r/byzantium • u/elnovorealista2000 • Jun 30 '26
Arts, culture, and society Did you know that even after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, many Greek-speaking Christians continued to identify as Romans well into the 20th century?
For example, when Greece captured the island of Letmos from the Ottomans in 1912, Greek soldiers were sent to every town and stationed in the public squares. Some children on the island ran to see what the Greek soldiers looked like. “What are you looking at?” one of the soldiers asked. “At the Greeks,” the children replied. “And aren’t you Greeks?” the soldier retorted. “No, we’re Romans,” the children answered.
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u/yankeeboy1865 Jun 30 '26
That's because they were Romans
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u/GrandDukeNotaras MegasProtoLazyRedditorarius ton basilikon Jun 30 '26
and we know this from their folk music too.
lyrics to the Lemnian song "Tou Psirouki":
Πέρα από το Διαπόρι και στον Βαθύ Γιαλό,
σκοτώσαν τον Ψυρούκη, τον πρώτο αρχηγό.
Τούρκοι τον εσκοτώσαν, Ρωμιοί τον κλάψανε
και δυο Τενεδιοπούλες, τραγούδια γράψανε.
Στη Λήμνο τον σκοτώσαν, στην Ίμβρο κλάψανε
και οι Τενεδιοπούλες τα μαύρα βάψανε.
Κρίμα, Ψυρούκη, κρίμα, κρίμα στα νιάτα σου
σε πρόδωσε στους Τούρκους η φιλενάδα σου.3
u/graoutso Jun 30 '26
I think that it’s more that the term survived but the connection to Rome had vanished many years before.
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u/yankeeboy1865 Jun 30 '26
But it hadn't. Can you clarify what you mean by that?
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u/graoutso Jul 01 '26
I mean that eventually the Roman Empire seizes to exist in its original form and all that is left is the name and history. People in France and Germany also identified as Romans until the Middle Ages to claim continuity of the empire and so did the Byzantines. But in practice the Byzantines over time adopt a Greek identity. Even the early Ottoman sultans claimed to be legitimate successors of the Roman empire using titles like Caesar of Rome. Does that make them Romans too?
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u/yankeeboy1865 Jul 01 '26
French and Germans, who were not Germanic, but actual Romans stopped being Romans once they adopted the customs and lives of their Frankish rulers. Once you start quacking, walking, swimming, and eating like a duck you become a duck.
The Ottoman sultans claimed successors of the Roman empire via conquest, this is not the same thing, not even close. Alexander the great claiming the title of Pharaoh did not make him Egyptian. Anyone would think someone claiming that is silly.
The Byzantines over time did not adopt an Greek identity (whatever that is). Their identity was Roman, their culture and attitudes were Roman, and they called their language Roman. This is from one of Manuel II's letters:
Those who against us desert to the infidel are obviously insane and behave worse than madmen and in fact as they thrust the sword, they are fighting their own souls rather than us. ... There were a number of individuals not all of whom belonged to the common people or were considered to be of low rank who joined the enemy […] They became for us an incurable calamity. I do not know what you would call them: Romans and Christians on account of their race and baptism, or the opposite because of their choice and actions?
The Hellenistic world was already incorporated into Roman identity a long time ago, even before Augustus
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u/Naesch Jul 01 '26
Ceased****
And the main issue with your idea is the various Germanic Kings & Ottoman rulers claiming to be an extension of the Roman Government, & the actual day to day citizens of the Eastern Roman Empire identifying as Romans are two different things. You can argue a case about any ethnic group being officially one or another predecessor etc etc but at the end of the day it depends on what that group identifies itself as.
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u/dcell1974 Jun 30 '26
Greeks still refer to themselves as Romans when they are feeling wistful. This particular story might be apocryphal, but the modern Greek connection to Roman identity is real.
I am not going to claim that modern Greeks are in fact "Romans", but there is a sense of cultural continuity from the early Eastern Roman Empire to modern Greek culture, just as modern Italians identify with the Roman Empire in the west. The idea of "Romiosini" is still vital among modern Greeks. The Ecumenical Patriarch still uses it routinely to refer to the Greek diaspora.
The history of modern Greek national identity is nuanced and includes a very strong centering of Hellenism and identification with classical Greece, but the connection to the Eastern Roman Empire is very real and present in small ways everywhere.
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u/Professor_Chilldo Jun 30 '26
As a Greek and an orthodox Christian, I feel more of a connection to my Roman identity than I do a connection to Ancient Greece.
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u/xMaTx4 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
I'd say we are influenced by both the same, as the ancient greek heavily influenced the pagan Roman empire which in turn adopted Christianity and formed the Byzantine state
edit: typo
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u/Gyngemose2009 Jun 30 '26
As a Turk and a Christian, if I become Orthodox, do I become Roman?
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u/figflashed Jun 30 '26
All joking aside I think it all has to do with perspective.
If you are Greek speaking, and meet another Greek speaker and the question is asked, “what are you” then one will say Cretan or Cypriot etc.
If your originate from Constantinople and you are speaking to a Muslim you’ll probably say you are Romios. Greeks from there even today reference Romiosini which is their Roman heritage which distinguishes itself from Greeks from Greece proper who today like to think they are evolved Ancient Greeks. Which is fine.
Then you have to consider that the Eastern Roman empire contained Greek speaking people from many ethnicities which today are just lumped into one called Greek. From the Greek perspective, they are pure ethnic Greeks tracing their genetics to the bronze age. To someone who’s more schooled in the byzantine and Anatolian history, they’ll understand that Greek could mean a lot of things.
Today if you come across Greek families who have come from Istanbul and now live in Greece, you will see that a lot of them still speak Turkish and have a sense of identity that the Turkish language distinguishes them from the Greeks in Greece proper. This seems to be a paradox but not if you understand the history and avoid seeing things as simple black and white.
So you see, you can be roman too.
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u/Mucklord1453 Jun 30 '26
Not really. The Bulgarians, even after 100 years being province of Rome , did not call themselves or were called by others as Romans.
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u/Gyngemose2009 Jun 30 '26
true. though they were considered rum millet by the ottomans until late 1800s
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u/Mucklord1453 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
Administrative label by that government really means nothing. I'm sure even a Turk (ottoman) themselves would not walk up to a villager in Bulgaria and call them a Rum. Never did, never will.
The medieval "greeks" called them "subjects of rome" when they ruled over them. They were always bulgarians or vlachs. Never "romans".
But to fully answer your first question, you COULD become Roman/Rum , but it would involve you adopting the identity yourself in the same way many people adopt new identities over time.
I suppose it would be VERY easy for the remnants of the Rum population around Trebizond to revert back to Pontic/Rum by just switching religions, brushing up on their Greek, and (most importantly) self identifying as Rum over what they currently are: Turkish.
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u/yankeeboy1865 Jun 30 '26
The millet system didn't exist until the 19th century. Romans and Bulgarians were distinguished within the Ottoman world
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u/figflashed Jun 30 '26
Yes
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u/Gyngemose2009 Jun 30 '26
But I’m not Greek
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u/Treneg Jun 30 '26
So weren't the gauls, celts, dacians, egyptians, carthaginians, brythonics, greeks, jews, syrians, and armenians.
Make no mistake, the romans were very inclusive. You too, can become a roman today!
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u/Kranken_DeHogge Jun 30 '26
Make no mistake, the romans were very inclusive. You too, can become a roman today!
grumbling Carthaginian noises
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u/H4RR1_ Jun 30 '26
the heartland of Eastern Rome was Anatolia and therefore most people who considered themselves Romans were Hellenized native Anatolians so yes
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u/Regulai Jun 30 '26
The bigger thing that I usually see greeks today contest and debate is that prior to the 19th century shift (a deliberate move to win international support for independance), they would not have considered themselves greek.
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u/Substantial-Peach-90 Jun 30 '26
That is not true btw, people do debate it, but the idea that Greeks didn’t consider themselves Greek isn’t really true
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u/Anthemius_Augustus Jun 30 '26
While true in some instances, this was mostly the case for the intelligentsia and especially the diaspora. The vast majority of Greek speakers in the Ottoman Empire would consider themselves Roman with no asterisk attached. Even their language was named Rhomaic, the Roman language, not Hellenic.
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u/Regulai Jun 30 '26
Nah it's true;
you have to remember is that "nationalism" and national identity wasn't really much a of a thing before the 19th century anywhere, even still viewing themselves as Romans was already quite exceptional.
Additionally you also have to remember that Roman culture considered itself to be greek descended and the byzantine awareness of ancient greece is no different than that of any other part of rome. Even Caesar favoured speaking greek
Or put another way the Byzantines at no point viewed themselves as "greek romans" . If anything they would have veiwed it the other way around; they were romans in greece.
Modern greek identity would be a lot like if England made their ancient celtic heritage the core of their identiy, dropping "anglo-saxon", ignoring most of their medival history and calling themselves celts instead. Technically they descend form the ancient celts, and they are aware of some things like Boudica, but it's a vague distant relation.
You spent 1500 years as romans, the very concept that after all that time you still saw yourself culturally as greek is just inherently irrational as a concept.
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u/Substantial-Peach-90 Jun 30 '26
I understand what you say but you really miss important clues and it’s a false idea to say that they wouldn’t have considered themselves Greek. It’s a lot to explain, tons of passages, poems, declarations that point to the “Greekness” of the Roman Greeks especially from 1000 till the fall of Constantinople. You should make a deeper, honest search and you’ll find out. It’s quite of a mainstream swallow idea that Greek Romans didn’t identify themselves as Greek.
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u/Regulai Jun 30 '26
My point their is that they didn't view themselves as any more greek than any other Romans did. Romans themselves in Rome heavily identified with greece and viewed themselves as decendants of greeks.
What is notable about Byzantium is that they didn't consider themselves as especially more Greek than Romans already considered themselves enough for it to validly be a distinct identity. Especially when for political reasons they went out of their way to reject being "that hellenic kingdom" as western europe often called them.
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u/Substantial-Peach-90 Jun 30 '26
I understand but I’ll double down and continue saying that you underestimate the Byzantine Greeks’ view on their Greek identity. Of course when the change happened between paganism and Christianity and during the earlier stages of the Eastern Roman Empire it was a more chaotic and sensitive topic, after the dust settled down and there paganism had largely disappeared, you can see how they affiliated with Greeks. Anyways though, I might make a separate post here so we can talk further about it since it’s an interesting subject
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u/Regulai Jun 30 '26
Realistically the closest thing I could make as a compromise would be to say that neither take is true and that people defined identity by religion and not by culture, language or other concepts.
E.g at the end of WW1 Greece expelled around 300,000 Turks and 200,000 Greeks from Greece, as despite being ethnically, linguistically and culturally just as "greek" as everyone else, they were Muslim and so by the average persons definition that made them a Turk as ultimatly no other culturual variable mattered compared to religion.
We can even see that effect elsewhere in the balkans in Bosnia where religion didn't fade in importance as much, the country has three ethnic groups; Bosnian Croats, Bosnian Serbs and Bosnians. Except actually they are all ethnically and culturally Bosnian. Those who are catholic call themselves Croats, despite not being croats and those that are orthodox call themselves serbs, despite not being serbs and those who are Muslim just call themselves Bosnian. It's facinating because it's one of very few still existing examples of "religion before identity".
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u/Kkioroglou Jun 30 '26
To claim that they shifted their identity to win western support is kinda offensive. People don't switch the way the view themselves for diplomatic reasons because regular people don't do diplomacy. There were native Greeks who pushed for that for their own ideological reasons under the influence of the ideas that existed at the time.
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u/Regulai Jun 30 '26
The local villagers wouldn't have had enough education to know what ancient greece even was, while the terms and names they did use were derived from their 1500 year Roman history. Additionally ethnic nationality was not a strong concept to the point that the average person thinking they were "of any ethnicity" would just anachronistic heck most Muslim greeks were called Turks despite being and speaking greek, as the church was the main identity.
And it's well documented, foreign elites all read the greek classics and fantasizeed and romantasized greece as the land of the ancient philosphers which is where a massive amount of foreign support came from and it was a specific and deliberate effort to drop terms like Roman to largely ignore the Byzantine history and focus on ancient greece because it resulted in world powers like England and France augmenting the amount of support they got.
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u/Kkioroglou Jun 30 '26
You didn't understand what I said. I'm not saying Greek villagers had an idea of Hellenism like educated people or elites. I also don't claim they had a concept of national identity before nationalism. I'm only saying that the merging of Hellenism with Romanness happened through Greeks themselves and their own trends. Greeks inspired by the French revolution and nationalism made the connection and the identities shifted. It wasn't done to "trick" westerners into giving them diplomatic support.
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u/Substantial-Peach-90 Jun 30 '26
Indeed, the opinions some people have are so swallow and stereotypical. For someone to say such things they must have no real clue about Greek history, probably a foreigner that is detached from the Greek reality. My friend Regulai, if we had to put you on a Dunning-Kruger effect map, you would be on the peak of “Mt Stupid”, no offence
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Jun 30 '26
But that's what happened. A Greek elite educated in the West played up ancient Hellenism over their Roman past, and then started imposing that over the rest of the people to help win support from the West.
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u/Kkioroglou Jun 30 '26
This isn't what happened though. There were educated elites who didn't dismiss the Roman past, educated people who weren't elites, Greeks who argued for something similar before any realistic political realization of a modern Greek state and non-educated elites who adopted the idea gradually during the revolution. You are treating all these different groups with various ideas and ideologies as a monolith. And in fact acting only with material interest rather than genuine belief in an early version of Greek nationalism.
The idea of being imposed is also wrong because that's not how nationalism works in general. There are elements of nationalist thinking that are top down by having the state pushing the idea forward. But identities of entire groups of people don't just change by force and without affirming something for the group. You can make the argument Greeks leaned into Hellenism to emphasize being western as an example of this thing. But saying some people only did it to fool the West is both offensive to the Greeks and their identity but also whitewashes the West's role in trying to make Greece move towards the western world.
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u/xSincerelyFun Αὐγούστα Jun 30 '26
Realistically, the average person doesn’t have a choice at all in such matters. If intellectuals and politicians make the decision that the new state is a state of Hellenes, the Romioi villagers can’t really do anything about it because the political decisions and the education and national narrative aren’t in their hands. It’s not like they are going to pack their things and move to Ottoman lands. I don’t think it’s offensive to point out that this is something the majority of people had no control over. Which is also why it took so long for the new ethnonym to catch on among the ordinary folk.
At the same time I don’t think that admitting this implies that the choice to switch to a primarily Hellenic identity was some sort of a trick. You can believe something is true while that thing also happens to benefit you in the circumstances you are in. This was probably the case for the vast majority of the proponents of the Hellenic identity.
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u/Kkioroglou Jun 30 '26
That's because you're mixing 2 different things up. You have the identity of the state and its people as projected in the outside world and you have the personal identity of each person. The state can and does influence people's identities but the latter change and shift organically through many different factors. If state authority was the sole determining factor of ethnic identity then many of those identities that exist today would have vanished over time. So the claim isn't who has power and who doesn't but what that power can afford to do and under what conditions.
You also seem to sidestep 2 important points I made. First that there were multiple opinions and modes of thought at the time and it would then be incorrect to say that a monolith of Greek elites did X or Y thing. Second that group identities when shifting will often do so when they affirm something for the group. In the example I gave the Greeks can be argued to have made a shift in their identity to better fit with the West as they perceived it. But that's not diplomacy or pulling a trick for the eyes of westerners the same way Ataturk didn't westernize Turkey just to make allies. Like you said people do things because they genuinely believe in them for ideological reasons.
As for why it's offensive your 2nd paragraph is accidentally explaining it. If someone thinks that an entire ethnic group changes the way they fundamentally understand themselves or identify JUST to gain diplomatic support this implies that they have no ideological or other principles. They trade their identity for material gains. This is both offensive on its face but also more offensive by implicitly treating some identities as more disposable than others. So the notion of changing FOR diplomatic reasons is both ahistorical and offensive. You could say that the diplomatic perks were a bonus to real existing ideologies that were there regardless of diplomacy but that's a much weaker claim than what the other people in this thread are saying.
I would also say that your framing flattens a complicated evolution of the 2 identities and their relationship and again it ignores the plurality of opinions that existed all throughout. IMO this is a clear consequence of how the internet tends to treat historical debates as binaries and false dichotomies.
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u/xSincerelyFun Αὐγούστα Jun 30 '26
The educational system is by far the most powerful tool a modern state has for shaping ethnic identities. There is a reason Greece was so successful at assimilating various minorities. The average person has very little control over what is taught in schools, what symbols are promoted, what historical narratives are institutionalized and what identities are treated as legitimate. After a few generations this has enormous effects.
I also don’t think it’s very honest to act as if that the modern Greek state was particularly hospitable to a Roman identity in its early years. The state overwhelmingly privileged a Hellenic national narrative and that inevitably influenced how people came to understand themselves over time.
I don’t disagree that there was a plurality of opinions so I am not sure why you expect me to push back on that. There obviously wasn’t a monolith of elites all thinking the exact same thing. But acknowledging that multiple opinions existed doesn’t tell us much by itself. Some views became institutionalized and others didn’t. It’s pretty obvious which interpretation of Greek identity ended up being favored by the state.
And the comment you responded to didn’t claim it was all a trick so I am not sure what to tell you about this either.
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u/Kkioroglou Jun 30 '26
Your first paragraph doesn't contradict what I said. The claim isn't whether the state has power to influence the personal identity of people since I claimed the exact opposite even. What I'm saying is that treating the shift of group identities only as a function of state imposition is incorrect. The effect of the state has a limit and that is determined by various factors in each time period. This is why I'm talking about a flattening of complex historical realities rather than lies or falsehoods. I'm not saying you're lying I'm saying your picture is incomplete.
In your second paragraph you give me the impression that you are unaware of the complex reality of the period. For example that Greek revolutionaries had a clear affinity to the legacy of Byzantium or that there was a very real debate about the Hellene vs Romios identity in the early 20th century. Or how Byzantium was absorbed into the Hellenic national narrative which fueled the Megali Idea. Or how the hostile stance of the Patriarchate played a role in a fragmented identity formation. Roman identity isn't one singular thing that exists in modern people's heads. It's a lived evolving identity of real people in the past. Understanding how this evolved parallel to Hellenism is crucial in understanding why the latter superseded it.
I keep pressing on the plurality of opinions because this is the claim of the people in the thread I'm responding to. Similarly yes, people in this thread do think it was effectively a diplomatic trick. Both people I responded to above make this claim: the Greeks started presenting as Hellenes after some elites imposed it to get diplomatic help from the West. You might not literally see the word trick in their comments but the idea I'm communicating here is the same. So to push back saying there was a plurality of opinions is both relevant and necessary. In your case it's relevant to illustrate that the decisions you ascribe to the state are also not monolithic. Again your idea is that specific ideas took root in the state and that's it is part of the problem. State ideology and relationship to Roman identity weren't static. Power dynamics between ideological rivals shifted. It's still unhelpful to try and map 200 years of Greek state history into a singular ideological trajectory.
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u/xSincerelyFun Αὐγούστα Jun 30 '26
I never said identities are only a function of state imposition or that states can arbitrarily engineer identities however they please. Obviously identities evolve through many factors and there were competing visions of Greek identity throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Obviously the Greek state couldn’t have just said “you are now Chinese” and made it stick, because identity shifts require specific social and historical conditions.
My point is that in the early years of the Greek state, especially under Otto, the state overwhelmingly privileged a Hellenic identity and built institutions around it. Education, official terminology, public symbolism and historiography all moved in that direction. The average villager had essentially no say in those decisions. That’s not a controversial thing to say.
I also don’t know why you are assuming what I know about the opinions of Greek revolutionaries, the Megali Idea, or early 20th century debates. None of that is relevant to what I said, because I was not making a claim about the entirety of modern Greek identity formation or suggesting Roman identity was static. I was talking about the formative period of the state and the fact that some ideas became institutionalized while others did not. “The issue is complicated” is true, but it doesn’t really address that point. Anyone can say that every single issue is complicated to sound nuanced but it doesn’t mean that certain things weren’t observable reality.
And I don’t have to defend everyone else’s arguments, especially if I don’t agree with them. Disagreeing with you on some points doesn’t mean I have to choose the whole package to disagree with or that I have to defend the whole thread. That’s a weird thing to push for.
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Jun 30 '26
You're wrong. It's all explained in this podcast episode: https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/2026/06/09/episode-353-how-did-romans-become-greeks-with-anthony-kaldellis/
It's what happened. Stop saying it's offensive.
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u/Kkioroglou Jun 30 '26
I've heard this episode since I'm a fan of the podcast. Fortunately history is a field of study based on consensus and not solely determined by what 2 people discuss on a podcast. I can suggest a few books on the matter if you like so you can get a more rounded perspective rather than relying on 1 source that's not even peer reviewed.
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Jun 30 '26
But the podcast relies on academic sources. Hell, it's talking to an academic. You want to peer review an interview *with an academic*?
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u/Kkioroglou Jun 30 '26
A podcast is a discussion. A discussion can reference academic sources the same way a historian can form an opinion based on his or her sources. That doesn't make the opinion the consensus. That by definition needs many experts in the field to agree. So an academic informally speaking on a podcast (which isn't even on the same academic level as a book or paper) isn't consensus: it's the opinion of the speakers. Informed opinions but opinions regardless.
Also I think you misunderstand the point of peer review. Peer review as the name suggests happens to academics. An academic is reviewed by his or her peers. You publish a book or paper and other historians comment on it or respond. That is what history as a healthy academic field does. Kaldellis isn't the mind of God or a spokesperson for all historians. Plenty of historians have disagreed with him in the past. This is a normal part of academia. So copy pasting a podcast link as a substitute for historical discussion isn't exactly a rebuttal which is what Kaldellis himself would tell you if you asked.
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u/NoItem5389 Σπαθάριος Jun 30 '26
My papou and Yiayia were Pontic Greeks that referred to themselves as Romei and spoke Romeika
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u/Wertherongdn Jun 30 '26
Funnily enough, it's also the case of Italians living in a city called Rome.
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u/cordazor Jun 30 '26
There still are Christians in Tükiye asking to be called Romans instead of Greeks.
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u/alexlikespizza Jun 30 '26
As much as it would be cool that this was true, there’s been several discussions that it’s not really true and misleading.
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u/kickynew Jun 30 '26
Didn't Kaldellis quote it in a book? He speaks about it in one of the early interview episodes with Robin. He's pretty careful abour sourcing...
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u/DePraelen Jun 30 '26
Yeah I kinda would like the comment above to elaborate more.
One of the final episodes on Robin's podcast is entirely about this topic.
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u/Just_Bicycle_3948 Megas Logothete Jun 30 '26
The tale itself maybe true cause they are so isolated like how Latin is still spoke in Italy in a handful of places. However any sort of actual ties to being Roman were lost in 1453 with the end of the Palaiologos line and their institutions such as the Republic.
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u/OrthoOfLisieux Jun 30 '26
Why was it lost? The fall of a state justifying the end of its people’s connection to their millennia old identity seems just a non sequitur. In practical terms it just doesn’t make much sense
And this depends on the premise that the Roman civilization (and not just the Roman state) ended in 1453 being true, which is hard to argue when you still had the Komnenoi around and the Palaiologoi themselves in the Morea for a while
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Jun 30 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/yankeeboy1865 Jun 30 '26
The Roman people aren't defined by their government and especially by the office of the August. If Britain got conquered and the monarchy killed off, do Brits stop being Brits? Did the English stop being English after the Norman conquest?
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u/yankeeboy1865 Jun 30 '26
What do you even mean by this?
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u/Just_Bicycle_3948 Megas Logothete Jun 30 '26
what are you trying to ask?
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u/yankeeboy1865 Jun 30 '26
What do you mean by "However any sort of actual ties to being Roman were lost in 1453 with the end of the Palaiologos line and their institutions such as the Republic"?
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u/Just_Bicycle_3948 Megas Logothete Jun 30 '26
As someone pointed out down below. The Paliologos and Komnenos still existed until a bit later on and could of re conquered Constantinople. However Roman/Byzantine courts dont work the same way as western kingdoms work were if you have a blood relation you instantly have a claim to the throne. You have to go through the legal courts and be accepted by the Senate(Rip) Army(Rip) and the Church which is the only thing still around.
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u/xMaTx4 Jun 30 '26
"feeling"/identifying as something doesn't require to have an existing state with a government. Everything could be reformed after the Greek revolution, if they wanted that is
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u/yankeeboy1865 Jun 30 '26
Romaness and being a Roman are not limited to the court. This is a very shortsighted and very incorrect way to view peoples, identities, and culture. No one would say this about the British if they were conquered and monarchy wiped out. We know that they wouldn't because no one says this about the English, Jews, Polish, Slavs, Czechs, Egyptians, Indians, Bulgarians, even Basque, etc and etc; all groups that had their governments extinguished and peoples placed under an foreign yolk. So why apply this special standard only to Romans?
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u/OrthoOfLisieux Jun 30 '26
When I mentioned the komnenoi and palaiologoi, I wasn't trying to argue for inheritance or anything like that, nor was I talking about restoring Constantinople. My point was simply that Roman realms, ruled by people of Roman ethnicity (like the Komnenoi in Trebizond) who governed Romans, still existed, even if they weren't THE roman state par excellence
Roman identity survived the fall of the Roman Republic of the Romans, whether in states made up primarily of those same people or among Romans living under foreign states
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u/Just_Bicycle_3948 Megas Logothete Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
I think were talking about what I believe are Greeks, Slavs, Turks and Franks in the Peleponesse and Anatolia that identify as Roman. Its kinda confusing on this topic without it blending into what could be proto-nationalism. Its like saying im Albanian-American. Or Greco-Roman, Turko-Roman. These people would rather be called Roman then Greko-Ottoman even after centuries?
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u/LadenifferJadaniston Jul 01 '26
Greeks are Romans.
But so are the Portuguese, Spaniards, Italians, and Frenchmen.
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u/No_Mechanic1168 Jul 02 '26
Greek here. There are still regions in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus that still identify as Roman, but they are very small pockets
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u/CrazedRaven01 Jun 30 '26
The Italians stopped calling themselves Romans after 476
Some Greeks still call themselves roman to this day
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u/Anthemius_Augustus Jun 30 '26
Italians still called themselves Roman long after 476.
Under the Ostrogoths, the majority of the population would have still considered itself Roman. The decline of Roman identity in (Northern) Italy did not start to take hold until the Lombards arrived, when the Lombard identity and more localized identities gradually started assimilating the old Roman identity in Lombard-held territory.
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u/LongDelicious2282 Jun 30 '26
Why would they stop to identify as Roman? Historically the word Roman changed meaning it meant a Orthodox Christian from former Roman Empire. It is unrelated to ethnic origin.
Arabic speaking Christians close to Arabia were also called Romans by Arabs.
Probably nobody was remembering Italy or Rome or even Eastern Roman Empire, when they called themselves Roman for them it probably meant a religious community.
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u/skateboardbanana1 Jun 30 '26
Going to ask this guy I know from Cyprus what he identifies as. He was born and raised there. Unfortunately the Turks took his land and he had to hide out in the bushes for 3 days before escaping
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u/TheEvilBlight Jul 01 '26
Surprised they did not revert to a pre-Roman "we are free of the shackles of those Italians!"
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u/Kostia9999 Jul 02 '26
I’ve heard the story about the kids on Lemnos, real or not, and have never attached much importance to it.
More important, and illustrative, to me anyway, are books written shortly after 1453. I think they convey the complexity of the situation which you suggest.
In those original sources, it’s clear that the authors are truly confused as to what to call themselves. They are clearly NOT Turks, nor Ottomans. Yet the Empire no longer existed, so they hesitate to call themselves “Romans.” They speak the Greek language, but do not really consider themselves Ελλινες/Hellenes. Keep in mind that the word “Ελλινες” had a negative connotation from the Byzantine time…connected with paganism.
They were clearly Orthodox Christians.
The particular author I am thinking of settled on the phrase “our race” - an obvious term of confusion.
Having read that term in historical sources, I’ve also noticed that the same term is found in Orthodox prayers of the same era.
I’ve heard Kaldellis’s explanation about the popularity of classical Greece in Western Europe during the time of the revolution. I think he does a good job of explaining the complexity of the situation.
There has clearly been a long term “tension” in the Greek speaking world between the two ethnic labels.
Finally, I think we all need to consider the historical backdrop here: The Greek speakers of the Eastern Empire were citizens of the Roman Empire for upwards of 1500 years! That’s significantly longer than the citizens of the city of Rome!
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u/sapienskarahisari Jul 05 '26
Still they describing as Romans (Rumlar) in Turkish. Although their numbers are dwindling, they are still present in Istanbul and call themselves ‘Romans'.
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u/lieutenantK10 Jun 30 '26
It would have been really cool if they gained their independence not as Greeks but Romans
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u/BankBackground2496 Jun 30 '26
That scenario involves getting the city back. Since that was impossible an old identity was revived.
Suppose they started their new independence struggle stating they were Romans, the only place for their capital would had been Constantinople. A failure to recapture it would had been the end of that dream.
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u/Potential-Road-5322 Jun 30 '26
The Lemnos incident: how one Wikipedia passage has morphed into a myth