Look, I love the Roman Empire just as much as anyone (and get more than a little miffed whenever someone denies that the Eastern Roman empire was legitimately Roman), but it was in no way a democracy.

It's funny -and not counter to your point- but several of the succession struggles that plagued the Eastern Empire are characterized as "almost elections", by historians. Since its inception, the empire never had an official succession system and hence every new ruler was contested. Constantinople was so easily defendable that a popular usurper had great chances of making himself with the throne if he could take control of the capital. More than once, pretenders rose to power by popular acclaim at the hippodrome.

That's actually kind of a fair point. Another thing to consider is that if you consider only the military (which wouldn't have been that weird for a pre-enlightenment democracy), there are quite a few times during the empire that approached democracy (relative to the time period).

I guess, really, I meant to imply some sort of a modern interpretation of democracy, wherein a single city (or military) voting for the entire empire wouldn't exactly cut it.

The parent is talking about the Roman Republic, not the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire and its continuation the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire were not democracies.

> They lasted until 1453 - incidentally only 50 years before Columbus sailed

Sidenote: incidentally not coincidentally. The closure of the Silk Road and other important East-West land routes as a result of the Ottoman conquest was one of the important spurs that kicked off the Age of Discovery, as everyone scrambled to find new routes.

in context, I think they are referring to the republic.