This would have been far more readable broken up into paragraphs.

Interesting…can’t wait for the replies to this one.

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I am probably gonna get crucified haha

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You just hit the enter key on the computer. The returrn button on the phone.

That brings you to another paragraph

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their culture diverged from the original roman culture, I agree with that but they are definetely the most direct descendent of the roman’s. plus their form of government was much closer to rome’s than fuedal europe.

Yes but by the time of Alexios I, governments were totally different.

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.

People who say that ERE diverged culturally from WRE are mistaken. WRE copied Hellenic culture and old Greek language was spoken in Rome by the aristocrats. Basically, Greek part of Empire is culturally original.

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

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Because reddit uses markdown I’m pretty sure it takes one extra newline

>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.

You agree a term commonly used by historians is a good term. Wow what a revelation.

You need to hit it twice between paragraphs

So I think your problem is that you don't directly describe what it is to be 'Roman' because the term itself it not a very concrete term.

Romulus was a Roman, Augustus was a Roman, Septimius Severus was a Roman, a low wage worker in Constantinople in 450 was also Roman.

People and identities change over time. They are allowed too they adapt. But if you asked every one at everytime what it means to be a Roman, the answer is different.

To Romulus a Roman would have been a citizen of Rome, by the time of Augustus an Italian would have been a Roman. Something unthinkable even 50 years prior to his birth. The Romans literally went to war with the other cities of Rome during the social war to finally decide once and for the question of what it means to be a Roman citizen.

Eventually you have emperors who aren't even born in Italy, Trajan was from Hispania and his ties to the Italians are sketchy at best. Yet he was known as the greatest emperor, Optimus Princeps.

We use Byzantine because it's easier for us as historians to have that need dividing line between the Latin and the Greek empires, but it's an arbitrary line in the sand. It doesn't make the Byzantines any less Roman themselves. It just makes it easier for us.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

True, they even claimed to be descendants of Anaeas. Romans were just grecophiles with a superiority complex

I've seen a few passionate people hating the term "Byzantine" but never offering a better name

It's a delusional conversation. You're talking about a civilisation long gone in a translated language. If the perspective is what's the most respectful to the actual culture obviously use it's greek or Latin name, Eastern Roman or Byzantine or Roman Empire is irrelevant as they are all incorrect.

Nah i think it's dumb.

1. If you're gonna call it after the capital, call it the Constantinian or the Constantinopolitan Empire, not Byzantine which is named after its old un-relevant name.
2. And if you're concerned about its greek culture, then call it the Greek Empire. That's what most of Europe called it in its history.

The Byzantine name is just stupid imo.

It makes sense from the context that Byzantium was a small Roman city that Constantine turned into the cultural center of the eastern empire. At least from a chronological evaluation of the empire

My opinion is that it is correct to call it the byzantine empire, since the empire was ruled from the city of byzantium. We must still remember they were the descendants of the romans, so the roman empire is applicable, but it is less specific

I could not agree more.

After a break from 476 to ~ 535, they controlled Rome for another 200 years. Constantinople was officially “New Rome.” They thought of themselves as “Romans.”

The Byzantines second the motion but we're still waiting on word from the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and the Vandals.

Thing about it is, even though they were speaking Greek by the 7th century, they kept many of the old Roman institutions, and continued to think of themselves as Romans. Its the "Western View of Civilization" that chooses to ignore those facts in favor of seeing Byzantium as an "alien" monarchy. This is the same "Western" civilization that in 1204 sacked Constantinople just because a) they weren't Catholic, and b) they were the wealthiest state in Europe....then made half-hearted efforts to save them from the Ottoman Turks.

The West choosing to reduce the actual Roman Empire i.e: Byzantium to a mere Greek kingdom was the result of a conflict over which state could actually claim the mantle of Roman (Holy Roman or Byzantine). Holy Roman Emperors, despite being elevated from mere Frankish and Saxon kings by the popes, were only borrowing the name of Roman because the old Roman Empire was still fresh in the memories of many in the old western empire, particularly in the Frankish period. But because any actual Roman administration in the lands of Germania was confined to the extreme south and southwest of the region, they only had the influence of Rome to build on. Byzantium by comparison had all the legal, political, military and economic institutions from the former Roman Empire and an unbroken tradition of dynastic rule which had started with Caesar Augustus (Octavian) and continued even past the point in 476 when the last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was overthrown by a barbarian general.

It’s not a useful term because it completely ignores the obviously prominent Roman aspects of the empire.

When I first encountered the term “Byzantine Empire” when I was younger, I had no idea what it was. It took me a surprisingly long time to recognise that it was at all connected to the Roman Empire. It’s unnecessarily confusing for laypeople (especially kids), imo, especially when there’s better terms to use.

I prefer to use “Eastern Roman”, as it places emphasis on the Roman characteristics of the empire while also distinguishing it some from “THE Roman Empire”.

>People who say that ERE diverged culturally from WRE are mistaken

They definitely aren't.

The ERE diverged from itself over a thousand years. Look at how many distinct phases fit into their culture. Heck, just look at...say... 400-800 ad.

Just like the West did from itself in a "how it started" "how it ended" fashion.

Both of those two entities diverged hugely over their life.

If you want to call them different names that's fine, if you want to call them the same, that's fine.

The idea that the Byzantines weren’t Roman is very West European centric. The Arab Muslims in the 600s went to war against an empire which still spanned most of the Mediterranean, and was recognizably the Roman Empire. The city of Rome would remain part of that empire until the 750s, and the Empire would survive in the old Italian heartland until the 1000s.

I think there is a strong case to be made that 1204 should be seen as the end of the empire as opposed to 1453.

I dont think proclaiming yourself a descendant of the Trojans means you consider yourself a greek.

The Roman empire stood for over a thousand years. Of course the governments changed, nothing ever stays the same. People react and adapt to changing environment.

The Roman east was always Greek, even during the days of Caesar and Augustus the Eastern part of the empire spoke Greek.

The notion of the Byzantine emperor was invented as a disambiguation between two emperors in countries that were themselves in the sphere of influence of the "other" Roman emperor (replacing the even worse "Emperor of the Greeks"). They needed circumlocutions that avoided "Roman emperor" to avoid insult.

But do note that Carolingian empire is a similarly modern circumlocution. No contemporary would have called it that. In contemporary documents it is just the Roman Empire (Imperator Romanorum). So Western European historians have already "fixed" that issue of two emperors as far as I am concerned by inventing more neutral new terms for both of them.

They called themselves Roman and we’re a continuation of half the Roman Empire. They were Roman

Empress Irene in Byzantium nearly managed a marriage alliance with the Frankish emperor Charlemagne in the 780s. Otto III married a Byzantine princess in the 1000s-1100s which won the southern part of Italy and opened the possibility of mutual recognition of both the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires as "Roman" in a nod to a time in the late imperial era when Rome was split into eastern and western halves to better manage such crises as food shortages and incursions.

The works of Liutprand of Cremona (10th century Ottonian ambassador to the Byzantine court) are interesting in this regard. Describes a breakdown of diplomacy over the pope referring to the emperor as "Greek" in a letter.

Even during the unified Roman Empire, the eastern half (i.e., the future "Byzantium") differed in language and culture from the western half. When Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Empire to Byzantium, and gave a speech about it, the audience (the Greeks) did not understand his speech.

And what about the term "Byzantium", I think it is appropriate to use it to refer to the Empire between 1261-1453, because at that time very little of Greece was really Roman, because what little was left of the Roman Empire was destroyed in 1204.

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.

It actually needs to be two spaces at the end of a line and return once for a new line, or two return strokes for a new paragraph in reddit markup. :)

I think it shows that from even their own origin myth the romans adopt Greek history/myth.

There's plenty of things showing romans were Greek fanboys, the most apparent being tutored by Greeks (as apparently you're no a true civilized Roman aristocrat if you don't own/pay for an expensive Greek tutor)

I'll concede that they probably didn't REALLY consider themselves Greek, that was just a poor exaggeration on my part

The problem is, you defined "Roman" first using preconceived ideas and began assessing the Eastern Romans based on these ideas.

A Roman in the 1st century was primarily someone who spoke Latin, practiced Greco-Roman Paganism, and lived in Italy. A Roman in the 10th century was primarily someone who spoke Greek, practiced Orthodox Christianity, and lived in Asia Minor.

Both are unquestionably Romans. Both were recognized by their neighbors as Romans. In fact, up until the modern Greek nation state, most Greeks still identified as Roman, not Greek.

Ask an Arab, Turk, Armenian, or Persian what a Roman is, and they will describe the 10th century Roman. Ask a Western European or American, and they will describe the 1st century Roman. In truth, both are Romans, just from different time periods and geographies.

Did they have a Senate like the Western Empire did?

I don't think you know what the Eastern Roman Empire was or what Romans were. You also think 500 years of history are monolithic. Yes, Romans of 500 AD were culturally distinct from Romans 100 BC, including who could be Roman citizen and then even Emperor. It is still a continuation. That equally applied to all parts of the Roman Empire. Rome also never established hereditary dynasties so many people could gain Roman citizenship, even join the aristocracy and within centuries became Roman Emperors without having been born anywhere close to Rome.

Romans used Greek as the sophisticated language in the higher classes already in the republic. As such it was favored long before the "Fall of Rome" by Romans.

The division into West and East Rome was an administrative organization of the Roman Empire. As such East Rome was an uninterrupted continuation of the Roman Empire within its eastern administrative borders.

And that the Pope, who usurped imperial authorities or Germanic dynasties who grabbed territory did not accept Roman authority is somehow expected. Though even that is a simplification because apparently the West Romans did no see their empire fall when historians claim it did. They even complained about Justinians reconquest a as a needless civil war between Romans aka did not consider themselves under foreign rule.

Constantine himself was not Roman by origin, but of Illyrian descent with a Greek mother.

Roman was not a nationality by that point. Plenty of people up to the highest echelons could come from anywhere in the empire.

This idea that Romans ruled over non Romans was precisely not how things worked. As Romans settled through the empire after a few centuries they assimilated into their regional provinces and regional provincials assimilated into Roman elites. To the point to a whole row of Roman emperors coming from all over the place.

Our culture diverges from that 50 years before significantly.

Eastern Roman Empire is widely used by historians and Byzantine less favored today.

The Senate was not a structure defined by the Western or Eastern Roman Empire, It existed within them. It also existed when Italy was ruled by the Osthrogoths and Lombards.

So yes, there was not only a Senate in the later Eastern Roman Empire, while East Rome controlled Italy, the Senatorial class of Italy and their Senate was also part of East Rome.

While the Roman Senate (Senate of Rome/Italy) itself disappears by the 7th century, East Rome retained its own senate for its own region.

The ethnic groups may have been mixed. But linguistic and cultural differences persisted.

Illyria, for example, was Latin-speaking.

With no relevance to the structure of the Roman Empire as a political Entity.

The entire point is: Yes, Cultural differences persisted, including between Illyria and Africa, Africa and Italy, Gaul and Spain, Spain and Greece.

And emperors and other high officials came from all those places.

It's funny, but there were no emperors exactly from Greece. where roman emperors were born

I mean, borders are a bit complicated

Point remains that we have a general assimilation of more and more provincial elites until we have Roman citizenship apply to a wide breadth of people.

At the same time the title emperor to the Roman was never the same exclusive title it became in the Middle Ages and later so someone holding a title of imperium did not mean it needed to be someone from a specific bloodline. They always saw it in a more complex political organization, that is why we have emperors seemingly splitting the empire. To them this was obviously an office of high prestige, but it was an office with administrative and military power, not some blood right. And they never saw this as breaking the Roman Empire apart, but making administration or military organization easier.

My primary issue with all of this is that Eastern Rome was the direct political continuity of the empire, it wasn't a successor state, it wasn't the "empire of the Greeks", it was the direct line from Rome and onwards. Using a term that didn't even exist during the time of the empire just seems wrong, and frankly a little disrespectful.

Though the Trojans themselves were considered to be Greek.

What? By who? The Trojans/Wilusians were more closely related to the Luwianians and Hittites than the Minoan or Mycenaean. Linguisticly, religiously, and culturally they are in no way considered to be Hellenic.

The ancient Greeks themselves considered the Trojans (of the Trojan War era) to be Greeks. Dionysius of Halicarnassus even stated that Troy was ‘as Greek as any true Greek city’ (something like that; I don’t remember the precise wording). This belief is displayed in the Iliad too, where the Trojans are presented as having the same language, culture, and religion as the Greeks.

Obviously this doesn’t fit the reality of the Mycenaean era, since the Greeks only settled Troy from c. 900 BCE. But then, plenty of chronological information about the Trojan War actually places it post-900 BCE (like the evidence from Ctesias).

To answer your questions " We are always thought that the West wanted to bring back the Roman empire and they missed it a lot, but how can you say that and think about invading or destroying the Eastern part of it?"

The idea that the Western states wanted to restore the Roman Empire is a complex one. It's true that the Western states did idealize the Roman Empire and sought to emulate its political and cultural achievements. However, their actions towards the Byzantine Empire, the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, were often motivated by more practical considerations such as political power, economic gain and religious differences. The Byzantine Empire was seen as a rival to the Western states, and their efforts to invade or conquer it were driven by the desire to expand their territories and influence. This does not mean that the Western states did not acknowledge the Eastern Roman Empire as the true descendants of Rome, it's more that their actions were driven by other factors.

Additionally, the Eastern and Western parts of the Roman Empire had grown increasingly distinct over time, with different cultures, languages, and religions, which further contributed to the Western states' view of the Byzantine Empire as a separate entity. The idea of "restoring" the Roman Empire likely referred more to the idea of re-establishing a powerful, centralized state in the Western parts of the former empire. The actions of the western states towards the Byzantine Empire were driven by a combination of practical considerations and the idealized image of the Roman Empire, rather than a genuine desire to restore the Eastern Roman Empire as it was.

By your logic Rome after 284CE or 312CE isn't Rome anymore either...

There is an argument for the separation from the Roman Empire but it's not the points you are making. You are personifying an imperial state & statements like they didn't have respect for the latin empire is just plain wrong.

People who make the case it should be referred as the Roman Empire often give the argument that people themselves believed there was continuity & identified as Roman. What they forget is that historical naming conventions never take that into account, they are arbitrary dividing lines used to draw up history into manageable chunks & bring attention to significant monents of change, for example the decline of the Roman Republic. It's not a reference to people's identity.

However there is also a valid case to make that Byzantine Empire is a pejorative term that has too much negative baggage & should be discounted. The term itself has become an insult to refer to courts that are back stabbing, conspiracies & low morality. The consensus among historians is to refer to it as the Eastern Roman Empire & to do so at an earlier date, usually from Theodosius, to emphasise the continuity whilst still making the historical definition. Popular culture such as video games have not caught up with this however.

The exact definition of where you draw the line is difficult to identify clearly. It's not like the end of the Republic where we can draw a line when hereditary rule starts. Changes occur gradually by different emperors over hundreds of years. But there's no real need to be exact & articles with opinions on this are entertaining reads that anyone interested in the period would happily read so it's not exactly a problem. It's helped that Ancient Roman historians often get off the bus when he hit Constantine & the empire becomes Medieval in structure.

What we should really do, in my opinion, is make more divisions. Carve up the Roman Empire into several empires of different rise & falls. Harriet Flower has an excellent book that does this for the Republic arguing that Rome from a historian studying perspective had not a single republic but 6 distinct republics with definably different structures of govt, visible rises & falls and also experienced two interregnums where govt broke down.

Accepting that these lines are just divisions by historians & with that chopping individual periods up further would do alot to boost the study of those periods. For example historians look at Augustus's state and ask the question, how did the Roman Empire fall, they then start to talk about the Goths & migrations, disease, taxation still in the context of the Augustan Empire. This inevitably leads to historians giving all the change from Augustus to Honorius as a cause of the fall. This isn't correct, the question isn't framed right and should be always in the context of the Empire at the time which was very successful despite its differences. If we draw our lines here and say the Principate/Augustan Empire was its own distinct historical entity with a rise and fall that becomes easier then the smaller scope makes it easier to define. The Augustus Roman Empire fell during the crisis of the Third Century when the succession mechanism broke down. This line also gives us a nice valley for additional debate to flood. Maybe some revisionist historian wants to point out actually they can evidence it just took so many generations for inflation & economic damage to hit & succession wasn't a big part. Etc.

This is why we have these lines as historians & in my opinion the more the better.

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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And the “proper” Rome of old changed government multiple times. The kingdom of Rome became the republic which backed the principate form of the empire followed by the dominate. If a change in government and culture means they’re not Roman then Rome stopped being Roman a hell of a long time before the eastern empire was formed.

Hard disagree. They were Roman. They called themselves as such. Were called Romans even by their enemies. The term Byzantine empire or calling then Greeks was done due to doctrinal and political disputes and wanting to delegitimize the eastern empire. What right does some historian or people 500 years after the empires death have to say someone wasn’t Roman when they called themselves Roman and even their enemies did too? All this stuff about them not being laying speakers or being Greek is nonsense. The eastern empire was Greek speaking since the time of Alexander and even before him. And your whole thing about them being in disputes with the west is nonsensical and invalid. That doesn’t effect their Romanness. When the empire split for the final time with the death of theodosius I the two empires had the same government and army and bureaucracy and laws and it’s people were Roman citizens and everything. The eastern empire changed in many ways but Rome had a long long history and changed in many ways during that time. They never stopped being Roman and to call them anything else is ridiculous.

They called themselves Roman. The rest of the world at the time called them Romans. Some modern historian decides they’re not Roman and so we call them Byzantines… Makes sense.

I don’t know much about Roman history, but I only have this to offer: it’s tricky to decide how we categorise groups of peoples. Do we split them by race, religion, culture, customs, physical borders such as mountains, climates? The list is endless. The borders between actual peoples are blurred, whilst human-implemented borders such as states and countries and empires are forced and definite. You can’t tell A that they belong absolutely to A if their characteristics are blended with that of B. The problem you’re encountering is that you, like most historians, want an absolute term to categorise a wide group of peoples when the answer may simply be that they both are and aren’t similar to the rest of the Roman Empire.

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The 678 CE sacra of Constantine IV to Pope Donus calls monasteries in the east Byzantine. Hence, although they called themselves Romans (Romaioi), Byzantine was understood to be an acceptable term for the eastern empire pretty early on.