History
The Byzantine Empire was the end result of centuries of Roman rule and bureaucratic growth. During this era, a combination of growth of the aristocratic class, the difficulties of administering an increasingly expanding Roman republic led to a complex and opaque system of government that no one who had not grown up inside it had much hope of understanding.
It was so complex that Byzantine complexity has come to refer to any overly complex system.
Read more about this topic: Byzantine Complexity
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)