The Eastern Roman Legacy: From Rome to Byzantium

This course takes a campaign, tactics, and institutional-military lens on the Byzantine Empire — genuinely distinct from the Politics Subject's own German and Hungarian Political History courses, which trace how those countries were governed. Here the question is how one Roman successor state fought, for over a thousand years, to survive.

Diocletian's Real, Practical Division

By the late 3rd century, the Roman Empire had grown too large for one emperor to administer or defend at once. Diocletian's real Tetrarchy (from 285 CE) split administration into eastern and western halves — the formal power-sharing arrangement itself collapsed quickly, but the underlying east/west division genuinely endured.

Theodosius's 395 CE Split — and Why Only Half Survived

Theodosius I was the real, last emperor to rule a genuinely unified Roman Empire. On his death in 395 CE, it split permanently between his two sons. The West, destabilized by real rebellious barbarian vassals and eventual barbarian warlord rule, collapsed by 476 CE. The East never experienced that same real pattern of internal collapse.

Constantine's Real Founding of Constantinople (330 CE)

Constantine formally founded Constantinople on 11 May 330 CE, on the site of the far older Greek city of Byzantium — itself real, founded around 657 BCE by colonists from Megara. Constantine's own real reasoning was explicitly strategic: a genuinely defensible position with ready access to both the Danube and Euphrates frontiers, commanding the real sea route between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean and the real land route between Europe and Asia at once.

"Rhomaioi": A Real, Continuous Roman Identity

The people this course studies never called themselves "Byzantines" at all — that label is a real, later scholarly convention, only applied after the empire's own 1453 fall. They called themselves, in Greek, Rhomaioi — Romans — genuinely without interruption for over a thousand years after Rome's own western half had already fallen.

Looking Ahead: Justinian's Ambition

By the early 6th century, the Eastern Empire was stable enough to attempt something genuinely audacious: reconquering the western provinces Rome had already lost. Chapter 2 picks up there, with the empire's own most celebrated general, Belisarius.

Reflect