Why was the roman empire divided into two called?

Answer 1

The Romans Empire was never divided. In 286 the emperor Diocletian created a co-emperorship and designated Milan (in Italy) as the imperial capital of the western part of the Roman Empire and Nicomedia (in northwestern Turkey) as the imperial capital of the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Rome became the nominal capital of the whole empire. West and east were administrative sub-subdivisions of a single empire which, Diocletian stressed, was indivisible. Other subdivisions were some two hundred provinces which Diocletian grouped into 12 dioceses. Co-emperorship was not new. Previous emperors had ruled with their sons as co-emperors, with one of them in charge of the western part and one in charge of the eastern part. After Diocletian there were alternations of periods of sole emperorships and co-emperorships, which further demonstrates that the empire was bot divided.

The terms Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire have been coined by historians. The Romans had only one term: Roman Empire.

Byzantine Empire is also a term coined by historians. They use it to indicate the eastern part of the Roman Empire after the fall of the western part. The western part of the Roman empire fell under the weight of invasions by Germanic peoples. The eastern part was not affected by these invasions and continued to exist for another 1,000 years. The Romans did not use this term, they called it Roman Empire or Romania (this referred to this empire and not the country which was later called Romania).

The term Byzantine is derived from Byzantium, the Greek city which was redeveloped, turned into the imperial capital of the eastern part of the Roman Empire and renamed Constantinople (city of Constantine) by emperor Constantine the Great in 330. It is used to indicate the fact that not long after the fall of the western part, this empire became centred on Greece and Greek in character after it lost most of its non-Greek territories. Greek replaced Latin as the official language of this empire in 620, some 150 years after the fall of the west.