What’s worse, not only did the Greeks usurp the Roman name and identity, but they hated and despised the very people whose identity they usurped.
Throughout much of its history the Byzantines were notoriously anti-Latin and hostile to Rome itself. So much so that in 865 AD, after the Byzantine Emperor Michael III had insulted the Latin language, a letter was sent to him by Pope Nicholas the Great, a real Roman descended from a noble Roman family. In the letter, Nicholas rebukes the Byzantine emperor and tells him that he should stop calling himself a ‘Roman’:
“In your frenzy, you inflict insult on the Latin language, calling it a ‘barbaric and Scythian tongue’. Now, if you call Latin a barbaric and Scythian tongue because you do not understand it, consider how ridiculous it is to call yourself ‘Emperor of the Romans’, and yet be ignorant of the Roman tongue! ... Indeed, in the beginning of your letter you call yourself ‘Emperor of the Romans’, yet you dare to call the Roman language barbaric! ... Therefore, cease to call yourself ‘Emperor of the Romans’ since in your own opinion they are barbarians whose emperor you claim to be. Because the Romans use this language which you call 'barbaric and Scythian’.” (Source: Letter of Pope Nicholas I to Emperor Michael III, 28 September 865 AD)
As Nicholas and many other Romans throughout history acknowledged, Romanitas is inexorably linked to Latinitas. The preface of Justinian’s Digest describes Latin as the ‘Roman tongue’ and distinguishes it from Greek, saying that the text ought to be published “both in the Greek tongue and that of the Romans” (“tam Graeca lingua quam Romanorum”). The ‘tongue of the Romans’ means Latin.
Even the Byzantines themselves acknowledged this, as in Byzantine texts Latin is called ‘the Roman language’ and is differentiated from Greek (which the Byzantines called ‘our language’). In the 7th century Greek work Miracles of Saint Demetrius we find precisely these affirmations. Here is a description of the text:
“In the first collection, written by archbishop John at the beginning of the seventh century, we are informed about a soldier possessed by the devil, who, when cured by the saint, started asking unexpected questions "in the Roman language". What is this language? If the author, being himself a Greek and addressing a Greek audience, felt it necessary to define the language in which these questions were asked, one can deduce that it was not Greek — thus it could be only Latin, called by the Byzantines "the Roman tongue" until the tenth century. ... In the same collection of miracles...we find a text...describing...four languages: Greek ("our language"), Latin ("the language of the Romans"), Slavic and Bulgarian.” (Source: Euangelos K. Chrysos & Ian N. Wood, East and West: Modes of Communication, 1999, p. 50)
The Greeks’ disconnection and total disassociation from Rome can be observed even in their attitude towards Rome.
Under the Roman Empire, Italy held a very privileged and unique position within the Empire. Among its special rights were religious and financial privileges, such as exemption from taxation.
In Virgil’s Aeneid, commissioned by Emperor Augustus, Italy is described as “our Fatherland” (hæ nobis propriæ sedes). Italy thus was the ‘metropole’ of the Roman Empire; the centre of the Empire; the homeland of the Romans; Italy was, in the words of Pliny, “a land sacred to the gods” (Haec est Italia diis sacra), “a land that is the nursling and mother of all other lands” (terra omnium terrarum alumna eadem et parens), a land “chosen by the divine inspiration of the gods to enhance the renown of heaven itself...to give mankind civilization. To put it succinctly, Italy was to become the sole parent of all races throughout the world.”
As such, Italy was the only place in the Roman Empire whose inhabitants inherited Roman citizenship at birth, merely by virtue of being Italian. Unlike all other territories, Italy was not a mere province, but rather was the ‘Dominator of the Provinces’ (Italia non est provincia sed domina provinciarum), i.e. the country to which all the provinces were subject to. The concept of a ‘province’ originated as an administrative territory located outside of Italy; hence a ‘provincial’ was, by definition, a non-Italian and a non-Roman; he was a person living in a land conquered by the Romans; a land now subject to Italy and which had to pay tribute to Rome.
However, this is not how the Byzantines viewed Italy at all. They were notoriously neglectful of Rome and of Italy in general, and on numerous occasions abandoned it and betrayed it.
For example, when the Western Roman Empire fell to Odoacer in 476 AD, the eastern Emperor Zeno (an Isaurian from Anatolia, whose ancestors never stepped foot in Rome) did nothing: he sent no military aid to the western Emperor Julius Nepos because he saw this as an opportunity to secure his own power in the East. He was enticed by the idea of becoming sole emperor in Constantinople, without any competitors in the West. In 488 AD the same Emperor Zeno encouraged the Ostrogoths to invade Italy, in order to divert them away from the Balkans and protect Constantinople. Later it was the Byzantines again — this time the disgraced traitor Narses (Byzantine general of Armenian origin, removed from his post in Italy for having abused the Roman population) — who in 568 AD invited the Longobards to invade Italy. The betrayal of Narses received the tacit sanction of the eastern Emperor Justin II, who sent no assistance to Italy, and it was met with indifference by the Byzantine garrisons, which offered almost no resistance to the Germanic invaders. In this way, the Longobards conquered large parts of Italy; Italy was partitioned between the Longobards and Byzantines; and the country became politically divided for the next 1300 years.
I wrote briefly about Zeno here. However, a much more detailed historical context surrounding the deeds of Zeno and Narses can be read here: History of the Kingdom of Italy, 888-1014
The Eastern Emperor Maurice — the first Greek emperor — like many of his predecessors and most of his successors, cared so little about Rome that he refused to send a relief force to defend it against Longobard aggressions in 584 and 592 AD. The protection of the city, its surroundings and its inhabitants was thus left to the resolve of Pope Gregory I, who set up the defenses himself, personally paid the army, negotiated treaties and became de facto secular ruler over Rome. Assuming the role of civil administrator and military director in the absence of the apathetic emperor, he established a precedent for what would later become the Papal States. Gregory complained: “How anyone can be seduced by Constantinople and how anyone can forget Rome, I do not know.” (Source: Registrum Epistolarum, Book VIII, Letter 22)
The largely ambivalent attitude of the Byzantines towards Rome and Italy can only be comprehended by understanding who the Byzantines themselves were, and what it was which so markedly differentiates them from the Romans.
The Byzantine Empire was centered around Constantinople and Asia Minor; they treated Italy more or less as just another province, as a subjugated territory, located on the periphery of their Empire. And this precisely because they were not Italian and were not Roman: they were predominantly Greeks and Hellenized Asians, who cared very little for Rome, let alone the rest of Italy. Following the Justinian conquest of Italy, the new Byzantine government abolished ancient Roman institutions such as the consulship and nearly all senatorial offices; the patrician title was devalued of its prestige; Rome itself was reduced to a dukedom subject to the Byzantine imperial representative at Ravenna. The Byzantines even sacked Rome twice in the span of a century (552 AD under general Narses; 663 AD under the Constans II, an emperor of Hellenized Armenian origin). The Byzantines felt no attachment to this land. And why would they? They had no links to Rome neither by birth, nor ancestrally, nor culturally, nor even politically. Therefore there was no reason for them to have any attachment to it sentimentally, nor to treat it differently or better than any other territories belonging to their Greco-Oriental empire.
As is well summarized by Louis II, the Carolingian King of Italy, in his 9th century letter to the Byzantine Emperor Basil:
“Not only have the Greeks deserted the city and capital of the Empire [Rome], but they have also abandoned Roman nationality and even the Latin language. They have migrated to another capital city [Constantinople] and taken up a completely different nationality and language.” (Source: Letter of Louis II to Emperor Basil, 871 AD)
It should be noted also that the Byzantines’ entire self-identity as ‘Romans’ was wrapped up in the concept of ‘New Rome’ (i.e. Constantinople), which they viewed in opposition to ‘Old Rome’ (i.e. Rome, in Latium, Italy).
Today many Greeks and Byzantinophiles resort to a political or legalistic argument, citing supposed institutional and political ties to ‘Old Rome’ which would demonstrate political-institutional continuity between Old Rome and Byzantium and thereby justify the medieval Greeks calling themselves ‘Romans’.
However, the Byzantines themselves did not regard themselves as ‘Roman’ by virtue of any presumed political ties to the original Rome: they regarded themselves as ‘Roman’ by virtue of their ties to the so-called ‘New Rome’ on the Bosphorus, where the language was Greek, where the culture was Greek, where the people were Greek or Hellenized Asiatics, and where the population followed the religion and rites of the Greeks. This is a concept known as translatio imperii (imperial transfer). Additionally, they regarded themselves as ‘Romans’ because they equated the term ‘Roman’ with ‘Greek Christian’. The very premise of their self-identity was therefore an imperial-religious ideology in opposition to ‘Old Rome’, in opposition to the Rome of Augustus, in opposition to the Latins, even in opposition to Latin Christians. And as the centuries passed, their self-identification with Greekness and antipathy towards Latinity became ever stronger.
In 968 AD the Byzantine emissaries of Emperor Nicephorus II described Rome and its Roman inhabitants in this disparaging way:
“The silly pope does not know that the holy Constantine transferred [to Constantinople] the imperial sceptre, the senate and all the Roman knighthood, and left in Rome nothing but vile minions – fishers, namely, peddlers, bird catchers, bastards, plebeians, slaves.” (Source: Liutprand of Cremona, Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitana, 968-969 AD)
The false myth of the ‘imperial transfer’ was still an article of faith among the Byzantines in the 14th century, when the Patriarch of Constantinople Philotheos Kokkinos — who was an Orthodox convert of Jewish origin — referred to Italians as “barbarians in mind and body” and then proceeded to recite the Byzantine revisionist mythology according to which God, through Emperor Constantine, had supposedly given Constantinople the authority to take the Roman Empire away from Italy:
“The great and wonderful Empire of the Romans was transferred from Italy to the East when Constantine the Great, by divine command, was converted from Hellenism to faith in Christ and transformed the city of Byzantium into the present great city which he called by his own name. It was he who built here a palace and moved the council and the senate over from Old Rome to make this, the New Rome, leader in authority over all other cities.” (Source: Philotheos Kokkinos, Logos Istorikos, 1352 AD)
The fables that the Greeks conjured to boost their prestige were monstrous and truly ridiculous. Donald M. Nicol, commenting on that exact passage, said: “It is a sign of weakness rather than strength when fictions have to be invented to support alleged realities.” (Source: The Byzantine View of Western Europe, 1967)
Their entire claim to being ‘Roman’ merely served to justify medieval Greek political power and prestigious titles, while basking in the glory associated with the name of Rome. It should be noted also that if one were to follow the Byzantinist political arguments to their logical conclusion, then one would also have to recognize that the Ottoman Turks were ‘Romans’ too. Naturally, however, the Greeks today completely reject this: they refuse to concede that anyone else could be Roman except themselves.
The Byzantines redefined, distorted and perverted the concept of ‘Roman’ to such an extent that they regarded only themselves as Romans and did not even regard as Roman the actual Romans living in Rome. They began to refer to the Romans of Italy as ‘Franks’ and ‘barbarians’. In Byzantine historiography, the term ‘Latin’ was also often employed as an antonym, as an antithesis to ‘Roman’. This can be seen in the Alexiad of Anna Comnena and in many other Byzantine texts which distinguish ‘Latins’ (i.e. Latin-speaking people of the West) from ‘Romans’ (i.e. the Greek-speaking Byzantine Christians). Thus they completed a total usurpation of the Roman name and identity, while simultaneously denying the real Romans the name of Roman — the name of their own ancestors.
The spectacle was such that according to the Byzantines’ own definition of ‘Roman’, even the original Romans were not Roman! The Byzantine definition of Roman excluded Latins, whom they considered barbarians. But Caesar, Virgil and Augustus were Latins. Julius Caesar, the most important Roman in history, whose family traced its beginnings to the foundation of Rome itself, was not really a Roman according to the Byzantine employment of the term: he was a barbarian with his “Scythian language”, as the Byzantine emperor Michael III called it. According to Byzantine logic, Caesar, Augustus, Virgil, Cicero, Cato and their Italian descendants were not Romans, yet an ensemble cast of medieval Greeks, Armenians, Syrians and Khazars were!
Rome was founded as a Latin State. Its founders were an Italic tribe called Latins, who came from Latium, in Italy. For nearly its entire existence only Latins (and other Italians, related to the Latins) could be full citizens in that State, and enjoy all the rights that came with it. For the entirety of the Empire’s history the Latin language — Rome’s native language — was the official language which all were required to know: it was the language of law, of the military, of administration and of all state documents. The Roman Empire’s entire history and origin is inseparably tied to the Latin and Italic people.
How absurd and insulting, then, for a foreign people — the descendants of a conquered people — to reject Rome, mock Romans, mistreat Italy, detest Latin culture, dismiss the history of Rome and denigrate the Roman language as “barbaric”, while — in a stunning display of hypocrisy — claiming to be Roman and usurping the Roman legacy.
How can one call oneself a Roman and hate Rome?
How can one call oneself a Roman and denigrate the Roman language?
How can one call oneself a Roman and deny all the qualities of Romanitas?
How can one call oneself a Roman and condemn as ‘barbarians’ the Latins who founded and built Rome?
How can one call oneself a Roman and not even have any connection or relation at all to the Romans?
The Byzantines hated and despised everything which Ancient Rome stood for and represented. Nor do the modern defenders of Byzantium feel any different. A few years ago I witnessed an online discussion in which a Greek ‘Byzaboo’ made reference to “filthy Latins” while insisting on defending the ‘Romanness’ of the Byzantines. Filthy Latins? Such as the filthy Latins who founded Rome, created the Roman Empire, conquered the Greeks, subjugated them for 350 years, then expanded citizenship to freemen in 212 AD only for the Greeks to spend the next millennium stealing their identity and pretending to be their heirs? Those filthy Latins?
It is worth pointing out also that the first twelve eastern emperors were native Latin-speakers (every one prior to Emperor Maurice, who was the first Greek-speaking emperor; and even Maurice’s court still retained the Latin language). Indeed even Constantine himself — whom the Greeks erroneously and preposterously regard as their founder and first emperor (in reality the first eastern emperor was Arcadius in 395 AD) — he would not be a ‘Roman’ either according to the Byzantine use of the term, for it is often forgotten that Constantine too was a Latin who did not speak a word of Greek; in fact, he required the use of a translator in order to translate his Latin speeches into Greek. He mandated the use of Latin in administration just as his predecessors had; he never intended for the Latin State to be subverted by Greeks nor for its highest political institutions to be hijacked by a hostile people who would regard him and his Flavian ancestors as ‘Latin barbarians’.
The Greeks have no right to the Roman name. Their robbery of the Roman legacy is the worst form of cultural appropriation and identity theft. The Byzantine Empire was little more than an oriental despotate consisting of Greeks, Armenians, Thracians, Slavs and Hellenized Asians calling themselves Romans. One can not be a Roman without having any ties to Italy or the Roman people; and one can not be a Roman while despising the Latin men who founded Rome and created the Roman Empire in the first place.
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