It may be just me, but I recently realized that the Byzantine Empire is largely underrepesented in most areas of popular cultur, including most categories of historical-entertainment but also areas like (mainstream) philosophy, poetry, art, architecture, etc.
For example, people that are not in any way concerned with Byzantine or Middle-Eastern history, will recognize several individuals of Classical Antiquity, be it Philosophers, Scientists(the same thing back then lol), Military or Civic leaders, etc.. When it comes to the Byzantine Empire, most people won't know anybody, with the exception of Justinian I maybe and will be hard pressed to name any Byzantine architectural feat except for Hagia Sophia.
This seems rather odd, considering that even after the fall of the Western Roman Empire it was among the most long-lived Empires in history. Certainly, in well over a millenium the Byzantine Empire has contributed enough to earn its own distinct place in popular culture?
Was it because for a large part of its existence it struggled to survive? Or because, rather than a father of western Culture, like Ancient Greeks and the (latin) Roman Empire, it was more of a cousin?
Hope this attracts somebody's interest, this really got me pondering.
*Edit: I just thought of two more reasons: It is my understanding that there was some degree of competing with the Vatican and the HRE as to who was the spiritual and secular successor, respectively, to the Roman Empire. This may have contributed to its obscurity. Also, the omnipresence of Roman-inspired culture is attributed to the Italian Renaissance, which was triggered(to my knowledge) by the acquisition of Islamic sources on the Romans, rather than preservation by the Byzantines.
The Byzantine Empire's obscurity is more a modern blind spot than anything else: it's place at the crossroads of the European and Islamic worlds made it a fascinating and significant place.
If, however, it seems it was less influential on 'Western Civilization' than the medieval nations of Western Europe, there are a few clear explanations.
First, the language barrier: few Europeans outside the empire spoke or read Greek until the Renaissance, and by then the Byzantine Empire was in its last days. Medieval scholars in Paris or Rome reading Greek texts such as Aristotle were reading/creating Latin translations of Arabic translations of Greek manuscripts. The Greek-speaking world was a bit of an island unto itself.
Second, the religious barrier: scholarship in the medieval world was an entirely religious affair, and even before the Great Schism the eastern and western traditions of Christianity had difficulty relating to each other, in part because of different theologies, in part because they were bad at translating concepts back and forth from Latin and Greek. Western European scholarship simply moved forward without much concern for Byzantine scholarship, although not entirely. It doesn't help that Orthodox Christian theology was, and still often is, rather traditionalist and little interested in conversing with other schools, even within Christianity. The Orthodox world was a bit of an island unto itself.
Third, the empire was fairly well knee-capped by the Islamic conquests and simply not the power it had been. It couldn't project power or influence as well as some other nations, partially because it was checked by the rising nations surrounding it. Coupled with questions as to the effectiveness of the imperial government at any point in time and it appears the Byzantine Empire lacked momentum for much of the medieval period.
Rest assured, thanks to a slew of strategy games that began WAAAAY back with Age of Empires, the Byzantine Empire is in no way under represented in video games or the online world.
It is also not under represented in the history of Eastern Europe, including Russia, which considers itself the inheritor of Byzantium. Consider for a moment that the Russian style of sovereign over church leadership has a continuity that stretches all the way back to the Byzantine Empire, and you'll know that its history is in no way irrelevant there.
People love to blame Gibbon for his hilariously didactic beatdown of the late late late Roman Empire, but in all honesty, it's because all public education is about choices in explaining the precedents for the nation a history is written about. America, descended from the histories of western europe, has significantly more continuity with the Western Roman Empire. Thus we learn about the west, not the east.
I mean, when was the last time you heard about the Sogdian Empire of western Africa, if not from Civ 5? Education is about choices.
I'll elaborate more simply. When was the last time Byzantium impacted your life, outside of a computer game or here in AH? I'd dare say unless you go regularly to an orthodox church, its probably likely you aren't dealing with their legacy in any regular capacity.
Actually I should amend myself. As mentioned before, whenever you think about the bizarre autocratic tendencies and corrupt nature of Putin as lord and master of Russia, THAT is the western perception of Byzantine legacy at work.
I don’t want to hijack, but I need ask about what postcolonial theorists such as Edward Said may have said about this issue. So, with postcolonial theory in mind, what can we say about the Byzantines (lack of) presence within the west’s collective conscious?
the Byzantine empire IS the Roman Empire!!! It is H. Wolf who influenced by the europocentrists ideas decides to call it with a different name that never existed before. How can we had become barbarians again while the Roman empire still existed... well lets make a new story, the roman empire disappeared, so we became barbarians again. Of course that never happened, the ROman empire existed continuously without a single day of interruption ot the political continuum until 1453.