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StepSideways77 t1_it36yvb wrote

When the east fell to the Turks in 1454 AD intellectuals/books flooded Europe and is a factor in the renaissance of the 15th century.

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[deleted] OP t1_it3760g wrote

This exact fact is what prompted me to ask about fall of west.

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Capriama t1_it3b9h1 wrote

Yes, but even in that case the vast majority of Greeks remained. There were some Greeks that fled to certain European regions but there wasn't a mass migration.

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MoreanSwordsman t1_it3ur1g wrote

*Romans, not Greeks. Yes, they had Greek culture all around them, but they saw themselves as Romans. When you today go to Southern Cyprus and ask the people, they will tell you that they are Cypriots or Rums (Romans), but not Greeks.

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Capriama t1_it44c65 wrote

They were Greeks with Roman citizenship. In other words they were both Greeks (ethnicity) and Romans (politically) and that's how they saw themselves based on the primary sources that have survived.

>When you today go to Southern Cyprus and ask the people, they will tell you that they are Cypriots or Rums (Romans), but not Greeks.

I suppose you mean Cyprus and I think you got confused by our different ethnonyms. Greeks today have three ethnonyms: Ελληνας (Hellenas), Γραικός (Graikos) and Ρωμιός (Rhomios/Roman). All these terms mean "Greek" in Greek and Έλληνας is by far the most popular one. Although during the byzantine period we also used Ρωμαίος/Rhomaios/Roman, today Ρωμαίος is used for the ancient romans while Ρωμιός is the term that we use for ourselves. As for cypriots, we are Greeks. As far as I know Turks use the term "Rum" for Greeks from Cyprus,Pontic Greeks and Greeks that still live in turkey while they use the term "Yunan" (from Ίωνες, the ancient Greek tribe) for the rest of the Greeks that live in Greece.

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Phat-Lines t1_it5cpyy wrote

At that point yeah. The Greeks definitely began to view themselves as Greeks and not Romans as the centuries went on.

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bel_esprit_ t1_it3x8vl wrote

So a medieval brain drain — very interesting (I never learned this and thought it was a modern concept)

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Maximum-Bad-7295 t1_it4drf2 wrote

The Eastern Empire/Byzantium was more or less surrounded by the turks. In its latter days, the empire was a diminishing island in an Ottoman sea. The western empire some places, like Britannia, it more or less disappeared overnight, others, it just withered away. I suppose there was a lot of internal displacements in such turbulent times, but mass migration from west to east, seems unlikely. To me, that is :)

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