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The significance of this question becomes all the more apparent by comparing continuity and change in the West with those same features in the East. Though what is now generally called the Byzantine Empire lasted over a thousand years (albeit for quite some time in a very shrunken state), its heritage is rather restricted. The only territory that can be considered a linear descendant of Byzantium in the modern world is that now occupied by Greece and the Greek-speaking part of Cyprus. In these two states alone is Greek the official language spoken as their first language by the population at large. This is a major negative feature. Though the Byzantines always thought of themselves as “Romans” (and Orthodox Christians are still referred to in Turkish as Rûm), their empire was essentially a Greek empire. From the time of Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE), Greek became the lingua franca of the Eastern Mediterranean even though Roman rule made Latin the official language of the whole Roman Empire until it was replaced in the East by Greek in 610.

In terms of religion, Byzantium has left a more robust heritage. The Eastern Orthodox Church, made up of a number of autonomous (or autocephalous) national churches, is today the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with 220 million adherents, largely concentrated in Eastern Europe. However, most of the autonomous churches have quite a tenuous connection with Byzantium. The liturgical language in most such churches is either Church Slavonic or a vernacular language, and though the Patriarch of Constantinople, known as the ecumenical patriarch, has priority over all other patriarchs, he is only primus inter pares (first among equals).

Another heritage of Byzantium which cannot be ignored is, ironically, the result of its demise, namely the rescue of thousands of Classical Greek texts, which were smuggled to the West after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and are thought to have had some effect in developing the Italian Renaissance.

None of these features, however, really provides much continuity with the Byzantine Empire.