Byzantium -

When the Ottomans took the city, Greek scholars fled west to Italy with their trunk-loads of Plato and Aristotle. Those refugees triggered the . Without Byzantium, there would have been no Leonardo da Vinci, no Shakespeare, no Age of Enlightenment. Why It Matters Today We use the word "byzantine" to mean overly complex or devious. That’s a disservice to a people who kept the light of classical knowledge burning while Western Europe stumbled through the Dark Ages.

Welcome to .

Or, as historians now prefer to call it, . For over a thousand years (330–1453 AD), this civilization was the wealthiest, most sophisticated, and most resilient power in Europe. Yet, ask the average person on the street, and they might think "Byzantine" just means "overly complicated." byzantium

Eleanor Cross Reading time: 5 minutes

But the real tragedy came in 1204.

When we think of the Roman Empire, we picture legions in sandals, the Colosseum, and the fall of an era in 476 AD. But what if I told you Rome didn’t actually die? It just changed its postal code. When the Ottomans took the city, Greek scholars