Did byzantines consider themselves greeks or roman?

>>553556
both

>>553556
They referred to themselves as the Roman empire

>>553566
Can confirm. Also, the notion of Byzantium and Eastern Romans were apperently modern creations by some German historian I believe

>>553556
Romans. The independence war from 1821 I believe started with the idea to eventually retake Constantinople and establish the Empire. Greek nationalism, as in a return to view of a Greek nation rather than a roman empire, came later, as did a return to referring to themselves as Hellenes

>>553588
"Byzantium" (actually Byzantion) was indeed the name of Constantinople before it was named after Constantine, but yes, the term "Byzantine Empire" was the creation of Hieronymus Wolf in the 16th century.

If you go back to, say, the age of the Crusades, the "Byzantines" called themselves Romans, while the Latins/Crusaders called them Greeks. For their part, the Muslims called them Romans (thus the Seljuks referring to Anatolia as "Rum," e.g. Rome, and later on the Ottomans calling the Balkans "Rumeli" or Rumelia.) But nobody ever thought to call them Byzantines until Wolf.

>>553556
They, and literally everyone around them considered themselves the Roman empire, Byzantine is a made up word by the Renaissance writers.

>>553556
>>553556
It depends on who you asked the emperors referred to themselves as Romans but the last emperor in my opinion that was truly roman was justinian
No one is arguing that the byzantine rulers Considered them selves "byzantine" the term is used to emphasize that the empire was politically and geographically centered around the Greeks to the point that calling it "roman" is purely out of nostalgia and that the true roman empire had ceased to exist (but I would argue that rome didn't fall suddenly with the west but was slowly buried by the greeks)

They called themselves Romans to the end, though Westerners often called them Greeks. There was some proto-nationalistic hellenic sentiment in the late Empire but it hardly amounted to some sort of awakening.

>Ῥωμαῖος

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>>553652

>tfw the Allah himself in the Qu'ran calls them "the Romans"

Both, the Hellenic world became synonymous with the Roman empire during the centuries they were a part of it.

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>>554249


Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Turkroach anon

O sultan, Turkroach devil and damned devil's kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are you, that can't slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil excretes, and your army eats. You will not, you son of a bitch, make subjects of Christian sons; we've no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, fuck your mother.

You Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-fucker of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, pig of Armenia, Podolian thief, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig's snout, mare's arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw your own mother!

So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. You won't even be herding pigs for the Christians. Now we'll conclude, for we don't know the date and don't own a calendar; the moon's in the sky, the year with the Lord, the day's the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!

>>554268

>posting fake letters

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>>554271

>posting fake prophets

>>554281

>posting fake frogs

>>554288
>posting anything

>>554295

>posting nothing

>>554296
>po

>>554299

>

>>554144
Who? The emperor? The aristocrats? The people of Constantinople?
Sure many aristocratic families might claim to be descendants of Rome but when you speak Greek, are devout christians, and follow Greek tradition instead of Latin ones, how "roman" are they

>>553566
This. Pretty much the first thing you learn while reading about them. And that the traditional European medieval court was invented by them.

>>554312
Except that the western courts evolved from those of Charlemagne which was built on the foundation of earlier Franks and with the administrative assistance of Gallo-roman bureaucrats
Byzantine courts had always been FAR more complex then the western counter part
Even the thought of the Byzantines half a world a way playing such role on early western societies sounds kinda sketchy

>>554308
>Who?
Everyone whop wasn't actively tryuing to denegrate that.

It was the "land of the romans" populated by the "romans" led by the emperor of rome.

>Sure many aristocratic families might claim to be descendants of Rome but when you speak Greek,
The army was using latin well after the commoners stopped, as was the administration.
Plus, most people under the empire would use their native tounges for day to day business. Pay your taxes and the romans don't care what language you speak.
>are devout christians,
Christianity is a roman religion.
>and follow Greek tradition instead of Latin
"latin" traditions that date to after the empire had fallen in the west. Which are heretical.
>ones, how "roman" are they
I don't know, how roman is a state that... s literally the other half of Rome, using roman law, a roman army, roman administration, and under a roman faith?

At what arbitraty point do we decide that the inevitabke evolotion of a culutre menas it's now an entirely different thing?
Why does speaking greek even matter, when the romans had nobles speaking fucking classical greek, and rome was actually a state?

>>554362
Byzantine court proceedings are incredibly fucking complicated, and they made them that way on purpose. There' no chance at all that western courts came from them.

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>>554281
HOLY FUCKING SHIT

>>554308
Consider that from their point of view - people and aristocrats alike - the Roman empire had never ended.

Constantine founded (or re-founded) their great capital, and since that point, an Roman Emperor had always ruled there. Since Constantine's day, it had always been the Roman Emperor ruling a Roman Empire with a Roman church, a Roman army, and Roman law. Sure, Rome itself - the city - had fallen, but the rule of the Roman Emperors in Constantinople had never faltered. They were Romans, their ancestors had been Romans, their emperor was Roman, and that's how it had always been, regardless of their language. Even when the Roman Empire had been whole, Greek had been a language of learning and in widespread use, there was nothing un-Roman about it. The word Greeks today use to refer to themselves, "Hellene," had the connotation of "pagan" in their time; people who thought of themselves as inheritors of Christian Rome would never deign to call themselves that.

So really, who did these illiterate, uncultured Frankish and German barbarians think they were, saying that the only true Roman Empire wasn't "Roman?" Which realm deserved the title more, the actual Roman Empire that had never stopped existing, or the kingdom of a knuckle-dragging German king whose only claim to imperial dignity was that his predecessors had seized by force the rotting husk that was the old city of Rome?

>>553556
Yes.

>>554527
>So really, who did these illiterate, uncultured Frankish and German barbarians think they were, saying that the only true Roman Empire wasn't "Roman?" Which realm deserved the title more, the actual Roman Empire that had never stopped existing, or the kingdom of a knuckle-dragging German king whose only claim to imperial dignity was that his predecessors had seized by force the rotting husk that was the old city of Rome?

THIS. Its just Germans trying to be relevant in history again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ztOV2wrrkY

>>554299
>going on /po/

>>553556
Romans. You've got to remember that the population of Greece had been made Roman citizens in AD 212, and they remained inside the Roman Empire up until the area came under Turk control in the 15th century. The periods where they weren't under Imperial control were incredibly brief, not long enough to cause them to change their identity. That's more than 1000 years of being Roman, and it's why they continued to consider themselves Roman until the 19th century and awakening of Greek nationalism

>>554380
Execpt that only a small percentage of people in the empire were romans.
Being roman is a culture.
While Christianity became a dominant force in the late empire it had never fully integrated into roman culture
It's not the Franks who made the difference (in fact Charlemagne requested to marry the empress to unite the "two romes") the label byzantine is actually is a more modern one. But being modern doesn't mean it's unjustified because while Byzantines are definitely the continued empire in a self altered form. both names are correct it's just when Byzantine history is as long as it is and as different as it is from the earlier empire. If you compare byzantine society to Roman culture through out most of its history, not just the late empire, you get two very different groups and that is why we give it the name byzantine
But no the empire actually almost completely discontinued Latin as it was very uncommon in that part of the empire anyway, all of the soldiers spoke Greek, the court spoke Greek, the laws were made in Greek and later on in the empire there were only a handful of scholars left who could use Latin (this was done out of common sense but it's an important part of your identity)
The military of the Byzantines was also vastly different from earlier roman armies. The byzantine army was relatively small, very well organized and was also much more complex then earlier roman armies. Romans soldiers fought for glory and money while byzantine soldiers saw themselves as holy warriors defending the last light of civilization (the church and state of the Byzantines are inseparable) compare that to the late roman armies which made extensive use of barbarian mercenaries
yes they are the continuation of the same roman empire and the name byzantine is a useful term to refer to a specific period of said empire

>>555454
By this sort of argument, Germans, French etc. should be called by other names as well since their post-medieval cultures differ very much to their medieval ones.

>>553556
Both and neither.

>>555454
>Execpt that only a small percentage of people in the empire were romans.
the same is true of the Principate and Dominate periods of the Universal Roman Empire. Empires always have a smaller elite riding on top of larger disparate and different ethnicitys/cultures.

The Roman Empire was always the Roman Empire, case closed.

>>554527
This is perfect

>>555454
>Being roman is a culture
being Roman was never one monolithic culture. It couldn't be in an empire that size. What it meant to be Roman was different in in Britannia to what it meant in Hispania to what it meant in Syria, etc.
>it had never fully integrated into roman culture
this is just not true. The church actually represents a return to the traditional Roman practice of donating to public works in a lot of ways

>>553652
>"Byzantium" (actually Byzantion) was indeed the name of Constantinople before it was named after Constantine, but yes, the term "Byzantine Empire" was the creation of Hieronymus Wolf in the 16th century.
Why did he do it? Was it a strategy to appropriate the HRE label for Germany?

>>553566
so did germans but we know that's not how it works

>>556944
>Why did he do it? Was it a strategy to appropriate the HRE label for Germany?

Probably not. If he had called his work the "History of Rome" people would have presumed it was about the Roman Empire, or possibly the Holy Roman Empire, or maybe the city of Rome under the Popes. If he had called it the History of the Greeks people might have assumed it would discuss the ancient Greeks. There was no good term for "the rump state of the Roman empire between the fall of Rome and the fall of Constantinople." Though "Byzantine" isn't an accurate term for that state, at least it's not a confusing term, which is why people still use it today. Everyone understands what we mean when we say the "Byzantine Empire," which is not true of "Rome" or "the Roman Empire" or "the Romans."

That said, later historians probably did use the term in part because it was a bit derogatory. It distinguished the medieval Roman Empire, which was often regarded in the West as corrupt, effeminate, despotic, sclerotic, and so on, from the ancient Roman Empire, which was admired as strong, vital, and the predecessor to Western civilization (unlike the decadent "Romans" of the East). There's a reason that in English, "byzantine" is also an adjective meaning overly complex/arcane/bureaucratic. Calling the medieval Romans "Byzantines" allowed scholars who didn't think very highly of them to refer to them without tainting the name "Roman;" indeed, it let them label the "Byzantines" as false Romans, a people who were really more like decadent orientals than the superior peoples of the west and didn't "deserve" the name of Rome. Western historians preferred to see their societies as the true heirs to the glory of ancient Rome, and that required explaining why the actual Roman empire which continued to exist in Constantinople didn't really count.

>>558138

Only the Byzantine Empire was the part of the Empire that survived, not some German king going WE WUZ ROMANS AND SHIT

>>553556
Roman. They just calling themselves greek again after they botched their rebellion against the Ottomans.

>>558315
Well said.

>>558315
Very informative, thanks!

>>553556
As this guy said they cobsidered themself romans first, but parts of their culture and organization werr totally greek.
The official language (paired woth latin) was ellenistic greek. Their visual arts have more of a greek and eastern feel to them, often related to the ancient esoteric and mystic greek cults.
A couple of facts:
>after 1453 the ERE's intellectuals fled to Italy, spreading once again the greek language in Europe
>when the crusaders led by Venice conquered Constantinople in 1204, a Greek Empire was established in the ellenic region.

>>558376
>when the crusaders led by Venice conquered Constantinople in 1204, a Greek Empire was established in the ellenic region.

Which state do you mean, exactly? The "Empire of Nicaea" was in western Anatolia, not Greece proper, and in any case they always considered themselves to be the Roman Empire. The Emperors in Nicaea still called themselves Roman emperors and their subjects were still called Romans; they were just temporarily in exile while the Latins held Constantinople.

Certainly there was more of a Greek "national awareness" starting in the Nicaean/Laskarid period, and because of the contraction of the empire it was probably more ethnically "Greek" than ever before, but it's inaccurate to say that a Greek Empire was "established." In their view the Roman Empire was still unbroken even if it had lost its capital city yet again.

>>558315
What's wrong with "Eastern Empire" desu

>>558417
It's not really any more accurate than "Byzantine Empire." There never was a state which called itself the "Eastern [Roman] Empire;" it's an anachronism we use to refer to the eastern part of the empire when it was ruled by two emperors. Personally, I mildly prefer "ERE" to "Byzantine Empire" because it avoids the negative connotations of the word "Byzantine," but as a technical term ERE is less precise because it also refers to the eastern part of the empire prior to the fall of Rome.

If you're asking why Wolf didn't use "Eastern Roman Empire," I couldn't really say.

How do modern greeks refer to the Byzantine Empire?

Here's something I've been wondering for a while, did the Germans in the HRE consider themselves, and referred to themselves, as Romans as well? Or were they simply Germans in the Roman Empire?

>>553556
Both. Roman doesn't mean latin.

>>558844
Roman in this context refers to the religion (catholicism) iirc. So they considered themselves romans but not in the way you're thinking.

>>553556
Yes

>>554299
>>554302
a-am I being memed?

>>558844
Did people in that era in Western Europe even referred to themselves as Germans? IIRC, they were mostly concerned with their villages and a Bavarian considered an Austrian as much of a foreigner as he considered a Frenchman or a n Englander.

>>553556
Roman, but not in the ethnic sense. they considered themselves the Roman Empire, but the earliest Byzantines hated the actual city of Rome, hence they created a Christian Empire located at Byzantium.

They choose that location because it was a great defensive location to repel invading armies.

A better name would nearly be the Orthodox Roman Empire, seeing that Orthodox comes from the Byzantines.

Old Roman Empire = Pagan
New Roman Empire = Christian

Was Constantine a Serb?

>>558973
Ofcourse.
Everybody you know is serbian.
Every animal on the Earth is serb.
Even the aliens are serbia.

The whole universe is called "Velika Srbija" and you are living in it, shqiptar.

>>558987
How terrifying

Just a historical trivia. Armenians, first encountering Roman Empire, couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that there was a split between the Western and Eastern part. They settled for calling Byzantines "Romans" and Western Romans "Latines".

>>553556
They weren't as stupid as people on anime image boards like to present them. They were fully aware of their Grecian roots and in contrast to their political Roman identity.

>>559073
Armenians met romans when it was still a republic

>>559078
They were also smart enough to embrace the glory of Rome even though they defeated a few of their distant ancestors.

Having a victim complex is an entirely modern thing.

>>558844
No, but they saw themselves as having re-established the Roman Empire.

HRE doesn't become the name for a few decades/centuries later.

>>553652
>Rumelia
Is that why Romania is called that way and not Dacia?