Byzantine re-enactment

[Hoplitesmores]

It is well known that the so-called "Byzantines" defined themselves as Romans (citizens of the Roman Empire). After the edict of Caracallus all free people of the Empire became Romans. Other nations and peoples such as Latins, Franks, Germans, Russians, Armenians, Georgians, Khazarian Jews thought of the "Byzantines" as Greeks or Yunani, Yavani, Yoyn (Ionians). The "Byzantines" called their state "Kingdom of the Romans" (Basileion ton Rhomaion) but others described it as Graecia (Greece), the Greek Empire, or Yunastan, Yavan, Yawan (Ionia).

Aristotle, Apollodoros, the Chronicle of Paros and other ancient sources tell us that the name Greek is older than Hellene. It was occasionally used by the Byzantines themselves for self-identification, but more frequently it was used to designate the learning, language, and culture of their Empire. With some exceptions, for most of the foreigners the whole Byzantine Empire, including Asia Minor, was Greece, and its citizens Greeks. In determining the Greek national character, outsiders made no distinction between pagan and Christian Greeks, between the Greeks of ancient times and the "Byzantines" of the Middle Ages.

The overwhelming majority of the "Byzantines" themselves were
conscious of their uninterrupted continuity with the ancient Greeks
who, although not Christians, were ancestors. Though the adjective
Hellene, was used to imply pagan, it never disappeared as an ethnic
name. However, the names Greek and Ionian had been extensively used
by their neighbors and other people of Europe and the Orient and even
by themselves.

Graekos, as an ethnic identification, was used often. Priskos, the
fifth century historian, relates that, while unofficially on an
embassy to Attila the Hun, he had met at Attila's court someone
dressed like a Scythian but who spoke Greek. When Priskos asked him
where he had learned the language, he smiled and said that he was a
Graikos [Greek] by birth.

Many other "Byzantine" authors speak of the Empire's natives as
Greeks [graikoi] or Hellenes. For example, writing about the revolt
of a Slavic tribe in the district of Patras in the Peloponnesos,
Constantine Porphyrogennitos of the tenth century writes that the
Slavs first proceeded to sack the dwellings of their neighbors, the
Greeks, [ton Graikon], and gave them up to rapine and next they moved
against the inhabitants of the City of Patras.

Hellene as an ethnic name was used frequently after the eleventh
century by Anna Komnene, Michael Psellos, John III Vatatzes, George
Pletho Gemistos and several more. Anna Komnene writes of her
contemporaries as Hellenes. She does not use Hellene as a synonym
for pagan. Anna boasts about her Hellenic classical education, and
she speaks as a native Greek not as an outsider who learned Greek as
a foreigner. She writes of her country not as an insider.

Michael Psellos, a philosopher and historian of the 11th century was
another person conscious of the Greek nature of the Empire. When he
attacks Herodotos, the son of Lykos, who dared to criticize his
fellow Greeks and express his bias in favor of the Persians, Psellos
writes as if Herodotos had insulted his own ancestors. Emperor John
III Vatazes in his correspondence with old Rome writes of his people
as Hellenes.

In one of the early debates between representatives of the See of
Rome and the Patriarchate of Constantinople at the Council of
Florence (1438-1439) on the subject of Purgatory, Markos of Ephesos
and Bessarion of Nicaea drafted a response to the Latin position and
added that "on the subject [of Purgatory] our Fathers and all of the
Hellenes who have written have said nothing about it. What the
Latins have said, appear to us Hellenes unintelligible (senseless)."
Note here that Markos and Bessarion used the name Hellenes rather
than Graekoi or Romioi.

It was on the basis of the learning and language that Plethon
Gemistos identified the Empire's people as Hellenes. There are
linguistic, cultural and psychological indications that
the "Byzantines" viewed themselves as direct descendants and
inheritors of the ancient Hellenes. Culture, language, education,
religion were far more important factors than racial characteristics
in their self-understanding.

To be sure most of them followed the beliefs and practices of
Orthodox Christianity. But their religious faith did not force them
to reject their cultural past.

Instead, we discern in their writings and practices of daily life an
effort to integrate their old culture with the new faith. Their
perception of themselves found support in the views of their
neighbors and other nations which invariably called them Greeks or
Ionians.

The sixth century Syrian monk, Joshua the Stylite, writing about a
famine that plagued Edessa in Mesopotamia ca. 501-502 praised the
army stationed there for the help they provided to the victims. He
relates that "the Greek soldiers" set up places in which they looked
after the sick.

In a seventh century text, known as an Apocalypse, originally written
in Syrica and attributed to Methodios of Patara, known as Pseudo-
Methodios, uses the terms Greeks and Romans as synonyms,
interchangeably. He describes the rulers of the Byzantine Empire
as "the rulers of the Greeks, that is the Romans."

To Benjamin of Tudela, the Spaniard Jew who traveled to the East in
the 12th century, the whole of the Empire, including the Balkan
Peninsula and Asia Minor, is Greece. Constantinople "is the capital
of the whole land of Javan, which is called Greece." In the eyes of
Benjamin, the Byzantines were not warlike. Instead, for their wars,
usually defensive, they hired among all nations warriors called
barbarians to fight against the Sultan of the Seljuks, "for the
natives are not warlike." Lawless people from the hills of Wallachia
despoiled and ravaged "the land of Greece." While those lawless
people refrained from killing Jews, "they killed the Greeks."
Benjamin adds that in Constantinople is the church of Santa Sophia
and the seat of the Patriarch of the Greeks, "since the Greeks do not
obey the Pope of Rome." He calls the whole Empire, including the
Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor, "the Empire of Greece." The Greeks
are described as very rich, possessing of gold and precious stones,
and dressed in garments of silk with gold embroidery; they ride
horses and look like princes. "Indeed, the land [of the Greeks] is
very rich in all cloth stuffs, and in bread, meat, and wine. Wealth
like that of Constantinople is not to be found in the whole world.
Here also are men learned in all the books of the Greeks, and they
eat and drink, every man under his vine and his fig-tree."

For Ibn Batuta, the twelfth century Arab traveler, the Emperor in
Constantinople is the King of the Greeks. Cities such as Sinope,
Brusa, Ephesos are Greek cities. Ghazi Chelebi ruled over Sinope, a
city surrounded by eleven villages inhabited by Greek infidels, he
used to sail out in order to "fight the Greeks." He writes that the
City of Brusa was captured "from the Greeks." Ephesos on the other
hand, a large and ancient town, was venerated by "the Greeks." When
Smyrna was besieged by the Turks "the Greeks under pressure of the
attacks appealed to the West for help."

The Russian chroniclers of "Tales of Bygone Years," known also as The
Primary Chronicle or The Chronicle of Nestor, very frequently
describe the Byzantine Empire as Greece and its inhabitants as
Greeks. The Empire's ruler is the Emperor of Greece; the Russian
prince, Igor, advanced upon the Greeks and he received from the
Greeks gold and palls. But who were the Greeks? They were
Macedonians, Thracians, Thessalians, Epirotes, Peloponnesians and
people of the entire Greek nation in other geographical areas of the
ancient Greek world. For the Chronicle Byzantium meant only the City
of Byzantion.

Later Russian sources, too, call the Byzantine Empire a Greek land.
For example, the Zabelin and Hludov manuscripts of The `Wanderer'
Stephen of Novgorod relate that "in Constantinople, at the Jordan, on
the Holy Mountain ,and all over the Greek land it is the Typikon of
St. Sabas [which is followed]."

What do they mean by "all over the Greek land?" To be sure, not
merely the mainland, the Greek chersonese proper.

There is no great need to elaborate on how Latin sources refer to the
Byzantines. A few illustrations will suffice. In several of the
lives of popes such as Stephen II, Hormisdas, John I, John III,
Stephen III, Hadrian I, the Byzantine Empire is Graecia, its emperor
is called Greek Emperor, and the Empire's inhabitants are designated
as Greeks. Several Latin or Western European sources, too, such as
Gregory of Tours, the Venerable Bede, Gregory the Great, Isidore of
Seville, Liutprand of Cremona, to mention only a few representative
sources provide identical information.

The designation Greek was not used as a derogatory name but as a
historical and long-standing appellation. Paul the Deacon, the
eighth-century chronicler of the Lombards, writes that Maurice (582-
602) was the first emperor of the race of the Greeks. And for
Liutprand of Cremona whether for realistic or polemical reasons, the
Byzantine Empire was Greek and its emperor the king of the Greeks.

For the Latin chroniclers who wrote about the Crusades, the
Byzantines were Greeks and their Empire, including Asia Minor, was
Graecia.

Guibert of Nogent praised "the hospitality of the inhabitants of the
Greek Provinces," notwithstanding the "utmost insolence" of
the "pilgrim" crusaders. For Peter the Hermit, it was the Empire of
Constantinople and its inhabitants were Greeks. For Geoffrey of
Villehardouin and Robert di Clary, both eyewitnesses of the Crusades
and recorders of speeches by the movement's leaders, the Byzantine
Empire is called Greek Empire and its citizens Greeks.

Several more western Europeans, travelers, chroniclers, and
theologians after the twelfth century continued o call the so-called
Byzantine Empire as Graecia and its inhabitants Greeks. Khazarian
Hebrew sources express themselves in terms identical with Latin
sources.

For the Arabs, too, the "Byzantines" were the descendants of the
ancient Greeks. Arabic sources indicate that the Arabs made no
distinction between ancient and contemporary Greeks.

"Only the highest praise could do justice to the importance of the
Greeks. Even excessive admiration is not infrequently expressed" by
Arabs in the words of Franz Rosenthal, a leading scholar of Islam and
the Arabs. He cites Arabic sources.

For the Arabs, the Byzantine rulers were Greeks, not Roman,
and "Greek rulers were always building level roads through difficult
territory, filling hollows, cutting through high mountains and
banishing fear of them.

They were always constructing various kinds of bridges, erecting
strong walls, building aqueducts and diverting rivers… They were
concerned with science and medicine." Other Arabic sources describe
the Byzantine state as Rum but they consider its people and culture
as Ighritsi (Greek).

For Armenians, Georgians, and several Semitic people of the Near
East, the "Byzantines" are Ionian Greeks (Yoyn, Yavani) and their
Empire is Yunastan, Yavan, Javan, Yawan (Ionia, Greece).

For Armenian sources in particular, all the emperors from Diocletian
in the third to Constantine XI Palaiologos in the fifteenth century
as well as military leaders, and all the Patriarchs of Constantinople
are called Yoyn.

In brief, the so-called "Byzantines" identified themselves as
Graekoi, Hellenes, and Rhomioi while Western European (Latin,
Germanic, Frankish) and Eastern European (Russian, Khazarian, Hebrew) and other non-Greek sources describe them as Greeks and their Empire as Graecia, or "land of the Greeks." The sources we have cited were closer to the events they described, and to the mind of the people they knew. They should be considered more reliable than later
writers who invented rather than inherited the perceptions of the past