ended a state that had lasted in unbroken
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continuity for more than 11 centuries since Constantine's
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refoundation. The name Byzantine as a designation
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for this vanished empire was popularized by Western
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European scholars most notably the German humanist
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Hieronymus Wolff in the 16th century. Wolff edited
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and published a major collection of Eastern Roman
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historical texts, which he titled the Corpus
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Historiae Byzantine. In doing so, he established
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Byzantine as a scholarly category, a way of distinguishing
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the medieval Greek -speaking empire from the
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ancient Roman empire of the classical past. The
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label spread through French and English scholarship
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in the 17th and 18th centuries, reinforced by
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Enlightenment historians who found in the Eastern
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Empire a convenient foil for their own values.
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Where ancient Rome had been rational, martial
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and civic -minded, Byzantium could be portrayed
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as superstitious, effeminate and bureaucratically
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decadent. The very name seemed to carry a judgment
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built into it. These were not real Romans, but
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something else, something lesser, something that
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had declined from an authentic original. No single
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work did more to cement this image than Edward
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Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the
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Roman Empire, published between 1776 and 1789.
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Picture it as a physical object, six volumes
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emerging from a London press. Their title pages
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announcing the decline and fall of the Roman
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Empire, their weight in bulk suggesting a comprehensive
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final judgment. Gibbon was a magnificent narrative
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historian, but his framing of the Eastern Empire
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was decisive and damaging. For Gibbon, the Roman
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Empire truly fell in the 5th century, with the
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end of the Western imperial government. What
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followed in the East was a long, melancholy afterlife.
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a Byzantine period in which the forms of Roman
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government persisted without the spirit. He described
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Constantinople as a place where the subjects
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of the Byzantine Empire, who assume and dishonor
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the names both of Greeks and Romans, present
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a dead uniformity of abject vices, which are
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neither softened by the weakness of humanity
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nor animated by the fierceness of guilt. This
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was not history written to understand the past
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on its own terms. It was history written to confirm
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a narrative of decline, to separate the Eastern
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Empire from the real Rome that Gibbon admired,
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and to justify the superiority of modern Western
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civilization. The label Byzantine served this
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project perfectly. It created a category that
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was Roman enough to be connected to the classical
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past. but different enough to be judged inferior
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to it. The consequences of this naming choice
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have been subtle but profound. When we call the
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Eastern Empire Byzantine, we risk making it seem
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like a separate civilization, a Greek empire
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that happened to occupy Roman territory rather
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than the Roman Empire itself in its medieval
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form. We risk implying that Roman identity required
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Latin language, Italian geography, or pagan religion,
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when none of these conditions had ever been essential
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to Roman -ness. We risk accepting, without examination,
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a set of Western European claims about who the
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true Romans were and who could legitimately inherit
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Rome's legacy. The term Byzantine has also accumulated
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a range of secondary meanings in modern English.
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Byzantine with a lowercase b means excessively
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complicated, devious, or bureaucratically intricate.
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This linguistic development too reflects the
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negative image that Enlightenment historiography
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created. It's worth asking whether we would speak
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of Byzantine complexity if we habitually called
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the empire what its inhabitants called it, the
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Roman Empire. Modern historians have increasingly
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recognized these problems. There is a growing
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scholarly preference for speaking of the Eastern
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Roman Empire or the Medieval Roman Empire, terms
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that preserve the continuity that the inhabitants
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themselves claimed. Some argue that Byzantine
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should be abandoned entirely. Others more pragmatically
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suggest that the label is now too entrenched
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to discard, but should be used with explicit
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caveats and critical awareness. The debate itself
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is instructive. It reveals how deeply terminology
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shapes our historical imagination, how a name
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invented centuries after the fact can come to
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seem natural and inevitable, and how difficult
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it is to recover the self -understanding of people
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who organize their world according to categories
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we no longer share. What then should we say about
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the transformation that the Eastern Empire underwent
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over its long history? It is undeniable that
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the empire changed profoundly between the 4th
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and 15th centuries. Greek gradually replaced
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Latin as the language of administration and high
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culture, though Latin persisted in law and official
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context for centuries. Christianity, once persecuted,
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became the established religion and then the
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defining framework of imperial ideology. Court
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ceremonial grew increasingly elaborate. drawing
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on Persian and other Eastern models as well as
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Roman precedents. The borders contracted, expanded
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and contracted again until, by the Empire's final
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centuries, it was reduced to little more than
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Constantinople and its immediate hinterland.
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These were real changes, not illusions. But they
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were changes within Roman identity, not a replacement
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of Roman identity by something else. The Romans
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of the East did not wake up one morning and discover
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they had become Greeks. They understood themselves
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as Romans who spoke Greek, as Romans who were
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Christian, as Romans whose empire had been transformed
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by time and circumstance, but whose fundamental
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identity remained continuous with the Rome of
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Augustus and Constantine. The evidence for this
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self -understanding is abundant and consistent.
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Consider a bronze coin of the 12th century, similar
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to thousands that circulated through the eastern
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Mediterranean. On one face, the bearded emperor
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in his regalia. On the other, the Greek words,
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Emperor of the Romans. The metal worn slightly
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smooth at the edges from the hands of merchants
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and soldiers who handled it without ever doubting
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whose empire they inhabited. Legal texts, including
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the Great Codification of Justinian in the 6th
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century, were issued in the name of the Roman
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Empire and applied Roman law. Chronicles and
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histories written within the empire, from the
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6th century through the 12th and beyond, routinely
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refer to the inhabitants as Romaioi, Romans.
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Anna Komneni, the 12th century princess and historian,
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wrote of her father Alexios I as the Roman emperor
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and of his subjects as Romans, even as she wrote
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in Greek and inhabited a world profoundly shaped
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by Christian theology. The physical fabric of
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Constantinople itself testified to Roman continuity.
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The great walls built by Theodosius II in the
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5th century still stood in the 15th, still defining
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the boundaries of the Roman capital. The empire's
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institutions, its tax system, its military organization,
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its administrative geography all evolved from
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Roman roots, however much they were adapted to
18:05
new conditions. It is also worth considering
18:08
what Roman identity actually meant in the ancient
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and medieval Mediterranean. Rome had always been
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a capacious category. It had incorporated Italians,
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Gauls, Spaniards, North Africans, Syrians and
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Egyptians, granting citizenship and eventually
18:27
imperial status to peoples who spoke many languages
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and worshipped many gods. The extension of Roman
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identity to Greek -speaking Easterners was not
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a departure from Roman practice, but its fulfillment.
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The shift from Latin to Greek in the East was
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not a rejection of Rome, but a continuation of
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patterns that had existed since the Republic.
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when Greek culture had been admired and absorbed
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by Roman elites. The Eastern Empire's Christianization
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too had Roman precedents. Constantine himself
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had been a Roman emperor who promoted Christianity,
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and his successors had woven the Church into
19:06
the fabric of Roman statecraft. None of these
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transformations, considered historically, required
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the Easterners to stop being Roman. They were
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Romans in a particular phase of their history.
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Romans who had undergone changes that earlier
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Romans had also undergone in different forms.
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If Roman identity was this capacious, then the
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Western denial of it cannot have been a simple
19:32
description of reality. It must have been doing
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political work. And it was. The Western denial
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of Eastern Roman identity serves specific political
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purposes. It justified Charlemagne's imperial
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title. The papal claims to authority over the
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Eastern Church, the Crusaders' conquests of Constantinople,
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and eventually the Ottoman claim to be the true
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heirs of Roman imperial tradition. It allowed
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Western Europeans to present themselves as the
20:05
authentic continuators of Roman civilization,
20:07
while dismissing the actual Roman Empire in the
20:10
East as a Greek imposter. This was not history
20:14
as we would wish to practice it. but it was effective
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politics, and its legacy persists in the very
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language we use. When we speak of Byzantine art,
20:27
Byzantine theology, Byzantine diplomacy, we are
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using a term that carries this loaded history,
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even when we intend no judgment. The question
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is whether we can use it responsibly, with full
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awareness of what it conceals. or whether we
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should seek alternatives that do less damage
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to our understanding of the past. There are limits
20:51
to what we can recover. The voices of ordinary
20:54
people in the Eastern Empire are largely lost
20:57
to us. We know how emperors and historians and
21:00
churchmen understood Roman identity, but the
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self -perception of peasants, soldiers, merchants
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and artisans must be inferred from scattered
21:09
evidence. It is possible that for many people,
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Local identity, religious identity, or occupational
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identity mattered more than imperial Roman -ness.
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But this is true of most large pre -modern states,
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and it does not negate the significance of the
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official ideology and the elite self -understanding
21:31
that we can document. What we can say with confidence
21:35
is that the state and its educated inhabitants
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understood themselves as Roman. that they maintained
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this identity for a thousand years, and that
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the modern label Byzantine was imposed upon them
21:47
from outside long after their empire had ceased
21:50
to exist. The episode returns us finally to the
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people we began with, the inhabitants of Constantinople
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in 900 or 1100 or 1400, who called themselves
22:02
Romans and whose state was the Roman Empire.
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We might picture again the bronze coin in a merchant's
22:10
hand. the legend basileus ton romerion still
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legible after centuries of use or the theodosian
22:18
walls still rising above the city still defining
22:22
the roman capital even as the empire contracted
22:25
around them these people were not confused about
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their identity they were not pretending to be
22:33
something they were not they were romans who
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had inherited a tradition that stretched back
22:38
to augustus who had adapted it to Greek language
22:41
and Christian faith and new political circumstances,
22:44
but who had never abandoned the core claim that
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they were the Roman Empire, the Basileaton Romion,
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the continuation of the ancient Roman state.
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Our modern label, Byzantine, can be useful as
23:00
a convenience, a way of distinguishing the medieval
23:03
Eastern Empire from the ancient Empire centered
23:06
on Rome. but it is useful only when we do not
23:10
allow it to hide the Roman identity that was
23:13
central to how these people understood themselves
23:15
and their place in history. Terminology, we might
23:20
conclude, is never merely terminology. It is
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a tool that can quietly decide whose claims appear
23:26
legitimate, whose history counts as continuous,
23:30
whose identity deserves recognition. The people
23:34
we called Byzantines called themselves Romans.
23:37
That fact is not a footnote. It is the beginning
23:41
of understanding who they were.