Were the Byzantines Roman?
>>724613
they were eastern roman
>>724613
Yes.
Next!
Yes until Justinian died.
>>724613
They were Greek/Hellenic
They got Eastern half of the empire (basically) and when the West fell they declared themselves to be the Romans successors so
Kinda
Not really
In a way
The Western Roman empire wasn't even Roman. The moment Constantine changed the state religion, that shit wasn't Roman.
>>724649
Romans basically altered their religion to conform precisely with the Greek religion and mythology. Constantine just did it all over again.
>>724613
No, they were Greek.
>>724613
They were romanized greeks.
>>724651
Not really, they just drawed equivalents between their gods and the greek ones. They did the same with gauls and gyppos. The actual worship didn't change, and was actually quite different from the greek version. You can say that the romans adopted some greek divinities (but then the greeks did the same, half their pantheon was anatolian/phoenician), but they didn't change shit about their own.
>>724656
Weren't Romans to the Greeks as wiggers are to black people?
>>724656
Half of the italian peninsula was colonized by greeks before the roman empire came into being. What does it even mean to be "roman"
>>724658
>Not really, they just drawed equivalents between their gods and the greek ones.
No, they pretty much copypasted the entire mythology and incorporated characters like Heracles and Achilles.
>>724662
>Half
Only Sicily and the southern coast. Not even close to half.
>>724659
Not always. For a time the Romans recognized Greeks as degenerate homos.
>>724673
Certainly not by the time they were imperial.
>>724673
>For a time
They never stopped thinking that. They just loved their culture.
>>724681
So...wiggers is an accurate term here
>>724665
Bullshit. The romans incorporated shit from every people they conquered, but they didn't alter their worship to imitate the greeks. Do tell what changed in the cult of Jupiter or Mars to make it more similar to the greek equivalent.
Next you're gonna tell me is that they copypasted the gaul and german pantheons because they thought Woden=Mercury and Mars=Toutatis
>>724682
Pretty much yeah.
>>724688
>Do tell what changed in the cult of Jupiter or Mars to make it more similar to the greek equivalent.
What are the mysteries
>>724696
>What are the mysteries
A wide range of religious belief not necessarily of greek origin that did not alter roman religion because they had an individual as opposed to civic form of worship
>>724613
They were Roman. More specifically they were the remnants of the Roman Empire following the collapse of its West.
>>724706
No, the Greco-Roman mysteries were definitely of Greek origin.
No, they didn't involve civic worship, but neither were they mere individual religions, like Platonism. If we take Cicero as any source. the Greco-Roman Mysteries were the religion religion. Roman public religion was, well, more of a just a ceremonial thing. The Mysteries were what concerned theology and the afterlife and things like that, and the Romans considered them extremely important.
>>724722
>Isis
>Mithra
Real greek these ones. Shit even Artemis and Dyonisus are really anatolian, and the greeks converted to them rather than create them.
Also it's beside the point anyway. Because you insist that the romans altered their worship, when in fact even private cults like penates and lares stayed unchanged after the diffusion of the mysteries. You can say that some romans converted (and even that is stretching it, given the nature of polytheism), but it sure as shit didn't change the way the roman pantheon was worshipped.
>>724613
>Were the Byzantines Roman?
Literally Theseus's ship, empire edition.
If Greeks travelling West triggered the renaissance, how come they weren't doing just as notable stuff before they moved? Where are the Byzantine Bach, Leonardo, Machiavelli, or Shakespeare figures?
>>724613
No they weren't else the turk could have some legitimacy to being third rome and we can't have that amirite fellow /pol/acks ?
>>724789
Triggered doesn't equal "made" nigger. The greeks triggered the renaissance by bringing back classical knowledge that inspired western thinkers, not by personally innovating anything.
>>724800
>No they weren't else the turk could have some legitimacy to being third rome
>implying the byzs conquered the ERE from the WRE
>>724753
So you be saying the Romans didn't consider their pantheon particularly Roman, but Roman identity is based on the Roman pantheon?
>>724803
Whatever, my main question is why Byzantine culture isn't shit compared to Romance culture.
>>724811
>So you be saying the Romans didn't consider their pantheon particularly Roman
Yes
>but Roman identity is based on the Roman pantheon?
No
>>724816
Then what do you mean they ceased to be Roman when they converted? Did Greeks with Roman citizenship immediately cease to be Roman when they converted?
>>724828
>Then what do you mean they ceased to be Roman when they converted?
But I didn't say that. I said some romans converted to the mysteries, not changed culture. Otherwise romanity would have died with christianity, which is obviously retarded.
>>724845
Christianity not doubt influenced Roman culture, but I wouldn't say they changed to culture to Jesus Christ's culture.
>>724848
Yeah that's my actual point.
>>724613
>were the Byzantines Roman?
tl;dr Yes. but lets break it down.
there really is not "ETHNIC" Roman, the term Roman was used to describe citizenship to the state and government of Rome, rather than being a ethnic native to Italia, which was incredibly diverse from the Etruscans to the Gauls in the Po Valley.
This means that no matter where a person was from or what their ethnicity was, if they held citizenship, they were Roman. Gauls in france were just as Roman as Egyptians in Alexandria.
The Eastern Roman Empire still is a Roman state, the citizens of which still called themselves Romans all the way until the fall of Constantinople, Roman law still held supreme over the territory, the legions were still trained in the old Roman way, and the Eastern Roman Emperors still held the title of Καῖσαρ, or Caesar all through their history.
There was a time where there was a crisis where the Eastern Empire considered if they were Roman or not without Rome, which was a major incentive for Justinian to take back the city, when it was recaptured, all doubts were dashed and the people did consider themselves as the Roman Empire still, with the city of Rome to prove it.
The Eastern Empire still followed the law and customs of Rome, and was still considered by all contemporary peoples the Roman Empire still, even if just a weakened one.
>>724889
>legions were still trained in the old Roman way
I don't know much about the Byzantines, but what I do know is that the legions were long gone. By the 8th (9th?) century Eastern Roman military has changed beyond old antiquity.
Actually, it changed even during the late Roman Empire. Legions were legions in name only.
>>725051
Not that anon but they had a professional standing army of citizen soldiers until the 13th century. They just were trained and organized in more updates factions, however the military reforms of Maurice into themes or military districts based on geography came directly from the Roman Imperial tradition of prudent garrisoning of the provinces. And of course as the eastern Roman Empire transformed itself from a slave mode of production to a feudal one, so too did the professional army move from being professional soldiers to small landholding peasants usually capable of providing some of their own arms.
>>724889
This answers the question pretty well actually.
They were not ethnically Roman but in actuality there was no singular Roman ethnicity. Hell even the origin story of the city claims its citizens were a hodgepodge of local outcasts.
The Byzantines were not Italian, but they were very much Roman. Both practically and spiritually.
They were not ethnic Romans (Latins) from the city of Rome, but their state was the Roman Empire, the very same state started by Romulus that once ruled all Europe and by the Middle Ages had been reduced to just Greece and Anatolia, and so their nationality was Roman. It does not matter that they did not have Rome, that city ceased to be important to the overall state long before the division of the empire and the fall of the West, and even then, Constantinople was literally the new Rome, build for the sole purpose of replacing the old, decrepit one. It does not matter that they spoke Greek, the empire was now based in Greece, were the elite and public employees gonna keep speaking in a dead language just because MUH ROOTS? Their rulers were a continuous line from Augustus without any breaks, except maybe the Fourth Crusade.
We just call it Byzantium because Brits and Spanish and for some reason fucking Germans thought that the Roman Empire couldn't exist without their being a part of it, even though the East was always the more important part, and Italy provided absolutely nothing to the rest of the Empire beside being the home base.
Aeneas was Anatolian, wasn't he?
>>724889
>which was a major incentive for Justinian to take back the city
What was Rome like when it was recaptured?
>>724646
WoW this is sooooooo wrong.
They didnt declare anything the East was the Senior Empire, as in it was the one with the direct line of succession to the combined empire not the west.
>>724668
Ok, the area called Magna Greacia is larger than you think, and what is now called Northern italy was Celtic lands, and Etruscans werent roman and they lived in central Italy. So when you say Roman if you mean a true by blood Roman than that person lived only in the city of Rome or a descendant.
>>725274
Saxon rape babies huddling in enormous ruined mansions. Also there was that heretical pope guy.
>>725245
>We just call it Byzantium because Brits and Spanish and for some reason fucking Germans thought that the Roman Empire couldn't exist without their being a part of it, even though the East was always the more important part, and Italy provided absolutely nothing to the rest of the Empire beside being the home base.
Well it was mostly butthurt Germans in the Holy Roman Empire. The Kaisers would repeatedly call the Byzantine-Roman Emperor "The King in Greece" just to piss them off, and it mostly stuck because people in Hispania, France, and Britain didn't like the idea of the Empire being run by 'heretics', so blame the Pope too.
Late on Historians adopted it because they either didn't know better or wanted a way to separate the Latin and Greek periods of the Empire
>>725766
>or wanted a way to separate the Latin and Greek periods of the Empire
It was this. That's why they went with Byzantium, in reference to the fact that it was basically a city-state empire like Rome, but with a Greek city running the show.
>>725812
>a city-state empire
But that wasn't the case at all. Byzantium was the capital, but it wasn't a "city state empire", and neither was the Roman Empire. A city state empire is something like the Delian league as a city-state empire of Athens.
>>724649
Augustus Caesar changed the state religion to make Julius Caesar the chief deity at the state temple (though not the "ruler" of the pantheon so to speak, it was still the personality cult of Caesar infesting the state religion)
Aurelian had changed the state religion to worship of Sol Invictus
Constantine did NOT make Christianity the state religion. All he did was decriminalize it.
Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the state religion in 380 CE
>>725766
>butthurt
>high level of discourse
>>725833
I think what he means is that after the reign of Constantine, the balance of power shifts from Rome to Constantinople (known in antiquity as Byzantium), from one continent bestriding megalopolis to another... after the young eats the old, of course
>>724812
For the same reason there's no "Byzantince" languages.
Their empire got conquered and destroyed by other superpowers of the time, instead of gradually collapsing into un-centralized forms of government that could continue the cultural tradition.
Rome is where the emperor sits. After Caracalla gave citizenship to all people of the empire, Roman was no longer an ethnicity, the people of Italy were Italic/Latin, not "Roman"
>>725976
None?
>>726004
Exactly.
>>725976
I don't know about that. The HRE atleast had the benefit of being certified by a part of the Church of Rome, which at that point was the last vestige of the Western Roman Empire, and for a while everyone tried to pretend that the Frankish Empire was the Western Roman Empire. The Ottomans never had a legit claim to the Roman Empire outside of conquering what little was left of it.
>>726032
The Church of Rome sold that legitimacy claim twice, though.
>>726086
Indeed it did, doesn't change the fact that it makes the HRE's claim to the Roman Empire more legitimate than the Ottoman's.
>>724613
Yes
>>726123
I'd say they're pretty even.
HRE:
-Loose confederation of Germanic states "governing" almost none of the WRE's holdings aside from Rome at the very beginning, and then nothing.
-Bought a bogus legitimacy claim from the Chruch, who did not even have that authority originally to begin with.
-Frankish king, admittedly the most prominent figure in western Europe and the closest thing to a WRE successor, was originally the "emperor" to this non-empire.
-Didn't even have a central city to be declared Rome's successor, unless Paris counts (and it shouldn't).
7/10 on culture, 4 (declining to 2)/10 on geography.
Ottoman Empire:
-No religious, cultural nor historical ties to the Roman Empire.
-Was an actual empire that governed pretty much all of the ERE's holdings, including the capital Byzantium, which it turned into its own capital and their successor state still holds to this very day.
0/10 on culture, 9/10 on geography.
All in all, they both almost make Moscow's claim to be the third Rome seem legitimate.
>>726304
Hey now, the Franks also had Gaul, so I'd say that's at least a 6/10 on geography, and I'd say it goes down to a 1/10 since the HRE eventually lost Rome and Italy in the 1500's and all they had left was the Alps and Slovenia/Carinthia.
>>726362
>Franks also had Gaul
But that was part of the Frankish kingdom. Was the Frankish kingdom actually considered a formal part of the HRE?
>>726380
Depends on whether or not you consider Charlemagne's crowning as Roman Emperor as the beginning of the HRE or not. The title of Emperor didn't come to the German Kings of the Carolingian dynasty till the 900's, and really people didn't stop calling it the Roman Empire and start calling it the Holy Roman Empire, till Barbarossa.
>>724613
Were hippies American? Of coarse they were. What kind of fucking question is that?
And just like a bunch of hippies they turned their back on the corruption and decadence of the capital and went to the best place on the map to start a cult.
In 200 years their form of Christianity made Rome look like a pile of dog shit. They even took back most of the empire for a while until they realized most of it was worthless. Then went back to the places that had roads and infrastructure for the last 1000 years.
>>724688
half of the italian peninsula was greek by the time of the Roman Republic. The romans entire world view came from the Greeks,
>>726304
It really doesn't matter in the end though who is more "Roman". All of the actual Romans had been dead and gone for over a thousand years before either of those two countries existed, when the world was far less populous and far more simple and brutal place. By the time the Ottomans and the Holy Roman Empire existed the concept of a "Roman" was so vague as to be essentially pointless: Roman was whatever they wanted it to be, and that changed from century to century. Even the Romans themselves couldn't agree what it was and waged violent, bloody wars trying to figure it out. We could come up with some vague term like "civilization, law, and order" and recognize that the Roman system was far more primitive than ours, built on the unsustainable backs of brutally subjugated labor, and their society eventually choked on its own excesses and deflated out of existence when they ran out of foreigners to pillage and turned on each other.
