Chapter 18 Two Historical Parallels: The Greek Nation under Roman and Turkish Rule D. A. Zakythinos, Academy of Athens There have been three major periods in Greek history during which the Greek nation has not been constituted as an indepen. dent, autonomous state, or as a number of such states: the periods of Roman, Frankish, and Turkish rule. This is an overschematic generalization, but it is necessary to limit the area of historical inquiry to the three periods in question and ignore a large number of phenomena that, though of intrinsic interest, were of only local importance or of an ephemeral nature and consequently do not form a solid foundation for the construction of general theories. Of the three periods under consideration, the period of Frankish rule differed from the other two in that it did not present an aspect of unity or universality. Frankish domination was imposed on Greece after the capture of Constantinople by the Latins and the dissolution of the Byzantine state (1204), which was suc- ceeded not by another single empire but by a number of more or less independent states: the Latin Empire of Constantinople, the short-lived kingdom of Thessaloniki, the principality of Achaea, the duchy of Athens, and other, smaller feudal principalities. ‘The Venetians acquired a more lasting control over parts of main- land Greece, and especially over Crete, over the Cyclades, for a short time over Cyprus, and over the Ionian Islands, where the rule of the Serenissima Republic continued until the Treaty of Campo- formio in 1797. The Greek resistance, which manifested itself immediately in a number of areas, crystallized at a very early date around three states, all of them claiming descent from the dismembered Byzan- tine Empire: the empire of Nicaea, the empire of Trebizond, and the despotate of Epirus. These were later joined by a fourth after the occupation of Lakonia and the establishment there of a strong Greek state, the despotate of the Morea. It is therefore inaccurate to speak of the Greek nation not wielding sovereign 312Two Historical Parallels 313 power at this time, and it is clear that the period of Frankish rule is morphologically different from the other two in that it failed to create a unified state and also in that the Byzantine Empire con- tinued to exist in a variety of forms, all of them exhibiting a ten- dency toward unity. The periods of Roman and Turkish rule are both characterized by greater unity and are much clearer cases.' Roman rule was the result of the gradual extension of Roman control in the East. Beginning in the Balkan peninsula, it spread to the islands in the eastern Mediterranean, to all the territories bordering on it, and to the Black Sea and the Red Sea. This policy of conquest was punctuated by a number of major landmarks: the initial interven- tion of Rome against the Illyrians in 229 B.C.; the battle of Pydna in 168; the destruction of Corinth in 146; the acquisition by Rome of direct control of the kingdom of Pergamum and the for- mation of the province of Asia in 133-129; the conquest of Syria and Palestine in 63; and finally the conquest of Egypt in $0 B.C. The territories in the northern part of the Balkan peninsula were subjugated and formed the provinces of Illyricum, Upper and Lower Moesia, and Dacia. The whole of the Balkan peninsula, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa were thus united under Roman rule in the two hundred years between the middle of the second century B.C. and the middle of the first century A.D.? ‘The geographic expansion of the Ottoman Empire followed a similar pattem, though in this case the movement was from the east. The Osmanlis were originally an obscure Turkish tribe whose existence is first noted in Bithynia during the last decades of the thirteenth century. They first appeared on the stage of history on 27 July 1302, when they defeated the Byzantine armies at the battle of Bapheus near Nikomedeia, a victory that marked the beginning of the rapid rise of Turkish power, which ended in the founding of the Ottoman Empire. The major landmarks in the conquest of Asia, Europe, and Africa were: the capture of Brusa (6 April 1326); the capture of Nicaea (2 March 1331); the descent on Gallipoli (2 March 1354); the conquest of Adrianople in 1361; the battle of the Maritsa (26 September 1371); the captures of Serres (1383), of Sophia (1393), and of Thessaly (1394); the battle of Nikopolis (25 September 1396); the final subjugation of ‘Thessaloniki (1430) and that of Ioannina (1430), the conquest of Serbia (1439 onward); the battle of Varna (10 November 1444); and the fall of Constantinople and subsequent dismantling of the314 D. A. Zakythinos Byzantine Empire (29 May 1453). There followed the collapse of the despotate of the Morea (1460), the empire of Trebizond (1461), Euboea (1470), Naupactus (1499), Modon and Coron (1500), Rhodes (1522), Cyprus (1571), and finally Crete (1669). In the meantime, Ottoman sovereignty had been established in Egypt in 1517.3 Both the Roman and Ottoman Empires were thus formed by conquest. Chronologically they are separated by an interval of about fifteen centuries. In geographic terms, the heartland of each covered much the same territory—an area centering on the eastern Mediterranean and divided between the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Roman Empire, of course, also included the Italian peninsula and Rome’s other European possessions until 395, when it was finally divided into Eastern (pars Orientis) and Western (pars Occidentis) sections. The Ionian Islands, under the control of the Venetians, the Ionian Sea, and the Adriatic con- stituted the general line of the western border of the Ottoman Empire. Typologically, the Roman and Ottoman states were both empires (imperia). According to one recent definition “l'empire en tant que grande puissance est un Etat souverain, s*étendant durant un certain temps sur un vast térritoire, habité par de multiples groups socio-politiques placés sous l’autorité d’un méme gouvernant ayant une politique tendant a ’hégémonie.™ The main features of an empire are thus its great territorial extent, the exercise of authority by a single agent throughout the entire state, its continued existence over time, the multiracial composition of the social groups of which it is comprised, and the tendency toward absolute rule. Both empires are secondary, in that they derived from a gradual process of conquest of great states that had already reached an advanced stage of political and social decomposition: the Roman Empire from the disintegration of the empire of Alexander the Great and the decline of the Hellenistic kingdoms; the Ottoman, from the decline and disintegration of the Byzantine Empire, the Byzantine-inspired Balkan states, and, locally, from the dismem- berment of the Asian state of the Seljuk Turks. Both empires were multinational states in which the conquerors formed a minority, the relative size of which varied in different areas. There was also local variation in religious belief, education, evel of culture, and mentality and intellectual and psychological make-up of the inhabitants. In their advance eastward, Hellenism and the Roman Empire had assimilated the religions of Asia andTwo Historical Parallels 315 Egypt alongside the traditional Olympian gods and the Roman Pantheon. The Magna Mater, Isis, Mithra and a host of other gods and goddesses all found their way into the complicated pattern of the Roman Pantheon. Similarly, in addition to Islam and Greek Orthodoxy, the state of the Osmanlis embraced a number of religious beliefs, heterodoxies, and heresies of both these faiths. Both empires came into contact politically and culturally with Greece and Greek education before they reached the height of their power. The scale of this contact differed considerably, of course, and the influence exercised by it on the two empires was in no way comparable, in terms either of its intensity and depth or of the nature and quality of it. Rome came into contact at a very early date with the flourishing Greek civilization of Magna Graecia, Campania, Lucania, Apulia, and Calabria and Bruttium, and at a later date with that of Greek Sicily after the conquest of that island.’ Greek influences on Rome are as old as the city itself, and recent writers speak of the Hellenization of religion, art, and literature from as early as the fourth, third, and second centuries B.C.” The comment of Henri-Iréneé Marrou is representative: Cas particulier du fait fondamental qui domine toute lhis- toire de la civilisation romaine: une civilisation autonome proprement italienne n’a pas eu le temps de se développer parce que Rome et l'Italie se sont trouvé intégrées dans l’aire de la civilisation grecque; parcourant rapidement les étages qui séparaient leur barbarie rélative du niveau de culture atteint précocement par l’Hellade, elles se sont assimilé avec une remarquable facilité d’adaption, la civilisation hellenisti- que. . . . S'il demeure légitime de parler d’une culture latine, cest en tant que facies secondaire, variété particuliére de cette civilisation unique.* ‘The origins of the tribe of the Osmanlis before their move to Bithynia are lost in obscurity. For the carly period of its history, transitional between a nomadic or seminomadic existence and settlement in a permanent territory, the sources are scanty and confused. A new period in the progress of the Ottomans toward urban life was ushered in by the capture of the great cities of Brusa (1326), Nicaea (1331) and Nikomedeia (1337). The early decades of the fourteenth century thus saw the addition to the original Turkoman and Seljuk substratum of elements deriving from an urban and Greek environment. There are early references316 D. A. Zakythinos to contacts between Greeks and the newcomers, though religious and political factors, as well as fundamental differences of outlook, meant that the influence exercised by the Greeks on the Turkish conquerors was limited. It occurred mainly in the sphere of insti- tutions and the systems of government and taxation, in the field of diplomacy, and in the area of land tenure and cultivation. It has been observed that the mutual influences felt by the two popula- tions belong mainly in the sphere of Volkskultur. It should also be noted, however, that a large number of Byzantine institutions were handed on to the Ottomans through Seljuk syncretism. The rise of the Turkish state was accompanied by a correspond- ing growth of Byzantine influence, which reached its peak a few decades before and during the first century after the fall of Con- stantinople. One piece of evidence for this phenomenon is the wide use of Greek as the language of international relations.” The turning of Turkish attention to Asia Minor and the conquest of Syria (1516), Egypt (1517), the Persian territories on the Euphrates (1534), and southern Arabia (1568) had the effect of weakening the Greek influence on the empire and of intensifying the Islamic nature of its culture. The Sultans turned once more to the Greek element in the empire during the seventeenth century, and particularly after the second attack on Vienna (1638) when they abandoned their schemes of conquest in favor of European- style diplomacy." The dissolution by the Romans of the kingdom of Egypt, the last of the Hellenistic states, in 30 B.C.; the fall of Constantinople, and with it the Byzantine Empire, to the Turks on 29 May 1453; and the capture of the Peloponnesos in 1460 and of Trebizond, capital of the Greek empire of Pontos, in 1461, were all events that resulted in an immensely significant change in the history of the Greek nation. On each occasion, the states that formed the legally constituted framework through which the Greeks exercised their political activity were obliterated; in other words, there no longer existed any independent Greek state. The state is defined by G. Jelinek as “a people permanently established in a particular country, organised as a legal body, and possessing political sover- eignty,” and Nikolaos Saripolos observes that “political sovereign- ty, or authority in its own right is one of the main hallmarks of the state, which differs from other legal bodies in that it assumes the prerogative of the sole exercise of political power, issuing commands to free individuals and compelling the observation of them.” In the case of both the Hellenistic states and the decliningTwo Historical Parallels 317 years of Byzantium, the sovereign authority of the Greeks was fragmented, but this does not conflict with the general rule. Though Hellenism was divided, it constituted an ideal community over and above the boundaries of space and time. It was precisely through this ideal community, existing without reference to particular events and circumstances, that Hellenism continued to flourish during the long periods of time that it did not constitute an independent sovereign state. In the received histori- cal and sociological terminology, the Roman and Turkish con- quests were periods during which the Greeks were deprived of the ability to form a state and merely constituted a nation. According to the definition of R. Johannet, a nation is “the concept of a collective body, which may vary in inspiration, self-consciousness, intensity and size, and which has some relationship with the state either in that it represents a once unified state that no longer exists, or in that it coincides with an existing unified state, or in that it aspires or has the tendency to found a unified state in the future.” The first and third parts of this definition are applicable to the periods with which we are concerned. During the periods of domination by the Romans and the Otto- man Turks, the Greek nation was isolated in the midst of barbar- ian peoples, geographically fragmented, and torn by civil strife and political dissension. Despite the fact that it had been defeated on the battle field and had been compelled to yield to the superior force of the barbarians, however, it preserved its creativity intact. The path it had to follow was a difficult one, deprived as it was of the power to control its own destiny, but it continued to flourish in terms of its intellectual achievements and influence. On the eve of the Roman conquest, the Hellenism of Greece proper was manifestly in decline. The center of gravity, however, had long since shifted to the east. This period commenced with the campaigns of Alexander the Great (334-323), which marked a turning point in world history. From that time until the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, the history of the Eurasian and Mediterranean civilizations presents a unified appearance, despite its gaps. Unless this point is fully grasped, it is impossible to arrive at a correct historical interpretation of Greece or Rome, of the spread of Christianity, of Byzantium, or in the final analysis, of the foundations of the European spirit. It has pertinently been observed that Alexander “introduced a new civilisation.” Although his empire disintegrated in political terms, its achievements were enduring, for the real significance of his campaign lay in “giving a318 D. A. Zakythinos vigorous and decisive impetus to a movement that had started before his time, but which had so far existed only on a limited scale: the expansion of the Greeks and their culture outside the bounds of the old Greek world.” With the publication of the first edition of J. G. Droysen’s classic Geschichte des Hellenismus," the period of Alexander’s successors and the Hellenistic kingdoms was restored to its right- ful place in the history of the Greek nation. Since that time, research has furnished a wealth of new material, particularly from epigraphic and papyrological sources. New horizons are being opened to historians, and it is now seen as one of the great periods in the history of the Greek spirit. A change of enormous signifi- cance took place in the Hellenistic kingdoms between 323 and 30 B.C.: the East was Hellenized and united in the process. “The destruction of the Persian state and its conquest by Alexander marked a great change in the fortunes of Greek civilisation.” So said Edouard Will in his recent book. The Greeks n’avaient pas vu s’ouvrir 4 eux une telle possibilité d’expan- sion géographique depuis le fin de la ‘‘colonisation” archai- que (VII-VI siecle); encore cette premiére expansion n’avait elle affecté, de facon plus punctuelle que continue, que certains régions littorales de la Méditerranée et de ses mers bordiéres, alors que c’est a présent immense masse du con- tinent asiatique et Ia vallée du Nil qui s’ouvrent a la présence hellénique.'* A number of fundamental changes occurred in the political, social, and economic institutions of the Greek world as a result of this expansion, But the civilization of the Hellenistic period (Hellenismus) “also (many would say mainly) constitutes a new chapter, the longest of all, in the history of the Greek spirit.”"* The Hellenistic period may not have produced immortal monu- ments comparable with those of the classical period, but the strength of its spirit and the boldness of its intellectuals were in no way inferior. It is therefore improper to speak of it in terms of decline; rather we are dealing with “orientation différente de la puissance créatrice.”"” Art sought new forms; literature showed a preference for particular genres; the Stoics renewed the founda- tions of moral philosophy; and most important, the natural and literary sciences and technology entered a decisive phase of their development.'® Hellenistic education is of paramount importanceTwo Historical Parallels 319 for the historian who is not content to contemplate intellectual matters merely as creative acts, whether literary, artistic, or scientific, but who perceives them as social phenomena involving the meeting, interacting, and fusion of cultures. One form of the Greek language, the koine, became the major international me- dium for the movement of ideas, and the sole vehicle for interna- tional communication and higher education.'” ‘A similar outburst of intellectual activity and a comparable increase in international influence accompanied the protracted death throes of the Byzantine Empire. After its spirited resistance to the Latin conquest, and its partial recovery, Byzantine Hellen- ism struggled to achieve geographic unification. The end of the thirteenth century, however, ushered in a long period of political, military, and economic decline resulting from external pressures and internal dynastic, political, social, and religious cleavages. Nonetheless, the last two centuries of its painful decline were a period of exceptional intellectual and artistic activity. The Palaeologan Renaissance was achieved amid disaster, con- flict, and ruins; yet it was an astonishingly comprehensive revival. Art is the field in which it can best be observed. Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Mystras, Thessaly and Epirus, Thrace, northern Macedonia, the islands, and the distant Slavic centers contain the finest remains. A huge artistic community came into being through- out the whole of the Orthodox world and beyond. Hellenism was politically in decline, but a vigorous regeneration of thought and literature is observable in a number of areas, such as the capital, which was increasingly deserted with the passage of time; in Thessaloniki, which was shaken by social movements; in Epirus, the Peloponnesos, and Trebizond. Significant contribu- tions were made in every field of letters. Freed from the restraints of the court, an original and flexible popular literature developed. The ancient classics became the subject of philological study. Under the cover of religious strife and heresy was concealed speculation about the major problems of the human spirit. Philos- ophy was much more open to influences from the current ideas of Western intellectuals; with the passage of time, it gradually freed itself from the heritage of theology and steadily developed its own methods. The Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Italy were all exposed to Greek influence.” The paradox of military and political decay being accompanied by a flourishing of intellectual activity is undoubtedly to be ex- plained in terms of the very close contacts between the Byzantine320 D. A. Zakythinos world and the fecund springs of Hellenism in its birthplace. The revival of Greck patriotism during the last decades of the empire was reflected throughout the entire Christian world. When the final collapse came, a veritable army of intellectuals became part of the diaspora and traveled to the European countries, bringing with them the message of Greece.! The Greek nation, though entering a new period of its history under foreign suzerainty, was clearly at the height of its intellectual powers, and even in its fall created a new Hellenismus, in Droysen’s sense of the term, through its international values,?? The year 1976 marked the two-hundredth anniversary of the publication of the first volume of one of the most distinguished works of European historiography—the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788), by the British historian Edward Gibbon. The year 1977 was the hundredth anniversary of the appearance of the seven volumes of the History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time (146 B.C.- ‘A.D. 1864), in which H. F. Tozer gathered together the writings of another British historian, George Finlay, on the history of Greece from 146 B.C. to A.D, 1864, The volume dealing with Greece under Roman rule (146 B.C.-A.D. 716) had appeared separately in 1844. These two works are very different in conception and are written from totally different standpoints, but both have had a profound effect on historiography throughout the world. We are today in a position to review the period that has elapsed since the publication of these works and to note the enormous changes of interpretation resulting from subsequent scholarship. These derive not only from the discovery of new sources but also from a more general change in the modern historical interpretation of the later Roman Empire, Byzantium, the Turkish and Latin periods, and even the history of modern Greece. A number of special studies published on the occasion of the hundredth anni- versary of the publication of Gibbon’s History give very lucid accounts of the progress achieved during these two centuries.? It should be noted at this point that modern Greek historians in particular long adopted a negative stance toward the periods of Roman and Turkish domination. Authors writing in the first half of the nineteenth century viewed the battle of Chacroncia as marking the end of the ancient world and thought of the whole of the subsequent history of Hellenism up to 1821 as a dark period of decadence over which lay the “black mantle of slavery.” The pioneering works of Spyridon Zambelios and KonstantinosTwo Historical Parallels 321 Paparthigopoulos opened the way for a radical revision of their position, Nonetheless, the outmoded interpretations still hover over historical science, perpetuating mistaken views and per- vasively affecting the historical education of the Greeks.” The Roman and Turkish dominations of Greece, when evaluated and judged in the light of the present state of our knowledge, were clearly both great periods in the history of Greece, and the lessons to be drawn from the study of them are illuminating and inspire optimism, It should be stated immediately that this is not to underestimate the disasters, the persecutions, the incalculable destruction of human life and material property, the slavery and the bitter humiliation suffered in these periods. But great periods in history are not measured in terms of the sacrifices they entail. Great periods are those that succeed in transforming the disasters and ruins into dynamic forces, into the instruments of regenera- tion, and into national and international values in which the intel- lect rules supreme. Despite the fact that, during both periods under consideration, Hellenism lost its sovereignty and independence, not only did it retain its individual identity as a national, and to some extent an administrative, unit, but it succeeded in accomplishing what it had failed to achieve under more favorable political conditions: under foreign domination, it formed itself into a broad national and moral community. Under the Romans, this community took shape within the small unit of the city, whereas in the Ottoman period the framework was supplied by the wide organizational network of the church. The city, with its religious, institutional, economic, emotional, and educational structure, was the most important focus on which the activity of the Greeks centered during the Roman period. The policy of founding new cities reached its height under Alexander and his successors, the rulers of the Hellenistic kingdoms. The range of meaningful political activity open to the cities was in- creasingly restricted, particularly after the Lamian War (323-322) and subsequently under the Romans, but until the end, the Greek cities continued to assimilate from and exercise a civilizing influ- ence on both the peoples of Asia and their conquerors. The creation of the city-state, an institution of purely Greek origin, subsequently adopted by the Romans, was an event of incalculable importance in the history of mankind, for as Oswald Spengler ob- served, “I’histoire universelle est l'histoire des cités."** The Ro- mans, having exploited the network of cities in order to extend322 D. A, Zakythinos and maintain their sovereignty, ultimately fell victim to it. The Roman Empire was “an agglomerate of cities (civitates-poleis), self-governing communities." The activity and influence of the Greeks during the Roman period was multifaceted, aggressive, and ultimately victorious. If Horace had not died in 8 B.C. but had been able to see the found- ing of Constantinople in A.D. 324, he would surely have felt that his prophetic verses, “Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes / intulit agresti Latio” had been far outstripped by reality. The problem of the relations between the two great peoples of antiquity, the Greeks and the Romans, has been the subject of new research in recent years. A. H. M. Jones, one of the most dis- tinguished Roman historians, has observed that ‘The most sur- prising feature of Roman rule in the Greek East is that despite its Jong duration it had so little effect on the civilisation of the area,” and he adds, “The influence was indeed in the other direction.”?” During the course of their history, the Greeks and the Romans leveled many charges against each other, for all that there was no real conflict of interest between the two peoples.** Their exposure to Greek education had prepared the conquerors for their historic change. Beyond the boundaries of the Greco-Roman world, in Asia, in Africa, and in northern Europe, moved the hostile world of the barbarians, organized in some areas, less well organized in others, either free or bearing the yoke of domination with reluc- tance; and this fact tended to bring the two peoples closer to- gether. The result was that with the passage of time the Greeks became partners in the worldwide empire of Rome, though this occurred tacitly and quietly, without the establishment of an official mechanism or any agreement in principle. Each partner made his own contribution to this curious condominium and gained his own successes. Greek writers such as Aclius Aristides in the second century A.D. and Themistius in the fourth, defined the roles of the two peoples. In their view, the dual monarchy was an expression of the universal nature of Roman power on the one hand, and of Greek literature and education on the other.2? The dominating position attained by the Greek language under the Roman Empire symbolizes perfectly the degree to which the empire was Hellenized. Roman writers agree. Suetonius (ca. A.D. 75-150) attributes to the emperor Claudius (41-54) the expres- sion uterque sermo noster, referring to Latin and Greek; and the Romans frequently used expressions such as utrague lingua, utra- que oratio, while the Greeks spoke of hé hekatera glatta, hé heteraTwo Historical Parallels 323 glotta. Greek became an official language of administration after the conquest of the eastern provinces, and Greece thereby ac- quired far-flung linguistic borders to compensate for the loss of her narrow political boundaries. The Roman Empire was bi- lingual.?° Rome’s world empire rested on Greek foundations. The Roman state was transformed by the process of conquest. In contrast with its earlier conquests, this one had been preceded by the achieve- ment of a unified civilization, and for this reason its results were more enduring. As Jacques Pirenne has observed, the Roman Empire was, in the final analysis, a Hellenistic state.°" Consequently “a comprehensive study of Hellenistic civilization or of the Hellen- istic world ought to include the study of Roman civilization, at least in the imperial centuries, and not merely in the eastern provinces of the empire. This fact is manifestly a vindication of those historians who extend their analysis of Hellenistic civiliza- tion down to Christian times.”?? F. E. Peters has recently gone even further and speaks of ‘Latin Hellenism” and “Greek Hellen- ism”: “Both branches, the Latin and the Greek, came under the political dominion of the ecumenical Roman Empire, and the European’s eyes are naturally directed to the process whereby Hellenism gradually transformed that Roman state and eventually produced the cultures of Europe and America.” The history of the Roman Empire in the East belongs properly and irrevocably within the sphere of Greek history. It was an epoch of great creativity and as such formed an unbroken contin- uation of the civilizing mission of the period of Alexander and the Hellenistic period, with which it fused to mark a turning point in the history of mankind. Greek Byzantium was nurtured by it, and the syncretism of its education made possible the rapproche- ment of Hellenism and Christianity. We saw earlier that religious and political factors combined with fundamental differences of intellectual outlook to inhibit the development of any real communication between Greeks and Ottomans during the Turkish period. The conqueror, for reasons stemming from his own legal system, as well as from more general considerations of political expediency, recognized the religious autonomy of the conquered; the Greek patriarchs were allowed to exercise religious authority over all the Orthodox peoples in the empire. With the passage of time, this developed into a de facto decentralization of religious, legal, and administrative power. This phenomenon played a crucial role in creating the necessary324 D. A. Zakythinos preconditions for Greek religious, economic, social, and intellec- tual life.™* The Ottoman conqueror, like the Roman governor or emperor before him, was aware of the superiority of the culture of the con- quered and frequently felt an attraction for and was influenced by their state, political, and intellectual systems. From the seven- teenth century onward, the institutions of the grand dragomans, the dragomans of the fleet, and the rulers of Wallachia and Mol- davia developed as Greek institutions within the cultural and administrative framework of Ottoman rule and firmly established a Greek presence in the state machinery of the empire. This chapter in Greek history, dealing with the influence exercised by the Greeks on the general life of the conquerors, remains to be written.s The presence of Hellenism within the administrative and social systems of the Ottoman state constituted only one aspect, and perhaps the least important, of the international influence exercised by the Greeks. The effects of Hellenism were felt on a very wide scale, extending to the Christians of the Balkans enslaved by the Turks, the Orthodox peoples of Eastern Europe, the Christian minorities of the Near East, and finally to Western Europe itself. The church was the vehicle through which the ecumenical spirit of post-Byzantine and modern Hellenism was transmitted. The Greek churches—the patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem—and the Russian church, which was in- fluenced by the Greek, the patriarchate of Moscow, which was formed in 1589, were the basis for the creation of a unified cul- ture within a broad nonpolitical society that was firmly Greek (one might even say Hellenistic) in its origins. From the very first centuries of the conquest, Byzantine art, together with its post-Byzantine extensions, was the major graphic expression of this huge cultural community, constituting at once a silent language, a canon of faith and belief, and a symbol of self- assertion and resistance. The other language, spoken and written Greek, transcended the boundaries of the mainly Greek territories and became a widely used instrument of communication. The Humanism of the Renaissance, which flourished in the decline of Byzantium and was transplanted and cultivated in Western Europe, was followed by a broad spectrum of other intellectual move- ments: the religious humanism of the seventeenth and early-eight- eenth centuries; the Enlightenment of the second half of the eighteenth and the carly-nineteenth centuries, which was nurturedTwo Historical Parallels 325 in the urban centers of Hellenism; and international Hellenism in contact with the literature of antiquity and the modern ideologies of Europe.** There is no need here to examine at length the question of the international values achieved by Hellenism under foreign domina- tion. It need only be stated that, during this great period, Eastern Europe in many ways played a role resembling that of the East in the intellectual life of the Roman imperial period. In both, Greek education was universal and achieved a syncretism of the intellec- tual tendencies of the Near East under Greek leadership. The bold proposals of Rhigas for unity in the political and social sphere had already been realized in practice in the sphere of the intellect. This inquiry into these two long periods during which the Greeks did not constitute a sovereign state has not proved vain: though they were separated by many centuries, they exhibited a large number of common features, and this is no coincidence. In the past, and perhaps in some quarters still today, both were believed to be periods of decline and decay—dark and shadowy blemishes on an otherwise brilliant picture. This was not the case. On the contrary, both were great, creative periods—great in terms of the misfortune suffered in them, and great for the Greeks and the peoples of the Balkans and the Near East. The verdict of modem historians on both periods, and especially on the Roman, is unanimous, as some of the remarks quoted above illustrate. The Roman and Turkish periods deserve our particular attention, not only as fields for academic research, but also as crucial sub- jects in the historical and national education of the Greeks. The French academic André Siegfried wrote that “in the pys- chology of peoples there exists a substructure that can always be traced.”>7 This statement springs to mind as one examines these two parallel periods of Greek history. Today we are moving away from the Hegelian concept that there exists in peoples an intellect through which the intellect of the world is revealed; but we can recognize the unity of the intellectual fabric of the Greek con- science. In the psychology of the Greeks, there exists that perma- nent substructure that can always be traced. Notes 1. Volumes 6, 10, and 11 of The History of the Greek Nation (Ekdotike Athenon) (Athens 1974-1976) are devoted to the Roman and Turkish periods.326 D. A. Zakythinos 2. Andfe Aymard, Rome et son empire, histoire générale des nations, vol. 2 (Paris, 1954), André Piganiol, La conguéte romaine, 5th ed. (Paris, 1967). 3, Ernst Werner, Die Geburt einer Grossmacht—Die Osmanen (1300- 1481): Ein Beitrag zur Genesis des tiirkischen Feudalismus, Forschungen zur mittelalterlichen Geschichte (Berlin, 1966). Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600 (London, 1973). 4. J. Gilissen, “La notion d’empire dans histoire universelle: Les grands empires,” Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin pour Vhistoire comparative des institutions, vol. 31 (Brussels, 1973), p. 793. This weighty volume contains the studies announced at the meeting of the Société Jean Bodin in Rennes between 11 and 15 October 1966. Of particular interest for the subjects dis cussed in the present article are the contributions on the empire of Alexander the Great (by Claire Préaux), on the Roman Empire (by Roger Rémondon), ‘on the Byzantine Empire (by Héléne Ahrweiler), and on the Ottoman Empire (by T. Gokbilgin). 5. Cf, the classic work by Franz Cumont, Les réligions orientales dans le paganisme romain, 4th ed. (Paris, 1929). 6.M. B. Chatzopoulos, The Hellenism of Sicily during the Roman Period (264-44 B.C.) (in Greek) (Athens, 1976). 7. Henrislrénée Marrou, Histoire de V'éducation dans Wantiquité, 4th ed. (Paris, 1958) pp. 329 ff. Aymard, Rome, pp. 175 ff. K. N. Iliopoulos, Roman Policy in Latin Writers and Their National Consciousness (in Greek) (Athens, 1974). Idem, Phithellene and Anti-Hellene Trends in Ancient Rome and Roman Humanism (in Greek) (Athens, 1975). 8. Marrou, Histoire de l'éducation, pp. 829 ff. 9.S. Lambros, “Greck as the Official Language of the Sultans,” Neos Hellenomnemon 5 (1908):40~78; idem, “Greek Public Letters of the Sultan Bayezid II,” ibid., pp. 155-189 (both in Greek). F. Babinger and F. Dalger, “Mehmed I frithester Staatsvertrag (1446),” in Byzantinische Diplomatik, ed. F. Délger (Ettal, 1956), pp. 262-291. A. Bombaci, “Due clausole del trattato in greco fra Mahometto II e Venezia, del 1446," BZ 43 (1950):267- 271. Idem, “Nuovi firmani greci di Mahometto II,” BZ 47 (1954): pp. 298- 319. Héléne Ahrweiler, “Une lettre en grec du sultan Bayezid II (1481- 1512),” Turcica: Revue des études turques 1 (1969): pp. 150-160. Elisabeth A. Zachariadou, “Early Ottoman Documents of the Prodromos Monastery (Serres),” Siidost Forschungen 28 (1969):1-12. 10.G. Georgiades Arnakis, The First Ottomans: A Contribution to the Problem of the Collapse of Hellenism in Asia Minor (1282-1337) (in Greek) (Athens, 1947), pp. 70 ff. Speros Vryonis, “The Byzantine Legacy and Otto- man Forms,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 23/24 (1969-1970):251-308. Idem, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamiza. tion from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971). 11. Cf. D. A. Zakythinos, Introduction to the History of Civilisation (in Greek) (Athens, 1955), pp. 54 ff.Two Historical Parallels 327 12, Ibid., pp. 38 ff. 18, André Aymard, “L’Orient et la Gréce antique,” Histoire générale des civilisations, vol. 1 (Paris, 1953), pp. 287 ff. Cf. the truly pioneering remarks of Spyridon Zambelios with respect to Hellenism and on the “fusion of Greece and the East": Folk Songs of Greece (in Greek) (Corfu, 1852), pp- 37 ff. 14. J. G. Droysen, Geschichte des Hellenismus (1838-1843; 2d ed. 1877- 1878). 15. E. Will, C. Mossé and P. Goukowsky, Le monde grec et l'Orient, vol. 23 Le IVe siécle et l'époque hellénistique: Peuples et civilisations (Paris, 1975) pp. 337 ff, with bibliography. 16. Ibid., p. 567. 17. Aymard, “L'Orient et la Gréce antique,” p. 499. 18. Ibid., pp. 470 ff., 499 ff. Will, Mossé, and Goukowsky, Le monde grec, pp. 567 ff., 583 ff., 608 ff. 19.Cf. Antoine Meillet, Apergu d'une histoire de la langue grecque, 7th ed. (Paris, 1965), a work of fundamental importance. J. O. Hoffman, A. Dobrunner, and A. Scherer, Geschichte der griechischen Sprache, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1969). J. Humbert, Histoire de la langue grecque (Paris, 1972). 20. "Art et société a Byzance sous les Palologues” (actes du colloque organisé par I'Association international des études byzantines 4 Venise en septembre 1968), in Bibliotheque de UInstitut Hellénique d'études byzan- tines et post-byzantines de Venise, no. 4 (Venice, 1971). Steven Runciman, The Last Byzantine Renaissance (Cambridge, 1970). 21.D. A. Zakythinos, Byzantium: State and Society: A Historical Survey (in Greek) (Athens, 1951) pp. 143 ff. 22.D. A. Zakythinos, “Etats-sociétés-cultures: En guise d’introduction,” in “Art et société 4 Byzance sous les Paléologues, jyzance: Etat- société-economie, Variorum Reprints, no. 12 (London, 1973), p. 12. 23. Lynn White, Jr., ed., The Transformation of the Roman World: Gib- bon’s Problem after Two Centuries, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Con- tributions, (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966). Karl Christ, Von Gibbon zu Rostovtzeff: Leben und Werk fithrender Althistoriker der Neuzeit (Darm- stadt, 1972). Michel Baridon, Edward Gibbon et le mythe de Rome: Histoire et idéologie au siecle des lumieres (Paris, 1977). 24. D. A. Zakythinos, “Post-Byzantine and Modern Greek Historiography,” Praktika tis Akadimias Athinon 49 (1974):97*-103*; idem, “Spyridon Zambelios: The Historian of Byzantine Hellenism,” ibid., pp. 303*-328"; (both in Greek). 25. Oswald Spengler, Le déclin de U’Occident: Esquisse d'une morphologie de Vhistoire universelle, traduit de Vallemand par M. Tazerout, vol. 2 (Paris, 1948), p. 89. 26.A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284-602: A Social, Eco- nomic and Administrative Survey, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1964) p. 712 27.A. H. M. Jones “The Greeks under the Roman Empire Oaks Papers 17 (1963):1-19. Dumbarton328 D. A. Zakythinos 28.N. K. Petrokheilos, Roman Attitudes to the Greeks (Athens, 1974). 29. Gilbert Dagron, “L’Empire romain d’Orient au IVe siécle et les tradi- tions politiques de I'Hellénisme: Le témoinage de Thémistios,” in Travaux et Mémoires, Centre de Recherche d'Histoire et de Civilisation Byzantines, vol. 3 (Paris, 1968), pp. 1-203, Idem, “Aux origines de la civilisation Byzan. tine: Langue de culture et langue d'état,” Revue historique 241 (January- March 1969):23-56, Cf. D. A. Zakythinos, “The Tabula Imperii Romani and Research into the History of Hellenism under the Roman Empire" (in Greek), Praktika tis Akadimias Athinon 47 (1972):316* ff. 30.1. Lafoscade, “Influence du latin sur le grec,” in Jean Pischari, ed. Etudes de philologie néo-grecque, Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Hautes Etudes: Sciences Philologiques ct Historiques, vol. 92 (Paris, 1892), pp. 117 ff. Cf. Marrou, Histoire de Wéducation, pp. 345 ff., 542 ff. Jones, Later Roman Empire, vol. 2, pp. 986 ff.; vol. 3, pp. 330 ff. 81, Jacques Pirenne, “Les Empires du Proche-Orient et de la Méditerranée: Rapport de synthase,” in Les grands empires. 82, Will and Mossé, Le monde grec, p. 343. 33. F. E. Peters, The Harvest of Hellenism: A History of the Near East from Alexander the Great to the Triumph of Christianity (London, 1972), p22. 34. D. A. Zakythinos, The Making of Modern Greece: From Byzantium to Independence (Oxford, 1976). 35. Cf. the works referred to inn. 10. 36. Zakythinos, The Making of Modern Greece, pp. 140 ff. 37. A. Siegfried, L'éme des peuples (Paris, 1950), p. 5.