Capital of an Empire

In the 5th century (400s AD) the western half of the Roman Empire was overrun by Germanic tribes. Rome itself was sacked in 410 by the Visgoths in 410 and again by the Vandals (where the term vandalism comes from) in 455. However, as the Western Roman Empire to an end the eastern half of the Roman Empire lived on. Centered around the rich and powerful city of Constantinople, the eastern half of the Roman Empire would flourish for another thousand years until 1453. (Below is a map of the eastern half of the Roman Empire that survived after the western Roman Empire had collapsed at the end of the 5th century.)

While the people of this empire called themselves Romans and thought of themselves as the continuation of the Roman Empire, the culture of the eastern half were different from that of the Romans. For one, Rome was not part of the empire anymore. So instead of Latin speakers who saw their heritage as originating from Italy, the people were Greek speakers, who traced their heritage to Ancient Greece. Due to these and other differences, historians see this as a distinctive empire, which we know today as the Byzantine Empire. Notice how this new Byzantine Empire stretches over three continents and is centered around the Eastern Mediterranean.