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:
“There is no example in history of a revolutionary movement involving such gigantic masses being so bloodless.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)