We have Lars Brownworth here. We're talking about Byzantine history and we have a question from Rob He says Edward Gibbon refers to the Byzantines as the Greeks But the Empire is made up of the Commonwealth of people IE serves in Bulgarians. They all speak Greek and they see themselves as Greek That's a very good question. Did they all speak Greek? No, but Greek was the dominant language They were to the end in Empire made up of many different languages. In fact, you have Medieval travelers to Constantinople Complaining about the fact that you walk into the street and you can hear 12 different languages and you're not really sure what's going on But Greek always was the dominant language. It was the language of culture of tradition Did the Byzantine see themselves as Greek not as we use the word Greek today? the word Helene Had a pagan connotation so they called themselves Roman oil, which of course means Roman but more than that in a broader sense it means civilized In other words someone who had a classical education Dip their bread and oil cross themselves from right to left Was civilized was a Roman National identities American British etc. There very much a modern notion Moving outward most ancient and medieval people would have considered themselves belonging to a particular family and then a village or a town and then possibly a region Beyond that there was probably a dim view of Christendom But certainly not a sense of being a German or a Spaniard a Byzantine would have divided the world into two basic parts those who had civilization Romans and those who didn't barbarians It wasn't necessarily a haughty thing the term barbarian has negative connotations today, but not back then The Persians for example were viewed as refined worthy adversaries who were respected on the battlefield But they were not right thinking they didn't acknowledge the one true emperor the ruler of the civilized world And they didn't recognize the true religion which was the orthodox version of Christianity They were there for barbarians no matter how impressive their society was So had you asked a Byzantine on the street? Do what do you consider yourself? You would have looked at you kind of funny and then said I'm a Roman Thanks a lot Lars and thanks to Rob for the question