W
hen Constantine I founded a “New Rome” in the East in 324 on the site of the ancient Greek city
of Byzantium and called it Constantinople in honor of himself, he legitimately could claim to be
ruler of a united Roman Empire. But when Theodosius I (r. 379–395) died, he bequeathed the Empire to
his two sons, Arcadius, the elder, who became Emperor of the East, and Honorius, who became Emperor
of the West. The Emperor of the East ruled from Constantinople. After the sack of Rome in 410, Hono-
rius moved the western capital to Milan and later to Ravenna. Though not formally codified, Theodo-
sius’s division of the Empire (which paralleled Diocletian’s century-earlier division of administrative
responsibility) became permanent. Centralized government soon disintegrated in the western half and
gave way to warring kingdoms (see Chapter 16). The eastern half of the Roman Empire, only loosely
connected by religion to the West and with only minor territorial holdings there, had a long and com-
plex history of its own. Centered at New Rome, the Eastern Christian Empire remained a cultural and
political entity for a millennium, until the last of a long line of Eastern Roman emperors, ironically
named Constantine XI, died at Constantinople in 1453, defending it in vain against the Ottoman Turks.
Historians refer to that Eastern Christian Roman Empire as Byzantium (MAP12-1), employing
Constantinople’s original name, and use the term Byzantineto identify whatever pertains to Byzan-
tium—its territory, its history, and its culture. The Byzantine emperors, however, did not use these terms
to define themselves. They called their empire Rome and themselves Romans. Though they spoke Greek
and not Latin, the Eastern Roman emperors never relinquished their claim as the legitimate successors
to the ancient Roman emperors. During the long course of its history, Byzantium was the Christian
buffer against the expansion of Islam into central and northern Europe, and its cultural influence was
felt repeatedly in Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Byzantium Christianized the Slavic peoples of the
Balkans and of Russia, giving them its Orthodox religion and alphabet, its literary culture, and its art and
architecture. Byzantium’s collapse in 1453 brought the Ottoman Empire into Europe as far as the
Danube River, but Constantinople’s fall made an impact even farther to the west. The westward flight of
Byzantine scholars from the Rome of the East introduced the study of classical Greek to Italy and helped
inspire there the new consciousness of antiquity that historians call the Renaissance.
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