'''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 Empire|Roman]] rule and [[Bureaucracy|bureaucratic]] growth. During this era, a combination of growth of the [[aristocracy|aristocratic class]]{{Citation needed|date=February 2007}}<!--need evidence to show why this cause Byzantism-->, the difficulties of administering an increasingly expanding [[Roman republic]] 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.
