Crossed off the list: The second-to-last Roman emperor

There was no intention of pointing out the Greekness of the Byzantine Empire as a negative. Quite the opposite actually. I find that calling the Byzantine Empire 'Roman' undermines the Greek nature of that civilisation. Greece didn't die when Romans invaded. For me, the Byzantine empire is as important as Classical Greece. Two sides of the same coin (purdon the pun!)

I agree and I believe that Greece was very lucky to be conquered by the Romans during its decline rather than by someone else. Some conquerors choose genocide and anihilation, but luckily for the Greeks,in the Roman case it was more like appropiation and appreciation. That eventually made the Byzantine empire possible, which also greatly benefited from the Roman administrative practices and structure. Having said all that, the Carthaginians (if there were any left) wouldn't have anything kind to say about the Romans.

To be honest, it is quite evident that theological differences were the 'excuse' and political differences were the main reason for the schism. It was all about where the ecclesiastical power were supposed to be based, Rome or Constantinople.

Don't forget that the notion of 'national identity' is a very recent one and it actually appeared around that time (the 19th century). Greece when it was conquered by Rome was hardly united. They were aware that they were all Greeks, but this didn't stop them fighting and killing each other in kingdom vs kingdom, city state vs city state. During the Ottoman period, the important uniting factor was religious identity and this is how people were mostly seperated/united.

 

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Great write up @ValiantKnight! Eventhough these coin types are of crude style, they are somehow very attractive and I actually want one myself now!

I totally agree with @Only a Poor Old Man (and some other people here).

The Hellenic world became merged with the Roman world and the ethnic Greeks called themselves Rhomaioi until the very end. However there has formed a distinct culture over the year, heavily influenced by the orthodox religion and different from the Roman Imperials. After the end of the "dark ages" (ca. 7 to 8th centuries) the Empire took the "character" that western historiography calls "Byzantine", different from the Western Romans, and the predominance of the Greek language against Latin was almost total. The ethnic Greeks still recognized themselves as descendant from the Hellenics and the Latin language never replaced Greek as the language of communication among people, of philosophy, science and the church.

 

The Empire undoubtably became Hellenised, but I see the traditional Papal, Frankish & English historical narrative as an overtly political one.

Hellenisation aside, the legal entity that was the Roman Empire, though greatly and progressively diminished, continued right up until 1453, and aside from a brief stint of Gothic rule, held Rome itself into the 8th century.

The fallacy of 476 seems more apt than the fall.

 

I think this story gives the most compelling answer, for me at least as to whether the Eastern Empire should be considered Greek or Roman:

On 8 October 1912, the island of Lemnos became part of Greece after being captured from the Ottoman Empire. Peter Charanis, born on the island in 1908 and later a professor of Byzantine history at Rutgers University, recounts when the island was occupied and Greek soldiers stationed themselves in the public squares.

Some of the children ran to see what Greek soldiers looked like. ‘‘What are you looking at?’’ one of them asked.

‘‘At Hellenes,’’ the children replied.

‘‘Are you not Hellenes yourselves?’’ a soldier retorted.

‘‘No, we are Romans."

 

I would say the term 'Roman' no longer meant 'a person from Rome who spoke Latin', precisely because it evolved and assimilated other cultures.

By the time of the schism in 1054 the Western Roman Empire hadn't existed for 600 years. After 600 years, the Roman Catholics would also have been rather different to the Romans of the Roman Empire. Most people didn't speak Latin for a start.

Indeed, the Romans persecuted Christians until after Rome ceased to be the de facto capital of the Empire. Was being Christian as un-Roman as speaking Greek? Or were they both Roman characteristics?

 

I never denied they did not call themselves Romans and trying to make a distinction if they considered themselves "Greek or Roman" just does not make sense.
I try to say is that they were Romans i.e. Citizens of Rome, being part of the Roman Empire (eventhough after the 7--8th century it got a complete different character), but still ethnic Greeks and still they considered themselves descendant of the Hellenics. You should also not forget, Hellenics were pagans, those orthodox Greeks did not want themselves to be considered a pagan, and being a Hellenic was a dirty term as an Orthodox Christian.
During the Ottoman Empire, all Orthodox people in Greece and the Balkans (including Bulgarians, Albanians, Vlachs, Georgians and Serbians) were all called "Rum" i.e. Romans part of the "Rum Millet" i.e. Roman Nation. For that reason ethnic Greeks by default continued to call themselves Romans after 1453. There were so many different ethnics in that millet, yet the Ottomans consider them all birds of a feather.

Regarding the Lemnos account. As @Only a Poor Old Man mentioned, the nationalistic awareness started in the 19th century, all around the beginning of the Hellenic state. Lemnos was not part of this "Hellenic state" until 1912. The locals were not fully consciousness raised and the the children fell back on the Byzantine and Ottoman default. They just did not know yet those "Hellenics" were actually the same people as them, the nationalist consciousness just took a while to propagate and did not reach Lemnos until 1912.
I have a unique family name from Epirus and a book is written about it by one of my family members (he is a writer) and there they called themselves a Roman as well all the way till the liberation from the Ottomans. It was not just Lemnos, but all parts that were still under Ottoman rule after 1821. The Ottoman empire still existed yet in 1827, the Greeks at the third national assembly at Troezen established the Hellenic State (Eλληνικὴ Πολιτεία). They were not any different then all the other people living in the Ottoman ruled Greek parts in that time.

Just a side note, in my opinion Lemnos got liberated rather than "captured" from the Ottoman Empire.

 

I don't think that this anecdotal story really proves anything. Even if those children fancied the idea of being 'Roman', it didn't make them any less Greek.

The main question here, was the Byzantine Empire a direct continuation of the Roman Empire especially if you look at it in modern ethnological terms? The answer would be no as the most common criteria applied for such identification is ethnicity, language and religion. That's why the term 'Byzantine' was invented. Historians didn't see the logic into calling the empire Roman any more. However, nobody can deny its influence as the Byzantine Empire kept using the Roman administration structure and was a mixture of both Hellenic and Roman culture especially in the early years.

Edit: I just saw Pavlos' response and he explained it great and in better detail than me.

 

I think we are all 95% in agreement here. However, if you try to impose this rule (ethnicity, language and religion) on the Roman Empire at any point you will come unstuck, not just in the Byzantine era.

 

Your response is similar to what I would have made. The areas of Greece were no less Greek in 200AD than 500AD, and yet in 200AD “Greece” was Roman. If religion is a factor then the Roman Empire was officially gone once Theodosius came about.

I think a fun question to consider would be: if all provinces in the West fell in 476 except the Italian peninsula, and the peninsula remained part of the Empire until 1453, would we call it the Roman or Byzantine Empire?

 

..i'm of that school of thought also...Byzantine it is...(and they spoke Greek too! )

 

This was a great read, thank you! Highlighting the point on captured versus liberated I agree 100%. I’m not sure why every write up on this story uses that word, and I simply copy-pasted it for my post. I should have mentioned my own disagreement with that word choice in my original reply!

 

Particularly if in 1453 the Byzantines decided to move the capital back to Rome to get away from the Ottomans...

 

Very informative post, VK.
Nice coin as well.

 

Meant to reply back to this very informative discussion (thanks guys!), but life got busy

How I see it, due to the evolution of the concept and the culture over two-thousand years, there is no one definition to what it means to be "Roman". As the direct, political continuation of the empire founded by Augustus, the Byzantine Empire was, at least from a modern/legal standpoint, that very same empire, even up to 1453. By this interpretation, the Byzantine Empire's people (excluding slaves and foreigners, at least) would be appropriately be considered Roman citizens (which as already stated, is how they self-identified during the empire's existence). Going further back, we also have the 211 AD Edict of Caracalla that gave full Roman citizenship to all free-born inhabitants of the empire; before, this was restricted to Italians.

Of course, it all just depends on how you view, define and label things (such as on how much a culture, people or state needs to change to be different enough to warrant a new label). One person's post-610 AD Greek-speaking Eastern Roman is another person's Byzantine. Ethnically, the majority of the inhabitants of the ERE were Greek, not Latin-speaking Italians/Western Europeans, but can be seen as Roman in the sense that they followed the majority-culture of the empire, which was Roman-based/influenced (itself influenced by earlier ancient Greek culture). The culture followed by the Greeks of the ERE in 1453 was very different than the Roman culture of 1 AD, but since those Greeks were technically Roman citizens of the (Eastern) Roman Empire referred to as such themselves and by contemporaries (not all, especially in Western Europe) as such, by association, would it be correct to call their culture "Roman" by this definition as well?

Nothing new of substance added to the conversation, but just wanted to get my two folles in