Eastern Roman appreciation/discussion thread

...

>Roman empire

>
>Implying Greek wasn't a vital part of the Ancient Roman culture, and a lot of Romans spoke it along with Latin.
>Implying Constantinople wasn't the capital of the whole Roman Empire
>Implying Greeks weren't citizens of the whole Roman Empire

The Eastern Greek Kingdom

made me kek

"Greek" back then was largely a religious identification. For instance, "Julian the Apostate" was called "Julian the Hellene" by the Jews.

Greeks identified as Romans then, which obviously was a lot broader than just the city, it meant the Imperial State of Rome.

Krautboo detected. Begone imposter of the true Romans and start making your lands an actual empire

>"""""""""""""""""Roman"""""""""""""""""""""

Lol, let's take you to school lad

>Language = Greek

Like the above user said, Greek had since the time of the decline of the Republic had played a heavy role in Rome, not only in terms of the language itself, but in the ideas of its literary works.

2) Since the time of the Selecuids, Greek had always been the lingua franca of the East, and stayed throughout the entirety of Latin's dominion over the empire.

3) The Greek spoken by the Romans was not that of the polis (which was a thing of the past), during those hundreds of years of being Roman, it had become heavily "latinized" demarcating a back-and-forth natural to the empire. It was always give and take.

4) Since we're talking an issue of "self" identification (cus we sure as shit aren't taking your personal fapping over augustus view of Rome any seriously), if we're to argue for what constitutes a Roman identity, first and foremost (overtime) would have been that the Romans, whenever they were, always saw themselves as the civilized part of the world, and everyone else as barbarians. That these civilized now spoke greek rather than Latin (and by the way, it was a fucking empire you neet, it was aalways multi-lingual) was merely what they did now.

>not Latin

Holy shit, then I guess we must then necessarily take the view that the Rome stopped being Rome the moment they conquered Sicily (full of Greeks), certainly once they took Carthage (thereby no longer having a latin majority)

>Citizens = Greeks

I have not fucking idea what you're talking about here. The citizens of the ERE were Greeks, not Romans? If so, wrong, the polis, and identifying as Hellen had died off by the time of say Constantine. Greece, Thrace, Anatolia, Pontus were all heavily Romanized and considered themselves as such (to say nothing of Commodus granting citizenship all those people of the empire, however stupid that decision was, it didn't take long for the effects and self-image to set in.

(Part 2 of btfo)

>not Romans/Latins

Again with this. Have you ever stopped to consider that Rome didn't see self-image in terms of race/ethnicity/language/people (or at least any one of those factors alone). It was a combination of these, along with an overrall adherence to the state (eventually the emperor, and Roman law.

>Capital = Constantinople

Rome, while the origin of the empire and term "Roman" was given its esteem and due, it was already considered a cultural backwater and slum by even the 3rd century, owing to hundreds of years of having way too many citizens getting fat and stupid on bread and circuses (these are not the men who took the Sabine women anymore). Plus, the majority of the population of the empire had always been in the east. One of Constantine's reasons behind choosing the site of Byzantium as the capital over say other capitals (Milan, Ravenna, a reminder, when "Rome fell in 473, its capital was in Ravenna, not Rome), one of the main reasons asides from its excellent harbor and defensibility, was how it would shift the power of the emperor closer to the center of its activities. This again because the majority of action of the empire had typically been in the east. (This gets all manner of French, English, Spanish natives real butthurt). The west was backwater by comparison

>not Rome

Not argument.

Keep em coming, boy

The Greeks called themselves Romans during the Byzantium because the Greek word for "Greek" is Hellen, (Έλλην, Έλληνας in mordern Greek) and Hellen used to signify a pagan.

id like call it the greek kingdom instead desu senpai

Excellent rebuttal, but I have one question. How exactly was Commodus's granting of citizenship to all the peoples in the Roman Empire a bad decision?

Well while I honestly support that the "Byzantine" Empire was in fact Roman, I dislike the idea of calling themselves Roman means they were, as that would mean the Ottomans, Krauts, Italians and much more were Roman

so was Gallienus' Cavalry a parmanent fighting unit or just a ragtag vexillatio?

>I dislike the idea of calling themselves Roman means they were, as that would mean the Ottomans, Krauts, Italians and much more were Roman
It really wouldn't. The Byzantine Empire was the same state that Rome had become during the principate of Augustus. It wasn't a continuation, or a succession, or anything like that, it was literally the same country.

They knew that they were not actually Romans, they just called themselves so to separate themselves from their pagan past for jizzus.

After the Social War the Greeks were considered titular Romans

Well actually after the death of Basil II feudalism started to seep into the Roman Empire and everything went to shit once Alexios started encouraging it. So I would say it wasn't exactly the same state for all of its existance but with a state that lasts so long there's bound to be differentiation

Yeah but the person I replied to only stated that the Greeks calling themselves Roman as evidence

>1485317

Can't have it both ways desu, it was the Basileia Rhomaion, literally "Kingdom of the Romans." At various points, it had Serbs, Slavs, Scythians, Bulgars, Croats, Avars, Hungarians, Pontics, "Native Anatolians," Armenians, Arabs, Turks, Turkopole half-breeds, Persians, Assyrians, Coptics, Syriacs, even Viking Rus, and yes, Latins as its citizens. All these speaking different languages, yet most would consider themselves Roman.

>1485317

Though its more complicated than I'll make it out to be, the gist is that up to that point, the main guaranteed way to acquire citizenship (and all the benefits entailed in being able to own land in the most well protected and prosperous place on earth [tail end of the Pax Romana after all] was by signing up for the army. Though pro-citizenship throughout the empire people poised a lot of problems for the empire which Commodus felt he was solving, it immediately erased a large number of people residing within the empire's border from whom the empire had reliably drawn on as a base of soldiers. Soon after (paired off with all the bs of the third century), the empire increasingly found itself with not such a large supply of men to draw on, and thus relying on mercenaries. Too (though this wouldn't be crytalized until the reforms of Diocletian), such quick citizen ship reeaaally decentralized a lot of nodes of power, so that within a hundred years you have these proto fiefdoms and lords popping up

Well Basil II did exhaust the Roman economy with his campaign, but the Makedon dynasty was always a dynasty of soldiers rather than great administrators

He wasn't the worst administrator. He could have been a man as Justinian, great ambitions but with no sense of what they cost

>implying greek wasn't as important as Latin in the peak years of the Empire
>implying Constantinople hadn't eclipsed that of rome and even mediolanum and Ravenna by the time of the fall of rome
>implying roman culture in the balkans differed from roman culture in the peninsula

So if Commodus didn't give all men citizenship, the empire could have potentially survived for 200-300 years more?

False. Basil II actually left a sizable treasury after his death. Considering the number of conflicts he was involved in, this only suggests that he was a fully capable administrator. His main economic policies centered on creating economic incentives for farmers and decreasing their taxes (thereby creating a sizable population base to draw his armies by, with such fierce loyalty to him alone), and heavily taxing the "useless" rich and Church. Having the army ready to die for him, the elites and church could no nothing. His main, and perplexing fuck up is why he didn't have a kid of his own.

It was his successors who were literally just lazing and allowed shit to rot away so that eventually a Manzikert is even possible, and then blowing up that conflict so that it did damage out of scale with what could have only been minimal

True, true, but while Justinian was stuck in the past and just conquered, instead of consolidating his power base, Basil II was fighting for pride and the protection of his people, and while economically that was not the wisest, he did eliminate some big threats of the Empire, most notably the Bulgars

The empire survived for another 1200 years, desu. What are we talking about.

But really, if questions are hard and best avoided in history unless you just want fun keks and specs. It really can't be overstated how much Commodus fucked shit up for his scant 8 (or was it 13 years?) that he ruled. I heard a story that we derived the term comode as a derisive remembrance of that guy. It likely isn't true, but that it could be is rather telling

leaving a full treasury doesn't mean he was great in economic matters, just that he got a lot of loot
constant war is never good for an economy no matter how good he dealt with it

Whatever you say Memet Stephonpaulus

Yeah sometimes I have a brain fart and say stupid shit. I obviously meant a whole empire

You fucked up both names
Wow you're a fucking failure

Also don't forget he was the last man to combat the encroaching threat of feudalism

But didn't feudalism absolutely fail in the Latin Empire during the 1200s, just because the Romans weren't used to it?

>fucked up both names
Nice comprehension skills.

You did
It should be Mehmet Stephanopoulos

The Latin Empire failed cause it wasn't able to defeat the Romans and because it was a French Catholic empire ruling Orthodox Greeks

So you are implying that the Crusader feudalism was practically the same as Imperial administration and that they had no economical problems

Hell with Alexios he added in a lot of feudal elements

No but Alexios tried to include western elements, one of which was the addition of feudal elements

Pretty sure there are Turks with both Memet or Mehmet.

Would staying the same benefit the Empire? Did Alexios need to do this reforms or were they western pandering?
But you can't outright call it feudalism, now can you?

I'm pretty sure there aren't

You also fucked the Greek surname quite much

Whatever you say Albanian kun.

Well I concede on that point, it wasn't entirely feudalistic. And Alexios saw the western nations and believed making his like theirs would improve the empire, leaving it less centralized and more feudal as a result, weakening it.

No one gives a shit about Greek names here. Now pay debens.

>Stephonpaulus
That sounds like a faux French name a "sophisticated" black woman would call her child
>can't even write "debts"
u dint eben got skol boi

>You also fucked up the Greek surname quite much.
>quite much
I really don't care if I fucked it up, kouhai.

You are literally retarded holy shit.

>doesn't even know about debens
In before "I was only pretending.png"

unrelated, but how does the greek language sound to you my barbarian friends? like seriously I wanna know without trying to be offensive

You hellen?

Anyway, like any other language, it depends on whos speaking it and what. I'm not knowledgable enough to know of anything like regional dialects and as to whether there are some that are considered to sound more aesthetically pleasing than others (for example, in the US the "Boston" accent is absolutely wretched, whereas, if it isn't slurring or evident of degenerativeness, then a tenessee accent proper sounds for some reason veeery appealing to me). So with Greek, I've heard it by barbarians speaking Greek and it sounds terrible. Stand alone objectively? I still like it. It has in common with most Mediterranenan tongue a sense of necessarily coming out in waves, tumbling out. Rough, but always lyrical. Whatever is going on linguistically that gives it that almost jazz-flute effect of "badudadu dududuh brruh-duduh" is great. It can go wrong when its some hairy ass man slurring it for convience sake, but thats true of any language

Its a very unromantic sounding language.

If you look at the history of literally every fucking state that lasted more than a few centuries you'll see the same thing. What a fucking retarded argument

Neo-Roman Hellenic Despotry.

Ancient Greek sounded cool.

rhapsodes.fll.vt.edu/Pindar/pindar.htm

Here's a reading of Pindar's First Olympian Ode in the reconstructed pronunciation.

Yeah this guy has a nice pronounciation compared to others. Most people try too hard and end up failing.

Yes, and I and think you put it very well.

Why are you posting augustus? he is as related to the eastern empire as he is to the western one.

>EASTERN
>ROMAN
>EMPIRE

TROLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL U MAD BRO?

>Augustus
>Greek

>Augustus
>German

Roman elites spoke greek.

NOT EASTERN NOT ROMAN NOT AN EMPIRE

This meme will never stop being funny.

It was Caracalla, not Commodus, that gave the citizenship, or act antonine.

caracalla with the edict of 212 if i remember correctly made all free people in the empire roman citizens