A Brief Timeline of Byzantine History
Created | Updated Feb 19, 2004
The Byzantine Empire is the name which historians use for the Eastern part of the Roman Empire after the fall of Rome itself in 476 AD. Although the people of the Empire called themselves 'Romans' and the surrounding states used the term 'Romania', the term Byzantine is used to clearly distinguish the Empire from its Roman-centered predecessor. It comes from the city of Byzantium1, which was rebuilt by the Roman Emperor Constantine in 330 and renamed Constantinople2. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Byzantine Empire was considered the center of both Classical and Christian culture, a beacon of light against the surrounding forces of heresy and ignorance. Its convoluted manuvering, so famous that the adjective 'Byzantine' is often used to refer to things shadowy or underhanded, combined political, religious, economic, and military squabbling into the vast and always busy city of Constantinople. Although not by any means a complete list of all Emperors or all events in the thousand-year history of the Byzantine Empire, this entry will attempt to give a basic understanding of the course of Byzantine history.
The Tetrarchy, 286-324
The question of the beginning of the Byzantine Empire is a complex one, but for simplicity this entry begins with the first attempt to split the Roman Empire administratively into two parts, east and west. This was the establishment of the tetrarchy, an invention of the Emperor Diocletian, in the year 286. The tetrarcy, from the Greek word for four, was a complex system in which the administration of the Empire would be handled by four rulers: two Augusti or emperors and two Caesari, somewhat like vice-emperors. The east and west would each have one Augustus and one Casar, the western rulers based in Milan and the eastern in Nicomedia. Upon the death of the Augustus, the Caesar would take his place and appoint a new Caesar. All a very working system...except that it never really worked. A series of Caesar puppets for one side or the other, combined with the constant threat of one Augustus trying to depose the other made the system useless and it was eventually abolished by Constantine in 324, when he 'reunited' the Empire. Nevertheless, it set the precedent for later divisions.
Constantian Dynasty, 324-362
The Emperor Constantine was, by all accounts, an extraordinary person and a ruthless powermonger. He was responsible for the founding of the city of Constantinople as the new Roman capital, forever turning the focus to the east. As Augustus of the west, he led a military campaign against Maxentius, his eastern counterpart. That campaign was settled at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge outside Rome, the battle before or at which Constantine is supposed to have seen a miraculous sign in the sky telling him to inscribe a christian symbol on the banners of his army. This story is most likely apochryphal3 but it is certainly true that after his rise to power Constantine allied himself with several of the various Christian factions. In 325, a year after firmly gaining power, he called the first ever council of bishops at the city of Nicea to clear up various doctrinal disputes and also compile the various gospels and other christian writings into an established holy text. The results of the Council of Nicea were the famous Nicean Creed, the vulgate Bible, and for the first time ever an organized Christian Church. Cynics may argue that Constantine needed a cohesive organization of Christians for his alliance with them to be of any value to him. Certainly it is true that the Council of Nicea established the Emperor's authority over the church4 and Constantine soon afterward proclaimed Christianity to be a legal religion of the Empire and therefore no longer subject to persecution. Constantine himself remained a pagan until his deathbed baptism, but nevertheless he is today considered a saint by the Orthodox Church.
Constantine passed power to his three sons, Constantine II, Constans I and Constantius II5 who engaged in bloody infighting and collectively had almost the entire family wiped out. Rule finally passed to the one remaining male family member, the pagan Julian who was later called 'the Apostate'. Julian waged a losing war to revive the old pagan gods by restablishing languishing temples and commissioning a number of priests to perform the old rites. The possible success of this endeavour will never be known, since Julian ruled less than two years before a poorly planned campaign against Persia took his life.
Valentinian Dynasty, 362-395
The Empire was again divided between Valentinian and his brother Valens, strongly Christian emperors who fixed the Christian nature of the Empire for good. Valentian, at least, was an able ruler who negotiated a peaceful compromise with the barbarian Visigoths by which they could escape the fury of the Huns by taking refuge within the borders of the Empire. The transition did not go as well as planned but all was peaceful until after the death of Valentian which made Valens the senior Emperor. He soon moved against the Visigoths, whose poor treatment at the hands of local officials had made them unruly and violent. In the Battle of Adrianople the Roman army was decimated and Valens killed. Theodosius was appointed eastern emperor. He spent the next 20 years divided between putting down usurpers in the west and keeping the Visigoths under control.
Theodosian Dynasty, 395-457
Theodosus is now called 'the Great', primarily for his establishment of Athanasian Christianity (the type used by both the Catholic and Orthodox churches today) as the only legal religion in the Empire in 381 and for persecuting pagans. Like Constantine, he was involved in a battle (Battle of the Frigidus River) which was associated with miraculous occurances. He also continued the constant struggle to keep the Goths in line and managed to do a decent job throughout his lifetime. He reconquered the west in 394, but after his death in 395 the Empire was again divided into east and west between his two sons. The slide toward the end was swift at this point. In 407 a confederation of German tribes crossed the Rhine into Roman territory. The general who went out to meet them, Stilicho, was also a german who had been hired by Rome to defend its territory. The Goths alternated between allies and enemies, often bribed by Constantinople to raid western territory or vice versa. In 410 they sacked Rome. Various barbarian armies ran rampant across the territory of the western empire. In 455 Rome was again sacked, this time by the Vandals6. After the death of Valentianian III in 455 control of the western empire fell to the German general Ricimer. A series of figurehead western emperors controlled by various German tribes followed until finally in 476 the Emperor Romulus Augustulus was dethroned and not replaced. The western empire had fallen.
Leonine Dynasty, 457-518
The eastern empire, on the other hand, stayed relatively unscathed throughout this upheaval for a variety of reasons. Perhaps most importantly, the trade that passed through Constantinople from the east enriched the eastern empire, allowing it to pay off hostile invaders and maintain a relatively well-trained army. The east also had a significantly shorter border over which barbarians could pass. The Emperor Leo and his descendants ruled during the fall of the west. Although family members and loyal servants were repeatadly sent to the west as candidates for the throne, there was very little cooperation between east and west. A joint campaign against the Vandals in North Africa failed due to incompentence. Emperor Zeno the Issaurian also forced the allegiance of the German Odovacer, who claimed the title of King of Italy from 476 to his death in 496. Despite these efforts, the Leonines were mostly content to consolidate what territory remained to the Emperors . After all, in their minds they were now the heirs of the Roman Empire, even if they no longer controlled the city of Rome itself.
Justinian Dynasty, 518-610
The Emperor Justinian had an unfortuanate beginning to his reign. A massive riot7 destroyed much of the central part of Constantinople and shook the confidence of the 'Romans' in the integrity of their empire. To inspire his people, Justinian undertook a series of large-scale projects, stripping down the imperial administration to its bare essentials in order to provide the funding. He codified Roman laws and rebuilt the destroyed buildings, in the process funding the construction of the massive Hagia Sofia church, the largest church in Christendom. Most spectacularly he undertook an effort to reconquer the western empire. In 533 the unsuspecting Kingdom of the Vandals collapsed, giving Justinian control over North Africa. In 536 a massive sea crossing gained him control of the city of Rome, and by 552 the rest of Italy had been reconquered. Finally in 554 Andalusia (the southern part of the Iberian penninsula) fell under Byzantine control. Gaul and Britain were never retaken.
Meanwhile, in turning his attention to the symbolic lands of the west, Justianian had taken the pressure off of his real threats: the Persian Empire in the east and the Bulgar Khanate in the Balkans. In 541 the revived Persians under Shâh Khusro I burned Antioch8 to the ground after first arrogantly offering to sell it back to the Emperor at an outrageous price. Bulgar raids were temporarily stopped by a campaign of the Emperor Maurice in 582, but by then Italy had been reinvaded by the Lombards. The three-front war exhausted the Empire and led to the assasination of Maurice by his own soldiers in 602. The Persians finally turned back, but only after reaching the Asian side of the Bosporous and the Balkan frontier collapsed, leaving Byzantine control over only Greece. And before any of these problems could even be confronted the newest and greatest threat to the Empire came storming out of Arabia.
Heraclian Dynasty, 610-717
The Emperor Heraclius took power in a coup as the Persians were camped outside the gates of Constantinople. In a brilliant, if reckless, move he mounted a massive campaign which involved transporting several thousand Byzantine soldiers up the Black Sea to what is now Georgia and marching them against the Persian capital of Persepolis. Neither capital could be successfully breached, and both Heraclius and the Persian Shâh Khusro II were forced to return to their own territory by 628. Meanwhile, in 620 the Balkan stronghold of Spalatum was overrun by the Avars. In 624 the important North African city of Carthage was taken by the Visigoths. In 626 the siege of the retreating Persians was replaced by a siege from the west by the Avars.
In the long run, this was all just background noise for the real event of the period, the rise of Islam. Arabia, which previously had been essentially a wasteland of bickering tribes, became a major power under the unifying force of Islam. In the period 636-640 the forces of the Caliph Omar conquered Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Egypt, essentially ripping the guts out of two of the world's three most powerful states (the third being China). Jerusalem, considered at the time to be the center of the world, was lost and not recovered until the Crusades. However, the efforts of Heraclius and his descendants managed to preserve a core for the greatly diminished Empire. Much of modern Turkey and Greece as well as Italy remained in Byzantine hands. Indeed, Constans II Pogonatus visited Rome in the 640s as an Imperial possesion no different from its status in the third century. This was part of the campaign against the Lombards, who were attacking Constantinople's Italian territory on and off. Constans II also continued to exert influence over the Bishops of Rome, having Pope Martin I arrested for heresy and exiled.
Constantine IV withstood the first of many Arab sieges of Constantinople in 674-677. This was aided by the destruction of much of the Arab fleet with the use of the obscure technology known as 'Greek Fire'. This was a flaming liquid of unknown composition which was hurled at the enemy. Descriptions from the time remind modern readers of nothing so much as napalm. Regardless, it certainly saved Constantinople and helped to regain Byzantine authority in the Mediterranean. The rise of Islam also helped to secure the ideological position of Byzantium as the guardian of the west. Whatever else might happen in Europe, even their enemies respected the force of Byzantine arms which kept Christiandom safe.
