Jump to content

Byzantine complexity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 45.72.149.182 (talk) at 02:28, 30 August 2017. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Byzantine complexity is anything that is so overly and unnecessarily complex as to be beyond understanding. The implication is often that something with Byzantine complexity is not worth understanding.

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[citation needed], the difficulties of administering an increasingly expanding Roman Empire 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.

See also