www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Greeks: Rhomaioi vs Hellenes (was: Ruthenian?)

I and others (Robert Kaplan in Balkan Ghosts [books.google.com]) have noticed the playing up of the connection with the pre-Christian Hellenes (like when the government forced katharevousa on schoolchildren - 'let's pretend we still speak ancient Greek') and the downplaying of the Rhomaios one. I was once in a Greek-American church like that. The church exterior and church proper were all Rhomaios of course; the basement hall a celebration of nothing but Hellenism. Understandable considering the Hellenic contribution to culture (Michael Constantine in My Big Fat Greek Wedding: 'we invented democracy when you were swinging from trees') but still not right: it would have puzzled and probably appalled mediæval Greeks.

Undoubtedly. As I pointed out in a review of Edward Luttwak's Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, in addition to its military professionalism and strategic acumen, the Byzantine Empire was sustained by what I called a sense of "Byzantine exceptionalism", which in turn had a tri-fold foundation: (a) as defenders and evangelists of Orthodox Christianity; (b) as heirs to the Roman imperial legacy; and (c) as conservators of classical culture (by which they meant Greece). As anyone can see, these three aspects involve a certain amount of internal contradiction, and they always had to be maintained in dynamic tension, but of the three, it was their Orthodox identity that came first, followed by their Roman identity; the Hellenic inheritance was always in third place and subordinate to the other two.

So a nod to the Hellenic heritage including an understandable pride in its accomplishments wouldn't have been out of place to the Byzantines; the deprecation of Orthodoxy and of the Roman imperial legacy would have been unthinkable.

The fate of the late Byzantine neo-pagan humanist Michael Psellus is a good indication of Byzantine priorities. I believe that contemporary Greeks, and particularly Greek-Americans, have tended to denigrate the Constantinopolitan heritage because it is seen as residing principally on "Turkish" territory, and thus not truly "Greek". Certainly the cry of one Church of Greek prelate that "Orthodoxy is Hellenism" would have struck the Byzantines as paradoxical at best, heretical at worst.

Can't prove this but I strongly suspect that the attempted transformation of the Romaoi into Hellenes has its origin in a series of efforts to pander to Western European "philhellenes" (particularly but not exclusively the English - it is not pure coincidence that "Philhellene Street" in Athens is the location of the Anglican Church in Athens - the pastor of which Anglican Church holds the amazing title "archdeacon of the Aegean".

For an egregious example of this sort of thing, read Edith Hamilton's speech in the Agora when she was made an Athenian citizen. She certainly would not have spouted such utterances had she understood herself to be accepting honorary citizenship in the city of Saint Paul, Saint Philothea, and so many other Christian Saints.

Fr. Serge

For the Byzantines, "Hellene" always meant "pagan".

I don't know what Hellene means but here in Lebanon we always call the Byzantine 'Roum' and i thought it was diffrent then Roman because roman in arabic would 'Rouman'... I am confused now...
We must read history from books before WWI!

The Lebanese are correct on this one. What's more, to this very day in Turkish one speaks of the "Rum Patrikanesi" - the Greek Patriarchate.

Likewise in Arabic one refers to Greek as "Romani". There is a word meaning Hellenic, but I've only heard it in Egypt, and it quite surprised me.

Romanian, of course, is a word derived from "Roman" and the reference is to the Empire of the East.

Fr. Serge