Byzantine Empire or Eastern Roman Empire?

[The Mikado]

The Arab conquests are a pretty good line between a massively multicultural, multilingual state with many different brands of Christianity and ethnic groups and the vast wealth of Egypt vs. the smaller, more homogenous in language, more exclusively Greek, state that emerged with far less international reach and influence.

The loss of Egypt and Syria, the most valuable parts of the Empire (arguably Egypt was the most valuable and important part of the Empire even before the East West divide), is a really transformative moment in terms of what kind of power we're talking about. I think it's fair to call it a "Roman" state through Heraclius' reign. Heraclius' reign even mostly features that greatest of Roman passtimes: a knock down, drag out fight with the Persians, something a Roman from 700 years prior would've nodded approvingly at as totally proper even if he wouldn't recognize these newfangled cataphracts.

[The Mikado]

Why would it be the Eastern Roman Empire when it didn't even include Rome?

Thing is, it totally did.

If you want to be a dick and ask "Who was the last Roman Emperor to build a monument in Rome" you could always win by pointing to this piece of s**t:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column_of_Phocas

Built in 610. Yes, the column of Phocas is about as impressive as Phocas was an Emperor, but it was still built a century and a half after the fall of the Western Empire.

The Empire seized back the City of Rome in 537 and kept it for a good two centuries.

[The Mikado]

^ This brings up another question I have often had that is loosely related to all of this ... when did areas like Egypt and the Levant lose their relative wealth compared to the various parts of Europe?

This deserves a longer and more detailed response than I want to give right now, but the short version boils down to:

Classical Egypt was an agricultural powerhouse that produced a huge agricultural surplus and fed much of the rest of the Mediterranean. Its population was 2 million.

Modern Egypt is an agricultural powerhouse. It...produces a huge agricultural deficit and has to import a lot of food. It has a population of 80 million.

There's obviously a lot more to say, but that should get at the thrust of what the problem is.

[The Mikado]

Why would it be the Eastern Roman Empire when it didn't even include Rome?

Rome wasn’t even A capital of the late Western Roman Empire.

Yeah, I think they had Ravenna as the capital.

RINO Tom said a capital for a reason. The Roman Empire in the West tried a bunch of more forward-facing capitals first: Milan/Mediolanum because it was so much further north and closer to the frontier, and during the 4th century they even made Trier (Augusta Treverorum) a capital of the West to put the emperor on the front lines. The 5th century move to Ravenna (which is basically an impregnable city in the middle of a swamp that can't be taken without naval superiority) is a humiliating concession that the Imperial capital needs to be hidden away where it cannot be taken.

Speaking of Ravenna, when the Empire took back Italy from the Ostrogoths in the 6th century, it promptly lost most of its gains to the Lombards, but due to Ravenna's defensibility, it held onto it for WAY longer, until the 750s.



Nice map of Europe in 700. You can see the Empire continuing to hold Ravenna and Rome (and Sicily) even though the rest of Italy has fallen to the Lombards.