this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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[–] Longpork3@lemmy.nz 7 points 5 months ago (12 children)

I mean, there was no such thing as a byzantine. That's a name we came up with in the modern era to help distinguish between "roman" empires.

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago (11 children)

To expand on that it was during the enlightenment in the early renaissance where people had a boner over the Roman Empire but still thought the medieval Roman Empire (Byzantine) to not be cool. So they came up with a new name for it. A declining empire that had a massive beauracracy, spoke Greek and had the wrong brand of Christianity (Orthodox) is not nice enough to create a glorious image like the Pax Romana did.

This of course made a lot of people upset in the then Ottoman empire since they identified as Romans but were not counted as Romans according to western people. Think "You're not Romans with a glorious history, you're Byzantines" even though they clearly were.

For extra fun the Byzantine/Roman distinction is also unfair.

  • Eastern Rome always spoke Greek, even at 200AD.
  • Orthodox and Catholic were the same pre-schism.
  • During the decline of the Western Empire the capital was moving a lot anyway so "based in Rome" was soon outdated.
  • During the decline Italy was just another province anyway so "based in Italy" was soon outdated.
  • They were literally the same thing except one half managed to fuck their shit up while getting invaded by hordes of tribes at the same time.
[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 0 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Fuck their shit up by inventing systemic racism

[–] ThunderclapSasquatch@startrek.website 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Oh it's cute you think the Roman's invented that.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 1 points 5 months ago

I didn't say they were the first!

There are plenty of cultures that developed systemic racism independently, I don't want to diminish their shittiness.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Also very curious considering that racism as we would recognize it doesn't have its seeds planted until the 15th century AD.

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