When Did Greeks Start to Identify as Romans?

[RINO Tom]

There is ample discussion online about when Greeks STOPPED identifying as Romans, but I have always been curious when they STARTED to see themselves that way.  Throughout the Second Century BC, even those Greek states that had allied with Rome eventually came to fight against Roman rule ... yet well into modern times, many Greeks continued to prefer a Roman identity as successors of Roman and then Eastern Roman (i.e., Byzantine) civilization.

When did Greeks start to identify as Romans?  Was it as simple as when Christianity became the majority religion and the term "Hellene" took on a uniquely pagan meaning?

Thanks for any responses, as always!

[Alcibiades]

In Ancient Greece, the idea of a single ‘Greek’ identity was always ambiguous. There was certainly some awareness of it, as shown by the distinction between βαρβαροι (non-Greeks) and ξενοι (a word with a wide variety of meanings, including ‘Greek from another city state’, ‘stranger’ and the uniquely Greek concept of ‘guest-friend’), and the Greek alliance in the Perisan Wars. But, evidenced by the fact that Greeks from other city-states were considered ‘strangers’, it was always a fairly weak identity. Contrast this to the powerful Roman identity, eventually based not on ethnicity and geography but on civic and moral principles, and it is not difficult to see how the latter might overpower the former.

To answer your question, for these reasons some Greeks may have started to identify as ‘Roman’ not long after conquest, but I suspect that it really became a widespread thing once the Western Empire fell and the Eastern/Byzantine Empire became the sole remnant of the Roman Empire, and in the Greek world, ‘Greek’ and ‘Roman’ became coterminous. It is probably from this sense of being the last protectors of a great civilisation that the identification arose. The fight with the Pope and the Franks/Holy Roman Empire over the rights to this name probably served to strengthen attachment to it among those were aware of this.

[The Mikado]

To answer your question, for these reasons some Greeks may have started to identify as ‘Roman’ not long after conquest, but I suspect that it really became a widespread thing once the Western Empire fell and the Eastern/Byzantine Empire became the sole remnant of the Roman Empire, and in the Greek world, ‘Greek’ and ‘Roman’ became coterminous. It is probably from this sense of being the last protectors of a great civilisation that the identification arose. The fight with the Pope and the Franks/Holy Roman Empire over the rights to this name probably served to strengthen attachment to it among those were aware of this.

It's earlier than that that "Roman" becomes a major identity. Over a century before the collapse of the Western Empire. One of the big factors is the 4th century and "Roman" becoming synonymous with "Theocratic Christian Autocracy ruled by an Emperor as regent of God," an understanding of Roman that was basically complete by Theodosius' reign. Basically replaces the connection of "Roman" with Latin language and traditional Roman culture to a "one empire, one church, one Emperor, one god" sort of understanding. 5th century Greeks definitely viewed themselves as Roman through that last century of the Western Roman Empire still standing.

You can also use Constantinople becoming the Imperial capital (after the East West split, the Eastern Capital, but before that just the Capital) as a major turning point.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Zeus is the universal God in all religions, and the Vikings perfected it by giving him a planet to rule on and Loki was the God of Treachery and the Dead. Just like the Jews worship Moses as their God, while Christians believe Jesus was there God. Jesus always praised Moses as a Universal figure, and during the transfiguration,  Moses told him what to do, to die on the cross to forgive people of their sins, and return to Heaven

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

This is the best board on Atlas

[Statilius the Epicurean]

To answer your question, for these reasons some Greeks may have started to identify as ‘Roman’ not long after conquest, but I suspect that it really became a widespread thing once the Western Empire fell and the Eastern/Byzantine Empire became the sole remnant of the Roman Empire, and in the Greek world, ‘Greek’ and ‘Roman’ became coterminous. It is probably from this sense of being the last protectors of a great civilisation that the identification arose. The fight with the Pope and the Franks/Holy Roman Empire over the rights to this name probably served to strengthen attachment to it among those were aware of this.

It's earlier than that that "Roman" becomes a major identity. Over a century before the collapse of the Western Empire. One of the big factors is the 4th century and "Roman" becoming synonymous with "Theocratic Christian Autocracy ruled by an Emperor as regent of God," an understanding of Roman that was basically complete by Theodosius' reign. Basically replaces the connection of "Roman" with Latin language and traditional Roman culture to a "one empire, one church, one Emperor, one god" sort of understanding. 5th century Greeks definitely viewed themselves as Roman through that last century of the Western Roman Empire still standing.

You can also use Constantinople becoming the Imperial capital (after the East West split, the Eastern Capital, but before that just the Capital) as a major turning point.

Yes. To call oneself a Rhomaoi rather than a Hellene was to identify oneself quite literally as a member of the Kingdom of God. From Stephen Shoemaker's The Apocalypse of Empire: Imperial Eschatology in Late Antiquity and Early Islam: 

The real watershed moment, however, came of course with the conversion of Constantine and, ultimately, the empire to Christianity during the fourth century. In this context Eusebius of Caesarea emerged as the architect of a political ideology that would have far- reaching consequences for the history of Christian Rome. Even before the rise of Constantine, Eusebius viewed the Roman Empire in its triumph and universal dominion “as God’s instrument in effecting salvation history.” By the end of Constantine’s reign, the Kingdom of God and the Roman Empire had become virtually one. Drawing on the classical tradition of Rome’s eternal dominion and fusing it with biblical eschatology, Eusebius articulated a new mixture of divine authority with political authority that focused on the person of the emperor and the role of the Christian Empire as a divinely elected polity that would fulfill the culmination of history. The Romans were now God’s chosen people, through whom God’s rule would extend throughout the earth, so that by the sixth century, the Byzantines had even come to call themselves the “new Israel.” The result, as Gerhard Podskalsky explains, was effectively to merge the Roman Empire with the Kingdom of God: while the two were not exactly one and the same, the empire in some sense overlapped with and had inaugurated God’s Kingdom. This vision is most vividly related in Eusebius’s Panegyric on Constantine, in which, as Timothy Barnes summarizes, “the empire of Constantine is a replica of the kingdom of heaven, the manifestation on earth of that ideal monarch which exists in the celestial realm.” Eusebius here equates Constantine with Christ, and likewise, the empire with Christ’s heavenly Kingdom. In effect, the coming Kingdom of God that Christ promised has now been realized, according to Eusebius, in the Roman Empire.

[Kingpoleon]

The last to call themselves Romans are an interesting story.

In October of 1912, during the First Balkan War, the Hellenic Republic annexed several islands, notably one called Lemnos. When the Greeks first sent government officials and a few dozen soldiers to the islands, the people of the whole island of Lemnos gathered to see them. The officials went inside, but the guards outside were confused, and summoned their commander, who asked, loudly, to the whole assembled crowd, “What have you come to look at us for?”

The audience was silent for a long minute. They looked at one another and said nothing. Suddenly, a young child stepped forward - no more than five or six. “We have never seen Hellenes before, sir!” A few adults nodded. The commander was confused; he asked, “Are you not yourselves Hellenes?”

The child answered again, quickly, before the adults could stop him. Lacking that strange restraint of maturity, he said, “No sir! We are Romans, maybe the last.” The children laughed at the commander’s mistake, and a handful of adults joined in. A child’s tongue tells truths no one else will.

[Landslide Lyndon]

The last to call themselves Romans are an interesting story.

In October of 1912, during the First Balkan War, the Hellenic Republic annexed several islands, notably one called Lemnos. When the Greeks first sent government officials and a few dozen soldiers to the islands, the people of the whole island of Lemnos gathered to see them. The officials went inside, but the guards outside were confused, and summoned their commander, who asked, loudly, to the whole assembled crowd, “What have you come to look at us for?”

The audience was silent for a long minute. They looked at one another and said nothing. Suddenly, a young child stepped forward - no more than five or six. “We have never seen Hellenes before, sir!” A few adults nodded. The commander was confused; he asked, “Are you not yourselves Hellenes?”

The child answered again, quickly, before the adults could stop him. Lacking that strange restraint of maturity, he said, “No sir! We are Romans, maybe the last.” The children laughed at the commander’s mistake, and a handful of adults joined in. A child’s tongue tells truths no one else will.

That seems to me like an apocryphal story. I have never heard it before.

[Kingpoleon]

That seems to me like an apocryphal story. I have never heard it before.

The exact details are disputed, but Peter Charanis, who was born on the island in 1908, told the story.

[dead0man]

the part about them thinking they are Romans is easier to believe than the bit where they claim to have never seen a Hellenes before.  It's a big island (8th largest in Greece, which has like, 6 billion islands), not far from other places full of people who certainly were Hellenes.  It ain't the North Sentinel Island.