Romania in the Second Millennium
Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio.
“Conquered Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought her arts into rustic Latium.”- Horace
Foreword:
The Empire of the Romans (or as it is more popularly called, “Romania”) evokes a multitude of reactions in people, especially those of us in the West. Sometimes romantically loved as the source of Western Civilization itself, at other times despised for the bloody centuries of conflict that followed. People praise Julius Caesar and Trajan in the same breath in which they denounce Basil and John Callinicus[1], without actually attempting to understand what differences (if any) lay between them. There is indeed an overarching feeling of cultural appropriation: that Roman history and culture used to be ours till “they” came and took it away (or corrupted it, as the popular narrative has now shifted to). It is easier for the Germans and the Norse to turn away from it and proclaim their supposed cultural independence, despite the degree to which “Roman-ness” had penetrated their culture. But those of us who still cling on to a semblance of Latin culture have no such excuse, and must at times wonder at how the relationship became so dysfunctional. Was it fated to be thus since the Crusaders laid siege to Constantinople alongside pagans, or were the seeds sown earlier, perhaps on that New Year’s Day when a Pope had the audacity to crown a “Holy Roman” Emperor? Did Diocletian doom the East by introducing “Oriental Despotism” or was that moment inevitable the instant Alexander crossed into Anatolia? These are questions most educated scholars of History face, and unfortunately cannot find a clear cut answer to.
Members of the general public may not be plagued with these issues as often, as made evident by the tendency of our politicians to blast the “Greeks” while kneeling before a Palestinian[2] preacher whose Gospel was originally written in Greek. Perhaps that is one of the major places where the conflict comes, for though Rome had given us Christ, she herself had turned her back to the faith and demonstrated a level of tolerance many of our brethren in the New World would find intolerable. Certainly that is one of the major issues that keeps us divided, for I have little doubt that some form of rapprochement would have been reached by those of us in the Old World if not for our allies in the New one. There are legitimate issues concerning National debt and the refugee crisis that lie between our government and theirs, but to let us trifling issues halt a relationship with the primus inter pares of the League of Civilizations[3] is folly of the highest order.
But for an understanding to be reached and be acceptable to the general public, it is essential to gain a finer understanding of our shared history in order to see where our paths parted and the workings of the Roman state which somehow remains intractably alien to us. Both our cultures pay lip service to Solon and Cicero and yet somehow Romans feel a closer kinship to the heirs of Confucius and Buddha than to those of us who ostensibly share the same cultural heritage, because of the aversion to the “accursed Latins”. Our media too often falls into a similar trap, denouncing all Asian cultures with the same label of “oriental despotism” without actually attempting to understand the differences between the cultures that span that continent.
This is work for many generations, but it is my hope that this book will bring to it’s readers a closer understanding of modern Roman political thought and history as opposed to paying lip service to shared ancient ideals that few ultimately care about. There are several excellent books on medieval and modern Roman history already, but few are meant to be accessible for the popular masses as they almost exclusively target academics. The objective of this book is exactly the opposite, for it seeks to summarize Roman history in a fashion that a non-specialist would be able to understand and appreciate. A professional historian will not care much for this one, as it is merely a rehash of my earlier work on the materials leaked from the Bucoleon Archives, little to no new material has been added since then.
The question of where to end is fairly simple, but the deciding on the starting date is a harder task. Diocletian, Constantine or Theodosios offer convenient starts, but our tales were still too tangled then to be truly called separate. The same goes for Justinian and Heraclius, while the years following the latter left very little bits of information to stitch a narrative together. It was only after Charlemagne that more information starts to appear, and thus that point may be seen as a natural origin. Yet, I personally do not think accounts of Theophanes and the like are entirely satisfactory as they seem more like records without an actual voice. Primary sources with a voice start appearing much later, around the time of John I Tzimiskes, which somewhat coincidentally is around the earliest time recorded in the censored documents. This tale therefore shall mainly focus on Romania in the Second Millennium (by the reckoning of Dionysius)-at least to those of us who keep to the years of Our Lord, and of the singular characters who made it possible. It is a tale of blood and conflict, defined only by the continuous ascent of the Empire and the battles it waged both against us and it’s mortal foe. I speak of course of Islam, the only force that had once brought the Empire to it’s knees and which still keeps Ministers of the Interior awake at night. Roman foreign policy had always looked more to the East, and was greatly influenced by the evolution of this strange and highly dysfunctional relationship. Much of what I will report therefore will not be to the liking of our brethren across the Ocean, but facts do often have an inconvenient way of not adhering to previous biases.
I should also offer a personal disclosure about my main source which may not be known to many readers. Most of the material came from primary sources meticulously copied by the Late Professor Constantine Anastasios, who unfortunately met his end in an automobile accident in Cagliari before I could publish the material he confidentially provided me with. His estate however contests this claim, and has filed several lawsuits against me that prevents me from stepping foot in Romania without fearing arrest. This is undoubtedly at the behest of the Roman Government, who have sought to keep material in the Bucoleon archives a secret. The inability of scholars to access the actual manuscripts stored there makes it difficult for us to verify the material Professor Anastasios provided me with. The only evidence I can therefore bring to support my claims are circumstantial, with the credibility of this work being strongly reliant on my reputation as an academic, as well as that of Professor Anastasios.
Lastly, I would encourage my readers to read the material with an open mind. It is easy for us to buy into popular conceptions of the greedy, cruel Greeks when we remember the recession we had to endure on account of the Roman Government’s unwillingness to forgive our debts. Our blood boils when we hear the leaders of the Popular Orthodox Rally call for gassing the refugees fleeing the continental European conflicts while corpses of those trying to flee to safety in Syria and Mesopotamia wash up on Aegean shores. Yet the biggest mistake we can commit is to refuse to hear their side of the tale. I am every bit as outraged as the rest when it comes to the callousness of the Roman Government, but at a primal level I do understand where they are coming from, being stuck between the hammer and the anvil for most of their history. I may be an emigre-a descendant of purged Republicans after the Imperial coup in the Nineteenth Century, but on some level Romania still calls to me. I was in fact fortunate to grow up in a more tolerating environment than my parents, who jumped into the first plane to Constantinople after the descendants of purged Republicans were no longer persona non-grata after a century of exclusion, and am thus more British than Roman. That is not really the case for many others in my generation, who bitterly rue the fact that the Motherland will not welcome them back with open arms, while they are distrusted and excluded in their country of birth. Whatever political division may exist within the Senate halls in Constantinople fades the moment one steps out into the Latin West, where even sworn republicans name their children after dictators and tyrants in a misguided attempt to atone for defying their Basileus. It is therefore left to us to take a higher moral ground, and bring our people closer with the Roman ones-even if our Governments will not cooperate. Only this way can the wounds dealt over centuries be healed, and we can purge the shadows of the past that still hang over us.
Your Sincerely,
Ίωάννης Ιούλιος Κομνηνός
John Julius Comnenus
London, 29th May 2005.
Notes:
[1] TTL character. Might be hearing more of him than you like.
[2] Not Palestine as we would understand it in 2015 of OTL, but rather the Roman Province (it was Iudea in the first century, but the current name is Palestine).
[3] TTL alliance of nations.
Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio.
“Conquered Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought her arts into rustic Latium.”- Horace
Foreword:
The Empire of the Romans (or as it is more popularly called, “Romania”) evokes a multitude of reactions in people, especially those of us in the West. Sometimes romantically loved as the source of Western Civilization itself, at other times despised for the bloody centuries of conflict that followed. People praise Julius Caesar and Trajan in the same breath in which they denounce Basil and John Callinicus[1], without actually attempting to understand what differences (if any) lay between them. There is indeed an overarching feeling of cultural appropriation: that Roman history and culture used to be ours till “they” came and took it away (or corrupted it, as the popular narrative has now shifted to). It is easier for the Germans and the Norse to turn away from it and proclaim their supposed cultural independence, despite the degree to which “Roman-ness” had penetrated their culture. But those of us who still cling on to a semblance of Latin culture have no such excuse, and must at times wonder at how the relationship became so dysfunctional. Was it fated to be thus since the Crusaders laid siege to Constantinople alongside pagans, or were the seeds sown earlier, perhaps on that New Year’s Day when a Pope had the audacity to crown a “Holy Roman” Emperor? Did Diocletian doom the East by introducing “Oriental Despotism” or was that moment inevitable the instant Alexander crossed into Anatolia? These are questions most educated scholars of History face, and unfortunately cannot find a clear cut answer to.
Members of the general public may not be plagued with these issues as often, as made evident by the tendency of our politicians to blast the “Greeks” while kneeling before a Palestinian[2] preacher whose Gospel was originally written in Greek. Perhaps that is one of the major places where the conflict comes, for though Rome had given us Christ, she herself had turned her back to the faith and demonstrated a level of tolerance many of our brethren in the New World would find intolerable. Certainly that is one of the major issues that keeps us divided, for I have little doubt that some form of rapprochement would have been reached by those of us in the Old World if not for our allies in the New one. There are legitimate issues concerning National debt and the refugee crisis that lie between our government and theirs, but to let us trifling issues halt a relationship with the primus inter pares of the League of Civilizations[3] is folly of the highest order.
But for an understanding to be reached and be acceptable to the general public, it is essential to gain a finer understanding of our shared history in order to see where our paths parted and the workings of the Roman state which somehow remains intractably alien to us. Both our cultures pay lip service to Solon and Cicero and yet somehow Romans feel a closer kinship to the heirs of Confucius and Buddha than to those of us who ostensibly share the same cultural heritage, because of the aversion to the “accursed Latins”. Our media too often falls into a similar trap, denouncing all Asian cultures with the same label of “oriental despotism” without actually attempting to understand the differences between the cultures that span that continent.
This is work for many generations, but it is my hope that this book will bring to it’s readers a closer understanding of modern Roman political thought and history as opposed to paying lip service to shared ancient ideals that few ultimately care about. There are several excellent books on medieval and modern Roman history already, but few are meant to be accessible for the popular masses as they almost exclusively target academics. The objective of this book is exactly the opposite, for it seeks to summarize Roman history in a fashion that a non-specialist would be able to understand and appreciate. A professional historian will not care much for this one, as it is merely a rehash of my earlier work on the materials leaked from the Bucoleon Archives, little to no new material has been added since then.
The question of where to end is fairly simple, but the deciding on the starting date is a harder task. Diocletian, Constantine or Theodosios offer convenient starts, but our tales were still too tangled then to be truly called separate. The same goes for Justinian and Heraclius, while the years following the latter left very little bits of information to stitch a narrative together. It was only after Charlemagne that more information starts to appear, and thus that point may be seen as a natural origin. Yet, I personally do not think accounts of Theophanes and the like are entirely satisfactory as they seem more like records without an actual voice. Primary sources with a voice start appearing much later, around the time of John I Tzimiskes, which somewhat coincidentally is around the earliest time recorded in the censored documents. This tale therefore shall mainly focus on Romania in the Second Millennium (by the reckoning of Dionysius)-at least to those of us who keep to the years of Our Lord, and of the singular characters who made it possible. It is a tale of blood and conflict, defined only by the continuous ascent of the Empire and the battles it waged both against us and it’s mortal foe. I speak of course of Islam, the only force that had once brought the Empire to it’s knees and which still keeps Ministers of the Interior awake at night. Roman foreign policy had always looked more to the East, and was greatly influenced by the evolution of this strange and highly dysfunctional relationship. Much of what I will report therefore will not be to the liking of our brethren across the Ocean, but facts do often have an inconvenient way of not adhering to previous biases.
I should also offer a personal disclosure about my main source which may not be known to many readers. Most of the material came from primary sources meticulously copied by the Late Professor Constantine Anastasios, who unfortunately met his end in an automobile accident in Cagliari before I could publish the material he confidentially provided me with. His estate however contests this claim, and has filed several lawsuits against me that prevents me from stepping foot in Romania without fearing arrest. This is undoubtedly at the behest of the Roman Government, who have sought to keep material in the Bucoleon archives a secret. The inability of scholars to access the actual manuscripts stored there makes it difficult for us to verify the material Professor Anastasios provided me with. The only evidence I can therefore bring to support my claims are circumstantial, with the credibility of this work being strongly reliant on my reputation as an academic, as well as that of Professor Anastasios.
Lastly, I would encourage my readers to read the material with an open mind. It is easy for us to buy into popular conceptions of the greedy, cruel Greeks when we remember the recession we had to endure on account of the Roman Government’s unwillingness to forgive our debts. Our blood boils when we hear the leaders of the Popular Orthodox Rally call for gassing the refugees fleeing the continental European conflicts while corpses of those trying to flee to safety in Syria and Mesopotamia wash up on Aegean shores. Yet the biggest mistake we can commit is to refuse to hear their side of the tale. I am every bit as outraged as the rest when it comes to the callousness of the Roman Government, but at a primal level I do understand where they are coming from, being stuck between the hammer and the anvil for most of their history. I may be an emigre-a descendant of purged Republicans after the Imperial coup in the Nineteenth Century, but on some level Romania still calls to me. I was in fact fortunate to grow up in a more tolerating environment than my parents, who jumped into the first plane to Constantinople after the descendants of purged Republicans were no longer persona non-grata after a century of exclusion, and am thus more British than Roman. That is not really the case for many others in my generation, who bitterly rue the fact that the Motherland will not welcome them back with open arms, while they are distrusted and excluded in their country of birth. Whatever political division may exist within the Senate halls in Constantinople fades the moment one steps out into the Latin West, where even sworn republicans name their children after dictators and tyrants in a misguided attempt to atone for defying their Basileus. It is therefore left to us to take a higher moral ground, and bring our people closer with the Roman ones-even if our Governments will not cooperate. Only this way can the wounds dealt over centuries be healed, and we can purge the shadows of the past that still hang over us.
Your Sincerely,
Ίωάννης Ιούλιος Κομνηνός
John Julius Comnenus
London, 29th May 2005.
Notes:
[1] TTL character. Might be hearing more of him than you like.
[2] Not Palestine as we would understand it in 2015 of OTL, but rather the Roman Province (it was Iudea in the first century, but the current name is Palestine).
[3] TTL alliance of nations.
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