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Dogmantra wrote
lol sorry to kinda hijack your cities post twovests but i just really like rome ok?
twovests wrote
no posts are hijack posts and i appreciate ur commentes
you are and i am Learn
ellynu wrote
people be like, oh the fall of rome was in the 400s. and rome is like... exists for another thousand years
Dogmantra wrote
I am 100% convinced that the fall of the western empire is traditionally considered 476 because the emperor whose deposition caused it was called Romulus Augustulus which is like... such a perfect bookend for the empire? city founded by Romulus, turned into the empire by Augustus, and the last ruler shares a name with both of them? But this time it's an ironic echo because the empire is a shell of its former self.
Nevermind that Romulus Augustulus was a usurper who was never officially recognised and that the man he deposed was recognised as the legitimate emperor until 480.
Nevermind that the Domain of Soissons existed, a province in northern Gaul where the governer insisted that it was merely another Roman province waiting for a new emperor. The locals called it the kingdom of the romans. It existed til 486 when it was conquered by the Franks.
Nevermind that Roman culture and art and administrative structures stuck around in the west for hundreds more years! Especially in somewhere like Britain where Romano-British culture was such a huge influence on our borders that we still feel its fallout today.
It's all too easy to make history fall into neat stories. And I love the story of Rome falling in 476 because so much of why it happened echoes why Rome was such a powerhouse. But it's not really an accurate representation.
hollyhoppet wrote
oh huh i thought constantinople was a big deal at least in the later years
Dogmantra wrote
it was, that's the point of my rant :p
hollyhoppet wrote
wait so "but we name them after the name of their capital city that they never used" sarcasm? I'm confused. Didn't Constantinople used to be called Byzantium, meaning they named it after that? I'm just having trouble parsing the language here.
Dogmantra wrote (edited )
oh sorry, I meant they never used the name, they definitely used the city!
I mean of course they called it byzantium when it was called that, but it was changed to constantinople when constantine upgraded it to the new capital, so it was never called byzantium during its big role in the empire if you get me.
My point is that calling the Eastern Romans "Byzantines" is a bit like calling people from France "Gauls". Like, yeah that is where Gaul was physically located, but the modern nation of France is a different thing.
hollyhoppet wrote
ahh, thanks for clarifying
Dogmantra wrote
right? that's fucked up too!!
they were romans. by the time the split between western and eastern empire was really embedded, the east was by far the more influential and important part. new emperors in the west were basically given legitimacy by the east. the western empire officially fell because the east abolished the position of western emperor after the deposition of romulus augustulus & assassination of julius nepos.
the east was in charge. they called themselves romans, they acted like romans, they controlled the roman empire.
but we name them after the name of their capital city that they never used? I get it's convenient to have a different name for the continuation of rome after western rome fell. But we have a name for that already... eastern rome.