The Roman Empire: The Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire Byzantium was an ancient Greek colony founded by a man named Byzas. This colony’s basic purpose was to serve as a trade point between Europe and Asia Minor. A man named Constantine was looking for a site to make a new Roman capital. What attracted Constantine to this place was the fact that he could control land and sea routes between Asia and Europe. Since the sea bordered the city on three sides, only one defense was required to enclose the city and it was done with a wall. A great advantage of being surrounded by water on three sides was that the western wall stretching across the peninsula enclosed a large amount of land by a relatively short line of protection. So basically what this meant was it was harder to be

Some of these influences were Eastern, Latin, Roman and Nordic. Constantinople, like many great capitals, was a melting pot of heterogeneous elements: all seventy-two tongues know to man were represented in it, according to a contemporary source (Mango, 1980, p.16). Because of Constantine, the religion of the Byzantines was Christianity. Before the Byzantine Empire began, the official religion of the old Roman Empire was Paganism. This basically meant that the people believed in many Gods. Back in old Rome, Christianity was beginning to rise. I remember watching clips of people being persecuted because they were Christians. Toward the end of the Roman Empire, more and more people were punished for being Christians. But when Constantine became ruler, he proclaimed Christianity the empires religion and persecution stopped. Constantine wanted to make the capital a “New Jerusalem”(Marston, p. 28). The armies of the Byzantine Empire were called "Holy Armies" because all the fighting that they fought for was to spread the word of Christianity to everyone (Marston, p. 30). Byzantium was the first empire ever in the world that wasn’t only founded on worldly power. The authority of the church also founded

He ruled from 527-565 with his wife Theodora. We talked about him in our class quite a bit. The imperial goal reflected in Justinian’s policy of “one God, one empire, and one religion” was to centralize government by imposing legal and doctrinal conformity throughout and with this in mind he ordered a collation and revision of roman law (Craig, p. 318). Because of this, the body of civil laws, the Corpus Juris Civilis, came into play. Not much is known of Justinian’s early life. His uncle adopted him and became leader after his death. He married a woman named Theodora, the daughter of a circus bear trainer. She was much his equal and they ruled as co-rulers. Theodora was a passionate ruler and some say she was even wiser than her husband. In 532, after massive tax riots-the so-called Nika Revolt-rocked the city, threatening its destruction and the end of Justinian’s brief rule, Justinian contemplated abdication and flight. But Theodora stiffened his resolve, insisting that he reestablish his authority unambiguously, which he thereafter did by ordering a bloodbath that left tens of thousands of protesters dead in the Hippodrome (Craig, p. 317). Some historians believe that because of this event, Theodora may have saved the Byzantine Empire from losing one of their most powerful leaders (Corrick, p.