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No, it isn't. I'm not sure what you mean by "underlying Greek cultural identity" here; before the late period the Byzantines didn't have any sort of Greek identity, underlying or not. They viewed...

Most Romans of the medieval period spoke Greek, but that doesn't, on it's own, make them "Greek", just like the Irish aren't English just because most of them speak it. Something interesting to note...

@Ludicius

I'm currently travelling so I don't have the time to properly respond to multiple giant comments at the moment. I promise I'll get back to you once I have the time, and I do think that...

Perkins explicitly claimed that the Islamic Levant was the "true heir" to the sophisticated etc. of Antiquity to the exclusion of the West and the Romans, obviously imply that they're the "untrue" or...

And what's the figurative interpretation, pray tell? If he had said something like "The Muslims of the Levant were, in fact, heirs of the sophisticated economy and culture of antiquity" or "The...

I agree with him here to an extent, in that an economic long late antiquity applies far more to the Levant than the west or the Romans, but culturally, and, to an extent, socially, more than a long...

@sumskilz Thanks for the addition, wish I could give rep.



Honestly, it's already pretty ignorant to imply that constructing a single building in a late antique style makes a civilization the...

Sorry, I didn't notice the edit until now.


The Byzantine economy only started to recover in the late 8th century, and even then the empire was still constantly raided by Arab forces, often lead...

Canadian actually; I'm familiar with the language, but not enough to properly digest an academic article I'm afraid.



The Arab conquests destroyed the economies of Anatolia, Africa (the...

Well, fairly direct anyway, certainly in comparison to the medieval Romans and western Europeans. Indian merchants could be seen in the red sea, and we have at least a few Roman travelers' accounts...

The Mediterranean was already closely connected with the Indian ocean, and China, for that matter. Roman civilization had a direct connection with the east via Egypt, and an indirect one via Persia,...

Just a note: I have no idea what character was originally used, but "round" isn't necessarily the same thing as "spherical". If the translation is accurate in this regard, Yu Xi might have been...

There was no such thing as a Byzantine ethnicity, but there was a Roman ethnos (alternatively genos) that was defined, after the 8th century, by the Greek language (colloquially called "Romaikos"),...

Neither of you has remained that civil, but not so subtly implying Common Soldier is a racist, or even white supremacist, just because he disagrees with you about the historical influence of one...

About the Islamic conquests, I don't think I would say that they caused the "dark ages", since that concept really can't be applied unilaterally to the greater European world (England and northern...

As they went to Constantinople, but in the period being discussed (IE approx. 500-1000) we see far, far more contact, cultural exchange, and mutual influence in general happening between the Romans...

But where's the justification for doing so? It's the equivalent of cutting Baghdad out of the equation when discussing Islamic science. As I've already mentioned, Constantinople was the center of the...

Except there was no post Roman Europe in the medieval period. There was a post Roman western Europe, but it doesn't make sense in this context to separate it from the actual Roman empire....

I can't speak for the ancient Greco-Romans, but, while few accounts from their end survive, the Byzantine Romans probably knew quite a bit about China. Justinian successfully sent monks to the region...

I'm partial to Leo the Deacon and Michael Attaleiates for 10th and 11th century Byzantium, though only the former is available online. Kekaumenos, writing in the 11th century, is also short but...