Did Byzantium celebrate Rome's 2nd Millennium?

Factual Questions
1

I understand that in the Roman Empire in 248 A.D. there were celebrations to mark one thousand years since the founding of Rome.
Did the Byzantines, who saw themselves as continuing the Empire, celebrate two thousand years of Rome in 1248 A.D?

2

Isn’t 1248 BCE to 248 CE just shy of one and a half millennia?

3

Oh, and the Roman Empire wasn’t even split into two until 285 CE. Sole rule from Byzantium/Constantinople/Nova Roma didn’t occur until 324 CE.

4

And, ahem, of course I mean 248 BCE to 1248 CE. :smack: So you can ignore my second post.

5

Well, the Byzantine state was technically defunct or at least in temporary abeyance in 1248. The Fourth Crusade of 1204 had overrun it and in its place was the Latin Empire and its various Byzantine rump state rivals like the Despotate of Epirus, the neo-Bulgarian empire and the eventual restorer of the Byzantine state, the empire of Nicaea in western Anatolia.

Whether any of them held any sort of celebration to mark the founding of Rome, I’m afraid I don’t know.

  • Tamerlane
6

Oh, well, thanks for the replies. Very prompt!

I had assumed that whoever controlled Constantinople at the time (John III Ducas, I thought) might have claimed a link to bolster his position and such a celebration would have helped in this…

7

No, the traditional date of Rome’s founding was 752 BCE, so 752+248=1000.

8

I wouldn’t be surprised. However John III was emperor in exile in Nicaea and while the Nicaean emperors are counted in the official lists ( for one thing they had presided over a reestablished Ecumenical Patriarchate and then had themselves crowned after the interregnum of 1204-1208 ), the ruler of Epirus/Thessalonika also at one point claimed the imperial title - Theodore Ducas of Epirus had himself crowned in ~1225 in opposition to the Nicaean rulers. More distantly so did the Comneni in Trebizond. John was widely successful, but he died in 1254 without taking Constantinople - that was left to Michael Paleologus in 1261.

  • Tamerlane
9

Thanks for the extra info, Tamerlane; most of the books I have don’t go into much depth for this period…