(10) LATIN EMPIRE (1204 – 1261 AD)

Probably the most ignominious of my high tier successors to the Roman Empire – the state established by the Fourth Crusaders after conquering Constantinople in 1204 – but it did occupy Constantinople after all, hence qualifying for my foremost criterion for high-tier ranking, the occupation of either that city or Rome itself. Also hence why 1204 is yet another date proposed for the fall of the Roman Empire.

It was certainly one of the more precarious. Nominally, according to the treaty or treaties among the Crusaders to partition the eastern Roman Empire among themselves, it was awarded direct control of a quarter of the former empire, with its vassals receiving a further three eighths – and the balance of three eighths going to Venice.

In reality, the Latin Empire was just another Crusader state – or more precisely Crusader states – in which the Crusaders never controlled most of the former empire, as three successor states of the empire arose to challenge it, with the most substantial, the Empire of Nicaea, recapturing Constantinople and reviving the former empire in 1261.

The Latin Empire consisted of not much than Constantinople itself, with only the neighboring territory on either side – although it had various vassal states through most of Greece and the Greek islands. Its vassal states actually did better and endured longer than the Latin Empire itself, which fell when Constantinople was recaptured – although the Latin imperial line persisted in exile for a century or so afterwards.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(9) VENETIAN REPUBLIC (697 – 1797 AD)

Venice may have laid its claim as an assassin using the Fourth Crusade as its weapon, but it did lay claim to be “lord of a fourth part and a half of the whole Empire of Romania” – or three eighths of the eastern Roman Empire – after Constantinople fell to the Crusade in 1204 AD, extending to a significant part of the occupation of Constantinople itself and hence my primary criterion for high-tier ranking.

Venice had a weird love-hate symbiotic-parasitic relationship with the eastern Roman Empire – evolving from an imperial province and vassal in the empire’s reconquest of Italy, to ally and close associate of the empire effectively as its navy and trading house, and ultimately to rival and perfidious adversary in the Fourth Crusade.

In some ways, that symbiosis involved Venice as almost the inversion of Constantinople – the heart of a mercantile empire which waxed and rose, sucking from the blood of the latter as it waned and fell. Although ironically, Venice found its fortune to be little more symbiotic with Constantinople than it would have liked after all – declining as it faced the Ottoman Empire more directly once the Ottomans captured Constantinople, and not coincidentally, the decline of Mediterranean trade relative to the Atlantic, although it endured until 1797 when it finally fell in the face to the French under Napoleon.

Venice was also somewhat antagonistic to Rome – even as it resembled the latter’s classical republic, down to it also being an imperial republic, albeit more in the classical Greek model of a maritime colonial empire with a focus on its naval power and trade. Of course, the world had moved on from when a single city state could dominate first the Italian peninsula and then the whole Mediterranean like the Romans did – although Venice did punch remarkably above its weight, going toe-to-toe with the Ottoman Empire for four centuries or so of Ottoman-Venetian wars.

Venice is reputed to have been settled by refugees from the Huns and Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire seeking the safety of its islands. It was founded as the Duchy of Venetia within the eastern Roman Empire’s Exarchate of Ravenna – its leader’s title of Doge originating from the Latin for dux (or duke) as an imperial provincial title. It became increasingly independent as the Exarchate of Ravenna crumbled, until effectively achieving de facto independence because of an agreement between the Holy Roman Empire and the eastern Roman Empire.

Venice remained nominally subservient to the eastern Roman Empire but abandoned even that over the next century. However, it remained closely associated with Constantinople, by way of trade and as an ally – essentially gaining exclusive privileges in the former in exchange for the use of its navy in the latter, firstly against the Normans in Italy and then against the Turks. Significantly, Venice acknowledged its homage to the empire against the Normans, but not subsequently against the Turks – reflecting the decline of the eastern Roman empire and the rise of Venice.

The rise of Venice (and its role as creditor to the empire) ultimately saw it become the empire’s rival and adversary, which bore bitter fruit when Venice played that instrumental role pulling the strings of the Fourth Crusade to divert it to capture Constantinople instead, leading to my next special mention entry…

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(8) EXARCHATE OF RAVENNA (584 – 751 AD)

Yes – this special mention entry is just the Romans again, for the province of the eastern Roman Empire after their reconquest of Italy. However, the exarchate of Ravenna (also called the exarchate of Italy) seems sufficiently distinct – as well as tenuous, albeit enduring for two centuries – for its own entry.

The exarchate of Ravenna emerged from the Gothic War, a slogging match for almost two decades from 535 and 554 between the eastern Roman Empire and the Ostrogothic Kingdom, in which the Romans found themselves the victors of a proverbial Pyrrhic victory in Italy.

Sure – they defeated the Ostrogothic Kingdom and recaptured Italy after fighting off yet more invasions by the Franks and Alemanni, but an Italy devastated and depopulated by war, and worse, with the eastern Roman Empire so exhausted that they found themselves incapable of resisting an invasion by the Lombards, yet another German invader.

So the exarchate of Ravenna, founded in 584 AD, was tenuous from its very inception – presiding over territory snaking across central Italy to Rome itself and mostly clinging to the coastal cities and southern parts of Italy, as the Lombards were ensconced in the hinterland of the peninsula. (The eastern Roman imperial territory in the Italian islands – Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica – was separately governed).

And it was also tenuous in presiding over increasingly fractious and fragmented territories, nominally subject to the exarch in Ravenna as the representative of the emperor in Constantinople, but in reality asserting their own sovereignty even before being swallowed up by the ever-encroaching Lombards (until the Lombards in turn were swallowed up by the Franks in the Carolingian Empire, the origin of the Holy Roman Empire).

The exarchate crumbled away, with the last exarch in Ravenna killed by the Lombards in 751. As for Rome itself, it had been administered as the Duchy of Rome within the Exarchate, but the Duchy was increasingly supplanted by the papacy, culminating with the papal states under the patronage of the Carolingian or Holy Roman Empires.

However, the eastern Roman empire retained territory in southern Italy that was reorganized as the Catapanate of Italy, which endured in dwindling form until conquered by the Normans in 1071, finally extinguishing five centuries of the eastern Roman empire in Italy.

So there’s yet two more tongue-in-cheek dates for the fall of the Roman Empire – 751 and 1071. And the Exarchate of Ravenna did lead in a way to my next special mention entry.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(7) OSTROGOTHIC KINGDOM (493 – 553 AD)

The immediate successor to Odoacer’s Kingdom of Italy in my previous special mention – the Ostrogoths led by Theodoric the Great took over the kingdom after killing and replacing Odoacer. The kingdom itself carried on much the same as before, including in territory – it’s the same picture as one might observe of maps of the two kingdoms.

That understates the brilliant ploy of the eastern Roman Emperor Zeno that lay behind it – a classic illustration of winning without fighting by having others do your fighting for you. In this case, having the Ostrogoths fight Odoacer.

The Ostrogoths had settled within the eastern empire in the usual manner of German allies or foederati – except that they retained more independence than the Romans preferred. If anything, the eastern empire was at some risk of becoming an Ostrogothic colony – with large numbers of Goths entering service in the Roman army, as well as comprising “a significant political and military power in the court of Constantinople”.

“The thought occurred to Zeno and his advisors to direct Theodoric against another troublesome neighbour of the Empire – the Italian kingdom of Odoacer”

That suited everyone at the time, except of course Odoacer – who despite being Zeno’s nominal viceroy in Italy, was menacing eastern Roman territory (among other things), although not any more once Theodoric was done with him.

Theodoric the Great assumed a similar position to Odoacer, nominally a subject of the eastern Roman emperor and ruling from Ravenna as their viceroy in Italy. “In reality, he acted as an independent ruler, although unlike Odoacer, he meticulously preserved the outward forms of his subordinate position”. An Ostrogothic Augustus, one might say – similarly appeasing the eastern roman empire as Augustus did the Senate by keeping up appearances of their rule. Speaking of the Senate, they continued to function mostly as before, as did the Roman administration, law, church and elite.

I have a soft spot for the Ostrogothic Kingdom ever since their starring role in L. Sprague de Camp’s SF novella, Lest Darkness Fall, in which the time travelling protagonist finds himself stranded there and seeks to stave off the pending Dark Ages.

We are accustomed to thinking of the Dark Ages kicking in with the fall of the western Roman Empire, but that is arguably premature of us, at least in Italy – with Roman Italy carrying on much as before until the destruction of the Ostrogothic Kingdom by the Byzantines in the Gothic Wars, which truly turned Italy into the Dark Age wasteland we see in our mind’s eye.

The Gothic Wars came about for Theodoric’s successors, when the Ostrogothic Kingdom’s relations with the eastern empire – always somewhat strained, even under Theodoric – finally ruptured into war and the eastern empire under Justinian the Great sought to reclaim the western half of the empire, a war fought for about two decades and that led to my next special mention entry…

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(6) KINGDOM OF ITALY (476-493 AD)

The immediate successor to the western Roman Empire in Italy and neighboring territory in the Balkans, commencing as it did with its Germanic ruler Odoacer deposing the last western Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476 AD, the date traditionally seen as marking the end of the western Roman Empire.

It therefore ranks as a high tier claimant to the succession of the Roman Empire, not only for its immediate continuity with the western Roman empire but also for my foremost criteria of possession of Rome, as well as the actual imperial capital at the time, Ravenna.

Odoacer did not purport to have any imperial authority beyond his kingdom and indeed expressly represented himself as the client of the eastern Roman emperor Zeno, ruling his kingdom on behalf of the eastern empire under the title of duke of Italy (dux Italiae) bestowed on him by Zeno. To that end he sent back to Zeno the imperial regalia of Romulus Augustulus.

And really it seemed like business as usual for the Romans in Italy. Odoacer simply abandoned the pretense of the succession of puppet emperors to German leaders. Romulus Augustulus was himself a child emperor, little more than a frightened figurehead for his father, possibly much relieved at avoiding the hot seat of the western imperial throne – and apart from deposing him, Odoacer left him to peaceful retirement.

Odoacer also left the Roman Church alone, despite being of the Arian Christian faith pronounced to be heresy by the Church. In addition, he ruled with the loyal support of the Roman Senate in Ravenna – in part probably because the Senate no longer had to contend with their own emperor.

Indeed, while the former empire west of Italy went its own way, Roman Italy itself doesn’t seem too distinct for the next couple of centuries or so from internal strife within the former empire – except instead of Roman generals contending with each other, it was barbarian German warlords contending with each other, or with Roman generals from the eastern empire after its resurgence under Justinian.

Odoacer’s reign of almost seventeen years was relatively peaceful when compared to other periods of Roman internal strife in Italy – until it wasn’t, which brings me to my next special mention entry…

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(5) RUSSIAN EMPIRE (1472-1917)

The second of the two most enduring and significant claimants of continuation of the eastern Roman Empire – and the one which managed to pull it off without conquest or even any of the same territory of the former empire (except for the most far flung parts at its greatest extent in the Crimea and the Caucasus).

Indeed, it didn’t even have my foremost criteria for top-tier or high-tier claimant to succession from the Roman Empire by having either Rome or Constantinople, instead breezily styling Moscow as the third Rome – a lesson in audacity for any claimant as heir to the Roman Empire. Just style your capital as the fourth Rome. What next? London? Tokyo? Canberra, seat of the Tsar of all the Australias?

In fairness, the Russian Empire did set its sights on Constantinople in its foreign policy – and more to the point, did have a tenuous claim to dynastic succession from the eastern Roman Empire. “Ivan III of Russia in 1472 married Sophia (Zoé) Palaiologina, a niece of the last Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI” and styled himself Tsar, adapted from Caesar. It also claimed a more abstract succession as the new Orthodox empire, champion of that religious denomination elsewhere.

So now we can add another date to those proposed for the fall of the Roman Empire – 1917, when the last ‘Roman’ emperor fell to the ultimate plebeian revolt in the Russian Revolution.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(4) OTTOMAN EMPIRE (1453-1922)

“Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople

Been a long time gone, Constantinople”

The first of the two most enduring and significant claimants of continuation of the eastern Roman Empire – and the one which had the force of right of conquest to it, something the Byzantines themselves might have recognized as part of their own imperial doctrine, as well as substantially overlapping with the territory of the eastern Roman empire at its height under Justinian the Great.

It also had my foremost criteria for a top-tier or at least high-tier claimant to succession from the Roman Empire – possession of one of the two Romes, Rome or Constantinople, once Constantinople fell to Ottoman conquest in 1453.

“After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II declared himself Roman Emperor: Kayser-i Rum, literally “Caesar of the Romans”, the standard title for earlier Byzantine Emperors in Arab, Persian and Turkish lands… Mehmed’s claim rested principally with the idea that Constantinople was the rightful seat of the Roman Empire, as it had been for more than a millennium”.

Indeed, Mehmed apparently took a swing at the first and original Rome itself, emulating Justinian the Great and “reuniting the Empire in a way it hadn’t been for nearly eight centuries” – starting a campaign in Italy with the invasion of Otranto in 1480 but which was cut short by his death in 1481. His successors didn’t follow up on that but instead ” repeatedly (albeit never successfully) attempted to conquer the capital of the rival contenders to the Imperial Roman title” with their sieges of Vienna. Those rival contenders of course being the Habsburgs as claimants for the Holy Roman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire also had the “additional though questionable claim of legitimacy” from past alliances between the Ottoman dynasty and the Byzantines through marriage.

Hence one of the dates proposed on occasion (albeit also often tongue in cheek) for the fall of the Roman Empire is 1922, the end of the Ottoman Empire.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(3) HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE (800 / 962-1806)

It may be most remembered today by Voltaire’s famous quip – neither holy nor Roman nor an empire – but it remains the most enduring and significant claimant to the continuation or succession of the western Roman empire, hence ranking in my top tier of special mentions.

Of course, that claim does feel somewhat like Pope Leo III pulling a fast one on the eastern Roman Empire, opportunistically using a woman on the eastern imperial throne – the horror! – to effectively claim Empress Irene as a nullity and crown Charlemagne as Roman emperor, in Rome no less, over three centuries after the last western Roman emperor. Charlemagne’s realm henceforth was styled simply as the Roman Empire – the holy part of its title came a few centuries later or so.

In fairness, the claim to Roman emperor or empire had some force to it under Charlemagne. After all, he had achieved the largest unified polity in western Europe since the Roman Empire, including a substantial part of the former territory of the western Roman empire, effectively including Rome itself – although his father Pepin had donated that to the papacy in what would become the Papal States. Possession of one of the two Romes – the original first Rome or the ‘second Rome’ of Constantinople – is my foremost criteria for ranking special mentions above my wild tier of claimants to succession from the Roman Empire.

Historians tend to identify the empire of Charlemagne as the Frankish or Carolingian Empire, as distinct from the Holy Roman Empire proper. Charlemagne’s empire was divided between his sons. From that division, Germany emerged as a separate realm from the Frankish Empire, largely originating from the eastern Frankish empire, and it was from Germany that the Holy Roman Empire truly arose, with Otto I as the first Holy Roman Emperor in 962, even if that cuts down the so-called thousand year Reich (from Charlemagne’s coronation in 800) to a mere 844 years.

Again, the claim to Roman empire had some force to it under Otto and his successors, even if it oscillated between that idea as reflected in its title as Roman Empire and the reality as reflected in its title as Empire or Kingdom of the Germans. The actual term Holy Roman Empire began to be used only during the reign of Friedrich or Frederick Barbarossa two centuries and two dynasties later, under whom the claim also had some teeth to it (as well as transforming him into a legendary figure) and continued to do so until his grandson Friedrich II, who attempted to run an Italian-German empire from Sicily.

From there however the empire and its claim to succession from Rome devolved into the sorry state reflected by Voltaire’s quip – or that of Marx, that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce – until Napoleon Bonaparte did away with the whole dog’s breakfast of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. Hence 1806 is occasionally proposed as a date for the fall of the Roman Empire, albeit often with tongue in cheek.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(2) ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH / VATICAN CITY

The most enduring successor of the Roman Empire, indeed the one which can “actually trace its origin to the Roman era” and endures to the present day – inheriting the capitol, the pontifex and the imperial language of Latin, as well as many of the trappings and much of the mystique of the western empire.

It’s a successor in a somewhat unique sense. It was not a direct political successor or successor in terms of the military institutions of empire – as it lacked the latter other than those it could enlist from leaders or states owing it allegiance – but dare I say it, a spiritual successor.

I gave it away with that reference to leaders or states owing it allegiance – it was the surviving institution from the western empire most retaining allegiance, or cultural and moral authority or legitimacy, reinforced by its effective monopoly status as ‘international’ institution transcending tribes or kingdoms, reflected in the catholic part of its name, connoting universality

Indeed, it had started to eclipse the empire in moral authority even prior to the fall of the western empire, best demonstrated by Pope Leo I as imperial envoy to Attila the Hun to persuade him to turn back after his invasion Italy and not sack Rome, armed with little else other than moral authority – which by some miracle worked, with Attila withdrawing from Italy, never to return to the empire (and dying shortly afterwards, possibly from papal mojo).

For much of its history, the Church was somewhat broader than the present Roman Catholic Church, including as the Orthodox Church in the eastern empire – but ironically the Orthodox Church remained in the shadow of the eastern imperial government, while the Roman Catholic Church emerged as the shadow empire because of the very absence of any political state to rival it in reach after the fall of the western empire

Of course, the Church was able to convert (heh) its moral authority to claims for political succession of the Roman Empire, becoming effectively the ’empire-maker’ (or more precisely emperor-crowner) – not for itself, except in so far as it was able to secure control of Rome and other Italian territory as the Papal States, but for my next special mention.

On the subject of the Papal States, they too have endured to the present day, albeit very much in residual or substituted form as the state of Vatican City in its enclave within Rome, the smallest nation in the world.

The continuation of the empire in the Church tends to be one of bases for the argument that “the empire never ended” – albeit usually in a trippy way, as in the works of SF writer P.K. Dick.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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(1) ROMAN REPUBLIC (509 BC – 27 BC)

Some might argue for this as the real Roman Empire or true Pax Romana – the Roman Republic as imperial republic, a recurring political model with surprising frequency in Western history.

Certainly, when many people think of the Romans, they are thinking of the Romans of the Republic rather than the Romans of the Empire.

As I said for the eastern Roman Empire, there seem to be two recurring arguments among Roman history enthusiasts – whether one ranks the Roman Republic over the Roman Empire, and whether one ranks the Byzantine Empire over the Roman Empire.

While the Roman Republic predates the formal institutions of empire founded by Augustus, it essentially laid almost all the foundations for the subsequent empire, not least in its Mediterranean supremacy and imperial core territory. And perhaps even more so in the values or virtues, martial or otherwise, fostered by the Republic in its citizens and institutions – such that it might be (and has been) argued that the further one gets into its history, the more the Empire is running on fumes from the Republic.

The Republic also saw some of the most definitive events and figures of Roman history – not least Julius Caesar, who lent his name to the title of emperor and is perhaps the figure most identified with the Empire, although it was his heir Augustus who actually founded the empire in the wake of Caesar’s assassination. Like a good car salesman, Augustus just slapped the formal institutions of empire on the pretense of authority of the Republic or Senate, and said this baby can fit a millennium and a half in it.

Obviously, it is the one exception to my special mentions as successors to the Roman Empire – but not from the line of succession itself, except that for the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire claimed succession from it rather than the other way around.

And while we’re on the subject of line of succession, I can’t give special mention to the Roman Republic without a shout-out to the Republic’s legendary predecessor, the Roman Kingdom.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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