Most people don’t have a clue. I remember mentionning the word byzantine at the dinner table when I was a teenager and was told “you play too many games and read too many books, this is reality, there’s no such thing as a byzantine”.
When I showed them the wikipedia page about it, “it’s not because it’s on the internet that it’s true”. Yet here we are, in 2024, where they are glued to facebook believing some of the wildest things.
To expand on that it was during the enlightenment in the early renaissance where people had a boner over the Roman Empire but still thought the medieval Roman Empire (Byzantine) to not be cool. So they came up with a new name for it. A declining empire that had a massive beauracracy, spoke Greek and had the wrong brand of Christianity (Orthodox) is not nice enough to create a glorious image like the Pax Romana did.
This of course made a lot of people upset in the then Ottoman empire since they identified as Romans but were not counted as Romans according to western people. Think “You’re not Romans with a glorious history, you’re Byzantines” even though they clearly were.
For extra fun the Byzantine/Roman distinction is also unfair.
Eastern Rome always spoke Greek, even at 200AD.
Orthodox and Catholic were the same pre-schism.
During the decline of the Western Empire the capital was moving a lot anyway so “based in Rome” was soon outdated.
During the decline Italy was just another province anyway so “based in Italy” was soon outdated.
They were literally the same thing except one half managed to fuck their shit up while getting invaded by hordes of tribes at the same time.
Humans are pretty racist by default until they realise that everybody is actually also a human being. “Barbarian” is just a different word for “sub-human” that was used back then. Nowadays we use racial/ethnic/religious/housing status or whatever negative term that’s out of the person’s control to justify instead.
That’s a common misconception. The word “barba” in Spanish and “barbaroi” in Greek have distinct origin of the gibberish “bar bar bar” which is apparently how all barbarian speak. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia page on barbarians under “Etymology”.
The Ancient Greek name βάρβαρος (bárbaros) ‘barbarian’ was an antonym for πολίτης (politēs) ‘citizen’, from πόλις (polis) ‘city’. The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek 𐀞𐀞𐀫, pa-pa-ro, written in Linear B syllabic script.
The Greeks used the term barbarian for all non-Greek-speaking people, including the Egyptians, Persians, Medes and Phoenicians, emphasizing their otherness. According to Greek writers, this was because the language they spoke sounded to Greeks like gibberish represented by the sounds “bar…bar…;” the alleged root of the word bárbaros, which is an echomimetic or onomatopoeic word. In various occasions, the term was also used by Greeks, especially the Athenians, to deride other Greek tribes and states (such as Epirotes, Eleans, Boeotians and Aeolic-speakers) and also fellow Athenians in a pejorative and politically motivated manner. The term also carried a cultural dimension to its dual meaning. The verb βαρβαρίζω (barbarízō) in ancient Greek meant to behave or talk like a barbarian, or to hold with the barbarians.
I know I learned about them twenty years ago but I don’t recall anything about either of them anymore, so that’s how I can’t know the difference anyway.
How they hell would anyone not know the difference? It’d be like not knowing the difference between Taylor Swift and Madonna.
Most people don’t have a clue. I remember mentionning the word byzantine at the dinner table when I was a teenager and was told “you play too many games and read too many books, this is reality, there’s no such thing as a byzantine”.
When I showed them the wikipedia page about it, “it’s not because it’s on the internet that it’s true”. Yet here we are, in 2024, where they are glued to facebook believing some of the wildest things.
I mean, there was no such thing as a byzantine. That’s a name we came up with in the modern era to help distinguish between “roman” empires.
To expand on that it was during the enlightenment in the early renaissance where people had a boner over the Roman Empire but still thought the medieval Roman Empire (Byzantine) to not be cool. So they came up with a new name for it. A declining empire that had a massive beauracracy, spoke Greek and had the wrong brand of Christianity (Orthodox) is not nice enough to create a glorious image like the Pax Romana did.
This of course made a lot of people upset in the then Ottoman empire since they identified as Romans but were not counted as Romans according to western people. Think “You’re not Romans with a glorious history, you’re Byzantines” even though they clearly were.
For extra fun the Byzantine/Roman distinction is also unfair.
Fuck their shit up by inventing systemic racism
Humans are pretty racist by default until they realise that everybody is actually also a human being. “Barbarian” is just a different word for “sub-human” that was used back then. Nowadays we use racial/ethnic/religious/housing status or whatever negative term that’s out of the person’s control to justify instead.
What’s fun to me is that Barbarian literally means hairy, referring to cultures that didn’t wear beards as superior
That’s a common misconception. The word “barba” in Spanish and “barbaroi” in Greek have distinct origin of the gibberish “bar bar bar” which is apparently how all barbarian speak. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia page on barbarians under “Etymology”.
I know I learned about them twenty years ago but I don’t recall anything about either of them anymore, so that’s how I can’t know the difference anyway.