Empire395 CE – 527 CE · 132 years
Eastern Roman Empire
The eastern half of the Roman Empire that quietly outlasted the western half by a thousand years.
What it was
Centered on Constantinople, Byzantium combined Roman law, Greek language, and Orthodox Christianity. It absorbed waves of Persian, Arab, Bulgar, and Turkish pressure for a millennium before finally falling to the Ottomans in 1453.
Why it mattered
It preserved classical Greek learning through the European Dark Ages and Christianized the Slavic world; the Cyrillic alphabet and Russian Orthodoxy are direct downstream consequences.
From Wikipedia
The Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, it endured until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. The term 'Byzantine Empire' was coined only after its demise; its citizens used the term 'Roman Empire' and called themselves 'Romans'.
Wikipedia: Byzantine Empire·CC BY-SA 4.0
Borders & accuracy
Solid borders are reconstructed from canonical historical-basemap data or hand-crafted from scholarly atlases.
- SOURCEaourednik / historical-basemaps
- DETAILhistorical-basemaps (Ourednik)
- SNAPSHOT500 CE
- POLITY TYPEstate
Wars of this empire8
Conflicts whose belligerents name this polity, best-documented first.
- Byzantine–Sasanian wars502–628 CEMajor conflict
- Fall of the Western Roman Empire395–486 CESignificant
- Battle of Ravenna425 CERegional
- Roman–Vandal wars (455–468)455–468 CERegional
- Battle of Cape Bon468 CERegional
- Battle of Amida502 CERegional
- Battle of Apadna503 CERegional
- Battle of Horreum Margi505 CERegional
Open in the atlas →Seeks the timeline to 395 CE and fits the map to these borders.
Cite as: Eastern Roman Empire (395 CE – 527 CE). War Atlas. https://waratlas.org/e/eastern-roman-byzantine-early · Sources & methodology