Did the Eastern Roman Empire Have a Roman Ethnic Identity?
An Analysis of Emperor Konstantinos VII Porphyrogennetos' De Administrando Imperio
Did the Eastern Roman people, the inhabitants of what is often referred to as the "Byzantine Empire," have a Roman ethnic identity? Was their empire a nation-state in the modern sense?
As I have explained in a previous article,1 Professor Anthony Kaldellis has argued that the Eastern Roman Empire was indeed a nation-state with an ethnic population self-identifying as Roman, and with a distinct national identity.
In the present article, I will take a closer look at Konstantinos VII Porphyrogennetos' works in order to understand if we can use such categories as "ethnic identity," "national identity" and "nation-state" to characterise how he viewed the Roman Empire and its people.
1 Roman Ethnicity
In the first chapter of his book “Romanland,” Anthony Kaldellis quotes a passage from Emperor Konstantinos VII Porphyrogennetos' manual of statecraft "De Administrando Imperio" (On the Administration of the Empire).
In it, Konstantinos VII (Κωνσταντῖνος Πορφυρογέννητος, reigned 913 – 959 CE) admonished his son Romanos not to intermarry with nations (ethnē) from the North, i.e. from the regions of the Balkans bordering the empire. Here is his argument:
"For if any nation (ethnos) of these infidel and dishonourable tribes (apista kai atima boreia genē) of the north shall ever demand a marriage alliance with the emperor of the Romans (basileys Rhomaiōn), and either to take his daughter to wife, or to give a daughter of their own to be wife to the emperor or to the emperor's son, this monstrous demand of theirs … you shall rebut with these words, saying:
'Concerning this matter also a dread and authentic charge and ordinance of the great and holy Constantine [Constantine I, reigned 306 to 337 CE] is engraved upon the sacred table of the universal church of the Christians, St. Sophia, that never shall an emperor of the Romans ally himself in marriage with a nation of customs differing from and alien to those of the Roman order, especially with one that is infidel and unbaptized, unless it be with the Franks alone; for they alone were excepted by that great man, the holy Constantine, because he himself drew his origin from those parts; for there is much relationship and converse between Franks and Romans.
And why did he order that with them alone the emperors of the Romans should intermarry? Because of the traditional fame and nobility of those lands and races. But with any other nation whatsoever it was not to be in their power to do this, and he who dared to do it was to be condemned as an alien from the ranks of the Christians and subject to the anathema, as a transgressor of ancestral laws and imperial ordinances” (Porphyrogenitus 1967, pp. 71-73)
Konstantinos then goes a step further, claiming that nations with "different customs and divergent laws and institutions" should not intermarry, and he compares different nations to animal species:
"For each nation (ethnos) has different customs (ethē) and divergent laws (nomoi) and institutions (thesmoi), and should consolidate those things that are proper to it, and should form and develop out of the same nation the associations for the fusion of its life.
For just as each animal mates with its own tribe (homogeneîs), so it is right that each nation also should marry and cohabit not with those of other race (allophyloi) and tongue (alloglōssoi) but of the same tribe (homogeneîs) and speech (homophōnoi).
For hence arise naturally harmony of thought and intercourse among one another and friendly converse and living together; but alien customs and divergent laws are likely on the contrary to engender enmities and quarrels and hatreds and broils, which tend to beget not friendship and association but spite and division."
(Ἕκαστον γὰρ ἔθνος διάφορα ἔχον ἔθη καὶ διαλλάττοντας νόμους τε καὶ θεσμοὺς ὀφείλει τὰ οἰκεῖα κρατύνειν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ αὐτοῦ ἔθνους τὰς πρὸς ἀνάκρασιν βίου κοινωνίας ποιεῖσθαι καὶ ἐνεργεῖν. Ὥσπερ γὰρ ἕκαστον ζῶον μετὰ τῶν ὁμογενῶν τὰς μίξεις ἐργάζεται, οὕτω καὶ ἕκαστον ἔθνος οὐκ ἐξ ἀλλοφύλων καὶ ἀλλογλώσσων, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ τῶν ὁμογενῶν τε καὶ ὁμοφώνων τὰ συνοικέσια των γάμων ποιεῖσθαι καθέστηκεν δίκαιον. Ἐντεῦθεν γὰρ καὶ ἡ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὁμοφροσύνη καὶ συνομιλία καὶ προσφιλής συνδιατριβὴ καὶ συμβίωσις περιγίνεσθαι πέφυκεν· τὰ δὲ ἀλλότρια ἔθη καὶ διαλλάττοντα νόμιμα ἀπεχθείας μᾶλλον καὶ προσκρούσεις καὶ μίση καὶ στάσεις εἴωθεν ἀπο γεννᾶν, ἅπερ οὐ φιλίας καὶ κοινωνίας, ἀλλ' ἔχθρας καὶ διαστάσεις φιλεῖ ἀπεργάζεσθαι) (ibid., pp. 74-75).
From the aforementioned passages Kaldellis draws the conclusion that Konstantinos' views "might be deemed isolationist, xenophobic, and racist, and certainly nationalistic," and his idea of nation is "equivalent to standard modern definitions of the nation" (Kaldellis 2019, p. 8).
But is Kaldellis' argument correct? Let us take a closer look at the text.
It is true that Konstantinos claims that different nations should not intermarry. But this statement is contradicted by the following one: "never shall an emperor of the Romans ally himself in marriage with a nation of customs differing from and alien to those of the Roman order … , unless it be with the Franks alone."
The first thing to note is that Konstantinos is explicitly talking about emperors' marriage alliances, i.e. the use of marriage as a means of conducting foreign policy. He is not talking about the "nation" as such, meaning an entire community of people sharing the same language, culture and other traits deemed as national.
Secondly, Konstantinos says that Roman rulers can intermarry with the Franks. And why does he think that marriage alliances with the Franks are legitimate? As he puts it, it is because of the "traditional fame (periphaneia) and nobility (eygeneia) of those lands (merē) and races (genē).”
Fame and nobility are therefore more important criteria than modern concepts of ethnicity or national identity.
Furthermore, Konstantinos himself married his own son Romanos to a foreign woman named Bertha, the illegitimate daughter of Hugh of Arles, King of Provence (928-c. 948) and King of Italy (926-945), and a descendant of Charlemagne (Arbagi 2004, p. 516).
Bertha was sent to Constantinople in the summer of 944. She and Konstantinos' son Romanos were married despite still being children, and Bertha was given the Greek name Eydokia (Shepherd 2009, pp. 541-542).
Konstantinos wrote about Bertha's lineage in De Administrando Imperio:
"The genealogy of the illustrious king Hugh ('Η γενεαλογία τοῦ περιβλέπτου ῥηγός Ούγωνος).
The elder Lothair, king of Italy (rhēx Italias), grandfather of the illustrious king Hugh, was by descent of the family of the elder Charles [Charlemagne], a man much celebrated in song and story and author of heroic deeds in war.
This Charles was sole ruler over all the kingdoms (monokratōr pantōn tōn rēgatōn), and reigned as emperor in great Francia (megalē Phraggia). And in his days none of the other kings dared call himself a king, but all were his vassals (hypospondoi) …
Well, this Lothair took his forces and marched against Rome and assaulted and got possession of it, and was crowned by the pope of that time …
[S]he who came up to Constantinople and was joined in marriage to Romanus, the son born in the purple of Constantine, the Christ-loving sovereign, was the daughter of the same illustrious king Hugh, and she was called Bertha after the name of her grandmother.
[She] changed her name to Eudocia, after that of the grandmother and sister of Constantine, the Christ-loving sovereign" (Porphyrogenitus 1967, pp. 108-113).
Konstantinos portrays king Hugh and his daughter as noble and worthy allies of his dynasty.
It is interesting to note that in a subsequent chapter he claims that the Germans "are now called Franks" (Γερμανούς, τοὺς νῦν καλουμένους Φράγγους) (ibid., p. 104). In his understanding, therefore, the term "Franks" indicates a larger group than simply what we would define today as the Franks.
It is clear that Konstantinos' argument that each nation should marry people from the same nation is not to be understood through the lens of modern ideas of ethnicity or national identity. Indeed, Kaldellis' interpretation seems to be applying modern standards to a 10th century text where they do not fit.
In his treatise, Konstantinos was giving his son advice on dynastic alliances. He viewed the people of the North as inferior in prestige to the well-established elites of the Roman Empire and the Frankish Empire, and that is why he admonished Romanos not to intermarry with them.
2 Multiethnic Empire or Nation-State?
Was the Roman Empire a multiethnic state or a nation-state? Kaldellis argues that the Romans were a nation. He criticises historians who can easily identify various ethnic groups that existed within the empire and beyond its borders, while at the same time refusing to see the Romans as an ethnic group. He writes:
"Byzantinists are disingenuous when they say that the Byzantines would have been 'surprised' to hear themselves described as a Roman nation … Instead, they would have been surprised by the modern error that 'Roman' was somehow a multiethnic category. This modern idea would have sounded to them like a contradiction in terms, as for them Romans and foreign ethnics were separate categories …
[T]he Romans of Byzantium were an ethnic (or national) community … that demarcated itself against other ethnic groups by roughly the same criteria that are used by modern scholars to discuss ethnicity.
This approach and the conclusions it produces are far removed from the consensus that prevails in the mainstream of Byzantine Studies … [W]hile [Byzantinists] deny the existence of the Roman people, when it comes to the empire's ethnic minorities (e.g., Jews, Armenians, Arabs, Turks), they classify them in a naïve, unreconstructed way as 'natural' entities.
They present us with the implausible picture of a society that had an undefined and nameless majority alongside manifest minorities that can easily be identified and named" (Kaldellis 2019, pp. 8, 42).
I do not subscribe to Kaldellis' argument that “identifying and naming” groups of people is equivalent to modern theories of national or ethnic identity. I will discuss this issue more in depth in another article. Let us now return to Konstantinos' works to examine how he describes the people within the Empire.
In the 6th century CE, Slavic peoples began to migrate into the Balkans, coming into contact with the Roman Empire and conducting raids against it. In the 550s, the threat from the Slavs was compounded by the arrival of the Avars, a Turkic tribal confederation.
By the second half of the 7th century, the Empire had lost control over most of the Balkans, and Slavic peoples pushed southward as far as Greece. Slavic-speaking communities coexisted alongside Greek-speaking ones, with intermixing occurring between them (see Hupchick 2002, pp. 29-33).
A process of christianisation and assimilation gradually blurred the lines between Slavs and the indigenous population. For instance, in 766 Niketas, who was of Slavic origin, was appointed Patriarch of Constantinople (Shea 1997, pp. 85-86). However, some Slavic communities remained distinct from their Greek-speaking neighbours.
In De Administrando Imperio, Emperor Konstantinos VII writes about a revolt of the Slavic population that inhabited the Peloponnese, describing “how the Slavs (Sklaboi) were put in servitude and subjection to the church of Patras”:
“Nicephorus [Emperor Nikephoros I, reigned 802–811] was holding the sceptre of the Romans, and these Slavs who were in the province of Peloponnesus decided to revolt, and first proceeded to sack the dwellings of their neighbours, the Greeks (Graikoi), and gave them up to rapine, and next they moved against the inhabitants of the city of Patras and ravaged the plains before its wall and laid siege to itself, having with them African Saracens also.
And when a considerable time had gone by and there began to be dearth of necessaries, both water and foodstuffs, among those within the wall, they took counsel among themselves to come to terms of composition and to obtain promises of immunity and then to surrender the city to their yoke.
And so, as the then military governor was at the extremity of the province in the city of Corinth, and it had been expected that he would come and defeat the nation of the Slavenes (to ethnos tōn Sklabēnōn), since he had received early intelligence of their assault from the nobles, the inhabitants of the city resolved that a scout should first be sent to the eastern side of the mountains and spy out and discover if the military governor were in fact coming, and they instructed and gave a signal to their envoy, that if he were to see the military governor coming, he should on his way back dip the standard, so they might know of the coming of the military governor, but if not, to hold the standard erect, so they might for the future not expect the military governor to come. So the scout went off and found that the military governor was not coming, and began to come back, holding the standard erect.
But, as it pleased God through the intercession of the holy apostle Andrew, the horse slipped and the rider fell off and dipped the standard, and the inhabitants of the city, seeing the signal given and believing that the military governor was coming undoubtedly, opened the gates of the city and sallied forth bravely against the Slavenes; and they saw the first-called apostle, revealed to their eyes, mounted upon a horse and charging upon the barbarians, yea, and he totally routed them and scattered them and drove them far off from the city and made them to flee.
And the barbarians (barbaroi) saw and were amazed and confounded at the violent assault upon them of the invincible and unconquerable warrior and captain and marshal, the triumphant and victorious first-called apostle Andrew, and were thrown into disorder and shaken, and trembling got hold upon them and they fled for refuge in his most sacred temple.
Now when the military governor arrived on the third day after the rout and learnt of the victory of the apostle, he reported to the emperor Nicephorus upon the onset of the Slavenes and the foraging and enslaving and destroying and the plundering and all the other horrors which in their incursion they had inflicted on the regions of Achaea; and also upon the siege of many days and the sustained assault on the inhabitants of the city; and in like manner upon the visitation and aid in battle and the rout and the total victory won by the apostle, and how he had been seen revealed to their eyes charging upon and pursuing the rear of the foe and routing them, so that the barbarians themselves were aware that the apostle had visited us and was aiding us in the battle, and therefore had fled for refuge to his hallowed temple.
The emperor, learning of these things, gave orders to this effect: ‘Since the rout and total victory were achieved by the apostle, it is our duty to render to him the whole expeditionary force of the foe and the booty and the spoils.’ And he ordained that the foemen themselves, with all their families and relations and all who belonged to them, and all their property as well, should be set apart for the temple of the apostle in the metropolis of Patras, where the first-called and disciple of Christ had performed this exploit in the contest; and he issued a bull concerning these matters in that same metropolis.
These things the older and more ancient narrated, handing them down in unwritten tradition to them who lived in the after time, so that, as the prophet says, the coming generation might know the miracle wrought through the intercession of the apostle, and might rise up and declare it to their sons, that they might not forget the benefits done by God through the intercession of the apostle.
And from that time the Slavenes who were set apart in the metropolis have maintained like hostages the military governors and the imperial agents and all the envoys sent from foreign nations, and they have their own waiters and cooks and servants of all kinds who prepare foods for the table; and the metropolis interferes in none of these matters, for the Slavenes themselves collect the necessary funds by apportionment and subscription among their unit” (Porphyrogenitus 1967, pp. 228-231).
Konstantinos describes the Slavs as a separate community from the Greek-speaking inhabitants of the Peloponnese. But it is noteworthy that he does not refer to the Greek-speaking peoples as “Rhōmaioi” (Romans), but as “Graikoi” (Γραικοί, “Greeks”). The term Graikoi has a long and complex history.
In Homer's works, the Greek-speaking peoples are mainly called “Achaioi,” and alternatively “Danaoi” and “Argeioi.” Some ancient Egyptian inscriptions mention a country named “Danaya,” while Hittite tablets refer to a kingdom called “Achiyava.” These names later fell into disuse as generic terms for the Greek-speaking peoples.
In the 7th century BCE, the ancient Greek poet Hesiod (Works and Days, 1. 653) called all the mainland Greeks "Hellenes" (Ἕλληνες). By the 6th century BCE, the name “Hellenes” had become the common term identifying the Greek-speaking peoples (Carras 2013).
However, Aristotle claims that “Graikoi” was an ancient name used before “Hellenes”. In a treatise titled “Metereologika,” he writes:
“The deluge in the time of Deucalion, for instance, took place chiefly in the [Hellenic] world and in it especially about ancient Hellas, the country about Dodona and the Achelous, a river which has often changed its course. Here the Selli dwelt and those who were formerly called Graeci (Graikoi) and now Hellenes.”
(ὥσπερ ὁ καλούμενος ἐπὶ Δευκαλίωνος κατακλυσμός· καὶ γὰρ οὗτος περὶ τὸν Ἑλληνικὸν ἐγένετο τόπον μάλιστα, καὶ τούτου περὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα τὴν ἀρχαίαν. αὕτη δ' ἐστὶν ἡ περὶ Δωδώνην καὶ τὸν Ἀχελῷον· [352b] οὗτος γὰρ πολλαχοῦ τὸ ῥεῦμα μεταβέβληκεν· ᾤκουν γὰρ οἱ Σελλοὶ ἐνταῦθα καὶ οἱ καλούμενοι τότε μὲν Γραικοὶ νῦν δ' Ἕλληνες).23
The origin of the name Graikoi is obscure. According to one tradition, it is derived from Graikos, the mythical son of Zeus and Pandora, daughter of Deucalion.
The Eastern Roman writer and official John Lydos (ca. 490 – ca. 565 CE) cites a fragment from “The Catalogue of Women,” a work attributed to Hesiod:
(1.13.) “Aeneas, after very much wandering, landed at a city of Italy called Laurentia … Then, after becoming son-in-law to Latinus, who ruled that district, and ruling for three years himself, he left ...
After the enjoyment of such hospitality, they called the native inhabitants of Italy Latini, and those who spoke Greek Graeci (Λατίνους μὲν τοὺς ἐπιχωριάζοντας, Γραικοὺς δὲ τοὺς ἑλληνίζοντας ἐκάλουν) - from the [names of] Latinus (whom I just mentioned) and Graecus.
[These were] brothers, as Hesiod in the Catalogues says:
Agrius and Latinus,
And the daughter of noble
Deucalion, Pandora, in the house
mingled with Father Zeus, the
commander of all the gods, in love
and then gave birth to Graecus,
According to a different tradition, Graikoi comes from the name of the inhabitants of the Greek town of Graia, in Boeotia. The Romans allegedly came into contact with Greek peoples in southern Italy who called themselves Graikoi. In their Latin tongue, Graikoi was adapted into “Graeci,” from which the English word “Greek” is derived (see Mellor 2016).
In 212 CE, Emperor Caracalla granted citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Roman Empire. Just about a century later, Emperor Constantine I embraced Christianity, and in 313 CE he issued the Edict of Milan, which made the persecution of Christians illegal. In 330 CE, he founded a new capital in the Greek-speaking East, the city of Constantinople.6 7 8
These events led to a major shift in the society and culture of the Greek-speaking peoples. They adopted the Christian faith and discarded not only the religious beliefs of their ancestors, but also the name “Hellenes,” which by the 6th century CE had become synonymous with “pagan” (Carras 2013).
The names Hellenes, Graikoi and Rhomaioi continued to be used for hundreds of years in different contexts. For instance, the Greek scholar Adamantios Korais (Ἀδαμάντιος Κοραῆς, 1748 – 1833) proposed the use of Graikoi for the modern Greeks, and of Hellenes for the ancients (Ricks / Magdalino 2016, chapter 5).
Let us now return to Konstantinos VII’s text. He named and identified the Slavs. However, he did not contrast them with the Romans, but with the Graikoi, whom he also named and identified as a separate community. It is not clear why he chose that term. Perhaps, he wanted to emphasise that they were Greek speakers living in the lands associated with ancient Greece.
If Kaldellis were correct in arguing that “Roman” was an ethnonym (i.e. a name given to an ethnic group) for the Greek-speaking majority population, then Konstantinos would have simply called them Rhomaioi rather than Graikoi. Even if we assume that Graikoi is just a subcategory of Rhomaioi, this shows that identifying and naming a community of people with distinct characteristics is not enough to establish an implicit modern understanding of nationhood.
It must be also emphasised that Konstantinos did not talk about removing the Slavs in order to create a homogeneous national community. He simply wanted them to submit to the authority of the church and the state and pay their taxes.
Two other Slavic populations that rebelled against the Roman authorities were the Milingoi and Ezeritai, who also dwelled in the Peloponnese. Konstantinos writes:
“The Slavs of the province of Peloponnesus revolted in the days of the emperor Theophilus [reigned 829 – 842 CE] and his son Michael [reigned 842 – 867 CE], and became independent, and plundered and enslaved and pillaged and burnt and stole.
And in the reign of Michael, the son of Theophilus, the protospatharius Theoctistus, surnamed Bryennius, was sent as military governor to the province of Peloponnesus with a great power and force, viz., of Thracians and Macedonians and the rest of the western provinces, to war upon and subdue them.
He subdued and mastered all the Slavs and other insubordinates of the province of Peloponnesus, and only the Ezeritai and the Milingoi were left, towards Lacedaemonia and Helos. And since there is there a great and very high mountain called Pentadaktylos, which runs like a neck a long distance out into the sea, and because the place is difficult, they settled upon the flanks of this same mountain, the Milingoi in one part, and in the other part the Ezeritai.
The aforesaid protospatharius Theoctistus, the military governor of Peloponnesus, having succeeded in reducing these too, fixed a tribute of 60 nomismata for the Milingoi, and of 300 nomismata for the Ezeritai, and this they used to pay while he was military governor, as this report of it is preserved to this day by the local inhabitants.
But in the reign of the lord Romanus the emperor [Romanos I, reigned 920 – 944], the protospatharius John Proteuon, military governor in this same province, reported to the same lord Romanus concerning both Milingoi and Ezeritai, that they had rebelled and neither obeyed the military governor nor regarded the imperial mandate, but were practically independent and self-governing, and neither accepted a head man at the hand of the military governor, nor heeded orders for military service under him, nor would pay other dues to the treasury.
While his report was on its way, it happened that the protospatharius Krinitis Arotras was appointed military governor in Peloponnesus, and when the report of the protospatharius John Proteuon, military governor of Peloponnesus, arrived and was read in the presence of the emperor, the lord Romanus, and was found to contain news of the revolt of the aforesaid Slavs and of their reluctant obedience, or, more properly, their disobedience to the imperial commands, this same protospatharius Krinitis was instructed, since they had gone so far in revolt and disobedience, to march against them and defeat and subdue and exterminate them.
And so, beginning his war upon them in the month of March and burning down their crops and plundering all their land, he kept them to defence and resistance until the month of November, and then, seeing that they were being exterminated, they begged to negotiate for their submission and pardon for their past misdoings.
And so the aforesaid protospatharius Krinitis, the military governor, fixed upon them tributes greater than they had been paying: upon the Milingoi 540 nomismata on top of the 60 nomismata which they had paid before, so that their total tribute was 600 nomismata, and upon the Ezeritai another 300 nomismata on top of the 300 nomismata they had paid before, so that their total tribute was 600 nomismata, which this same protospatharius Krinitis exacted and conveyed to the Treasury of the Bedchamber guarded of God.
But when the protospatharius Krinitis was transferred to the province of Hellas and the protospatharius Bardas Platypodis was appointed military governor in Peloponnesus, and disorder and strife were aroused by this same protospatharius Bardas Platypodis and by protospatharii and nobles who took his part, and they expelled the protospatharius Leo Agelastos from the province, and straight away the Slavesians made an attack upon this same province, then these same Slavs, both Milingoi and Ezeritai, sent to the lord Romanus, the emperor, requesting and praying that the increments to their tribute should be forgiven them, and that they should pay what they had paid before.
And since, as has been said above, the Slavesians had entered the province of Peloponnesus, the emperor, fearing lest they might join forces with the Slavs and bring about the total destruction of this same province, issued for the latter a golden bull providing that they should pay as before, the Milingoi 60 nomismata, and the Ezeritai 300 nomismata. Such, then, is the cause of the increase of the tribute of the Milingoi and Ezeritai, and of its remission” (ibid., pp. 232-235).
In another famous passage, Konstantinos mentions the inhabitants of the city of Maine (Μαΐνη). He explains that this community continued to be pagan and to follow ancient Greek religious beliefs up until the reign of Basileios I (867 – 886). Interestingly, he argues that they were of the “race” of the “ancient Romans,” and that their neighbours still called them “Hellenes” due to their adherence to polytheism:
“The inhabitants of the city of Maina are not of the race of the aforesaid Slavs (tês geneâs tōn Sklabōn), but of the ancient Romans (ek tōn palaioterōn Rhōmaiōn), and even to this day they are called 'Hellenes' by the local inhabitants, because in the very ancient times they were idolaters and worshippers of images after the fashion of the ancient Hellenes (kata toys palaioys Hellēnas); and they were baptized and became Christians in the reign of the glorious Basil.
The place where they live is waterless and inaccessible, but bears the olive, whence their comfort is. This place is situated on the tip of Malea, that is, beyond Ezeron towards the coast. Seeing that they are perfectly submissive and accept a head man from the military governor, and heed and obey the commands of the military governor, they have paid from very ancient times a tribute of 400 nomismata.”
(Ιστέον, ὅτι οἱ τοῦ κάστρου Μαΐνης οἰκήτορες οὐκ εἰσὶν ἀπὸ τῆς γενεᾶς τῶν προρρηθέντων Σκλάβων, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ τῶν παλαιοτέρων ‘Ρωμαίων, οἱ καὶ μέχρι τοῦ νῦν παρὰ τῶν ἐντοπίων Ἕλληνες προσαγορεύονται διὰ τὸ ἐν τοῖς προπαλαιοῖς χρόνοις εἰδωλολάτρας εἶναι καὶ προσκυνητὰς τῶν εἰδώλων κατὰ τοὺς παλαιοὺς Ἕλληνας, οἵτινες ἐπὶ τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ ἀοιδίμου Βασιλείου βαπτισθέντες Χριστιανοὶ γεγόνασιν) (ibid., pp. 236-237).
This passage is interesting for several reasons. Konstantinos contrasts the Slavs with the people of Maine, and he claims that they originate from the “ancient Romans” and are also called “Hellenes” by their neighbours, whom he also identifies as a separate community. Here religion becomes a clear marker of identity. “Ancient Romans” and “Hellenes” both refer to pagan peoples. The inhabitants of Maine are yet another distinct community of Greek speakers who are not identified as Rhomaioi.
Another important point is that Konstantinos uses the word “genea,” and not “ethnos.” This shows the lack of a precise terminology to describe concepts of nation and ethnicity. Linguistic ambiguity regarding these ideas already existed in antiquity and continued throughout the Eastern Roman period:
“The Greeks and Romans were obsessed with understanding human difference, but they never could seem to agree on what differences mattered or what caused the differences. They could not even agree on what words they would use to discuss the differences: genos, ethnos, ethnê, phulê - all were used variously to denote a race, an ethnic group, a political unit, or some other social or cultural unit” (Kennedy et al. 2013, Introduction).
Linguistic ambiguity demonstrates that the Eastern Romans did not develop modern concepts of nation and ethnicity. They were very capable of developing a complex vocabulary regarding, for example, religious matters. But they never articulated a precise terminology regarding race, nation and ethnicity. The argument that modern ideas of race, nation and ethnicity already implicitly existed throughout history is an essentialist concept. I will come back to this point in another article.
3 A Shrinking World Empire
Konstantinos VII was well aware that the Roman Empire had once been a state encompassing large areas of Europe, Africa and Asia, and that its territory had shrunk over time. He dates the start of Rome's territorial losses as far back as the sack of Rome by the Goths in 410 CE. He writes:
“[F]rom the time of the capture of [great] Rome (megalē Rhōmē) by the Goths, the Roman possessions began to be lopped off …”
(’Αφ' οὗ γὰρ παρελήφθη ἡ μεγάλη ‘Ρώμη παρὰ τῶν Γότθων, ἤρξατο ἀκρωτηριάζεσθαι τὰ ῾Ρωμαϊκὰ πράγματα) (Porphyrogenitus 1967, pp. 86-87).
Konstantinos talks about the history of the Roman Empire as a continuum, and describes defeats at the hands of Goths and other Germanic peoples, as well as of the Arabs. Here is an example:
“In ancient times the whole domain of Italy, both Naples and Capua and Beneventum, Salerno and Amalfi and Gaëta and all of Lombardy, was in the possession of the Romans, I mean, when Rome was the imperial capital.
But after the seat of empire was removed to Constantinople, all these territories were divided into two governments, and therefore two patricians used to be dispatched by the emperor in Constantinople; one patrician would govern Sicily and Calabria and Naples and Amalfi, and the other, with his seat at Beneventum, would govern Papia and Capua and all the rest. They used to remit annually to the emperor the sums due to the treasury …
All these countries aforesaid used to be inhabited by the Romans … [I]n the time of the empress Irene the patrician Narses was sent out and was governing Beneventum and Papia; and pope Zacharias, the Athenian, was governing Rome” (ibid., pp. 113-115).
Konstantinos then talks about the invasion of the Lombards, a Germanic people that conquered most of Italy in the late 6th century CE. He argues that this event was triggered by the betrayal of Narses, who invited the Lombards into Italy after a personal dispute with Empress Irene.
What did Konstantinos mean when he wrote that those countries “used to be inhabited by the Romans” (Αὗται δὲ πᾶσαι αἱ προρρηθεῖσαι χώραι κατωκοῦντο παρὰ τῶν Ῥωμαίων)? What happened to the Romans after the Lombard conquest? Was the native Roman population replaced by the Lombards?
In De Administrando Imperio, Konstantinos calls the domain of the Romans “Rhōmania”, that of the Franks “Phraggia” (land of the Franks) and that of the Lombards “Lagoybardia” (Λαγουβαρδία), from the Greek name for the Lombards (Lagoybardoi). Clearly, these names refer to the ruling elites, rather than to the ethnic identity of the masses of the people. That is, large parts of Italy were conquered by the Lombards, who set up their own ruling structure, and therefore the inhabitants were no longer subjects of the Emperor in Constantinople.
There were cases in which the inhabitants of an area chose to be subjects of the Roman Emperor. For instance, Konstantinos claims that the Venetians opposed the Frankish King Pippin and pledged allegiance to Constantinople:
“[K]ing Pippin, at a loss, said to the Venetians: ‘You are beneath my hand and my providence, since you are of my country and domain.’ But the Venetians answered him: ‘We want to be servants of the emperor of the Romans, and not of you.’ (Ἡμεῖς δοῦλοι θέλομεν εἶναι τοῦ βασιλέως Ρωμαίων καὶ οὐχὶ σοῦ) (ibid., pp. 120-121).
A similar episode happened in Dalmatia, where the inhabitants of the city of Ragusa asked the Roman Emperor for protection from Arab raids. Ragusa had been founded in the 7th century by Roman refugees after the sack of the Epidaurus by Slavs and Avars. Due to subsequent migrations, the population was a mix of Romans and Slavs.9
Konstantinos writes:
“[T]he inhabitants of the cities of Dalmatia also had become independent, subject neither to the emperor of the Romans nor to anybody else.
But after some time, in the reign of Basil the glorious and ever-memorable emperor, Saracens from Africa, Soldan and Saba and Kalphus, came with 36 ships and reached Dalmatia and took the city of Butova and the city of Rossa and the lower city of Decatera. And they came also to the city of Ragusa and blockaded it fifteen months.
Then in their strait the Ragusans made a declaration to Basil, the ever-memorable emperor of the Romans, saying this to him:
‘Have pity on us and do not allow us to be destroyed by them that deny Christ.’ The emperor was moved with compassion and sent the patrician Nicetas, admiral of the fleet, surnamed Ooryphas, with one hundred ships of war” (ibid., p. 127).
This type of political allegiance has little to do with the modern concept of the nation-state, where political legitimacy is tied to ethnic and national identity. It also shows how porous and unstable the borders of the Empire were.
In another chapter, Konstantinos implies that Cyprus was not part of Rhomania because it was ruled by the Islamic Caliphate.
Cyprus was under Arab rule for about 300 years, from the mid-7th century to the late 10th century. It was reconquered in 965 by Emperor Nikephoros II, the successor to Konstantinos' son Romanos.10
Konstantinos describes how Cypriot refugees were allowed to return to the island after the Arab conquest, thanks to the mediation of Emperor Justinian II:
“When the island was captured by the Saracens and remained uninhabited seven years, and the archbishop John came with his folk to the imperial city, a dispensation was made by the emperor Justinian in the holy sixth synod that he, with his bishops and the folk of the island, should take over Cyzicus and should make his appointments whenever a bishopric should fall vacant, to the end that the authority and rights of Cyprus might not be interrupted (for the emperor Justinian himself also was a Cypriot, as from the Cypriots of olden days the tale has persisted unto this day); and so it was ordained in the holy sixth synod that the archbishop of Cyprus should appoint the president of Cyzicus …
But after seven years, by God's will the emperor was moved to populate Cyprus again, and he sent to the commander of the faithful [i.e. the Caliph] of Bagdad three of the illustrious Cypriots, natives of the same island, called Phangoumeis, in charge of an imperial agent both intelligent and illustrious, and wrote to the commander of the faithful asking him to dismiss the folk of the island of Cyprus that were in Syria to their own place.
The commander of the faithful obeyed the emperor's epistle, and sent illustrious Saracens to all the parts of Syria and gathered together all the Cypriots and carried them over to their own place. And the emperor, for his part, sent an imperial agent and carried over those who had settled in Romania, that is, at Cyzicus and in the Kibyrrhaiote and Thrakesian provinces, and the island was populated” (ibid., pp. 224-225).
The sentence “carried over those who had settled in Romania” (διεπέρασεν καὶ τοὺς ἐν ῾Ῥωμανίᾳ οἰκήσαντας) implies that Cyprus was considered as being outside of Rhomania because it was not under the direct rule of the Emperor. Here, too, he names and identifies a group of Greek speakers, the Cypriots, but he does not call them Rhomaioi.
Throughout his treatise, Konstantinos mentions a number of territories that used to be under Roman rule and no longer were, as well as former Emperors who came from various parts of the Empire which Constantinople no longer controlled.
But he makes no connection between the Roman Empire and a specific ethnicity or national identity in the modern sense.
4 The “Roman language”
Language is one of the most important attributes commonly ascribed to national identity. According to a Pew Research Center survey published in 2017, majorities of respondents in 14 countries viewed language as the most critical element of national identity, arguing that “it is very important to speak the native language to be considered a true member of the nation.” In the United States, “70% of the public says that to be truly American it is very important to be able to speak English.”11
The US, Canada, Australia and the UK are the countries in the survey which share English as their primary language (or one of their primary languages).
The wording of the survey is quite interesting, because the concept of national identity is not defined. Moreover, how can language be a marker of national identity when different states and societies share the same language, while one state can have multiple languages?
I will discuss these issues in a later post and show how the ideas of nation, nation-state and ethnicity are far from being settled even in our own time.
Here I will just point out that in our modern usage “nation” can mean either a community with a shared language, culture etc., or it can simply mean a state.
When the Eastern Romans spoke of the “Roman language,” they meant Latin, and not Greek, even though ancient Greek was the language of the state, of the church and of written culture in general.
Kaldellis writes:
“In antiquity, the main language of the Romans, the Roman language, or ‘Roman,’ was Latin. Latin could also be called the language of the Latins, or some variation thereof. Even though many ancient Romans, especially elites, also spoke Greek, so much so that they referred to ‘our two languages,’ Latin was regarded as ‘the language of the Romans,’ an idea that continued into Byzantine times.
This meant that Byzantine authors, who wrote in Greek, referred to what had effectively become a foreign language to them, Latin, as the language of the Romans, even though they were now the Romans, in fact the only Romans in the world, except for those of Rome in Italy.
They referred to ‘the language of the Romans’ whenever someone in a narrative spoke Latin (which included both conversation and formulaic acclamations by the army or imperial subjects), as well as when the author had to use a technical term or the name of an office that was derived from Latin” (Kaldellis 2019, pp. 98-99).
Konstantinos VII uses the term “language of the Romans” in the exact way described by Kaldellis to mean Latin or romance languages, as we can see from the following passage, in which the Emperor explains that the Dalmatian town of Diadora (present-day Zadar in Croatia) was called “iam era” in the “language of the Romans”:
“The city of Diadora is called in the language of the Romans (tē Rhōmaiōn dialektō) 'iam era', which means, ‘it was already': that is to say, when Rome was founded, this city had already been founded before it …”
(Ὅτι τὸ κάστρον τῶν Διαδώρων καλεῖται τῇ Ῥωμαίων διαλέκτῳ ‘ἰὰμ ἔρα’, ὅπερ ἑρμηνεύεται ἀπάρτι ἦτον· δηλονότι ὅτι ἡ 'Ρώμη ἐκτίσθη, και προεκτισμένον ἦν τὸ τοιοῦτον κάστρον) (Porphyrogenitus 1967, pp. 136-137).
Kaldellis argues that the Eastern Romans “had ways of addressing this mismatch of language and ethnicity,” one of which was “to qualify Latin as ‘the ancestral (patrios) language’ of the Romans, implying that it was no longer the language that they used, but was the language of their ancestors” (Kaldellis 2019, p. 100).
He further notes that this linguistic discrepancy caused them “no doubt whether they were Romans,” pointing out that “our understanding of ethnicity should give to the Byzantines themselves the right to decide which of their cultural attributes constituted their ethnicity and how” (ibid.).
Yet in a subsequent passage Kaldellis contradicts himself by stating that “our [Roman] elite sources downplay the extent of popular Romanness” (ibid., p. 101). Specifically, he claims that the Eastern Roman population started to call their Greek language “Roman” (Rhomaiika), which he interprets as a sign of ethnic identity that “elite sources” downplay:
“The majority of the population was, in the middle Byzantine period, coming to a more straightforward view of the relationship between their Romanness and their language. Not caring for the historical claims of Latin or the niceties of linguistic accuracy, they began on a popular level to call their (Greek) language ‘Roman,’ because they were Romans and that was their language.
It is likely that they were doing so for a long time before our sources catch up to the fact. This corresponds to how popular speech pioneered the name Romania for the national state of the Romans, before more official types of discourse caught up …
In spoken Greek, the change to naming the language ‘Romaic’ was complete and comprehensive by 1250” (ibid., pp. 101-102).
As I will explain in another post, Kaldellis presents what I would call a “grand narrative” of ethnic and national identity, a teleological march from point A to point B lasting for hundreds of years. It is conspicuous how he claims that we should trust the sources, yet dismisses the sources when they “downplay” ethnic Romanness. He provides several “snapshots” encompassing over a thousand years of history to construct this narrative, but he withholds the full context of the sources, only examining isolated quotes that appear to confirm his main thesis.
In this article, I have focused specifically on Konstantinos VII’s De Administrando Imperio to show that the way he portrays the Roman Empire is much more complex than the national narrative that Kaldellis suggested by quoting one single passage.
If enough readers have interest in this topic, I will proceed to analyse more texts and then provide my own interpretation on the issue of “Romanness” in the Eastern Roman Empire.
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