110 Fun Facts About Byzantine Empire

What did the citizens of the Byzantine Empire call themselves?

Romans they remained in their own eyes for over a thousand years; the label 'Byzantine' was coined by historians only after the empire had fallen.

'Byzantine' comes from Byzantion, which was what?

The Greek settlement on which Constantinople was built lent its name only to that city's residents; nobody called the whole empire 'Byzantine' until after it had fallen.

What did Constantine I call his new eastern capital, rebuilt between 324 and 330?

New Rome was his name for it, but the city soon became known by his own name instead: Constantinople, the city of Constantine.

Constantine legalised Christianity, but which later emperor made it the state religion and was the last to rule the whole empire?

Theodosius I left the empire to his two sons when he died in 395, one ruling from each capital, and no single emperor ever held east and west together again.

Which emperor divided the Roman Empire into eastern and western halves under the Tetrarchy?

Diocletian judged the empire too big for one ruler and shared it among four; in 305 he became the first Roman emperor to step down of his own accord.

The eastern emperor Valens died at which battle in 378?

Adrianople cost Rome two-thirds of an army in an afternoon; Valens's body was never found, and his successor had to let the Goths settle inside the empire.

Which invader ravaged the Balkans in the 440s until Constantinople bought him off with a huge yearly tribute in gold?

Attila later turned on the weaker western empire instead, and his own realm broke apart within years of his death in 453.

Which warlord deposed the last western emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476?

Odoacer spared the boy-emperor and sent him to live in Campania on an allowance, then ruled Italy as king without naming a successor.

Which Ostrogothic king did Emperor Zeno encourage to take Italy from the warlord who had deposed the last western emperor?

Theodoric invited his rival to a banquet in Ravenna in 493 to seal a power-sharing deal, killed him with his own hands, and then ruled Italy for 33 years.

By what name is the imperial legal code rewritten and enacted between 529 and 534 now known?

Corpus Juris Civilis is a title given centuries later; studied in Europe's universities from the 11th century, Justinian's compilation became the basis of many modern legal systems.

Which two chariot-racing factions joined forces against Justinian in the Nika riots of 532?

Blues and Greens were usually bitter rivals, but they united after Justinian refused to pardon one man from each side; the week-long revolt ended with some 30,000 dead.

Which former actress became empress and urged Justinian to stand firm during the Nika riots of 532?

Theodora. Roman law barred senators from marrying actresses, so Justinian's uncle, the emperor Justin I, changed it, and she was crowned beside her husband in 527.

Which general conquered the Vandal Kingdom of North Africa in 533?

Belisarius. He shattered the Vandals in two battles within months, then brought their king Gelimer back to Constantinople as a captive to walk in his triumph.

What brought down Hagia Sophia's first dome in 558, some twenty years after the church was finished?

An earthquake. The replacement dome was built taller and steeper, so more of its weight pressed straight down instead of pushing the walls outward.

What was Hagia Sophia's status between 1935 and 2020?

A museum. Atatürk's secular republic closed the mosque and reopened it as a museum, until a Turkish court annulled that decision in 2020 and it became a mosque again.

The pandemic that reached Constantinople in 542 and is named after Justinian was an outbreak of which disease?

Plague. DNA from 6th-century graves shows the same bacterium that later caused the Black Death, and Justinian caught it himself in 542 but recovered.

Which relic, seized by the Persians at Jerusalem in 614, did Heraclius later restore to the city?

The True Cross. The Persians carried it off when they took Jerusalem, and their collapse after his victory forced them to hand it back, so Heraclius restored it to the city.

Heraclius defeated the Sasanians decisively in 627 at which battle?

Nineveh. Heraclius is said to have killed the Persian general in single combat, and soon afterwards the Persian king was overthrown and killed by his own son, who sued for peace.

On which strait between Europe and Asia did Constantinople stand?

The Bosphorus. Constantine chose the site because it was almost surrounded by water and easy to defend, and every ship leaving the Black Sea had to pass beneath its walls.

Which Byzantine arrangement, begun in the 7th century, stationed armies in set districts under military governors?

The theme system. Each district's general commanded its troops and governed it too, and that standing local defence let Anatolia outlast yearly Arab raids without being occupied.

Constantine IV repelled Arab attacks on Constantinople in the 670s using what weapon?

Greek fire. Sprayed from tubes on the ships' prows, it kept burning on water, and its recipe was guarded so closely that it has since been lost.

Which emperor repelled the great Arab siege of Constantinople in 717–718?

Leo III. Crowned only months before the Arabs arrived, he held the walls while an unusually hard winter, famine and disease wore the besiegers down until they withdrew in August 718.

What name is given to the Byzantine emperors' 8th- and 9th-century drive to remove religious images from churches?

Iconoclasm. From 726 emperors feared that honouring icons had become idolatry, and the images returned for good only in 843, a restoration Eastern churches still celebrate each year.

Which empress ruled the Byzantine Empire alone when the pope crowned Charlemagne emperor in 800?

Irene. She had overthrown her own son to rule alone, and two years after the coronation a marriage between her and Charlemagne was reportedly discussed.

Which Greek mountain has been home to a self-governing republic of Orthodox monks since Byzantine times?

Mount Athos. Its first great monastery was founded in 963 with an emperor's money, and its twenty monasteries still govern themselves and still bar women from the peninsula.

By which epithet is the long-reigning emperor Basil II, who died in 1025, remembered?

The Bulgar Slayer. As a young emperor he was routed by the Bulgarians at Trajan's Gate, and he spent the following decades avenging it until their state was annexed in 1018.

What is Basil II said to have ordered done to thousands of prisoners after Kleidion?

They were blinded. Chroniclers, perhaps exaggerating, say one man in every hundred kept an eye to lead the rest home, and that their ruler Samuel died of shock at the sight.

The Varangian Guard, the Byzantine emperors' elite bodyguard, was first recruited mainly from which people?

Vikings. The first 6,000 were Rus warriors sent from Kiev to help Basil II keep his throne, and Anglo-Saxons from England later filled the ranks beside them.

In modern English, what is a set of rules described as 'byzantine'?

Overly complicated. English borrowed the empire's name for anything as intricate and scheming as the imperial court at Constantinople was reputed to be.

At which battle in 1071 did the Seljuk Turks capture the Byzantine emperor Romanos IV?

Manzikert. The sultan freed his captive within days in return for territory, but Romanos came home to find himself overthrown, and the Turks went on to take most of Anatolia.

Emperor Alexios I asked the pope for mercenaries against the Seljuks and instead set off which campaign?

The First Crusade. Whole armies arrived where Alexios had wanted hired soldiers, so he made their leaders swear to hand back any imperial land they retook from the Turks.

On first seeing the finished Hagia Sophia, Justinian is said to have boasted that he had outdone which biblical king?

Solomon. 'Solomon, I have surpassed thee,' he reportedly said of a church built in under six years after rioters burned down its predecessor.

The Fourth Crusade planned to reach Jerusalem by first invading which country?

Egypt. The plan was to break the sultan's power on the Nile before marching on Jerusalem, but the army could not pay for its ships and was steered elsewhere to settle the debt.

Which maritime republic, led by its blind and aged ruler Enrico Dandolo, steered the Fourth Crusade against Constantinople?

Venice. The crusaders could not pay for the fleet it had built them, so Dandolo had them work off the debt, first against Zara and then against Constantinople itself.

Which emblem of the Palaiologoi, the last Byzantine dynasty, still appears on Russia's coat of arms?

A double-headed eagle. Moscow's grand prince Ivan III took it up after marrying Sophia Palaiologina, niece of the last emperor, and Albania's flag carries one too.

Which Greek successor state recaptured Constantinople from the crusaders in 1261?

Empire of Nicaea. A scouting force of about 800 men found most of the city's garrison away in July 1261, got inside the walls and took it almost without a fight.

Michael VIII staved off Charles of Anjou partly by aiding which 1282 uprising?

He also recognised papal primacy at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, to the disgust of his subjects.

Which band of mercenaries, hired in the 1300s, turned on the Byzantines?

The Catalan Company. After the co-emperor had its leader Roger de Flor assassinated in 1305, it ravaged Thrace for two years and went on to seize Athens for itself.

Which conqueror's defeat of Sultan Bayezid I in 1402 saved Constantinople from an Ottoman siege?

Timur. He took Bayezid prisoner at Ankara, and the sultan's sons then fought an eleven-year civil war, a reprieve that let Constantinople survive another half-century.

Greek scholars fleeing Constantinople's fall in 1453 carried their learning west, helping feed which movement?

The Renaissance. Italian humanists had already been seeking out Byzantine teachers to help them read ancient Greek texts, so the refugees found pupils waiting.

Which Ottoman sultan captured Constantinople in 1453?

Mehmed II. Aged just 21, he made the conquered city his capital and ordered thousands of households from across his empire to move there and refill it.

Which weapon did the Hungarian engineer Orban build for the Ottoman sultan after the emperor could not afford his price?

Giant cannon. The biggest hurled huge stone balls more than a kilometre at the land walls, but the heat of each shot limited it to about seven firings a day.

What did Constantine XI stretch across the mouth of the Golden Horn in 1453 to keep out the Ottoman fleet?

A great chain. It held, so the sultan had his ships hauled overland behind Galata and launched into the harbour on the far side of it.

Children born to a reigning Byzantine emperor, in a palace chamber lined with porphyry, were said to be 'born in the' what?

Purple. Purple dye was so costly that law and custom reserved it for royalty, and the title porphyrogennetos, purple-born, went only to children born after their father took the throne.

Which western city overtook Constantinople as Europe's largest during the 13th century?

Paris. The crusaders' sack gutted Constantinople just as Paris was growing into the most populous city of the medieval West.

What is the 1054 break between Rome's and Constantinople's churches called?

The Great Schism. The pope's envoys laid their bull on the altar of Hagia Sophia, the patriarch answered in kind, and the two sentences were lifted only in 1965.

Which brothers devised the Slavs' first alphabet?

Cyril and Methodius. The Byzantine missionaries devised Glagolitic in the 9th century to put church texts into Slavic; their followers in Bulgaria later built a new script on Greek letters, and that one took Cyril's name.

Where in Constantinople did Justinian's troops trap and cut down the Nika rioters in 532?

The Hippodrome. The rioters were in the chariot-racing arena crowning a rival emperor of their own when the troops stormed in.

Which Chinese secret did two monks smuggle to the court of Justinian, ending the empire's costly dependence on imports?

Silkworm eggs. Persia had controlled the overland trade and its prices; once the worms were hatching at home, silk-making became an imperial monopoly.

Which gold coin did Constantine institute as a stable currency?

Solidus. It kept its weight for some seven centuries, until 11th-century emperors debased it and Alexios I replaced it with a new coin; western Europe knew it as the bezant, after Byzantium.

What were the Byzantine warships equipped with the empire's secret incendiary weapon called?

They made the empire the dominant power of the eastern Mediterranean.

Which doctrine arose in Russia after Byzantium's fall to present Moscow as the empire's successor?

Third Rome. Rome and Constantinople had both fallen, a monk of Pskov wrote to the grand prince, so Moscow now stood as the third, and there would be no fourth.

Which Italian church holds the famous gold mosaics of the emperor Justinian and his court?

Basilica of San Vitale. A local banker paid for the Ravenna church, finished in 547 after Justinian's armies had taken the city; his court fills one wall of the apse and the empress's the other.

Which title did Simeon of Bulgaria take in rivalry with the Byzantine emperors?

Tsar. The word is a Slavic form of 'Caesar', so taking it was a claim to stand level with the emperor in Constantinople; Ivan IV made it Russia's title in 1547.

Which ruler of Kiev was baptised a Christian around 988 and married the sister of the emperor Basil II?

Vladimir the Great. The bride was his price for sending soldiers to prop up Basil's throne, and his baptism drew Kiev and its people into the Byzantine church.

Hagia Sophia honours no saint called Sophia, so what does its Greek name mean?

Holy Wisdom. The name refers to Christ as the Wisdom of God, not to a woman called Sophia, and the Ottomans kept it when they turned the church into the mosque Ayasofya.

In 1439 the emperor John VIII accepted church union with the pope at a council in which city?

Florence. The council had opened in Ferrara and moved there, and the union was proclaimed on 6 July 1439, yet Constantinople fell to the Ottomans fourteen years later.

Justinian, a Balkan peasant's son, grew up speaking which language rather than the Greek of his capital?

Latin. He owed his rise to his uncle Justin, a soldier who climbed from the ranks to the throne and adopted him, and his great law code was composed in his mother tongue.

Which horseback sport from Persia did the Byzantine nobility play under the name tzykanion?

Polo. It began in Persia as a training game for the king's cavalry before becoming a pastime of nobles, and the Byzantines took it up in its Persian form.

Which Byzantine dining innovation later shaped Italian and Western table habits?

The fork. A Byzantine princess who married into Italy in the early 1000s ate with a golden one, and half a century later a churchman was still condemning it as sinful luxury.

The Byzantine condiment garos most resembles what modern product?

Fermented fish sauce. Garos was Rome's garum under its Greek name, and a bishop sent as envoy to Constantinople in 968 grumbled that the emperor's table served dishes steeped in the stuff.

At its height under Justinian, the Byzantine Empire once again held lands around most of which sea?

The Mediterranean. His generals retook North Africa and Italy, but within a decade of his death the Lombards had overrun much of northern Italy and the gains began to slip.

About how many people were living in Constantinople when it fell to the Ottomans in 1453?

50,000. That was about a tenth of what the city had held in its prime, and it could muster only a few thousand soldiers to man its walls.

The Nika riots of 532 took their name from the crowd's chant of 'Nika', a Greek word meaning what?

Conquer. Fans normally screamed it at the charioteer they backed, as in 'Win!'; in 532 the rival factions joined forces and turned the chant on Justinian.

Tavli, a board game the Byzantines loved and Greeks still play, is a form of which game?

Backgammon. One 5th-century emperor had such a disastrous dice throw that a historian wrote the position down, which is why the game can still be reconstructed today.

Which 9th-century poet is said to have lost an emperor's bride show by out-arguing him?

Kassia. As chroniclers tell it, he remarked that evil came into the world through a woman, she answered that better things did too, and he chose another bride; she became a nun whose hymn is still sung each Holy Week.

Hagia Sophia's designer Isidore of Miletus is credited with first compiling the works of which ancient Greek mathematician?

Archimedes. A copy made in Constantinople some 400 years later was scraped and overwritten as a prayer book, and that reused parchment, the Archimedes Palimpsest, still holds his text.

Which rig design credited to the Byzantines improved a ship's responsiveness to the wind?

Other military innovations included the riding stirrup and a specialised horseshoe.

Which medical institution is the Byzantine Empire credited with pioneering in its modern form?

The hospital. Rome had kept sick-houses only for soldiers and slaves; the Byzantine church opened them to the public as an act of charity, aiming to send patients home cured.

Which historian praised Justinian's wars and buildings in public but savaged the emperor in his unpublished 'Secret History'?

Procopius. He had spent years on the staff of Justinian's chief general, so the man who wrote the official praise from the inside also wrote the most scandalous attack.

Constantinople, the Byzantine capital for more than a thousand years, is known today as which Turkish city?

Istanbul became the city's official name only in 1930, under a postal law that also turned Angora into Ankara and Smyrna into Izmir.

Which musical instrument did Emperor Constantine V send from Constantinople to the Frankish king Pepin the Short in 757?

An organ with great lead pipes was a novelty in the West, and when Pepin's son Charlemagne asked for one like it for his Aachen chapel, the instrument began its long career in church music.

A 10th-century envoy described a Byzantine throne that rose into the air, flanked by which roaring gilded automata?

Lions of gilded bronze or wood beat the ground with their tails and roared beside the throne, while metal birds sang in a gilded tree, a spectacle that awed visitors to the palace.

Which monster of Greek myth has her carved head at the base of two columns in Constantinople's Basilica Cistern?

Medusa looks out from two stone blocks reused from an older building, and nobody knows where they first stood. The underground reservoir later served as a James Bond film location.

Narses, who finished Justinian's conquest of Italy, belonged to which group that emperors trusted with high office?

Eunuchs were barred from the throne, so emperors thought them safe to promote. Narses commanded the palace bodyguard before he led armies in Italy.

Justinian shut down the Neoplatonic Academy, heir to Plato's famous school, in which Greek city in 529?

Athens lost its last pagan school of philosophy with the closure, and its remaining members are said to have sought protection at the court of the Persian king Khosrow I.

The Bulgarian khan Krum is said to have turned the skull of the slain emperor Nikephoros I into which object?

A drinking cup lined with silver is what the story describes, made after Krum trapped the retreating imperial army in the Varbitsa Pass in 811.

Which elite Ottoman infantry, taken as boys from Christian families, led the last assault on Constantinople in 1453?

Janissaries went in as the final wave, after irregulars and provincial troops had already been thrown against the damaged walls.

Emperor Justinian II won back his throne in 705 despite which mutilation, inflicted to bar him from ruling again?

A slit nose earned him the nickname Rhinotmetos, and he is said to have worn a solid gold replica over the wound once he was back in power.

Which peninsula, long the Byzantine heartland, did Turkish forces largely overrun in the decade after 1071?

Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor, makes up most of modern Turkey, and it slipped away during the decade of civil conflict that followed the capture of Emperor Romanos IV.

Which people, led by Robert Guiscard, took Bari in 1071 and ended five centuries of Byzantine rule in southern Italy?

Normans had first come to southern Italy as mercenaries, some of them in Byzantine pay, and Bari fell to them after a siege of nearly three years.

Which Germanic people invaded Italy in 568 and seized much of the land Justinian's generals had just won back?

Lombards crossed into Italy under King Alboin just three years after Justinian's death, and the northern region of Lombardy still carries their name.

Which Italian city, last seat of the western emperors before 476, housed the Byzantine exarch until 751?

Ravenna had also been the capital of the Ostrogothic kings, and the exarch who governed Italy from it combined military and civil power in one office.

Which Byzantine princess wrote the Alexiad, a history of her father's reign, in the seclusion of a monastery?

Anna Komnene had been schooled in medicine, mathematics and philosophy, and she filled fifteen books with the story of her father's wars and diplomacy.

Which term, analysed by Max Weber, describes a secular ruler such as the Byzantine emperor controlling the church?

Caesaropapism was never an accepted principle in Byzantium itself: emperors presided over church councils and appointed patriarchs, but leading churchmen resisted imperial control.

Which caliphate, ruling from Damascus, sent the huge army and fleet that besieged Constantinople in 717?

Umayyad troops were crippled by famine and disease during an unusually hard winter outside the walls, and the caliphate gave up its goal of taking the city.

At which 636 battle, fought beside a river on the Syria–Jordan border, did Arab armies end Byzantine rule in Syria?

Yarmuk raged for six days in August and is counted the greatest victory of the Arab general Khalid ibn al-Walid, who beat a larger army sent by Heraclius.

Which Aegean port, named after a sister of Alexander the Great, ranked as the Byzantine Empire's second city?

Thessaloniki was second only to Constantinople in wealth and size, and its early Christian and Byzantine monuments joined the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1988.

At the foot of which mountain did Justinian build the fortified monastery now named for Saint Catherine?

Mount Sinai's monastery encloses what is claimed to be the burning bush seen by Moses, and it is the world's oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery.

Which architectural device, fully developed at Hagia Sophia, lets a round dome rest on four piers around a square space?

Pendentives are curved triangles of masonry that gather a dome's weight onto the corner piers; earlier builders had to make do with corbelling or squinches.

Which Greek title, used by Heraclius from 629, served as the Byzantine emperors' official style for eight centuries?

Basileus was the ancient Greek word for a king or sovereign, and the kings of modern Greece later took up the same title.

Which steppe people besieged Constantinople in 626 in league with the Persians while Heraclius was away at war?

Avars had been paid huge sums in gold to keep the peace, yet their khagan attacked the city while a Persian army waited at Chalcedon on the far shore. The siege's failure saved the empire.

Which Seljuk sultan is said to have placed his boot on the neck of the captured emperor Romanos IV in 1071?

Alp Arslan then treated his captive with considerable kindness and released him after a week, in return for a ransom and a yearly payment in gold.

Which founder of the Ottoman dynasty beat a Byzantine force sent to relieve Nicomedia at the Battle of Bapheus?

Osman I gave the Ottomans their name, and his victory at Bapheus cemented his young state and heralded the Turkish capture of Byzantine Bithynia.

Which Italian republic held the walled colony of Galata, facing Constantinople across the Golden Horn?

Genoa was granted the quarter by Michael VIII in 1267 and in 1348 crowned it with the Galata Tower, still a landmark of the city.

Emperor Manuel II, the only Byzantine ruler to visit England, was hosted over Christmas 1400 by which king?

Henry IV received him at Blackheath and lodged him at Eltham Palace until February, with a joust in honour of a guest who had come seeking aid against the Ottomans.

Which Byzantine successor state on the Black Sea outlived Constantinople itself, holding out until 1461?

Trebizond's rulers called themselves emperors to the very end, when the Ottoman sultan took the city after a month-long siege and carried the last of them into captivity.

To which North African city did Heraclius consider moving his capital in 618, with Constantinople under threat?

Carthage was where his father governed as Exarch of Africa and where his own revolt had begun, but the patriarch and the people of the capital persuaded Heraclius to stay.

Which small sea, linking the Black Sea to the Aegean through two straits, washed Constantinople's southern shore?

Marmara takes its name from an island rich in marble, and it is often counted the smallest sea in the world.

Which ruler's 1804 law code, still in force in France, took its categories from Justinian's codification?

Napoleon's code borrowed its structure from Justinian's Institutes rather than from earlier French law, and his conquests then carried it across much of Europe.

Which US state's private law descends, through French and Spanish codes, from the Roman law that Justinian codified?

Louisiana owes this to its French and Spanish colonial past, although its criminal law largely rests on the same common law as the other 49 states.

Which courtroom principle echoes the rule in Justinian's law books that proof lies on whoever makes the claim?

Presumption of innocence rests on the same idea, that the accuser must prove the charge. Justinian's compilers credited the maxim to the jurist Paulus, who wrote three centuries earlier.

In which Italian city, home to Europe's oldest university, did Irnerius revive the study of Justinian's law?

Bologna's teachers, the glossators, wrote their notes in the margins and between the lines of the old texts, turning them into a living law that spread across medieval Europe.

Which code of 449 BC, displayed in the Forum a thousand years before Justinian, stood at the foundation of Roman law?

The Twelve Tables were won by plebeian agitation, because the law had until then been unwritten and interpreted only by upper-class priests.

The Institutes, issued in 533 as part of Justinian's codification, was written chiefly for which group of readers?

Law students in their first year received it as a textbook, much of it taken word for word from a manual by the jurist Gaius, yet Justinian gave it the full force of law.

Which part of Justinian's codification, also called the Pandects, gathered extracts from older jurists into fifty books?

The Digest was compiled in only three years, from 530 to 533, and once it appeared the jurists' original works could no longer be cited to explain it.

In parts of which country did Justinian's Roman law stay in force until a national code replaced it in 1900?

Germany had long been too divided politically to agree on a national code, so courts in some regions went on applying the old law until the new one arrived.

Which jurist led Justinian's law commission, though the emperor had to dismiss him during the Nika riots?

Tribonian, the most renowned legal scholar of his day, was restored to his post as quaestor in 535 and kept it until his death.

Professors from which Phoenician city's renowned law school made major contributions to Justinian's Codex?

Beirut kept its school when Justinian shut down other provincial law schools, which left it one of the few places still allowed to teach jurisprudence.

In which medieval Italian poem does Justinian appear as a blessed soul on Mercury, recounting the empire's history?

The Divine Comedy places him in Paradise, on the sphere of Mercury, where Dante also has him lament the feuding factions of the poet's own Italy.