Eastern Roman vs. Byzantine

I always find it a bit jarring to read about Israel/Palestine in the “Byzantine” period. To my mind, Byzantine has strong medieval connotations, a time when the region fell under various Muslim and Crusader states. Hence, I’d be more inclined to talk about the Eastern Roman period. But given the continuity from the Roman Empire to the Eastern Roman Empire to the Byzantine Empire (which never called itself the Byzantine Empire), can we ever hope to draw a sharp line between (Eastern) Roman and Byzantine?

As a non-historian, I’m here to tell you: yes.

Unburdened by too much relevant knowledge, it seems to me that there are at least two big differences between the Late Antique Eastern Roman Empire and the Early Medieval Byzantine Empire.

First, the Byzantine Empire is unapologetically Greek, while Latin titles and the Latin language still played some role in the Eastern Roman Empire (although Greek was certainly dominant).

And second, the map of the Empire goes from something like this:

To something like this:

Except for some short-lived (re)conquests under Justinian I, the big difference is the loss of Egypt and North Africa, the Levant, and much of Armenia to the Islamic conquests.

This also changed the religious make-up of the Empire, as large segments of the Christian population of the lost areas (Copts, Syriac Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox) followed a form of Miaphysitism (Christ has one nature) as opposed to the official Roman state religion at that time of Chalcedonian Christianity, the forerunner of Eastern Orthodoxy as well as Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.

Gold solidus depicting Heraclius and two of his sons

Happily, both developments can be associated with one and the same emperor: Heraclius (r. 610–641 CE). After fighting a devastating war against the Sasanian Persians, Heraclius’ empire suffered a series of crushing defeats to the early Caliphate, the first engagement taking place in 629.

And in the very same year, Heraclius first styled himself as basileus, the title used by Greek and Hellenistic rulers before the Romans and by all Byzantine rulers afterwards, without using other titles that were inherited from the earlier Roman period: kaisar (Latin: Caesar), augoustos or sebastos (Latin: Augustus) and autokratōr (Latin: Imperator).¹ This makes for a nice cut-off point for the total dominance of Greek, even though the Latin titles remained in use for some time afterwards.

A couple of unrelated developments similarly co-occurred under one emperor some 250 years earlier. Theodosius I was the last emperor to hold sway over the whole Roman Empire: after his death in 395 CE, the empire was split into East and West, each half being ruled by one of his sons. Administratieve divisions like this had taken place before, but this one was to be permanent and is commonly taken as the beginning of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Gold solidus depicting Theodosius I

Theodosius’ reign also saw an important event in religious history. In 325, the Council of Nicaea had formulated what would become the orthodox doctrine concerning the Trinity. After decades of ongoing struggle with non-Nicene forms of Christianity and holdovers of pre-Christian Roman religions, an edict by Theodosius established this Nicene Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380. From that point on, it would play a paramount role, both in the West, where it contrasted with the non-Nicene Arian Christianity of most invading Germanic peoples, and in the East, where subsequent debates over the nature(s) of Christ would lead to schisms between the Church of the East, the Miaphysite churches, and what would become the Chalcedonian church.

So at two points in time, we have a few political and religious developments going hand in hand. Together, they lend a distinct flavour to these different periods in the history of the Roman Empire(s). Of course, there are several ways to further split up the periodization of the Roman Empire (e.g. before and after the third century) and the Byzantine Empire (pre- and post-Seljuks seems like a big distinction). But as for the Eastern Roman Empire, I think this gives us a pretty well-defined beginning and end point:

	Roman Empire	Eastern Roman Empire	Byzantine Empire
era	Classical Antiquity	Late Antiquity	Middle Ages
established by	Octavian/ Augustus (r. 27 BCE–14 CE)	Theodosius I (r. 347–395 CE)	Heraclius (r. 610–641 CE)
ruled by	Caesar, Augustus, Imperator	kaisar, augoustos/ sebastos, autokratōr	basileus
dominant language	Latin (Greek)	Greek (Latin)	Greek
dominant religion	Roman paganism	Nicene Christianity	Chalcedonian Christianity (second half: Eastern Orthodoxy)

So: “Eastern Roman synagogues”, “Aramaic dialects of the Eastern Roman period”, “Hebrew poetry of Eastern Roman Palestine”… Who’s with me?

A famous emperor from roughly the middle of each period: Marcus Aurelius, Justinian I, and Basil II.

1. Wikipedia tells me that Heraclius first used basileus together with autokratōr kaisar in a letter from 628, with the more traditional titles first being left out in one from 629. ↩︎