Well, what did you think the pre-order bonus was going to be?
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Thank you! I tried to google but I didn't find the answer within 5 minutes and my adhd found something else to obsess over.
Yes and no. The Senate at this point had lost much of its power, with eventually it being more influential within the city itself, and not so much outside of it. This was mostly due to a gradual decline, but the Diocletian reforms really codified their loss of power, as it relegated them to mostly things public games etc. They couldn't do much on their own without an Emperors approval. This also meant that when the capitals* were shifted outside of the city of Rome there was a basically no interference at all from the Roman Senate. Which was part of the point of choosing to run a section of the Empire away from the city. I'll note also that Constantine set up a new Senate in his city. So this means for a time there was a unified Rome with two Senates, one in Roma and one in Nova Roma. That Senate didn't fare much better though, it didn't hold any real power, but it was closer to the emperor so could advise and did have some sway. But Emperors were higher than the senate in this period.
*you can refer to them as administration centers etc, either way it's the same, these were the placed from which the Empire was run in these later periods, and they were not Roma. The city had sadly faced heavy decline was depopulating, leaving a lot in disrepair and a lot of vacant homes. This is not the golden age of the city.
Oh I was meaning more so in terms of what was Roman and what wasn't. Rome was always multilingual, multicultural etc, there were Romans that loved Greek culture, Romans that hated it etc. But there wasn't this concept that the east was not Roman and a part of Rome. Greece itself had been part of Rome for 400 years at this point. They didn't really distinguish along ethnic, cultural or linguistic lines. They didn't view one half as more a part of the empire and the other as a lesser part. In a lot of cases they actually viewed the Eastern sections, and Greece as being highly important. Also note that many emperors, generals, members of the upper class, legionaries etc, were of a myriad of ethnicities and backgrounds. It was very very blurred about who was what and from where. It didn't matter as much as other things, such as power, wealth and citizenship. Part of the appeal of Rome was there was a sort of meritocracy, where anyone could earn citizenship and rise to power. It's a very multicultural construct.
The divide grew over time, and really ramped up more after the western half had fallen, and even more so as the religious divide grew, which is what I was trying to get at. You'd also need to consider the myriad of minority languages, and other major languages, such as Coptic in Egypt. The Empire was not comprised of a Latin half and a Greek half. No, it was much more than that. But there is some truth to it, with Greek being a lingua franca in the east despite not being the native tongue of areas like Egypt and the Levant. One interesting thing to consider also is that in the later period much of the Roman upper class were bilingual, and spoke to each other in Greek as it had a lot of prestige to it, considered a language of learning etc. It's very hard to remove the Greek from the Roman.
Which brings me to this part. There was definitely a sort of renaissance of Greek culture within the east over time, which grew as they lost more of their non-Greek speaking territories. But this wasn't a de-romanisation. They weren't becoming less Roman, or removing Roman influences, or beginning to identify themselves as Greek etc. They still identified themselves as Romans, in a Roman state, with Roman laws. It's simply that there was more homogeneity, a higher percentage of the Empire spoke a single language, and this led to more people sharing the same understandings such as stories, myths etc. Eventually though, what it meant to be a Roman was to be a speaker of Greek, and they began to discriminate against non-Greek speakers, groups that refused to assimilate which led to a wealth of issues for them.
A note with this is that things remain stagnant over a 1,000 year period. Things shift, cultures change, people adapt. The Eastern Romans adapted by becoming more absorbed in Greek history and language, developed things like "Greek fire" and Cataphracts etc. The Roman Empire continued in the East, growing and evolving, for 1,000 years. But they didn't fall, they continued, and there was a clear line of continuity.
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No, "alma" was an adjective and meant nourishing, kind or propitious: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/almus#Latin
It means soul in Italian, but assuming that "alma Roma" is in Latin as the other expressions, it would need to be "anima" to mean "soul". Over time the "i" from "anima" stopped to be pronounced as it was not stressed which lead to "anma" which was weird to pronounced so the Italians or the Spanish changed it into "alma" while the Occitans and French changed it into "arma" and "arme" respectively, which ultimately became "âme" in French.
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Well. Back to being confused. Although I guess something around it being a place of abundance and fortune would make sense, a hopeful place in contrast to the gloomy and declining city of Roma. Which at this point was depopulating and falling into disrepair.
One thing to note here is that the Koine Greek spoken in the Roman Empire also transformed over time, and while it was a continuation of Greek from the past it gained a new identity under the Romans "Romaica". It was considered to be the Roman language. It may seem odd, but bear in mind that in the later periods almost all of the nobility of the Roman Empire favoured the Greek language and spoke to each other in it. As the Romans lost control over the Latin speaking west and Greek was the dominant language the language became associated with being Roman.
A key thing to remember is that the multicultral, multiethnic, multilingual nature of the Empire. The empire was something like 30% Greek speaking and 30% latin speaking, with a myriad of other languages like Coptic in Egypt. And Greece was absorbed very early in the span of this. To try and draw a line between Greek and Latin is a bit odd, since these groups were mixing and merging resulting in changes to both. You can't really remove the Greek from the Roman.
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I don't know, I would expect that Romans would call the old Rome "alma Roma" as well, but when I tried to look it up in a database of Latin texts from all periods it only found results from "corpus textuum fascisticorum Latinorum", which I guess you can guess what it means... One of them as even a poem literally called "Dux" by certain Michele Ginotta, most likely a fascist author who published in a journal called "Alma Roma". I don't know this expression seems kind of sus.
From what I can see it just seems to be another way they said "New Rome" as in it came about as a distinction, they wanted to specify which Rome they were talking about. It was the shiny new prosperous one. I've seen it referenced in a few secondary sources and from historians, but I can't find primary sources or how it came about or what they meant by it. At any rate, it's more of a footnote, just one of many different things they called the city.
Alright they quote some primary sources so it should be fine, but it seems that the expression was particularly dear to fascist Latin writers and these definitely meant the old Rome.
I don't agree with this part. Based on Vasiliev's History of the Byzantine Empire, 324–1453, which is one of the most reputable history books on the Byzantine empire, there was a popular emergence of Greek identity as opposed to Roman in the later empire.
"In the epoch of the Palaeologi one may note the interesting fact of the rise of patriotism among the Greek people, accompanied by a turning back to the glories of ancient Greece. For instance, officially the emperors continued to bear the usual title of basileus and autocrat of the Romans, but some prominent men of the time tried to persuade the basileus to take the new title Emperor of the Hellenes"
I agree with what you are saying, but it's not weird to draw a line between Greek and Latin because that line exists and will always exist
They are different languages with different alphabets and different laws that govern them, you can however argue that the Easter part of the Roman Empire changed it's court language from Latin to Greek, and even assimilated that greek into a new idendity, but that doesn't dissolve the difference between the languages
Also please keep in mind that the response was given to the concept of the City of Rome change in language being similair to that of the Easter Roman Empire, which i disagree with for the reasons i gave
“some prominent men” does not sound very “popular” to me, sounds more like elitist. And I believe it has already been established that the elites turned more towards their Greek past in the late empire akin to how Latin elites were turning towards their Roman past with the renaissance. I believe that common people were much less affected by both of these movements.
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There is a lot of complexity and nuance here, and you need to be careful not to misinterpret it. They weren't necessarily striving to become Greek, or a Greek people. They didn't really have that Greek identity or nationalism until much later on, especially under Ottoman rule. Maybe we can find moments or pockets here and there, but there really wasn't much of that going on, they were thoroughly Romanised and very proud of it. What they did have was a resurgence of Greek culture and history. So yes, a harkening back to the accomplishments of Alexander and to the Odyssey etc. But this wasn't at the expense of being Roman, it was more like adding icing to the cake.
You need consider their duality. People can hold two things as true. They were Romans, with the legacy of Rome, Roman laws, Roman rule, Roman military might and engineering, and could count Rome's accomplishments as their own. But they also spoke a Greek language, and lived on Greek land, and had Greek ancestors, and had Greek education and Greek stories, and could count Alexander's accomplishments as their own. There was a growing desire over time to recognise that Greek history as their history, not just the Roman history, and to delve into all the Greek mythos etc. But this wasn't a Greek nationalism or separatism, those are more modern ideas. Also, that theme, of being enamoured with the Greek stories etc, it's a constant throughout all of the Roman Empire's history too, the Philhellenes. But this of course was going to accelerate when they lost much of the territory that spoke other languages, not just Latin but Coptic too. Losing Egypt accelerated that Greek resurgence, because what was left was Greek speakers on Greek land, in the last remnant of the Roman Empire.
Then of course, we are also generalising a large group of people over a 1,000 year period, or even close to 1,600 years if you count the first moment Rome conquered Greece. It's a long period of time with a great number of people. Their identity, language, culture etc all evolved constantly, and people often had different views. For example there was at one point the idea that Greek was pagan with pagan ideas, and that the history and stories should be forgotten, and Latin favoured.
Oh they are quite distinct for sure, Greek and Latin having split from Proto Indo European around 5,000 years ago, whereas Italian diverged from Latin around 1,500 years ago. So I agree that it's not a direct parallel, since one was an evolution of the existing language and the other was picking favourites between two existing more distantly related languages.
We make this mistake of wanting to categorise things based on very neat and clear criteria. So that would be the Roman Empire was Latin. Nice, simple, clear. But it's not true. The Republic certainly started as a Latin construct. But they chose to expand across Europe and grant Roman citizenship to large swathes of it, people speaking all kinds of languages. Much of the elite chose to speak Greek and favoured Greek over Latin more as time went on. Greek was always seen as a more prestigious language, one of refinement and culture, a language of the elite. It was elitism and snobbery that led to them favouring Greek basically. Latin was the language of the masses, politics and legal affairs. Greek was the language of culture, education etc. Rome was very much a multilingual state.
But I digress. It was all still the same empire, they just shifted culturally. Greek didn't even become the court language until around 620 in Eastern Rome / Byzantium. Until then they were still speaking Latin and writing in Latin for all state affairs. Because it was just a continuation of Roman rule. When they did finally shift over to Greek it made practical sense to do so, since they didn't really have many Latin speakers left, having lost the west, and Greek being such a prestigious language. They translated existing Roman law and records into Greek and carried on, as Romans who spoke Romaica, the Greek language which had developed under Roman rule.
Just a fun little tidbit I will note. The main reason Latin even spread through the empire in the west is that much of the west spoke Celtic languages which were very closely related to Latin, so it was a very easy swap for the Celts to make. Celtic and Latin were so closely related that often they could understand each other. Add to this that Latin was the prestige language, and the language of the ruling class, power etc, and it was a given that they would shift. But the East had Greek, which was an even more prestigious language than Latin, so Latin existed in the East in a complementary fashion, being the language of laws, the state etc, but never replacing Greek.
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Y'all why is this thread even still going on? What do you even have to discuss about this?
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The Iberian language has nothing to do with Latin and Celtic languages, it's speculated to be related to Basque, and they all adoted Latin. Same as with North African languages (Afroromance was an extinct language but it existed). They reason has nothing to do with language similarity but with the elites speaking Latin.
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In the case of this person it could be "arsenianism", you know the movement of the Arsenites who hated Michael VIII and the Palaelogoi for deposing the Laskarids and the patriarch Arsenios
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