The thing we call the Byzantine Empire never used that name. Its people called themselves Romans (Rhomaioi) and their state the Roman Empire, because that is exactly what it was — the eastern half that did not fall in 476 and kept going for another millennium from Constantinople.
It survived Persians, Avars, Arabs, Bulgars, and its own crusader allies, who sacked it in 1204. It clawed back from that and limped on for two more centuries as a shrinking city-state. On 29 May 1453 the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II breached the great walls with gunpowder artillery, and the last emperor, Constantine XI, died fighting in the streets. The longest-lived empire in this museum ended on a single spring morning, eleven centuries after it began.
Worth remembering
- Constantinople's Theodosian Walls turned back siege after siege for a thousand years — until gunpowder artillery finally breached them in 1453.
- Its navy guarded the secret of 'Greek fire,' a liquid weapon that burned on water; the recipe was so closely held that it is still lost today.
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Sources
- Founded 330 CE at Constantinople; peak under Justinian Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Constantinople fell to the Ottomans on 29 May 1453 Wikipedia
- The Byzantine Empire endured for over a thousand years from Constantinople, preserving Roman law and Greek learning; its navy guarded the secret of Greek fire and its Theodosian Walls repelled sieges for centuries World History Encyclopedia
- On 29 May 1453 Mehmed II breached Constantinople's walls with gunpowder artillery; the last emperor Constantine XI died fighting in the streets, ending eleven centuries of Roman continuity in the East World History Encyclopedia
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.