(17) GREECE?

Probably not too surprising that modern Greece would claim the mantle of the eastern Roman Empire as its former heartland.

Indeed, after Greece won its independence from the Ottoman Empire, it developed the “Megali Idea” or Great Idea “of recreating the Byzantine Empire, understood as an ethnic-Greek polity with capital in Constantinople”, or the “Greece of Two Continents and Five Seas” (Europe and Asia, the Ionian, Aegean, Marmara, Black and Libyan seas, respectively)”.

Apparently, the idea popped up in political debates in 1844, although of course it had older roots. And Greece took a swing at it in the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 when the opportunity seemed to present itself with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. That didn’t work out too well for them, as while the Ottoman Empire was gone, the new republic of Turkey was not as down and out as everyone had first thought.

RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)

Map of the approximate borders of the Empire of Trebizond shortly after the establishment of the Latin Empire, with the short-lived possessions in western Anatolia conquered by David Komnenos – map by Samhann for Wikipedia “Empire of Trebizond” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

(9) EMPIRE OF TREBIZOND & PRINCIPALITY OF THEODORO

(1204-1461 / 1475 AD)

One of the three major residual successor states to the eastern Roman Empire after the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade in 1204 – and the one with coolest alternative name, the Trapezuntine Empire.

(Which always prompts to my mind images of the Trapezoid Empire, itself prompted by that pyramid scheme in The Simpsons protesting that their model was more of a trapezoid).

Like the other two vestigial states, it claimed to be the legitimate successor of the eastern Roman Empire – but pushed that claim the least of the three of them, preferring to do its own thing on the Black Sea coast and peacefully abandoning its claim in 1281 or so by treaty with the Nicene imperial state that did succeed in claiming back the empire.

Interestingly, the Trapezuntine Empire was formed before the fall of Constantinople, essentially as a descendant of the last truly great imperial dynasty took the opportunity presented by the encampment of Crusaders outside Constantinople for a military adventure to found his own empire, in alliance with the kingdom of Georgia.

Before that, Trebizond had a long history of doing its own thing even when part of the Roman empire and the Trapezuntine Empire just carried on that history, only more so through the wealth of its trade and pimping out its princesses famed for their beauty.

And there must be something to that foreign policy of bling and booty as Trebizond survived longest among the eastern Roman successor states (setting aside the residual Serbian or Italian dependency that was in Epirus), outlasting the fall of Constantinople until it too was besieged and conquered by the Ottomans in 1261.

Even then, its bizarro Byzantine offshoot in a sliver of Crimea, the Principality of Theodoro, lasted another 14 years until it too fell to the Ottomans in 1475.

Palmyrene Empire in 271 AD by Ennomus – Wikipedia “Palmyrene Empire” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

(5) PALMYRENE EMPIRE
(270-273 AD)

And now we come to the other usurper state during the Crisis of the Third Century when the Roman Empire split into three, with two breakaway empires at either end of it, west and east.

The Palmyrene empire was the more dangerous of the two, since it seized most of the wealthier eastern part of the empire, including the empire’s breadbasket in Egypt.

Ironically, the Palmyrene empire originated from the city of Palmyra (now in modern Syria) which while styling itself as a kingdom loyally defended the eastern borders of the Roman Empire from the Sassanid Persians, under its king Odaenathus, who defeated the Persians in 260 AD.

For his loyalty to and defense of the Roman Empire, he was rewarded with the position of Governor of the East, holding the highest political and military authority in the region, superseding that of the Roman provincial governors.

Unfortunately, he and his son were assassinated, so the Palmyrene kingdom now came under the control of its queen, widow of Odaenathus – one of those femme fatale figures to the empire that so alarmed Rome like Cleopatra before her, Zenobia.

Although it’s somewhat sad that Cleopatra eclipses Zenobia in popular imagination, since the shade of Cleopatra wishes she was Zenobia – Zenobia did what Cleopatra could only dream of doing, forge an eastern empire as a genuine rival to Rome.

Zenobia trod lightly at first, but her Palmyrene kingdom slowly transformed into the Palmyrene empire in open rebellion against the Roman Empire and conquering much of the latter’s eastern territory from 270 AD, although historians debate to what extent that rebellion was aimed at Palmyrene independence or more ambitiously at the imperial throne in Rome itself.

And she might have succeeded, certainly in the former and perhaps even the latter, had she not been opposed by the legendary restorer of the world himself, Emperor Aurelian, who made short work of her Palmyrene Empire in 272, as well as a brief revival of its rebellion under her successors in 273