4155 AM · 395 CE · world history
The Division of the Roman Empire
After Theodosius dies, the empire splits permanently into West and East.
Ruling from Britain to the Euphrates from one centre had long been impractical, but Theodosius was the last man to hold it all. He left the West to one son and the East to another, and the halves never reunited. The Latin West fell within eighty years; the Greek East endured another thousand years as Byzantium.
Sources
Documents of the period
- inscriptions and coinage of the Roman Empire — the separate coinage of the two courts, Ravenna and Constantinople
Scholarship
- late Roman historians: Ammianus Marcellinus, Zosimus — the division of the empire after the death of Theodosius in 395, in the chronicles of the age
Basis: documents and evidence.