How 'Roman' was the Roman Empire?

[Maion Maroneios]

Hardly. The Roman society was well-integrated into what we call "Byzantine Empire" today. The very word "Byzantine" is something only we use to describe the Eastern Roman Empire, while they themselves still viewed themselves as Romans. Not to mention their customs and fighting techniques, which were clearly Roman. The only Greek was probably the official language of the State, as even the local populance spoke a hodge-podge of Greek, Slavic, Latin etc.

Maion

[Skullheadhq]

Hardly. The Roman society was well-integrated into what we call "Byzantine Empire" today. The very word "Byzantine" is something only we use to describe the Eastern Roman Empire, while they themselves still viewed themselves as Romans. Not to mention their customs and fighting techniques, which were clearly Roman. The only Greek was probably the official language of the State, as even the local populance spoke a hodge-podge of Greek, Slavic, Latin etc.

Maion

If they are Roman, why didn't they speak Latin?
Romans without Rome aren't Romans,

[Maion Maroneios]

That doesn't count as an argument in my book. Constantinople was officially called "Nova Roma", which means "New Rome". And as I said, Greek was indeed the official language after some point. But that is mainly because the majority of the population was more familiar with Greek, especially in Greece where the population spoke some kind of Greek dialect and where the Empire itself was based.

Oh, and just for you to know, during the years of the Republic or early years of the Empire (at least that's the extend of my knowledge on the specific subject) cities like Athens and Alexandria still used Greek. Not to mention a "good" education of any Roman included Greek after some point. It's called influence. Not to mention the fact that Latin was probably only used as an official language in writing and quoting laws etc., local languages of conquered tribes especially in very autochthonous areas probably outlived any Latin influence long after the split and disintegration of the Empire.

Maion

[Macilrille]

Maion, you are right on point.

As I said at the start of this thread, numerous good books has been written on the subject. I would suggest enlightenment by reading these instead of limited posts in an I-net forum however informative they are.
Nothing compares to books.

In fact when you install EB you agree to do just that; read more history.

[Maion Maroneios]

I couldn't agree more to that.

Maion

[Macilrille]

Plus, it is damn fascinating and interesting.

[Maion Maroneios]

That's subjective, I guess.

Maion

[Andros Antonius]

That doesn't count as an argument in my book. Constantinople was officially called "Nova Roma", which means "New Rome". And as I said, Greek was indeed the official language after some point. But that is mainly because the majority of the population was more familiar with Greek, especially in Greece where the population spoke some kind of Greek dialect and where the Empire itself was based.

Oh, and just for you to know, during the years of the Republic or early years of the Empire (at least that's the extend of my knowledge on the specific subject) cities like Athens and Alexandria still used Greek. Not to mention a "good" education of any Roman included Greek after some point. It's called influence. Not to mention the fact that Latin was probably only used as an official language in writing and quoting laws etc., local languages of conquered tribes especially in very autochthonous areas probably outlived any Latin influence long after the split and disintegration of the Empire.

Maion

I think Greek was made into the official language early in the 7th century through the reforms of Heraclius (which also included military reorganization), when some say the Eastern Roman Empire "turned into" the Byzantine empire, so for most of its history it seems to have had Greek as its language. That, and even when the Roman empire was unified, Greek was always the majority language in the eastern provinces, so its influence remained strong. I'm sure they thought of themselves as Romans even until the end of their time, but I wonder how many actual Romans still survived in Greece and the east by the fall of Constantinople. However, I remember reading that many Byzantine refugees fled to Italy after the Turks took it, meaning that they might have seen Italians as old kindred people, even though they were divided along the lines of religion for centuries.

I am Romanian , proud member of the only nation that kept this name (Romani in Romanian) for 2000 years.Also, Romanian is considered the language with the most arhaic latin vocabulary and the closest to old vulgar latin spoken all over the emmpire.
My opinion is that the Roman empire was Roman all over the provinces in what concerns the state institutions : administration and the army.
Latin language imposed itself as lingua franca through the presence of roman administration and of roman legions on the ground.
Three factors were very important : Administration,Army and Culture.
Barbarian tribes took fast the benefits of roman culture and language - Spain,Gaul, Trace.
Advanced cultures like Greeks all over the east were good enough for roman use, so they werent imposed roman language in administration, greek was also in use.

Roman legions were very present in Provincia Dacia during 106- 274 AD , short time, but at times even 4 legions were serving...the reason was the huge gold mines from the Western Carpathians, modern day transilvania.
The gold was the reason for Trajan's 2 campaigns of 101-102 and 105-106 AD which led to the distruction of the Dacian kingdom. Well, there was also a barbarian habit of these Dacians to invade and plunder all the way from Danube to Greece :D .
Roman settlers were installed in the province, which hapens to be the center of old greater Dacia streching from river Tisa to the river Nistru. Even after the withdrawal of 274, the Romanised population spread the latin language all around the carpathians, leading to the romanisation of all Dacians outside the empire. So now you have no Dacian remainents , like the Gauls or Basc minority in Spain.

Unlike Romania, modern Albania (Iliria) kept their language which is related to the tracian-dacian because the roman army was not concentrated there , an interior pacified long time province.

I think that all the succesor nations are actually local populations turned into Romans by mean of cultural asimilation.

A branch of the Romanian people live in the Balkans, Macedonia, Albania, Greece, they call themselves Arm'ni , meaning Aromani, Aromanians, but they also call themselves "Makidoni" and they cherish the flag of ancient Macedonia, the red sun and have songs about it in their tradition, songs about Alexander and so on.

This tells me that they are local Macedonian shepards turned into Romans by language 2000 years ago.

Same with Romanians, our tradition, folk , old stories are of mountain shepards, not of roman colonists. We are Dacians talking a latin language. There is even an old story talking of the union of a Troian (Trajanus ?) and an old lady called Dokia (Dacia ? ) Oral tradition talking of roman conquest as a colaboration kept alive for 2000 years.



Example of similar words in Romanian and Italian:

Italian- Romanian-English

Casa-casa-House
Uno,due, tre, quatro - Unu,Doi,Trei, patru = one, two, three
Monte negro - Munte negru - Mountain black

That's true, some aspects of the language and grammar in Romanian have survived hundreds of years are very close to Latin. Like we don't have the word "the" (like la or le); instead it's included in the actual noun as an ending, like Latin. Also, for plurals, we use the letter i at the end, instead of s like Spanish, French, and Portuguese. And alb, the word for white, sounds closer to the Latin albus than blanc or bianco. There's still people with names like Virgiliu, Aureliu, and Ovidiu after all these years, although they're not as common anymore. But even though the languages are similar, I don't know how many actual Romans colonized the place or survived over the centuries. It's an interesting topic anyway.