Hi, i have a question about eastern roman empire soldiers.. suppose we have a soldier in 1453...

I dont get it?

Literally everyone has a hard picturing the Eastern Romans, because we mostly have no idea how they really dressed. Keep in mind that the empire was around for more than a thousand years, Constantine's clothing looked nothing like Justinian's, and Justinian's nothing like Alexios', and Alexios' nothing like Constantine XI. We only know what they looked like because they were emperors and people drew pictures of them, but its pretty hard to find depictions of everyday life and normal people of Constantinople, from any time period. We can only really guess what they looked like based on random pieces of armor and frescoes like this which are very, very rare.

Is that a Turkish auxiliary?

Read the filename dummy.

That's because the germs adopted roman style gear and kept it for centuries after the fall of the empire.

>frescoes like this which are very, very rare
Why tho? The western romans left behind a lot of frescoes, mosaics and shit. How comes the same didn't happen for the easterners?

A turkish auxiliary would be chinkey.

I don't like to be that guy, but probably because Islam. We know that persians loved them frescoes too and we have basically nothing today.

Armor was always changing within the Roman Empire, even through the United period.

the red-dyed uniforms with the metal plating you always see in Hollywood are mostly from the late Republic and Early Empire periods, it's pretty safe to say that Roman soldiers did not carry that iconic armor after Marcus Aurelius', and looked more like pic related throughout the late empire and into Justinian's day, with armor and uniforms only changing through there as time goes on, as 1000 years is a lot of time for military strategy, culture, and customs to change naturally.

A lot of their stuff they themselves destroyed with their iconoclast bullshit, but that was still in the relatively early days of Constantinople, following that, pretty much anything of value in the city was taken by the forces of the 4th Crusade, when people say that the city never recovered from it, they really mean it. Connie was the richest city on the globe and nearly everything was stolen when the city was invaded, like the horses of Saint Mark, which are still in Venice today. The little that remained they spent trying to keep themselves afloat in the final days of the empire, like when the crown jewels were pawned to Venice.

In terms of ruins, outside of Constantinople, most Byzantine cities were abandoned as the empire fell apart, and the Ottomans just ignored the husks. There was anyone to take care of, or appreciate Byzantine ruins in the same way that Western Roman ruins were maintained. And when Mehmet took Connie, it was an almost ghost-town, still because of the 4th Crusade, with abandoned palaces and public squares falling into disrepair, which the Ottoman Sultans mostly cleared away in order to make brand new buildings.

*there was no one to take care of

What was the makeup of the middle/late Byzantine army? Were they still the traditional heavy sword infantry or had they transitioned to massed spearmen?

>probably

Why do people always feel the need to talk even if they dont know anything about it? Why are you even on the history board?

>Connie was the richest city on the globe
Was it really? Baghdad was similarly big in the same period, without the aggravating circumstance of a century long economic crisis.
This without even considering indian and chinese cities.