Beyond the question of origins and cultural influences, however, there is also the fact that the Greeks — in real life — literally did usurp the Roman name and identity for over 1000 years!
During the Early Middle Ages (c. 6th century AD) the Greeks abandoned their own Hellene identity. Not only abandoned, they consciously rejected the Hellenic identity and condemned it. The reasons why they did so are not really important; what is important is that it happened. From about the 6th century AD onwards they renounced their Hellenic identity and began to adopt the name ‘Roman’ in its place, redefining the term amongst themselves.
At one point during the Late Byzantine period, many Greek authors even began to refer to themselves as Ausones. The Ausones were an Italic population which inhabited central-southern Italy, and one of the ancient poetic names of Italy was precisely Ausonia. So, not content with usurping the Roman name, the Byzantines even began to usurp other Italic identities as well.
At least the Germans — from the 15th century onward — were honest enough to call themselves ‘Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation’ (Sacrum Imperium Romanum Nationis Germanicae).
But the Greeks clung to the name and have ever refused to give it up.
In summary, the medieval Greeks abandoned their Hellenic identity in favour of a Roman one. For 1000 years they LARPed as Romans, and continued to do so even in the centuries after the fall of Constantinople, before finally resurrecting a Hellenic national identity in the 19th century. And now Modern Greeks want to have it both ways: they want to claim Hellenic and Roman heritage for themselves. They have manipulated history and definitions in such a way as to enable themselves to simultaneously be both Romans and Hellenes, while denying to Italians the right to sole proprietorship of the Roman legacy.
Today you also have ‘Byzaboos’ (fanatical fans of the Byzantine Empire, both Greek and non-Greek) who still insist that the Byzantines were Romans and even “the real Romans”. They reason that “they considered themselves Romans, therefore they were Romans”. This is the same sort of logic which justifies the mental illness of transgenderism and gender dysphoria: a biological male considers himself a woman, therefore he is a woman. I am sorry, but no. Just because the Greeks began to style themselves ‘Romans’, does not mean they were such. In the West we called them Graeci (Greeks) and their country Imperium Graecorum (Greek Empire) because that is what they were.
The Greeks become enraged when Turks try to insist that the Ottoman Sultans were Romans. They are equally maddened by the Slavo-Macedonians who consider themselves the heirs of Alexander the Great, because the Greeks regard this as an illegitimate attempt to cheapen and usurp their ancient heritage. For decades Greek lobbyists have referred to Macedonians as ‘Skopjans’ and have forbidden the country from using the name ‘Macedonia’ (forcing it instead to call itself ‘FYROM’). The Macedonians are not even allowed have a monument dedicated to Alexander the Great in their capital; instead the statue had to be called ‘Monument on a Horse’, in order to avoid upsetting Greeks. Yet the Greeks themselves commit the exact same thievery from the real Romans whose name and identity they usurped.
At least one anonymous Greek had the honesty to admit this, though not publicly. The following quote is taken from an article written by a Greek-Australian journalist named Dean Kalimniou, who quotes his Greek friend as saying in a private conversation the following words:
“We have appropriated the Roman identity, in the same way that the Skopjans have appropriated a Macedonian identity for themselves. I wonder why the Italians haven’t realised this. They would sue the pants off us. And it turns out we are no better than those we deride, except that we got away with it. ... Just like we thought we were Romans and promoted a Roman identity, even though the world was telling us we were not, they think they are Macedonians, even though they are not.”
The author of the article, however, still insists that Greeks are Romans, and disagrees with his friend.
Sometimes the Greeks try to justify their hypocritical behaviour and appropriation of the Roman name by resorting to arguments of citizenship. I will note here that even during the period of the Roman Empire, being ‘Roman’ was never merely a matter of citizenship. There were certain Greeks, for example, who held Roman citizenship (granted as a concession on individual basis); however, in Latin historiography Greeks were never identified as ‘Romans’; they were always identified as Greeks. I will affirm again: in Latin literature a distinction was always made between Romans and Greeks. They were opposing terms, not complementary ones.
Even after the Edict of Caracalla (212 AD) this did not change. This Edict, by the way, has been very much misinterpreted in later centuries: contrary to popular belief, it did not grant Roman citizenship to everyone in the Roman Empire; it granted Roman citizenship only to all freeborn adult men in the Roman Empire. The Empire’s population still continued to consist predominantly of other classes of people (including slaves), who therefore never enjoyed Roman citizenship.
One interesting anecdote is the fact that Maximinus Thrax (a barbarian who had acquired Roman citizenship) was rejected by the Roman Senate on account of his foreign origins; to them it did not matter that he was a Roman citizen. There was also Emperor Galerius, who in Roman literature was scourged as a ‘barbaric foreigner’ due to his Dacian mother.
Perhaps you could compare this to the situation of Jews in the United States. In the 19th century the United States only permitted immigration of white peoples. And yet, from 1820-1924 — a period in which “white-only” laws were in force — some 2.8 million Jews immigrated to the United States. This means that, legally speaking, the Jews were considered ‘White’ by the United States government. But did the larger American society — the American people — ever regard the Jews as ‘White’? No; and still today the Jews do not even regard themselves as white either. They always distinguish between themselves and White Americans (except in cases when it will benefit them to pretend to be white).
One can also compare it to North Africans and Arabs, both of whom are legally categorized as ‘White’ according the U.S. Census. But would anyone dream of considering Arabs as ‘white’? Definitely not.
Similarly, in a very narrow and limited sense of citizenship, sure, Maximinus Thrax and Galerius were ‘Roman’. But the actual Romans did not regard them as such. Hence why still in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD emperors such as Carus and Constantine emphasized their Roman ancestry (for Constantine his descent from the gens Flavia; for Carus the gens Aurelia).
The cases of Maximinus and Galerius (rejected for their foreign origin), in addition to the cases of Carus and Constantine (who placed strong emphasis on descent from old Roman families), are sufficient to show that Roman citizenship in and of itself was not sufficient to be regarded as truly Roman, and that those of provincial or non-Roman descent were not generally viewed as ‘Romans’ in Roman society, not even in the decades and century following the Edict of Caracalla.
Another interesting testimony comes from the letters of St. Jerome. In a letter to Rufus dated to 398 AD, Jerome metaphorically speaks of “turning Origen into a Roman” by translating his works from Greek into Latin, because Latin is the mark of a Roman — not Greek:
“Large numbers of the brethren have, I know, in their zeal for the knowledge of the scriptures begged learned men skilled in Greek literature to make Origen a Roman by bringing home his teaching to Latin ears. One of these scholars...translated from Greek into Latin his two homilies on the Song of Songs...” (Source: Eusebius Hieronymus, Letter LXXX. From Rufinus to Macarius. 398 AD.)
At this point in time (late 4th century AD) all freemen of the Empire, including free Greeks, had Roman citizenship for nearly two centuries. And yet, ‘Roman’ and ‘Latin’ were still identified with each other as synonymous, as hand in hand; in contrast to Greek, the language of a people who were not Roman, despite citizenship status.
The most explicit testimony, however, comes to us from Cassius Dio. Writing in c. 229 AD, he explicitly identifies the Greeks as a foreign people and laments that the real Romans might one day perish:
“It is neither pleasing to Heaven nor creditable that our race should cease and the name of Romans meet extinguishment in us, and the city be given up to foreigners — Greeks or even barbarians. We liberate slaves chiefly for the purpose of making out of them as many citizens as possible; we give our allies a share in the government that our numbers may increase. And so, you Romans of the original stock, including the Fabii, Quintii, Valerii and Iulli, do you desire that your families and names both shall perish with you?” (Source: Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book LVI)
It is clear from Roman writings that the Romans regarded themselves as a distinct ethnic group and regarded Greeks as foreigners who threatened their survival as a people.
Romanity (or Romanitas), that is to say being Roman, was more than merely citizenship; what differentiated Romans from non-Romans was not mere political status. Being a Roman was also characterized by — or associated with — a number of other traits, including the Latin language, Roman mores (mos maiorum) and Italian descent.
The Greeks were a different people, with a different language, different customs, different traditions, and always had been; they had their own history, their own civilization and their own identity, completely distinct and apart from Rome. As such, they were never Romans.
The Greeks are one of the numerous peoples who were conquered by the Romans, subjugated by the Romans and enslaved by the Romans; but they were not Romans. Obtaining citizenship after the 3rd century AD does not magically make them “Roman”, no more than an African or Indian citizen living in the British Empire is “British”.
As I have written elsewhere:
“The Greeks were not Romans; they were one of the many peoples conquered by the Romans. Greeks had no special or unique status in the Roman system; their lands were conquered and colonized by the Romans, and many Greeks were turned into slaves much like any other people subjugated by Romans. Greeks did not receive citizenship until the 3rd century AD, at the same time as all the other freeborn provincial populations. Greek and Roman authors alike always made a clear distinction between Romans and Greeks. Even in the rare cases in which a Greek individual held Roman citizenship, he is still referred to as a Greek and never as a Roman. Both viewed themselves as two different peoples, regardless of social status or citizenship.”
However, even if being Roman were merely a matter of citizenship, the fact remains that most Greeks were still not Roman citizens: with the Edict of Caracalla, only those who were freeborn adult males became citizens. And as shown already, even after this extension of citizenship, some very important people of foreign origin — including two emperors — were still not considered Romans despite their citizenship status.
More importantly, let us never lose sight of these following facts:
The history of Ancient Rome stretches for 1,229 years, from 753 BC to 476 AD. And for 964 of those years (753 BC to 212 AD) only Italians were Roman citizens. That is to say, for nearly 80% of Rome’s long history, only Italian people enjoyed Roman citizenship. Non-Italians began to be enfranchised in sizable numbers only after 212 AD — as the empire was facing financial crisis and its inevitable demise. And even after this extension of citizenship, nearly all officials and personages of the Empire were still Italian or descended from Roman colonists, while the vast majority of the Empire’s population never enjoyed citizenship.
For many centuries — up until the Social War (91-87 BC) — the Romans did not even want to grant Roman citizenship to other Italians, let alone to foreign peoples such as Greeks or others. As the Roman historian Florus explains in his ‘Epitome of Roman History’: the allied Italian tribes who revolted against Rome, even though they did not have full citizenship, were just as guilty as if they had been citizens, because the Romans and Italians were one people:
“Though we call this war a war against allies, in order to lessen the odium of it, yet, if we are to tell the truth, it was a civil war. For since the Roman people united in itself the Etruscans, the Latins and the Sabines, who all share the same blood and ancestry, it has formed a body made up of various members and is a single people composed of all these elements... and the allies, therefore, in raising a rebellion within the bounds of Italy, committed as great a crime as citizens who rebel within a city...”
The Roman historian Marcus Velleius Paterculus, echoing Florus in his ‘History of Rome’, says:
“120 years ago, Italy as a whole took up arms against Rome. The lamentable affair started with the people of Asculum...after which it had permeated all regions of Italy. The fortune that overtook the Italians was grim, but their cause was absolutely legitimate: for they were seeking membership in a state whose empire they had been defending with their weapons. Through all the years and all the wars, they had been providing twice as many infantry and cavalry, and yet they were not granted the right of citizenship in a country which, thanks to them, had reached so high a position that it could look down upon men of the same race and blood as though they were foreigners and aliens.”
It is very clear that the Romans were an Italian people, that it was Italians who made Rome powerful, and that only Italians were citizens for the first one thousand years of its 1,200 year history. It is completely absurd therefore for people today to suggest that anyone could be Roman, to infer that we ought to completely disregard or ignore nearly a millennium of Rome’s history by focusing only on the final stages of Rome during the period of its decline, and in so doing redefine what a ‘Roman’ is and obfuscate who and what the Romans really were.
All of the greatest and most famous Romans — tribunes, senators, consuls, emperors, generals, admirals, architects, engineers, jurists, poets, playwrights, philosophers, historians, dramatists, satirists and orators, from Remus and Romulus to Priscus and Tarquinius, to Junius Brutus, Cincinnatus, Gracchus, Scipio Africanus, Gaius Marius, Germanicus, Drusus, Agrippa, Agricola, Lucullus, Cato, Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Tacitus, Livy, Pliny, Seneca, Suetonius, Juvenal, Lucan, Florus, Ennius, Plautus, Lucretius, Varro, Paterculus, Vitruvius, Sallust, Crassus, Sulla, Pompey, Marc Antony, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius — all of them were either born in Italy, or born to Roman colonial families which had originated in Italy.
All of them had Latin, Italic and/or Etruscan origins. Indeed all the ancient Roman families or gens had Latin, Italic and/or Etruscan origins. All of the Roman legions and allied cohorts up until the days of the Augustus were composed exclusively by Italian soldiers; and even when, under the Flavian Dynasty, the Italian-born troops began to gradually decline, their place in the legions was taken up by the descendants of Italians settled in the Roman colonies, since the Italian colonists were the only other people (aside from the Italians born in Italy) who held Roman citizenship.
The entire history of Rome is a history of Italy and Italic people, and of their expansion across the known world. To reduce this fact to a handful of liberal-progressive mantras such as “Rome was an idea”, or “Roman was just a citizenship, not a people or an ethnicity”, or “Caracalla extended citizenship to everyone in 212 AD, therefore a Roman could come from anywhere”, is not only historically inaccurate, but is insulting and discrediting to the ancient Italian people who founded, governed, colonized and built that empire and its civilization. It means attributing to other people the achievements of ancient Italians.
When defining ‘who is a Roman’, people today want to pretend it to be a matter of greater complexity than it really is, owing to their ahistorical, multicultural and universalist interpretation of Roman history, according to which everyone who happened to live under the Empire — even the slaves — was equally Roman, which is not true at all.
It is like speaking of the British Empire as a “multicultural, multi-ethnic empire where anyone could be British”, when in reality we all recognize that it was an empire founded, ruled and built by British people, and that the real British were and are the English, Scottish and Welsh. One can not take that away from them and attribute its origins and success to “a collaborative effort of diverse peoples who all made equal contributions”, just because in the last stages of its existence some Pakistanis, Indians and former African slaves obtained British citizenship.
The tendency to overemphasize the contributions and influences of foreign groups — and to overplay the role of the Greeks in particular — gives a completely distorted image of Roman history, Roman civilization and Roman people. The Romans were Italians (of Italic and Etruscan origin); their language was Latin (an Italic language); they were a product, above all, of their own Italic culture together with profound Etruscan influences.
Moreover, just because many famous Romans were born outside of Italy does not mean that they were not Italians. The Romans established hundreds of colonies and military camps across the empire, and in each of them one could find Italic settlers, soldiers, colonists, functionaries and administrators. Those who think that emperors Trajan and Hadrian were “Spaniards”, for example, or that Aurelian and Constantine were “Illyrians”, merely because they were born in Hispania and Illyria, commit the same fallacy as those who think that George Orwell was Indian, that Cleopatra was Egyptian, or that Santa Claus was Turkish.
Before closing this section it would not be inappropriate to recall what the general attitude of the Romans was towards the Greeks and Greek culture. The Romans regarded the Greeks as soft and decadent, preferring Italian discipline to Greek art. Actors were considered to be the scum of society in Rome, and other ‘Greek activities’ were discouraged, while the term graecus (‘Greek’) was used as an insult. Cato expelled Greek doctors and philosophers from Rome. Pliny informs us that Cato “recommended the banishment of all Greeks from Italy”.
In 151 BC the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum issued a decree ordering the destruction of a theatre and even banned seats at venues — ordering that Romans must stand — because, according to him, remaining seated was associated with “Greek laziness”. The decree was specifically intended to reduce the creeping Hellenic influences, which were regarded as negative and as having the potential to corrupt Roman values.
In 18 AD the consul Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso criticized General Germanicus for being too affable towards the Athenians and accused him of demeaning Rome’s dignity. Juvenal referred to Greek culture as “sickening” and “grotesque”. Martial agreed in regarding Hellenic customs as foul. As was mentioned, Philhellenism was extremely controversial and was met with great opposition by many conservative Romans. Those who had too much knowledge of Greek, or who aped degenerate Greek customs, or who were even too friendly towards the Greeks, were met with hostility and were severely criticized by other Romans who maintained that Hellenic customs, philosophy and mentality would lead to the corruption, decline and destruction of Roman society.
One last thing to remember:
The oldest texts of Greek literature are the works of Homer: The Iliad and The Odyssey, which recount the legendary war between the Mycenaean Greeks and the Trojans, which culminated in the destruction of Troy, the slaughter of its inhabitants and the enslavement of its women.
When the Romans adopted the Trojan origin story as their national myth, declaring their ancestors the offspring of Trojan refugees, it was a resounding statement against the Greeks — a people whom they despised. By tracing their descent from Aeneas through Romulus, the Romans consciously identified themselves as the natural ancestral enemies of the Greeks.
This is reflected also in the Romans’ highly negative view of Achilles — the Greek hero of the Trojan War — whom Roman authors unanimously portray as a savage butcher and rapist, precisely because he was a Greek warrior and therefore an ancestral enemy of the Romans. There is no way to harmonize this with the notion that Greeks can be Roman too: even their mythological identity was one shaped in opposition to Greeks.
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