Rome and Byzantium Questions

Ask any questions you have about Rome or Byzantium. They can be about anything, timeframe is from founding of Rome to fall of Constantinople.

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How much of a blow was the closure of the neoplatonic school to the intellectual life of the country?

What was the molestation like in the early days of the Roman Catholic church?

Hard to measure exactly. Many of the people moved to Alexandria, where multiple such schools were publicly funded. This move did hurt Byzantium in the long run, because they moved the people much closer to Islam, once it came to exist a few centuries later, which gave them that knowledge and helped them develop.

The school also went to Constantinople in the 600s, although it was secular there.

The got their nephews
boipucci

I'm not super familiar with the development of the church, but heres my best answer:
It depends on what definition of "early" we are using, since Christianity was tolerated or suppressed at varying levels until 337, when Constantine converted. Wether or not it was publicly allowed would influence the power a priest would have over people, which would make it more likely for their abuse to go unknown/unpunished. Also Roman culture, which was notoriously lax about having sex with same gender (unless you were the receiver) and children, would likely add to this. Depending on the time frame, I would put it at at least parity with modern day molestation, probably worse.

Did they produce manuscripts to the extent that the West did? And if they did, were they illuminated?

Educate me on sieges of constantinople. Were those big fancy walls ever actually useful? I only know about 1204 and 1453

Who is "they" here?

Were they Nords?

What's with the "turks think they're Romans" meme....did they ever actually think that?

Byzantines

>they moved the people much closer to Islam, once it came to exist a few centuries later,

To Arabs and Arabism, not Islam.

Translation efforts eventually paved the way for pro-Christian apologetics. Many of the translators did not intend to align themselves with Islam let alone convert, even though it likely benefited Muslims in the long run.

Like this

Yes, very much so. While quite a few people believe that they were useless, this is largely due to the fact that most sieges of Constantinople were actually raids on the nearby suburbs, with few attempts to pierce the walls, and even fewer successes. The walls often acted in concert with Byzantium's navy, with their navy giving them huge edges in both 626 and 718.

In 626, the walls allowed for 10,000 Byzantines to fend off 100,000 Avars and Slavs, with countless Persians stationed in Chalcedon (basically glaring at Constantinople from across the Bosphorus). The Avars bombarded the walls for a month with no success. The Persians were unable to give Avars better siege technology because of Byzantine blockade.

In 718, Constantinople was surrounded by more than 120,000 Muslims, but their control of the sea allowed them to bring in food indefinitely, until the Muslims were ravaged by plagues and starved to death during a famine. Leo III then leaves the wall and crushes them.

In 860 and 941, "sieges" of Constantinople happened, although they largely just amounted to raiding the suburbs, with no attempts to take the city itself.

There were only a few times they failed to protect the city, and almost all cases were due to unusually strong disadvantages:
1203, when Alexius III fled, removing all leadership from Byzantium
1204, leaderless Byzantium again
1261, small force snuck in, Latin Emperor fled with no resistance or siege.
1453, the Ottomans blew down the walls with artillery.

Tl;Dr: The walls protected the city exceptionally well. They were unable to defend the suburbs, but prevented anyone from taking the city, minus a few cases where the Byzantines were at a huge disadvantage. The innovations of gunpowder would eventually make them useless, as shown in 1453 when the Ottomans pierced it, however they lasted for hundreds of years.

By much closer, I meant physically closer, such that when Islam spread and seized Alexandria, they got part of the school as well.

Chances are very low. That theory generally died out in the 40s (1940s), and was due to attempts to make Rome and Byzantium have links to Aryans, or at least white people (they were white however).

It seems to have been a tragic time to be alive, polis councils banned and replaced by bureaucrats, the Acropolis converted into a church, Gray Eyed Athena forced to walk the streets homeless and ultimately corrupted into the cult of mary... Rome fell to the sword; Athens fell in peacetime. Give me a reason other than hubris.

They claimed to be the successor to the Roman state, although that was not unusual. This was also claimed by Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Holy Roman Empire, France, Italy, etc. The huge prestige and achievements of Rome led many to claim to be the successor state. The Turks themselves did not adopt Roman or Byzantine culture on a large scale.

While this has some poetry to make Catullus look illiterate, I have no idea what the question is. Are you asking why Rome fell?

Kind of an autistic question, but could the adoption of the Rhine-Danube frontier be considered purely the product of Caesar and Augustus, or was it "inevitable" that this would eventually become the frontier? Could Rome have been satisfied with the frontier at the alps and along the Adriatic coast? It seemed to serve them well during the years of the Republic.

Are you a professional historian? Where do you get your information

Cool. I'm sure those walls probably deterred a lot of would be sieges too

The Byzantines are famous for their manuscripts, many of which were illuminated. The making of manuscripts, as we define them (manuscripts can also refer to simple papyrus and ink creations that spanned a lot of Roman history) didn't become truly popularized until the 4th century, and Western Roman Empire fell in late 5th century. If you are interesting in seeing some, flickr.com/photos/medmss/ has almost 11,000 pages of manuscripts, many Byzantine.

Western Rome didn't have a whole lot of time to make them, since they fell within about a century of their popularization, whereas Byzantium fell 1000 years later, before manuscripts fell out of favor.

Is Moscow really the third rome?

I am not a profession historian as of yet. I am working on my undergrad. Most of my knowledge of History comes from various books, such as "The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire", "Frontiers of the Roman Empire", "Systems of East Roman diplomacy in Late Antiquity" etc.

Inevitable to a point. Roman conquest was inevitable when the land was worth the time to conquer and own. After the wipeout in Teutoberg forest, the Romans abandoned their plans to set it at the Elbe. The Romans usually used mountains or rivers to set borders, and would try and push into the next physical barrier if they wanted to expand.

The Danube was a matter of military necessity, rather than economic viability. The land of the Dalmatian Alps was exceptionally thin before the conquests of Augustus, meaning that anyone who did actually succeed in taking them could cut off Rome's access to the newly massive eastern part of the empire. It was done a few years after Egypt, Libya and parts of Turkey (most of Turkey already was part of it, either as provinces or client states) were added to the empire.

Definitely. Many of the tribal peoples lacked good siege technology. Even during the fall of the Western Roman Empire, some forts remained free of barbarians for decades or centuries, since the barbarians could't take them sans the element of surprise. One Gothic commander even joked that "He was wholly at a state of peace with all walls."

They have some legitimacy in the claim. Ivan III married the niece of Constantine the 11th, the last emperor, giving him hereditary claim. Theological grounds are often also used, due to Kievan Rus' becoming orthodox due to Byzantium, and holding similar Caesaropapist ideas.

Thanks

No problem.

Any more?

Why did the Roman economy collapse so spectacularly in the 3rd century and what steps could have been taken in the previous century to mitigate or outright stop it?

So not bad at all? the molestation scandal was overblown by jewish media. The catholic church was wrong to send these clergyman to other places as opposed to reporting them to authorities, but statically speaking molestation rates were not higher in the catholic clergy vs other professions.

You mean Romans? “”byzantines” is a protestant meme that real historians don’t take serious any longer.