When Greece became independent from the Ottomans, was there anyone (politically important/relevant) calling for the restoration of the Roman Empire? Or did everyone agree on creating a new Greek state?
Greeks still called themselves Romans up to about the 1980s, some older people still refer to themselves as Romans to this day. So why was their monarch titled the King of the Hellenes, and not of the Romaioi?
>>333230
They just wanted Greece.
When you say they called themselves Romans, they weren't really calling themselves Romans, it was just the word for themselves, it had long since lost the direct meaning of Roman. When i say im English i don't mean im an Angle from north Germany.
>>333230
It would have been wildly out of place, and not something the Concert of Europe was even particularly interested in.
First battle of the Greek war of independence was in Romania, the war grew out of an effort to restore the whole Byzantine Empire, they wanted to grab Constantinople as late as WWI. But they failed, so "Greece" it was.
>>333230
>When Greece became independent from the Ottomans, was there anyone (politically important/relevant) calling for the restoration of the Roman Empire? Or did everyone agree on creating a new Greek state?
Not really, but they did call themselves Romaioi, because the word Hellene meant Pagan and was disliked by the Orthodox Greeks.
>So why was their monarch titled the King of the Hellenes, and not of the Romaioi?
Many reasons, the most obvious is Western Philhellenes having a raging boner for anything ancient Greek, the second is that the Western Powers didn't want a new "Roman Empire" many considered themselves as successors to the Romans, especially the Germans and the >Holy >Roman >Empire
All in all it was mostly westerners jerking off to the idea of classical Greece, and it was the worst mistake the Greeks made.
>>333230
Pretty sure the greeks called themselves roman and wanted to restore the Byzantine empire all the way until Mustafa Kemal annihilated their attempt to retake Constantinople and Syria, despite Turkey being at its lowest point in the whole of history.
Somewhere there they decided to be greeks instead, propaganda shifted to Athens-Sparta tier stuff, pagan temples began being renovated, etc.
So the modern greek nation began at around 1922, until then they were romans.
>>335852
>So the modern greek nation began at around 1922, until then they were romans.
wat?
>>333230
There was the Megali idea:basically reuniting Greece with its Asian territories and restore Constantinople. It failed as the Greeks were decisively defeated by the Turks
Don't take everything I say for granted, I haven't looked into it much.
The name "Greek" is the oldest recorded and that's the word Romans used to describe the ..Greeks. Then during charlemagne etc. the western european empires used the word Greek to describe someone who is not a true Roman. Meanwhile Byzantium claimed that they were the the true Romans, the only ones left and so the word "Roman" described the Greek traditions-culture that got Christianized and dominated Byzantium. It was the link between greek culture and orthodox christianity.
I don't know why we chose the word "Hellas" but that's what they use mostly in Greece today.
I doubt that they had in mind the restoration of the byzantine empire when the war for independence started. They were all poor and against many odds. Maybe it was a distant dream.
>>333230
There was actually a national/intellectual conflict between the two concepts. Some, the more Democratic/Republican and Enlightened, favored the classical heritage because of connotations with Democracy and Reason as opposed to the despotic and theocratic dark ages. Others, more traditional, favored the Byzantine heritage. Another problem was that "Roman" was not a particularly good label for a nation unlike Greek or Hellenic which has firmer ethnic connotations. To add, Orthodoxy is a very integral part of medieval to modern Greek identity, the Church was and still is quite powerful, which conflicts with classical and secular ideas.
This battle also manifested in language, where some favored the purist variant known as Katharevousa and others the common and naturally-developed Koine-descendent Demotic. The latter prevailed out of mere practicality. The image of classical Greece prevailed in most other cases particularly in government and tourism. Or to be specific, there's a strange fusion between the two as you would expect. It doesn't help that the Greeks never managed to take back Constantinople.
>On 8 October 1912, during the First Balkan War, Lemnos became part of Greece. The Greek navy under Rear Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis took it over without any casualties from the occupying Turkish Ottoman garrison, who were returned to Anatolia. Peter Charanis, born on the island in 1908 and later a professor of Byzantine history at Rutgers University recounts when the island was occupied and Greek soldiers were sent to the villages and stationed themselves in the public squares. Some of the children ran to see what Greek soldiers looked like. ‘‘What are you looking at?’’ one of them asked. ‘‘At Hellenes,’’ the children replied. ‘‘Are you not Hellenes yourselves?’’ a soldier retorted. ‘‘No, we are Romans." Thus was the most ancient national identity in all of history, preserved in isolation, finally absorbed and ended.[14]
>>337439
He's saying Greece had ambitions to restore itself as "Roman" up until about that point until they just settled on being Greeks.
Don't know if what he's saying is true though.
>>340589
It's a half truth. Talks of Roman restoration makes good propaganda when nearing Constantinople but their territorial ambition was driven by simple nationalism as in the desire to incorporate Greek-inhabited areas and areas of historical relevance regardless whether they were Romans or not.
It's not like they would decline annexing the city after the Greco-Turkish war because "Plato and Aristotle not Constantine and Justinian ok. Praise Zeus"
