Comments by "Nick Strife" (@NickStrife) on "TLDR News EU"
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@a_kazakis Well yes, it's a matter of perspective. Genetics do not mean anything to me for example. There are many modern Greeks who cannot make a genetic claim, and I am not taking about just some minorities here.
Ancient Greeks could make an ethnic argument (what they meant by "ethnic' was actually "same blood"). Most modern Greeks cannot do the same today.
Using the factors "ethnicity", "religion", "language", "culture". Modern Greece fulfills all except the first one. Which is why neo-Greeks are closer to ERE than their Ancient ancestors.
Also, do not be so sure you would find many cultural similarities with an ancestor of yours from 200 ago. Not only your daily lives are completely different but the language would be a lot different as well. Language is a living organism and changes bit by bit throughout the ages, so you would hardly be able to communicate with each other.
At this point I should mention what the terms "culture" and "subculture" actually mean. In short, culture is the daily life of a group of people whereas subculture is a very specific part of the daily life for some people of the same culture (a culture can contain many subcultures). Today our culture is the western one. A thing few of our ancestors would identify with today.
This means, and I insist, that the gradual change in culture is not something someone can use to separate groups of people in History. You can, however, make such claim if the cultural change was the result of a foreign occupation. For example, Palestinians and Israelis are different groups of people today despite both being genetically "Semitic". That's because one group tried to keep their identity as intact as they could while being away from their homeland, whereas the other group stayed behind and was culturally assimilated by their Arab occupiers.
I agree that wherever Romans conquered the locals would keep a part of their culture intact even if they were considered Roman citizens and had to follow Roman Law. This is part of the reason Greeks kept their language and culture despite the fact their Greek States were conquered by the Romans. However, there is a fundamental difference between Greek culture and the rest of the cultures the Roman Empire was influenced by. First of all, even during the times of the early classical Roman Empire, the dominant culture was the Greek one alongside the Roman one. Iberic, German and English people cannot make the same claim today. As their cultures were not held to such a high regard by the "true" Romans.
ERE had roman laws and roman customs, these were mixed with Greek culture. We need also to take into account Roman and Greek culture had 1000+ years to mold into something new. A fact which is not true for other cultures like the Germanic and the Iberic ones.
Citizens and rulers of the ERE were speaking Common Greek, but they called their language 'Romaika". They also called themselves 'Romioi". After 1000+ years of cultural mixing can we still claim that ERE was "Hellenized"? I am not so sure. I believe the most accurate term for the culture of the ERE is "Greco-Roman". Something new that happened gradually, under the influence of, yes foreign people, but foreign people who respected our culture above all else. Like Palaiologos said, "we are descendants of both Greeks and Romans".
For all the above reasons, I firmly believe our true identity is the Roman or to be more precise the "Greco-Roman" one. We just chose again to go by the name "Hellenes" after 1500 years for diplomatic and political reasons during the preparations for the revolution of 1821.
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