The Eastern Empire in the sixth century

Andrew Louth

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521362917.006

4 - The Eastern Empire in the sixth century

from PART I - THE SIXTH CENTURY

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Andrew Louth

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Paul Fouracre

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Paul Fouracre: Affiliation:
University of Manchester

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Summary

The beginning of the century saw Anastasius (491–518) on the imperial throne, ruling an empire that was still thought of as essentially the Roman Empire, coextensive with the world of the Mediterranean, however unrealistic such a view seems to modern historians, who have the benefit of hindsight. Although Anastasius ruled from Constantinople, ‘New Rome’, over what we call the ‘Eastern Empire’, the Western Empire having been carved up into the ‘barbarian kingdoms’, this perspective is ours, not theirs. Through the conferring of titles in the gift of the emperor, and the purchasing of alliances with the wealth of the Empire – wealth that was to dwarf the monetary resources of the West for centuries to come – the barbarian kings could be regarded as client kings, acknowledging the suzerainty of the emperor in New Rome, and indeed the barbarian kings were frequently happy to regard themselves in this light. The discontinuation of the series of emperors in the West, with the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476, was regarded by very few contemporaries as a significant event: the notion that East and West should each have its own emperor was barely of a century’s standing, and the reality of barbarian military power in the West, manipulated from Constantinople, continued, unaffected by the loss of an ‘emperor’ based in the West.

Keywords

Constantinople Justinian's reign Christian Roman Empire Anastasius Byzantine

Type: Chapter
Information: The New Cambridge Medieval History , pp. 91 - 117

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521362917.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2005

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