Comparing Roman and Byzantine Empires | AP US History | Khan Academy

We already have several videos talking about the Byzantine Empire, which is really just the continuation of the Roman Empire after its fall. They even called themselves the Roman Empire. But what I want to do in this video is a bit of a deep dive to make sure we understand the different elements of continuity and change between what we consider the Roman Empire, when it was one unified Western and Eastern Roman Empire, and then what we later call the Byzantine Empire.

So, what was the same between them? Then what changed over time? Let's just do a review. This is what things look like at around the year 400. As you can see, from an administrative point of view, even though it was considered one empire, it was already being governed separately: the West being governed from Rome, the East being governed from Constantinople. Most historians mark the beginning of the Byzantine Empire with the rule of Constantine, who moves the capital to Byzantium. It gets renamed Constantinople.

But as we've talked about in multiple videos, in 476, you have the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the West becomes fragmented into a bunch of various Germanic kingdoms. However, the Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital Constantinople, continues. Once again, they did not call themselves the Byzantines; they called themselves the Romans. They called themselves the Roman Empire. It was only much, much later that historians tried to separate this period of the Roman Empire by calling it the Byzantine Empire.

There is a bit of a resurgence under Justinian. He's able to capture significant portions of the West, including the Italian Peninsula. But then, over time, the Byzantine Empire contracts, especially in the East. It has to contend with the spread of Islam. As we go even further in time, as we enter into the second millennium, we can see that the Muslim Turks make further inroads into the Byzantine Empire. Also, during the Fourth Crusade, Western Crusaders sack Constantinople.

And we can go all the way to 1453, where all that was left at the time of the Byzantine Empire—or you could say the Eastern Roman Empire—is Constantinople. In 1453, that also gets sacked by the Ottomans, and that's the official end of the Byzantine Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, which you can see continues on for another thousand years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Now, with that review out of the way, let's think about how the Byzantine Empire was the same and different from the Roman Empire. So first, let's think about the center of power. Well, the Roman Empire is named after its seat of power. During the great majority of its history, the seat of power of the Roman Empire is Rome. Near the end of the Western Roman Empire, it becomes Ravenna. And of course, we talk about Constantine changing the capital to Byzantium, which eventually became Constantinople.

That's the official start of at least the roots of the Byzantine Empire. Although Constantine was Emperor of both, it's fair to say that Rome was the capital of the Roman Empire from its early days as a kingdom all the way until the first several centuries of the Common Era. The roots of the Byzantine Empire are with Constantine changing the capital, the seat of power of the combined Empire, and moving it from Rome to Byzantium, which will eventually be called Constantinople.

Now, let's think about language. The language of the Roman Empire is Latin. In the early days of the Byzantine Empire, Latin is used in conjunction with Greek. But over time, it becomes more Greek. In fact, Heraclius in the 7th century makes Greek the official language of the Byzantine Empire.

Now, religion: for most of Roman history, their religion is the Roman pantheon. Near the end of what is called the Roman Empire, when Constantine comes around in the early 4th century, Christianity gets legalized. Theodosius, who is the last emperor to rule over both East and West, makes Christianity the official religion. Since the Eastern Roman Empire's roots, the Byzantine Empire’s roots are considered to be with Constantine, it has a Christian nature from the beginning, and it only becomes more and more Christian over time.

In other videos, we will talk about the eventual spiritual split between East and West, the Latin Christian church and the Greek Christian church, and they're going to diverge more and more as we go into the year 1054, when there is the official Great Schism.

In terms of law, the Roman Empire has a long tradition of law, and I guess we could just call it Roman law. In fact, so profound has its influence been on Western civilization that many of our legal terms today come from Latin. What historians would consider the Byzantine Empire would continue Roman law, much of it written in Latin. Justinian would famously try to reform Roman law, make it more consistent, make it more clear, in his code.

You have Emperor Leo III, who has a famous law. As you have these revisions and these reformations of Roman law, they are more and more written in Greek than Latin, and they do have more and more of a Christian influence in terms of governance. Especially under the Roman Empire, the notion of a province was the main subdivision under which the empire was governed.

Once you have Emperor Diocletian come on to the scene, and this is shortly before the time of Constantine, he reformed it and set up what is known as a tetrarchy, where you had these two emperors of East and West, and then you would have essentially their subordinate emperors. But along with that, he redefined what a province is, so you had smaller provinces, which then would go into dioceses, which would then go into prefects, which would then go into a tetrarch.

Once you have the start of the Byzantine Empire, they would have elements of this. Remember, Constantine wasn't only the emperor of the East; he was emperor of both East and West. But he got rid of the tetrarchy, while he kept Diocletian's notions of these smaller provinces going into dioceses, going into prefects. So you have that continuity. But then later on, in the mid-7th century, it was turned into more of a feudal system in the Byzantine Empire.

Once again, this was under Heraclius, who also made Greek the official language. The reason why I say it's feudal is that it was comparable to the feudal system in Western Europe at the time, as it provided land grants to local rulers in exchange for their military service and the ability for them to send resources up to the emperor.

In terms of culture, you have many of the things that we associate with the Roman Empire. You have chariot racing, you have gladiator fights, you have imperial birthdays, you have the Olympics, which carries over from the ancient Greeks. It actually lasts over a thousand years. As we go into the Roman Empire, some of these continue and some of them don't.

So, for example, the notion of chariot racing does continue, and famously, Justinian is almost overthrown after a rowdy chariot race. You don't have the Olympics, as Theodosius felt that it wasn't in line with Christian tradition, but you did have things like imperial celebrations, imperial birthdays.

So the Byzantine Empire definitely continued some of the traditions but also eliminated others. This is just a rough overview. I encourage you to think about it yourself: are we missing any dimensions? And what other aspects do you think were the same as we go from the traditional Roman Empire into the continuation of the Roman Empire, which historians will later call the Byzantine Empire?