Faction idea: Byzantine Empire

[Apomonomenos]

I said Greeks that took on the role of the Roman Empire

My grammer may be a little bad, but what I mean is by calling themselves Romans, but are not actually.

[Abadu]

Tough I read somewhere that the byzantines considered themselfs romans (I dont know if its true).

[Justinian]

Tough I read somewhere that the byzantines considered themselfs romans (I dont know if its true).

They considered themselves Roman until after the rise of Charlemagne, and the snob that the Vatican gave them.

In depth, during Belisarius' conquest of southern Italy (for the record it was not just him conquering at this point) he was ordered not to take Rome, on the orders more or less of Rome. Despite the amount of time that passed the Vatican never really accepted Byzantium as New Rome.

Later on (some five centuries later) during Charlemagnes conquests he managed to take all of northern Italy under a catholic banner. The Pope liked this and declared the Germano-Franc Nation he had the Holy-Roman Empire, which was a direct snub to the Byzantines.

Edited July 21, 2008 by Scipii_Alemanus

[Belisarivs]

Actually, Byzantines is quite new name. It was introduced in ~19. century by French historians as symbol of decadence.

Basileia Romaika was correct name for Byzantine Empire and Emperror was Basileios ton Romaion until end of its days.

Actually, there were quite many similarities between East and West Roman Empire. For example Excoubitai (Excubitores) were revival of Praetorian Guard and fought in same manner as old Legion with same structure.

As Empire started to be under strong pressure from all sides, it had to adapt to changing warfare.

One of results was introduction of Cataphract, under influence of Persians, which started during reign of Emperror Hadrian.

Keep in mind, that military in Western portion also underwent significant changes and Legion started to be obsolete.

Also, whole Roman Empire wasn't coherent nation. In eastern portion simply Greeks predominated, but by far not absolutely.

Latin language was common language until Arab conquest, which led to loos of large portion of land, but also led to consolidation of the Empire nation-wise and Greek language started dto be used mainly.

[Apomonomenos]

OK, I don't really know as much about the Byzantine Greeks then I do of Modern Greece and Ancient Greece. Maybe if you are going to make Monks for them, maybe you could give them names like Papaioannou which means Father John

Edited July 23, 2008 by Alexthegod5

[WOLFLING]

That is just detail. It wasn't my work, so I can't do anything with it.

I'm seeking someone who can speak Greek, so he can correct any error or finish translation.

I SPEAK GREEK AND I KNOW "SOME THINGS" ABOUT BYZANTINE EMPIRE ASK ME WHATEVER YOU WANT AND I LL DO MY BEST TO HELP YOU

[Ephestion]

Warren treadgold has a good book about the army of the Byzantien state.

Also everything i saw on this thread, so far, is totally wrong about Byzantines.

There was no Albania to start with it was Illyrium.Diocles was a Greek from that region and started the Tetrarchy basically dividing the empire in 2 and have two leaders per half. 285AD

This is what the Byzantine army looked like upto around 400AD

Saint George

Saint Dimitrios

The priests used to wear only black robes but after the last emperor they started wearing uniforms similar to the emperor: This tradition was part of the church because by 700AD the emperor had a role in the church service. And to take his place the Bishops wore his atire.

Constantine XI

Modern Orthodox Bishops wearing the same outfits:

On all other occasions the Bishops wore these black uniforms similar to the Jews:

After 400AD the Byzantines start to employ more mercenary armies than their own. Hence the varied uniforms you see about the armies post 400AD. However upto around 700AD the royal army always wore the same as those in 285-400AD.(or very similar) Later Orthodox icons show Venetians and several Germanic soldiers because they were recruited by the Byzantines. The Turks were never hired by the Byzantines as someone mentioned, the Turks were mainly hired by the Persians. The Turks dressed like Asiatic nomads with fur etc and wore pants. The Byzantine army never wore pants as this was the dress of the "barbarians". However, numerous Greek tribes like the Pontians wore something that was a cross between a pants and a foustanela (kilt type thingy) they called it the braka (Vraka). That became popular for mounted Anatolian/Greeks in the East. It looked similar to this:

This male is wearing something similar to what i am talking about. But the image is showing how they looked in the 1400-1800's.

This Vraka became popular because of the contact with Germanic and Persian tribes. And the average pleb would have worn something like this post 1000AD. Since they used Thematic (pleb) armies after 800AD whatever the fashion of the plebs was what they wore to war.

But i am pretty sure that right upto the fall the emperor and his soldiers were still wearing the same gear i showed with St George.

Try looking up military saints of the Greek or Byzantine Orthodox churches and you should find more depictions. Icons are better than artist interpretations because they were drawn near the time of the people they represent.

El. Greco drew Venetians as part of the Byzantine Amry.

http://www.artesmagazine.com/2010/01/el-gr...venetian-crete/

[Ephestion]

The common language Belisarius was never Latin. Only two emperors did not know Greek, Julius and Nero. The common language that linked east and west was always Greek. The Wetsern provinces gradually drifted from this unity by accepting the influences of the schism that the Papist church introduced. The once Katholiki ekklisia (Katholik Church) divided into a Papist and Orthodox faction. The Papists (known today as Roman Catholics), began to heavily influence the West when they started to print the First Latin Bible post 700AD. Up until 700AD all Christians East and West were using Greek Bibles. The term Katholiko was introduced by Saint Chrysostom (A Greek from Constantinople) in The Creed which became the standard of what Christians believed. His usage of the term was not denominational like it is today ie there were no Catholics just Christians both East and West believing in the Katholik Creed. So after 700AD we start to see Latin Bibles influencing the West and more and more people learning Latin. At some stage post 1453AD Latin could have been considered a common language for Western Europe especially when the Renaissance started. But Latin was never spoken in the Eastern empire nor was there any evidence of its usage. Only one school in Ephesus appears to have been a translation center for Greek laws into Latin.

Around 700AD there were claims by the Western Empire's Pope that the common language is Latin. However, Numerous other sources some from France claim that the "Ligua Franca was Greek" indicating that Latin phrases like Lingua and Frankish terms like Franca were being used, but that the common language was Greek. Even before the rise of the Romans Empire, Greek was used in Roman courts. During and after the fall of the Western Romans, the lingua franca was still Greek. You can refer to numerous writings by the Five good emporers of Rome as well as sporadic legal documents to realise that the administration of Rome was never using Latin until the Papacy introduced it. And the Papacy was by then arguably less Roman than the Ostrogoths.

Charlamagne was crowned emperor of the East and Western empire by the then pope, only problem with that is that Charlamagne was documented to have come to the East asking to be recognised as leader of the West and was also asking to marry a Roman Byzantine princess so that he would have legitimacy to the Eastern throne, which still ruled over East and West. At this point the Western EMpire was getting more Germanic and Justinian decided that he had to restore the West, there were very few real Romans left. Lombards Vandals and a host of Germanic tribes swamped the old Greek/Roman cities. The Great schizm of the church around 1000AD coincides with the fact that the then pope was a German who wanted the power of ruling the Western empire.

Also regarding the identity of Rome and Byzantium. Consider for a moment the British colonising the USA, the USA becomes all powerfull, then the USA falls then the British take back their colony after a few millenium. The same way, Greece was the seed that became rome, it grew expanded, and during its decline it became Greek again. There was no such thing as carrying the mantle of Rome and the Roman empire. Rome was loaned by the Latins and when they declined in power Rome returned back home where she started and back in the hands of her creators. There was no such thing as New Rome to denote a new empire. New Rome was one city formerly Byzantium or Constantinople. The empire was still considered Roman but more correctly ΡΟΜΑΙΟΙ. Hence the slander term given to Romanised British (POM or Poms).

Edited June 24, 2010 by Ephestion

[SMST]

I was startled, Ephestion, that you said that Carthage was Greek. I am even more startled now as you say that Rome was Greek.

[Ephestion]

Carthage and Rome (Nea-Polis meaning New City) were established between 900-700BC as Greek Colonies. Both Rome and Carthage were led by local administrators. But Neapolis/Rome started to rise in power while Alexander drew on Greek resources to establish the Eastern empire. Several Latin based groups invaded the peninsula during this time and established themselves in seats of power. Julius Caesar and Nero were the only emperors that are Suspected of not knowing Greek. It is these emperors that made possible for Latin to become part of the administration of Neapolis/Rome. But all the letters written by the apostles for example were in Greek. http://www.stpaulsirvine.org/html/saintpaul.html

[Mythos_Ruler]

LOL

[SMST]

LOL

I thought up of a more sophisticated answer, but this sums it up quite well.

[Ephestion]

Why LOL?

I suggest you read Warren Treadgolds Byzantine Society. It will give you enough information about the BYzantine society and culture.

[SMST]

LOL because you once again make ridicolous statements without proving anything.

[emperor77]

Naples/Napoli was Neapolis not Rome.

Edited July 9, 2010 by emperor77

[Ephestion]

LOL because you once again make ridicolous statements without proving anything

How can i condense an entire lifetime into two paragraphs on a forum? Which part do you think is ridiculous?

Neapolis was a suburb of what became Rome but it was it's oldest suburb.

As for Titus and Livy, their history of Rome is just propaganda mainly. Plutarch gives a much more reliable account. And for one when you read the English translations of Plutarch they are not the same in any way. Infact most translations of Plutarch are hybrids between what others have said and what Plutarch is saying.

As for Byzantine history the best modern book on the subject is by Warren Treadgold: Byzantine State and Society.

[SMST]

How can i condense an entire lifetime into two paragraphs on a forum? Which part do you think is ridiculous?

Well, the overall idea that all ancient civilisations in the Mediterranean must have been Greek is ridicolous. You are neglecting all other people's achievements by saying they were Greek, and they cannot have been other than Greek, and so on. Pardon me, but your bias is surprisingly stupid.

EDIT:

Oh, and I am a mere victim of centuries of "propaganda", also known as "historiography", "archaeology", "ethnography" and similiar criminal subjects. Just so you know.

Edited July 10, 2010 by SMST

[Ephestion]

Up until the fascists forced the revised Italian language on the Southern Italians most spoke a dialect similar to Greek it was called Grec. Dante who wrote the Komodia was writing in a dialect very similar to Grec. These were the last signs of an old heritage that linked Southern Italy to both Magna Gracia and later Hellenisation periods.

I am not saying that Imperial Rome was Greek. The Latin tribes took over administration and Julius and Nero both worked towards increasing the power of the Latin people within Italy. But Latin was by no means a common language. It became at best a second administrative language and later became used by the Church in the West. Like I said the councils of Rome used Greek between 1AD-700AD as the common language between councillors.

There is a distinction between Imperial Rome and the Roman Empire. If today Japan took over Australia, Britain, Canada and the USA then Japanese would be an administrative language. But the common language would be English. In the same way when Rome started to expand under Latin rule all it did was take over Greek or former Greek territories and colonies. That is pure fact! The Romans documented how they forced the Greeks out of the cities, slaughtered them and recolonised the said cities with Latin colonists. This happened mainly in Western Europe where the Greeks were reasonably few in numbers. The end result of the Roman Empire was that it had far more Greek speakers than any other language. At around 285 AD the tables turned Diocles also Known as Diocletian Defeated the last Imperial ROman armies and started to re Hellenise the former Greek territories including Southern Italy. Diocles along with many other generals in the Roman Army after Nero had to speak Greek because it was the common language. Diocles was born a Greek.

When Christ was crucified on his Cross there was a wooden plaque (epitaph) that read:

And Pilate wrote a title, and put [it] on the cross. And the writing was, Jesus Of Nazareth The King Of The Jews.

This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, [and] Greek, [and] Latin.

Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews.

Pilate answered, What I have written I have written. (John 19:19-22)

The reason for Greek is that it was the Common language of the Mediterranean, Latin because at the time Latin rulers governed central Rome and Hebrew for the locals.

[SMST]

I agree with you that Greek was the common language of the Roman empire. Though, you failed to prove why all the cultures in the Mediterranean were Greek ...

In the same way when Rome started to expand under Latin rule all it did was take over Greek or former Greek territories and colonies. That is pure fact!

Now you are talking about "Greek territorries" instead of all cultures "being Greek". Very nice. But even this is not true. If you want to call the Hellenistic territorries Greek, then, yes, there was a fair amount of Hellenistic empires who fell under Roman rule. But did the Greeks rule Gaul, Britain, Spain, Tunisia, Mauretania? They did not. The whole western Mediterranean was more or less under Carthagenian rule, and beyond that, there were Celts and Germanics.

So again, it is ridiculous to state that all the Mediterranean cultures weree Greek (territorries).

[Ephestion]

All those places you mention had some form of colony or were known to the Greeks intimately. Have you ever heard of the pact between the Celts and Alexander? The Danube river which stretches from the Bosphorus to Germany was dotted with villages that traded with the Greeks and borrowed from them many ideas, in part Hellenising themselves. It is not by chance that the Greek Gods can be interpreted into Roman Gods and NOrse Gods. (We saw this happen again when the Ostrogoths became hellenised in that same very region) There are ancient drawings showing the Celts fighting against the Greeks. So the Greeks had already impacted on the West. Hispania was at one stage a Greek colony, the name itself is Greek. Also Carthage according to Greek historians WAS a Greek colony. But as the years rolled by, well things changed: The Seleucids once asked Sidon or Biblos (Can't remember exactly) to attack Carthage and they said we have a pact to not attack our own. Meaning that by 320BC the city had become different to when it was a Greek colony but nevertheless it remained part of Ptolemy's rule through Egypt. Any attributed success of Carthage was dependant on it's support from Egypt. Cleopatra was the last to reign in the lineage of Ptolemy(former general of Alexander).

This link shows you that the Greek coins were the most used in the city of Carthage as of 320BC

http://www.jstor.org/pss/504208

Look for the part that says SNG coins were the most used: this is an abbreviation for Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, or simply Greek coins.

Here are some database searches for some SNG's

Ref. XIII Newcastle Antiquaries Soc.

State: Spain Mint: Malaka

Period: -199 to -100

Obv: Head of Vulcan bearded r Rev: Bust of Helios radiate

Material: AE Weight: 12 Axis: 2 Width: 20 SNGuk_1301_0002

Ref. XIII Newcastle Antiquaries Soc.

State: Campania Ruler: Augustus Mint: Neapolis

Period: -395 to -385

Obv: Head of nymph r. in sphendone Rev: Man-headed bull l., head frontal, being crowned by Nike; below double exergue line, ???????????

Material: AR Weight: 8 Axis: 1 Width: 20 SNGuk_1301_0024

Ref. XIII Newcastle Antiquaries Soc.

State: Calabria Ruler: Augustus Mint: Tarentum

Period: -212 to -209

Obv: Rider l. crowning his horse on ground line; behind, ??; below, ??????? Rev: Dolphin-rider carrying Nike in r. and cornucopia in l.; below, ?????

Material: AR Weight: 4 Axis: 11 Width: 18 SNGuk_1301_0038

Note all these Greek coins constitute the majority and are not rare occurrences.

This timeline is reasonably ok. Look at 320BC and note Ptolemy uses Egypt to take Lybia and Carthage as a province. Carthages missions were driven by a central Greek leader in Egypt/Memphis.

http://www.bible-history.com/jesus/jesusTime_Charts.htm

Anyway, Rome was pretty much Greek or very Greekish in terms of population there are too many evidences for and only a few that contradict that.

[SMST]

I am German. Would you say that I am American because American culture influenced Germany heavily? Or, to go on, even deny any original German cultural achievement in retrospective?

[Ephestion]

There are only 4 books surviving regarding the Germanic people prior to 500AD. So it becomes hard to understand them completely. But from Greek accounts the Celts were generally allies to the Greeks during and after Alexander's time. That they attacked Rome may have been a peace keeping mission because they only raided Rome in 340BC. But later they tried to attack Rome on several accounts with intent to take some of the nearby cities.

Note Also that the Germanic people had a large network of villages but stopped short of building cities until much later in their history. Possible reasons may have been that they lived by a Feudalistic type of government headed by a chief. This limited them from establishing large delegated labour networks to complete state works. But from 400AD onwards all this changes dramatically and the Germanic people end up taking all of Europe. The Americans as you put them were a branch of the Germanic people. English itself is a Germanic language. So don't think that Germany is the only place to find Germanic people. The Slavs, Celts, Gauls, Rus (Russians), Norse, Anglo-Saxxons etc are all part of a Germanic family. The Germanic people took a while to join the fight but they have literally taken over the world in our modern age. Rome and Greece fell!

But getting back your point, I am not taking anything away from the history of other people. But the impact of having a Greek speaking empire that stretched from Europe to India had such a massive impact on the world. Also the deliberate attempts to colonise Western Europe by the Greeks and later Romans was the start of what you see today. Some historians say that the Roman's built the roads that made it possible for the Greek NT to travel all over the world. Imagine now what would have become of Europe and Russia if they didn't have a common faith that prevented them from slaughtering each other.

[SMST]

It didn't prevent them from slaughtering each other, after all.

I did not state Germany to be the only place to find Germanic people (or even the only place to find Germans), or at least I am not aware of that. What I wanted to express with that example was that you would not normally say that a culture is another culture, just because it was influenced by them. It may be but a simple misunderstanding that we are arguing about all the time, but to me, it seemed as if you said that because of the big cultural influence of the Greeks on the whole Mediterranean (which I do by no means deny) the influenced people are neccessarily Greek.

[Ephestion]

It varies with which place we are talking about. But in the case of Italy the southern part was heavily colonised so it was not merely influencing the locals but actually forming cities where the inhabitants were mainly Greek. Of course over time the locals would have gone to live in the cities and outnumbered the Greeks. The city state was a new idea that the Greeks had introduced and as such Italy's roots lay in a Greek colonising effort. This does not mean that there were no Italian people, it just means that the concentrated population you find in cities were only found in the Greek cities of Italy. But later Latins and other tribes tried to take southern italy and eventually they succeeded. No longer were the Greeks the majority in their own cities.

As for Egypt the Greek city was Alexandria where the majority of people were Greeks at the start. Hispania also was a Greek city. But as for Carthage well maybe there are two stories and you just need to choose which is right.

So what i was saying is that although the local people existed in many of these places, their first cities (in the West) were Greek cities. (not all but most) And then eventually the locals took control of these cities and they changed them. Hispania for example was eventually run by Celts then Romans.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=uA4DAA...lony%22&f=false Search the text where it says: "Rome was a Greek Colony"

Edited July 13, 2010 by Ephestion

[Kyriakos]

Once i figure out how to add a building i could be of some use to this mod if you want my help, i have modeled some Byzantine Buildings, such as the Holy Apostles of Thessalonike (image below)