On Annoyingly Erroneous Bumper Stickers

You know, usually I'm all about taking it easy and not letting things bother me. I'm not a party pooper or a killjoy. But I got really annoyed yesterday. By a bumper sticker.

It read "If you're so Goth, where were you when we sacked Byzantium?"

Ha ha, right?

NO.

Allow me to put on my Pedantic History Nerd Hat for a moment. First of all, the Goths (either the Ostrogoths OR the Visigoths) never sacked "Byzantium". They sacked ROME, and they did it in 410 AD. By that time, "Byzantium" didn't even exist, as it had been known as "New Rome", or Constantinople since around 330 AD, when Emperor Constantine I built a new city around ancient Byzantium, which was founded sometime around 660 B.C.

Secondly, Constantinople wasn't sacked until nearly a millenium after the fall of Rome, when the Fourth Crusade came a'knocking in 1203. It can't even be said that Goths had anything to do with that sacking, either, as the Fourth Crusade was comprised mostly of Venetians, Flemish, and the French.

In conclusion, it is a stupid bumper sticker, I am a huge nerd, and anyone visiting Constantinople immediately after 1203 would probably have seen something like this:

Not Dead!

To prove it, I made you a mixtape:

And a slideshow!

See? Dead hoboes don't make mixtapes or slideshows*!



*except maybe Zombie Hoboes. They might.