Blake Anderson su Medium parla della storia dell’Impero Romano dopo il 330 D.C. di come ne sia stata “negata” l’identità dagli storici e del perché questo è importante guardando la situazione attuale.

It then may surprise you to learn that for century after century, Anglophone historians and political leaders have asserted that roughly half of Rome’s multi-thousand-year existence wasn’t “Roman.” While we have allowed the Romans to call themselves Roman before 330 C.E., we have drawn a line in the sand there, and the state and people that continued past that point in time were posthumously rechristened with a new name in the 19th century: Byzantium.

Why did we make this distinction? After all, there were no major disruptions or revolutions that year. The Roman people did not stop calling themselves “Roman” in 330, nor did they long after the state’s collapse in 1453 C.E. Rome’s neighbors — Arabs, Iranians, and Turks — continued to recognize them as Romans. So, why don’t we?

The answer is complex, as one might expect with a millennial controversy, but is also imminently relevant to the politics of today. In my mind, the fraying of 20th-century institutions and the rise of ethno-nationalist sentiments across the globe prompt examining the genesis and entropy of identity. And what better subject to examine than the Romans.

 

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