Byzantine Empire: Greek or Roman/Latin?

[Dr_Maul]

Do you have a source on the thing about Arabs calling it the Armenian empire? This is the first time I heard this. Thanks.

To my knowledge, they were called Rûmi/Rūmiyah (Roman) or Yūnāni (Ionian/Greek) however the Armenian part sounds likely considering everything

[brennus dux gallorum]

It depends: Latin from 5th to 7th century, multiethnic from 7th to 13th century but with Greek language dominant, ethnic Greek during its last 1-2 centuries

[Tauromachos]

Byzantine Empire was a Greek Christian Empire

[Vojnik]

Byzantine Empire was a Greek Christian Empire

So greek that less then 1% of the emperors were greek.

Show me how it was Greek or Hellene. Show me the people identifying as such.

[Renekton]

So greek that less then 1% of the emperors were greek.

Show me how it was Greek or Hellene. Show me the people identifying as such.

From the reign of Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641), Greek was the predominant language amongst the populace and also replaced Latin in administration. At first, the Byzantine Empire had a multi-ethnic character, but following the loss of the non-Greek speaking provinces with the 7th century Muslim conquests it came to be dominated by the Byzantine Greeks, who inhabited the heartland of the later empire: modern Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, and Sicily, and portions of southern Bulgaria, Crimea, and Albania. Over time, the relationship between them and the West, particularly with Latin Europe, deteriorated.

Relations were further damaged by a schism between the Catholic West and Orthodox East that led to the Byzantine Greeks being labeled as heretics in the West. Throughout the later centuries of the Byzantine Empire and particularly following the imperial coronation of the King of the Franks, Charlemagne (r. 768–814), in Rome in 800, the Byzantines were not considered by Western Europeans as heirs of the Roman Empire, but rather as part of an Eastern Greek kingdom.

[Renekton]

Spoken language and state, the markers of identity that were to become a fundamental tenet of nineteenth-century nationalism throughout Europe became, by accident, a reality during a formative period of medieval Greek history.[103] After the Empire lost non-Greek speaking territories in the 7th and 8th centuries, "Greek" (Ἕλλην), when not used to signify "pagan", became synonymous with "Roman" (Ῥωμαῖος) and "Christian" (Χριστιανός) to mean a Christian Greek citizen of the [Eastern] Roman Empire.[3]

In the context of increasing Venetian and Genoese power in the eastern Mediterranean, association with Hellenism took deeper root among the Byzantine elite, on account of a desire to distinguish themselves from the Latin West and to lay legitimate claims to Greek-speaking lands.[104] From the 12th century onwards, Byzantine Roman writers started to disassociate themselves from the Empire's pre-Constantinenan Latin past, regarding henceforth the transfer of the Roman capital to Constantinople by Constantine as their founding moment and reappraised the normative value of the pagan Hellenes, even though the latter were still viewed as a group distinct from the Byzantines.[105] The first time the term "Hellene" was used to mean "Byzantine" in official correspondence was in a letter to Emperor Manuel I Komnenus (1118-1180).[106] Beginning in the twelfth century and especially after 1204, certain Byzantine Greek intellectuals began to use the ancient Greek ethnonym Héllēn (Greek: Ἕλλην) in order to describe Byzantine civilisation.[107] After the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders in 1204, a small circle of the elite of the Empire of Nicaea used the term Hellene as a term of self-identification.[108] For example, in a letter to Pope Gregory IX, the Nicaean emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes (r. 1221–1254) claimed to have received the gift of royalty from Constantine the Great, and put emphasis on his "Hellenic" descent, exalting the wisdom of the Greek people. He was presenting Hellenic culture as an integral part of the Byzantine polity in defiance of Latin claims. Emperor Theodore II Laskaris (r. 1254-1258), the only one during this period to systematically employ the term Hellene as a term of self-identification, tried to revive Hellenic tradition by fostering the study of philosophy, for in his opinion there was a danger that philosophy "might abandon the Greeks and seek refuge among the Latins".[109][110] For historians of the court of Nikaia, however, such as George Akropolites and George Pachymeres, Rhomaios remained the only significant term of self-identification, despite traces of influence of the policy of the Emperors of Nikaia in their writings.

[Hapanuwa]

Greek

[-Scar-]

It was a multiethnic Greek speaking empire which gradually started shifting from the Roman identity to a Greek one from the 11th century.

[Vojnik]

It was a multiethnic Greek speaking empire which gradually started shifting from the Roman identity to a Greek one from the 11th century.

Show me where they identified as Greek or Hellene, please.

[brennus dux gallorum]

It was a multiethnic Greek speaking empire which gradually started shifting from the Roman identity to a Greek one from the 11th century.

this is the most accurate definition so far