Here the Empire did not fall. Constantinople continued to be the capitol city, as it had been
since the 320s. Its rulers called themselves Roman emperors and its subjects were Roman citizens
subject to Roman law. True, the western portion of the Empire was in disarray, but all through the
fifth and sixth centuries the people of the east could say without blinking that the Roman Empire
had not fallen.
By the reign of Justinian, though, in the early sixth century, modern historians begin speaking
of the Byzantine Empire instead of the Roman Empire. For the world had changed, and the surviving
empire had new boundaries. Greece and Asia were under the rule of Constantinople, as were Egypt
and Syria. Other provinces were won and lost over the course of years, as they ever had been.
The Byzantine Empire had Greek for its official language, not Latin. It was Greek Orthodox in
religion, not Roman Catholic, though this break comes later, in the 700s.
The Byzantine emperors could and did fool themselves into thinking there was more to their
realm. They received tribute payments from western kings and gave to those kings titles like
proconsul and Master of the Horse. They could and did claim that Gaul or Spain or whereever was being
ruled as a provincial tributary.
And so the fiction of the Empire, the legend, the ideal, which had had a life of its own for
centuries, continued and was furthered. Indeed, the more shadowy the reality became, the stronger
the myth grew. Far into the 600s and 700s, and even later, a barbarian king could reach no higher
than in some manner to associate his name and his house with the Roman Empire.