Should We Use The B-Word (Byzantium)? 

Kkkkkkkkk you can't afford Brazilian discord? 😂😂😂

Orthodoxy have its very deceptive attitude since it deliberately concealed the fact they rebranded Hungarian-MacAr-Scythian rulers as somehow they own Orthodox figures which is how Béla 3rd Hungarian king got rebranded as Alexios Jewnanistani king just as the entire Cuman-Coman dynasty, Varangiai Urak-Rurik as Kijewish Rus etc

With Surfshark and Romaboo, we can all say "Ecce Romani!" ;)

wtf? This is splitting hairs argument, they can be both? I don't think we need to reinvent nameplates, anyone who knows what a byzantine is knows they were roman.

i cracked the case, the Pagans are the True Romans and the Christians are illegal usurpers ....thus the Empire fell with Maxentius...... the Pagans slowly withered away over the coming centuries

How much Byzantine history do they teach in Bulgaria?

I'm pretty sure the Arabs and Muslims do that too. For the same reasons

@@RomabooRamblings Mostly covered the wars between the two states and the intricate politics between them, which in itself is a ton. Obviously, we all know about Basil II

@@Dian_Borisov_SW Probs to Bulgaria for Teaching Basil II it is always a hard Topic to talk about someone who won a Decisive War against your Home Country . (Im Italian So Obvisouly I Like Basil II)

@@Dian_Borisov_SW How does Bulgaria address the 160 years of Byzantine rule? Where do Byzantine cultural and institutional influences stand?

Poor Byzantium... didn't they already endure enough name changes??

@@matthewmagda4971 being called strange exonyms can be funny sometimes. Greeks still to this day call my country "Gallia", "Gaul".

@@Duke_of_Lorraine Yes, because calling it France and calling you Franks sounds like an insult to Modern Greek ears.

@@gregoryheers2633 I've heard it's because of that cursed 4th crusade.

​@@Duke_of_LorraineMost in Greece are Slavs who wish they were Greek. See "Greeks, Latins, Iberians and Jews were, and are, NOT Blond!"

Always good to get the non western point of view. Helps me in understanding history.

@@georgezissis9244 One of the most important thing about the history is it is written by the victors :)

As a Greek when I first found out about this it blew my mind.

Correct. They say there are still some 10 million Serbs in Turkey today - some from Janissaries, other from before Turks in Phrygia, Lycia, etc... Have you heard of anything like that?

@@borisfrlic Can not say something like "10 million Serbians" but there are quite some "millions" of people descendants of the Balkan region in general spread across the modern Turkiye. Some from Janissaries some from convertions in general and some know some doesn't know their heritage as usual.

Most in Greece are Slavs who beLIEve they're Greek.

Yet you still have issues with Macedonia's international name. Probably Romans (the Latin ones) had the same issue with Late Antiquity Greeks (Eastern Romans).

@@danielradu3212 30' video and yet you still have no clue what you are talking about. What relation do the southern Slavs have with Macedonia?

@@Theophanis_Ketipidis Well, they inhabit parts of Ancient Macedonia, they embrace the Macedonian symbols and declare themselves Macedonians. After centuries of Roman occupation a resurgent Macedonian state in the Balkans would be normal to expect.

@@danielradu3212 Not really, other than the Greeks there were no other people identifying themselves as Macedonians before WW1 so why would one find normal to expect a Macedonian state?

i am greek can confirm

They do see themselves as ancestors but genetically modern greeks are middle eastern

@@captainmccuckin2698 well as far as i know the opposite is true

@@marshallsilverstar9636 yes because the study on it is banned in Greece and there are not many copies

@@captainmccuckin2698 What study is that? (I mean it's characteristics )

If looting the capital means robbing the empire of its resources, then that empire is not a too functional country.

@@genovayork2468 the amount of wealth Constantinople had at the time was hundreds of years of valuables, priceless artifacts that date back to Classical Rome and even to the BC era. The wealth was used by the state to get out of disastrous wars

@@Muramasa1794 Yes, did I say it wasn't?

@genovayork2468 the citizens thought it was a civil war. Business went on as usual though much of the fighting. The seizure of the city was a betrayal by Christians that humiliated the Pope and doomed the Crusader states. From here on we'd see increasingly pointless civil crusades and the Ottomans had an easy run, killing far more Christian life. The 4th Crusaders were doomed to hell by their evil leaders who lied and manipulated them into multiple excommunications, which is horrible for those at that time, clearly holy men to be there in the first place.

@@nikusja5864 No, Egypt was more longevive. Also stick to topic.

Something changed

All empires changes. The Roman Republic were different from the Roman Empire later. It is laughable that we moderns are determining the identitity of ancient people . They are not here to tell their side of the story. I will go by what the ancient people wrote. From the Emperor , Patriach , bishops diplomat, chroniclers and foreign enenmies Arabs Turks Bulgarians Serbians Persians even all the way to India and China call the Empire centred in Constantinople Roman. All of them called that Empire Rome and the inhabitants Roman. The only people not calling them Romans were the Latins , Franks and their cultural descendants. No one would have given two hoots what these Latins and Franks thought or call of the Constatipnople Romans if not the fact that they went on to have the renaisance 18th century enlightenment and the Industrial revolution to conquer the world and imposed their world view and scholarship on the rest of us. The Byzantium Empire did not exist. Only Roman. And even though th Empire was gone by 1453. Romans and Roman lands still existed until early 20th century.

In what sense though? This makes absolutely no sense! The Roman Empire of Theodosius and Constantine was certainly very different from that of, Augustus Caracella and Aurelian. The Roman polity lasted a very long time, shifting from an Republic, to an Empire (but even by the late Republican period it was an Empire) to a nation-state (after Caracella gave universal citizenship), each era with different laws, political ideals and perceptions of what constituted "Roman" (over a 700 year period in the West). Do we consider those times any less Roman because of those changes? Of course not! This argument is a non-sequiter because it makes no logical sense when you stop looking at this from a surface level. Were the English any different from the English now at the time of Alfred the Great, Charles I, Oliver Cromwell or George V? Even though they went through various changes in that time-span legally, linguistically or politically? The answer is no, and the Roman case isn't any different!

@@BorninPurple Byzaboos clawing their damn nails to the bone trying to maintain the slightest relation to Rome lmao. Cry harder, The Roman Empire (Western Rome) thought of the Byzantines as a bunch of LARP'ing dorks

⁠@@BorninPurpleI like where you were going with your comment, but a huge flaw is in the last bit of your point. The English were very much different during Alfred’s time versus Cromwell, Charles, George etc. They were very much Anglo-Saxon rather than English. From 899 to 1066 they weren’t English like we know them. It wasn’t till Henry IV that even our rough conception of English identity form. That’s why there is something to say about the shift in terminology when describing the Eastern Romans/ Byzantines. Roman is a fickle thing because one is not wrong saying a person in Gaul in 300 AD was very much Roman, as were the folk in Constantinople. But while the Skelton of Roman identity remained one can’t argue that the religion, culture and even spoken/ written word no longer was that of the Romans of Constantine. Their was no unified church across the Mediterranean, Latin was not spoken nor used in documents. The ERE evolved into a Greek empire naturally. This flower sprouted from Rome but became a “cross-pollinated” plant with elements of the inherent Greek culture that was in the proverbial soil. Side note- the ‘Byzantines’ saw and called themselves Roman, they were the children of Rome. At the end of the day they were Roman, but a variation that evolved into a Greek empire due to the culture that existed in this side of the empire removed from the anarchy of the Germanic kingdoms. They are Schrödinger Roman’s, both are and aren’t at the same time, it’s just easier to use a Byzantine when teaching the subject/ discussing it.

oh well the potato boy got mad that his ancestors greatest achievement was to put bombs in cars

you losers just read single quotes and think you have an undersetanding. Modern history is a joke; it believes in literal fairy tales as truth

​@@DimitriterrormanNo.

​@@DimitriterrormanIncas are potato boys. The Irish are leprechauns.

@@DimitriterrormanDamn, savage

The entire “Hellenic” revival is Phanar scheming and imperial ambitions. Ofc Phanar only pretend to be Christian and the serve Satan, so they love little boys, etc... this was part of the “Hellenic revival” You know that almost all the Greeks in Thrace up / north are hellenised Serbs, Vlahs, and Albanians? Then later some Romans proper were brought in with the population échange with Turkey. Phanar must be destroyed. Emperor Dušan went to kick them out of Constantinople after becoming Autocrator of join Serb / Roman Empire, and the poisoned him on the way there.

Yes, we still call ourselves Ρωμιοί/ Romans. It means "Greek" in the greek language and it's a definition that the term "Roman" obtained during the byzantine period. Due to the fact that, among the people with Roman citizenship, Greeks were the ones that had become the core and rulers of the empire during the medieval period the term "Roman" started to be associated with them and came to mean the ethnically Greek. With this definition we're using the word Ρωμιοί for ourselves till this day. As just another word that means Greek (like Γραικός and Ελληνας), not as a different non-greek identity. We don't claim that we have some kind of connection with the ancient romans whenever we're using the term Ρωμιοί. Our connection is solely with the medieval Greeks/byzantines. Ελλην was never a taboo (it was used during the entirety of the byzantine period the same way that the rest of the greek ethnonyms were used). It just had two definitions. It was used as a national term that meant "Greek" or as a religious term that meant "pagan". Identifying as Greek wasn't considered a taboo (that's how Byzantines self-identified), identifying as pagan on the other hand wasn't considered as something good.

@@Ragnarok__ You can't be that ignorant so you are probably a troll. I'm not interested in wasting my time with trolls.

In what way did the Italians win!? Genetic and cultural - mixture of Germanic (Goths, Langobard, Arab Muslims in Sicily and later Normans as well Spanish (Gothics, Barberish Arabs as well as Hellenic in the Sicily).... As well as Punic (Cartagenian origin) as well ignoring the fact that the teachers of young nobles were Greek- speaking community

​@@gilpaubelid3780absolutely correct

Not calling the Roman Catholics with the Pope in Rome 'Roman Christians', but using 'Roman Christians' to describe the Christians who at this point are predominantly in Russia sounds like an incredibly convoluted naming system.

@@legateelizabeth It has nothing to do with the city of Rome but with how we perceive the Roman Empire. We see the Byzantines as the continuation of the Roman Empire (like they did) so we call people affiliated with their (Greek Orthodox) church Roman Christians. Note that Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox are two separate groups with separate churches.

@@legateelizabethyou guys aren’t actually Roman, you’re Frankish. It would make more sense to simply go by Frankish Catholics who have the Patriarch of Rome since you refer to the other 4 patriarchs in Orthodoxy “Greek”

@@nel7105 Well I'm a British Buddhist so I'd certainly hope I'm neither Frankish, nor Roman, nor Catholic or I'd be having quite the identity crisis. :D

@@legateelizabeth Ironically, us Catholics don't refer to ourselves as "Roman Catholics" usually. That's actually a term more used by Protestants. We just call ourselves Catholics and that's that.

Agree considering history is already confusing as it is.

​@@YapsiePresentswith even a small amount of interest or study you would really have to try to be confused by the subject

Neither are correct

it's not about the term call it whatever you want the problem is when people think it's not the Roman empire and it's something separate from it or trying to imitate the Romans.

Philosophers? Lol wtf

A interesting point, but in this case the self-identification is actually relevant, and not the type of titular self-aggrandizing for a creed, as in your example about the puritans. Because if Eastern Rome is seen as a legitimate successor (which is very hard to argue against), then the self-identification becomes an important point of contention. Had they not identified as roman, there would have been a good argument against their 'romanness'. But they did. So it's important to take it into consideration in the debate.

Definitely think we should start calling the Puritans "the godly". "The godly" vs "the quasi-papists" is much more accurate than "cavaliers" vs "roundheads", which makes it sound like long-haired cavalry officer Oliver Cromwell should have been on the "cavalier" side.

Octavian the emperor is another channel relivent example. China is another as its a name for a single dynasty that came and went. Others are cato the elder/younger.

The "Democratic Republican" Party of early US history called themselves Republicans, but were only distantly related to the current Republican Party founded in the 19th century. It's another good example of a term applied retroactively by historians for clarity.

True, it's even in the title of the Liudprand's account of his embassy

Also it's worth to note that "Latin empire" wasn't the name of the state, it's emperor it had three official variants of the title "Emperor of Romania (land of the Romans)", "Emperor of Constantinopole" and "Emperor of Romans"

@@vladprus4019 I think this is a pretty interesting point. Since Latin Empire is also a later name given by historians, should we also just call it Roman Empire? I think the historiographical name is useful, when you read "Latin Empire", you immediately know which sixty year period it refers to.

​​@@RomabooRamblings You can see why the term Byzantine Empire came into common usage. It's just a slightly different (shorter) rendering of Constantinopolitan Empire

God doesn't side with Mary idolaters. "Queen of heaven" is irrefutably a goddess title. Satan counterfeited the "church."

@@user-qd4td7yb8e I’m not sure what this has to do with anything but that’s low-key based. Catholics worship Mary more than they do Jesus.

@@RESIST_THE_GREAT_REPLACEMENT The connection is obvious: the Byzantines claimed to be Christian but they were heretics for the reason I gave which is in a very long list.

@@user-qd4td7yb8e Completely irrelevant and ignorant comment. If you have anything of essence that would like to say that’s actually on the topic, I am listening.

Bc Catholicism is only christian on paper

You definitely are wrong! The Greeks despised the Romans, seeing them as illiterate brutes!

As they said Culture is more important than DNA... Because there is no such thing as pure race, Europeans especially in Mediterranean are mostly mixed European Hunter gatherers DNA, Neolithic Anatolians farmers DNA etc... And the East Romans is just like that, but they represent and enriched the Hellenic civilization not Latin, Albanian, Bulgarian culture and traditions.... That's the hard reality

Romanians have entered the chat

He's one of those contrarians that doesn't think Justinian wasn't a top 10 emperor, which falls appart the more you learn about his reign.

He's the most interesting Byzantinist currently writing.

The late/medieval Roman army was, in his opinion, better than the one of the middle and late Republic period.

I personally strictly avoid using the word Byzantine. No fucking shit the word was invented by Germans to pretend Germans are Roman do to holy Roman Empire. and only idiots would seriously call Germans as Roman in the dumbest intellectual deficiency. So I avoid the term Byzantine to my own. And would prefer saying Roman. That's how I do it.

Makes sense. When the Byzantine empire lost most of its land, Latin had stopped being widely used, the entire governmental system changed, etc.

@@compatriot852 if the United States lost lands the people and government doesn't cease to be American. The Roman Empire likewise doesn't cease being Roman. Say the "Anglo" culture of America is diminished and the capital DC and the original 13 colonies lost and Spanish gains predominance, the citizens are still American and the culture while changed still has influence from the foundation. There's to acknowledge it gain Mexican Spanish influence. If we compare a US and Mexico relationship to Greco-Romans. My analogy has flaws and isn't perfect but it's what I'm saying

For God's sake, why is everyone repeating that anecdote? This comes from the personal account of Panagiotis Peter Charanis, a Byzantinologist Greek-American who was born in Lemnos in 1906-1908, and was just 4 years old when the Greek State liberated Lemnos from the Ottoman Empire in 1912. Having not even started grade school at the time, I think we should not base a rift of Hellenic and Rhomaic Identity on the mistake of a little child. We Modern Greeks still call ourselves not only "Hellenes" and Greekness as "Hellenesmos", but also as "Rhomeoi" and Greekness as "Rhomeosene", that means "Modern Romans" and "Modern Romanness".

LARP is apparently all that's needed to claim legitimate identity in history lol

Turks still refer to Greek speaking muslims in Turkey and Cypriot Greeks as "Rum". Cypriot Greeks refer to themselves still as "Romioi" (being Greek Cypriot myself)

Gypsies refer to themselves as roman. I know it's supposedly refers to a different word, but it sounds exactly like "roman" in some languages. It makes me wonder why they picked that word out of all words. Romanians named their nation after Rome.

​@@KevinJohnson-cv2no That's exactly how cultural identity works, yes

He is right though

@@Michael_the_Drunkard Gibbon? nah

In the later stages of the Byzantine empire Latin sort of evolved to be equivalent of Barbarian. Also it was common across the western Mediterranean to call all Western Europeans Franks regardless of who they actually were.

Nah, the Roman consider the Papal state as barbarian because...they were literally decendence of Goth and Lombards from Germany. All the Popes were not ethnically Italian.

Charlemagne was a Frank and never intended for the Roman title to be significant. His son only inherited it by accident since the brothers died. Italy was already absorbing Germanic influence before the west fell

​@@wewenang5167 If we ignore the fact that the italians (both medieval and modern) speak the most latin language, are culturally closest to classical latin, base their laws off roman law, practice the same christian rite as they did as subjects of rome and are genetically the closest to classical romans, then you might be correct in calling italians germanic. Just because they were conquered by a small band of barbarians doesnt mean the romanness of the italians was lost.

They were considered barbarians and were hated.

Citizens of the empire yes, romans no. The only romans are the italians of today.

As they said Culture is more important than DNA... Because there is no such thing as pure race, Europeans especially in Mediterranean are mostly mixed European Hunter gatherers DNA, Neolithic Anatolians farmers DNA etc... And the East Romans is just like that, but they represent and enriched the Hellenic civilization not Latin, Albanian, Bulgarian culture and traditions.... That's the hard reality

Just sounds like identity politics, Greeks larping as their conquerors. “Ey yo Popadapaulis, we wuz Romans n’ shiet”

​@@ShayPatrickCormacTHEHUNTER The Romans from the Italian Peninsula were much germanized by Goths, Lombards, Franks, Germans, for about 1000 years, until the Renaissance Italian Republics.

Byzantines were Greeks in everything and typically Romans only by name! 🤫 The Eastern Roman Empire was in language and civilization a Greek society. Bulgarians were Turkic or Slavs?Rus were Swedish or Slavs? Holy Roman Empire was Roman or Germanic empire?Moghuls were Turkic or Indians?Safavids were Turkic or Persians? Byzantines were Romans/Italics or Greeks? I can give many examples were a nation have a different origin from its initial name: 1)Bulgarians were initially a Turkic nation but gradually Slavicised so nowadays they consider themselves a Slavic and not a Turkic nation , 2)Moghuls had a Turco-Mongolic name but it was an Indian Empire in language, ethnicity and culture, 3)Russians name is derived from the Rus' people, who were a Swedish tribe, and where the three original members of the Rurikid dynastry came from but nowadays they are an East Slavic nation! 4)Safavids were initially a Turkic/Kurdish dynasty but gradually their nation and whole dynasty became fully persianised! 5)Holy Roman Empire was an empire made by Germanic people, who they talk Germanic dialects and had a Germanic culture, so the were "Romans" typically only by name! Same way the 6)Eastern Roman Empire initially was a Roman Empire but gradually fully Hellenized in every aspect like language, culture and also main ethnicity. Linguistically, Byzantine or medieval Greek is situated between the Hellenistic (Koine) and modern phases of the language. Since as early as the Hellenistic era, Greek had been the lingua franca of the educated elites of the Eastern Mediterranean, spoken natively in the southern Balkans, the Greek islands, Asia Minor, and the ancient and Hellenistic Greek colonies of Southern Italy, the Black Sea, Western Asia and North Africa. At the beginning of the Byzantine millennium, the koine (Greek: κοινή) remained the basis for spoken Greek and Christian writings, while Attic Greek was the language of the philosophers and orators. Byzantine was generally known to many of its Western contemporaries as the Empire of the Greeks. This was because of the dominance of the Greek language, culture, and population. Greek was not only the official language but also the language of the church, literature, and commercial transactions. Most historians agree that the defining features of their civilization were: 1) Greek language, culture, literature, and science, 2) Roman law and tradition, 3) Christian faith. The Byzantine Greeks were, and perceived themselves as, heirs to the culture of ancient Greece, the political heirs of imperial Rome, and followers of the Apostles. The Byzantine Greeks were the Greek-speaking Eastern Romans throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. They were the main inhabitants of the lands of the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire), of Constantinople and Asia Minor (modern Turkey), the Greek islands, Cyprus, and portions of the southern Balkans, and formed large minorities, or pluralities, in the coastal urban centres of the Levant and northern Egypt. Throughout their history, the Byzantine Greeks self-identified as Romans (Greek: Ῥωμαῖοι, romanized: Rhōmaîoi), but are referred to as "Byzantine Greeks" in modern historiography. Latin speakers identified them simply as Greeks or with the term Romaei. Use of the Greek language was already widespread in the eastern parts of the Roman Empire when Constantine moved its capital to Constantinople, although Latin was the language of the imperial administration. From the reign of Emperor Heraclius (r. 610-641), Greek was the predominant language amongst the populace and also replaced Latin in administration. At first, the Byzantine Empire had a multi-ethnic character, but following the loss of the non-Greek speaking provinces with the 7th century Muslim conquests it came to be dominated by the Byzantine Greeks, who inhabited the heartland of the later empire: modern Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, and Sicily, and portions of southern Bulgaria, Crimea, and Albania. Over time, the relationship between them and the West, particularly with Latin Europe, deteriorated. Byzantine Greeks weren't Latin/Romans. You should know the period when Byzantines with Belisarius reconquered Italian peninsula. They even ruled Rome itself for more than 220 years. This period is well known for its Greek Popes! They called those Popes Greeks for a reason! Simply because they were GREEKS!🇬🇷🇬🇷🇬🇷🇬🇷🇬🇷🇬🇷🇬🇷 Ethnicity is not always connected to religion. Ksekolla to mualo sou. You probably has zero knowledge about the ancient Indo-Greek Kingdom who converted to Buddhism. Is that means that after their conversion they ceased to be Greeks? Of course no, they were still Greeks! ru-vid.comgicXr7WsTyE?si=XqvhmcCiiyZyNHMq Ancient Greek Buddhist Kingdoms. They still considered themselves as Greeks and not Indians. If you still don't understand that then you are a moron. Same way the Byzantines Christians were Greeks and NOT italic-latin-romans. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Etrr0E59g1A.htmlsi=tYUSkcV7xrZS1j4K

@@GrecoByzantine1821 first I'm aware of Greco-Bactrians, second Romans aren't an ethnicity, they're a citizenry. Emperor Caracala I think is the one to extend citizenship to all in the empire. I'm having a hard time understanding your thesis statement because it doesn't sync up with my thesis statement. Also the Mughals are Mongols, direct descendants of Genghis Khan. The Safavids are multi ethnic, at least in their ruling family, since they had Kurdish, Azeri, and Pontic Greek heritage. I don't remember calling you a moron as I don't even know who you are or how your comment connects to mine. You seem to really be caught up on a modern concept of ethnicity. Or did you interpret my statement as anti Greek? Also, the Bulgarians are not Turkic, the Bulgars are. You cannot assign ethnicity so quickly to a people who took a few centuries to form. Like the Macedonian Slavs, they're historically protean. You seem real hung up on the Greekness of the Byzantines/Eastern Romans, which is fine but they can't be exclusively Greek, empires cannot be mono-ethnic states. Which is why Roman and Byzantine are not ethnic terms. If we look at the Byzantine Empire by the time Emperor Basil II died, you have a state that includes Greeks, Bulgarians (the Slavic people who have assimilated the Turkic Bulgars), Italians, Croatians, Bosnians, Albanians, Georgians, Armenians, assuredly some Turkic tribes that were migrating into Anatolia, assuredly Arabs that got left behind when the Caliphate retracted, Jews, and Vlach/Aromanians, and that's just naming the ones that come to mind. The Emperor of the Romans is not not the Emperor of the Greeks, if he was just that, the others ethnicities wouldn't be too thrilled to take orders from him. Did you even watch our man's video or did you just come here to fight in the comments lol. Straight up, I don't even know if you're replying to my message specifically or replying to the video and accidentally commented through mine. Our topics aren't even the same lol.

A very interesting historical fact. In the late Ming Dynasty in China, a military book recorded that a Lumi(噜密) ambassador brought a matchlock with a special long barrel. This was different from the original matchlock in China. Its power could A little larger than the Spanish and Chinese matchlocks.Lumi is actually the transliteration of Roma, but when we look at the illustrations printed in the book, you will find that there is an Ottoman with a turban on it.🤣 It should be said that at that time, both the Arab world and China referred to all people in Asia Minor as Romans.

@@user-hq3ht2hp6x I've actually heard this story before, yeah, Lumi is close to Luoma, which is modern Mandarin for Romans. And yeah, the western portion of Anatolia has been called Rum for a while. The Balkans were further called Rumelia, if I am spelling that correctly. Thus, it would be easy to say that most of the Balkans people have a claim to the Romano-Byzantine legacy, since empires cannot be mono-ethnic.

@@Rudero3 "second Romans aren't an ethnicity, they're a citizenry." That's a bit too easy. They were both a citizenry and, at least initially, a people (or a subset of the Latin people) with their own language, religion, traditions, etc. All of these were encapsulated in the "mos maiorum" that kept defining Roman self-perception well into the empire. Also, pointing to the fact that the emperors kept extending the citizenship infinitely as proof that Romanness was merely an administrative matter (as the argument seems to be) is a bit of a one-sided approach, as it ignores the internal opposition that did exist against this liberal approach to citizenship and identity, most notably from the Senate. It was the policy of the emperors, and they won, but the fact that they won does not necessarily make their more pragmatic, maybe even cynical, perspective on what it meant to be Roman the only valid one.

I mean also early Rome fought wars against the Latins and denied them citizenship for a long time. Even in the time of Cicero, since he was not literally from the city of Rome, but from latinum he was often called a foreigner. So it's not like Roman identity was synonymous with speaking Latin

Also you had emperors of Byzantium like Justin and Justinian who's first language was Latin

@@jaydenburgher2651 Justinian himself recognized Greek as the Modern Roman language and labeled Latin “their ancestral language”

​@@jaydenburgher2651 Because they were Thraco-Romans, literally the Romans of the Proto-Romanians

​@@tylerellis9097 Where is that?

Imo as an italian, I also always thought of other romance speakers to have as much roman heritage as italy does, I don't understand why people narrow it down to Italy. Italy was the center for many years, but in many years it also wasn't, plus then Italy came under the control of different cultures, Franks, Lombards, Eastern Romans themselves, so is much more like a mosaic than a single color itself. Of course today I see how Greece and many countries around the Balkans have roman heritage, but many people do not!

@@viperking6573Greeks are the Heirs of the Hellenes & Romioi! That is undeniable & we laugh at anyone that tries to prove otherwise! 🤣

100% agreed. If your Turkish, it's the Ottomans, if you're Iranian it's the Achaemenids, if you're Lebanese it's the Phoenicians. I think people just pick the oldest coolest national power that had vaguely the same ethnic heritage to point to to be like "See? We had a cool ancient empire too!!"

It is called continuity , I think , and some nations around the world can, without any doubt, claim it as their documented history. There's nothing wrong with that.

​@@jonmiller6787 Turkey is a direct successor of Ottomania in every sense of the word "direct". And the Achaemenid Empire and modern Iran have the same name and are inhabited by the same people.

Also he said " we will win just as we fought Carthage, Gaul, the Bulgars " or something like that, clearly stating that the idea of being the Roman Empire and being Roman citizens was the main one

In the Medieval Byzantine context, saying that Greeks aren't Romans is about as silly as saying Californians aren't Americans or Texans aren't Americans.

It's not really the Greek vs Roman identity that people care about; identities can co-exist if they compliment each other. It's the Pagan vs Christian divide that mainly trashes the culture of the empire, robbing it of the martial vigor that defined the Roman polity & pacifying the state. "Byzantine" has become a by-word for pointless rituals and ceremonies which have no real world impact; there's a reason for that.

@@viperking6573source?

plenty of greek culture fanboys from even the legend of the creation of rome. they believed they were trojans

You could have just said that culture changes over time, and the meaning of belonging to a particular culture changes as the culture changes.

A roman is a citizen of the roman state. Italians and latins were also not initially romans until they were granted citizenship. The southern italians were greek by the way and acquired citizenship earlier than other greeks.

All the empires you listed will almost always have an additional name tacked on to denote the change in time or ruling government. For instance, the Achaemenid Persians were the ones with Cyrus and Darius, while the Parthian and Sassanid Persians were the ones who fought against Rome. The 25th Dynasty of Egypt was ruled by Nubians while Ptolemaic Egypt was ruled by Greeks. The German Empire had the Kaiser, while Weimar Germany was what came after. If somebody wants to use Byzantine as a descriptor of the Roman empire after the loss of Rome and transition to a Greek-speaking, orthodox christian empire, they'd have a pretty good foundation for doing so.

As they said Culture is more important than DNA... Because there is no such thing as pure race, Europeans especially in Mediterranean are mostly mixed European Hunter gatherers DNA, Neolithic Anatolians farmers DNA etc... And the East Romans is just like that, but they represent and enriched the Hellenic civilization not Latin, Albanian, Bulgarian culture and traditions.... That's the hard reality

It's up to debate how much on an empire it was in the later Byzantine perios

@@RomabooRamblings It was up to the 12th century The final phase after 4th crusade/ 1204 AD sure is debatable

@@corpi8784 we know that Andronikos III had latins around him and John VI allowed cuman refugees to settle in the empire there were also venetians and geonese settled permanently in biggest cities if Andronikos III didn't died prematurely I can see Archea, Rhodes and duchy of Archipelago reintegrated into the empire with their greeko-frank populations

​@@RomabooRamblingsthey had an emperor as their head. That makes them an empire in the traditional sense

Historical accuracy and truths are important than your prejudices. “Byzantine” empire is the real Roman Empire.

No one calls it Turkish. The Ottoman rule came by after brutal conquest and brought massacres and discrimination to those who called themselves «Roman ». they had a different culture, religion, language, all foreign to anything Roman. They were a foreign invading people from Central Asia. Calling the Turks Roman is pure stupidity.

It’s Roman. Its official name was Βασίλειον τῶν Ῥωμαίων (Kingdom of the Romans). End of story. The term Byzantium is nothing but an anachronism.

I think he implies that turks are going to start apropriating it like they try to do with the anatolian peoples like the hittites and the trojans

​@@olbiomoirosNot supporting the ottomans claim and neither their empire but, come on. Rome did the same to many populations, Carthage was yeeted out of history, Gauls genocided, Jews expelled and so on. The negative view of the ottomans come mainly becaude they were muslims. And ofc their actions from ww1

A nation is a group of people; groups of people are often named for the location, and when a new people move in, they 'take' the name despite not being of that group of people. But virtually all Europeans are apart of the same 'family' with virtually all of them being from Germanic tribes; Celts and Gauls were just earlier Germanic tribes.

The United Kingdom doesn't exist. Dumbocracy and Kingdom are mutually exclusive. A king is a man with the final word, and maximum authority, among mortals. Modern so-called monarchs are more like jesters on par with the Burger King. But dumb people want the glory of the past while gullibly accepting the stupidity of the present; in this case, that bandwagon fallacy, demoncracy. Liberalism is poison.

​@@pyropulseIXXII am not Germanic. "Virtually all" is like saying virtually all Mongoloids are Chinese.

@@user-qd4td7yb8e All white people come from ancient Germanic tribes

@@pyropulseIXXI While true that all Europeans have a shared ancestry saying Celts and Gauls (Gauls are Celts, so odd to differentiate them) were germanic tribes is wrong. Germanic is contemporary to Celts in ethnic history and quite far away from the common ancestor.

My own list would be somewhat similar with a few tweaks: 10) Manuel Komnenos 9) John I Tzimiskes 8) Alexios Komnenos 7) Basil II 6) Leo III 5) John II Komnenos 4) John III Doukas Vatatzes 3) Anastasius 2) Constantine V 1) Constantine the Great

If nothing else, HRE shares some continuity in ideals of universal monarchy with late Roman empire.

because unlike you, he actually has some knowledge of history rather than falling for the lame, false and tired epikk voltaire meme that microdick pop-history fanboys love to shill

Redditor

@@jebbush2527 le ebin voltaire meme is peak reddit: uneducated pop-history nonsense with no basis in reality, peddled by downs syndrome crayon-eaters that have deluded themselves into thinking they're smart because they have access to wikipedia. Cry harder.

germanoid lmfao

I don't know if you're Greek or not but Greeks called themselves Roman and Greek interchangeably until recently and I still know many fellow Greeks who do, including myself. It's not a dialectic, it can be both. Unlike this video, most people called them Greeks outside of the Frankish West. The Rus used Greki, the Bulgars Graikos, (Chalatar inscription), the Armenians used both Roman and Greek (Horrom and Yuna) (Emperor Romanos was addressed as Kaysrn Yunats' Romanos: Caesar of the Greeks Romanos) and the Georgians used exclusively Berdzen and their land Saberdzneti which also referred to Ancient Greece, and the Greeks....though it was used (at least once) to refer to Ancient Romans (Hadrian and his Roman-Armenian alliance), but the berdzulita the Berdzuli language, always meant Greek, as opposed to hromaelebrita, the Roman language aka Latin. One can be both Greek and Roman. Even Emperor Constantine Porphyrogennitos describes the Maniots as Hellenes only in reference to their recent pagan past, but ethnically as "ancient Romaioi" clearly using Roman to mean Greek. It wasn't always a synonym, but it very much could be.

@@achilleuspetreas3828 I am Greek, but I know how our Greco-Romans ancestors saw themselves; and they saw themselves as Romans. You have to take into consideration the average, everyday man, who called himself "Roman" not because he thought that he descended from the ancient Romans, but because that's what was handed down by his forefathers. Our Rhomaioi ancestors though of Constantine the Great as the leader of their nation, New Rome-Constantinople was their capital, and Rhomania (Land of the Romans) was their fatherland. And no, they didn't use the name Greeks and Romans interchangeably. I could point that the Arabs called us Rum, and they made a very clear distinction between the Yunan (ancient Greeks) and the Rum (Romans - "medieval Greeks"). If we always used it "interchangeably", then people even in the early 20th century would respond that they are "Rhomaioi" when asked by the Greek liberating soldiers. Whether we like it or not, our forefathers became romanised in consciousness, and they retained it even after the Greek Revolution of 1821, hence why they referred themselves as such in the Ottoman occupied lands. You couldn't be both a Hellene and a Roman, since Hellene denoted that someone was a pagan, the second worst thing after heretic. And for that daemonisation responsible is the Church. That's just how it is. Changing your national identity doesn't mean that the ancient Greeks vanished. People change their national identity when their old one dies out for various reasons. It's human nature to adapt in order not only to survive, but to thrive. You have to remember, that no matter how the others call you, you have to take into consideration how a population calls itself and how it self-identifies, how it sees itself. And whether we like it or not, our forefathers saw themselves as new Romans.

@@jasoncassios7114 I think we agree more than disagree, aderfe. To the point of identifying as Roman, yes, sometimes they appear synonymous but I don't believe it to be an actual synonym. I see it in the same way as a father (Rome) and mother (Greece) with their son ("Byzantium"). The son takes on the identity, legacy, and name of his father, but his mothers influence is seen in many ways from running the house, from food and music to teaching him to speak. Constantine the Great is a real mythological character being an anthropomorphized version of Constantinople and the empire itself, having a Latin speaking father and a Greek mother. I also think of the Church. As much as I value our philosophical tradition in our faith, I know that our faith is descended from the Jews, and if anyone challenges that and says we have a "Greek" faith and not one descent from Judaism, that angers me, even though I am proud of my Greek. On your point of the Arabs, yes, they called them Rum, but during times of war they used that as in insult in the same way that the West used Greek as an insult. To the Arabs, they would confirm the Rum as being descendant of the Yunan at times of friendliness but would say that the Rum were not because they don't deserve it because to them, it was Christianity that made them abandon the sciences of the ancient Greeks. I'd recommend the book: Byzantium Viewed By The Arabs by Nadia El Cheikh for more on this topic. She does not come from a philhellene or Greek nationalist point of view on the topic. The point of the Greek liberators, I'll quote someone in the comments who summed it quite well, "that comes from the personal account of Panagiotis Peter Charanis, a Byzantinologist Greek-American who was born in Lemnos in 1906-1908, and was just 4 years old when the Greek State liberated Lemnos from the Ottoman Empire in 1912. Having not even started grade school at the time, I think we should not base a rift of Hellenic and Rhomaic Identity on the mistake of a little child." "You couldn't be both a Hellene and a Roman, since Hellene denoted that someone was a pagan, the second worst thing after heretic. And for that daemonisation responsible is the Church." Yes, until the 11th century whereabouts, you couldn't be both a Hellene and a Roman because yes, it meant pagan, but once that connotation was lost, we see the word slowly being used again, because the meaning of the word shifted and no longer had the same stigma. We see this in Procopius' history of wars where he says that more than once that Hellene was now the word used for the "old faith". "ἀλλὰ τριβώνιον ἐνδιδυσκόμενος ἱερεῖ πρέπον τῆς παλαιᾶς δόξης ἣν νῦν Ἑλληνικὴν καλεῖν νενομίκασι," "but he clothed himself in a coarse garment appropriate to a priest of the old faith which they are now accustomed to call Hellenic" When I mean Greek identity I don't mean the use of the word Hellene Έλληνες solely, but to mean that the people recognized their shared culture and ancestry (however much, even if only partly) from those people along side their (Patriarchally) Roman one, whether that be in the form of Γραικος or something else, just as Achaeans was used before Hellene. That the two identities of Roman and "Greek" became thoroughly one, something that cannot be (or shouldn't be) separated or "divorced" so to speak. As Emperor Constantine Porphyrogennitos said in Chapter 49 of De Administrando Imperio: Νικηφόρος τὰ τῶν Ρωμαίων σκῆπτρα ἐχράτει, καὶ οὗτοι ἐν τῷ ϑέματι ὄντες Πελοποννήσου ἀπόστασιν ἐννοήσαντες, πρῶτον μὲν τὰς τῶν γειτόνων οἰκίας τῶν Γραικῶν ἐξεπόρϑουν Nicephorus was holding the sceptre of the Romans, and these Slavs who were in the province of Peloponnesus decided to revolt, and first proceeded to sack the dwellings of their neighbours, the Greeks, He uses Γραικῶν to refer to the Peloponnesian Greeks, but then when talking about the Maniots aka the descendants of the Spartans, he says this in the following chapter. Ιστέον, ὅτι of τοῦ κάστρου Μαΐνης οἰκήτορες οὐκ εἰσὶν ἀπὸ τῆς γενεᾶς τῶν προρρηϑέντων Σκλάβων, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ τῶν παλαιοτέρων Ῥωμαίων, οἵ καὶ μέχρι τοῦ νῦν παρὰ τῶν ἐντοπίων Ἕλληνες προσαγορεύονται διὰ τὸ ἐν τοῖς προπαλαιοῖς χρόνοις εἰδωλολάτρας εἶναι καὶ προσκυνητὰς τῶν εἰδώλων κατὰ τοὺς παλαιοὺς Ἕλληνας, οἵτινες ἐπὶ τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ ἀοιδίμου Βασιλείου | βαπτισϑέντες Χριστιανοὶ γεγόνασιν. The inhabitants of the city of Maina are not of the race of the aforesaid Slavs, but of the ancient Romans, and even to this day they are called ‘Hellenes’ by the local inhabitants, because in the very ancient times they were idolaters and worshippers of images after the fashion of the ancient Hellenes; and they were baptized and became Christians in the reign of the glorious Basil. This shows not only that Hellene was still used to mean pagan at the time, but why did he use Rhomaioi to refer to ancient Greeks? Why wouldn't he just use Graikos? Just as it's a dialectic to say that Roman only meant Greek in the Hellenic sense at this time period, it is still a dialectic to say that it had nothing to do with what it meant to be Greek either. It's fascinating but I think it's a little more nuanced than both sides like to believe it was.... Thank you for being civil, my friend. Very rare on the internet lol

​@@jasoncassios7114The name Romeos which became ethnonym for Greeks does not mean descendant of Rome. Romeos probably means a Hellen Roman citizen and especially a Christian Hellen in the era of the transition from polytheism to christianity

@@mikel3359 The name "Rhomaios" literally means "of Rome". And for that case, New Rome, Constantinople. There's no "probably" in it. They called their own country "Rhomania", "Land of the Rhomans" The word "Hellene" was the second worst thing someone could call you, (the first was "heretic"), since it denoted paganism. Rhomaios = the romanised Christian Greek. I don't get why you keep denying the roman character of the Greek of these times. It's as if people don't change consciousnesses...

Based Croatians lmao

Coastal serb moment

Just so. There is a certain amount of ideological contamination around this name, but it's still a useful one.

Edit: I mean by that , that we can’t by example view the Athens of the 14 century differently from the Athens of the 1 century bc . In opposite of that, it is not correct to claim that the Augusta treverorum was able to legitimise the holy Roman emperors heritage . Greece was always without a doubt a elemental part of Roman culture history and mythological understanding . Never would had Vergilus put the newly conquered Germania minor into the same status of Romanitas as he would do so with the country from which his Minerva derived from

Perfectly said

I use Rhomania

​@@orrorsaness5942 Which is wrong, the "h" is futile, it is Romania.

@@genovayork2468 ok! Romania

I wish he finished his eastern Roman history videos

@@Caligulashorse1453 Bigger. He'd call it.

So true and when you say Byzantium people automatically know you are talking about Purple Christian Rome

@@DonnellGreen To be fair, I'd say that awareness mostly came relatively recently (at least for those who don't study and/or follow Roman history)

Well that’s a good question though. ARE we the same person we were 10 years ago? You’ve probably got a whole different worldview, social circle, and like you said body. Would you say you’re the same person? Or is that continuity of experience and the name you apply to it just useful to mark yourself as the new person built on top of the old one?

It's a bit like referring to pre-imperial Augustus as "Octavian". Okay, the name he was known by was Julius Caesar - but that's just confusing when discussing that period. Byzantium is in a similar (if less necessary) situation.

Just imagine having to write Eastern Roman Empire everytime instead of Byzantium, it is an historiographical term for a reason

@@gurigura4457 Except Octavian did not transform into a wholly different being upon taking the name Augustus. He didn't suddenly start believing in a new god, start speaking a different language, swap out the location of the palace, abandon Roman fashion & aesthetics, etc. so the comparison falls a bit flat.

@@KevinJohnson-cv2no Acting like there was a sudden shift between the older Roman way of doing things and the Byzantine way of doing things is just silly. Also, Christianity was establish in Rome long before Byzantium was left as the rump state.

@@Galahad_Du_Lac If by "established in Rome" you mean carried by the whispers of slaves & peasants in back-alley provinces, then sure.

Average War Thunder/Roman history enthusiast

As they said Culture is more important than DNA... Because there is no such thing as pure race, Europeans especially in Mediterranean are mostly mixed European Hunter gatherers DNA, Neolithic Anatolians farmers DNA etc... And the East Romans is just like that, but they represent and enriched the Hellenic civilization not Latin, Albanian, Bulgarian culture and traditions.... That's the hard reality

That’s literally from the last day of the Empire’s life. In my estimation, Constantine was trying to appeal to all his subjects, including those with Hellenizing tendencies (mainly the intelligentsia, who had begun heading in a more Hellenic direction ever since the Fourth Crusade).

@gregoryheers2633 That is only one of the many sources in that direction. The Hellenization of the Empire was already on tracks since the 7th century , after the establishment of Greek as the official language. When paganism stopped being a threat , even the self-identifying terminology got enriched with the terms Greek and Hellenic. The 4th crusade was surely the final strike on Romanitas. The Nicaean Empire , the Despotate of Epirus, etc , were purely Greek states.

That "speech” fragment, which many love quoting to death in these pointless youtube polemics, and in fact the entire siege account part of that chronicle has long been proven to have been added by Makarios Melissenos over a century after the events. It may be useful in demonstrating what the bishop of Monemvasia wanted to propagate to his audience in the late 1500s but it does very little to demonstrate the defunct empire's ideology or what Constantine could had actually told his troops.

@@ntonisa6636 That is one out of many, dear Antonio. Since you are Greek , you know the facts and the sources , right? www.oodegr.com/neopaganismos/romi/eikones/smerdaleos_2/APAT9SMERD01.jpg www.oodegr.com/neopaganismos/romi/eikones/smerdaleos_2/APAT9SMERD08.jpg www.oodegr.com/neopaganismos/romi/eikones/smerdaleos_2/APAT9SMERD09.jpg www.oodegr.com/neopaganismos/romi/eikones/smerdaleos_2/APAT9SMERD10.jpg www.oodegr.com/neopaganismos/romi/eikones/smerdaleos_2/APAT9SMERD11.jpg www.oodegr.com/neopaganismos/romi/eikones/smerdaleos_2/APAT9SMERD14.jpg www.oodegr.com/neopaganismos/romi/eikones/smerdaleos_2/APAT9SMERD17.jpg www.oodegr.com/neopaganismos/romi/eikones/smerdaleos_2/APAT9SMERD18.jpg www.oodegr.com/neopaganismos/romi/eikones/smerdaleos_2/APAT9SMERD19.jpg To name a few...

​@@gregoryheers2633Then your estimation would be incorrect because there are plenty of sources from the entirety of the byzantine period where Byzantines are clearly saying that they are Greeks. And you're saying that actual Greeks had "hellenizing tendencies"? Considering the fact that they were Greeks it was much more than just a "tendency".

There is no need to differentiate the two , you don't have a different name tomorrow

I thought it was very inconsistent, as Kaldellis flips between "this one was very influential" and "oh, I just really lime this guy". That being said the only two on it who wouldn't have made my own list are Theodosius and Manuel.

@@RomabooRamblings That's a good point. I was definitely surprised by Theodosius, even if he was only at number 10. I was also confused about why Alexios I Komnenos was below Manuel.

Who would you have added to your own list, in place of Theodosius and Manuel?​@@RomabooRamblings

​@@jacoblinde7486I can at the very least see Manuel being number 10 on the list, but yeah, he shouldn't be above Alexios. Theodosius... get that guy out of here. He severely weakened the empire through the civil war, failed to take care of the Goths, massacred the population of Thessaloniki, and left the empire in the hands of his two piss poor sons.

Rhomeosene is just Modern Romanness as it survives in Greece. But I would abstain from using the term for Medievel Romanness, for the simple reason that the Medieval Romans never used the word.

Ρωμηοσύνη is simply a romaic term for the Romanitas. Its not exclusive to the modern neogreek "identity" but it goes way back in our culture. In modern times it has the additional context of the need to return to our Roman roots and reject the neogreek identity (it also means bravery and honesty in many cases too). @@paulmayson3129

John Romanides? Seriously?

Ναι. Υπάρχει πρόβλημα; @@genovayork2468

As they said Culture is more important than DNA... Because there is no such thing as pure race, Europeans especially in Mediterranean are mostly mixed European Hunter gatherers DNA, Neolithic Anatolians farmers DNA etc... And the East Romans is just like that, but they represent and enriched the Hellenic civilization not Latin, Albanian, Bulgarian culture and traditions.... That's the hard reality

Catholicism was made on a forged document so that the pope would have more political power and no longer have to answer to the Roman Emperor.