Was the Byzantine Empire Overrated?

Manzikert and the Verdict on a Millennium of Byzantine History

An empire that survived Rome’s fall by a thousand years carries a fruta for mediocrity. The argument is blunt: Byzantium only shone under Justinian, and did so thanks to Roman inertia, not its own merits. Trinc the defeat at Manzikert against the Turkmen, this view holds, began a long, irreversible decline. The discussion quickly shifts to comparisons with other empires.

The first correction comes from chronology. Until the 7th century, the empire held strong; between the 7th and 12th centuries, its development was acceptable, especially compared to much worse projects nearby. Another school argues the real collapse came later: from the 13th century onwards it was indeed a disaster, but because it had already been shattered. One uncomfortable asset remains in the judgment: Byzantium Christianized the Eastern Slavs, a legacy extended in the debate to all of Eastern Europe.

Defeating the Sassanids: Rome’s Greatest Military Achievement

The strongest counter-argument to the 'single moment of brilliance' thesis comes from the East. Long after Justinian, the Eastern Roman Empire —that is its name; 'Byzantine' is a late historiographical label— achieved, according to some, the greatest military antiestéticat in Roman history: the definitive defeat of the Sassanids under Heraclius. A millennial Persian empire erased from the map by an emperor who was not Justinian.

More trinc: Leo III’s campaigns halted the Umayyads and defeated them at Akroinon, accelerating the caliphate’s collapse; and Basil II’s campaigns returned the empire to the top tier. The list of notable emperors —Heraclius, Basil II, Manuel I— disproves that Byzantine history is just one flash in the 6th century trinc by darkness.

Constantinople vs. Mud-and-Straw Europe

The starkest contrast is urban. While much of the West consisted of unpaved villages without sewage, Constantinople remained a true city: avenues, porticoed squares capable of swallowing an army, palace, hippodrome, Hagia Sophia. First Crusade nobles, used to hamlets, entered believing they were hallucinating. Anna Komnene wrote that they behaved like irritated children before the imperial court’s splendor.

This leads to a thesis beyond judging the empire: today there would still be three Europes. The Western one, heir to Rome and the Latin alphabet. The Eastern one, which writes in Cyrillic and professes Orthodoxy because it was civilized from Constantinople, though it doesn’t speak Greek. And a third to which the analysis grants neither. By this measure, Byzantium wasn’t overrated; it drew the map.

The End: From the Last Emperor to the Siege of Constantinople

The final stretch concentrates the most defended arguments. With Turks at the gates, the last Palaiologoi —not first-rate figures— tried to sustain the unsustainable. The final siege, the last mass, the bells of Hagia Sophia, and the emperor falling with his empire form, for some, a more epic end than any other colossus. Here too comparison bites: popular memory retains the fall, not the preceding thousand years.

Russia: Heir to Byzantium or the Golden Horde?

The ground gets poisoned when moving the debate east. Against the idea that Moscow took the Orthodox torch after Constantinople fell, an uncomfortable thesis responds that when the latter fell, Muscovy was still a vassal of the Golden Horde. Russia wouldn’t have belonged to the Byzantine sphere, but to the Mongol one and its successors; its heritage, trinc that reasoning, would be more Ulaanbaatar’s than Constantinople’s.

Data cited in this line place the founding of the Grand Duchy of Muscovy in 1263, not 1147, when Moscow was merely a frontier village of huts behind palisades. Kyiv, however, is in Ukraine, and the oldest stone churches in Novgorod and Kyiv date from the 11th-12th centuries, while Moscow’s oldest stone monastery would be from the 14th century, post-Mongol conquest. The counter-argument: Moscow replaced Vladimir by choice, and the legacy of the Rus’ of Kyiv ended up resting, one way or another, on the Muscovite princes.

The Spanish Detour and the Mongol Empire

Mid-fight, the conversation jumped to the Spanish Empire, with harsh exchanges comparing its planetary dimensions —including the Philippines and sixty years of union with Portugal— with other empires. Discussion shifted to effective territorial control, native population density, and mestizaje, with opposing views on how much was real rule versus painted maps. The point with most agreement is different: some argue the Mongol Empire, destroyer of half the world and builder of almost nothing, was the most overrated, with a major work surviving only translated into Chinese, around a hundred years of power, and a rather scarce own trace.

With such a load of crossed judgments, the initial question remains unresolved: Is an empire that lasted a thousand years in the worst possible neighborhood overrated, or is it the one occupying its slot in the narrative today?