What is the difference between rome and byzantine

The Justinian Code was the foundation for the Byzantine legal system for nearly nine hundred years. The served its purpose and brought law and order back to the Byzantines. What is Theodora remembered for? Theodora, a 6th-century Byzantine empress married to Emperor Justinian I, is remembered for being one of the most powerful women in Byzantine history.

She used her power and influence to promote religious and social policies that were important to her. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Ben Davis March 2, What were the similarities between the Eastern and Western Roman Empire?

What were some similarities and differences between the Roman and Byzantine empires? Islamic traders in the Middle Ages helped to spread the religion of Islam from inside of Arabia to places outside of Arabia.

One group of people who helped to spread Islam was the Ottoman Turks. The Ottoman Turks were people who lived within the Byzantine Empire. They migrated there from Asia. Economic troubles and overreliance on slave labor. The rise of the Eastern Empire. Overexpansion and military overspending. Government corruption and political instability. The arrival of the Huns and the migration of the Barbarian tribes. Christianity and the loss of traditional values.

From Constantinople now Istanbul , Constantine ruled over the entire Roman world, but eventually the empire split again. In , the western Roman empire was swept away. However, the eastern empire , which is called the Byzantine Empire , endured until , when it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire.

The popular name Constantinople or 'City of Constantine' soon replaced the emperor's own official choice of 'New Rome'. It served as a center of religious, political, and artistic life for the Byzantine world and has provided us with many useful scholarly insights into the period.

It was also an important site of Muslim worship after Sultan Mehmed II conquered Constantinople in and designated the structure a mosque. He dreamed of reconquering the lands of the Western Roman Empire and ruling a single, united Roman Empire from his seat in Constantinople. The western conquests began in , as Justinian sent his general, Belisarius, to reclaim the former province of Africa from the Vandals, who had been in control since with their capital at Carthage.

Belisarius successfully defeated the Vandals and claimed Africa for Constantinople. Belisarius defeated the Ostrogoths in a series of battles and reclaimed Rome. He sent another army to conquer Spain. Justinian also undertook many important projects at home. The riots were put down, and Justinian set about rebuilding the city on a grander scale. His greatest accomplishment was the Hagia Sophia, the most important church of the city.

The Hagia Sophia was a staggering work of Byzantine architecture, intended to awe all who set foot in the church. It was the largest church in the world for nearly a thousand years, and for the rest of Byzantine history it was the center of Christian worship in Constantinople. Even now, it is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest buildings in the world. Prior to his reign, Roman laws had differed from region to region, and many contradicted one another. The Romans had attempted to systematize the legal code in the fifth century but had not completed the effort.

Justinian set up a commission of lawyers to put together a single code, listing each law by subject so that it could be easily referenced. The impact of a more unified legal code and military conflicts was the increased ability for the Byzantine Empire to establish trade and improve their economic standing.

Byzantine merchants traded not only all over the Mediterranean region, but also throughout regions to the east. She was one of the most influential and powerful of the Byzantine empresses. Some sources mention her as empress regnant, with Justinian I as her co-regent. Along with her husband, she is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, commemorated on November She had laws passed that prohibited forced prostitution and closed brothels.

She created a convent on the Asian side of the Dardanelles called the Metanoia Repentance , where the ex-prostitutes could support themselves. She also expanded the rights of women in divorce and property ownership, instituted the death penalty for rape, forbade exposure of unwanted infants, gave mothers some guardianship rights over their children, and forbade the killing of a wife who committed adultery.

A terrible plague swept through the empire, killing Theodora and almost killing him. The army was also afflicted, and the Ostrogoths were able to effectively regain Italy in CE, through guerrilla warfare against the Byzantine occupiers. In the Roman-Persian Wars, the Persians invaded and destroyed a number of important cities.

Justinian was forced to establish a humiliating year peace treaty with them in CE. Still, Justinian kept the empire from collapse. He sent a new general, Narses, to Italy with a small force. Narses finally defeated the Ostrogoths and drove them back out of Italy.

By the time the war was over, Italy, once one of the most prosperous lands in the ancient world, was wrecked. The city of Rome changed hands multiple times, and most of the cities of Italy were abandoned or fell into a long period of decline.

The impoverishment of Italy and the weakened Byzantine military made it impossible for the empire to hold the peninsula. Soon a new Germanic tribe, the Lombards, came in and conquered most of Italy, though Rome, Naples, and Ravenna remained isolated pockets of Byzantine control. At the same time, another new barbarian enemy, the Slavs, appeared from north of the Danube. They devastated Greece and the Balkans, and in the absence of strong Byzantine military might, they settled in small communities in these lands.

Justinian I achieved lasting fame through his judicial reforms, particularly through the complete revision of all Roman law that was compiled in what is known today as the Corpus juris civilis. Byzantine Emperor Justinian I achieved lasting fame through his judicial reforms, particularly through the complete revision of all Roman law, something that had not previously been attempted.

There existed three codices of imperial laws and other individual laws, many of which conflicted or were out of date. All three parts, even the textbook, were given force of law. They were intended to be, together, the sole source of law; reference to any other source, including the original texts from which the Codex and the Digesta had been taken, was forbidden.

Nonetheless, Justinian found himself having to enact further laws, and today these are counted as a fourth part of the Corpus , the Novellae Constitutiones. In the early days of the Byzantine Empire, Latin is used in conjunction with Greek but over time, it becomes more Greek. In fact, Heraclius in the seventh century makes Greek the official language of the Byzantine Empire. Now religion, for most of Roman history, their religion is the Roman Pantheon.

Now near the end of what is called the Roman Empire, when Constantine comes around in the early fourth century, Christianity gets legalized and Theodosius, who is the last emperor to rule over both east and west, he makes Christianity the official religion.

Since the eastern Roman Empire's roots, the Byzantine empire's roots are considered to be with Constantine. It has a Christian nature from the beginning and it only becomes more and more Christian over time. In other videos, we will talk about the eventual spiritual split between east and west, the Latin Christian church and the Greek Christian church and they're going to diverge more and more as we go into the year when there is the official Great Schism.

In terms of law, the Roman Empire has a long tradition of law and I guess we could just call it the Roman law. In fact, so profound has its influence been on western civilization that many of our legal terms today come from Latin. What historians would consider the Byzantine Empire would continue Roman law, much of it written in Latin. Justinian would famously try to reform Roman law, make it more consistent, make it more clear. Justinian's code. And you have the emperor Leo III has the famous Ecloga but as you have these revisions and these reformations of Roman law, they are more and more written in Greek than Latin and they do have more and more of a Christian influence.

In terms of governance, especially under the Roman Empire, the notion of a province was the main subdivision under which the empire was governed. Once you have Emperor Dioclesian come onto the scene and this is shortly before the time of Constantine, he reformed it and he set up what is known as a tetrarchy where you had these two emperors of east and west and then you would have essentially their subordinate emperors but along with that, he redefined what a province is, so you had smaller provinces which then would go into diocese, which would then go into prefects, which would then go into a tetrarch.