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OT but interesting fact. The first evidence we have of purple or red shoes used for kings is more than 3000 years old. Etruscans (an ancient Italian populatio

OT but interesting fact. The first evidence we have of purple or red shoes used for kings is more than 3000 years old. Etruscans (an ancient Italian population) used red shoes for their kings[1], albeit its uncertain whether they could be purple which is more likely. This habit then moved to the roman kings and later the Roman emperors. It is uncertain when it went from purple to red, but it's likely a practical reason: when going outside you don't wear slippers but leather boots, which were very easy to get in a red color, purple? Not really. You can easily find purple used anywhere in clothing, but not shoes. And who else claims (or claimed) to be the heir of the Roman empire other than the Pope? The emperor of byzanthium [2], notice how he's the only one depicted with red/purple shoes. The German emperor [3]. The Tsars [4] (Tsar word comes from Caesar, same as Kaiser) too claimed the inheritance of the Byzantine (and thus Roman) empires after the Ottomans took the city. [1] https://www.pope2you.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Etruscan-times.jpg https://www.pope2you.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Etruscan... [2] https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/QytBnfnDoP8aDE-rm3eYGbTYCpk=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-501580205-5c82be0d46e0fb0001a0be42.jpg https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/QytBnfnDoP8aDE-rm3eYGbTYCpk=/... [3] https://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/field/image/Frederick-II-Facebook-Preview.jpg https://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/field/im... [4] https://www.mediastorehouse.com.au/p/731/tsar-boot-antiquities-russian-state-1849-1853-20765720.jpg.webp https://www.mediastorehouse.com.au/p/731/tsar-boot-antiquiti...

mr_toad 3y ago
To be pedantic the Holy Roman Emperors claimed that title before Constantinople fell to Mehmed, which makes the claim even less legitimate. The Byzantine emperors carried on many Roman traditions, including wearing purple. The imperial birth chambers were decorated in purple (actually a purple stone), giving rise to the term “born in the purple” to describe their legitimate heirs, these days used to describe any old toff. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_in_the_purple https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_in_the_purple
- mrangle 3y ago
  >which makes the claim even less legitimate. I'm not sure that follows. Who specifically "inherited" the Right to Rule from Roman Empire was always more of a political claim. The concept of "legitimacy" in this regard is dubious. That said, the original Northwest European territory of the Merovingians-Carolingians had a strong political connection to Roman Imperial Rulership. Not to say that this necessarily translated to "legitimate inheritance", but arguably no territory outside of Byzantium had a stronger historical political claim.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    In principal I agree, but Costantinople had a sounder claim. In 298 the emperor Diocleziano split the empire in two different administrative parts, the western one, culturally latin, and the eastern one, culturally greek. The emperor Costantine I moved the capital from Rome to Costantinople in the 320s, the city was called also New Rome and the greek inhabitants of the eastern empire called themselves "Romei", and the balkans have been called then Rumelia a term that spread even further under the Ottomans. Even today many turks use the term "Rumeli" for balkan people (as Balkans is a term introduced two centuries ago by a german geographer). By the end of the 4th century the split was basically complete and the latest Latin-born emperor of Byzanthium was Giustiano in the 7th century. I think that the history of the Eastern Roman Empire has enough "de jure" claims for the inheritance. This also connects to Russia. By the fall of Costantinople in 1453 no country claimed to inherit the throne of the eastern roman empire but Russia. The Tsar Ivan III married the last granddaughter of the last emperor (Constantine III) thus uniting the bloodlines. The crown of the byzanthine empire was then given to the Tsars as it was the last country in Europe of greek-orthodox descendance (visible still today, both in religion, culture and language) thus claiming to inherit the throne of the roman emperors more than a thousand years after. I do absolutely agree with you about the legitimacy, I don't think there's necessarily any nor I think it's relevant, but I find this extremely interesting nonetheless.
    - thaumasiotes 3y ago
      > In 298 the emperor Diocleziano split the empire > The emperor Costantine I moved the capital > and the latest Latin-born emperor of Byzant[]ium was Giust[in]iano in the 7th century. This is a surreal approach to the names of historical figures. Diocleziano and Giustiniano are not their names in English, the language you're speaking, nor are they the actual names of the people. "Costantine" appears to be a hybrid of the modern Italian name Costantino with the English name Constantine, and analogously for "Costantinople". > the latest Latin-born emperor of Byzanthium > The crown of the byzanthine empire There is no H in Byzantium, the Greek original uses a tau and not a theta, and the modern Italian noun and adjective are bisanzio and bizantino. I really can't figure out where you're getting this spelling. > and the greek inhabitants of the eastern empire called themselves "Romei" That isn't Greek; surely they called themselves rhomaioi? What's up with the Italian imperialism from "epolanski"?
throwawaylolx 3y ago
The emperor of "Byzantium" literally was the emperor of the Roman empire; it was not merely a claim like in the other cases but an administrative and historical fact. It is more accurate to say that "the Byzantine Empire" not being the actual Roman empire is merely a modern claim.
- toyg 3y ago
  Well, technically it was one of two emperors.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    Yes and no as the emperor Constantine literally moved the capital from Rome to Costantinople and Constantinople was the capital of both empires for another few centuries till the death of Giustiniano. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > The emperor of "Byzantium" literally was the emperor of the Roman empire; it was not merely a claim like in the other cases but an administrative and historical fact. Not in any useful sense. Cyrus the Great was literally the King of Sumer and Akkad. Did he know where Akkad was? Tsai Ing-wen is literally the President of China. You might object that China doesn't even have a president, but the administrative and historical facts are against you.
  - retrac 3y ago
    If the United States were invaded on the east coast, and the invaders were stopped at the Mississippi, and the US then carried on with its capital in Sacramento for the next 1000 years, do you think the executive would no longer be called the President of the United States just because the US lost some of the states? (Credit to Dan Carlin for that little thought experiment.) The Byzantines called themselves Roman. They thought of themselves as Roman. To them, the constitution of their political order dated to 753 BC with the founding of Rome, even after they lost Rome. It wasn't just a label. For example, Latin remained is use in law in the empire, many hundreds of years after they lost the west. Emperor Heraclius around 610 AD would undertake a project to start translating all the old Latin laws into Greek (even though he may have spoke Latin himself natively). If nothing else, the Roman self-identity is important for understanding how they saw themselves in their own historiography.
amenhotep 3y ago
It's a bit weird to write that the Romans of Constantinople "claimed" to be the "heirs" of the empire; as far as they were concerned they simply were Romans and their empire was obviously the same empire as Augustus', albeit with a change of capital city and so on. And given that they were Romans and the Emperor of Rome did become the Emperor of Constantinople, you have to do some work to argue against them. In particular, very unsurprising that they'd share continue to like the same colours of shoes.
- bigstrat2003 3y ago
  It's not hard at all to refute the Byzantines' claims to being the Roman empire. If your empire doesn't include Rome, it cannot be the Roman empire. Similarly, Taiwan is not China even though they are the continuation of the old Chinese government.
  - sophacles 3y ago
    That's silly. The Roman empire could not have existed at all, delusional people claimed roman citizenship but lived far beyond the city limits. You can't be a citizen of a place you've never been, so the whole thing is just dumb and a myth. I can't believe you buy into this absurd nonsense that there could even be a Roman Empire without a megalopolis covering much of Europe, North Africa and the Levant.
  - philwelch 3y ago
    Even the Western Roman Empire didn’t always use Rome as its capital. At times it was Ravenna or Mediolanum (today known as Milan).
  - riffraff 3y ago
    When the bizantine re-took part of Italy, the local germanic tribes who had occupied Italy identified them as Romans, which is why to this day there's a geographical region called "Romagna" a few hundred kilometers from the city of Rome.
plugin-baby 3y ago
> It is uncertain when it went from purple to red, but it's likely a practical reason: when going outside you don't wear slippers but leather boots, which were very easy to get in a red color, purple? Not really. You can easily find purple used anywhere in clothing, but not shoes. Wasn't the point of regal colours that they were scarce/expensive?
- kadoban 3y ago
  Scarse is good, for regal, but they do have to actually exist. Were there dyes that would work on leather at that time and yield the desired color and not wash off in 3 seconds and look like crap?
wil421 3y ago
The snails produced red, purple, and a unique red/purple. It’s more likely they had the deep reddish purple.[1] [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple
boringg 3y ago
Byzantium = Eastern roman empire. They referred to themselves as Roman and in every way were Roman. Funny that we bifurcated the empire nomenclature for our own classification.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  If it was actually true that in every way they were Roman, we wouldn't have done that.
- coliveira 3y ago
  The reason people continue to refer to "Byzantium" (this was not the name they used to themselves) is that the Western European countries also made the claim to be the heirs of the Roman Empire. So they couldn't accept the fact that "Byzantium" was the real Roman Empire (at least what remained of it).
canadianfella 3y ago
[dead]
legitster 3y ago
> It is uncertain when it went from purple to red The same dye produces a wide range of shades between purple and red depending on how the cloth is treated/the amount used/the aging of the piece. A shift in color could very much be a gradual shift over time as styles/process change.
- 1propionyl 3y ago
  This is also true of the dye obtained from the cochinilla (cochineal) insect. Adjust the acidity and you can get anything from mauve to crimson. Soda ash and citrus juice were well known even three thousand years ago. Of course this was the dye of royalty halfway around the world to the Zapotec people even before the Aztec conquered them, but details, details.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

mr_toad 3y ago

To be pedantic the Holy Roman Emperors claimed that title before Constantinople fell to Mehmed, which makes the claim even less legitimate. The Byzantine emperors carried on many Roman traditions, including wearing purple. The imperial birth chambers were decorated in purple (actually a purple stone), giving rise to the term “born in the purple” to describe their legitimate heirs, these days used to describe any old toff. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_in_the_purple https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_in_the_purple

mrangle 3y ago
>which makes the claim even less legitimate. I'm not sure that follows. Who specifically "inherited" the Right to Rule from Roman Empire was always more of a political claim. The concept of "legitimacy" in this regard is dubious. That said, the original Northwest European territory of the Merovingians-Carolingians had a strong political connection to Roman Imperial Rulership. Not to say that this necessarily translated to "legitimate inheritance", but arguably no territory outside of Byzantium had a stronger historical political claim.
- epolanski 3y ago
  In principal I agree, but Costantinople had a sounder claim. In 298 the emperor Diocleziano split the empire in two different administrative parts, the western one, culturally latin, and the eastern one, culturally greek. The emperor Costantine I moved the capital from Rome to Costantinople in the 320s, the city was called also New Rome and the greek inhabitants of the eastern empire called themselves "Romei", and the balkans have been called then Rumelia a term that spread even further under the Ottomans. Even today many turks use the term "Rumeli" for balkan people (as Balkans is a term introduced two centuries ago by a german geographer). By the end of the 4th century the split was basically complete and the latest Latin-born emperor of Byzanthium was Giustiano in the 7th century. I think that the history of the Eastern Roman Empire has enough "de jure" claims for the inheritance. This also connects to Russia. By the fall of Costantinople in 1453 no country claimed to inherit the throne of the eastern roman empire but Russia. The Tsar Ivan III married the last granddaughter of the last emperor (Constantine III) thus uniting the bloodlines. The crown of the byzanthine empire was then given to the Tsars as it was the last country in Europe of greek-orthodox descendance (visible still today, both in religion, culture and language) thus claiming to inherit the throne of the roman emperors more than a thousand years after. I do absolutely agree with you about the legitimacy, I don't think there's necessarily any nor I think it's relevant, but I find this extremely interesting nonetheless.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > In 298 the emperor Diocleziano split the empire > The emperor Costantine I moved the capital > and the latest Latin-born emperor of Byzant[]ium was Giust[in]iano in the 7th century. This is a surreal approach to the names of historical figures. Diocleziano and Giustiniano are not their names in English, the language you're speaking, nor are they the actual names of the people. "Costantine" appears to be a hybrid of the modern Italian name Costantino with the English name Constantine, and analogously for "Costantinople". > the latest Latin-born emperor of Byzanthium > The crown of the byzanthine empire There is no H in Byzantium, the Greek original uses a tau and not a theta, and the modern Italian noun and adjective are bisanzio and bizantino. I really can't figure out where you're getting this spelling. > and the greek inhabitants of the eastern empire called themselves "Romei" That isn't Greek; surely they called themselves rhomaioi? What's up with the Italian imperialism from "epolanski"?

throwawaylolx 3y ago

The emperor of "Byzantium" literally was the emperor of the Roman empire; it was not merely a claim like in the other cases but an administrative and historical fact. It is more accurate to say that "the Byzantine Empire" not being the actual Roman empire is merely a modern claim.

toyg 3y ago
Well, technically it was one of two emperors.
- epolanski 3y ago
  Yes and no as the emperor Constantine literally moved the capital from Rome to Costantinople and Constantinople was the capital of both empires for another few centuries till the death of Giustiniano. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> The emperor of "Byzantium" literally was the emperor of the Roman empire; it was not merely a claim like in the other cases but an administrative and historical fact. Not in any useful sense. Cyrus the Great was literally the King of Sumer and Akkad. Did he know where Akkad was? Tsai Ing-wen is literally the President of China. You might object that China doesn't even have a president, but the administrative and historical facts are against you.
- retrac 3y ago
  If the United States were invaded on the east coast, and the invaders were stopped at the Mississippi, and the US then carried on with its capital in Sacramento for the next 1000 years, do you think the executive would no longer be called the President of the United States just because the US lost some of the states? (Credit to Dan Carlin for that little thought experiment.) The Byzantines called themselves Roman. They thought of themselves as Roman. To them, the constitution of their political order dated to 753 BC with the founding of Rome, even after they lost Rome. It wasn't just a label. For example, Latin remained is use in law in the empire, many hundreds of years after they lost the west. Emperor Heraclius around 610 AD would undertake a project to start translating all the old Latin laws into Greek (even though he may have spoke Latin himself natively). If nothing else, the Roman self-identity is important for understanding how they saw themselves in their own historiography.

amenhotep 3y ago

It's a bit weird to write that the Romans of Constantinople "claimed" to be the "heirs" of the empire; as far as they were concerned they simply were Romans and their empire was obviously the same empire as Augustus', albeit with a change of capital city and so on. And given that they were Romans and the Emperor of Rome did become the Emperor of Constantinople, you have to do some work to argue against them. In particular, very unsurprising that they'd share continue to like the same colours of shoes.

bigstrat2003 3y ago
It's not hard at all to refute the Byzantines' claims to being the Roman empire. If your empire doesn't include Rome, it cannot be the Roman empire. Similarly, Taiwan is not China even though they are the continuation of the old Chinese government.
- sophacles 3y ago
  That's silly. The Roman empire could not have existed at all, delusional people claimed roman citizenship but lived far beyond the city limits. You can't be a citizen of a place you've never been, so the whole thing is just dumb and a myth. I can't believe you buy into this absurd nonsense that there could even be a Roman Empire without a megalopolis covering much of Europe, North Africa and the Levant.
- philwelch 3y ago
  Even the Western Roman Empire didn’t always use Rome as its capital. At times it was Ravenna or Mediolanum (today known as Milan).
- riffraff 3y ago
  When the bizantine re-took part of Italy, the local germanic tribes who had occupied Italy identified them as Romans, which is why to this day there's a geographical region called "Romagna" a few hundred kilometers from the city of Rome.

plugin-baby 3y ago

> It is uncertain when it went from purple to red, but it's likely a practical reason: when going outside you don't wear slippers but leather boots, which were very easy to get in a red color, purple? Not really. You can easily find purple used anywhere in clothing, but not shoes. Wasn't the point of regal colours that they were scarce/expensive?

kadoban 3y ago
Scarse is good, for regal, but they do have to actually exist. Were there dyes that would work on leather at that time and yield the desired color and not wash off in 3 seconds and look like crap?

wil421 3y ago

The snails produced red, purple, and a unique red/purple. It’s more likely they had the deep reddish purple.[1] [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple

boringg 3y ago

Byzantium = Eastern roman empire. They referred to themselves as Roman and in every way were Roman. Funny that we bifurcated the empire nomenclature for our own classification.

thaumasiotes 3y ago
If it was actually true that in every way they were Roman, we wouldn't have done that.
coliveira 3y ago
The reason people continue to refer to "Byzantium" (this was not the name they used to themselves) is that the Western European countries also made the claim to be the heirs of the Roman Empire. So they couldn't accept the fact that "Byzantium" was the real Roman Empire (at least what remained of it).

canadianfella 3y ago

[dead]

legitster 3y ago

> It is uncertain when it went from purple to red The same dye produces a wide range of shades between purple and red depending on how the cloth is treated/the amount used/the aging of the piece. A shift in color could very much be a gradual shift over time as styles/process change.

1propionyl 3y ago
This is also true of the dye obtained from the cochinilla (cochineal) insect. Adjust the acidity and you can get anything from mauve to crimson. Soda ash and citrus juice were well known even three thousand years ago. Of course this was the dye of royalty halfway around the world to the Zapotec people even before the Aztec conquered them, but details, details.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]