Re:What Do We Get Wrong About the Byzantine Empire?
by aleksiy123 on Monday February 26, 2024 @06:45PM
(#39518284)
Eastern?
Re:What Do We Get Wrong About the Byzantine Empire?
by mr_toad on Monday February 26, 2024 @07:21PM
(#39518531)
Basically all the Mediterranean east of the Adriatic was either a Greek speaking colony or conquest, especially after Alexander had marched across it.
In Egypt for example the Ptolemaic dynasty spoke Greek (Cleopatra was the first to even learn Egyptian) and it was still widely used in Roman times.
Re:What Do We Get Wrong About the Byzantine Empire?
by aleksiy123 on Monday February 26, 2024 @07:30PM
(#39518597)
They edited the comment it used to say.
"The Western Empire never spoke Latin."
Re:What Do We Get Wrong About the Byzantine Empire?
by mcv on Tuesday February 27, 2024 @02:45AM
(#39521272)
What about Romania? That's a Romance language, which presumably means it's derived from Latin. I have no idea how it ended up that far east, but it being a Latin-speaking part of the Eastern Roman Empire sounds plausible to me.
Not to mention that according to the article, that eastern Roman Empire also called itself Romania.
Re:What Do We Get Wrong About the Byzantine Empire?
by throw_pm23 on Tuesday February 27, 2024 @05:14AM
(#39522329)
Yeah, it is significantly more complicated than the parent post implies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jire%C4%8Dek_Line
Re:What Do We Get Wrong About the Byzantine Empire?
by navane on Tuesday February 27, 2024 @08:20AM
(#39523727)
Every time some peoples came from the east to trample Europe, they came trough this patch of land and scorched it.
Romania's longing to Roman history is mostly a nation building effort. Romania was a buffer territory between the Ottomans, Habsburgs (austria-hungary) and Huns for many centuries. It was so hard to get people to live there, because there would always come an army to torch everything to the ground. They lured Germans to live there and civilize the country in return for city rights.
Re:What Do We Get Wrong About the Byzantine Empire?
by throw_pm23 on Tuesday February 27, 2024 @09:39AM
(#39524644)
That's all fine and good, but a population of 25 million that speaks a Romance language still popped out of somewhere.
The Eastern Empire never spoke Latin. There was always a cultural divide.