Instead of always asking why the Romans fell, we really should be asking how they stayed alive for so damn long?

They've been pretty thoroughly shattered several times through their history. They just keep coming back together by sheer inertia of the region's shared history and common culture. Not saying Canton is the same as Beijing, but they're more similar to each other than they are to Vietnam, Korea, Tibet, and the other territories that China occasionally conquers.

It isn't Roman because they were Greek, not Latin.

Violence and slavery.

Like any other empire.

But that's just the thing, isn't it. China got BTFO by barbarians several times, and always got back up. Rome just died.

Nope. It's still survive in many forms

>Roman Catholic
> Latin Alphabet
>Republic form of Government
>Roman Law
>Neo Classical Architecture

>Romance Language with 800 million native speakers
>Planets and stars named after Roman deities

China was never the same again after the Mongol invasions.

I was told in college that Roman empire lasted so long that even its greatest enemies thought of it as eternal and unending.

That's what I'm saying. China comes back while Rome died because the people see themselves as Chinese. If the Mongols had had the numbers to completely displace the locals and eliminated the state apparatus in the same way migration period tribes did when they carived out their own kingdoms in formerly Roman territory China most likely would be dead. Instead China was populous enough to at least partially assimilate their conquerors, and had strong enough institutions to be worth taking control of rather than destroying.

Greek was always a widely spoken language on the Empire. That the language of the state changed reflected the realities of the Empire at the time, political, economic and social. There's still not a clean break that one could use to separate the medieval empire and the empire of antiquity.

About then, yeah. It was fragmenting around the late 12th century. But I was saying that the Ottomans conquering the Byzantines, wasn't really a conquer as much as people think it to be. Some think that the Empire still controlled the Baltic and much of Turkey when the Ottomans came to power, when really it wasnt a rule as much as an influence that was weakening severely.

>Greek was always a widely spoken language on the Empire

Spanish is also widely spoken in the USA. Does that mean USA is a Hispanic country?

The USA over time could well experience a demographic shift resulting in the population being majority hispanic. When the hispanic population reaches 51% will it no longer be considered the United States of America despite what scholars will widely believe, despite the continuation of the structures of the state, just because this gradual cultural change #triggers literal children on the internet?

it would still have the same territory, and presumably the same institutions and cultural paradigms

as far as i'm concerned, not even the western roman empire was all that roman shortly after they split, and it really wasn't when Ravenna became the capital.

Don't you know? only le praetorian guard and le worshipers of mars are le TRVE roman XD

the roman empire ended in 476

>implying Rome didn't cease to exist with Tarquinius

lol you beat me to it

That's not true, they basically remain the same political system, economic system, cultures and ethnicity till Qing dynasty. Mongols literally changed the their empire's name into a Chinese name which derived from Chinese Yi Jing in order to suit Chinese Mandate of Heaven, and Mongol Yuan dynasty still called themselves "Zhoung Gou"(middle Kingdom). Hell, Manchu probably did more damage to Chinese culture than Mongols(e.g. hair and cloth style changed)

Some of the things that were part of Rome were interpreted and adopted by other cultures and civilizations. That doesn't mean Rome survived.

>E
>R
>E

ERE fell during the calamities of the 7th century, comparable to the 5th century in the West. The only difference being that the state institution itself survived. This enabled Byzantine to emerge as formidable power in the 10-11th centuries. But it wasn't any more roman than the Charlemagne's or Otto's empires. Byzaboos are just deluded fanboys.

but if not roman, it's still both eastern and an empire

>Byzaboos are deluded fanboys
>please just ignore my absurd doublethink about the East falling in the 7th century but the state institution surviving but "Byzantine" emerging as a formidable power despite Byzantium/ the Byzantine Empire being a retroactively applied historiographical term for the part of the Roman Empire that survived until the end of the medieval period
>please also ignore the fact that my retarded mental gymnastics in no way represent any common school of historiography regarding the Roman Empire

literally what the fuck are you talking about? There is no line where the eastern roman empire ends and your so called "byzantine empire" begins, it's a single continuous state

>how was the Roman government and state able to survive from the days of Cyrus the Great
It didn't.

They went from KANGZ, to Freedumbs, to Muh Empire.

Even before Ceaser Latin and Greek were pretty close in usage and especially in the East usage erred on the side of Greek. Thus is because that area had been HELLENIZED 300 years before and once the Romans mopped up there was a lot of people who spoke Greek.

The Byzantine eastern ROMAN empire had several nearly 5 periods of economic and political resurgence, and was the most centralised state post-antiquity, until the day it fell in 1453.

And indeed one should be asking how it outlasted all these other powerful states concurrent to it.

Charlemagne's empire lasted barely 3 generations

The Umayyads lasted 81 years.

The Mongol empire lasted 156 years being united.

The HRE collapsed into feuding duchies and Kingdoms as soon as the Ottonian dynasty ended.

The Persians though a mighty a continuous state until today, was completely annihilated by the Mongols and had a sunni dynasty installed.

The Angevin empire collapsed when Henry II died, lasting barely 60 years.

It is safe to say that Europe would not experience another Empire until the discovery of the new world and industrial era. And even then the empires formed in the modern era were also relatively short. The Ottomans lasted 600 years taking the cake for the longest lasting modern empire, the Austrian/Habsburgs 396 years, the British empire 337 years etc.

All small beans compared to 1000 years of influence and continuous existence.

>eastern
Compared to what, there was no Western Empire by this time.
>empire
Of what, they pretty much only ruled Greeks.
I like to call it the Medieval Greek Kingdom.

Good to see that more people are thinking this way.

>having enough money that it's more worth it for your enemies to accept tribute instead of trying to take the capital
>impressive
Byzaboos should really stop tarnishing the Roman name, and should really thank the Romans who built the walls that allowed the Greeks to flounder and fail another 800 years.

San Marino still use system similar to Roman Republic, with 2 Consuls.

>I like to call it the Medieval Greek Kingdom.
no one cares
history should have no place for personal feelings

We call it Eastern because it's the same state after the splitting of the Roman Empite, after Justinian's conquest of Rome they considered the Empire unified and as such they slowly came to call themselves Basilia Rhomaion
>only Greeks
so Armenians, Goths, Alans, Avars, Slavs, Bulgars, Arabs, Syrians, Egyptians, Assyrians, North Africans, the multiple peoples in Italy, Jews, Georgians, Abkhazians etc etc didn't exist
good to know

>Justinian told bellasarius not to attack citizens because in rome they were roman
Explain this, if the reconquest of rome was just some weird ass fanstasy why the fuck would he give explicit instructions not to in anyway harm the populace, who at this point were absolutely useless assets needing food water and protection.

>I like to call it the Medieval Greek Kingdom.

You could call it what you want, and it still won't Change the fact that it was the Roman Empire.

Just look at how the fucking Asians called it.
>Arabs have a chapter on the Byzantines in the Quran, called them "Romans" there.
>Seljuk Turkic splinters settlin in anatolia called the region "Rum" because they took it from Roman People
>CHINA, fucking China, had this to say about the Byzantines.
"The country of Fulin (拂菻) is also called Daqin (Rome) and is situated on the west side
of the Haixi (Egypt). It is located at forty thousand li (~16,000 km);
in the north it is bordered by the territories of the Turkish Kesa (可薩).
At the western side, near the sea, there is the (capital) city of Constantinople (Chisan 遲
散).(Fulin) has a common border with Persia in the southeast."- The Xintangshu (New Records of the T'ang Dynasty)
""Fu-lin [Byzantium] is the same as Daqin [Rome] of the Han period. It first communicated with Zhongguo [China] at the time of the Emperor Huan-di [147-168 C.E.]. During the Jin and (Tuoba) Wei dynasties it was also called Daqin, and tribute was sent to Zhongguo. During the T'ang dynasty it was called Fu-lin. During the Song it was still so called, and they sent also tribute several times; yet the Song-shih says that during former dynasties they have sent no tribute to our court, which throws doubt on its identity with Daqin. At the close of the Yuan dynasty [1278-1368 C.E.] a native of this country, named Nieh-ku-lun (Fra. Nicolaus De Bentra, Archbishop of Beijing's Chink Catholics as of 1360's), came to Zhongguo for trading purposes."

Forgot, the Last one was from the Ming-Shih, which is the official history of the Ming Period.

user looks tremendously btfo holy shit.

It will be the same thing, just a little browner. The food will be good too.

Exactly, which is why you call it what it was, a Medieval Greek Kingdom. There was nothing Roman or Imperial about it.

I consider the Roman Empire as ending during the AD 630s with the loss of Egypt, Syria, and North Africa. By that logic then every state in history has been an empire, because every state has minorities. Andorra is an empire, Monaco is an empire, Liechtenstein is an empire....

So now it's not enough that we care what some non-Roman Greeks think, now we have to care what some Chinks and Arabs think. No. The Romans, the people living in and around the city of Rome, didn't consider the Greeks of the Medieval Greek Kingdom to be Roman. They weren't Roman. Only the opinion of Romans matters when considering who is Roman and who isn't.

This actually. The romans were able to change their form of government when inefficiencies became critical. Republic replaced kings when people needed a stake in the goverment to be motivated to grow. Caesar took over the senate when senators couldn't agree on anything without bribing everyone massively. Ideally, the imperium should have been replaced by another republic but few really cared about defending rome by the end.

Arsacids and Sassanids lasted roughly a 1000 years. And the "Persian" Empire annihilated by the Mongols was a Turkic dynasty and state ruling Persia, not a native ethnic one.

>Medieval Greek Kingdom
KEK
Veeky Forums at his best

>how was the Roman government and state able to survive from the days of Cyrus the Great in Persia to the middle of the Italian Renaissance?
It wasn't. The form of government changed like five times

European civilization is what remains of Rome. Modern China has less in common with the Qin dynasty than France has with the Roman republic. Rome just got stuck in a perpetual warlord era.

Excellent! Full marks, top of the class!

Pleb.

>There was nothing Roman or Imperial about it.
except the fact that the emperor was the same institution since constantine

People like to say that as if it means something. Just because it's the same institution doesn't make it Roman or Imperial.

nice arbitrary date you pulled out of your ass for the "1337 OFFICIAL DATE OF ZE END OF ROME"

you see the reason nobody pays attention to you anti-byz faggots is because you can't give a real date for the transition. because the transition is bullshit, because it's the same fucking government. You'll always just pull random ass dates out of your ass like you're farming them.

IT WAS 476 GUYS

NO WAIT IT WAS 530

NOOOOO WAIT IT WAS 630 HONEST

NOOOOO IT WAS 780

you people can't make up your mind! it's hilarious and sad to see you do mental gymnastics as you try to get around state continuity because of your childhood and your feelings.

>WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH WHY ARE THESE GREEKS LARPING AS MUH ROME I PLAYED CAESAR III AS A KID THIS IS A TRAVESTY

kys.
like what the fuck
do you actualy not understand the words you say
same instituion that is what makes it roman, just because it don't fit in your nationalist based view of the world does make it change who they where.
they where romans because they carried on, had a direct line of authority all the way back to the city on 7 hills.
learn what words mean before you post again.

It was a transition, like blue slowly turning into red or humans evolving from lesser apes, a process where you can't pinpoint a definite time when one becomes the other, only a range over which it's certainly changed beyond recognition. Just because you don't understand this doesn't make it random.

Why is the institution what makes it Roman? Culture and language are the main determinants of what makes something Roman.

Because that's what states are. Institutions

>le transitional period that means I'm rite brainlet

no kys. this isn't an argument, this is an arbitrary boundary in which you define romanness by a standard the romans themselves hadn't defined it and then claim the same state thus passes through it and exits it at whatever fucking date you desire. It's random guessing from people too salted to accept what is plain as day.

>It isn't Roman because they were Greek, not Latin.
What? So Arabs who were Romans weren't Romans as well? Roman Empire is a very unique subject because it's not exactly centered around ethnicity, at the beginning you only have to have a house in Rome to be Roman and then they memed it as citizenship rights. Founders of the Eastern "Roman" Empire were literally Roman by any definition of Roman if you go with the formal ones, you know the ones they upheld over everything else and chastised others for not having formal laws.

So how does ethnicity matter in Roman Empire?

But city states are how it started in the first place. Rome as a city state had enduring qualities. As an empire it was often a clown's show.