History glossary
Byzantine Empire
the eastern Roman Empire centered on Constantinople, lasting for centuries after the western Roman Empire fell.
- Category
- Empire
- Region
- Eastern Mediterranean
- Date range
- 330-1453 CE
What it means
The Byzantine Empire is the modern name for the eastern Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople. Its people usually thought of themselves as Romans, but their empire developed a Greek-speaking Christian culture and controlled changing territories around the eastern Mediterranean. In Crusades history, Byzantine appeals for help against Seljuk Turkish advances helped set the First Crusade in motion, even though Byzantine goals and crusader ambitions soon diverged.
Related terms
Stories using this term
The Roman Empire
From Augustus to the fall of the Western Empire, Rome built a vast imperial system whose law, cities, armies and ideas shaped the ancient and medieval worlds.
Kievan Rus
The founding of the Rus’ state in the north.
The Norman Conquest of England
From Viking settlers to conquerors, the Normans reshaped England, Italy, and the medieval Mediterranean.
The Viking Age
From raiders to traders, Vikings built kingdoms and networks that reshaped Europe and beyond.
The Fall of Rome to Early Medieval Europe
From the arrival of Gothic peoples at the Danube to the crowning of Charlemagne, this story traces how the Western Roman Empire fragmented into successor kingdoms and how a new medieval world took shape.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece was a civilisation of city-states, sailors, philosophers, soldiers, artists, and political experiments whose influence reached far beyond the Aegean world. From Athens and Sparta to the Persian Wars, democracy, philosophy, drama, and Alexander the Great, Greek history helped shape ideas about citizenship, empire, knowledge, and culture. Its legacy survived through Rome, Byzantium, Islam, and modern Europe, making Ancient Greece central to the story of the classical world.
The Crusades
From Pope Urban II's call at Clermont to the fall of Acre, the Crusades reshaped the medieval world through religious war, cross-cultural encounter, and lasting consequences for Europe and the Middle East.
The Ottoman Empire
From a small frontier principality in Anatolia, the Ottomans built a multiethnic empire across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa before reform, nationalism, and world war ended imperial rule.
