cgf
FireBednarsSuccessor
Just like Egypt and you yet no fool would claim Egypt as greek empire when Cleopatra was Pharao.
A) Ptolemiac Egypt is actually considered a Hellenistic state...so even if that wasn't a bad comparison, you'd still be wrong.
B) Greeks ruling over Egyptians and adopting many egyptian customs to maintain their rule, is very different from Greeks, ruling over Greeks, according to greek customs. Which makes it a bad comparison for the later/eastern Romans/Byzantines...it would've been a much better comparison for the numerous Chinese empires that were ruled by foreign dynasties.
C) I think you're getting caught up by modern notions of nationality/ethnicity...which is why I tried to specify "the people we would now call greeks" initially and included my (probably apocryphal) anecdote from the modern Greek war of independence to illustrate that those people thought of themselves as Romans...but we would now classify as greeks.
The modern greek view is that the eastern roman empire was a part of their history where they predominantly ruled themselves. So whether they think it was "the" greek empire or not, doesn't matter to the conversation we were having. Prior to the founding of modern greece, it was the last state that was run & populated predominantly by greeks.
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