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February 9

February 9

February 9 is the 40th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 325 days remaining, 326 in leap years.

Events

- 474 - Zeno crowned as co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire.
- 1621 - Gregory XV becomes Pope, the last Pope elected by acclamation.
- 1775 - American Revolutionary War: British Parliament declares Massachusetts in rebellion.
- 1822 - Haiti invades the Dominican Republic.
- 1825 - After no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the United States House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams President of the United States.
- 1861 - American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is elected the Provisional President of the Confederate States of America by the Confederate convention at Montgomery, Alabama.
- 1885 - The first Japanese arrive in Hawaii.
- 1889 - The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is established as a Cabinet-level agency.
- 1895 - William G. Morgan invents volleyball.
- 1900 - Davis Cup competition is established.
- 1920 - By the terms of the Svalbard Treaty, international diplomacy recognizes Norwegian sovereignty over arctic archipelago Svalbard, and designates it as demilitarized.
- 1922 - Brazil becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
- 1942 - World War II: Top United States military leaders hold their first formal meeting to discuss American military strategy in the war.
- 1942 - Daylight-saving time goes into effect in the United States.
- 1943 - World War II, Battle of Guadalcanal: After forcing the remaining Japanese to be evacuated the night before, American authorities declared Guadalcanal secure.
- 1950 - Red scare: Senator Joseph McCarthy accuses the United States State Department of being filled with Communists.
- 1960 - Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
- 1964 - The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
- 1965 - Vietnam War: The first United States combat troops are sent to South Vietnam.
- 1971 - The 6.4 on the Richter Scale Sylmar earthquake hits the San Fernando Valley area of California.
- 1971 - Satchel Paige becomes the first Negro League player to become voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
- 1971 - Apollo program: Apollo 14 returns to Earth after the third manned moon landing.
- 1973 - Biju Patnaik of the Pragati Legislature Party elected leader of opposition in the state assembly in Orissa, India.
- 1975 - The Soyuz 17 Soviet spacecraft returns to Earth.
- 1986 - Comet Halley reaches its perihelion, the closest point to the Earth, during its second visit to the solar system in the 20th century.
- 1991 - Voters in Lithuania vote for independence.
- 1994 - Peace plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina announced (so called Vance-Owen peace plan).
- 1996 - The Irish Republican Army declares the end of its 18 month ceasefire shortly followed by a large bomb in London's Canary Wharf
- 2001 - The American submarine USS Greeneville accidentally strikes and sinks the Ehime-Maru, a Japanese training vessel operated by the Uwajima Fishery High School.

Births

- 1404 - Constantine XI, last Byzantine Emperor (d. 1453)
- 1533 - Shimazu Yoshihisa, Japanese warlord and samurai (d. 1611)
- 1666 - George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, British soldier (d. 1737)
- 1700 - Daniel Bernoulli, Dutch-born mathematician (d. 1782)
- 1748 - Luther Martin, American patriot (d. 1826)
- 1773 - William Henry Harrison, President of the United States (d. 1841)
- 1783 - Vasily Zhukovsky, Russian poet (d. 1852)
- 1800 - Hyrum Smith, American religious leader (d. 1844)
- 1830 - Abd-ul-Aziz, Ottoman Sultan (d. 1876)
- 1834 - Felix Dahn, German author (d. 1912)
- 1846 - Wilhelm Maybach, German automotive designer and industrialist (d. 1929)
- 1865 - Mrs. Patrick Campbell, British actress (d. 1940)
- 1874 - Amy Lowell, American poet (d. 1925)
- 1885 - Alban Berg, Austrian composer (d. 1935)
- 1891 - Ronald Colman, English actor (d. 1958)
- 1892 - Peggy Wood, American actress (d. 1978)
- 1895 - Hermann Brill, German politician (d. 1959)
- 1897 - Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, Australian pilot (d. 1935)
- 1901 - Brian Donlevy, Irish actor (d. 1972)
- 1901 - James Murray, American actor (d. 1936)
- 1902 - Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, German women's leader (d. 1999)
- 1909 - Heather Angel, British actress (d. 1986)
- 1909 - Carmen Miranda, Portuguese actress and singer (d. 1955)
- 1909 - Dean Rusk, United States Secretary of State (d. 1994)
- 1910 - Jacques Monod, French biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1976)
- 1914 - Gypsy Rose Lee, American dancer and actress (d. 1970)
- 1914 - Ernest Tubb, American singer (d. 1984)
- 1914 - Bill Veeck, baseball executive (d. 1986)
- 1916 - Tex Hughson, baseball player (d. 1993)
- 1922 - Kathryn Grayson, American actress
- 1923 - Brendan Behan, Irish author (d. 1964)
- 1925 - Burkhard Heim, German physicist (d. 2001)
- 1926 - Garret FitzGerald, seventh Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland
- 1928 - Frank Frazetta, American illustrator
- 1928 - Roger Mudd, American journalist
- 1930 - Garner Ted Armstrong, American evangelist (d. 2003)
- 1932 - Gerhard Richter, German painter and graphic artist
- 1936 - Clive Swift, British actor
- 1939 - Barry Mann, American singer and songwriter
- 1939 - Janet Suzman, South African actress
- 1940 - J. M. Coetzee, South African author, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1941 - Sheila Kuehl, American actress and politician
- 1942 - Carole King, American singer and composer
- 1943 - Joe Pesci, American actor
- 1943 - Joseph E. Stiglitz, American economist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1944 - Alice Walker, American writer
- 1945 - Mia Farrow, American actress
- 1947 - Carla Del Ponte, UN prosecutor
- 1949 - Judith Light, American actress
- 1949 - Jim Sheridan, Irish film director
- 1952 - Mookie Wilson, baseball player
- 1955 - JM J. Bullock, American actor
- 1955 - Charles Shaughnessy, British actor
- 1960 - Holly Johnson, British singer (Frankie Goes To Hollywood)
- 1961 - John Kruk, baseball player and commentator
- 1963 - Brian Greene, American physicist
- 1963 - Travis Tritt, American singer
- 1966 - Ellen van Langen, Dutch athlete
- 1970 - Glenn McGrath, Australian cricketer
- 1971 - Sharon Case, American actress
- 1976 - Vladimir Guerrero, Dominican Major League Baseball player
- 1979 - David Gray, English snooker player
- 1979 - Zhang Ziyi, Chinese actress
- 1981 - John Walker Lindh, American Taliban fighter
- 1982 - Ami Suzuki, Japanese singer
- 1985 - David Gallagher, American actor
- 1996 - Jimmy Bennett, American actor

Deaths

- 1199 - Minamoto no Yoritomo, Japanese shogun (b. 1147)
- 1450 - Agnès Sorel, mistress of King Charles VII of France (b. 1421)
- 1555 - Rowland Taylor, English pastor (executed) (b. 1510)
- 1619 - Lucilio Vanini, Italian philosopher (b. 1585)
- 1640 - Murad IV, Ottoman Sultan (b. 1612)
- 1675 - Gerhard Douw, Dutch painter (b. 1613)
- 1709 - François Louis, Prince of Conti, French general (b. 1664)
- 1751 - Henri François d'Aguesseau, Chancellor of France (b. 1668)
- 1752 - Fredric Hasselquist, Swedish naturalist (b. 1722)
- 1777 - Seth Pomeroy, American gunsmith and soldier (b. 1706)
- 1782 - Joseph Aloysius Assemani, Syrian orientalist (b. 1710)
- 1803 - Jean François de Saint-Lambert, French poet (b. 1716)
- 1881 - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russian novelist (b. 1821)
- 1891 - Johan Jongkind, Dutch painter (b. 1819)
- 1906 - Paul Laurence Dunbar, American poet (b. 1872)
- 1940 - Eugene Bleuler, Swiss psychiatrist (b. 1857)
- 1951 - Eddy Duchin, American musician (b. 1910)
- 1957 - Miklós Horthy, Hungarian admiral and regent (b. 1868)
- 1960 - Alexandre Benois, Russian artist (b. 1870)
- 1966 - Sophie Tucker, Russian-born actress and singer (b. 1884)
- 1969 - Gabby Hayes, American actor (b. 1885)
- 1976 - Percy Faith, Canadian musician and composer (b. 1908)
- 1979 - Dennis Gabor, Hungarian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1900)
- 1981 - Bill Haley, American musician (Bill Haley and the Comets) (b. 1925)
- 1984 - Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (b. 1914)
- 1994 - Howard Martin Temin, American geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1934)
- 1995 - J. William Fulbright, U.S. Senator (b. 1905)
- 1999 - Bryan Mosley, British actor (b. 1931)
- 2001 - Herbert Simon, American economist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1916)
- 2002 - Princess Margaret of the United Kingdom (b. 1930)

Holidays and observances

External links

- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/9 BBC: On This Day]
- [http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20050209.html The New York Times: On This Day] ---- February 8 - February 10 - January 9 - March 9 -- listing of all days ko:2월 9일 ms:9 Februari ja:2月9日 simple:February 9 th:9 กุมภาพันธ์

February 9

February 9 is the 40th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 325 days remaining, 326 in leap years.

Events

Births

Deaths

Holidays and observances

External links

Leap year

A leap year (or intercalary year) is a year containing an extra day or month in order to keep the calendar year in sync with an astronomical or seasonal year. Seasons and astronomical events do not repeat at an exact number of days, so a calendar which had the same number of days in each year would over time drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. Leap years (which keep the calendar in sync with the year) should not be confused with leap seconds (which keep clock time in sync with the day).

Gregorian calendar

The Gregorian calendar, the current standard calendar in most of the world, adds a 29th day to February in all years evenly divisible by 4, except for century years (those ending in -00), which receive the extra day only if they are evenly divisible by 400. Thus 1996 was a leap year whereas 1999 was not, and 1600, 2000 and 2400 are leap years but 1700, 1800, 1900 and 2100 are not. The reasoning behind this rule is as follows:
- The Gregorian calendar is designed to keep the vernal equinox on or close to March 21, so that the date of Easter (celebrated on the Sunday after the 14th day of the Moon that falls on or after 21 March) remains correct with respect to the vernal equinox.
- The vernal equinox year is currently about 365.242375 days long.
- The Gregorian leap year rule gives an average year length of 365.2425 days. This difference of a little over 0.0001 days means that in around 8,000 years, the calendar will be about one day behind where it should be. But in 8,000 years' time the length of the vernal equinox year will have changed by an amount we can't accurately predict (see below). So the Gregorian leap year rule does a good enough job. Image:Gregoriancalendarleap.png

Which day is the leap day?

The Gregorian calendar is a modification of the Julian calendar first used by the Romans. The Roman calendar originated as a lunar calendar (though from the 5th century BC it no longer followed the real moon) and named its days after three of the phases of the moon: the new moon (calends, hence "calendar"), the first quarter (nones) and the full moon (ides). Days were counted down (inclusively) to the next named day, so 24 February was ante diem sextum calendas martii ("the sixth day before the calends of March"). Since 45 BC, February in a leap year had two days called "the sixth day before the calends of March". The extra day was originally the second of these, but since the third century it was the first. Hence the term bissextile day for 24 February in a bissextile year. Where this custom is followed, anniversaries after the inserted day are moved in leap years. For example, the former feast day of Saint Matthias, 24 February in ordinary years, would be 25 February in leap years. This historical nicety is, however, in the process of being discarded: The European Union declared that, starting in 2000, 29 February rather than 24 February would be leap day, and the Roman Catholic Church also now uses 29 February as leap day. The only tangible difference is felt in countries that celebrate feast days.

Julian calendar

The Julian calendar adds an extra day to February in years divisible by 4. This rule gives an average year length of 365.25 days. The excess of about 0.0076 days with respect to the vernal equinox year means that the vernal equinox moves a day earlier in the calendar every 130 years or so.

Revised Julian Calendar

The Revised Julian calendar adds an extra day to February in years divisible by 4, except for years divisible by 100 that do not leave a remainder of 200 or 600 when divided by 900. This rule agrees with the rule for the Gregorian calendar until 2799. The first year that dates in the Revised Julian calendar will not agree with the those in the Gregorian calendar will be 2800, because it will be a leap year in the Gregorian calendar but not in the Revised Julian calendar. This rule gives an average year length of 365.242222… days. This is a very good approximation to the mean tropical year, but because the vernal equinox tropical year is slightly longer, the Revised Julian calendar does not do as good a job as the Gregorian calendar of keeping the vernal equinox on or close to 21 March.

Chinese calendar

The Chinese calendar is lunisolar, so a leap year has an extra month, often called an embolismic month after the Greek word for it. In the Chinese calendar the leap month is added according to a complicated rule, which ensures that month 11 is always the month that contains the northern winter solstice. The intercalary month takes the same number as the preceding month; for example, if it follows the second month then it is simply called "leap second month".

Hebrew calendar

The Hebrew calendar is also lunisolar with an embolistic month. In the Hebrew calendar the extra month is called Adar Alef (first Adar) and is added before Adar, which then becomes Adar Sheni (second Adar). According to the Metonic cycle, this is done seven times every nineteen years, specifically, in years, 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19. In addition, the Hebrew calendar has postponement rules that postpone the start of the year by one or two days. The year before the postponement gets one or two extra days, and the year whose start is postponed loses one or two days. These postponement rules reduce the number of different combinations of year length and starting day of the week from 28 to 14, and regulate the location of certain religious holidays in relation to the Sabbath.

Hindu Calendar

In the Hindu calendar, which is a lunisolar calendar, the embolismic month is called adhika maas (extra month). It is the month in which the sun is in the same sign of the stellar zodiac on two consecutive dark moons.

Iranian calendar

The Iranian calendar also has a single intercalated day once in every four years, but every 33 years or so the leap years will be five years apart instead of four years apart. The system used is more accurate and more complicated, and is based on the time of the March equinox as observed from Teheran. The 33-year period is not completely regular; every so often the 33-year cycle will be broken by a cycle of 29 or 37 years.

Long term leap year rules

The accumulated difference between the Gregorian calendar and the vernal equinoctial year amounts to 1 day in about 8,000 years. This suggests that the calendar needs to be improved by another refinement to the leap year rule: perhaps by avoiding leap years in years divisible by 8,000. (The most common such proposal is to avoid leap years in years divisible by 4,000 [http://www.google.com/search?q=%22gregorian+calendar%22+error+%22leap+year%22+4000]. This is based on the difference between the Gregorian calendar and the mean tropical year. Others claim, erroneously, that the Gregorian calendar itself already contains a refinement of this kind [http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mleapyr.html].) However, there is little point in planning a calendar so far ahead because over a timescale of tens of thousands of years the number of days in a year will change for a number of reasons, most notably: #Precession of the equinoxes moves the position of the vernal equinox with respect to perihelion and so changes the length of the vernal equinoctial year. #Tidal acceleration from the sun and moon slows the rotation of the earth, making the day longer. In particular, the second component of change depends on such things as post-glacial rebound and sea level rise due to climate change. We can't predict these changes accurately enough to be able to make a calendar that will be accurate to a day in tens of thousands of years.

Marriage proposal

There is a tradition, said to go back to Saint Patrick and Saint Bridget in 5th century Ireland, whereby women may only make marriage proposals in leap years.

Saint Patrick and the leap year

:Saint Patrick, having driven the frogs out of the bogs was walking along the shores of Lough Neagh, when he was accosted by Saint Bridget in tears, and was told that a mutiny had broken out in the nunnery over which she presided, the ladies claiming the right of popping the question. :Saint Patrick said he would concede them the right every seventh year, when Saint Bridget threw her arms round his neck, and exclaimed, "Arrah, Pathrick, jewel, I daurn't go back to the girls wid such a proposal. Make it one year in four." Saint Patrick replied, "Bridget, acushla, squeeze me that way again, an' I'll give ye leap-year, the longest of the lot." Saint Bridget, upon this, popped the question to St Patrick himself, who, of course, could not marry: so he patched up the difficulty as best he could with a kiss and a silk gown. (Source: Evans, Ivor H, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988) According to a 1288 law in Scotland, fines were levied if the proposal was refused by the man; compensation ranged from a kiss to a silk gown to soften the blow. Because men felt that put them at too great a risk, the tradition was in some places tightened to restricting female proposals to 29 February.

Birthdays

A person who was born on 29 February may be called a "leapling". In non-leap years they usually celebrate their birthday on 28 February or 1 March. There are many instances in children's literature where a person's claim to be only a quarter of their actual age turns out be based on counting their leap-year birthdays. A similar device is used in the plot of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance. Category:Calendars Category:Units of time als:Schaltjahr ko:윤년 ja:閏年 simple:Leap year th:ปีอธิกสุรทิน

474

Events
- January 18 - Leo II briefly becomes Byzantine emperor.
- February 9 - Zeno crowned as co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire
- November 17 - The death of Leo II leaves Zeno sole Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire; his mother-in-law Verina conspires against him.
- Julius Nepos becomes western Roman Emperor, deposing Glycerius.
- Forty-five years of conflict between the Roman Empire and the Vandals end when the eastern Roman Emperor Zeno's envoys conclude a peace with King Geiseric. Births
- Anthemius of Tralles, mathematician (estimated date). Deaths
- January 18 - Leo I, Eastern Roman Emperor.
- November 17 - Leo II, Eastern Roman Emperor.
- Theodemir, king of the Ostrogoths. Category:474 ko:474년

Zeno of the Byzantine Empire

Imperator Caesar Flavius Zeno Augustus or Tarasicodissa or Trascalissaeus (c. 425 -491), Eastern Roman or Byzantine emperor (February 9 474 - April 9 491) was one of the more prominent of the early Byzantine emperors. Domestic revolts and religious dissension plagued his reign which nevertheless succeeded to some extent in foreign issues. He presided over the official end of the Roman Empire in the west while at the same time contributing much to stabilizing the empire in the east. Tarasicodissa, as he was known as a young man, was an Isaurian tribesman from the region now known as Armenia. The Isaurians are thought to be ancestors of the modern Kurds, and were looked upon as barbarians by the Romans even though they had been Roman citizens for more than two centuries. Still, a fortuitous turn of events ultimately placed Zeno on the throne in Constantinople. Well-known as a warrior, Tarasicodissa caught the eye of the Emperor Leo I in the mid-460s, when Leo was searching for alternatives to using increasingly unreliable Germanic and Alan mercenaries in his army. In 466, Tarasicodissa exposed the treachery of Ardabur, the son of the Alans eastern magister militum Aspar and made himself even more indispensable. By 468, when Leo's incompetent (and perhaps traitorous) generals led the Byzantine fleet to disaster in a campaign against the Vandals, Tarasicodissa was considered Leo's best general. While on a campaign in Thrace he narrowly escaped assassination instigated by Aspar. On Tarasicodissa's return to the capital, Aspar was killed on Leo's orders and Tarasicodissa became magister militum in his own right. To make himself more acceptable to the Roman hierarchy and the native Greek population of Constantinople, Tarasicodissa adopted the Greek name of Zeno and used it for the rest of his life after his marriage to Leo's daughter Ariadne in 468. Although designed by Leo to secure the Isaurian support against the aforementioned ambitious minister Aspar, this political arrangement brought them a son, who was to become the emperor Leo II upon the death of his grandfather in 473. In the meantime, Zeno continued to lead the eastern armies with a great deal of success, most notably in expelling the Vandals from Epirus, which they invaded in 469 as part of King Geiseric's revenge for being attacked a year earlier. He also led troops against incursions by the Huns and Gepids south of the Danube River. Since Leo II was too young to rule himself, Ariadne and her mother Verina prevailed upon Leo to crown Zeno as co-emperor, which he did on February 9, 474. When Leo became ill and died on November 17, Zeno became sole emperor. He continued to be unpopular with the people and senate because of his "foreign" origins. A revolt fomented by Verina in favour of her brother Basiliscus in January of 475 and the antipathy to his Isaurian soldiers and administrators in Constantinople forced him to flee the capital for the city of Antioch. Zeno was compelled to shut himself up in a fortress and spent the next 20 months raising an army, largely made up of fellow Isaurians, and marched on Constantinople in August 476. The growing misgovernment and unpopularity of Basiliscus ultimately enabled Zeno to re-enter Constantinople unopposed in 476 after an army led by the general Illus defected to Zeno. His rival was banished to Phrygia, where he soon afterwards died. Restored to rule of the entire empire, Zeno was within two months forced to make a momentous decision when Odoacer deposed the last emperor in the west and asked for Zeno's recognition as a patrician officer of Zeno's court, intending to rule without an emperor. Zeno granted this, and thus in theory became the first emperor of a united Roman Empire since 395. In reality, he all but wrote off the west until several years later, when Odoacer began to violate the terms of his agreement with Zeno. At the same time, Zeno sent a mission to Carthage with the intent of making a permanent peace settlement with Geiseric, who was still making constant raids on eastern cities and merchant shipping. By recognizing Geiseric as an independent king and with the full extent of his conquests, Zeno was able to hammer out a peace which ended the Vandal attacks in the east, brought freedom of religion to the Catholics under Vandal rule, and lasted for more than 50 years. Since 472 the aggressions of the two Ostrogoth leaders, Theodoric the Great, son of Theodemir, and Theodoric Strabo, had been a constant source of danger. Though Zeno at times contrived to play them off against each other, they in turn were able to profit by his dynastic rivalries, and it was only by offering them pay and high command that he kept them from attacking Constantinople itself. Zeno survived another revolt in 478, when his mother-in-law Verina attempted to kill Illus for turning against Basiliscus, her brother. The revolt was led by her son-in-law Marcian and the Ostrogoth warlord Theoderic Strabo, but Illus again proved his loyalty to Zeno by quashing the revolt. However, Illus and Zeno had a falling out by 484, and once again Zeno had to put down a bloody revolt in the east. After Theodoric Strabo died in 481, the future Theodoric the Great became king of the entire Ostrogothic nation and began to be a source of trouble in the Balkan peninsula. Zeno got rid of the problem in 487 by inducing him to invade Italy to fight Odoacer and establish his new kingdom there, all but eliminating the German presence in the east. He died on April 9, 491, after ruling for 17 years and 2 months. Because he and Ariadne had no other children, his widow chose a favored member of the imperial court, Anastasius, to succeed him. Zeno is described as a lax and indolent ruler, but he seems to have husbanded the resources of the empire so as to leave it appreciably stronger at his death. In ecclesiastical history Zeno is associated with the Henoticon or "instrument of union", promulgated by him and signed by all the Eastern bishops, with the design of solving the monophysite controversy.

External links

Category:420s births Category:491 deaths Category:Byzantine emperors Category:House of Leo ja:ゼノン (東ローマ皇帝)

Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Greek-speaking Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered at its capital in Constantinople. In certain specific contexts, usually referring to the time before the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it is also often referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire. There is no consensus on the starting date of the Byzantine period. Some place it during the reign of Diocletian (284-305) due to the administrative reforms he introduced, dividing the empire into a pars Orientis and a pars Occidentis. Others place it during the reign of Theodosius I (379-395) and Christendom's victory over paganism, or, following his death in 395, with the division of the empire into western and eastern halves. Others place it yet further in 476, when the last western emperor, Romulus Augustus, was forced to abdicate, thus leaving to the emperor in the Greek East sole imperial authority. In any case, the changeover was gradual and by 330, when Constantine I inaugurated his new capital, the process of Hellenization and Christianization was well underway.

The term "Byzantine Empire"

Main article: Names of the Greeks The name Byzantine Empire is derived from the original Greek name for Constantinople; Byzantium. The name is a modern term and would have been alien to its contemporaries. The Empire's native Greek name was Romanía or Basileía Romaíon, a direct translation of the Latin name of the Roman Empire, Imperium Romanorum. The term Byzantine Empire was invented in 1557, about a century after the fall of Constantinople by German historian Hieronymus Wolf, who introduced a system of Byzantine historiography in his work Corpus Historiae Byzantinae in order to distinguish ancient Roman from medieval Greek history without drawing attention to their ancient predecessors. Standardization of the term did not occur until the 18th century, when French authors such as Montesquieu began to popularize it. Hieronymus himself was influenced by the rift caused by the 9th century dispute between Romans (Byzantines as we render them today) and Franks, who, under Charlemagne's newly formed empire, and in concert with the Pope, attempted to legitimize their conquests by claiming inheritance of Roman rights in Italy thereby renouncing their eastern neighbours as true Romans. The Donation of Constantine, one of the most famous forged documents in history, played a crucial role in this. Henceforth, it was fixed policy in the West to refer to the emperor in Constantinople not by the usual "Imperator Romanorum" (Emperor of the Romans) which was now reserved for the Frankish monarch, but as "Imperator Graecorum" (Emperor of the Greeks) and the land as "Imperium Graecorum", "Graecia", "Terra Graecorum" or even "Imperium Constantinopolitanus". This served as a precedent for Wolf who was motivated, at least partly, to re-interpret Roman history in different terms. Nevertheless, this was not intended in a demeaning manner since he ascribed his changes to historiography and not history itself. Later, a derogatory use of 'Byzantine' was developed.

Identity

"Byzantium may be defined as a multi-ethnic empire that emerged as a Christian empire, soon comprised the Hellenized empire of the East and ended its thousand year history, in 1453, as a Greek Orthodox state: An empire that became a nation, almost by the modern meaning of the word".¹ In the centuries following the Arab and Lombard conquests in the 7th century, its multi-ethnic (albeit not multi-national) nature remained even though its constituent parts in the Balkans and Asia Minor contained an overwhelmingly large Greek population. Ethnic minorities and sizeable communities of religious heretics often lived on or near the borderlands, the Armenians being the only sizeable one. Byzantines identified themselves as Romans (Ρωμαιοί - Romans) which had already become a synonym for a Hellene (Έλλην - Greek). Also, the Byzantines were developing a national consciousness as residents of Ρωμανία (Romania, as the Byzantine state and its world were called). This nationalist awareness is reflected in literature, particularly in the acritic songs, where frontiersmen (ακρίτες) are praised for defending their country against invaders, of which most famous is the heroic or epic poem Digenis Acritas. The official dissolution of the Byzantine state in the 15th century did not immediately undo Byzantine society. During the Ottoman occupation Greeks continued to identify themselves as both Ρωμαιοί (Romans) and Έλληνες (Hellenes), a trait that survived into the early 20th century and still persists today in modern Greece, albeit the former has now retreated to a secondary folkish name rather than a national synonym as in the past.

Origin

Greece, Illyricum and Oriens, roughly analogous to the four Tetrarchs' zones of influence after Diocletian's reforms.]] Caracalla's decree in 212, the Constitutio Antoniniana, extended citizenship outside of Italy to all free adult males in the entire Roman Empire, effectively raising provincial populations to equal status with the city of Rome itself. The importance of this decree is historical rather than political. It set the basis for integration where the economic and judicial mechanisms of the state could be applied around the entire Mediterranean as was once done from Latium into all of Italy. Of course, integration did not take place uniformly. Societies already integrated with Rome such as Greece were favored by this decree, compared with those far away, too poor or just too alien such as Britain, Palestine or Egypt. The division of the Empire began with the Tetrarchy (quadrumvirate) in the late 3rd century with Emperor Diocletian, as an institution intended to more efficiently control the vast Roman Empire. He split the Empire in half, with two emperors (Augusti) ruling from Italy and Greece, each having as co-emperor a younger colleague of their own (Caesares). After Diocletian's voluntary abandonment of the throne, the Tetrarchic system began soon to crumble: the division continued in some form into the 4th century until 324 when Constantine the Great killed his last rival and became the sole emperor. Constantine decided to found a new capital for himself and chose Byzantium for that purpose. The rebuilding process was completed in 330. 330 Constantine renamed the city Nova Roma, but the populace would commonly call it Constantinople (in Greek, Κωνσταντινούπολις, Constantinoúpolis, meaning Constantine's City). This new capital became the centre of his administration. Constantine deprived the single preatorian prefect of his civil functions, introducing regional prefects with civil authority. During the 4th century, four great "regional prefectures" were also created. Constantine was also probably the first Christian emperor. The religion which had been persecuted under Diocletian became a "permitted religion", and steadily increased his power as years passed, apart from a short-lived return to pagan predominance with emperor Julian. Although the empire was not yet "Byzantine" under Constantine, Christianity would become one of the defining characteristics of the Byzantine Empire, as opposed to the pagan Roman Empire. Constantine also introduced a new stable gold coin, the solidus, which was to become the standard coin for centuries, not only in Byzantine Empire. Another defining moment in the history of the Roman/Byzantine Empire was the Battle of Adrianople in 378 in which the Emperor Valens and the best of the remaining Roman legions were killed by the Visigoths. This defeat has been proposed by some authorities as one possible date for dividing the ancient and medieval worlds. The Roman Empire was divided further by Valens' successor Theodosius I (also called "the Great"), who had ruled both parts since 392: following the dynastic principle well established by Constantine, in 395 Theodosius gave the two halves to his two sons Arcadius and Honorius; Arcadius became ruler of the eastern half, with his capital in Constantinople, and Honorius became ruler of the western half, with his capital in Ravenna. Theodosius was the last Roman emperor whose authority covered the entire traditional extent of the Roman Empire. At this point, it is common to refer to the empire as "Eastern Roman" rather than "Byzantine."

Early history

The Eastern Roman Empire was largely spared the difficulties of the west in the 3rd and 4th centuries (see Crisis of the Third Century) in part because urban culture was better established there and the initial invasions were attracted to the wealth of Rome. Throughout the 5th century, various invasions conquered the western half of the Roman Empire and at best only demanded tribute from the eastern half. Theodosius II fortified the walls of Constantinople, leaving the city impenetrable to attacks: it was to be preserved from foreign conquest until 1204. To spare the Eastern Roman Empire from the invasion of the Huns of Attila, Theodosius gave them subsidies of gold. Moreover, he favored merchants living in Constantinople who traded with the barbarians. His successor, Marcian, refused to continue to pay the great sum. However, Attila had already diverted his attention from the Western Roman Empire and died in 453 after the Battle of Chalons. The Hunnic Empire collapsed and Constantinople was free from the menace of Attila. This started a profitable relationship between the Eastern Roman Empire and the remaining Huns. The Huns would eventually fight as mercenaries in Byzantine armies during the following centuries. At the time since the fall of Attila, the true chief in Constantinople was the Alan general Aspar. Leo I managed to free himself from the influence of the barbarian chief favouring the rise of the Isauri, a crude semi-barbarian tribe living in Roman territory, in southern Anatolia. Aspar and his son Ardabur were murdered in a riot in 471, and henceforth, Constantinople became free from foreign influences for centuries. Leo was also the first emperor to receive the crown not from a general or an officer, as evident in the Roman tradition, but from the hands of the patriarch of Constantinople. This habit became mandatory as time passed, and in the Middle Ages, the religious characteristic of the coronation had totally substituted the old form. The first Isaurian emperor was Tarasicodissa, who was married to Leo's daughter Ariadne in 466, and ruled as Zeno I after the death of Leo I's son, Leo II (autumn of 474). Zeno was the emperor when the Western Roman Empire finally collapsed in 476 and the barbarian general Odoacer deposed Emperor Romulus Augustus without replacing him with another puppet. In 468, an attempt was made by Leo I to conquer North Africa again from the Vandals had failed. This showed that the Eastern Roman Empire had feeble military capabilities. At that time, the Western Roman Empire was already restricted to Italy (Britain had fallen to Angles and Saxons, Spain fell to the Visigoths, Africa fell to the Vandals and Gaul fell to the Franks). To recover Italy, Zeno could only negotiate with the Ostrogoths of Theodoric who had been settled in Moesia. He sent the barbarian king in Italy as magister militum per Italiam ("chief of staff for Italy"). Since the fall of Odoacer in 493, Theodoric, who had lived in Constantinople during his youth, ruled over Italy on his own while maintaining a mere formal obedience to Zeno. He revealed himself as the most powerful Germanic king of that age, but his successors were greatly inferior to him and their kingdom of Italy started to decline in the 530s. In 475, Zeno was deposed by a plot to elevate Basiliscus (the general defeated in 468) to the throne. However, Zeno was again emperor twenty months later. Yet, Zeno had to face the threat coming from his Isaurian former official Illo and the other Isaurian, Leontius, who was also elected rival emperor. Isaurian prominence ended when an aged civil officer of Roman origin, Anastasius I, became emperor in 491 and after a long war defeated them in 498. Anastasius revealed himself to be an energetic reformer and an able administrator. He perfected Constantine I's coin system by definitively setting the weight of the copper follis, the coin used in most everyday transactions. He also reformed the tax system in which the State Treasury contained the enormous sum of 320,000 pounds of gold when he died.

The age of Justinian I

The reign of Justinian I, which began in 527, saw a period of extensive imperial conquests of former Roman territories (indicated in green on the map below). The 6th century also saw the beginning of a long series of conflicts with the Byzantine Empire's traditional early enemies, such as the Persians, Slavs and Bulgars. Theological crises, such as the question of Monophysitism, also dominated the empire. Justinian I had perhaps already exerted effective control during the reign of his predecessor, Justin I (518-527). Justin I was a former officer in the imperial army who had been chief of the guards to Anastasius I, and had been proclaimed emperor (when almost 70) after Anastasius' death. Justinian was the son of a peasant from Illyricum, but was also a nephew of Justin. Justinian was later adopted as Justin's son. Justinian would become one of the most refined people of his century, inspired by the dream to re-establish Roman rule over all the Mediterranean world. He reformed the administration and the law, and with the help of brilliant generals such as Belisarius and Narses, he temporarily regained some of the lost Roman provinces in the west, conquering much of Italy, North Africa, and a small area in southern Spain. In 532, Justinian secured for the Eastern Roman Empire peace on the eastern frontier by signing an "eternal peace" treaty with the Sassanid Persian king Khosrau I. However, this required in exchange a payment of a huge annual tribute of gold. Justinian's conquests in the west began in 533 when Belisarius was sent to reclaim the former province of North Africa with a small army of 18,000 men who were mainly mercenaries. Whereas an earlier expedition in 468 had been a failure, this new venture was successful. The kingdom of the Vandals at Carthage lacked the strength of former times under King Gaiseric and the Vandals surrendered after a couple of battles against Belisarius' forces. General Belisarius returned to a Roman triumph in Constantinople with the last Vandal king, Gelimer, as his prisoner. However, the reconquest of North Africa would take a few more years to stabilize. It was not until 548 that the main local independent tribes were entirely subdued. 548 In 535, Justinian I launched his most ambitious campaign, the reconquest of Italy. At the time, Italy was still ruled by the Ostrogoths. He dispatched an army to march overland from Dalmatia while the main contingent, transported on ships and again under the command of General Belisarius, disembarked in Sicily and conquered the island without much difficulty. The marches on the Italian mainland were initially victorious and the major cities, including Naples, Rome and the capital Ravenna, fell one after the other. The Goths were seemingly defeated and Belisarius was recalled to Constantinople in 541 by Justinian. Belisarius brought with him to Constantinople the Ostrogoth king Witiges as a prisoner in chains. However, the Ostrogoths and their supporters were soon reunited under the energetic command of Totila. The ensuing Gothic Wars were an exhausting series of sieges, battles and retreats which consumed almost all the Byzantine and Italian fiscal resources, impoverishing much of the countryside. Belisarius was recalled by Justinian, who had lost trust in his preferred commander. At a certain point, the Byzantines seemed to be on the verge of losing all the positions they had gained. After having neglected to provide sufficient financial and logistical support to the desperate troops under Belisarius' former command, in the summer of 552 Justinian gathered a massive army of 35,000 men (mostly Asian and Germanic mercenaries) to contribute to the war effort. The astute and diplomatic eunuch Narses was chosen for the command. Totila was crushed and killed at the Busta Gallorum. Totila's successor, Teias, was likewise defeated at the Battle of Mons Lactarius (central Italy, October 552). Despite continuing resistance from a few Goth garrisons, and two subsequent invasions by the Franks and Alamanni, the war for the reconquest of the Italian peninsula came to an end. Justinian's program of conquest was further extended in 554 when a Byzantine army managed to seize a small part of Spain from the Visigoths. All the main Mediterranean islands were also now under Byzantine control. Aside from these conquests, Justinian updated the ancient Roman legal code in the new Corpus Juris Civilis. Even though the laws were still written in Latin, the language itself was becoming archaic and poorly understood even by those who wrote the new code. Under Justinian's reign, the Church of Hagia Sofia ("Holy Wisdom") was constructed in the 530s. This church would become the center of Byzantine religious life and the center of the Eastern Orthodox form of Christianity. The 6th century was also a time of flourishing culture and even though Justinian closed the university at Athens, the Eastern Roman Empire produced notable people such as the epic poet Nonnus, the lyric poet Paul the Silentiary, the historian Procopius, the natural philosopher John Philoponos and others. The conquests in the west meant that the other parts of the Eastern Roman Empire were left almost unguarded even though Justinian was a great builder of fortifications in Byzantine territories throughout his reign. Khosrau I of Persia had, as early as 540, broken the pact previously signed with Justinian and destroyed Antiochia and Armenia. The only way Justinian could forestall him was to increase the sum he paid to Khosrau I every year. The Balkans were subjected to repeated incursions where Slavs had first crossed the imperial frontiers during the reign of Justin I. The Slavs took advantage of the sparsely-deployed Byzantine troops and pressed on as far as the Gulf of Corinth. The Kutrigur Bulgars had also attacked in 540. The Slavs invaded Thrace in 545 and in 548 assaulted Dyrrachium, an important port on the Adriatic Sea. In 550, the Sclaveni pushed on as far to reach within 65 kilometers of Constantinople itself. In 559, the Eastern Roman Empire found itself unable to repel a great invasion of Kutrigurs and Sclaveni. Divided in three columns, the invaders reached Thermopylae, the Gallipoli peninsula and the suburbs of Constantinople. The Slavs feared the intact power of the Danube Roman fleet and of the Utigurs (paid by the Romans themselves) more than the resistance of the ill-prepared Byzantine imperial army. This time the Eastern Roman Empire was safe, but in the following years the Roman suzerainty in the Balkans was to be almost totally overwhelmed. Soon after the death of Justinian in 565, the Germanic Lombards, a former imperial foederati tribe, invaded and conquered much of Italy. The Visigoths conquered Cordoba, the main Byzantine city in Spain, first in 572 and then definitively in 584. The last Byzantine strongholds in Spain were swept away twenty years later. The Turks emerged in the Crimea, and in 577, a horde of some 100,000 Slavs had invaded Thrace and Illyricum. Sirmium, the most important Roman city on the Danube, was lost in 582, but the Eastern Roman Empire managed to mantain control of the river for several more years even though it increasingly lost control of the inner provinces. Justinian's successor, Justin II, refused to pay the tribute to the Persians. This resulted in a long and harsh war which lasted until the reign of his successors Tiberius II and Maurice, and focused on the control over Armenia. Fortunately for the Byzantines, a civil war broke out in the Persian Empire. Maurice was able to take advantage of his friendship with the new king Khosrau II (whose disputed accession to the Persian throne had been assisted by Maurice) in order to sign a favorable peace treaty in 591. This treaty gave the Eastern Roman Empire control over much of Persian Armenia. Maurice reorganized the remaining Byzantine possessions in the west into two Exarchates, the Ravenna and the Carthage. Maurice increased the Exarchates' self-defense capabilities and delegated them to civil authorities. The Avars and later the Bulgars overwhelmed much of the Balkans, and in the early 7th century the Persians invaded and conquered Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Armenia. The Persians were eventually defeated and the territories were recovered by Emperor Heraclius in 627. However, the unexpected appearance of the newly-converted and united Muslim Arabs took the territories by surprise from an empire exhausted from fighting against Persia, and the southern provinces were overrun. The Eastern Roman Empire's most catastrophic defeat of this period was the Battle of Yarmuk, fought in Syria. Heraclius and the military governors of Syria were slow to respond to the new threat, and Byzantine Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, and the Exarchate of Africa were permanently incorporated into the Muslim Empire in the 7th century, a process which was completed with the fall of Carthage to the Caliphate in 698. The Lombards continued to expand in northern Italy, taking Liguria in 640 and conquering most of the Exarchate of Ravenna in 751, leaving the Byzantines with control of only small areas around the toe and heel of Italy, plus some semi-independent coastal cities like Venice, Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta.

The fight for survival

The Eastern Roman Empire's loss of territory was offset to a degree by consolidation and an increased uniformity of rule. Emperor Heraclius fully Hellenized the Eastern Roman Empire by making Greek the official language, thus ending the last remnants of Latin and ancient Roman tradition within the empire. The use of Latin in government records, (Latin titles such as Augustus and the concept of the Eastern Roman Empire being one with Rome) fell into abeyance, which allowed the empire to pursue its own identity. Many historians mark the sweeping reforms made during the reign of Heraclius as the breaking-point with Byzantium's ancient Roman past. It is common to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire as "Byzantine" instead of as "East Roman" from this point onwards. Religious rites and religious expression within the empire were now also noticeably different from the practices upheld in the former imperial lands of western Europe. Within the empire, the southern Byzantine provinces differed significantly in culture and practice from those in the north, observing Monophysite Christianity rather than Chalcedonian Orthodox. The loss of the southern territories to the Arabs further strengthened Orthodox practices in the remaining provinces. Constans II (reigned 641 - 668) subdivided the empire into a system of military provinces called thémata (themes) in an attempt to improve local responses to the threat of constant assaults. Outside of the capital, urban life declined while Constantinople grew to become the largest city in the Christian world. Several attempts to conquer Constantinople by the Arabs failed in the face of the Byzantines' superior navy, the Byzantines' monopoly over the still-mysterious incendiary weapon (Greek fire), their strong city walls, and the skill of Byzantine generals and warrior-emperors such as Leo III the Isaurian (reign 717 - 741). Once the assaults were repelled, the empire's recovery resumed. In his landmark work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the 18th century historian Edward Gibbon depicted the Byzantine Empire of this time as effete and decadent. However, an alternate examination of the Byzantine Empire shows instead that the empire was a military superpower during the early Middle Ages. Factors contributing to this view entail the empire's heavy cavalry (the cataphracts), its subsidization (albeit inconsistent) of a free and well-to-do peasant class forming the basis for cavalry recruitment, its extraordinarily in-depth defense systems (the themes), and its use of subsidies in order to make Byzantium's enemies fight against one another. Other factores include the empire's prowess at intelligence-gathering, a communications and logistics system based on mule trains, a superior navy (although often under-funded), and rational military strategies and doctrines (not dissimilar to those of Sun Tzu) that emphasized stealth, surprise, swift maneuvering and the marshalling of overwhelming force at the time and place of the Byzantine commander's choosing. After the siege of 717 in which the Arabs suffered horrific casualties, the Caliphate was no longer a serious threat to the Byzantine heartland. It would take a different civilization, that of the Seljuk Turks, to finally drive the imperial forces out of eastern and central Anatolia. The 8th century was dominated by controversy and religious division over iconoclasm. Icons were banned by Emperor Leo III, leading to revolts by iconophiles throughout the empire. After the efforts of Empress Irene, the Second Council of Nicaea met in 787 and affirmed that icons could be venerated but not worshipped. Irene also attempted a marriage alliance with Charlemagne. This alliance would have united the two empires and thus would have recreated the Roman Empire (the two European empires both claimed the title). Moreover the alliance would have created a European superpower comparable to the strength of ancient Rome. However, these plans were destroyed when Irene was deposed. The iconoclast controversy returned in the early 9th century, only to be resolved once more in 843 during the regency of Empress Theodora (9th century). These controversies further contributed to the disintegrating rel