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HumanMan00 t1_j4cvzy5 wrote

Disagreed. They called each-other Roman, other peoples called them Roman, the change of language was gradual but latin speakers were always present and latin was till widely used, they are quite literally The Roman Empire evolving into the middle ages.

Byzantium is what historians named it.

If they call themselves Roman and others called them Roman in their own time and after why would scientists name them anything else aside from marking it as a different period of Rome?

It’s just a term we use to mark the period like the Republic, the Monarchy and the Empire.

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[deleted] t1_j4d0vld wrote

This is my recollection too, and that the term Byzantine empire is an anachronism made by historians

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BMXTKD t1_j4d71cf wrote

It would be comparable to this.

The eastern United states, and the Western United states, split up along the 100th parallel. The Eastern United States falls, and becomes a group of different countries.

The Western United States, centered around its national capital of Las Vegas, becomes less Protestant, and more Latter-Day saints. They start speaking Spanish instead of English. The customs become more Southwestern and less WASP like. It starts warring with the Gitchi Gumi Republic, the nation of the Missouri valley, the Dominion of Texas,. Dixieland, Appalachia, and the North Atlantic Republic. They become Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, and culturally Catholic respectively.

The western United States considered itself to be the successor to the country that was established in the east. And so does the rest of the world. By the East sees the union has been dissolved, and The West being something new.

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HumanMan00 t1_j4d8ww1 wrote

Ok cool but the east in this instance would lack the legitimacy of the position of president of the US as they lost continuity and were conquered. Meanwhile the west, even though it is younger, continuously has a president ever since the split. The ruling classes in the east force the leftovers of the congress of west to elect one of their own as a president to legitimize their takeover.

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shantipole t1_j4hmbwb wrote

This is a good analogy, but there"s one big mismatch with the history--the eastern half of Roman Empire had the majority of the people and wealth. So, exactly what you said, except the Eastern and Western US have the others' economies and population numbers.

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mcmanus2099 t1_j4pmesd wrote

The only caveat to this is that you then need to fast forward 1,000 years & as someone so removed from present day decide how you are going to categorize the study of North America in the 20th & 21st centuries.

These divisions are not made by people at the time, it's all done arbitrarily by historians hundreds of years later in order to aid the studying of the subjects.

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R120Tunisia t1_j4d3z5n wrote

>other peoples called them Roman

Depends. Arabs called them Romans because they saw a continuity in the East between Roman and Byzantine rule. In the West, there was no such continuity and medieval Europeans called them just Greeks.

>but latin speakers were always present

By the 10th century the only Latin speakers in the Empire were a few Vlach/Aromanian sheperds in the Balkans.

>latin was till widely used

By the time of Heraclius, Latin was only used in offical military documents, something he got rid of because it was literally just something left from old imperial administration which wasn't useful in an empire where Greek was the majority language as well as the lingua franca.

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HumanMan00 t1_j4d70k3 wrote

First off, “a few latin speakers” is what we have today. At that time there were so many Vlachs and Armonians that we had special laws to cover them. And they were all over the place from Croatia to the Black Sea and from Vojvodina till the south of Greece.

The “few” latin speakers boosted the populations of Slavic states and still managed to create Romania later on. That’s how few they were.

In the 12th century there are still quite a few latin speakers in Constantinople.

On top of that,

Since when are Greek and Roman culture separated to a degree that a change of language is to be considered a change of culture? As far as i know Romans and Greeks functioned in synergy for a long time.

The status of Roman heritage between Rome and Constantinople in other words Catholics and Orthodox is a political thing.

Serbs called them Romei, Bulgarians called the Romei, Bosnians called them Romei. This i know for sure.

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ramkitty t1_j4d6alx wrote

Were ottomans romans then. When mehmet took istanbul not constantinople ;) he was the sultan of rum (rome)

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HumanMan00 t1_j4d80ek wrote

At which point exactly was Rome conquered by the Greek by that logic?

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