Are Byzantines Romans or Greeks

[Jan III Sobieski]

as title says.

[Boyar Son]

storm coming

[motiv-8]

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[Prodigal]

It depends on the period. I would say they gradually became more and more Greek in culture until they began calling their Emperor Basilius. That's when in my opinion they effectively became a Greek Empire. As for population, they were most certainly Greek dominant throughout.

[alhoon]

After Heracletus made the language of the empire Greek, it effectively became a Greek empire. The Hellenization was gradual, so the transition from Roman to Greek isn't easy to follow.

[Vermelho_Steele]

The Byzantines, really, are neither. Instead they are a mix of both. Roman AND Greek cultural influences, ideas, military tactics, architecture and cusine. A fusion ,if you will, of two cultures into the one Empire.

[wearenemesis]

Romeeks?

Grecomans?

[CiviC]

Byzantines = Roman citizens with Medieval Greek Orthodox culture.

[thursgun]

Byzantines were greeks, and the most important cultural difference with Hellenic greeks was Christianity.

[Xanthippus of Sparta]

In short, the Byzantines were both.

Law, customs, lineage, culture dating back to Roman times.

Religion, language, ethnicity (to an extent), and geography owed more to Greek influence.

[Tiberios]

Basicly the Greek/Hellenic part of the Roman Empire, which continued to evolve. Thus I think it's only natural that certain changes happened, like Greek replacing latinas language in the administration.

[nce_wht_guy]

Oh great....

[ly0_ly0]

Greeks

[Stavroforos]

You guys are all just racist.

[Dr. Oza]

romans, that happened to be christian

and they also had large greek populations

but byzantines always claimed to be roman and always had a roman-styled government, and military (at least in titles and overall organizational basis)

many of the people we call greeks today were also labelled and labelled themselves as romans back then

keep in mind that being roman is like being american

you can be any ethnicity, or religion, as long as you pay your taxes and pledge loyalty, you are a roman


and the byzantine name is a disgrace, it was invented by the popes to distance the more legitimate eastern romans from the roman namestake

[Vermelho_Steele]

@Stavroforos: How are we all racist?

[0N3]

@Stavroforos: How are we all racist?

By denying that all roman and greek culture comes from Egyptians just because they are brown

[motiv-8]

By denying that all roman and greek culture comes from Egyptians just because they are brown

Or maybe someone would deny that because it's absurdly false.

[Demetrios of Messene]

If I was to give a one-word answer to the thread's title, that would be:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Both.

And this is a more elaborate answer:
It really depends on your perspective, which is why the un-historical term "byzantines" is so conveniently widespread today.

• The civic status of the empire was essentially roman.
• The dominant language was greek.
• The dominant religion was christianity, which is neither roman nor greek in origin. After the schism, the dominant religion is orthodox christianity, which is important because it further differentiates the "byzantines" from the other christians (who eventually invented the term byzantine; the "byzantines" were normally called romans by themselves and usually either romans or greeks by foreigners).
• The "byzantine" education was a combination of the above. What is interesting is that the education was heavily influenced by the classical antiquity, in which the works of greeks had a prestigious place. All "byzantine" scholars seem consistently quite familiar with ancient greek myhts, Homer's sagas, Plato, Aristotle etc. Despite what some may believe, the "byzantines" had a passion about books, libraries and universities that cannot be matched by any other contemporary european state.
• The "byzantine" customs were at a constant fusion among roman (early on), greek, eastern (persian and later arabian), "barbarian" (so many mercenaries) and western european (specially at the later periods) influences.
• The ethnical background of the population had an immense variety. As the empire's territory was shrinking through the ages, from some period onwards the population comprised mostly greeks.

If you could travel back in time to the "byzantine" court, you had better address the "byzantines" as romans and romans only. At the early period, to be called greek was equal to be called pagan and even though the byzantines were proud of their greek education and language (which they had no problem calling it like that), to be called greek took ages to become acceptable again. Eventually, it became fully acceptable that there were individuals who felt that the only way to revive the Empire was to build on their greek heritage.

During the late period of the empire, the "byzantines" were greeks with roman citizenship. Both terms are correct in that timeframe. Only the word "byzantine" is at fault, because the only historical byzantines were the citizens of that old city of Byzantium, which had long been renamed and rebuilt as New Rome.

[Manco]

They were about as Roman as the French are still Frankish.