this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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A layman's reading of the East/West split reminds me of a private equity firm loading up a division with mediocre assets and debt, only to be spun-off to inevitable bankruptcy after a few years.
I wonder if the Eastern empire saw the West as not worth governing/reconquering... or when they split were they more equals?
In general, the Eastern Empire was always the wealthier half of the Empire. But for much of the Roman Empire, the Western half was politically and militarily dominant. By the time of the formal split, however, the Western half was very clearly the less healthy of the two.
The Eastern Empire made some attempts to reclaim control over the West - notably during the reign of Justinian, with the reconquest of Italy and parts of Africa - but ultimately it was less that they didn't see it as worth it, and more that the Eastern Empire (sometimes called the Byzantine Empire in its later periods) could barely hold onto what it already had. It would spend the next ~1000 years shrinking as neighboring polities took bite after bite out of it.
Actually the Byzantinians tried to reconquer western roman lands under Emperor Justinian between 535 and 554 AD