Few historical civilizations suffer from a greater identity mismatch than the Byzantine Empire. To modern readers, “Byzantine” conjures images of decadence, intrigue, and a shadowy afterlife of ancient Rome. Yet to the people who lived in the empire we now call Byzantine, this label would have been meaningless. They did not call themselves Byzantines. They did not believe they lived in a successor state. They were Rhomaioi—Romans—and their empire was the Roman Empire.
Understanding how Byzantines saw themselves is more than a matter of semantics. It reshapes our understanding of medieval history, Roman continuity, and the profound cultural divide between Eastern and Western Europe. The Byzantine self-image as Roman endured for more than a thousand years, surviving language change, religious transformation, territorial loss, and even the fall of Rome itself.
The Invention of “Byzantium”
Topographical map of Constantinople during the Byzantine period.- map by Cplakidas / Wikimedia Commons
The term “Byzantine Empire” is a modern scholarly invention. It derives from Byzantion, the ancient Greek name of Constantinople before it became the imperial capital. The label was popularized by early modern historians, particularly in Western Europe, who wished to separate the classical Roman past they admired from the Greek-speaking Christian empire they viewed with suspicion or disdain.
This label was not neutral. It reflected Renaissance and Enlightenment biases that equated “true” Rome with Latin language, pagan antiquity, and the city of Rome itself. Everything that followed—especially an empire ruled from Constantinople, steeped in Christianity, and culturally Greek—was treated as something else: a deviation, a degeneration, or an imitation.
For Byzantines themselves, however, there was no such rupture. The Roman Empire had changed, but it had not ended.
Roman Continuity After the Fall of Rome
The Byzantine / Roman Empire during the reign of Justinian I – image by Tataryn / Wikimedia Commons
When the Western Roman Empire fragmented in the fifth century, the eastern half remained politically intact. Its institutions, laws, army, taxation system, and imperial ideology continued without interruption. Emperors in Constantinople did not see themselves as rulers of a new state; they were the legitimate Roman emperors.
This continuity was reinforced by law. In the sixth century, Emperor Justinian undertook one of the most ambitious legal projects in history: the codification of Roman law in the Corpus Juris Civilis. This was not an exercise in nostalgia. It was a statement that Roman law still governed a living Roman state.
Justinian’s military campaigns to reclaim Italy and North Africa were similarly framed not as conquests, but as reconquests—efforts to restore Roman lands to Roman rule. The fact that these territories had been ruled by Germanic kings did not negate their Roman identity in Byzantine eyes.
Language Shift, Not Identity Shift
Jaharis Byzantine Lectionary, Byzantine, folio 191r, opening page of the Gospel of Saint Mark (MET, 2007.286)
One of the most common modern objections to Byzantine Roman identity is linguistic: Byzantines spoke Greek, not Latin. But language alone did not define Roman identity in Antiquity or the Middle Ages.
Greek had long been a major language of the Roman world. The eastern provinces of the empire had been predominantly Greek-speaking since before Roman rule. Even under the early emperors, Greek was widely used in administration, literature, and daily life.
Latin remained the official language of government until the seventh century, when Greek gradually replaced it for practical reasons. This shift reflected demographic and administrative realities, not a rejection of Roman identity. Byzantines did not see Greek as incompatible with being Roman; it had always been part of the Roman world.
Crucially, they continued to call themselves Rhomaioi—Romans—and their state Rhōmania, the land of the Romans.
Christianity and the Roman Identity
Cross. Detail from the 6th century Byzantine mosaic in the apse of the basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe (Ravenna, Italy) – Wikimedia Commons
Christianity profoundly transformed Roman identity, but it did not replace it. Instead, it redefined what it meant to be Roman. After Constantine’s conversion and the Christianization of the empire, Roman identity became inseparable from Orthodox Christianity.
Byzantines saw their empire as a Christian Roman state chosen by God. The emperor was not merely a political ruler but God’s representative on earth, tasked with maintaining orthodoxy and order. This fusion of Roman statecraft and Christian theology became a cornerstone of Byzantine self-understanding.
Heresy was therefore not just a religious error but a threat to Roman unity. Religious disputes—from Arianism to iconoclasm—were experienced as existential crises because they undermined the harmony of the Roman Christian order.
“Roman” as a Political and Legal Identity
Limestone funerary statuette at the Museum of Byzantine and Christian Art in Athens, Greece
To be Roman in Byzantium was not primarily an ethnic identity. It was a political and legal one. Subjects of the empire, regardless of origin, could become Romans through loyalty, service, and integration into imperial society.
Armenians, Slavs, Isaurians, and others rose to the highest levels of government and even became emperors. What mattered was not bloodline but participation in Roman institutions and acceptance of Orthodox Christianity.
This flexibility was one reason the empire endured so long. Roman identity functioned as a unifying framework that absorbed diversity rather than excluding it.
Byzantium and the Latin West: Competing Romes
Device of the Emperor John VIII Palaiologos, featuring the Byzantine double-headed eagle and the sympilema (the family cypher) of the Palaiologos dynasty
The Byzantine claim to Roman identity became increasingly contested in the medieval period, particularly by the Latin West. After the coronation of Charlemagne as emperor in 800, western rulers began to assert their own claim to Roman legitimacy.
From a Byzantine perspective, this was an act of usurpation. There could be only one Roman emperor, and he ruled in Constantinople. Western emperors were viewed as kings at best, pretenders at worst.
This rivalry was not merely political; it was cultural and religious. Differences in language, liturgy, and theology widened the gap between eastern and western Christians. By the time of the Great Schism in 1054, the sense of mutual otherness was deeply entrenched.
Western writers increasingly referred to Byzantines as “Greeks,” denying them Roman status. Byzantines, in turn, saw westerners as barbarians who had stolen the Roman name without inheriting Roman civilization.
The Shock of the Crusades
Late medieval armour at The Museum of Byzantine and Christianity Art
Nothing exposed the fragility of Byzantine Roman identity more brutally than the Crusades. Initially welcomed as allies, western crusaders quickly revealed their contempt for Byzantine culture and political claims.
The sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade was a profound trauma. Latin crusaders established their own empire in the city, explicitly rejecting Byzantine Roman legitimacy.
Yet even in exile, Byzantine elites continued to identify as Romans. Successor states such as Nicaea framed their mission as the restoration of the Roman Empire, not the creation of a Greek kingdom. When Constantinople was recaptured in 1261, the restoration was celebrated as the return of Roman rule.
Late Byzantium: Roman Identity in Decline?
Siege of Constantinople – 16th century depiction
By the late medieval period, the empire had shrunk dramatically. Greek language and culture became more prominent, and some intellectuals began to emphasize Hellenic heritage more openly. This has sometimes been interpreted as a shift away from Roman identity.
In reality, Roman self-identification persisted until the end. Even on the eve of Constantinople’s fall in 1453, inhabitants called themselves Romans. Ottoman sources referred to them as Rum, a term derived from Roman identity and used for Orthodox Christians under Ottoman rule.
The Ottoman Empire itself recognized this continuity, granting the Orthodox Church authority over the Rum millet—the Roman community.
Why the “Byzantine” Label Still Matters
The persistence of Roman identity in Byzantium challenges modern periodization and national narratives. It disrupts the idea that Rome “fell” in 476 and forces us to reckon with the longevity of Roman civilization in the eastern Mediterranean.
Calling the empire “Byzantine” is convenient, but it risks reinforcing outdated assumptions: that Byzantium was something other than Rome, something lesser or derivative. In reality, it was Rome—changed, Christianized, Greek-speaking, but continuous.
Understanding how Byzantines saw themselves restores historical agency to the people of the empire. It allows us to see medieval Roman history not as an epilogue to antiquity, but as a central chapter in European and Mediterranean history.
The Byzantines did not live in a world they thought of as “Byzantine.” They lived in the Roman Empire. For over a millennium, they preserved Roman law, Roman statecraft, and Roman identity, adapting them to new religious and cultural realities. That modern historians chose to rename them tells us more about modern anxieties and biases than about medieval self-understanding. To retake Byzantine identity seriously is to recognize that Rome did not simply fall—it endured, transformed, and remembered itself as Roman to the very end.
Zoe Tsiami is a PhD(c) in Byzantine History at University of Thessaly. Her research interests include baptism, catechism and naming practices in the Early Byzantine period. She has published papers and taught at workshops relevant to Early Byzantine/Christian history.
By Zoe Tsiami
Few historical civilizations suffer from a greater identity mismatch than the Byzantine Empire. To modern readers, “Byzantine” conjures images of decadence, intrigue, and a shadowy afterlife of ancient Rome. Yet to the people who lived in the empire we now call Byzantine, this label would have been meaningless. They did not call themselves Byzantines. They did not believe they lived in a successor state. They were Rhomaioi—Romans—and their empire was the Roman Empire.
Understanding how Byzantines saw themselves is more than a matter of semantics. It reshapes our understanding of medieval history, Roman continuity, and the profound cultural divide between Eastern and Western Europe. The Byzantine self-image as Roman endured for more than a thousand years, surviving language change, religious transformation, territorial loss, and even the fall of Rome itself.
The Invention of “Byzantium”
The term “Byzantine Empire” is a modern scholarly invention. It derives from Byzantion, the ancient Greek name of Constantinople before it became the imperial capital. The label was popularized by early modern historians, particularly in Western Europe, who wished to separate the classical Roman past they admired from the Greek-speaking Christian empire they viewed with suspicion or disdain.
This label was not neutral. It reflected Renaissance and Enlightenment biases that equated “true” Rome with Latin language, pagan antiquity, and the city of Rome itself. Everything that followed—especially an empire ruled from Constantinople, steeped in Christianity, and culturally Greek—was treated as something else: a deviation, a degeneration, or an imitation.
For Byzantines themselves, however, there was no such rupture. The Roman Empire had changed, but it had not ended.
Roman Continuity After the Fall of Rome
When the Western Roman Empire fragmented in the fifth century, the eastern half remained politically intact. Its institutions, laws, army, taxation system, and imperial ideology continued without interruption. Emperors in Constantinople did not see themselves as rulers of a new state; they were the legitimate Roman emperors.
This continuity was reinforced by law. In the sixth century, Emperor Justinian undertook one of the most ambitious legal projects in history: the codification of Roman law in the Corpus Juris Civilis. This was not an exercise in nostalgia. It was a statement that Roman law still governed a living Roman state.
Justinian’s military campaigns to reclaim Italy and North Africa were similarly framed not as conquests, but as reconquests—efforts to restore Roman lands to Roman rule. The fact that these territories had been ruled by Germanic kings did not negate their Roman identity in Byzantine eyes.
Language Shift, Not Identity Shift
Jaharis Byzantine Lectionary, Byzantine, folio 191r, opening page of the Gospel of Saint Mark (MET, 2007.286)
One of the most common modern objections to Byzantine Roman identity is linguistic: Byzantines spoke Greek, not Latin. But language alone did not define Roman identity in Antiquity or the Middle Ages.
Greek had long been a major language of the Roman world. The eastern provinces of the empire had been predominantly Greek-speaking since before Roman rule. Even under the early emperors, Greek was widely used in administration, literature, and daily life.
Latin remained the official language of government until the seventh century, when Greek gradually replaced it for practical reasons. This shift reflected demographic and administrative realities, not a rejection of Roman identity. Byzantines did not see Greek as incompatible with being Roman; it had always been part of the Roman world.
Crucially, they continued to call themselves Rhomaioi—Romans—and their state Rhōmania, the land of the Romans.
Christianity and the Roman Identity
Christianity profoundly transformed Roman identity, but it did not replace it. Instead, it redefined what it meant to be Roman. After Constantine’s conversion and the Christianization of the empire, Roman identity became inseparable from Orthodox Christianity.
Byzantines saw their empire as a Christian Roman state chosen by God. The emperor was not merely a political ruler but God’s representative on earth, tasked with maintaining orthodoxy and order. This fusion of Roman statecraft and Christian theology became a cornerstone of Byzantine self-understanding.
Heresy was therefore not just a religious error but a threat to Roman unity. Religious disputes—from Arianism to iconoclasm—were experienced as existential crises because they undermined the harmony of the Roman Christian order.
“Roman” as a Political and Legal Identity
To be Roman in Byzantium was not primarily an ethnic identity. It was a political and legal one. Subjects of the empire, regardless of origin, could become Romans through loyalty, service, and integration into imperial society.
Armenians, Slavs, Isaurians, and others rose to the highest levels of government and even became emperors. What mattered was not bloodline but participation in Roman institutions and acceptance of Orthodox Christianity.
This flexibility was one reason the empire endured so long. Roman identity functioned as a unifying framework that absorbed diversity rather than excluding it.
Byzantium and the Latin West: Competing Romes
The Byzantine claim to Roman identity became increasingly contested in the medieval period, particularly by the Latin West. After the coronation of Charlemagne as emperor in 800, western rulers began to assert their own claim to Roman legitimacy.
From a Byzantine perspective, this was an act of usurpation. There could be only one Roman emperor, and he ruled in Constantinople. Western emperors were viewed as kings at best, pretenders at worst.
This rivalry was not merely political; it was cultural and religious. Differences in language, liturgy, and theology widened the gap between eastern and western Christians. By the time of the Great Schism in 1054, the sense of mutual otherness was deeply entrenched.
Western writers increasingly referred to Byzantines as “Greeks,” denying them Roman status. Byzantines, in turn, saw westerners as barbarians who had stolen the Roman name without inheriting Roman civilization.
The Shock of the Crusades
Nothing exposed the fragility of Byzantine Roman identity more brutally than the Crusades. Initially welcomed as allies, western crusaders quickly revealed their contempt for Byzantine culture and political claims.
The sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade was a profound trauma. Latin crusaders established their own empire in the city, explicitly rejecting Byzantine Roman legitimacy.
Yet even in exile, Byzantine elites continued to identify as Romans. Successor states such as Nicaea framed their mission as the restoration of the Roman Empire, not the creation of a Greek kingdom. When Constantinople was recaptured in 1261, the restoration was celebrated as the return of Roman rule.
Late Byzantium: Roman Identity in Decline?
By the late medieval period, the empire had shrunk dramatically. Greek language and culture became more prominent, and some intellectuals began to emphasize Hellenic heritage more openly. This has sometimes been interpreted as a shift away from Roman identity.
In reality, Roman self-identification persisted until the end. Even on the eve of Constantinople’s fall in 1453, inhabitants called themselves Romans. Ottoman sources referred to them as Rum, a term derived from Roman identity and used for Orthodox Christians under Ottoman rule.
The Ottoman Empire itself recognized this continuity, granting the Orthodox Church authority over the Rum millet—the Roman community.
Why the “Byzantine” Label Still Matters
The persistence of Roman identity in Byzantium challenges modern periodization and national narratives. It disrupts the idea that Rome “fell” in 476 and forces us to reckon with the longevity of Roman civilization in the eastern Mediterranean.
Calling the empire “Byzantine” is convenient, but it risks reinforcing outdated assumptions: that Byzantium was something other than Rome, something lesser or derivative. In reality, it was Rome—changed, Christianized, Greek-speaking, but continuous.
Understanding how Byzantines saw themselves restores historical agency to the people of the empire. It allows us to see medieval Roman history not as an epilogue to antiquity, but as a central chapter in European and Mediterranean history.
The Byzantines did not live in a world they thought of as “Byzantine.” They lived in the Roman Empire. For over a millennium, they preserved Roman law, Roman statecraft, and Roman identity, adapting them to new religious and cultural realities. That modern historians chose to rename them tells us more about modern anxieties and biases than about medieval self-understanding. To retake Byzantine identity seriously is to recognize that Rome did not simply fall—it endured, transformed, and remembered itself as Roman to the very end.
Zoe Tsiami is a PhD(c) in Byzantine History at University of Thessaly. Her research interests include baptism, catechism and naming practices in the Early Byzantine period. She has published papers and taught at workshops relevant to Early Byzantine/Christian history.
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Top Image: The Double Eagle on a late 14th century altar cloth. Photo courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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