Roman/Byzantine division

If you were to ask me, I would say that this whole line-drawing between "Roman" and "Byzantine" is just silly and brought about by western Europe refusing to accept the legitimacy of the Roman remnant. Why? Because of politics.

There have come arguments that the shifting structure makes it cease to be the Roman Empire, but I would say that those arguments fail to realise the fact that things evolve and change. The Romans always adapted to their circumstances, and if they had not they would never have had as much success as they did. Yes, the evolution of a state can produce something quite different in the end, but this is true for any state.
 
If you are talking about the ERE, then yes.

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

The official language of the Eastern Empire remained Latin until 620, when Heraclius officially replaced it with Greek.

It's true that the bulk of the literate classes in the East had always been Greek speakers. But the language of government and the army and much of the Roman elite remained Latin until the Heraclian dynasty. It was the native tongue of emperors until that time. The Theodosian and Justinianic Codes were written in Latin.
 
If you were to ask me, I would say that this whole line-drawing between "Roman" and "Byzantine" is just silly and brought about by western Europe refusing to accept the legitimacy of the Roman remnant. Why? Because of politics.

There have come arguments that the shifting structure makes it cease to be the Roman Empire, but I would say that those arguments fail to realise the fact that things evolve and change. The Romans always adapted to their circumstances, and if they had not they would never have had as much success as they did. Yes, the evolution of a state can produce something quite different in the end, but this is true for any state.

This may have been true in earlier centuries, but it's hard to credit that it's relevant to modern historiographers. Certainly if there was any state that could legitimately lay claim to the Roman mantle after 476, it was the polity based at Constantinople - call it what you will. It certainly wasn't the Holy Roman Empire.

I don't think it takes anything away from the miraculous achievements of Byzantium to suggest, as does Peter Heather, that there was a decisive break in Romanness in the early 7th century, even if there remained the appearance of some nominal political continuity. Admittedly, it's a vexed issue assigning the break, given that the Byzantines themselves recognized no such break, and could point to a mere dynastic succession, without any interruptions. But changes that occurred during Heraclius and Constans' reigns were were just too drastic, in my opinion, to dismiss it as a mere adaptation of Roman culture.
 
I definitely see Heraclius as a dividing line. In fact, I'd like to call it Greek to denote the change as a descriptive term, but too many people would get up in arms about it. It's the main reason I always refer to them as "the Eastern Empire" in my TL instead of the Greek Empire (as Western Europeans did) except in dialog. The Nicaean successor/survivor state is something else again to the entity that prevailed from c. 650-1204.
 
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I definitely see Heraclius as a dividing line. In fact, I'd like to call it Greek to denote the change as a descriptive term, but too many people would get up in arms about it. It's the main reason I always refer to them as "the Eastern Empire" in my TL instead of the Greek Empire (as Western Europeans did) except in dialog. The Nicaean successor/survivor state is something else again to the entity that prevailed from c. 650-1204.

Well to be fair, "Greek" is basically as incorrect as the Byzantines calling, say, the Seljuk Turks "Babylonians".

"Byzantine" is at least defensible as it was what the residents of the capital called themselves, and the whole post-seventh century Empire was more or less orientated around the capital city.
 

scholar

Banned
I only use Byzantine Purple when Rome is divided and one part is based in Constantinople, which receives the color. Otherwise it has the standard Rome color until 1204, where it gets the Byzantine Color. Though on maps that I edit I rarely change Byzantine Purple to Roman Maroon unless I have something to add to make the change seem legitimate if the POD is after 800 A.D.

However, for everyone saying the social, political, and economic changes making the color change seem legitimate you'll face a problem of contradiction because if one makes that distinction then almost every country should have 2-4 shades for itself to represent different times. Roman disorganized tribes, medieval kingdoms, early colonial era, the divine right to rule period, semi-modern nationalistic/romantic movement states, and modern republics/constitutional monarchies. Each one of those divisions had changes just as dramatic or even more so to the socio-economic-political climate of the change between pre-600 A.D. Rome and post 800 A.D. Rome.
 
The official language of the Eastern Empire remained Latin until 620, when Heraclius officially replaced it with Greek.

It's true that the bulk of the literate classes in the East had always been Greek speakers. But the language of government and the army and much of the Roman elite remained Latin until the Heraclian dynasty. It was the native tongue of emperors until that time. The Theodosian and Justinianic Codes were written in Latin.

Thiis is not correct! Justinian ordered all the new Laws(Novellae) to be written in Greek and that point should be considered the departure.Justinian realized that his subjects were speaking Greek regardless of origin and his action,to start publishing all new Laws in Greek marked the point of departure by confirming the status quo.
 
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."

There is a foundamental mistake here Athelstane(too much Ivanhoe here...)
The Greek language was not spoken "often" in the east;that area spoke Greek for an unbroken period of 400 years,even the religiously orthodox Jews in palestine (which in the first century AD was inhabited by only 5% Jews) had adopted Greek names including their Chief priests,the area never spoke Latin apart from the few of the Roman administration and their immediate circle as a second language.The legions spoke greek since it was the communication language of the region and after all the soldiers were recruited locally.
The East was never roman since it was never latin,it had a higher culture than the latins and absorbed them to a great extend since the latins had adopted vestiges of greek culture in order to be accepted as civilised by their own kind.
as I wrote above the use of the greek language for the new laws by Justinian(along with their interpretation...)threw away the the latin domination although for some time the change was gradual to help the transition.
 
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Hello Cimon,

I used "often," which was not as accurate a term as I could have employed.

Obviously Greek was the predominant educated language in the East, and had been going back to the Hellenistic era. What I mean to allude to, really, was the presence of predominantly Semitic populations in Egypt, the Levant, and Armenia, who used their native tongues in daily life, and only some of whom had any fluency in Greek (of whatever dialect). And that linguistic divide certainly exacerbated the theological divide that emerged in the East after Chalcedon.

Latin was, to be sure, the tongue of administrators and Latin immigrants from the West, and was never the native tongue of more than a small minority, save possibly for some parts of the Balkans before the Slavic and Avar invasions.

That minority, however, included emperors up to Phocas, and most of their administrators and generals. Without the demographic mass of the Latin West, however, the Empire did not have the ability to resist, in the long run, the inertia of the predominant Greek element. Justinian's reconquests did not go far enough or last long enough to reverse that.

It's true that most of the novellae were initially issued in Greek by Justinian's jurists, which seems to have been a short term pragmatic move. Nonetheless, the Code itself was issued originally in Latin, and the court of Justinian, like its emperor, conducted its business in Latin. I just don't think that anything Justinian did was as decisive, linguistically, as what Heraclius did.
 

scholar

Banned
Well I certainly disagree with this. :)
It would have been better to include a group that actually can realistically claim heritage from the extinct state...

However, Greek Civilization around the Polis died with Philip and Alexander, the subsequent Hellenic civilization died with the Roman conquest, aspects of Greek culture flourished under the Romans, especially in language, but it was not the same Greek as the Hellenics, and certainly not the same Greeks that had three separate languages and suffered from the contentions of Athens and Sparta, this Greek civilization would die later on though in a way that Frank became French rather than the previous ones with clear markers. And then this Greek identity and civilization would die under the Ottomans. And the new, revived Greek civilization, is a completely different thing from the rest.

The only thing making modern day Greece Greek in the classical Greek perspective is a language and a geopolitical location, everything else is rhetoric based on nostalgia. The people sure as hell weren't the same anymore due to the massive human migrations population transfers various conquests and so on. If people called the Italian Peninsula the Roman Peninsula, you would be sure that it would be called Rome instead of Italy that currently resides there.
 
I would say that the ERE was more Latinized than people give them credit (or discredit depending on your stance, but I'm a Romanophile:)) for. They definitely adopted the Legion, the Roman Imperial government, the senate (though that did eventually go), and the Roman identity. I also assume that the conservative Christian attitude that they adopted in late antiquity was partly Roman in influence, since the Greeks were universally liberal for the most part. Indeed I think that all Nicene Christianity can probably be called a Latin and Greek culture collaborative efort (of course with some Jewish influences).

Of course, right up until the falls of Constantinople and Trebizond they considered themselves to be Roman, and had the pedigree to back it up, so I think that counts for allot, and they seemed to consider Greek to be an insult if it was meant to negate Romanness. They operated out of one of the Roman Imperial capitals, and they did not gain it through conquest or diplomacy, but rather through internal reform. I also point heavily to naming tradditions, where Roman style names continued (usually with C's replaced with Ks and the ending masculine US replaced with OS or ES). There especially a departure can be seen from ancient Greek culture.

Admittedly I'm no linguist, nor do I know Greek or more than a little Latin, but I'd like to know if any Latinization occured in the Greek language over the Roman/Byzantine period. I was fairly sure that at least some of the military terms were the same or similar throughout the whole milennium following the imperial split, and I would think some of the same would occur in other areas as well. Does anyone here know enough of the languages to verify how much mixture their was?
 
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It would have been better to include a group that actually can realistically claim heritage from the extinct state...

However, Greek Civilization around the Polis died with Philip and Alexander, the subsequent Hellenic civilization died with the Roman conquest, aspects of Greek culture flourished under the Romans, especially in language, but it was not the same Greek as the Hellenics, and certainly not the same Greeks that had three separate languages and suffered from the contentions of Athens and Sparta, this Greek civilization would die later on though in a way that Frank became French rather than the previous ones with clear markers. And then this Greek identity and civilization would die under the Ottomans. And the new, revived Greek civilization, is a completely different thing from the rest.

The only thing making modern day Greece Greek in the classical Greek perspective is a language and a geopolitical location, everything else is rhetoric based on nostalgia. The people sure as hell weren't the same anymore due to the massive human migrations population transfers various conquests and so on. If people called the Italian Peninsula the Roman Peninsula, you would be sure that it would be called Rome instead of Italy that currently resides there.

This sequence of ideas were first presented by Fallmerayer and other racist-imperialist "historians", in mid-19th c., based on the idea of the purity of the blood, and falling in the traps of time lag. These ideas were dropped already at their time, by scientists such as Kopitar, Thiersch and Zingeisen, not to mention modern historians.
Summing up, nothing "died" concerning the Greek, Hellenic, or whatever you call it, language, civilization and culture. What happened is called evolution, no matter on how one evaluates it. Nowadays Greeks speak the same language as Plato, Aristoteles and Xenophon, only this language has evolved in 2500 years, and it would be weird if it didn't. Nowadays Greeks share a lot of customs with their ancestors of the archaic or clasical era, especially those concerning the remnants of the earth-cult, or their traditional fairy-tales.

I guess it is purely worthless to speak about comments such as that migrations led to a situation that the Greeks were no Greeks anymore....
 

Esopo

Banned
This sequence of ideas were first presented by Fallmerayer and other racist-imperialist "historians", in mid-19th c., based on the idea of the purity of the blood, and falling in the traps of time lag. These ideas were dropped already at their time, by scientists such as Kopitar, Thiersch and Zingeisen, not to mention modern historians.
Summing up, nothing "died" concerning the Greek, Hellenic, or whatever you call it, language, civilization and culture. What happened is called evolution, no matter on how one evaluates it. Nowadays Greeks speak the same language as Plato, Aristoteles and Xenophon, only this language has evolved in 2500 years, and it would be weird if it didn't. Nowadays Greeks share a lot of customs with their ancestors of the archaic or clasical era, especially those concerning the remnants of the earth-cult, or their traditional fairy-tales.

I guess it is purely worthless to speak about comments such as that migrations led to a situation that the Greeks were no Greeks anymore....

Yes, its disturbing to see how anglosaxon and germanic XIX and early XX historiography tends to think that some migration during the centuries means that greece became turkish, northern italy became germanic and southern italy became saracen.
They dont know a heck of the huge load of customs, food, even genetics which european peoples share with the roman or even pre-roman europe.
 

scholar

Banned
This sequence of ideas were first presented by Fallmerayer and other racist-imperialist "historians", in mid-19th c., based on the idea of the purity of the blood, and falling in the traps of time lag.
If my point was purely based on purity of blood you may have an argument, however it most certainly was not and I would appreciate it if you did not imply that my argument is inherently racist and based on ethnic purity.

If you want to make the argument that nothing died you'd be fighting on a foundation of sand with every point you make tearing down at the foundation of your footing.

If you wish to be objective, apart from the language and some remnant ideals, greek civilization has changed massively. To the point of being a far more severe change from any single moment from the birth of the Eastern Roman Empire and the fall of Trebizond and even to modern day Greece, as that is simply 'evolution'. If we continue that standard then modern day Greece is actually Rome, not anything else, because the changes were not even close to enough to cause that color to change by your standard. Would you agree with that statement or are you looking for an arbitary line in the sand? Perhaps Rome becomes purple after the conquest of Egypt?
 
If my point was purely based on purity of blood you may have an argument, however it most certainly was not and I would appreciate it if you did not imply that my argument is inherently racist and based on ethnic purity.

If you want to make the argument that nothing died you'd be fighting on a foundation of sand with every point you make tearing down at the foundation of your footing.

If you wish to be objective, apart from the language and some remnant ideals, greek civilization has changed massively. To the point of being a far more severe change from any single moment from the birth of the Eastern Roman Empire and the fall of Trebizond and even to modern day Greece, as that is simply 'evolution'. If we continue that standard then modern day Greece is actually Rome, not anything else, because the changes were not even close to enough to cause that color to change by your standard. Would you agree with that statement or are you looking for an arbitary line in the sand? Perhaps Rome becomes purple after the conquest of Egypt?

Well, my statements were simple and clear, and they are on line with the modern History Science:

There's no "death" of the various forms of the Greek (as it aplies to a lot more ethnicities, cultures and civilizations), only evolution.

The idea that the ancient Greek civilization died during the Roman rule, and that the Roman civilization in the East died during the Ottoman rule was indroduced by historians of the 19th c. such as Fallmerayer, who bore the ideas of the classification of races and nations, and of "national destiny", which were the main ideological foundations of imperialism and colonialism. If you follow that, you are wrong, but this doesn't make you racist if you don't understand those ideas at their full lenght, or if you don't support the classification of nations, cultures, etc.

There's a clear difference between the statements "some things died" and "Greek Civilization around the Polis died with Philip and Alexander, the subsequent Hellenic civilization died with the Roman conquest", or "this Greek identity and civilization would die under the Ottomans". For example, it would be very useful if you read something about the cities during the Roman and the Byzantine eras, where one can easily notice that the cities were governed in ways very close to those of the hellenistic era. Or, the self-identification of the Greeks as "Romans" during the Byzantine and the Ottoman eras, along, not only with their customs, but also their language and laws: did you know, e.g., that the Greeks of the Ottoman empire called themselves "Romans" and they were very aware of their Roman and Byzantine legacy, or that they formaly used the laws of the Roman Emperors, reaching back to Justinian, until the Tanzimat?

To close by answering to one of your arguments: according to history science, Greece is not Rome, but is one of the Rome's "heirs". It seems that you find it difficult to understand that a culture can change a lot in three millenia of its history without "dying" a few times in the process. That excactly was the problem with the "historians" of the 18th and 19th c.: they had fallen in love with an ideal image of the ancient Greeks, and since they were not excactly fond of the modern ones, they declared modern Greeks fakes...
 
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