Confederatepatriot1025
what do ya'll think the world would be like if the roman empire was conquered by the greek empire?
The Byzantines were essentially a Greek empire, greek language and culture being central to the imperial identity despite calling themselves the Romoi or Romans.
Abdul Hadi Pasha
Banned
I don't agree with that. The language became Greek, but the institutions of society were Roman. What does "Greek" even mean in this context? It either refers to Classical Greece, which has little in common in any way with Byzantium, or the modern definition of Greek, which is also a lot different, as it's an invented ethnic classification.
Of course they do. Greece is a modern nation state, it needs a national history, and the Byzantines can hardly fight back, can they?
The Byzantines were effectively greek, even the term they used for themeselves (Romoi) while meaning Roman, was always written in the greek language, which is and was as static since ancient greece as the English language has been since the English first established themselves in England, which is to say there has been some distinct changes as different events have impacted on the greek people. Anyhoo, The Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine empire after Justinian and I think at the time of Heraclius changed to reflect the underlying cultural truths which was that the Greeks (which had always been a distinct cultural group under the Romans, and had a huge influence on Roman culture) effectively ruled and shaped the empire. The culture has adapted to reflect the impact of Christianity and various barbarian invasions and to reflect about 500 years of servitude to the Ottomans, and the language has changed as well, but there is direct continuity between classical Greece and modern Greeks. You cannot say that the Byzantines arent Greek, because if they arent Americans dont use the english language.
As for the institutions, yes they retained a senate and consuls but even before Byzantium became Constantinople, these were empty institutions that had prestige and not much else. Military terms and titles were Greek such as Drungarios which is the Byzantine term for Admiral. The emperor was refered to in official documents as Basileos, and there are a host of other Greek terms for high court officials all based off of old titles for King (Basileos) or noble in the classical Greek language. Essentially the Byzantine emperor was a Greek Despot (which in classical Greek is not a negative term, its simply a title) writ large. Had the empire stayed Roman, you would see other institutions surviving and a markedly different style of rulership, but you dont, as the largest most Cohesive cultural group in the Eastern Roman empire were the Greeks and since the Greeks wound up being the most educated group in the empire, their culture not only survived, it thrived when the empire split.
Abdul Hadi Pasha
Banned
I'm sorry, but a claim that there is direct continuity between classical Greece and modern Greece is so ASBish that there isn't even a basis for discussion. That's like saying there's direct continuity between Ancient Egypt and today's Egypt. They are totally different things.
Abdul Hadi Pasha
Banned
No, I'm not joking. "Greek" as an ethnic classification is as ridiculous as "Turk". Read a classical discription of a Greek. They're pale, hairless, and blue or green-eyed. Sound like modern Greeks? Not so much. Slavic invasions, Byzantine colonization, Albanian migration, five or more centuries of Ottoman rule, and a population exchange resulting in the receipt of 1.5M Anatolian Christians, large numbers of whom didn't even speak Greek, leaving out dozens of other things...
Point of fact I never claimed there was at the start of my posts that the byzantines were "modern Greeks" (i did later on and i stand by that to a degree). There is still some debate whether or not the high period of Greek cultural supremacy ended with the roman conquest of Greece or when Constantinople fell, but Greeks as an ethnic group have existed like the Celts of Wales, Scotland and Ireland not to mention Brittany, since antiquity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeks . Now thats a dump of data but my point there if you care to peruse the data, is the section on survivability of the language, which while adapting to the changes that history has brought, has not died (id love to underline that to stress my point) and has a written tradition stretching back nearly 3,000 years. The greeks like every other successful ethnic group in the twentieth century, has had intermarriage, but they still exist as a culture and have not died out. There is no break in the genetics or the language, therefore the Greeks of classical antiquity still exist in their descendants, as do the Jews, Celts and Basques.
Ibn Warraq
Banned
While most modern Greeks, or at least those I've met, are no more interested in classical Greece than modern Egyptians are in ancient Egypt(they're much more concerned about the Byzantie Empire) I do think there are dramatic differences.
The most notable is that, correct me if I'm wrong, but the modern Greek language comes from the ancient Greek language and their alphabet is partly based on it. Moreover, it's still fair to say that most modern Greeks while they're not as interested in their history as I really think they should be, seem to care about it more than most Egyptians. Also, while they obviously have had alot of mixing with other groups, they probably still have some genetic connection to the ancient Greeks.
Leo Caesius
Banned
There are several interesting parallels - for example, both the terms "Greece" and "Egypt" were effectively reintroduced by western Europeans to the two countries. The Greeks considered themselves to be, well, Romans, which at that point meant simply that they were Orthodox, and the Egyptians considered themselves to be Misriyyin, even if a trace of the former (Greek) name was preserved in the name of the Copts. No trace of the original Egyptian name for the Land of the Nile survives.
Finally we made contact with people from an ATLI'd like to ask if in your history there was a hyatus after the fall of the Mycenean civilization, or not
Back to the original question, unless people mean the Byzantine Empire conquering the Holy Roman Empire the only time a Greek Empire and Roman Empire coexisted was in the last 500 or so years BCE. So the protagonists would have to be the Athenian Empire vs early Rome, a later clash between the Hellenes and Roman empre or something in between.
In that context Rome was a Greek 'empire' in as much as its republican institutions that were formed in the time of the kings (really tyrants in the Greek sense) and immediately after were Greek in their inspiration.
Rome at this time sent delegations to Delphi and were considered a Greek city. Not ethnically of course but in its social and political identity.
I'm not sure I agree with that, although it depends on what you mean by 'institutions of society.' If we're talking about political institutions, then the Roman facade died pretty early on.