Byzantine Empire is a term which has been coined by historians toindicate the eastern part of the Roman Empire after the fall of thewestern part. The so-called “Byzantines” did not use this term.They called their empire the Empire of the Romans or Romania orRhomais in Latin or Basileia RhA?maiA?n or Rhomania in Greek.Romania was a short form for Roman Empire. It was not related tothe country which was later called Romania. All the peoples wholived the Roman Empire saw themselves as Romans. They had beengranted Roman citizenship by the emperor Caracalla in 215. Theso-called “Byzantines” did not even use the term eastern Romans,which is often used by historians for them. Western and easternRoman Empire are also terms which have been coined by historians.The Romans and the peoples in the Roman Empire only used the termEmpire of the Romans.
The term Byzantine was chosen by a German historian in the 16thcentury as a derivation from Byzantium, a Greek city which hadevolved into a Roman city under Roman rule and which was thenredeveloped, turned into an imperial capital and renamedConstantinople (City of Constantine) by the Roman emperorConstantine the Great in 330. It is used to indicate the fact thatnot long after the fall of the western part of the Roman Empire,this part of the empire became centred on Greece and Greek incharacter after it lost most of its non-Greek territories. Greekreplaced Latin as the official language of this empire in 620, some150 years after the fall of the western part. Both the termsByzantine and Byzantine Empire became common in Western Europe inthe 19th century.

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