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alexiscece In reply to msbrit90 [2014-12-17 17:46:49 +0000 UTC]

Thank you so much!  

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AMELIANVS In reply to alexiscece [2014-12-17 20:34:23 +0000 UTC]

Purple was the Imperial color.Official color of the Roman Emperors so that's why I guess.Only I hate that "Byzantine"terminology.She was as much Roman Empress as Livia was.

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alexiscece In reply to AMELIANVS [2014-12-17 20:47:36 +0000 UTC]

I was contemplating describing her a Roman empress, but since history remembers her a Byzantine, I went with that. I never really understood why historians decided to complicate matters by calling this era "Byzantine" instead of Eastern Roman or something to that effect.

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AMELIANVS In reply to alexiscece [2014-12-18 17:20:41 +0000 UTC]

I'm glad that you are at least aware of it-that there's something strange with word Byzantine Instead of Roman.

In "short": name "Byzantine"empire was artificialy fabricated 100 years after fall of the eastern part of the Roman Empire by one German scholar from very biassed reasons and since then propagated also by some enlightment era thinkers and philosophers who desperately desired to somhow disconnect what they considered(quite simplistically)as unworthy continuation of the ancient Roman Empire as their knew it from their idealistic imagination about ancient Rome.

So they forcibly tried rename surviving part of the Roman Empire and in word "Byzantine" they get that desired strict line between "real" Roman state and its medievaval continuation regardless that there never was such strict line in actual history and regardless the fact that eastern part of the Roman state had absolutly  all imaginable legal and historical rights to call itself simply the Roman Empire-which they did.They considered themselves Romans(not "Byzantines") and were fully aware that they are direct from day to day,Emperor from Emperor continuation of the state legendary established by Romulus even keepeng many traditions reaching back to Republican times(among very many other such things).

No one had ever called it the "Byzantine Empire" until it was still in existence and for example in Britain that manipulative term was for the 1st time only used in 1857.The main problem was that western states had almost constant conflicts with surviving part of the Roman state and later they tried to steal that name "Roman Empire" for themselves so from this reason the fact that there was still breating remaining part of the real Roman state in the east was very uncomfortable and unwelcome fact to them so they programmatically started to deny its existence to fulfill their own political ambitions and this situation eventually resulted in an attempt to strip the real Roman state around Constantinople of its very name.

It is situation fully comparable with German President proclaiming himself from day to day "President of the U.S.while at the same time starting claiming that Germans are real Americans and denying Obama as real President of the U.S and American continent living Americans as real Americans.
Still more and more people even from among modern scholars now protests against Byzantine terminology and things seems to slowly change for beter by now.

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alexiscece In reply to AMELIANVS [2014-12-18 18:23:42 +0000 UTC]

I should have figured the term "Byzantine" came from the Renaissance.
I do agree there should be some distinction between the two since there were many differences between the East and the West(language, religion, emperors). But completely severing the East and West is simply incorrect and gives an incomplete look at the Roman Empire. On a tour of The Hagia Sophia, I remember there were people in my group who thought the Byzantines were a completely separate empire. The term leads too much confusion and misunderstanding.    

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AMELIANVS In reply to alexiscece [2014-12-18 20:08:15 +0000 UTC]

Yes.I Know Turkish tourist guide walking on the sites of former Constantinople who told me his job is often depressing when he had to answer many times a day on questian like:..."And those Byzantines expelled the Romans from here?"... .-). As for the differencies between East and West-those were always there since the very beggining of Roman state dominance over those regions.But,you know,sometimes it seems to me that every state in human history is allowed to change with time and passing centuries.Every state...except Roman Empire.Not very fair attitude I think.

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