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Message:: [QUOTE="dltsrq, post: 2236696, member: 75482"]There is no firm date where one might have said "and today begins a middle age". The same is true for the so-called Byzantine empire. In reality there was only a single Roman empire which began with Augustus in 27 BC and ended with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Indeed, the notion of a separately considered "Byzantine" polity is first introduced by historians only in 1555. For numismatists, the monetary reform of Anastasius in 498 is a convenient jumping-off point. Historians, less concerned with the coinage, may cite 476 when the last western emperor was deposed as a major turning point, or the death of Theodosius in 395 after which east and west were permanently divided, or even 330 when Constantine moved the capital from Rome to Constantinople. The advent of Islam, which counts it's beginning from Muhammad's flight to Medina in 622, is considered another dividing line between what we might call "late antiquity" and the "middle ages". The coin which began this thread is Islamic and to most, therefore, "medieval" while it's Sasanian prototype would be classed as "ancient".[/QUOTE]