Mussolini used to say that Italy was the heir of the Roman Empire and wanted to recreate it;luckily his dream hasn't come true n moreover i don't think Italy is the heir of the Roman Empire;I think the Vatican City is the only political heir of the Roman Empire(papal lands contained central Italy till 1866),culturally,the whole western world is the heir of the Roman Empire.Kinda ironic for the smallest state on earth to be the heir of one of the greatest Empire ever,isn't it?

IMO Russia was more of a political/cultural/military heir to the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire lasted until 1453 in the guise of the Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Roman Empire). After which, the Russian Tsars claimed to inherit the mantle of the Byzantine Emperors, being the strongest Orthodox entity in the aftermath of the fall of the Byzantines.

Moscow was known as the Third Rome, so claimed the Tsars(Constantinople being the Second Rome). The Byzantine double-headed eagle remained a Tsarist insigna and had returned today with the fall of the Soviets.

I suppose when you think of what it is trying to acheive in the broader sense, the EU is the closest there is to an heir to the Roman Empire

Knight-Dragon,the Byzantine Empire was more greek(everybody spoke greek there),there always was a diffrence between the eastern side which was hellenized n the western side.Everybody in the roman empire was far from speaking latin.And Moscow,well i don't c it as the heir of the Roman empire.
The European Union yes.

Hmm, well Damien, your dead wrong, Knight-dragon is 100% correct, till the day the Turks broke through it's walls, the Byzantines called themselves Roman, and the Orthodox church was split between the occupied portion in Greece and the free portion in Russia.
That they spoke and acted in Greek fashion means nothing, the entire empire was heavily Hellenized by 300 AD, before Constantine's time.

The Tsar is a big hint, it's a form of "Caesar".

The Lombards had nothing in common with the western empire, and they inherited Italy.

The modern EU is nothing like Rome, Rome was built on slav labor and conquest coupled with tribute, the EU has none of that.

The Vatican is the seat of the catholic church, not necessarily a Roman remnant. I'd say it's just what it is, not an heir to the Roman empire. Besides, those 'papal lands' were not papal because of the Vatican - it allied with a line of Germanic nobles who actually owned those lands. Between the Roman empire's collapse and the rise of the Holy geRoman Empire, the Vatican had nothing but itself. After the HRE's demise, the same story. The vatican is just a central church authority that has married itself to several political and military powers over the ages. Heir? Only because it's been widowed a few times. :p

Culturally, the western world owes more to the ancient Hellenes than Rome, methinks. The Romans themselves openly honored the greeks as their own source of glory and culture. The greeks were maybe not even the originators themselves - they just wrote it all down first to get the credit. ;)

Well,i'm talking of true roman culture,G.W.Bush could say he's Caesar's heir i wouldn't believe him :D.
Rome had many cultural traits from the greeks,who it is believed borrowed writing from the phoenicians who borrowed it from Filistines,another name for Minoeans who fled the invasions of Greeks+maybe the eruption of a volcano-that will give birth to the Atlantis myth- n that will provoke an ebb in a sea to be mistranslated as the Red Sea while Moses was to c it as God's action.
Incredible how incredible history can be :D
And about barbarian invasions...barbarians got assimilated in one century.

Hmm, the Greeks, rather the Dorians taught the phonecians, the word alphabit is Greek in origin, the Mycaneans, Dorians and Thracians all predate the Phonceans, and all three had written languages.

There is no proof the Minoan culture is the phillistines, this is only supposed.

The Lombards were never assimilated into Greek or Roman culture, they and their Gothic brothers absorbed the Roman culture into them.

The Catholic control during fuedal times made it the apparent heir then, and i have often considered that. But really the British are the heirs to Roman supremecy and America the heirs to theirs.

Originally posted by Alcibiaties of Athenae
The Lombards were never assimilated into Greek or Roman culture, they and their Gothic brothers absorbed the Roman culture into them.
Isn't it the same thing?Most germanic tribes became latin as they adopted the latin customs.

But they didn't adapt Latin customs, the Roman west adapted Germanic tribal ways, like heraditary kings, trial by jury of peers, Germanic common law, and Germanic language.

There are several languages that have latin roots, the Romance languages, but these bare little resemblence to Latin as it's written or spoken in Roman text.

The German tribes also wern't big on organized slavery, this virtually vanishes in Europe (the fuedal serf is centuries away, during the early centuries the landed peasant didn't have as strong a place in Europe as it later would).

Originally posted by SKILORD
The Catholic control during fuedal times made it the apparent heir then, and i have often considered that. But really the British are the heirs to Roman supremecy and America the heirs to theirs. The British, the true heirs to Rome? :rolleyes:

Amazing that the mystique of the Roman Empire still has such a hold that the modern-day descendants of the Germanic tribes who swamped the western Roman provinces argued over who were the true 'heirs' to Rome. Formidable indeed. :)

Originally posted by Alcibiaties of Athenae
But they didn't adapt Latin customs, the Roman west adapted Germanic tribal ways, like heraditary kings, trial by jury of peers, Germanic common law, and Germanic language.

There aren't many words steming from germanic languages in Latin Languages.Latin languages stem from the latins that were spoken by common folks.french stem from gallo-roman(bad latin spoken in Gaul) for example.
The linguistic boundary between lat.n germ.languages in Europe doesn't correspond to the borders of the roman empire.If the barbarians were awed by roman culture,they adopted it,if not they didn't not.It depended on barbarians.Burgunds,Lombards did,Alamanii didn't.Hence the linguistic boundaries in Switzerland whereas the whole country was under roman occupation(Rumantsch is spoken by the descendants of Rhetes who spoke latin n took refuge in high mountains when barbarians arrived).

They didn't adapt latin political customs because at the time they arrived,they existed only nominally.Rome was under control of german mercenaries who did n undid emperors from the end of the 2nd century to Diocletian(at the end of the 3rd century) and then emperors became christian n the empire would never recover its former glory.From the 2nd century ad,the institutions were only fake.

and then emperors became christian n the empire would never recover its former glory.From the 2nd century ad,the institutions were only fake.The Romans did continue and in grand fashion - in the East. Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia, Greece had always been the most prosperous and populous parts of the Empire. Esp Egypt. It wasn't known as the Granary of Rome for nothing. Just cause the West entered a Dark Age didn't mean the entire Empire just collapsed.

Were it not for plagues, the Germanic tribes would not find it so easy to storm into the Western empire IMHO. Were it not for a plague, I think Justinian and his Byzantines might probably roll back the Germanic tribes and retake the West.

The Antiquity is very important for europeans as "everything" was nearly already thought at that time(communism,aristocracy,etc) and was wasted for more than 1000 years.It's a re-discovery:intrigues,politics,slavery,etc...it can be thought that nothing haven't really changed n debates n systems changed in apparence only.(landowner-tenant system among other things).Of course it's false..many things have changed luckily.

Yes but the East wasn't really roman but greek.I don't think the East had a senate,a praetorian guard etc.Moreover Slavs n more barbarians poured into the Empire ,Persians attacked n Arabs spread Islam.Constantinople was many times besieged.If it hadn't have its 3 great city walls,it would've fallen a thousand years earlier.

Actually, the eastern half of the roman empire was a combination of greek and roman culture. From the time the emperors took power in Rome, the senate was useless. It served only a symbolic function and had no actual power. Also, the Praetorian Guard was abolished before the fall of the western half of the empire. Thirdly, the Persians were kept in check by the Roman (byzantine) emperors and were defeated in battle after battle. The Arabs did not spread Islam in the eastern roman empire. They were easily defeated by the Byzantine troops, the best of their day, until the battle of Manzikert, when the Byzantine army was stripped of funds by a government fearful of a military coup. Only with the defeat at Manzikert did the Arabs begin making any real progress against the Byzantines.

Originally posted by Damien
Yes but the East wasn't really roman but greek.I don't think the East had a senate,a praetorian guard etc.Moreover Slavs n more barbarians poured into the Empire ,Persians attacked n Arabs spread Islam.Constantinople was many times besieged.If it hadn't have its 3 great city walls,it would've fallen a thousand years earlier. Culturally they might be Greek but they were still the Roman Empire regardless, the Eastern Empire. Even earlier the Romans had always been heavily influenced by the Greeks. What's your point? Empires changed and evolved, esp a long-lived one like the Romans'.

Most other points had been answered by Gandalf. :)

Originally posted by Gandalf13
Only with the defeat at Manzikert did the Arabs begin making any real progress against the Byzantines.Even then, the Byzantines recovered and managed to roll the Arabs out of Anatolia. However they didn't march further south although they could, as it would further impose a greater burden on the empire to defend the south too.

The decline of the Byzantines only really began when Constantinople was sacked and captured by Western knights during one of the Crusades in the 12th century. :rolleyes: The Byzantines never recovered fr it and still they hanged on until 1453 before the Ottomans finally captured Constantinople.

And then, all Europe laid bare before the Ottoman Islamic onslaught.

Today is actually stupid quotes day for me..... i should have stayed home, and definately out of this forum.

Originally posted by SKILORD
Today is actually stupid quotes day for me..... i should have stayed home, and definately out of this forum. I know the feeling. :D Don't worry about it; it's always interesting to see interesting posts.

What i mean is that it's not the same Empire.To me,the Byzantine Empire could be the heir of Alexander's Empire n it never really ended by the way.The Eastern part has been more or less romanized but generally it stayed hellenized.My point is that the Romanization succeeded in only a few parts of the empire(the Western Part)Till 212,only those born in Italy were Roman.The Roman empire had cultural links with Greece it's true but they always remained 2 different civs on all grounds(political,historical n cultural).

Originally posted by Knight-Dragon
The decline of the Byzantines only really began when Constantinople was sacked and captured by Western knights during one of the Crusades in the 12th century. :rolleyes: The Byzantines never recovered fr it and still they hanged on until 1453 before the Ottomans finally captured Constantinople.

And then, all Europe laid bare before the Ottoman Islamic onslaught.

The sacking of Constantinople in 1204 was just the death
blow. The Empire was pretty much doomed after the defeat
at the hands of the Seljuks in 1074 (can't remember the !#*$@&^% name of the battle), which cost them control
of much of Asia Minor, and a defensible eastern boundary.

As to the original quesion, I think an argument can be
made that the Vatican is the heir of the *Western* empire.
If I'm not mistaken the heirarchy of the Church is modeled
after the Roman one, and it also at least somewhat stepped
into the power vacuum created in 476AD in Western Europe.

This is a cultural argument.

Early Christianity existed within the Roman Empire as an underground religion because Christians refused service in the military and wouldn't accept the Roman emperors as deities. Rome actually was a very accomodating place for foreign religions - Judaism, for instance, was accepted as a legal religion until the Bar Kochba revolts, and Romans often worshipped the gods of their captive peoples including the Jewish and Christian God - but the Christians were a particular thorn in the imperial side. With the advent of Constantinius I and the legalization of Christianity within the Empire, then ultimately the lifting of Christianity to the status of state religion (391), profoundly transformed both its structure and its theology. Most Christians today would be very surprised to know what passed for Christian doctrine before circa A.D. 300.

Constantinius (and others later after an interregnum) cut their losses as Italy crumbled into chaos and poverty throughout the 4th century, splitting the Empire in half and moving the imperial government and bureaucracy to the new capital at Constantinople in the much wealthier and more developed East. The Empire existed split (briefly united at one point) with separate Western and Eastern emperors until A.D. 476., when the Western half of the Empire collapsed. This date however is arbitrary; it is the date when modern historians like to pin the end. For decades before this date barbarian chiefs (who really ruled most of Italy) were appointing and replacing Western emperors at will; in 476 the Skirian (Gothic) chieften Odoacer finally did away with the last Western emperor (the inappropriately named "Romulus Augustulus"). We do know though that in some places Roman legions and administration continued to function in the West for decades after 476, in some places until the mid-6th century. Still, it's as good a date as any and the Western half of the Empire had effectively ceased to exist.

The East continued on, however, and as both Knight Dragon and AofA mentioned, the eastern Romans never called themselves anything but Romans, as did those unfamiliar with Roman history. When the great Khan Krum of the First Bulgarian Empire slaughtered a Byzantine Army - including the emperor Nicephorus, out of whose skull Krum made a drinking goblet - in the mountain passes near Pliska in 811, Krum gave himself the Greek title Romaiokthonos, "Killer of the Romans". Since the eastern Roman city of Constantinople was built by Constantinius on the sight of a small Greek fishing village, Byzanc, the West has derisively refered to the eastern half of the Roman Empire as the Byzantine Empire, as if it were merely an empire of lowly Greek fishermen.

Was the Eastern Roman, or "Byzantine", empire a continuation of Rome? I think that's a ridiculous question, because to answer it we must define what traits were truly Roman, and then pinpoint when they ended or evolved beyond a recognizable point in Byzantine history. In A.D. 477, the eastern Roman Empire still used Roman law and institutions, and in fact never stopped using them. Yes, the Empire that collapsed in 1453 bore little resemblance to the Empire of Nero or Constantinus, but on the other hand the empires of Nero and Constantinus bore little resemblance to that of Octavian or the kingdom of the Tarquins. Things change and evolve, especially when we're talking nearly a thousand years between 476 and 1453. Greek replaced Latin as the primary language of the empire in the East, but Greek was nearly on a par with Latin within the unified Empire since the Battle of Actium anyway. Whether Byzantium ever stopped being Roman is not a matter of factual or historical basis, but rather personal opinion (and more often than not, personal prejudice).

The critical aspect of this question really derives from the question of who has ultimate authority within the Christian church and realm. Until the crisis of power in Constantinople with Empress Irena at the end of the 9th century, the bishop of (the city of) Rome was merely another link in the ecumenical chain, and the bishops of Rome recognized their subordination to the Patriarch and Emperor in Constantinople. Pope Leo III was the first to claim premier authority in the Christian world for Rome (and the West), and of course he did so merely because Constantinople was distracted with a crisis and Leo had military protection, in the form of the recently-converted Frankish empire. Leo attempted to re-create the Western half of the Roman Empire on Christmas day, A.D. 800 to rival the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire by crowning Charles the Great (Charlemagne) of the Franks as Romanorum gubernans imperium, effectively marrying the revived western church with the new and vigorous Frankish Empire. Since the attacks of the Arabs in the 8th century against Iberia, southern Italy, Sicily, Malta, Anatolia and Trans-Caucasia there was a movement afoot in Europe to organize resistance in the form of a state, preferably a resurrected Roman empire. Leo III was the one though to first attempt this through Charlemagne. The Frankish empire was successful but eventually imploded, and was succeeded in its eastern regions eventually by the Ottonian emperors, who formed the Holy Roman Empire in the 10th and 11th centuries, which lasted until Napoleon finally dismantled it in 1806. In its heyday the Holy Roman Empire, while in reality never more than a mass and loose confederation, claimed political rule over all of Christendom (the name Europe called itself until the wars of Louis XIV), and laid the political and protocol basis for all Western and Central Europe's monarchies. England, Poland, France, Hungary, Spain, etc. all were integrated into the Holy Roman Empire's intricate system of sub states until the Protestant Reformation saw most states "secede" in the 16th century.

Was the Holy Roman Empire a "true" continuation of the Roman Empire? That ultimately is a matter of opinion. It certainly tried to be; whether it succeeded or not is your guess. As Knight Dragon mentioned, the Eastern Romans did not recognize Western Roman supremacy, causing the "Great Schism" of 1154 that still persists today between Eastern and Western Christians. The Eastern ("Orthodox") Christians see the Roman continuity flowing from Rome to Constantinople to Moscow, while the West likes to imagine it never really left Rome. I might also mention that, believe it or not, the Ottoman Turks also saw themselves as a kind of continuation of the Classical Mediterranean empires, including being the legitimate center for the Christian world. Mussolini's attempt to claim derivation from the Roman Empire in his modern Italy - the word "fascism" coming from the Latin fasces, the sticks Roman conculs held as a symbol of the power of their office - but modern French, Spaniards, Greeks, British, and others can also claim just as rightfully to have derived from Romans.

Originally posted by Vrylakas
Was the Eastern Roman, or "Byzantine", empire a continuation of Rome? I think that's a ridiculous question, because to answer it we must define what traits were truly Roman, and then pinpoint when they ended or evolved beyond a recognizable point in Byzantine history. In A.D. 477, the eastern Roman Empire still used Roman law and institutions, and in fact never stopped using them. Yes, the Empire that collapsed in 1453 bore little resemblance to the Empire of Nero or Constantinus, but on the other hand the empires of Nero and Constantinus bore little resemblance to that of Octavian or the kingdom of the Tarquins. Things change and evolve, especially when we're talking nearly a thousand years between 476 and 1453. Greek replaced Latin as the primary language of the empire in the East, but Greek was nearly on a par with Latin within the unified Empire since the Battle of Actium anyway. Whether Byzantium ever stopped being Roman is not a matter of factual or historical basis, but rather personal opinion (and more often than not, personal prejudice).

Ok but it's a question of legacy:the Tarquins and Nero are parts of Rome's Legacy.It's the evolution of the same civilization.Like France under Louis the 14th n the Republican France,it's the same civilization n are parts of the french historical references.

Byzantine references were different.And u say that Byzantine used the Roman laws n institutions.There was senate,a praetorian Guard,a plebeian Assembly,etc?Rome fell,so Byzantium followed its own way.

P.S.:I'll be visitin my family(400 miles away from here) for the next 10-15 days so i won't post.