Eastern Mediterranean and Anatolia · Late Antiquity

Byzantine Empire

Rome's eastern half outlived the west by a thousand years

330 CE – 1453 CE · 1,123 years

The Greek-speaking continuation of the Roman Empire in the east, surviving for nearly a millennium after Rome's fall.

Where it sits on the calendar

Government

Centralized empire

Writing system

Greek alphabet

Estimated peak population

30,000,000

How it ended

Invasion or conquest

Traits

How Byzantine Empire ended

Constantinople fell to Ottoman forces in 1453 after a prolonged final siege.

See other civilizations that fell the same way →

Notable for

  • Preservation and transmission of Greco-Roman texts
  • The Hagia Sophia's engineering
  • Codification of Roman law under Justinian

Who else was alive at the same time

8 other civilizations in this dataset overlap with Byzantine Empire's 1,123-year span.

See every overlap involving Byzantine Empire →