The Roman Debt to Greece

[Robert Vermaat]

When the Roman Empire split you had of course the Latin-speaking Roman west and the Greek-speaking Byzantine east halves. Greek had been the Lingua Franca in much of the eastern Mediterranean for a long time anyway

Well, actually, Greek was the lingua franca (what's in a name) for the Eastern part throughout Roman history. The army seems to have spoken Latin, but the administration spoke Greek to a large extent. I mean, look at the sources: when Arrian (in his capaticy as governor of cappadocia) wrote a military treatise for his Emperor, he wrote it in Greek. The civilan population spoke their local languages and Greek and Syriac, I think.