The Roman Empire · 1:06am Aug 16th, 2023
Few seem to know that the Roman Empire actually survived for far longer than the first hundreds years post Jesus' birth.
In 395 AD, the Roman Empire was split along the middle, through modern day Serbia and Montenegro, between it's two rulers, Arcadius in the East, ruling from Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), and Honorius in the West, ruling from Milan then Ravenna. Similar splits had occurred during Roman history before, once the empire even split in fourths, but this split was unfortunately set to last. The Western Empire would suffer heavily while attempting to keep the Germans across the Rhine, which would quickly fail and they would seize most of Gaul (Modern France) and Iberia before the ruler of the West was deposed by mercenaries in 476. Ironically enough, their final emperor was named Romulus, just as Rome's founder was.
The Eastern Empire would continue to exist for many many years, even in the 500s under the rule of Justinian the Great (the last emperor to receive that title) would reconquer Italy, North Africa, some of Southern Gaul, and some of Iberia. This was unfortunately the last great achievements of the Empire and it would see an extremely slow decline from here on. Eventually the crusades came to take the Levant back, unfortunately the Great Schism had already occurred and the crusades were led by Catholic states and the Eastern Empire (now to be referred to as Byzantium) was Orthodox. Thus the crusades didn't necessarily treat Byzantium too well, and the Fourth Crusade even resulted in Constantinople being sacked and the Empire partitioned. In time she would regain most of Greece before again losing it, by the mid 1400s she was left as nothing but Constantinople and some of south western Greece, on top of that Constantinople's population was now incredibly low and the city not doing well. Finally in 1453, the Ottomans attacked the city again, and due to the Church failing to rally support for another crusade, the city fell and the Empire was finally gone. Thus, Rome as a country, finally ceased to exist in 1453.
