Sviatoslav Dmitriev
Ball State University
The commonly held view is that the Byzantines always claimed to be Romans and presented their empire as the New Rome, and that this attitude survived in some form until the end of Byzantium. It is believed, however, that gradually—largely over the course of their mounting confrontation with the Latin West—the Byzantines rediscovered their Hellenic identity and increasingly came to understand themselves as Greeks. Byzantine Hellenism, therefore, did not emerge until close to the time of the Crusades or, to use Anthony Kaldellis’ words, Byzantium’s “Hellenic identity went into abeyance” during the period from 400 to the mid-eleventh century (Hellenism in Byzantium. The Transformation of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition, Cambridge and New York 2007, 173). During those centuries, the Byzantines displayed a “hellenizing ambivalence” or an outright “indifference to Hellenism”: R. D. Scott, “Malalas and his contemporaries,” in Studies in John Malalas. Ed. by E. Jeffreys, B. Croke, and R. D. Scott (Sydney 1972), 73 and 80; repr. in R. D. Scott, Byzantine Chronicles and the Sixth Century (Farnham 2012), VII. Byzantine Hellenism was thus the opposite of the Byzantines’ Roman identity or the ideology of Byzantium as the Empire of New Rome: D. G. Angelov, Imperial Ideology and Political Thought in Byzantium, 1204-1330, Cambridge and New York, 95-98.
My presentation suggests that, first, Byzantine Hellenism emerged long before the mid-eleventh century and, second, it was quite compatible with the Byzantines’ claim to the Roman political inheritance. In fact, Hellenism was an intrinsic part of the Byzantines’ professed Roman identity. The reason for this was the decline of the official use of the Latin language— and Latin culture in general—in Byzantium in the sixth century. A decisive shift is thought to have taken place at the turn of the 540s: the number of Justinian’s Novels published in Greek increased dramatically after 534, with the last of his Novels in Latin appearing in 541. The process was symbolically rounded out in the early seventh century when the Byzantine imperial titulature switched from the Latin augustus to the Greek basileus.
Cultural identities carried political import. It is true that, on meeting his Persian counterparts before signing the Perpetual Peace with them in 532, Peter the Patrician—Justinian’s long- serving Master of Offices—declared to them: “You will be making a treaty with the Romans. It is enough to say ‘Romans’; the name says it all” (Menand., fr. 6.1, 30-32, tr. R. C. Blockley). However, when describing the signing of the peace of 562 between the Persians and “the Romans,” Menander Protector noted that this treaty was “written out in Persian and Greek, and the Greek copy was translated into Persian and the Persian into Greek” (Menand., fr. 6.1, 304-309). Procopius mentioned how the Goths addressed Byzantines as “Romans” during formal negotiations but referred to them as “Greeks” when communicating with the senators of Rome, as did Vitiges, when he sent a messenger to the senate in Rome during his siege of the city in 538, and Totila, who wrote a letter to Roman senators in 544, a year before he began a siege of Rome (Bell. 6.6.14-15, 5.18.40, and 7.9.12, respectively). Cultural identity served as the ideological marker: the Greeks had no more right than the Goths to control the city of Rome; nor did they have the right to Roman political inheritance. Euagrius (in the late sixth century) and Simocatta (in the early seventh century) reflected on the same situation when they narrated the story about the Persian king Chosroes II (r.590-628) restoring a gem-studded golden cross to the Byzantine Sergiopolis. While this cross had been captured by the Persians during their attack on Romania and was now being returned while Justinian was holding the “Roman scepters,” Chosroes wrote an accompanying message to the martyr Sergius in Greek; and he used this language a little later for his second letter to Sergius (Euagr. 6.21; Simoc. 5.13.2-4, 5.14.1). Byzantium’s claim to be the Roman empire turned out to be on shaky ground in the eyes of Byzantines and their neighbors because of Byzantium’s Greek cultural identity.
As my presentation demonstrates, sixth-century Byzantines responded to this situation by establishing Greek roots for the customs and institutions they claimed to have inherited from ancient Rome. John Lydus resurrected the old Greek theory—which dated back to the first century B.C.—of Latin as a dialect of Greek (Mag. 1.5.3, 2.13.6), asserting that Romulus and his companions spoke Greek (Mag. 1.5.3-4) and explaining many Roman terms via Greek etymology (Mens. 3.10, Mag. 1.5.2, 1.33.3, 1.47.4). While puzzling at first sight, deducing Latin concepts from Greek words was a natural thing to do if Latin was a dialect of Greek.
Sixth-century Byzantines similarly revived the old Greek theory of rulership (which could be traced all the way back to Plato’s political philosophy) as being based on the ruler’s knowledge of philosophy together with his moral and intellectual qualities, which complemented the traditional Roman senatorial approach to imperial power in legalistic terms. Among other such works, the anonymous Dialogue on Political Science urged the emperor to both abide by laws and apply philosophical reasoning to imitate God, combine philosophy and political power to put philosophy into practice, and act as a teacher and father for his subjects (Dial. Pol. Sc. 5.1, 3, 5, 9, 15, 21, 58, 186-196). The deacon Agapetus advised the emperor to both rule by laws and behave like a philosopher in controlling his passions, asserting that the emperor’s goodness of conduct was better proof of his right to rule than nobility of birth (Agap. 4, 17, 27, 68).
Sixth-century Byzantines also advocated the view that the Laws of Twelve Tables had Greek origins (Dig. 1.2.2.4; Lyd. Mag. 1.34.1-8) and that early Roman social organization was modeled on Solon’s constitution (Lyd. Mag. 1.47.4); they traced the roots of their praetorian prefect (hyparchos) to Romulus’s Master of the Horse (hipparchos), based on Greek etymology (Lyd. Mag. 1.15.2-3, 2.3.8); and clamed that their famous chariot races in Constantinople, which they inherited from Rome, had actually been borrowed from the Greeks by the Romans (Malal. 7.4 = Chr. Pasch. ad AM 4756; Coripp. Laud. Iust. 1.334-344; Lyd. Mens. 1.12). In the field of religion, they etymologically linked Constantinople’s sacred name, Anthousa, with the Anthesteria—an Athenian festival dedicated to Dionysus—deducing the former name from the latter (Lyd. Mens 4.73); claimed that the Palladium—the revered talisman image of Pallas Athena, which Constantine I allegedly brought to Constantinople from Rome—was of Greek origin (Malal. 5.12-7.1, 13.7; Lyd. Mens. 4.15); and believed that the Roman college of pontiffs, which cared for the Palladium, was modeled on a college in ancient Athens (Zos. 4.36.1-3; Lyd. Mens. 4.15).
Based on these and other examples, my presentation suggests not only that Byzantine Hellenism emerged much earlier than typically believed but also that it served the purpose of defending Byzantium’s claim to the status of the Roman empire by reinterpreting ancient Rome as Greek civilization. Byzantine Hellenism both redressed the Byzantines’ ignorance of the Latin language and, more generally, Latin culture, and—by presenting ancient Rome as part of Greek civilization—defended Byzantium’s Roman political identity based on the Byzantines’ Greek cultural identity.