end of the saga
The 21 year old wonderkid of history has finally had enough of me. And now she's stooped to insulting me! As she says "You don't understand the written word and you don't think." Big talk for someone who never heard of Constantine XI. She also mocks me for my intense interest in this, as she says "And yes, I meant you should move out of your
( Read more... )
The title is quite meaningless, and it should be seen as such after Mehmed II took on the title of Caesar. Emperor was also given by the Pontifex Maximus to Carolus Magnus. History isn't about titles and empires and geists. Do you really care whether the United States has a President or a King or a Prime Minister, granted they have the same powers of the executive and we the same bill of rights ? We are an extension of the British Empire whether we like it or not. In fact, we're more British than the Byzantines (I'm not using this word to aggrivate you, but merely for clarity, forgive it's usage) were Romans. It's merely a matter of semantics.
For instance, here is an example. Say America were to go down the dark path of Caius Iulius Caesar, to become an Empire, and eventually we conquered Mexico. We Anglicize them, have the educated all be fluently English 2L, maybe even English 1L, and allow them to be major politicians, even Emperor one day, but they retain their cultural heritage and conduct their spanish soap operas, mariachi circus music and continue their love of soccer instead of our awesome sports. Then one day the stupid fucking Canadian barbarian socialist warmongers tear down Pax Americana and consume the entire portion that was once the United States of America. But by this time, Washington D.C. had collapsed into it's giant mosquito infested marsh, and the denizens had become such corrupt hedonist bastards that the Emperor relocated the capital to just outside Guadalajara Mexico. So, now the empire is in ruins, but the only portion of the empire left is the Anglo-hispanic Mexican provinces, and they live on. But soon they drop the english language from their colloqium, and the bill of rights, and the constitution, and the legislative branch, and the McDonalds corporation etc. etc. Soon, they begin flourishing in a new golden age of their own, and the literature, the politics, the people .... are all Spanish speaking Mexicans who call themselves Americans (because by this time there is no difference in it's meaning).
Would YOU call them Americans ?
The medieval Romans were most definatly different than their ancient Roman ancestors, but isn't this to be expected? Look how much we americans are different than our own founding fathers and that was only 229 years after the official founding of our country. Roman, as an empire alone, exixted almost 1,500 years. Gay marriage, free black people, women voters, I could go on and on. Don't you expect that some things are going to be different in that time? Medieval Romans didn't speak Latin. Why would they?
They would speak latin if they were Romans, if they were indeed the Roman empire, as you say. What good is a Persian empire that speaks Turkish ? None whatsoever, that's why they called it Seljuk ... Timurid. And you're citing superficial differences there with gay marriage and whathaveyou. The Byzantines were as Greek as Greek culture could get, there was no other Greek culture but the Byzantine, they were Hellas. Not just linguistically either, but culturally. You look at the eastern empire church culture vis a vis the roman catholic church, the easterners were neoplatonists while the westerners were burning The Symposium to keep warm at night. The eastern orthodox church has about as much to do with Jupiter Capitolinus as the Karate Kid, whereas the roman catholic church maintained its congealment with paganism up to the time Constantinople was sacked and the refugees had influenced the italian renaissance.
Reply
The title is quite meaningless...
The point I was trying to make was that the imperial title that Constantine held was the same as the original. It was passed down and there was never a period of time in which the title did not exist. An example of this would be if from 300-500 ad the land of the romans was completely dismantled and then finally some greek guy came along and decided to start the new roman empire. I would agree that they may call themselves romans but they are not romans. This is the difference between the Holy Roman Empire and the real medieval Roman empire. In the case of the real Romans, Constantine the Great moved the capital to the east and called it Nova Roma. Clearly he intended that Constantinople would be the new center of the Roman world, not some greek case study that eventually tried to claim roman heritage. Maybe if the name Nova Roma had stuck people would feel that Constantinople was truly Roman. But it wasn't, though it shouldn't change matters.
For instance, here is an example. Say America were to go down the dark path of Caius Iulius Caesar...
Would YOU call them Americans ?
Of course not, but do you really think this is comparable? I'll go back to the question I asked last time, what do you consider a roman? If your defination is purely a citizen of Rome, then of course byzantines were not roman. By that definition, though, almost no one in the Roman empire was roman. So what do you consider the heartland of the Roman Empire? You say that when Rome fell the Roman empire ceased to exist, but Rome was pretty unimportant leading up to this point considering that the emperor with the most power lived in Constantinople(Nova Roma) and even the Western emperor ruled from Ravenna. And consider how long Greece proper was roman territory, the romans first started toying with the idea of ruling Greece around 200 BC and within 100 years greece was roman, so for over 500 years, greece was a part of the Roman empire, and being taken so early, it was roman for longer than a lot of the later western roman empire. So why did it turn out that france and italy were more so much more roman than greece? In addition, everything that became roman ultimatly came from greece, both before and after the fall of Rome. Clearly this is not the same situation as the US. I think a more valid comparison would be as follows:
The US, as we know her today, is composed of 50 states. Now say the canucks invaded and took everything from the mississippi river east. All that was left of the United States was the western half, would this half fail to be the same country, or would it still be the united states? And keep in mind that some states in the western half haven't even been states for more than 60 years. Greece was a part of the ancient roman empire for hundreds of years. I think it's pretty clear that the day after the west fell, the eastern emperor woke up and still knew he was emperor of the romans, even if Rome itself was in the hands of barbarians. Then the face of the empire changed into greek culturally, this is not disputed. But they did not cease to be romans because the city wasn't in their hands any longer.
By the way, Greeks were not merely latinized people who longed to return to their roots. Greeks embraced being roman, and the fact that they still called themselves roman in 1453 proves this.
Reply
A culture isn't a title. Dynasties even separate the Paleologans from the Theodosians from the Antonines, each running completely different countries. Today, Romania uses that root word, and they speak a Latin-derived language, but they are hardly "Roman" and yet are barely as far from being Roman as the Byzantines were.
You're intoxicated with superficialities and semantics. The late Byzantines called themselves Romans because the word had power. The Muslims called them Yunans for Ionians, they knew they weren't dealing with Rome. Republicans will tell you that Rome died at Pharsalus, most will tell you Rome died with Romulus Augustulus, but I look at it from the perspective that christianity, the barracks emperors and the Dominate created an anarchy that soon destroyed Italic cultural significance. The real death of everything that was Rome was the complete infiltration of Germans into the west, then Arabs into the east and south, and subsequently the dissolution of the classical mediterranean economy and its prosperity that had for so long fostered Roman culture.
"Now say the canucks invaded and took everything from the mississippi river east. All that was left of the United States was the western half, would this half fail to be the same country, or would it still be the united states?"
Very poor analogy, the western united states did not have native inhabitants with a culture that rivaled our own before we took it over, and continued speaking a separate language. Sure Greeks embraced being Roman, but they spoke Greek and were Greek, before during and after Pax Romana. The Byzantines were Greeks, the Romans were Italians. France and Spain had Italian colonial transplantations until the Franks and Visigoths overtook them and congealed into something new, same with the Goths and Lombards in Italy to a lesser extent. Britain mainly had troops, North Africa and the Maghreb were predominantly Carthagian/Berber/Semitic and Egypt was extremely non-Roman. Egyptians society had already been submitted to second class citizenry under the Ptolemies, with the Roman occupation, they became third class citizens, then one by one they kicked out their false Lords, even though they were "citizens" (for mostly tax purposes) of their false Lords.
Reply
Come on Kenny, why do romans need to speak latin in order to be roman? Do you realize how many people were made into romans in 212? And though I admit I have no numbers and would rather not to have to look them up, I would say a good portion didn't speak Latin. Look at how many people in the united states don't speak english, but it doesn't change the fact that they're americans. The Latin parts of the empire were conquered. How was the empire supposed to keep it's people speaking latin when these people had been romans for hundreds of years but spoke greek the entire time? Why were greeks as roman as anyone in Italy until the city of Rome fell into barbarian hands? The fact that greeks never spoke latin but were legally romans never mattered to anyone until the west was conquered. The fall of Rome was really sort of inconsequental, but people grasp on it, failing to realize that Rome had no power for a long time.
As for your points about the eastern and western churches, you're looking a it a little simplistically. I'm sure I don't need to rundown the history of the schism for you, but for a long time there was only one church. The split came several hundred years after the fall of the west, so for a while the medieval romans and western europe were under the same exact church. There were always some differences, but that's also to be expected when you consider how big europe is and how hard it was to have any sort of long range communications back then.
I'm not sure why your definition of a nation is which language the people speak. When you're dealing with a multi-cultural empire such as that of the ancient romans, there were bound to be areas that were culturally different. But as I've said, with Caracalla's decree that all free men in the empire were romans as well as the fact that 'byzantines' never stopped calling themselves roman, it's pretty clear that the byzantine empire was simply the medieval version of the roman empire.
Reply
America isn't Rome, but Rome had immigrants too, and they weren't considered Roman. They were considered whatever, until their family became Romans, just like migrants to America who wish to make their family American will do so, and they'll only do it by learning English. You can't exist here and create an American family without speaking English.
As for your points about the eastern and western churches, you're looking a it a little simplistically.
I don't think you understand what I was referring to, the church in Rome and the Church in Constantinople were of separate philosophies long before the schism. I didn't even refer to that. Byzantine theology began to grow separate right after Nicaea. They embraced philosophical neoplatonism via the Patristic authors while the westerners embraced the temple of jupiter and pagan apollonianism to a greater extent. The "dark ages" were so called in the west because it was all hokey pokey religion while they weren't fairing so bad in Constantinople.
I'm not sure why your definition of a nation is which language the people speak.
I'm afraid Nations didn't exist in the period we're speaking of, this is a cultural matter, and language makes a culture. It's the code which binds a people. You aren't part of a culture if you don't share their traditions or understand their speech. You can learn both and become influenced by both, but then to become part of their culture you have to actually live there too. The Byzantines neither lived in Rome, spoke Roman tongues, or dwelled in Roman culture.
The Romans and Greeks never were happy to consider themselves one and the same. Semantically and Religiously, they were part and parcel. Semantics is power. You can change the name of something and have people wrap themselves around your finger. Just look at the change from "estate tax" to "death tax". Calling yourself Roman and your country Romania, although you are neither, tells people exactly what's up, what standard you bear.
Reply
Byzantines called themselves Romans because the word had power.
I believe the byzantines called themselves Roman because of the fact that they felt that they were Romans and that's that. Of course the title did bring power with it but that's only an added bonus.
Calling yourself Roman and your country Romania, although
you are neither, tells people exactly what's up, what standard you bear.
This really won't go anywhere and apparently neither one of us are going to change our minds, but one thing I'd like for you to explain to me is how the roman empire went from being the roman empire to being the byzantine empire when nothing really changed. There was no coup, there was never a period of time in which a foreign power invaded and completely ended the existance of the empire. From the republic days when Greece was first brought into the fold until the days when the Turks breached Constantinople, there was not a time in which romans did not reign over Constantinople.
the Romans were Italians
Well we may as well agree to disagree now because I don't believe this to be true, and this is the central point to the whole debate. So you can call them Byzantines or whatever word they make up next to describe medieval Romans and I'll just keep calling them Romans.
Reply
Christianity changed everything. If Justinian had conquered the west and they actually were in Rome and half the "Byzantine" empire spoke Latin, I would still call it Byzantine because it was not the same empire. I don't consider any of the dominate, the principate, the republic nor the kingdom the same thing. With Diocletian and Constantine, the empire was split for administrative purposes, and the section that constituted a heavy majority hellenic culture survived past the fall of the latin culture. Though these people legally were Roman citizens, who maintained the concurrent capital of the "Roman Empire", they were not italians, who beget the Roman Empire. The Italians delivered to the Greeks their empire and the Greeks kept it. They called themselves Romans. If you want to call them Romans, go ahead. No law against that. No law against rehabilitation either. In fact, I encourage both. I'd like to see the Byzantines gain more recognition for their contribution to society. But claiming there's an unbroken chain from the fall of the Tarquin kings to Mehmed II's conquest is pure lunacy. There isn't even an unbroken chain in Byzantine history.
If you want to use the term "Medieval Rome", you're just going to look like you've got an unwarrented chip on your shoulder unless you're referring to the Papal States. And that's a fact.
Reply
Leave a comment