Would anything have changed if they stopped pretending to be

>>1680261
>it's a "nationalism existed before french revolution" thread.

>>1680261
>it's another butthurt westerner who won't admit that the eastern part of the Roman empire survived thread
Fags like you are why /his/ is a shit place.

>>1680261
>history
>&
>humanities

Probably not

>Pretending to be romans

Official citizens of the Roman Empire as decrees by Emperor Caracalla and a direct continuation of the Roman empire as established by Diocletian and continued by Theodosius.

>>1680261
Assuming a national identity would have wrecked the whole concept of being THE empire.

>>1680388
>>1680689
But romans had light eyes and fair skin.

It can't be.

>>1680811
No. Fair-skinned and light eyed peoples were the peoples who lived north of the Empire. Contemporary accounts of Romans are olive-skinned dudes and short. Also, no light eyes. Those were barbarian traits from Germania and Britannia.

>>1680261
>pretending to be Romans
They ARE Romans. When Constantine moved his fucking court to Constantinople as Emperor of Rome, every citizen of Rome from Gaul to Anatolia were Roman.

i don't think so

>Byzantine Empire
A completely ethnocentric term invented by North Europeans during the Renaissance that can't accept the idealized Roman Empire of old could actually decay after a 1000 years of existence.

>the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD
>the emperor that would reconquer a large portion of it, including Rome, was born 7 years later

>>1680261
Nope.
Byzantium was a universal empire, just like it's predecessor. Existence ofArab nobles within the empire proves it.

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>>1680811
>romans
>light eyes
>fair skin

>>1680811
>white power am... amiright guyz
>i-italians are niggers

>>1680261
they should have built a fucking wann from the black sea to the levent and just sacked out expansion east and continued colonising barbarians to the danube

>>1680811
Bait a day keeps /pol/locks away?

wall

>>1680261

Probably not. They'd still be corrupt, beholden to the themata system, and stupid.

>>1680261
Pathetic desu.

Why couldn't they conquer shit? Caesar made Gaul and Egypt his bitch, and Pompey did the same with the rest of the East.

Yet the incompetent Byzantines never managed to expand out of Anatolia and the Balkans after getting btfo by Arabs.

>>1681282
Well there were centuries of difference between the two. When Caesar conquered Egypt it was basically ripe for the picking after basically just being a pyramid scheme for the Ptolemies for several centuries, and the conquest of Gaul was pretty much a formality for the ongoing trend at the time.

The Eastern Empire didn't have quite the same advantages as they were dealing wth plagues in the sixth century, as well as a continuing war with the Sassanid Persians that ended up completely fucking over the latter empire when the Arabs came.

So with no manpower, the Eastern Empire was basically reliant on mercenaries and rare volunteers to do most of its defending, which is what it had to do as there simply wasn't the social infrastructure to support the kind of Empire Rome was anymore. Everybody was Roman, it didn't really mean anything at that point. The empire also couldn't really unite people or administer them under christendom, there was a schism forming and Islam quickly dominating the middle east, which had a theology that did a lot more to preserve the state than did Christianity.

>>1680388

>speak Greek
>composed of Greeks
>not even trying imitate Roman government or culture
>orthodox, not Catholic

N-no guys were totes Romans trust us

>>1681428
but you were, the empire just shifted because all the mines were done in iberia

>>1681428
Odoacer literally conquered West Rome, ordered a decree making it void, and then swore fealty to Constantinople, East Rome.

>>1681428

>speak Greek
Latin never managed to overcome Greek as a lingua franca in the eastern portion of the empire. Besides even roman Romans spoke Greek fluently, it was the secondary imperial language

>composed of Greeks
composed of greeks, egyptians, syrians, armenians and remnants of paleo-balkan and anatolian peoples. They were all hellenized, in varying degrees, but ethnic Greeks were just one of many ethnicities. l2empire

>not even trying imitate Roman government or culture
you're an idiot

>orthodox, not Catholic
you're an even bigger idiot

>>1681428
this

greekshits btfo

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>>1681428
I seriously can't believe people still believe this logic.

Do you think the Western Roman Empire was mostly comprised of people born in the city of Rome, i.e. "Romans" as you see them, solely spoke Classical Latin, was pagan and at the same time worshipped the Pope? The Pope didn't even become important until after the Fall.

>>1680261
The Romans of the Eastern Empire are as Roman as the Romans of the Western Empire.

>>1680811
WE

>>1682970
>t. Georgios Stavropoulos

>>1681428
Orthodoxy is literally called Orthodox Catholic Church. Also schism happened after Western part of the empire was already shattered.

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>>1680261

>>1681473
The average layman Roman did not speak Greek, you faggot.

>>1680261
>universal linguistic and cultural identities
>any time before the 19th century

Wewwwwwwwwwest of lads

>>1683229
How is the "average layman" important at all in an ancient/medieval political entity?

>>1683229
The average layman living in the city of Rome didn't speak the same Latin as a layman in Ravenna or any other city.

>>1683286
Nice bullshit.

>>1680261
It wouldn't have stopped the invading barbarian hordes who just wanted to destroy it regardless.

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>>1681428

Yes, yes, anon. The Romans were tall Nordic men wearing togas all the time, speaking only Classical Latin, lived only in Italy and they all became Catholics.
That how they look in my video games and the the Hollywood action movies, so it must be true.

>>1684672
Holy shit, not even that anon (in before implying implications) but no one said Romans were Nordic looking.

>>1684712
>but no one said Romans were Nordic looking

But that's a very common misconception. When these kids see paintings of actual Romans they sperg out because they think Romans looked British like in some HBO show.
The point that many people miss is that "Roman" isn't an ethnicity that supposed to be White (in the sense of Nordic White) and/or Italian or even Latin-speaking, it's a multiethnic civilization.
Like "European"

>>1681428
good post

>>1684255
>vulgar latin was a single language.

>>1684739
>praising idiocy

>>1681282
Maybe you should take a break from your total war and paradox games

>>1684762
>Vulgar Latin is often fallaciously confused with the Proto-Romance language.
>It cannot be supposed Vulgar Latin was a distinct and persistent language.
Keep trying.

>>1680294
this

>>1680294
>>1686940
>It's a nationalism is a completely modern invention with no ancient analogues thread

>>1680261
>pretending
Define pretending. By the 3rd century, the centre of Roman had moved from Italy to Anatolia (really since the age of the Antonines), where all the wealth, populations, major cities existed. By the time of Diocletian (save Valentinian--and only because he was a military man who had been serving in the West most of his life), the centre of Imperial society was in Anatolia. By the time of Theodocious this wasn't just apparent, it was de facto and effectively de jure. The Western "Emperors" from Honorius to Julius Nepos existed solely on the behest of the Eastern Emperors.

>>1680883
>When Constantine moved his fucking court to Constantinople as Emperor of Rome, every citizen of Rome from Gaul to Anatolia were Roman.

More like when Caracalla declared that every person from the Levant to Britain Roman they all became Roman.

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>>1680811

>>1688380
there were some exceptions,majorian and some other whom i forget