Surviving "lost" European Nations

Wikipedia entry is result of relentless effort of "Ugro-Finnish cabal", if you check article's history. They have a gift to present every Finnic chieftaindom as mighty empire dwarfing Rome and Ancient China (Russia is so small in their ethnically purified version of history, it does not even register). Authors of modern Estonian schoolbooks on history share this worldview. It produced generation of high school grads who are sure that Estonians beseiged Constantinople (under guise of "Rus'"). I kid you not.
 
I'd say the Kingdom of the Two Sciliy's, Republic of Venice (a Venicewank would be fun), Republic of Florence, Hanover, Bavaria, lets and Burgundy is a favorite of course, Aquitaine, and the Kingdom of Armenia.
 
That is utterly untrue. First of all, Procopius didn't write in English, and what you posted is a translation. In the original, he used Constantinople.

Err, no. Constantinople is the mis-translation. I don't know what translation you are using, but it's wrong. I use this very wonderful 1935 purist translation over at LacusCurtius, which correctly uses 'Byzantines' and 'Byzantium' throughout. There are other instances of this in other writing that I've seen - Priscus alternates between 'Byzantium' and 'Constantinople' in my translation of his report on the embassy to Atilla, but I haven't been able to check on that yet. Basically, it comes down to this: that in all probability, 'Byzantion' was the colloquial, and 'Konstantinopolis' was the official. Don't know why that's such an outrageous concept. I think 'Constantinople' has just been introduced into some translations to avoid confusion to the lay reader, which is very nice of them, but unfortunately, a pronounced innacuracy.

As for Procopius, you could take a look at the offending article in the original Greek here. You're looking for the word beginning with 'B' at the top of the page - Βυζάντιον.)

I'm not sure where you're getting this - it's pretty famous that "Byzantine" was first used by Hieronymus Wolf, the historian with the best AH.com logon ID. The term hasn't even been used that much in historical writing until the 19th c.

Pretty famous, but wrong. In particular, you might want to dwell on the fact that the Corpus Historiae Byzantinae was a collection of Byzantine source material. So who was Wolf et al getting this 'Byzantine' nomenclature off?

As for the rest - I really could go on all day here, (Same goes for Wozza - very good stuff, though) but I'm a bit pressed, so I'll stop derailing the thread now. Another time I think. Interesting debate, though. And I know that this board is board has it's fair share of Byzanto-Romanophiles, and I don't want suffer the full wrath of them all. ;)
 
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Err, no. Constantinople is the mis-translation. I don't know what translation you are using, but it's wrong. I use this very wonderful 1935 purist translation over at LacusCurtius, which correctly uses 'Byzantines' and 'Byzantium' throughout. There are other instances of this in other writing that I've seen - Priscus alternates between 'Byzantium' and 'Constantinople' in my translation of his report on the embassy to Atilla, but I haven't been able to check on that yet. Basically, it comes down to this: that in all probability, 'Byzantion' was the colloquial, and 'Konstantinopolis' was the official. Don't know why that's such an outrageous concept. I think 'Constantinople' has just been introduced into some translations to avoid confusion to the lay reader, which is very nice of them, but unfortunately, a pronounced innacuracy.

As for Procopius, you could take a look at the offending article in the original Greek here. You're looking for the word beginning with 'B' at the top of the page - Βυζάντιον.)



Pretty famous, but wrong. In particular, you might want to dwell on the fact that the Corpus Historiae Byzantinae was a collection of Byzantine source material. So who was Wolf et al getting this 'Byzantine' nomenclature off?

As for the rest - I really could go on all day here, (Same goes for Wozza - very good stuff, though) but I'm a bit pressed, so I'll stop derailing the thread now. Another time I think. Interesting debate, though. And I know that this board is board has it's fair share of Byzanto-Romanophiles, and I don't want suffer the full wrath of them all. ;)

We may have to leave this debate if you are not around but I will raise a couple of things.

Whilst I can agree with a degree use of Byzantium for the city, I would like to see it for the entire Empire, I do not believe I ever have, and although there may be examples out there it certainly is not anywhere near common usage.
I am also not sure of an official/common distinction - it may simply be that Byzantium is literary, one would have to compare the high sources written in Constantinople with some of the provincial saints lives and epic material.

Not sure about the date of compilation of the Corpus, it does have a Latin name of course, and may refer to material taken out of the city pre-Fall.
 
Dude. He used the word Konstantinopoulos, not Byzantion. Mr. Wolf didn't get "Byzantine" from any source material, he invented the term. It was never, even once, used before that. Never. Not. Once.

This is a completely crazy argument. The link you provided is off the Wikipedia article, which itself states "The term "Byzantine Empire" is an invention of historians and was never used during the Empire's lifetime."

A cursory internet search will find you thousands of references to the fact that "Byzantine" is a modern historical term, not one EVER used by the Byzantines.

Err, no. Constantinople is the mis-translation. I don't know what translation you are using, but it's wrong. I use this very wonderful 1935 purist translation over at LacusCurtius, which correctly uses 'Byzantines' and 'Byzantium' throughout. There are other instances of this in other writing that I've seen - Priscus alternates between 'Byzantium' and 'Constantinople' in my translation of his report on the embassy to Atilla, but I haven't been able to check on that yet. Basically, it comes down to this: that in all probability, 'Byzantion' was the colloquial, and 'Konstantinopolis' was the official. Don't know why that's such an outrageous concept. I think 'Constantinople' has just been introduced into some translations to avoid confusion to the lay reader, which is very nice of them, but unfortunately, a pronounced innacuracy.

As for Procopius, you could take a look at the offending article in the original Greek here. You're looking for the word beginning with 'B' at the top of the page - Βυζάντιον.)



Pretty famous, but wrong. In particular, you might want to dwell on the fact that the Corpus Historiae Byzantinae was a collection of Byzantine source material. So who was Wolf et al getting this 'Byzantine' nomenclature off?

As for the rest - I really could go on all day here, (Same goes for Wozza - very good stuff, though) but I'm a bit pressed, so I'll stop derailing the thread now. Another time I think. Interesting debate, though. And I know that this board is board has it's fair share of Byzanto-Romanophiles, and I don't want suffer the full wrath of them all. ;)
 
We may have to leave this debate if you are not around but I will raise a couple of things.

Whilst I can agree with a degree use of Byzantium for the city, I would like to see it for the entire Empire, I do not believe I ever have, and although there may be examples out there it certainly is not anywhere near common usage.
I am also not sure of an official/common distinction - it may simply be that Byzantium is literary, one would have to compare the high sources written in Constantinople with some of the provincial saints lives and epic material.

Not sure about the date of compilation of the Corpus, it does have a Latin name of course, and may refer to material taken out of the city pre-Fall.

The term "Byzantion" appears in some Byzantine writings, almost all of which are historical references to the pre-Roman period of the city, plus a couple of poetic references. It was never, ever, nah-ever used to refer to the empire, which was the freakin' Roman Empire!
 
The term "Byzantion" appears in some Byzantine writings, almost all of which are historical references to the pre-Roman period of the city, plus a couple of poetic references. It was never, ever, nah-ever used to refer to the empire, which was the freakin' Roman Empire!

Anna Comnena is certainly translated as using "Byzantium" for the city. There would seem to be no reason for this unless she used it. It is exactly her sort of archaism of course.

Never is a big word, and quite frankly, you never know. It may be out there somewhere.
 
Dude. He used the word Konstantinopoulos, not Byzantion. Mr. Wolf didn't get "Byzantine" from any source material, he invented the term. It was never, even once, used before that. Never. Not. Once.

This is a completely crazy argument. The link you provided is off the Wikipedia article, which itself states "The term "Byzantine Empire" is an invention of historians and was never used during the Empire's lifetime."

A cursory internet search will find you thousands of references to the fact that "Byzantine" is a modern historical term, not one EVER used by the Byzantines.
Dude. He used the word Byzantion, not Konstantinopoulos. - did you follow the link, which, by the way was to Google books, not wiki?? Procopios is using Byzantion there in more than one place on the page. Now, I will admit that my greek is not good enough to tell context, but at least the city is being referred to by that name. Procopios is NOT modern.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
Enough already. You're both right. Procopius does use the word Byzantion throughout the Greek text to refer to what we call İstanbul today. Furthermore, there did exist an adjective, "Byzantine", BUT it referred specifically and exclusively to the attributes of the city and its inhabitants. I'm sure that they were proud of their identity as inhabitants of the metropole, but they almost certainly wouldn't see non-Byzantinians as "Byzantine" any more than Manhattanites view people from Yonkers or Nassau County as "New Yorkers".

It would not have been applied to the empire as a whole, nor used as we use it today (e.g. when we talk about the "Byzantine" layers of a dig in Syria or Israel, as we're actually just referring to the late 5th c. to mid 7th century). It's as if we referred to the British Empire as the "Londonian Empire" and talked about "Londonian architecture" in Bombay and Sydney.

Now, can we please drop this?
 
Now, can we please drop this?

Sure. I was going to anyway, but since Abdul's (Now the first person ever on my ignore list) new debating tactic is to simply deny the facts, I'm not at all eager to continue here. What's the point if the other person is arguing purely from personal conviction? Not much fun in that.

If Wozza or anyone wants to continue this at a later date, then they can PM me.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
Sorry for the cut-and-paste, but there's a certain class of people that avoids the Chat sections like the plague (I believe they're called "sane" in real life).
 
I suggest the Kingdom of Dal Riada (sp?) to survive, if only because I have yet to find any TL where it actually does
 
Enough already. You're both right. Procopius does use the word Byzantion throughout the Greek text to refer to what we call İstanbul today. Furthermore, there did exist an adjective, "Byzantine", BUT it referred specifically and exclusively to the attributes of the city and its inhabitants. I'm sure that they were proud of their identity as inhabitants of the metropole, but they almost certainly wouldn't see non-Byzantinians as "Byzantine" any more than Manhattanites view people from Yonkers or Nassau County as "New Yorkers".

It would not have been applied to the empire as a whole, nor used as we use it today (e.g. when we talk about the "Byzantine" layers of a dig in Syria or Israel, as we're actually just referring to the late 5th c. to mid 7th century). It's as if we referred to the British Empire as the "Londonian Empire" and talked about "Londonian architecture" in Bombay and Sydney.

Now, can we please drop this?


No, we can't. Procopius almost always calls the city hē Pólis, and the point of the discussion is what the Byzantines called their empire, which was "Roman", not Byzantine. To accuse me of "outrageous fraud" for stating a fact is just bizarre. In any case, it doesn't matter, as I'm sure you can guess I've long since put V-J on ignore. Eventually all the irritating people will be invisible and this place can become fun again.
 

Fox of Ages

Banned
i'd love to see Sparta...

And the Vikings....

and a Roman Republic...

and a Prussia...

And an Athens....

And maybee a Carthage...

and thiere you have my AH Wishlist
 

The Sandman

Banned
Courland would be pretty cool.

Navarra, so that the Basques have somewhere to chill.

Burgundy, to make European politics even more confusing.

Granada and Cordoba, to prove the "Islam is automatically anti-progress" crowd wrong.

Venice and Genoa, both to make the Mediterranean more interesting and to put an end to this silly debate over the Eastern Roman Empire, at the same time as they put an end to the Eastern Roman Empire.

The Knights of St. John on Malta, and maybe reclaiming Rhodes later.

Bavaria.
 
I'd love more languages, personally.

Thracians, Phrygians, Lydians, Carians and so on. Maybe Galatians too, for the Celto-Wank. Etruscans. North African Phoenicians. Iberians.

Wendish Slavs galore, and some Goths in Crimea.

That's my wishlist at least.
 
Courland, Burgundy, Bavaria, Navarra, all the usuals.

Then Old Saxony (the one in NW Germany), medieval Flanders, the Visigoths, Caliphate of Cordoba or a Republic of Toledo, an Uber-Knights of Malta, Emirate of Sicily, Free Cities of Danzig, Fiume, and Trieste (not all at once...wait, all at once would be awesome :D), Pontus or Illyria, York (either Viking, Roman, Briton, or Saxon), Lorraine (Upper, Lower, or both), Frisia...

That's all I can think of for now. :D
 
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