The Myth of the Equal Standing of Ethnic Elements in Byzantium

If the above were true, if the Greek-speaking population had not constituted the principal and most dynamic element in the Byzantine world, it would be inexplicable why the term Roman ultimately came to be identified with the Greek-speaking Christian. Let it be noted that already in 491, when the Emperor Zeno died – who was of the tribe of the Isaurians of Mount Taurus (and who had changed his barbarian name Trascalisseus to the Greek Zeno) – the people of Constantinople demanded a Roman emperor, meaning that the new emperor ought not once again to be some foreigner, an Isaurian or a German. The Isaurians were of course also subjects of the eastern Roman state, yet it is evident that in Constantinople at this period they were not yet regarded as “Romans.” They preferred Anastasius, who in the end received the crown. More correct than the theory of the equal standing of the ethnic elements appears to be Ostrogorsky’s view that Greek civilization and the Greek language gave the empire, after its early transitional phase, its distinctive character. N. M. Panagiotakis, too, rightly regards the Greek-speaking population as the “principal core and ruling class” of Byzantium. The local tribal elements in Asia Minor, insofar as they were not Hellenized linguistically, remained inert from a social and cultural standpoint and left insufficient evidence of their activity.

(Stylianos Alexiou, Dimodi Byzantina, Stigmi Publications, 1977, p. 175).