Roman/Byzantine division

We've had threads like this before, but I don't think there's been one for some time, so I thought I'd open a thread to gain people's opinions.

When, if at all, do you think that "late Rome" shifted decisively to a civilisation that is better to be referred to as "Byzantine" rather than "Roman"? Does the change come immediately with Constantine's conversion or Theodosius' division? Does it perhaps come with Justinian's reforms to the state, or Heraclius' adoption of Greek titles and ceremonial language? Or is the whole idea of any break in continuity at all a bad one?

Personally, I think that there is a strong case for separating out a "late Roman" from a "Byzantine" state- and, furthermore, that that Byzantine state came to an end, not in 1453, but actually in 1204 with what remained afterwards a collection of successor states, three of which (the Latin Empire, the Nicaean Empire, and the Ottoman Sultanate) had their capitals at Constantinople at various points.

Anyway, I'd put the point of division between "late Roman" and "Byzantine" sometime around the year 710, with the end of the Heraclian dynasty, and the removal by the Arabs of the last imperial garrisons in North Africa and the Western Mediterranean. This, far more than the initial Arab conquests, permanently ended the Empire's pretensions of domination of the whole Mediterranean, and forced the Emperors into focusing much more on local policies. A good example of this is in religion. Until around this point, versions of Monothelite doctrine had been floated with more or less enthusiasm by Emperors to attempt to compromise and assert universal power over the Church. Afterward, religious policy became more and more introverted upon the whims of the provincial populations of Thrace and Anatolia- Iconoclasm is a reflection of this.

The Isaurian Emperors should be considered "Byzantines" rather than "Romans" for this very different outlook on the world. They clearly understood that their Roman Empire was a different state from that which had existed a century earlier, in the way that the Heraclians perhaps did not, and acted accordingly. I would argue properly developing the Thematic system, giving up attempts at reconquest of Syria and Armenia in favour of pushing the Arabs fully off the Anatolia plateau and being happy to alienate bishops from beyond the imperial core in an attempt to appeal to the religious views of that Anatolian core are examples of that process. When Isaurian Emperors did behave like "Romans", as Constantine V seems to have done, they were consciously reviving traditions perceived to have been lost- restoring aqueducts and holding triumphs, for example. The contrast I'm making here is with Justinian and Heraclius, who were attempting to continue traditions that existed in their own day, rather than reviving things that no longer happened in their day.

So, basically- up to 710, I use "Roman" about the state, afterward, I prefer "Byzantine", and for the post-1204, I simply call the states Greek/Latin/Turkish successors. But what is your view? Am I talking a load of nonsense?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

I'm not particularly fond of the word Byzantine.
Perhaps if it it weren't for that "Muntenian entity" we could use Roman vs Rhomanian ie "of Rome" vs "of Rhomania".

As for the division I'm happy for 1204 as the end of unqualified or Eastern Rhomania but not too sure where to place the Roman/Rhomanian boundary.

It seems to me that there's no one defining moment when the Roman Empire can be said to have morphed into the Byzantine Empire. Rather I should say there are many defining moments: the reforms of Diocletian (doing away with the primacy of Rome and Italia, inaugurating a true autocracy), the formal shift of the capital to the Bosporus under Constantine, the making of Christianity the state religion under Theodosius, Justinian's failed attempts to reunify the two halves of the empire and the massive territorial losses that eventually followed on that, and finally the reforms of Heraclius by which time the empire was much reduced and very much changed from the original 'Roman' state. These are a few of the most important events.

Because there are so many reigns and events that compete in the imagination for the defining transition between Roman and Byzantine, I think it's more appropriate to think of a general Roman-Byzantine transitional period, spanning from Diocletian to Heraclius (let's say 284-641 AD), rather than a clear-cut definition. Diocletian's reign really was the long-awaited end of the Roman Principate and marks many changes that would later be very important for identifying the Byzantine state, and by the time of Heraclius these alterations had progressed to such a point that it's no longer really possible to call the empire 'Roman'.

I guess I'm somewhat fond of never using the "Byzantine" label, given its pejorative aspects. Though I like the idea of referring to the later Eastern Empire as "Rhomania".

That said, I would agree that there is a definitive cultural/political shift that occurs, and that approx 700 is probably the place to draw the line. In addition to the aspects you mention, I would add two further reasons for drawing the line there.

1. For a generation or two after the loss of the Middle East, the Eastern Empire attempted to maintain its pre-existing fiscal and administrative structure. By around 700, the collapse of Imperial tax revenues has devastated the fiscal system, rendered the pre-existing military and administrative system unaffordable, and a general de-monetarization of the economy has occurred, especially in the rural areas/less important cities. This creates an Empire that is VERY different economically, politically and socially from what had gone before.

2. Although the Arab invasions get all the press, the Slav invasions of the Balkans also played a major part in changing the cultural makeup of the Empire. The loss of most of the inland Balkans deprived the Eastern Empire of the major portion of its territory (excluding the tenuously held Italy and the also lost in this period Africa) where Romance languages were dominant. After 700, Romance speaking portions of the Empire are reduced to just coastal territories in Dalmatia and fragments of Italy. By contrast the inland Balkans had been THE major military recruiting grounds of the Imperial army, which also had the incidental role of preserving the importance of Latin in military and political affairs into the 7th century, even though in absolute terms, Latin was not a major spoken language of the Imperial population in the East. By the time that Empire was able to regain some of these areas, language shift had occurred, and the surviving Romance-speaking populations were scattered population groups, not a cohesive major population. Combining this with the fact that the Arabs deprived the empire of its Coptic and Aramaic speaking regions, and the 7th century is responsible for making the Eastern Empire a much more "greek" place, and a lot less cosmopolitan as well.

As for 1204, I'm torn. I do think that it's worth underlying the political disjuncture between the Empire before 1204 and the Nicaean state after it, but I also think of China. We are comfortable referring to "Imperial China" in lots of different periods, even though individual dynasties were often separated by profound administrative breaches. So I guess that once the Nicaean's take Constantinople, I'm comfortable calling them the Empire again.

I'd put it at 610

I've always found this to be one of the most interesting questions about the late empire - it's not just a semantic question.

Just as the shift of Late Antiquity to Medieval is a process more than a specific point in time, so too can it be difficult to pin down when the Roman Empire in the East really becomes something else, something we've come to call Byzantine - not least because the Byzantines themselves never recognized any such break.

But unlike Tangerine, I do think there is a fairly short period of time when we can say there was a fairly decisive transformation. I think the Pirenne Thesis provides a starting point, and an antidote to Gibbon's reluctant acceptance of a continuous polity that only ends in 1453 - that is, that the real decisive break in Mediterranean civilization happened not with the Germanic invasions of the 5th century, but the Sassanid and Arab invasions of the 7th. Peter Heather's focus on the elements of Romanness is helpful here, especially given what he notes about what the archeological evidence now tells us. There were distinctive notes about Roman society, both rural and urban, notes that we can identify in the hard evidence of what we've found:

Gibbon concluded that the Roman Empire survived in the eastern Mediterranean for virtually a millennium, dating its fall to Ottoman capture of Constantinople in 1453. To my mind, however, the rise of Islam in the seventh century caused a decisive break in east Mediterranean Romanness. It robbed Justinian's state of three-quarters of its revenues and prompted institutional and cultural restructuring on a massive scale. Even though the rulers of Constantinople continued to call themselves 'Emperors of the Romans' long after the year 700, they were actually ruling an entity best understood as another successor state rather than a proper continuation of the Roman Empire. But even by my recokoning, a fully Roman state survived in the eastern Mediterranean for more than a century and a half after the deposition of Romulus Augustulus.

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Heather notes many aspects of this Romanness uncovered by archeological evidence; but to that we could add the Latin language as an official tongue of government and army, and at least as lingua franca for much of the educated elite; the basic Roman territorial and civic structure (consuls, tribunes, prefects, etc.), the legion structure of the Roman army, and the far-flung polyglot nature of the empire. All of these things were changed dramatically in the Heraclian dynasty (610-711), and more specifically, for the most part, during the reign of Heraclius himself. Within a few decades, urban life outside Constantinople was largely destroyed; the pattern of Roman rural life in most areas was permanently disrupted; Latin was abandoned for Greek as the official language, and not just the lingua franca; the army and provincial government were radically reformed along the new thematic military system; most of the remaining Roman civic customs and symbols were abandoned; and the Empire itself was rapidly reduced to its Greek-speaking core, quickly losing its Semitic territories in the East, and, not long after, its African, Spanish and Italian provinces as well.

In short, the post Heraclius Byzantine state seems to me, as it does to Heather, more of a (Greek) successor state - albeit an entirely legitimate one - to the Roman Empire rather than a strict continuation of it. The Byantines themselves never recognized such a distinction, not least because their legitimacy and claims to Roman prerogatives depended on it. But it was not for nought that Western Europeans referred to the polity based at Constantinople as the Empire of the Greeks. From the outside, it was easier to see what the Roman Empire in the East had actually become, or been replaced with.

None of which is to deny the reality that these developments represented the culmination of trends that had been at work for centuries. They were. But the Eastern Roman state of Justinian and even Phocas (notwithstanding its comprehensive Christianization) was Roman in a way that Constantine and even Augustus would have recognized, whereas that of Justinian II or Leo III would have seemed considerably more alien.

Then there's the whole question of what to call the Palaeologos state that resumed power in 1261. It strikes me as more of a successor state of a successor state. But perhaps that is fodder for a separate thread.

I call The Eastern Roman Empire the Eastern Roman Empire till it falls becouse of the fact the people in Eastern Roman Empire never called themselves byzantines but instead roman.

Some really great and helpful arguments here, guys. Thanks very much!

About the use of the term "Byzantine" as opposed to Rhomania, I would argue that while "Rhomania" is probably to be preferred as an in-universe term for writing TLs (as I did in IE), there's nothing really wrong with using "Byzantine" in discussion. I'd argue this because the Byzantine Empire was far more focused on Byzantion-Constantinople than the Roman Empire ever was on Rome at any stage of Imperial existence. Hence, the term Byzantine can be used quite reasonably, IMHO.

Regarding Heather- I definitely agree with the basic substance of his argument, though I'm a little off the guy for his short and rather disparging remarks on the post-Heraclian Byzantine state in his book Empires and Barbarians- remarks that seem to me to be distinctly Gibbon-esque. Everything he writes about Byzantium has to be qualified by saying that Byzantine achievements of reconquest were fairly minor and the Empire's contribution to history after Heraclius was mostly unimportant, with Constantinople being merely "fairly important" in the history of eastern Europe, for example.

Athelstane- whether those things changed in Heraclius' reign is technically up for doubt. Certainly, the Thematic system does not derive from Heraclius' time, and is more probably a creation of the early eighth century, and Heraclius' immediate successors were still issuing coins and inscriptions in Latin for decades after his death. I don't outright disagree with you- I guess I'm just being a useless pedant!

Hello Basileos,

Athelstane- whether those things changed in Heraclius' reign is technically up for doubt. Certainly, the Thematic system does not derive from Heraclius' time, and is more probably a creation of the early eighth century, and Heraclius' immediate successors were still issuing coins and inscriptions in Latin for decades after his death. I don't outright disagree with you- I guess I'm just being a useless pedant!

Oh, I know there's debate about that. At the least, we can say that the theme system wasn't fully implemented until later in the Heraclian dynasty.

But even so, there are plenty of enormous changes in his reign that are not up for dispute. The final switch to Greek from Latin is no small thing, nor is his adoption of Basileos instead of Augustus for his title. The massive disruptions wrought by the Persian and Avar wars, and then permanent loss of territory after the Arab invasion, destroyed much of what remained of Roman society in the East. Heraclius certainly oversaw a major restructuring of the army. The Empire took a very giant step from Roman to Byzantine, if I may use those shorthands, in Heraclius's reign. It's not necessarily a criticism of Heralcius, who accomplished an almost superhuman, miraculous salvation of Greco-Roman society in the face of long odds.

I concede that 610 is a little arbitrary - as is any date. I could pick 620, when Heraclius made Greek official; or 629, when he adopted Basileos as his title; or 636, the Battle of Yarmuk; or even a later date. But it's clear that it's the Heraclian dynasty where the real shift happens. And most of those changes were set in train in Heraclius's reign, albeit not always by his choosing. I think it's telling that current historiography usually adopts 610 as the end of Late Antiquity.

I'd say that, while there is a definite shift after the loss of total control in the eastern mediterranean, there is no true break, and thus I'm comfortable with calling it Roman up until 1204.

Which brings me to my second point, namely about the merits of establishing a new break at 1204. I personally do not consider 1204 to be a break in the empire's continuity, namely because the loss of the capital for a period of time does not mean the end of an entity, nor do changes to a state's structure to deal with new situations. I would actually argue that Nicea, Trebizond, and Epirus (under the Angeloi-Doukids at least) were all legitimate Roman empire's, namely because they were each founded by men with strong claims to the Eastern Roman throne, with the intention of retaking said throne, and (in my opinion most importantly) they were formed through internal politics rather than external invasion. All of them considered themselves Roman, and to some extent were treated as such by others. I would consider the period between the fall of the Angeloi and the Palaiologian resoration to be a civil war in which three men attempted to lay claim to the empire, and the final victor to be a legitimate emperor just as anyone else who won the throne through civil war. The only difference is that the capital was occupied by a foreign power during the civil war, and that it lasted for three generations.

As for the changes in administration, I don't feel that administrative changes constitute a break, since the same changes might have been taken by any emperor who saw them as effective against the challenges that his empire faced. If anything, I consider this adaptability to be a trademark of Romanism. I would also say that Emperors like Constantine and Diocletian were responsible for greater changes to the administration, but they are rarely considered the breaking point, so resting on these changes alone do not justify the difinitive break IMO.

Lastly, the Ottoman and Latin Empires were founded by foreigners, using foreign armies, and with no ties to the old administration (beyond copying it to some extent). In my opinion this constitutes a military takeover, and the fact that these groups chose to rule from Constantinople does not make them any more Roman than William the Conqueror setting up shop in London makes him a Saxon. To use the same example, if an English noble had risen up at the head of an English army and overthrown Harold II, even if he had made radical administrative changes to help compete with the mainland, it would not constitute a break, only an evolution.

I said it before, but if Osman had become a Roman vassal, his son married into Roman nobility, and the resulting grandson used a succession crisis to stake a claim to the throne and lead an army born and raised within the empire's borders to take control of the empire, he would have founded a new dynasty of Romans, not a new empire. The key is in the homeland and cultural identity of the forces being used to secure the throne, as well as if the people you are about to rule consider you to be one of them. The Ottomans and Latins were 0 for 2, while Nicea was 2 for 2, but of course that is my scale, nothing official.

I'd say that, while there is a definite shift after the loss of total control in the eastern mediterranean, there is no true break, and thus I'm comfortable with calling it Roman up until 1204.

It's hard for me to call a society Roman if it isn't using the Roman language - Latin - at some level.

hi people!

IMHO, it is probably wrong to look for a specific point of change in a unique state/society, whose history lasted at least a millenium. I mean that, I you definately want to find the turning point (the term "division" I think is absolutely mistaken here), you first have to set the parameters: political structure, political ideology, social structure, economic structure, culture, religion?
Because, if you choose to keep all of them in discussion, there can be no result:

political structure: there is the emperor and the senate. When excactly did the senate lose its power? Is it after Justinian, or is it after Caesar? Is the introduction of the themes, an initially concription and military foundation, enough to serve as a turning point for the empire?

economic structure: is a shift of the tax system enough to serve as a turning point? Or, should one take the introduction of the pronoia as such? But isn't it a bit late?

political ideology: probably a good point. The emperor seized being perceived a divine, and became the mandator of God, and the rightfull leader of the ecumene. This should be placed between Constantine and Theodosius.

social structure: is there a clear turning point, or a turnind period? Or just the continuus evolution of a society? The introduction of the priesthood "class", though, is something new...

culture-religion: two factors: christianity and hellenism. One could choose the promotion of Cristianity as the formal religion of the state, or the end of iconoclasm. Or, the introduction of the Greek language into the east roman administration, or the first Byzantine Humanism in the 8th-9th century.

And I 'm closing with two points:
1st Beware of the use of the term "successor state". In our case the Nicean Empire was one, the Latin Empire could probably perceived (at some points) as one, but the Ottoman Empire could not be classified as a successor state, only because it conquered the former Byzantine areas and addopted some terms, or addapted a few byzantine institutions. The distance in terms of culture, social structure, political ideology and structure, is quite huge...

2nd The "myth" of the Iconoclasm being the outcome of the Arab-muslim influence in Anatolia, has long being dropped by the historians. It has been proven that it was a matter of internal clash between two groups that could be schematically labeled as "imperialists" and "liberals". The myst about Leon III addopting muslim elements is nothing more than part of the (victorious) iconophiles.

cheers!

Athelstane said:

It's hard for me to call a society Roman if it isn't using the Roman language - Latin - at some level.

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The Romans were always fans of Greek language and culture. The shift to Greek, despite having a date where it was made official, was a gradual thing, and if I'm not mistaken post Roman Greek shared words and naming traditions with Latin. As far as I'm concerned the Roman Empire didn't switch to Greek language, since from its height Greek was the native language of most of the eastern portion anyways.

Andreas said:

And I 'm closing with two points:
1st Beware of the use of the term "successor state". In our case the Nicean Empire was one, the Latin Empire could probably perceived (at some points) as one, but the Ottoman Empire could not be classified as a successor state, only because it conquered the former Byzantine areas and addopted some terms, or addapted a few byzantine institutions. The distance in terms of culture, social structure, political ideology and structure, is quite huge...

cheers!

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Firstly, how is the Latin Empire much closer than the Ottomans? Aside from calling themselves Emperors of Rome (which the Ottomans did too) they really didn't take an interest in the Empire's culture, language, or structure.

Secondly, why is Nicea a successor state rather than a continuation of the whole, and why are Trebizond and Epirus omitted entirely? Each one was founded by a member of the current imperial family within the empire's borders in an attempt to recover the capital and be proclaimed emperor, and from the beginning they all believed that they were in a kind of temporary exile rather than at the head of a new state (though Trebizond came to believe that their chances of reconquest were over after David of Trebizond's death, and started to move in a new direction). Realistically, if something had changed to make Trebizond or Epirus recover Constantinople I would consider them the rightful successor too, and as far as I'm concerned the empire ended when Trebizond fell in 1462, and not a moment sooner.

personally, I wouldn't call Nicaea a successor state, for the simple fact that it was THE Byzantine Empire. Shortly before being overrun by the crusaders, the people, army and senate of Constantinople elected a new emperor. This emperor, lacking the means to adequately defend the capitol, fled to Anatolia, and established his base at Nicaea.

If England was invaded by the French and had London taken, with the legitimate king (crowned in London shortly before its fall) fleeing to York and his descendents eventually retaking London, would we still be speaking of a successor state to England ?


As to the distinction between Roman and Byzantine, I honestly don't know what to say, except that it was, IMHO, not a case of a single event, but rather a period that marked that transition.

Hello Avitus,

The Romans were always fans of Greek language and culture. The shift to Greek, despite having a date where it was made official, was a gradual thing, and if I'm not mistaken post Roman Greek shared words and naming traditions with Latin. As far as I'm concerned the Roman Empire didn't switch to Greek language, since from its height Greek was the native language of most of the eastern portion anyways.

Yes, but a slightly Latinized Greek is still...Greek.

I think language is a critical part of cultural identity. It shapes how you think. It's one thing for a language to evolve. It's another for it to be replaced by an entirely different one. We can be readily understood by Shakespeare and vice versa. We'd require more effort with Chaucer - but there would still be the sense of a shared language.

Gaius Marius and Augustus (to say nothing of Marcus or Constantine) could have made themselves perfectly intelligible to Justinian I, and vice versa - in their native language. By the time of the Macedonian dynasty, translators were often needed to converse with papal diplomats.

And what was lost as well was not just mutual intelligibility, but cultural memory and legal continuity. Not all of the classical works of Latin were translated into Greek, nor for that matter even all of Justinian's Code. A diminishing cohort of elite Constantinopolitans could still read those texts, but they were no longer accessible in the same way they had been to the educated Romans of Late Antiquity. Indeed, there was a growing contempt for Latin, because of its identification with the barbaric West and papal pretensions.

It's true that Greek was widely spoken, often as a native language, in the old Roman East, and use of Latin was already in decline before the Heraclians. But the Semitic lands (Levant, Syria) were mainly Semitic-speaking peoples with an upper crust of Latin and Greek speaking elites. Latin provided a unifying tongue that Greek did not provide as easily, given Semitic resentments of the Greeks.

It may be difficult to pick an exact date in time for a break in cultural and political continuity. But I do think that break is there during the Heraclian dynasty. Roman culture had been quite adaptable to that point. But during this period, it was essentially overcome by a Koine Greek culture presiding over a Greek rump state, only with the memory of a Roman past.

Firstly, how is the Latin Empire much closer than the Ottomans? Aside from calling themselves Emperors of Rome (which the Ottomans did too) they really didn't take an interest in the Empire's culture, language, or structure.

Probably due to religion and (some) shared culture.

If the Latin Empire is a successor state, however, it's a tenuous and rather illegitimate one.

Secondly, why is Nicea a successor state rather than a continuation of the whole, and why are Trebizond and Epirus omitted entirely? Each one was founded by a member of the current imperial family within the empire's borders in an attempt to recover the capital and be proclaimed emperor, and from the beginning they all believed that they were in a kind of temporary exile rather than at the head of a new state (though Trebizond came to believe that their chances of reconquest were over after David of Trebizond's death, and started to move in a new direction). Realistically, if something had changed to make Trebizond or Epirus recover Constantinople I would consider them the rightful successor too, and as far as I'm concerned the empire ended when Trebizond fell in 1462, and not a moment sooner.

I think you can make an argument for Nicaea, especially since it was close at hand to Constantinople and managed to retake it.

Trebizond and Epirus, on the other hand, were more distant and ended up cut off from the the old heartland of the Empire. They may have started out as remnants of the whole, but they settled into their independent status.

I suppose the real difficulty is that we all have no shared definition of "successor state."

Once the empire loses egypt, sirya and north africa and spain, it ceases to be an euromediterranean entity (like the roman empire was always been) and becomes a Greek balkanic-anatolian one.

Avitus said:

The Romans were always fans of Greek language and culture. The shift to Greek, despite having a date where it was made official, was a gradual thing, and if I'm not mistaken post Roman Greek shared words and naming traditions with Latin. As far as I'm concerned the Roman Empire didn't switch to Greek language, since from its height Greek was the native language of most of the eastern portion anyways.



Firstly, how is the Latin Empire much closer than the Ottomans? Aside from calling themselves Emperors of Rome (which the Ottomans did too) they really didn't take an interest in the Empire's culture, language, or structure.

Secondly, why is Nicea a successor state rather than a continuation of the whole, and why are Trebizond and Epirus omitted entirely? Each one was founded by a member of the current imperial family within the empire's borders in an attempt to recover the capital and be proclaimed emperor, and from the beginning they all believed that they were in a kind of temporary exile rather than at the head of a new state (though Trebizond came to believe that their chances of reconquest were over after David of Trebizond's death, and started to move in a new direction). Realistically, if something had changed to make Trebizond or Epirus recover Constantinople I would consider them the rightful successor too, and as far as I'm concerned the empire ended when Trebizond fell in 1462, and not a moment sooner.

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Hi!

About your second point, you are perfectly correct, and I mistaken in following the poster's terminollogy. Niceae, Epirus, Trapezus, were continuations, rather than successors of the Empire.

About the first, my expression was that "the Latin Empire could probably perceived (at some points) as one", and that means that I do not agree, but I could understand such a statement, since, even there's distance, the Latin Empire was the product of a christian culture, which was at least emotionaly close to Rome, while we shouldn't ignore the contribution of the Italian states, which were very close to the Roman (and Byzantine, if you like) traditions.
On the other hand, IMHO, the Ottoman Empire cannot be perceived as a successor to the ERE, since (no matter the titles of the Sultan and the intergration of some roman aristocrats) it had significant structural, social and ideological distance from the Roman state. For example, there was no laws of the state, only the Quran (religious "laws") and the will of the Sultan. Or, that there was no private property (concerning land), since the whole earth belonged to the Sultan. Or, unlikely with ERE, that the state was the Sultan himself, and every time a new Sultan emerged, everything had to be renewed by him.

The latin empire was christian, not muslim (islam was a religion which was an enemy of the empire since the beginning) and spoke a language which was very similar to the original empire's one.

It's hard. I tend to think that the late antique empire deserves its own identity distinct from the 'Roman' and 'Byzantine' phases, rather than being viewed as a period of flux between the two. More this later, but I have to go to lunch.

Athelstane said:

I'd say that, while there is a definite shift after the loss of total control in the eastern mediterranean, there is no true break, and thus I'm comfortable with calling it Roman up until 1204.

It's hard for me to call a society Roman if it isn't using the Roman language - Latin - at some level.

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The Roman language was Greek.

Rex Mundi said:

The Roman language was Greek.

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If you are talking about the ERE, then yes.

If you mean the WRE, then no, it was Latin.