The Byzantine empire is conventionally said to begin in 330 BCE, the year that the Roman empire's eastern capital was transferred to Constantinople. The Byzantines called themselves Romaioi, citizens of Rome, and regarded their ruler as absolute...

Empire, southeastern and southern Europe and western Asia. It began as the city of Byzantium, which had grown from an ancient Greek colony founded on the European side of the Bosporus. The city was taken in &AD; 330 by Constantine I, who refounded it...

. Eloquent witnesses to the renaissance of the 12th century and its desire to explore and integrate the riches of the Orient, along with the treasures of its classical past and the matière de Bretagne, the Greco-Byzantine romances explore a...

(born 1217, Constantinople—died Oct. 1273, Foggia, Kingdom of Sicily) Fifth and last Latin emperor of Constantinople (1228–61). The son of the third Latin emperor (Porphyrogenitus means “born to the purple,” thus “of royal...

(born 826/835, Thrace—died Aug. 29, 886) Byzantine emperor (867–86) and founder of the Macedonian dynasty. Born into a peasant family in Macedonia, he won employment in official circles in Constantinople and was made chamberlain by the...

The Byzantine Empire or Byzantium is the historiographical term conventionally used since the 19th century to describe the Greek-speaking Roman Empire of the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople. It is also known as the Eastern Roman...