Meaning & use

Byzantine Empire

proper noun·Academic

The Eastern Roman Empire that continued after the fall of Rome, centered on Constantinople, lasting from the fourth century until 1453.

See it in a sentence

The Byzantine Empire preserved much of Greek and Roman learning for nearly a thousand years.

Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, fell to the Ottomans in 1453.

A note on using this word

Lowercase byzantine is also used as an adjective for something excessively complicated, a sense drawn from the empire's complex bureaucracy.

Words with a similar meaning

Eastern Roman Empire

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