TITLE: Ship of Theseus - Roman Empire
SUBTITLE: To me, the Byzantines were as Roman as I am Anglo-Saxon.
AUTHOR: Peter Banks
DATE: 2025-04-17
URL: https://peterbanks.org/essays/ship-of-theseus-roman-empire
SOURCE: https://peteribanks.substack.com/p/ship-of-theseus-roman-empire

Academic and cultural fads in history come and go, but it’s fair to say that the current cultural consensus holds that the Byzantine Empire is another name for the final stage of the Roman state. It’s undeniable that the Byzantines saw themselves this way; they referred to themselves as Rhomaioi—Greek for Roman—and there was clear institutional and legal continuity that can be traced from the rise of the city of Rome through to 1453. But this consensus doesn’t sit right with me.

As a layperson who loves history, the late Byzantine Empire feels completely disconnected from the Rome of Marius or Virgil. It’s impossible to pinpoint a single moment when the two societies diverged; instead, there seems to have been a process analogous to speciation. Where, a continuous accumulation of changes—each one almost insignificant on its own—collectively resulted in a profound transformation. The erosion of Roman legalism, the diminishing use of Latin in administration, the fading centrality of Roman citizenship, the loss of republicanism, the displacement of the Roman pantheon, the dissolution of classical Roman class structures, the decline of the yeoman farmer, and even the biological waning of the pre-imperial Latin population accumulated gradually, until the edifice was rendered unrecognizable. By the rule of Justinian the Great, what remained resembled the Diadochi of the post-Alexander Near East far more than the Roman Republic.

A useful analogy for this process is the classic thought experiment known as the Ship of Theseus. Theseus, the mythical king of Athens, after defeating the Minotaur, returned home on a wooden ship. To celebrate this heroic accomplishment, the citizens of Athens replicated this journey every year in the same ship. But as the years passed, parts of the ship began to show their age. To simplify, let’s assume the ship is constructed of 100 wooden pieces. As one piece begins to rot or warp, the citizens replace it. Is it still the same ship? It would be absurd to argue that replacing a single floorboard turns it into something else. But what happens when everything has been replaced? Now, imagine that the parts couldn’t be perfectly replicated, and each replacement altered the ship slightly—making it longer or changing its colors. Eventually, after centuries, every single piece of the ship has been replaced by one altered, in large or small ways, and not a single part of the original vessel remains identical. Is it still the same ship? I would argue it is not, even if it fulfills the same ceremonies and carries the same name. 

This is a natural process. Since the circumstances of life aren’t static, our inherited institutions evolve over time. J.J. McCullough, in a video titled Canada has failed, quotes Canadian writer Will Ferguson’s idea that Canada was built on three principles: 1) keeping the Americans out, 2) keeping the French in, and 3) trying to make the Natives somehow disappear. By these standards, modern Canada is largely a failed project. But Canada hasn’t failed; rather, the objectives of its citizenry have simply changed. When we say things like China has existed for 4,000 years, or that Western civilization can be traced from its origins in ancient Greece, or that Rome existed for over 2,000 years, we risk giving the false impression that we’re pointing to something immutable. That is simply not the case. Mapping continuous changes to discrete categories is always challenging, but to me, the Byzantines were as Roman as I am Anglo-Saxon.
