[146 BCE - 1453 CE] Roman and Byzantine Dominion

Our story of Greece resumes in the year 146 BCE, with the scent of smoke and defeat hanging heavy in the air. The once-mighty city of Corinth, a bastion of Greek resistance, lies in ruins, sacked by the legions of the Roman consul Lucius Mummius. Its men are slain, its women and children sold into slavery, its priceless art carted off to Rome. This brutal act marks the definitive end of an independent Greece. The land of philosophers and citizen-soldiers is formally absorbed into the burgeoning Roman Republic, organized as the province of Achaea. A new era of foreign dominion, one that would last for sixteen centuries, had begun. Yet, Roman rule was not simply one of subjugation. The Romans, conquerors in arms, were themselves conquered by the culture they now governed. Greek tutors became essential in noble Roman households, and Greek philosophy informed Roman thought. Emperors like Nero toured the ancient sanctuaries, while Hadrian, an ardent philhellene, lavished funds on Athens in the 2nd century CE, completing the Temple of Olympian Zeus and constructing the grand Arch that still bears his name. Roman engineers built roads like the Via Egnatia, a stone artery stretching over 700 miles from the Adriatic coast to the city of Byzantium, binding Greece ever tighter to the imperial heartland. Under the security of the Pax Romana, life settled into a new rhythm, a hybrid existence where the Greek language and identity endured under the shadow of the Roman eagle. The empire’s center of gravity, however, was destined to shift. By the 3rd century CE, internal strife and external pressures had pushed the Roman world to a breaking point. Recognizing the empire was too vast to govern from one center, Emperor Diocletian divided it into eastern and western halves. It was his successor, Constantine the Great, who took the decisive step. Following a vision of a cross in the sky, he embraced Christianity and, in 330 CE, inaugurated a new capital on the strategic shores of the Bosphorus. “Nova Roma,” or New Rome, soon became popularly known as Constantinople, the city of Constantine. The power, wealth, and focus of the empire drained eastward, beginning a slow metamorphosis. The old Latin-speaking, pagan Roman Empire was steadily transforming into the Greek-speaking, Christian realm we now call Byzantium. This new Eastern Roman Empire reached a breathtaking zenith under Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century. Driven by an ambition to restore Rome’s lost glory, his general Belisarius reclaimed vast territories in North Africa and Italy. At home, Justinian commissioned the monumental task of codifying a thousand years of Roman law into the *Corpus Juris Civilis*, a legal framework that would influence Western law for centuries. His most visible legacy, however, was born from destruction. After the bloody Nika Riots of 532 nearly destroyed the capital, Justinian and his powerful empress, Theodora, launched an unprecedented building program. At its heart was the Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom. Its central dome, soaring 182 feet high and seemingly floating on a cascade of light from forty windows, was an architectural miracle, the largest enclosed space in the world. For the next millennium, this was the undisputed center of Orthodox Christianity. Life in Constantinople was a dazzling, and often dangerous, spectacle. For centuries it was Europe’s largest and wealthiest city, with a population that may have exceeded 500,000. Its markets teemed with Chinese silks, Indian spices, and Russian furs. The city’s pulse beat strongest in the Hippodrome, a massive stadium where tens of thousands of citizens, divided into the Blue and Green factions, cheered their chariot teams with a fanaticism that could ignite deadly political uprisings. Byzantine society was a rigid hierarchy, with the Emperor at its apex, seen as God's regent on Earth, robed in priceless Tyrian purple silk. Below him were aristocrats, clergy, soldiers, and the masses, whose loyalty was often secured by state-subsidized bread and the spectacle of the games. The empire's existence was a constant struggle. It was a Christian island in a sea of rivals. In the 7th and 8th centuries, Arab Caliphates laid siege to Constantinople itself, their fleets turned back only by the empire’s terrifying secret weapon: Greek Fire, a liquid incendiary that could not be extinguished by water. Slavic peoples migrated into the Balkans, permanently changing the demographics of the Greek peninsula. From the north, the Bulgarian Empire posed a constant, existential threat. This rivalry culminated in the brutal reign of Basil II, who, after a decisive victory in 1014, earned the grim moniker “Bulgaroktonos” (the Bulgar-Slayer) by blinding an army of 15,000 prisoners, an act of psychological warfare that shattered his enemy. While Byzantium fought for its physical survival, a spiritual rift was tearing Christendom apart. For centuries, theological disputes, cultural differences, and a power struggle between the Pope in Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople festered. The Pope claimed universal authority, while the Patriarch saw him as merely the “first among equals.” In 1054, this long-simmering conflict boiled over. The leaders of the Roman and Constantinopolitan churches mutually excommunicated each other, creating the Great Schism. This formal split between what would become the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Eastern Orthodox Church was a wound that never healed, and it would leave Byzantium dangerously isolated. That isolation proved fatal. In the late 11th century, a desperate plea for Western mercenaries to help fight Seljuk Turks had inadvertently spawned the Crusades. Over a century later, the Fourth Crusade assembled with the stated goal of liberating Jerusalem. But, diverted by Venetian merchants and the lure of Byzantine wealth, the Crusaders turned their arms not on Muslims, but on their fellow Christians. In April 1204, the crusading army stormed Constantinople, subjecting the world’s greatest Christian city to three days of unimaginable horror. Art was melted down, libraries were torched, and the populace was brutalized. The heart of the Orthodox world was shattered, not by an outside foe, but by men wearing the cross. The Byzantine eagle was broken. Although a Greek successor state managed to retake a ruined Constantinople in 1261, the restored empire was a pale ghost of its former self. It was now a small, poor state, hemmed in by Venetians, Genoese, Serbs, and the new, formidable power rising in Anatolia: the Ottoman Turks. For nearly two more centuries, this shadow empire clung to existence, a bastion of classical Greek scholarship even as its territory shrank to the capital city, a few islands, and a portion of southern Greece. It was a long, painful twilight. The final darkness fell in 1453. The ambitious 21-year-old Sultan Mehmed II, known to history as “the Conqueror,” arrived before the city’s legendary land walls with an army of over 80,000 soldiers and enormous cannons capable of shattering medieval stone. Defending the city was the last Emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, with a meager force of perhaps 7,000 Greeks and Genoese mercenaries. For 53 grueling days, this tiny garrison held back the might of the Ottoman army. But on May 29th, the final assault breached the ancient walls. The last Roman Emperor cast aside his purple regalia and died fighting anonymously amongst his soldiers. The city that had been the capital of a Christian empire for 1,123 years had fallen. The era of Roman and Byzantine dominion was over, and the lands of Greece passed into a new age under the crescent moon.