What do we get wrong about the Byzantine Empire? | Hacker News Reader

What do we get wrong about the Byzantine Empire?

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85 pointsbenbreen101 comments

I was traveling in Greece and heard a story about the modern Greek independence fighters in the ~1850's. At the time the soldiers were traveling around the various Greek islands to gain support.

According to the story on one small island, the local children asked who the soldiers were. They said "we're Greek, like you!" The children were confused and answered "no, we're Romans!".

I don't think what you say translates the way you think it does :)

"Romios" or "Romiosyni" (the act of being a Romios) is considered in many instances parallel to being Greek.

Remember that the Roman Empire dumped Latin and went with the Greek language.

The intricate matter of the name of the Greeks :)

To be pedantic, the soldiers might have probably said Hellenes, not Greek (γραικοί). But Roman was also a common ethnonym back then, used by the Ottoman society. In Greek (Helleneke) it was spelled Ρωμιός https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%A1%CF%89%CE%BC%CE%B9%CF%8... . The point of confusion was probably that, I suppose?

I grew up in Greece, no one uses any name other than Hellene anymore. To the point that "Greek" sounds more English than Greek to a native Greek speaker.

Also Rumelia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumelia

Fun facts, there is a chapter in the Quran (Chapter 30) that is named Ar-Rum or The Roman, correctly refering to the Byzantine Empire at the time. It also correctly predicted the eventual loss of Persian Empire in one of the longest conflict world has ever witnessed that lasted for more than 600 years [1]. The prediction was against the run of events due to the fact that at the time of the revealation, Persian was on a winning streaks. The pagans of Mecca were rejoicing and mocking the Muslim on the defeats of the Roman, since they considered the Persian as idolators similar to them.

The Roman eventually won the war as predicted and victorious over the Persian in 627 AD under Emperor Heraclius in Nineveh, and at the same time the people of Madinah (at the time called Yathrib) were defeating their enemies of Arab alliances by digging the trench (khandaq) in Madinah using a military tactic made popular by the Persian. During the the khandaq war according to tradition, it was prophezied that the capital of Rome (Byzantine) at the time namely Constantinople will falls to Muslim. Eventually after more than 700 years of conflicts surpassing the duration of Roman–Persian Wars, and after many campaigns that started as early as 674 AD, Constatinople fell to Ottoman Empire in 1453 AD under Sultan Muhammad Al-Fatih [3],[4].

[1] Roman–Persian Wars:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Persian_Wars

[2] 627 AD:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/627

[3] Siege of Constantinople (674–678):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Constantinople_(674...

[4] Fall of Constantinople:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople

You're saying the pagans were mocking muslims and zoroastrians as idolaters? Forgive me but this seems like a strange claim especially with no evidence?

The pagans were siding and rooting for the Persian to win the Byzantine/Roman - Persian war since they considered the Persian similar to them in practising idolatory by the latter fire worship. When the Byzantine was in the losing streaks and at the brink of defeat, the pagans were mocking the Muslim at the time since they considered Byzantine similar to Muslim due the Abrahamic root with their practise of Cristianity (Nasrani). According to tradition Ishmael and his mother Hajar, the second wife of Abraham were migrated to a barren land (Mecca/Bakka) under God commandment. The event are recorded in both Quran and the Bible (Old Testament), and the Muslim yearly pilgrimage to Mecca is commemorating and reflecting this event. After the verses predicting the Byzantine/Roman victory were revealed, however the Byzantine finally overcome the Persian in a very short time within a few years [1]. Eventually, both Persian and Byzantine/Roman (two of the major superpowers at the time) were conquered by the rapidly expanding Muslim Empire, and the rest is history.

[1] Surah Ar-Rum:

https://quran.com/surah/ar-rum/info

I would disagree with the point that they're no less Roman than Caesar or Hadrian - you could say they were still Roman but you've got to consider that by the middle and end stage they had very little in common with their earlier predecessors.

For the biggest differences: by the time of Basil II they were speaking Greek instead of Latin, they were Christians instead of pagans, they didn't have control over the city of Rome or any more than a foothold in Italy, they had totally different styles of art and their government and military were run entirely differently. If you asked Caesar or Hadrian they would've considered it a totally foreign country.

Sure they might have considered themselves Romans still, but it's like the Ship of Theseus, all those changes add up over time. A lot of civilisations went through smaller changes yet they're still considered entirely different to their predecessors - no one would say that the modern Russians are still Norse.

Any entity changes over that sort of timescale. Modern England is very different from what Æthelstan unified in the 10th century but we call both by the same name.

Yes but Aethelstan's England at least shares a lot more in common with modern England - you could easily recognise that it comes from the same source (same religion, both have a king, controls almost the same territory, speaks a language that's closer to modern English than any other modern language except Scots).

Even some civilisations that control the same territory aren't regarded as the same - for example modern Egypt and ancient Egypt are both called the same thing, yet wouldn't be regarded as the same civilisation due to their lack of commonalities.

Not really:

* same religion: most people say they are non-religious (thought some have Christian beliefs), some who say they are Christian really do not know the right term for their actual beliefs (moralistic therapeutic deists), those who are Christian are of different denominations.

* both have a king: the western empire of Hadrian's time and the Byzantine both had an emperor. modern England is a constitutional monarchy, an executive drawn from parliament, and parliament is very different from its predecessors that existed at the time. The king is also king of a lot of other countries.

* controls almost the same territory: true of England alone, but England is not an independent entity, but part of a larger union, and that union has a lot of overseas territories.

* speaks a language that's closer to modern English: we are talking about the same era as Beowulf. That was a very different language, so no more comprehensible than related modern languages which at least have some common vocabulary (including loan words). Does this look recognisably like modern English? https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-eng...

I agree with you about Egypt but it has been invaded multiple times, had a complete change of culture, etc. There is no political or cultural continuity (except the copts?) so it is fair to say it is another thing that happens to occupy roughly the same territory.

> Does this look recognisably like modern English? https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-eng...

Oh my... I can't even begin to understand that. It looks about as foreign as Old Norse (or modern German for that matter). How things change over just 1,000 years (that's just like what, 40 generations?!).

I am no expert, though I think the language changed a lot after the Norman conquest, right? So perhaps just a few hundred years later it would have morphed into something we could more or less recognize as English? Or was it really a more gradual evolution?

Yes, Chaucer from the 14th century is fairly understandable.

"Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote".

Easier if you say it to yourself as the spelling has changed so much

Unlike England, Eastern Rome had political continuity with the Western Roman Empire, the military language was partially Latin until the end, and the corpus of Law continued from the origin, the people viewed themselves as the same people, and until the last two hundred years hadn’t been conquered or occupied.

English law does have continuity with Anglo Saxon law from even earlier, and there is some continuity of identity and political system, but all those have still changed a lot more than it did in the Eastern Roman Empire so your point holds.

>by the time of Basil II they were speaking Greek instead of Latin

They were speaking Greek the entirety of their time in the Roman Empire though?

The Eastern provinces yes - including places now considered "middle eastern", which back when the Roman conquest happened were run by the Ptolemys and other hairs of Alexander.

The emperors however, when Byzantium was established did not, as they came from latin speaking Roman elites (it was after all the eastern part created from the split of the Roman empire into two organizational units). It took a few centuries for the eastern emperors to speak Greek (and basically rise from the local elements).

Thats incorrect. Greek may not have been their main language, but most of educated and especially noble Romans spoke it. It was language of poetry and philosophy, speaking it was a shibollet of belonging to the educated. Mark Aurelius Antoninus, for example, wrote his Meditations in Greek, not Latin.

There's also a lot of republican authors that compare Latin infavorably to Greek. This was during the "Golden Age" of Latin literature. Part of why the Aeneid was such a huge deal is that a lot Roman's didn't think you could write a good epic in Latin.

>Thats incorrect. Greek may not have been their main language, but most of educated and especially noble Romans spoke it

I wrote:"The Eastern provinces yes [did speak Greek]. The emperors however, when Byzantium was established did not"

The official language of the emperors and the state was latin, until Heraclius, 3 centuries after Constatinople was established.

Emperors spoke Latin regardless of whether they knew Greek as part of their cultural education. And some only had a more basic grasp, or were versed in ancient Greek (to read the relevant literature) more than colloquial late antiquity Greek. Constantine for example had a basic command of Greek, but still needed translators for anything official.

>The Eastern provinces yes - including places now considered "middle eastern", which back when the Roman conquest happened were run by the Ptolemys and other hairs of Alexander.

I'm not sure what your point is? The eastern provinces were part of Rome.

>The emperors however, when Byzantium was established did not, as they came from latin speaking Roman elites (it was after all the eastern part created from the split of the Roman empire into two organizational units). It took a few centuries for the eastern emperors to speak Greek (and basically rise from the local elements).

Emperor Julian may have spoken Greek as his first language and he was emperor during the 300s.

Regardless, a large number of emperors knew Greek to varying degrees. Many of the Roman elites (in the West) knew Greek.

>I'm not sure what your point is? The eastern provinces were part of Rome.

My point is those places had centuries of Greek-speaking established, and they spoke Greek.

I literally start with the point: "The Eastern provinces, yes [did speak Greek]", confirming the parent's ascertion that "they were speaking Greek the entirety of their time in the Roman Empire though?".

You may be mistaking the fact that the Romance languages would come to dominate in the former territories of the Roman Empire in Western Europe for some sort of significance of speaking Latin; not at all. Places like Spain and France would come to speak Latin derivatives because the common soldier stationed there spoke a dialect of it themselves, and the Roman governance needed to talk to the working-class soldiers to get anything done. The Roman working class would not have an extensive grasp of Greek.

The educated and elite of Rome, nay, the majority of the Mediterranean would have spoken a form of Greek. Paul of Tarsus writes his letters now collected in the New Testament of the Christian Bible in Koine Greek; likewise the rest of the New Testament, as well as most of the writing of the Church Fathers, largely written by people from middle-class backgrounds.

Hence, the Germanic warlords who would come to be the ancestors of Western European aristocracy today, would come to speak Latin because they primarily were use to engaging the militaries of Rome, both as allies and as enemies, rather than the intelligentsia of Rome.

>You may be mistaking the fact that the Romance languages would come to dominate in the former territories of the Roman Empire in Western Europe for some sort of significance of speaking Latin

The Roman emperors spoke latin, and that was the language of the senate, army, and politics in general, as well as everyday life in Rome. A latin ancenstry was also a must for the most part - even supposedly "ethnic" emperors are usually just descendants of latin parents, Roman royalty or army deployed in some part of the empire.

That the elites also were taught Greek as a cultural thing is another matter. For cultivation it was ancient (attic) Greek that they read classical Greek texts in, not Koine. Byzantium had both: the people spoke Koine Greek, but the "higher education" Greek in which "serious" literature and treatises was written, and which was taught, was attic, the Greek dialect of ancient Athens.

The population in the whole eastern part of the Empire, did speak Koine Greek, a big majority as their native tongue, and others as a trade language (or in older Greek settlements). The latter that was more commonly the case for the western provinces when it came to Greek too.

> Paul of Tarsus writes his letters now collected in the New Testament of the Christian Bible in Koine Greek

Were Roman soldiers of west less Roman than Helenized-yew?

> The emperors however, when Byzantium was established did not, as they came from latin speaking Roman elites

What the Emperor's ethnic/cultural background is, and what the general populace spoke are two different things.

If we want to use that analogy, then let's look at the Ottoman sultans. The first few Ottoman sultans were primarily of Central Asian Turkic ethnic makeup, however every one of them had a policy of having children with women who were Christians of either Greek, Circassian, Balkans/Caucus, and later Polish backgrounds.

That means that very quickly, the average Ottoman sultan was almost entirely a blend of Greek/Balkan/Circassian and a very small percentage actually of Turkic ethnic makeup. Does that mean that the Ottoman empire for most of its existence was a Greco-Caucasian Empire, rather than a Turkish one?

The above are exactly right. Insisisting on the Byzantine Empire being Roman is however Kaldellis whole shtick.

It so happens I’m reading The New Roman Empire by the first historian in the article, so I can talk about this a bit:

If we compare with the Roman Republic, not being centered on Rome is a big change. However, many emperors spent little time in Rome, and when there was a civil war it was apparently common to declare some other city a “New Rome,” so that idea was going around. Roman citizenship was considerably more flexible than other ancient empires, including people of many ethnicities, and was eventually extended to every free inhabitant in the empire. They didn’t just call themselves Roman, they legally were citizens, despite not living in and never going to Rome.

We could instead focus on the similarities, like not having a monarchy. Anyone could be chosen emperor if they were in the right place at the right time. (Originally by being a popular and effective general, but later acclaimed by the crowds in Constantinople after political maneuvering.)

So I agree that there’s a “Ship of Theseus” aspect to it, but it seems like a consequence of Roman flexibility, allowing the empire to evolve into something rather different over the centuries.

(Apparently Christianity resulted in far more religious strife, though, compared to polytheism. As a state religion, it seems like it was a turn for the worse, and the history of the many schisms over nonsense is rather tedious.)

So, in your game of philosophical roshambo, no-true-Scotsman beats Ship-of-Theseus?

Yes, and argumentam ad hominem beats a true Scotsman, but loses to a Ship of Theseus.

> the history of the many schisms over nonsense is rather tedious

You might be missing something from the early Christian Church (after Nicea). The Church design is hierarchical, with one presiding Bishop with legal jurisdiction over all the activity in their bishopric; hence, fighting over authority.

The tedious philosophical differences are the vestige now because the books and writing remain while the people are long gone. At the time, there was much more at stake. Secondly, Church creed was carefully and thoroughly unified at Nicea in a formal process. Heresy was well-identified and definitely resolved, but sometimes through in-fights or at worst excommunications.

Yes, I have the impression that it was really more about politics than theology and they would be quick to disagree about anything. Often, misconstruing the opinions of others. (Sound familiar?)

But apparently these disputes were often with bishops of other cities, so I don't really see what it had to do with power?

(edit above) Church authority was codified in writing. That was basic to the construct of Christianity, directly evolving from the extensive system of Jewish Law. Authority over the written scripture was a closed system.

Authority as a general thing? lots of reasons to fight about authority -- this might need some specific examples to get more context.

Hmm, so the real problem was writing down what they supposedly agree on in detail and trying to make it law?

I wonder if an emperor ever tried to get them to stop doing that, leaving it between each person and God?

slavery and warfare imposed itself by force on every random group of people that could be found in the ancient Middle East and along huge trade routes from there. Large areas of fertile Earth had nowhere to hide from the attacks of neighbors. Where in your example, would a mother be able to have children and raise them?

In some times in India, it was actually a problem for tribes that young and old men would go find some secluded place to find themselves and god. Actual tasks of daily life, medicine and comfort were neglected for the other eighty percent of the population that were not young or old men.

In some sense it is selfish to insist on seclusion by individuals. The lesson is not at all obvious to the person who is thinking that way.

> > the history of the many schisms over nonsense is rather tedious

From the outside it can seem tedious. Certainly some of them are tedious. However, some of these controversies were important philosophically. For example, the fights over whether religious (flat painted) icons were idolatry or not changed the development of European art.

The development and arguments over "correct" Christian theology also had enormous impacts on European thought and philosophy. Personally, I believe the Christian belief of Jesus being "theanthropos" (fully God and man) helped lead to the modern European ideals of human rights and eventual elimination of slavery.

> Yes, I have the impression that it was really more about politics than theology and they would be quick to disagree about anything. Often, misconstruing the opinions of others. (Sound familiar?)

Definitely many of these arguments were political, and probably not much different than the modern culture "wars" in the USA. Many of them were probably petty, but some were profound.

> Personally, I believe the Christian belief of Jesus being "theanthropos" (fully God and man) helped lead to the modern European ideals of human rights and eventual elimination of slavery.

Similarly one could also argue that this focus on human led to climate-change.

But seriously, this focus is older than Christianity. It is already in Genesis - where there are two versions of creation story. First where everything leads to man - here other animals are created first. Second where everything is created for man - here other animals are created after.

> Personally, I believe the Christian belief of Jesus being "theanthropos" (fully God and man) helped lead to the modern European ideals of human rights and eventual elimination of slavery.

How do you reconcile the millennium between that schism and the development of the modern European ideals of human rights or the eventual elimination of slavery? Jesus was theologically theanthropos for the entirety of the colonization era and the triangular trade period.

the institution of slavery through the ancient Middle East was more powerful, more entrenched, and those that practiced it had serious weapons and jails. It is a triumph that was long won to end the brutal practices of human slavery. You turn this around like it is the fault of the nice people that it didn't happen faster.

You think the nice Christians wanted to get rid of it earlier, it just took them fifteen hundred years of active participation in it because it was difficult? Ridiculous.

>You turn this around like it is the fault of the nice people that it didn't happen faster.

No, I don't think Christianity is to thank for the abolition movement, I think other aspects of politics and culture led to it.

please include Muslims in your thought process, in that case.

Ok, why didn't those Christians abolish slavery in the ~three hundred years between that schism and the birth of Muhammad?

I always feel like this argument is almost closeted Islamaphobia, kinda reinforcing my viewpoint there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery

> You think the nice Christians wanted to get rid of it earlier, it just took them fifteen hundred years of active participation in it because it was difficult? Ridiculous.

It’s not about being “nice”. Neither is it not ridiculous if you consider the actual realities and complexities at the time. Almost every culture in the world has allowed slavery to some extent. The Roman Empire was built on slavery, and it took centuries for Christian thought to limit and then to begin to dismantle the institutions of slavery.

Here’s a great quote from a Reddit post on the topic:

> This is not a simple question, nor one that can be easily described across the entire empire. Christianity was a very diverse religious tradition even from the beginning of the religion's predominance in the Mediterranean. Early Church figures such as St. Gregory of Nazianzus, from the Roman east, launched attacks on slavery as an amoral affront to reason and rationality (Harper notes that this is the first extant attack on slavery in the Latin West, but I am not sure if that is true or not). Within the western parts of the Empire too there was pressure on the practice from Christian authorities. St. Augustine of Hippo, arguably the foremost figure of the 5th century for the Latin West, too pressured changes to the Roman attitude and approach towards slavery, he too condemned the practice as Gregory did and pushed for new attitudes towards enslaved people that emphasized the unnatural state of slavery on rational creatures. Slavery, in particular sexual slavery was the target of early Christian thinkers. They argued that it was a particular violation given the dimensions that were added on with the layer of ownership and slavery to the sexual exploitation of slaves. Harper argues that the Christian response to this was an extreme restructuring of Roman attitudes towards sex, in which the widespread availability of enslaved people was harshly curtailed, as attitudes towards the sexual exploitation of slaves were brought into the realm of official and cultural condemnation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17zxoj9/what...

>The Roman Empire was built on slavery, and it took centuries for Christian thought to limit and then to begin to dismantle the institutions of slavery

"Centuries of Christian thought" happened before the two events I mentioned, things you ignored to quote someone saying a couple Roman Christians were against slavery.

That's because I was replying specifically to your part about "1500 years of participation". Those two Roman Christians were both very influential thinkers on both Christian and European thought. Eventually direct slavery in Europe was largely eliminated long before the 1500's, at least slavery of Christians. Institutions like serfdom still continued, but there were limits on it.

During this era no other major polities that banned slavery that I'm aware of.

The traingular trade began in the 1440's and some Pope's even supported it at first. It took longer for earlier Christian thoughts against slavery began to be applied to non-Christians and among European colonies but they were eventually. Pope's began condemning enslaving Christians in the new colonies, and later ones condemned the Portuguese slave trade (part of the triangular trade). Many leading abolitionists in the British empire such as John Newton or William Wilberforce were directly motivated by their Christian faith and were very influential in outlawing slavery in the British Empire. It was similar in the US as well.

>During this era no other major polities that banned slavery that I'm aware of.

Which reinforces my notion that it was other political and cultural shifts that led to abolition, not religion. The dominant religions have not drastically changed since that time, yet slavery eventually became intolerable.

>The traingular trade began in the 1440's and some Pope's even supported it at first. It took longer for earlier Christian thoughts against slavery began to be applied to non-Christians and among European colonies but they were eventually.

1440 (really the 1490's at the earliest, 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but fairly minor) is already over a millennium since theanthropos became the standard belief. In that time, no real ideal of human rights had developed, and even the modicum of respect paid towards other Christians would soon vanish as the Reformation kicks off.

Further, one of the major turning points for human rights in Europe, The Deceleration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, is about as unchristian as anything in Europe is capable of being.

You're right that many early abolitionists were Christian, after several hundred more years of practicing slavery. Many of the predominant supporters of slavery were also Christian. When both sides are Christian, it's hard to think religion is truly the impetus.

>Roman citizenship was considerably more flexible than other ancient empires, including people of many ethnicities, and was eventually extended to every free inhabitant in the empire. They didn’t just call themselves Roman, they legally were citizens.

Rather important example: Paul of Tarsus.

> Roman citizenship was considerably more flexible than other ancient empires, including people of many ethnicities, and was eventually extended to every free inhabitant in the empire

This practice predated the Empire by decades. In the Roman Republic following the Social War various peoples on the Italian peninsula, many of whom might never step foot in Rome, were granted citizenship [1]. Caesar himself gave Roman citizenship--all the way up to Senate membership--to Gallic aristocrats.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_War_(91–87_BC)

hopefully we can agree that tarquin was roman?

caesar had control over a very different territory than tarquin, very different styles of art, and a very different government and military than tarquin, and although he spoke tarquin's language, his subjects mostly didn't speak sabine and etruscan like tarquin's subjects did. i think you can make a case that basileios's government was a lot more similar to caesar's than caesar's was to gaius marcius rutilus's; certainly the justification caesar's assassins gave for killing him was that his government was uniquely un-roman

so sure, ship of theseus, but that didn't start with caesar. caesar was already five centuries of radical changes past tarquin (who also barely had a foothold in italy) and seven centuries after the mythological romulus

Weren't the Tarquins Etruscans?

originally, yeah

Right, so even pre-Republic, the Roman purity test is kind of problematic.

agreed

I guess it can already be argued that Roman Kingdom != Roman Republic != Roman Empire. And if we continue this logic even further, they are all != Eastern Roman Empire.

But the name itself is a source of pride and everyone after still wants to claim that they're continuation of it, so much that we have more than one ship of Theseus by the end.

i don't. fuck the romans. all of them, as well as anyone who aspires to be like them

It seems that your definition of being Roman is being Western Roman. Of course, tautologically by that definition, Eastern Romans would not be (Western) Roman. The article, and the scholarly consensus, is that Eastern Romans are Romans, and they should be part of what defines Romans; and definitions like yours are motivated by historical prejudice (a term used in the article).

Given that Roman elites, including the very emperors you mentioned, spoke Greek, worshiped (Latin-translated) Greek Gods, and versed in Greek philosophy and literature, one could argue that Western Rome is actually less Roman than the Eastern. Hadrian in particular was very Greek in his intellectual bents.

As for the city itself, Rome was not even the capital by the time of Sack of Rome (AD 410). Contrary to your argument, the Eastern Roman empire recaptures the entirety of modern day Italy by 555 AD during the reign of Justinian.

There's a sense in which the roman empire in the eastern mediterranean was only ever a thin layer of administration over the broader hellenistic culture that remained from Alexander's conquests.

Thin by modern standards, but it's my understanding that the Roman administrative system set it quite apart from many of the other polities it interacted with. Certainly the post-Roman West.

Thin layer? No, the core reason for Rome's success was the efficiency and adaptability of this administration. It could always generate much more taxes, soldiers, loyalty and diplomatic influence than other states that had the similar amounts of land and people. Then, when something had to change, the elites or even the people just deposed the emperor and got someone in power that did what was necessary.

I think the "thin" qualifier here was to mean that it wasn't a deeply cultural and nationalistic embedding of a nation as what we think of national today. It was more akin to modern colonialism where a certain degree of exploitation be the colonial powers was what roman authorities cared about but the degree of cultural influence depended much on the leeway allowed by the strength of the pre-existing culture of the conquered place

This gives me strong "the people of Rome wouldn't consider them to be Romans, but why should we care what they think?" vibes.

> ... and the scholarly consensus ...

Just because historians agree on something doesn't make it true. It is pretty reasonable to demand that an empire, if it is going to be designated as the true Roman Empire, control Rome at a minimum. And not as some outcrop that they had shaky control over.

Calling themselves Roman doesn't really mean much, they wouldn't be the last group to call themselves a Roman Empire and be wrong about that. If anything, historians should be renaming the Holy Roman Empire to something a bit more correct.

> It seems that your definition of being Roman is being Western Roman.

Which, considering that was the source of the empire, seems entirely reasonable. If the British Empire had gone down a different route and was today centered around Australia, with completely different language and customs, everybody would agree it's not really British any more. The insistence from (some, not even all) scholars that Byzantium was really Roman doesn't change the fact that there was very little that was recognizably Roman left there. Of course people treat it as something different.

A modern analogy would be this:

Imagine a backwards country somewhere in the northern European swamps of the doggerland (unsubmerged in this alternative history, just so I can imagine a hypothetical group of people without offending any real population), that didn't have much going on culturally and kinda missed out on all major developments in European history.

Imagine they suddenly become exceptionally good at combat and they are just unstoppable, they conquers all neighbouring territories, they level the Netherlands below the ground etc.

Finally they conquer the British isles, and continue to expand to the rest of europe. The ruling class of the doggerland has always consumed a lot of British culture. They are all well versed in British language and philosophy and media. They do scoff the Brits as weak and decadent by nevertheless they don't have enough of local high culture so the doggerland elite basically turns to the anglosphere for anything that has to do with culture.

Centuries pass. The doggerland empire now is a fixture of Europe. Everybody knows that the origin of the empire is obviously the isle of doggerland and their capital city Doga, the magnificent city.

Nevertheless all doggerland elite travel to London regularly because the cool stuff happens there. The trade network, the culture.

Political figures in doggerland fight for getting appointed as governors of British isles and even if the overseas territories British have colonized in the past because those territories, in the eyes of doggerlanders, are rich and prosperous. They don't care much about other territories they conquered, full of barbarians they don't understand. The Brits are foreign too, but doggerlanders understand them, because they copied them for centuries now.

Centuries pass again and the doggerland empire grants citizenship to more and more of their subject. Most people living in Europe now speak the doggerland language and feel themselves to be doggerlanders. Some of them are indeed settlers from doggerland that have been given land in various parts of Europe, including the British isles. Some of them are locals who have accepted the benefits of assimilating in the doggerland empire.

But Brits didn't feel such a strong push to assimilate and speak doggerlandish. Yes it's the official language of the empire, yes they need to use for legal documents and as a language of the military, but they don't really need to give up to their English since droves of doggerlanders will actually flood London just for the opportunity to learn English. Brits can find employment easily as tutors of wealthy doggerlanders just because they are native speakers of such a prestige language.

Yet the ruling class that rules over British isles is doggerlandish; sure a bit intermarried here and there, but when politics comes into play the pride of being the ruling doggerlanders prevails over the soft cultural games.

More centuries pass. The inertia of the English language is just too big to displace. All doggerlandish elites just speak English. They are brought up with English as their first language and they care less and less of their ancestral language.

Yes they still pay lip service to it, after all they are the descendents of the "great and brave doggerlanders, who conquered the whole known world", so obviously when asked "what people are you?" they will proudly announce "I'm doggerlander, and proud to be one". They may say that in English and nobody would think that's weird. Because in that universe it's perfectly normal for the ruling proud doggerlanders to just speak English. How can that be wrong? They're doing it for generations, for centuries.

Don't tell them they're Brits though! They are not! They are not these weaklings they have been conquered by the valiant doggerlanders! They just speak the language that everybody else speaks because what else should they do?

Now imagine that over time sea levels rise and doggerland gets submerged. The original motherland of the doggerlanders is lost. Their capital now is in London and they speak English and are for many things so different from the doggerlanders that spawned them, but isn't that the case for any society when a millennium passes?

> For the biggest differences: by the time of Basil II they were speaking Greek instead of Latin

That isn't a difference. There was never a time when they were speaking Latin.

The Romans, over in Italy, spoke Latin, but the Anatolians, in Turkey, never did. They spoke Greek before any contact with the Romans and they continued to speak Greek long after the Romans were gone.

> it's like the Ship of Theseus, all those changes add up over time.

The Ship of Theseus is more about changes that don't add up over time. If I repair a hole in the ship, it's still the same in pretty much all useful senses of "being the same", and the question is whether a set of changes like that which end up covering the entire ship still leave the whole ship "the same".

If I repair a hole in the ship by replacing it with part of an 18th-century ironclad, and as damage to the wood accrues I just build an ironclad over where the ship used to be, no one is going to think I'm posing some kind of deep question when I ask whether, at the end of the process, I still have the same ship.

You don't really understand the ship of Theseus if you think that. Replacing with different things not just identical pieces is part of the question.

That is the opposite of the statement of the Ship of Theseus:

> The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus , but this isn't exactly obscure material. )

The entire project is to replace a failing part of the ship with an identical, but not yet failing, part.

edit: Never mind, I re-read your original comment. Yes I agree that making major changes is less of a paradox. Never mind.

I'm surprised also by your take on the paradox. I've always understood that the difficulty lay with the use of identical materials to replace the old ones.

It might be clearer to consider the similar formulation of 'Trigger's Broom' from the show Only Fools and Horses on UK tv. Trigger has the 'same' broom for years, despite having replaced the head several times, and the handle several times. Clearly the same materials are used here.

I would say that replacing the wooden planks with metals ones is less of a paradox - that is more clearly a different ship! Replacing the decayed planks with other decayed planks makes no sense, so I don't understand your perspective on this ...

To say nothing of the fact the Iconoclasm (which started in the 700s) was heavily influenced by nearby Islam and the contact the Byzantines had with Islam. Granted, many of today's Byzantine-focused historians here in Eastern Europe treat that period as an "aberration", but you cannot call a historical aberration something that lasted for about a century, give or take, it's clear that there was some very heavy internal support inside of the Byzantine society for Iconoclasm.

There's also not enough mentions made of the fact that after the reign of Manuel I Komnenos the "elites" of the empire (including its intellectuals) had started to become more and more "latinised"/Westernised, in fact I would say that 1204 happened because said elites had already succumbed to the pull of the "West" (the fact that Byzantium didn't have a proper fleet by that point is a very good indication of that, of the empire just succumbing to the West via the Genoese and the Venetians).

From that point on the real "Greekness"/the real Byzantium spirit escaped to and managed to survive at monastic institutions like Mount Athos, with Gregory Palamas and the associated hesychasm being the best example for that. But because today's history is written mostly from an Western perspective, the focus is more on people like Bessarion and Demetrios Chalkokondyles, humanists that "demonstrate" that Byzantium wasn't just a backwater barbarian place, but a real precursor to the Western Renaissance. It does not matter that Bessarion was basically a traitor to the Christian Orthodox faith and to Greekness as a whole at Florence in 1439, what it does matter is to gain "institutional" points today by making said period of history relevant to Western audiences.

And that's why the history of hesychasm is almost totally ignored in much of the Western world, and that's why Ukrainian monks like Paisius Velichkovsky [1] "bringing" hesychasm to Russian lands in the late 1700s might as well be science-fiction for said Western audiences, they don't know anything about any of that. That's why it's easier for today's Western-influenced historians to write down stuff like:

> or that Putin lays claim to Byzantium and its history.

as that would be a thing that Putin had done after a millennium of no cultural and religious active contacts between Moscow and the Greek lands.

Without hesychasm you don't have Paisius Velichkovsky, you don't have staretsdom, you don't have Dostoevsky, you don't have much of the Russian culture of the late 19th century going to today, so saying that there's nothing connecting Byzantium to modern Russia would be a big lie.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisius_Velichkovsky

Wonderful! Thanks. IMHO Aquinas adoption of, ironically, Ancient Greek rationalism eliminated hesychastic mysticism from Catholicism. Western writers who repurpose Buddhist meditational practice as "mindfullness" overlook hesychasm...

> as that would be a thing that Putin had done after a millennium of no cultural and religious active contacts between Moscow and the Greek lands.

Arguably the cultural and religious contact begun severing on the 16th of July of 1918[1] when the only Russian leaders with any marginal claim to a connection to the Byzantine Empire or the "Greek lands" were murdered. Not that their marginal claim meant anything anyway. During the following decades the Soviet regime continued the severance in their pursuit of ideological supremacy and ethnic cleansing. See for example the Greek Operation[2] and the Deportation of the Soviet Greeks[3].

Any claim *(by the Russian state apparatus) to a Byzantine or Greek connection is only made to legitimize Russian imperialist ambitions. And to fan anti-American and pro-Russian sentiments in Greece.

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_the_Romanov_family [2]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Operation [3]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Soviet_Gree...

edit: Added a link to the murder of the Romanovs.

edit2(*): Clarified that this is not an accusation against the parent comment.

> For the biggest differences: by the time of Basil II they were speaking Greek instead of Latin

As far as I understand it, the lingua franca of the Eastern Roman Empire never “changed” to Greek, it was always Greek in the first place.

“During the earlier Pax Romana period, the western parts of the empire became increasingly Latinised, while the eastern parts largely retained their preexisting Hellenistic culture, creating a dichotomy between the Greek East and Latin West.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire

  I would disagree with the point that they're no less Roman than Caesar or Hadrian

When Belisarius invaded Italy, the actual Romans slurred them as "Greek invaders".

"Unlike the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church was not bothered by liturgy being celebrated in different languages."

Well that's just plain wrong. Sure, Rome (not the "Catholic", the East calls itself Catholic too) preferred Latin, but it was never universal. Anyway, the rite wasn't standardized to the rite of St Francis (but not imposed) until the Council of Trent, 100 years after the fall of Constantinople (hardly an empire by then).

When exactly did Rome object to other languages? The first 1000 years when East and West were in communion and Greek was the primary language of the Western Church?

I believe, before the time of Cyril and Methodius there were the idea that western churches shared the logic that it is possible to perform religious services only in three languages: Aramaic (Biblical Hebrew), Latin, and Greek. Cyril actually had to convince the Roman Pope that his translation of Bible to slavonic language is legit, only after that the tri-lingual restriction was considered as wrong.

Some sources could be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilingual_heresy

Two counterpoints:

- They were no longer properly Roman after they stopped speaking Latin, which they did almost immediately because majority of territories remaining under their control after initial Arab conquest were Greek-speaking.

- Written cultural heritage of Byzantine, unlike Roman, is negligible, mainly because they intentionally tried to be as un-original as possible, which is a paradox: they valued not writers or poets who could write new stuff that sounded fresh, but those who could imitate particular ancient authors's style as precisely as possible.

stopped speaking?

The Eastern Empire never spoke Latin. There was always a cultural divide.

Eastern?

Basically all the Mediterranean east of the Adriatic was either a Greek speaking colony or conquest, especially after Alexander had marched across it.

In Egypt for example the Ptolemaic dynasty spoke Greek (Cleopatra was the first to even learn Egyptian) and it was still widely used in Roman times.

They edited the comment it used to say.

"The Western Empire never spoke Latin."

What about Romania? That's a Romance language, which presumably means it's derived from Latin. I have no idea how it ended up that far east, but it being a Latin-speaking part of the Eastern Roman Empire sounds plausible to me.

Not to mention that according to the article, that eastern Roman Empire also called itself Romania.

Yeah, it is significantly more complicated than the parent post implies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jire%C4%8Dek_Line

Every time some peoples came from the east to trample Europe, they came trough this patch of land and scorched it.

Romania's longing to Roman history is mostly a nation building effort. Romania was a buffer territory between the Ottomans, Habsburgs (austria-hungary) and Huns for many centuries. It was so hard to get people to live there, because there would always come an army to torch everything to the ground. They lured Germans to live there and civilize the country in return for city rights.

That's all fine and good, but a population of 25 million that speaks a Romance language still popped out of somewhere.

"Properly Roman" according to what formal certifying authority of "proper Romans?"

They considered themselves Roman up until Constantinople fell to Mehmed II. And even then, the Ottoman Turks took the title Kayser-e-Rum, literally "Caesar of Rome." And even before them, as the Muslims first expanded out of Mecca and Medina, they referred to the Byzantines as "Rum" or "Rome."

Would you say the Holy Roman Empire was really Roman?

In the words of Voltaire it wasn’t Holy, it wasn’t Roman, and it wasn’t an empire.

>They considered themselves Roman up until Constantinople fell to Mehmed II.

Not as much, especially after the first 4 centuries. They claimed a different heritage then (the local one).

Besides the western barbarians that took down Rome proper also called themselves Roman ("the Holy Roman empire") for "legitimacy" purposes (as a claim to the expanses of the empire). The same reason Mohamed the conqueror adopted the "Ceasar of Rome" title.

You could say that the Latin-speaking Romans tried to be as unoriginal as possible. Most "Golden Age" Latin literature is a deliberate copy of something that exists in Greek.

Many educated Romans spoke both Greek and Latin. Greek had always remained the spoken language in the Greek islands, though it looked quite a bit different than the Greek used today. Egypt spoke Coptic. Punic was the other language.

It's kind of awe-inspiring to think that Constantinople was more or less the capital of the Western world for like one thousand years.

If anyone is interested in further reading on this topic, 'Byzantium' by Judith Herrin is apropros.

I have also heard that the barbarian kings of the fifth century onwards considered themselves, technically, vassals of the Emperor in Constantinople. And that this continued until Charlemagne. Unfortunately I don't remember the source for this.

from wikipedia on 674-678 siege:

> the mounting Bulgar menace

hah. At that time, everyone there has been "friend" for a while then "enemy" for a while, then again. +-10 years, repeat. That has been like schoolyard's everyday play. But Arabs.. No, thanks. That "Bulgar menace" Khan Tervel went and helped Byzantians get-arabs-off-the-lawn completely.. no matter was-it-friend-or-foe. Then went back to schoolyard's games/wars as usual.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Constantinople_(717...

One thing the article doesn't mention is a misconception about the efficiency of the Byzantine military. Their generals actually had a TON of issues coming to a consensus on whether to mount an attack or not.

Hah!

Bitcoin solves that ;)

Calling it Byzantine instead of Roman would be #1

The first paragraph is

>The first thing we get wrong is that we use made-up terms. ‘Byzantium’ and ‘the Byzantines’ were invented by western European scholars to deny the identity of this state and its people, who were Roman, no less so than Caesar and Hadrian. But this is now widely recognised, so I will move on.

As the "bysantium bureaucracy" is becoming more and more commonplace in the united states and the european union, it has become a priority to convince the population that it's actually a good thing. It's for the common good guys.

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