When did the Roman Empire stop being the Roman Empire

[Tarbicus]

An easier question to answer is: when did Rome finally stop being imperial?

The answer to this being between 29 April and 1 May 1357. At this time the Papal States in the 'Constitutiones Sanctæ Matris Ecclesiæ' promulgated their own law code and the territory of Rome stopped having a legal connection to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

Sounds rinky-dink to me. If you accept Rome being founded in 753 BC, that'd make Republican through Imperial Rome 2110 years old.

Not bad.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I personnally go with the Beginning of the Ottoman occupation of the Greek Eastern Empire, ie Greece itself, which was the last vestige of the old Empire.

That is a common choice but one thought always comes to mind. Mehmed II ruled over a very large percentage of the people that had been at one time part of the Roman Empire. At the same time he made sure to take the title Caesar as one of his many titles.

So why not say the Empire continued? The Empire had fundamentally changed from Latin to Greek, why not from Greek to Turk?

Actually I was just about to say 'It never ended....' :lol:

Well the Ottoman Sultan is gone, so is the Kaiser, and the Tsar. The Holy Roman Emperor who was not Roman or holy was last crowned in the 1910's so I do not think there is anyone around trying to associate back to the Roman Empire.

Thats what you think!! :wink: :lol:

If you accept Rome being founded in 753 BC, that'd make Republican through Imperial Rome 2110 years old.

Not bad.
_________________
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers

Yep, sounds right to me! :lol:

[Timotheus]

I personnally go with the Beginning of the Ottoman occupation of the Greek Eastern Empire, ie Greece itself, which was the last vestige of the old Empire.

That is a common choice but one thought always comes to mind. Mehmed II ruled over a very large percentage of the people that had been at one time part of the Roman Empire. At the same time he made sure to take the title Caesar as one of his many titles.

So why not say the Empire continued? The Empire had fundamentally changed from Latin to Greek, why not from Greek to Turk?

Actually I was just about to say 'It never ended....' :lol:

Well the Ottoman Sultan is gone, so is the Kaiser, and the Tsar. The Holy Roman Emperor who was not Roman or holy was last crowned in the 1910's so I do not think there is anyone around trying to associate back to the Roman Empire.

Thats what you think!! :wink: :lol:

Oops did I miss your coronation party?

[Robert Vermaat]

I personaly think that the end of Roman empire would be also the time, when the empire was disunited to east and west empire. As far as I can reason crises in Roman empire started in the end of the second century a.d. after Marcomanian war during reign of Marcvs Avrelivs and after his death.

Well, exactly - it depends on where you let it start, really. Those who include Caesar in the 'Roman Empire' let it begin much earlier and by the same defenition, will have to let it end much later, too.

As to the split under Diocletian, that was not really a 'final thing', you know. Constnatine later re-united the Empire and his sons split it in three. Reunification reoccurred again in 353-360 (Constantius II), 360-3 (Julian), 363-4 (Jovian) and 465-7 (Leo).

Personally I see the so-called 'Byzantine' Empire as nothing else than the Roman Empire. They viewed themselves certainly as just that.

[Sean Manning]

Starting with Charlemagne I avoid the words "Roman Empire" in favour of "the Greek empire" and "the German empire." By that point you have two empires both calling themselves Roman, and both with a reasonably good claim to it. The Greek, Roman empire of the middle ages was the only one with continuity, and the Tsars and Ottoman Sultans didn't have any direct connection to Rome, so I would probably say 1453 was the end. You could argue that it began in the third century BCE when Rome made its first conquests outside of Latium.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Oops did I miss your coronation party?

Did you not get the invite? :o
:lol:

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Roberto Wroto!

Personally I see the so-called 'Byzantine' Empire as nothing else than the Roman Empire. They viewed themselves certainly as just that.

Precisely, my dear Watson! 8) [/quote]

[Timotheus]

Oops did I miss your coronation party?

Did you not get the invite? :o
:lol:

Hate when I miss a good party.

[Gluteus Maximus]

I go along with Sonic's view that it was 1204, with the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders. Prior to that, no - one can argue that there was a direct line of succession from Augustus up to that point. Afterwards, it was as he says a medieval kingdom made up of remnants of the old order.

The Empire may have been in a different cultural phase to that of the Republic/Principate/Dominate, but it was still the same state. In exactly the same sense that Britain is effectively the same state as that which Duke William consolidated in the 11th centrury. Acquisition of Scotland and Wales, the growth of parliament, women's suffrage and the change of British Army uniforms from red to khaki do not make it a different state, and this analysis should be applied to the Roman Empire.

[Goffredo]

I always felt great interest with the Eastern Empire, considering it, "feeling it", to be the direct continuation of the Roman Empire, up to the coming of Islam; i.e. Heraclius' reign.

From a more more abstract poinf ot view I consider the 1204 Crusader sack and latin emperors the true end.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I would say the greeks who moved the capitol to the Peloponese
still felt themselves to be the remanents of the Empire. long after the sacking of Constantinople, and even The short period after its fall.

Other wise it may just as well be considered over when Constantine moved East....

[Spurius Papirius Cursor]

Hello

Personally I see the so-called 'Byzantine' Empire as nothing else than the Roman Empire. They viewed themselves certainly as just that.

Could I just pop in two cents' worth? In my other main interest at the moment (later roman legions) I came across:

Medieval Sourcebook: Anna Comnena: The Alexiad: Book VII; War with the Scyths (1087-90).
[url:3iohtzh7]http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/AnnaComnena-Alexiad07.html[/url]

and

The Alexiad By Anna Comnena, E. R. A. Sewter [url:3iohtzh7]http://books.google.com.au/books?id=mcGJLXOzOU4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+alexiad&client=firefox-a#PPA305,M1[/url]

The Alexiad was written about 1148 AD I gather and, while I didn't really pay attention to what I was skim reading, that those referred to as "the Romans" were Byzantines. If this is so, then that's rather interesting.

If the Byzantine Emperor's daughter is calling her countrymen Romans then maybe these medievals still thought they were living in the remains of the Roman Empire. That is, they thought of themselves as Romans in that same sense Romans of the Early Empire had.

Historical maps show that empire gradually collapsing back onto the country of Greece. Today, we look at Greece and see one state, but that was a unity that emerged in the 1800s I'd thought? My ancient Greek history's non-existent but I didn't think there was any unified Greek state by the time of the Roman conquests in the 2nd Century BC. Was there one "Greek" culture from pre-conquest to 1453? Or was there always that group of cultures that today is claimed as Greek by the modern state of Greece? (And accepted by everyone else as such).

What I'm getting at (for you Greek scholars and Byzantine scholars out there) is: if there was never any conception, from 306 AD to 1453 AD, that the Eastern Empire was Greek, then did the Byzantines think of themselves as Romans (never mind that Rome was no longer part of their realm) in the same way Augustus Caesar would have thought himself Roman?

I'm also passing curious as to how long Illyria was part of the Byzantine Empire? I gather the Illyrians came to fancy themselves as more worthy of the title Romans than those of the senatorial class fading into irrelevance back in Rome itself. I mean, could the Illyrian officer class (caste? - too strong a word?) of the 280's plus have been a vehicle for (or at least an aid to) the transfer of Roman-ness from Italy to the East?

Cheers

Howard/Spurius

[Urselius]

The inhabitants of the Eastern Roman Empire thought of themselves as "Romans." The Empire was multi-ethnic until the Fourth Crusade (1204) effectively destroyed it as a first-class power. There were Greeks in the Greek peninsula and islands and in western and northern Anatolia, but there were "Latins" in southern Italy and Dalmatia, Slavs in the northern and central Balkans, "Goths" in the Crimea, Armenians, Georgians and Syrians in the eastern and south-eastern parts of Anatolia; all these peoples could partake in "Romanness" as subjects of the Empire. For example the famous emperor Leo III was a Syrian, John Tzimiskes was of Armenian ancestry and Basil I was probably of Slavic origins.

The pre-1204 Byzantines thought of themselves as Romans and Orthodox Christians first and foremost, their idea of a "Hellenic" identity was largely caught up with a intellectual regard for Greek Antiquity. If a Byzantine of Anna Comnena's time said that someone was a "Hellene" it would mean that that person was a learned member of the upper-classes who quoted the Iliad and Aristotle a great deal, not that he or she was an ethnic Greek.

After 1204 the non-Greek areas of the empire had been largely shorn away and an idea of Greek national identity started to become much stronger.

Hope this helps,

Martin.

[Virtus Probi Invicti]

I believe that the "Byzantines" called themselves "Romans" (Romaioi??) on their coins up until the end.
I also read that the Seljuks of "Rum" were also attempting to call themselves "Roman" with that term!
I guess that Roman was really a state of mind, hm?

[Spurius Papirius Cursor]

Hi Martin and Bill

Does either of you know other sources (literary, coins, whatever) that show the Byzantines (of any period) referring to themselves as Romans? Obviously, I'm looking too, but at the pace of one tired old bloke.


Cheers

Howard?Spurius