Cited from the chapter “The world a city: Romans of the East” by Anthony Kaldellis at the Ohio State University. Published by the Cambridge University on 24 December 2009.

“Just as the Byzantines referred to foreign peoples by classical names, making the Goths into Skythians and the Arabs into Medes, so too did they regularly call themselves Ausones, an ancient name for the original inhab-itants of Italy. This was the standard “classicizing” name that the Byzantines used for themselves, not “Hellenes”.

In short, the depth and seriousness of the Byzantines Roman identity should not be denied lightly or on false premises. For instance, it does not matter what they were called by their neighbors. That is no way to approach a culture to begin with: suppose we tried to understand those others based on what the Byzantines called them.

In addition, the Arabic (or Semitic in general), Armenian, Slavic, and Latin terminology for Byzantium was idiosyncratic, inconsistent, and reflected historical, antiquarian, linguistic, and political biases that do not reflect Byzantine self-ascriptions. Some modern Greek scholars actually prefer foreign usage, which they use selectively to imply that the Byzantines “really were Greeks, but had not realized it themselves.”

To the contrary, the Byzantines sometimes corrected foreign usage in translating texts, changing “Greek” to “Roman. “

Sources

Kaldellis A. “The world a city”: Romans of the East. In: Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition. Greek Culture in the Roman World. Cambridge University Press; 2008:42-119.

Michael Attaleiates, History 31, 214; Alexios I Komnenos, Muses, passim; Theodoros Prodromos, Poems, passim; Niketas Choniates, History 150. See Pitsakis (1995) 26-27. Countless more such references exist.