Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Were the Byzantines Actually Romans?" video.

The eastern half of the Roman empire was part of Rome. But it had a very different carateristic from western half of the empire. They did not speak the same language and the way society was structured was also very different. If all of Canada fell into the hands of the barbarians and only French speaking Quebec remained of Canada. Would it then make more sense to call the country Quebec, or should we still call it Canada? To me the name you choose doesn't matter that much. What matters is that the main caracteristic of the country has changed. It is no longer mainly an English speking country, just like latin fell into the backseat after 476 and Greek instead became dominant. But my comparison here is not that good I admit, since it understates the many ways the Byzantine empire was different from the Roman republic. The way the Byzantine emperor was worshiped by the people as a God or demi-God had more in common with middle eastern and Egyptian tradition than the Republican/democratic traditions of western Rome. The latifund system took a great scale in the west, but that type of economy never became popular in the east, which relied more upon trade than agriculture and used slaves in the household instead. The centre of power laid in the countryside in the west, and in the cities in the east. The Byzantine empire was a religiously intolerant monotheistic theocracy, while the (west) Roman empire was a religously tolerant polytheistic state where people liked nude statues and art, and visiting a bathhouse or a gladiator game - while in the Byzantine empire such things were forbidden
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No. Their attempts only comes across as clumbsy and ridiculous. Only an insecure person without anything to be proud of would try to steal other peoples history. Modern Greeks are the most pathethic people in Europe. They get butthurt about another naming their own country Macedonia. They get angry when people stay to historical facts and point out that Alexander the Great was a homosexual... I mean, what normal person does fucking care? Alexander lived 2000 years ago, and only an idiot would worship a Hitler of Antiquity that commited genocide after genocide and burned down Thebe and Persepolis. He murdered Greeks, Persians, Indians, Medes, Pisidians, Cappadocians, Paphlagonians, Mesopotamians, Galatians, Armenians, Bactrians, Sogdians, Arachosians, and even some rare Uxians.
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Finland was a full worthy member of the Swedish empire just like Greece was a member of the Roman empire. But West Rome and East Rome are completly different things, just as Sweden and Finland are different. Had Sweden fallen into enemy hands and only Finland remained left of the Swedish empire, had the Swedish empire then remained Swedish? - Nope. Finland and Sweden are completly different things. The Finlandic language got no resemblance with Swedish at all, and it doesn't even belong to the indo-European language tree, indeed Finnish got more incommon with Hungarian and Mongol than the language of its Scandinavian neighbours. Had Denmark conquered Sweden and only Finland remained outside Danmarks rule, then the Finns might perhaps have called themselves "East-Swedes" the same way the Greeks called themselves "east Romans". But that would not change the fact that they are not Swedes.
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In the western half of the Roman empire people spoke latin. And in the eastern half they spoke Greek instead. Rome won North Africa, Spain and France by military conquests and could brutally impose their will and force the population to do everything that rulers in Rome wanted. The old culture was destroyed and people learned to speak latin instead. In the eastern half of the empire things were different. Eastern provinces were gained by inheritance, royal marriages and alliances with friendly minded kingdoms and states. And Rome offered the peoples in the east many benifits if they joined the Roman empire, and they promised that many cities could keep their own laws and old culture and customs if they joined the Roman empire. And the population did not have to pay all the same taxes as the Romans did. So the eastern half of the empire never became fully Roman. And the Romans never made any efforts to assimilate the Greek speaking population into the latin community. And the Greeks could keep their own Gods and traditions. One could think of it like the failed integration of a modern day ghetto of immigrants in todays Europe. If there are no forces that push for the immigrants to follow the law of the land, learn the language and trying to mix with the native population... then of course will the muslim immigrants then prefer to keep their own language, customs and traditions. Likewise was the Greeks in the eastern half never interested in giving up their own language and use latin instead. As long as Rome could conquer new rich lands and take enemy solidiers as slaves did the economy of the western half of the empire flourish and exceed the wealth of the Eastern half of the empire. But when Rome started to run out of slaves, then the slave economy in western Europe started to fall apart, and the power balance in the Roman empire swung over and the Eastern half of the empire became more important than the western half. It now was in the east the big cities and riches were found. And it was in the east the great thinkers and intellectuals were found. While the new provinces the Romans conquered like Britain were more of an economic loss than a benifit to the Roman empire. Britain needed to be defended by 4 Roman legions, but the little island province could not afford to pay for the upkeep for all those units on its own. The land also lacked natural resources - except tin... while other provinces like Spain had plenty of useful natural resources and both France and Spain would provide Rome with more money than what they costed to defend. And both Spain and France did also provide the Roman empire with philosophers, thinkers, celebrities and emperors. But Roman Britain did not provide a single one such person. So as you see did the western Roman empire at one point reach its peak.
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I think we see tend to view history always through the lens of our own time which we live in. The people back then did not view things the same way as we do now. Roman and German culture had been mixed for atleast 200 years before the fall of Rome. The German barbarians was of course not so cultured and sophisticated as their Roman contemporaries. But compared to the Germanic tribes a few hundred years earlier so was the new Romanified Germans very sophisticated and shared some of aspects of the Roman culture. The fall of Rome was not felt as dramatic as we sees it today. Most contemporaries believed that it would rise again within some years, decades.. or in the worst case one or two centuries. And most people living in the former Roman lands after the fall, had this dream that Rome would rise again and bring everyone togheter again one day. After a long time it started to become appearent that this was not going to happen anytime soon. But the dream of united Europe lived on. And the Holy Roman empire, the Byzantine empire, the papacy and France all wanted to unite Europe again.
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The upper classes may have spoken Greek, but so what? I mean King Frederick the Great spoke French and so did many of his officers and noblemen but that doesn't make Prussia a country of the French speaking sphere. It was a German country after all. And likewise was western Rome latin while Eastern Rome was Greek.
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Greek was a "world language" like english is today and its dominance was total until the romans took over the world. But in the eastern half of the mediterranean did Greek still dominate. So it only became natural to translate the Bible into Greek in order to reach a large international audiance. Some people believe that Jesus spoke Aramaic and that his last words were "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani". And Jesus was a jew so it would therefore be natural if some of the first variants of the Bible were written in hebrew. Few people, probably only 1% of the population was able to read or write, so it would therefore not surprise me if not many written eyewitness accounts of Jesus exist - if he ever existed. And I also think the likelyhood that anyone of them was able to speak both Aramic and Greek would also be very low. Anyways, that seems to the story there are some consensus behind. Personally I don't bother, since I am not a believer in Jesus existence.
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And the people who lived in western europe the centuries after the fall of Rome did also consider themselves as Romans
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Indeed, but over time changes do occur. American culture and British culture have similirities but they also got differences. Furthermore were Greek and Roman societies different also for other reasons, in terms of how society was structured, gender norms, what forms slavery took, the idea of citizenship etc.
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"My opinion : the byzantine empire was a hypridic one : state organization was Roman, religion Christian, and language / education Greek" You made the point earlier that things that seem important to us today may not have been so important to people in earlier times. And I think that point certainly apply here. As historian Oswald Spengler noted would religion matter extremely much to the Romans and if you would go back in a time machine and asked a Roman to learn you about what is would mean to be Roman he would not show you the aqueducts, the amazing architecture or other such wordly things that we admire the Romans for today. Instead he would take you to a temple and tell you about some made up stories and mythology and such. So a Roman would much define himself by his religion. So while hellenism or orthodox christianity might seem like an unimportant bullshit issue to us today, things were seen as very important in the past. "As to "ethnicity", the problem is a fictitious one, since in the 11th - 15th centuries (and even much later, well into the 18th), "nation" or "ethnicity" the way we perceive them today, did not exist." One should not exaggerate the amount of nationalism people felt in the past when people even rarely meet any fellow citizens outside their own home province. But it did however sometimes exist to some extent, even if the nationalist feelings rarely was a strong as they were during the 1800s or early 1900s. The Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus in the 1600s spoke both to his advisors and to common people about the necessity to fight his wars to protect the beloved fatherland. And this is just one example among many. In some way I also think a kind of nationalism existed in very early times as well. From what I can remember did the Greeks living around 400 BC like to think of themselves and other Greeks as part of a common cultural sphere. While people in balkans and rest of Europe were seen as barbarians, and Persia was considered to be a kind of common enemy for all the Greek city states.
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