Antique Names and Self-Identification: Hellenes, Graikoi, and Romaioi from Late Byzantium to the Greek Nation-State (original) (raw)

2014, D. Tziovas (ed.), Re-imagining the Past: Antiquity and Modern Greek Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, 81-97.

It has long been established that Modern Greek popular culture perceived Hellenes as mythical people with supernatural powers who did not make part of the core of the Romaic identity. Recent studies confirm that the formation of an ethnic Romaic identity must be placed around the time of the Frankish conquest of Constantinople in 1204, which encouraged the growth of an identity with cultural/ethnic characteristics that became detached and eventually replaced the political/imperial Byzantine Roman identity (Page 2008). This new ethnic identity, in the long period from the thirteenth (when it was decisively formed) to the nineteenth century (when it was officially replaced by the Hellenic national identity), was not static, but developed in response to major political changes in different times and different places, and one can argue that its many transformations allow us to speak of not only one but many Romaic identities (ethnic, religious, political, linguistic, cultural). On the other hand, some people in this long period described themselves as Graikoi and this leaves us with at least three ‘competing’ names Hellenes, Graikoi and Romaioi, all of which have an ancient pedigree and were discussed in the context of the Greek Enlightenment as possible options for the name of the new emerging nation that created the Greek nation-state in the nineteenth century. The names and the discussion are well-known, but modern and contemporary scholarship usually ignores the details: what was the actual dissemination of these names, what were their weight and components, were they all used as markers of ethnic identities in pre-modern times and by whom? This chapter presents and discusses the various appearances and perceptions of Hellenes, Graikoi and Romaioi in the pre-modern period from late Byzantium to the Greek nation-state, in both quantitative and qualitative terms. With the use of modern technology (TLG), separate indexing of primary sources, and secondary bibliography, it offers an overall picture that differs significantly from the one usually provided by the modern Greek national narrative. This difference is so striking that inevitably calls for a discussion of the ways in which generations of modern and contemporary scholars have imagined, negotiated and treated pre-modern terms of self-designation and identities, something that is attempted at the end of the chapter. The case made in the chapter regarding Hellenes, Graikoi and Romaioi is so strong that it may hopefully change the customary approaches of how late- and post-Byzantine Greek-speaking people perceived or imagined their ancient past and how our contemporary scholarship explores the relationship between antiquity and modern Greece.