I mean, yes, they're literally Romans but is it fair to say that at least by the time of the sacking of Constantinople they weren't *Rome*
I mean, yes, they're literally Romans but is it fair to say that at least by the time of the sacking of Constantinople they weren't *Rome*
They weren’t Rome when they stopped speaking Latin
Half of Rome at its height didn't speak Latin either. Your point?
Diversity was their strength
Greeks will never be Romans no matter how much they try.
more like Romans would never be Greeks no matter how much they tried lmao
OK Theodore.
Ok Byzantine Princess.
Im not sure what you mean.
Constantine's Rome is different to Augustus' Rome. Same for Caracalla's Rome. It doesnt matter. The law, culture and taxation continued in those provinces.
This is like suggesting France now cant call itself France because it doesnt have a monarchy
And Norman England is completely different from Stuart England.
Should we invent a gay retronym for it and claim that it is completely different from post-1485 England?
We can call it Winchisterian Empire
>the empire began with William the Conqueror and ended with Richard III
exactly.
LIke any country/state it adapted to the times. Constant war was happening on the Danube and Mesopotamia, made sense to move the capital. Constantinople was called new Rome anyway.
Why didn't they move the capital to Sicily, create a large navy to transport the army to Mesopotamia via antioch, or to the danube. The Sicily would be more defensible than Rome of Constantinople.
homie the city of Rome and most of Italy weren't even part of your fake gay "Roman" empire lmao
relevant how?
Names are made up from people's fee fees. Plebs can't get over this fact and their worldview is based on arbitrarily assigned names.
In your example the Angevins and Plantagenets are regarded as English despite their culture and capital being French. The only reason is Anglo cope because they cannot accept they were a conquered and erased people.
Just because transformation is gradual doesnt make it not a transformation, neither of those kingdoms truly moved elsewhere from their homeland, became composed of mainly other ethnic groups and languages. Calling them Romans isnt wrong but there is definitely a point in which things are so completely different that a new definition is needed. Romanhood was born out of a mother city and a founding myth and for most of its history power and culture flowed from it, Byzantium/Constantinople was its own cultural center of the world, and it actually downplays how important it was for the empire to call back to such an an antiquated legacy and not the reality or a different time in which it really was the queen of the cities and the heart of the most powerful state in Europe.
>country inhabited by Roman citizen speaking one of the two official languages of the empire
>NO IT'S DIFFERENT CULTURALLY AND ETHNICALLY
>one of the two official languages of the empire
Latin was the only offical language of the Empire until the reign of Justinian actually
there was never an official language of the empire until Greek from Heraclius.
>there was never an official language of the empire
Depends how you define it. Latin was the only language allowed to be used in offical correspondence and government records until Justinian decreed that Greek could also be used.
>until Greek from Heraclius.
This is a meme with no evidence. Latin was still used for major documents into the reign of Leo III.
>Roman citizen
Everyone within the borders of the empire after Caracalla was a citizen, but we dont argue about how Roman every Barbarian kingdom is.
Precisely the reverse is true. The state was still the old Roman Empire, but the cultural branched off into a completely new civilization, just as it did in Western Europe.
This. There's no way to refute the fact that the empire was the same polity from Augustus all the way through to 1204 at the very earliest. Personally I think you could definitely make the argument that the Nicaean Empire up to 1453 was in fact a successor state, not a continuation of the Roman Empire.
have a nice day transphobe
No it's not. This is dumb, and a lot of it comes from the fact that people don't understand that a lot happens in a 1000, let alone nearly 1500 years. America today is hardly a shell of what it was back in 1787 or 1776, and yet Americans still see themselves as the same people as the founding fathers, even if the vast majority of people aren't descendents from British colonists.
However, when most people study Roman history, they study it in a condensed manner, moving from one consul to the next to one emperor to the next. Think about how much the UK has changed since Victoria to present. That's only been a little less than 100 years. Now imagine how much has changed since William the Conqueror until present.
>and yet Americans still see themselves as the same people as the founding fathers,
I don't think this is really true anymore either and hasn't been for at least a decade.
Depends if you consider making reference to Hannibal's elephants for why you shouldn't be afraid of the Ottoman cannons means they weren't Roman enough for you.
They stopped being romans by the death of Heraclius