Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
Yet Xen you cannot by any argument you can make account for one simple fact : the Byzantine themselves considered their empire to be the Roman empire.
Different language, certainly, different culture, probably - but languages and cultures change over them ; that's simply the way of things.
But if you somehow teleported a byzantine here and asked him "Are you a Byzantine or a Roman?" (in a language he understood, of course), chance are he would say "I am Roman," (especially since the name Byzantium would have little to no meaning to them - their capital city was called Constantinople, after all).
As for your argument about cultural change and how an early empire roman would hardly recognize Constantinople...that's a given. In a 500+ years period, things change massively. But it's how the people think of themselves that matter. Today's Americans are very different from the 1776 ones on any number of things - yet today's americans still consider themselves part of the same civilization that was founded in 1776. And no one would dispute that they are.
The Byzantine empire is Rome because the byzantine, no matter how much they may have changed, thought of themselves as Romans still, and they were the "heirs" to the Roman empire (and thus had a legitimate claim to calling themselves romans).
Different language, certainly, different culture, probably - but languages and cultures change over them ; that's simply the way of things.
But if you somehow teleported a byzantine here and asked him "Are you a Byzantine or a Roman?" (in a language he understood, of course), chance are he would say "I am Roman," (especially since the name Byzantium would have little to no meaning to them - their capital city was called Constantinople, after all).
As for your argument about cultural change and how an early empire roman would hardly recognize Constantinople...that's a given. In a 500+ years period, things change massively. But it's how the people think of themselves that matter. Today's Americans are very different from the 1776 ones on any number of things - yet today's americans still consider themselves part of the same civilization that was founded in 1776. And no one would dispute that they are.
The Byzantine empire is Rome because the byzantine, no matter how much they may have changed, thought of themselves as Romans still, and they were the "heirs" to the Roman empire (and thus had a legitimate claim to calling themselves romans).
