Greek or roman?

Roman. "Greek" as a national identity did not exist in late antiquity and would not exist again until the 13th century at the earliest.

>>2200466
ROMAN !

>>2200466
What people don't seem to understand is that Roman is not an ethnicity or national identity as we know it, but rather a status of citizenship and an idea of state. As long as one held Roman citizenship, they were themselves Roman. A Italian/Latin living in the capital itself was just as Roman as an egyptian in Alexandria, or a Greek living in Athens.

The idea of the city of Rome maintaining the Empire of Rome began to fade during the late stages of the Western Empire, with them abandoning Rome as the capital altogether in favor of Ravenna for its proximity to the centers of conflict.

Seeing as how the Eastern Roman Empire continued the tradition of citizenship and the idea of a Roman state well past the fall of the West, I see no real controversy in its legitimacy as the Roman Empire, even to its demise in the 1450's.

>>2200569

most of the people living in the long history of Rome weren't actually Roman though. Caracalla's edict doesn't change that a lot of people were just fine being Peregrinii, latins, socii, foederatii, etc.

>>2200629
Because Caracalla's move to grant people Roman citizenship was a cynical ploy to raise taxes and to do something about the fact that most of the people actually living in the empire weren't citizens, and therefore weren't subject to the kind of taxes that full citizens were.

This also made life a nightmare for Christians because now they had to get their trade license by making a sacrifice at the appropriate pagan temple, and paying taxes was literally synonymous with making a sacrifice at the temple of Jupiter Optimex.

By the time of Caracalla the concept of Roman citizenship had already been reduced to the level of farce because the most basic concept of a citizen is that you get to have a say in how your government manages its affairs, and in the imperial era these functions had been completely sub-letted to autocrats pretending to be democrats

>>2200466
>On 8 October 1912, during the First Balkan War, Lemnos became part of Greece. The Greek navy under Rear Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis took it over without any casualties from the occupying Turkish Ottoman garrison, who were returned to Anatolia. Peter Charanis, born on the island in 1908 and later a professor of Byzantine history at Rutgers University recounts when the island was occupied and Greek soldiers were sent to the villages and stationed themselves in the public squares. Some of the children ran to see what Greek soldiers looked like. ‘‘What are you looking at?’’ one of them asked. ‘‘At Hellenes,’’ the children replied. ‘‘Are you not Hellenes yourselves?’’ a soldier retorted. ‘‘No, we are Romans." Thus was the most ancient national identity in all of history, preserved in isolation, finally absorbed and ended.[16]

>>2200649

Well yeah, democratic institutions were already relegated to irrelevant ceremonial purposes, however, Rome never tried to be representative beyond it's original tribes, everything beyond the city itself was an ally, a protectorate, a subjugated enemy or a colony, all either somewhat individual culturally and politically to an extent, or entirely dominated by the senate.

If Rome had given representation to it's provinces it would have gone to shit far earlier.

>>2200651
>tfw you realize rome lasted over 2500 years

>Greek
Don't you mean Macedonian

>>2200661
>If Rome had given representation to it's provinces it would have gone to shit far earlier.
Half the reason why the Roman Republic was so successful in the first place was because of their ability to "Romanize" newly acquired territory, where yesterday's defeated peoples were todays servants and freedman and tomorrows citizens and legionaries. Peoples who joined peacefully got a much better deal.

This is why by the time of the Punic War Rome could draw on massive manpower reserves (a luxury that their Carthaginian and Hellenic peers lacked) and almost 2/3rds of the Roman army were allies, and the fact that Romans weren't granting them citizenship was what provoked the social wars, which marked the beginning of many decades of strife and conflict which ultimately ended with Augustus declaring himself the "first citizen", and from that point on Roman society could be summed up by the phrase "all Romans are equal but some are more equal than others", and the concept of Roman citizenship ceased to have any real meaning or come with any real privilege

>>2200686

i mean in the sense that they gave "seats" to foreign provinces in the senate or make them influence the decisions of the republic at large.

the result of the social wars were that the rights of non-citizens had nothing to envy from the ones of citizens, not that more people were granted citizenship.

>>2200709
>not that more people were granted citizenship.
But that's not true. They were granted citizenship under the Lex Julia, which granted citizenship to all Italian allies who sided with Rome during the Social War, and then 2 years later the Lex Plautia Papiria de Civitate Sociis Danda granted citizenship to all Italian allies who had rebelled during the social war.

The central problem goes back to the word Republic, from the latin Res Publica, which means "public affairs". The very idea of a Republic is that you are partitioning political power amongst the citizens rather than letting an entrenched elite horde it, so when your population increases and so do the number of your citizens, but political power remains monopolized by a privileged elite, you're defeating the purpose of Res Publica in the first place (hence the hypocrisy of the late-Republic/ Imperial era as a place where citizenship and democracy were kept as hallowed values, but in practice shadow-autocrats were calling the shots and gradually eroding Roman's commitment to democratic values)

So for these allies who fought in Rome's army and paid Roman taxes, demanding representation is an inevitable, key aspect of Res Publica, just like Colonial Americans would do some 1750 years later, just like anyone would. Romans couldn't abide, so in a few generations they got the rule by privileged minority that they had so desperately craved

>>2200466
Both, because of a e s t h e t i c s. But mostly, Greek.