Excerpt from The Alexiad

Published in The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants, 1921

"Alexius was not yet, or very slightly, rested from his labors when he heard rumors of the arrival of innumerable Frankish armies."

The Byzantine (BIZ-un-teen) Empire—sometimes referred to as "Byzantium" (bi-ZAN-tee-um)—was a continuation of the ancient Roman Empire. In fact, the Byzantines referred to themselves as "Romans" rather than using the term Byzantine, which referred to the old name of their capital in Greece. In A.D. 330, the center of Byzantium had become Constantinople (kahn-stan-ti-NOH-pul), capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, Byzantium became more and more separated from Western Europe. This led to a division of faiths, with Western Europe adhering to Latin Christianity, or Roman Catholicism, and...