How did the object of study of the Greeks change from one period to the next?

Despite the loss of their political independence under Roman rule, the Greeks retained their traditional national identity as a "cultural people". The content of this identity consisted mainly in the identification with the homogeneity of their blood, language, religion, and way of life, the concept of the Greek-Barbarians dichotomy, and the identification with the Hellenized non-Greeks. While the content has not fundamentally changed, the way in which Greek national identity is realized has undergone several complex and subtle changes. One of these changes was the orientation of the identity towards a greater emphasis on cultural and historical traditions, within the context of acceptance and adaptation to Roman rule. Subsequently, the "Roman" and ****ist identity became the mainstay of Greek national identity in the Byzantine period.

[Key Words]National Identity/Greeks/Hellenization/Rome/***ization

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Until now, the Greek world during the period of Rome's domination is still in the "two-regardless" zone between the fields of domestic Greek history and Roman history. The potential reason for this situation may be the academic tradition that people usually take the country as the research unit of ancient civilization: the Roman conquest made the sovereignty of the Greek city-states and Hellenistic kingdoms cease to exist, and the history of Greece was written up to the Hellenistic era; and the writing and research of Roman history took the development of the Roman state as the explicit or implicit main axis, and the description of the situation of the Greeks in the Roman era was only a slapdash, let alone the description of the situation of the Greeks in the Roman era, and there was nothing that was based on the Greeks. The Greeks in Roman history have been described in a slapdash manner at best, not to mention the existence of a systematic treatise centered on the Greeks. However, from the point of view of both Greek and Roman history, the Greeks of the Roman era are an object of study that should not be neglected, and many of the achievements of classical Greek culture were created by them. And how they were able and how exactly they maintained their national existence and identity is undoubtedly one of the most important questions for understanding this part of their history and these achievements.

This paper is an attempt to address the above question, and its task is to utilize the relevant historical sources in an attempt to recover the overall picture of Greek national identity in the Roman era and to focus on the following perspectives: (1) the relationship between Greek national identity in the Roman era and that of the pre-Hellenic period; (2) the impact of the special relationship between the Romans and the Greeks on the Greeks' national identity; and (3) the role of Greek national identity in the ancient world. ) the final course of Greek national identity in late antiquity.

In the post-World War II period, international academics, whether in the West, the Soviet Union-Russia, China, or Japan, have experienced a generally consistent theoretical shift in the definition of "nation," that is, a shift from the previous measurement of the nation-state and the use of nation and nationality to refer to the nation, to a more and more consistent definition of national identity. The international academic community has experienced a generally consistent theoretical shift in the definition of "nation" from the previous practice of using nation-state as a criterion and nation and nationality to ethnos and ethnic group to refer to various kinds of ethnic groups that do not need to rely on the state for definition.

So how were the ancient Greeks referred to as a "nation"? During the 19th and half of the 20th centuries, many Western classicists were accustomed to thinking of the ancient Greeks as a nation that tried but failed to achieve political unity, and some scholars specifically explored the possibility of applying the terms nation and nationality to the Greeks. and nationality to the Greeks. For example, as late as the 1970s, the famous classicist Finlay also talked about, "If we insist on equating the nation (nation) with the nation-state, then in what sense are the Greeks a nation?" ② Nowadays, it has become a hot research topic in the field of classics to examine the national identity of the ancient Greeks as an ethnic group. The "nation" of the ancient Greeks mentioned in this paper is equivalent to the Western term ethnic group; accordingly, "ethnic identity" is equivalent to ethnic identity and ethnicity.

Secondly, from the point of view of the discourse systems of ancient and modern Greeks, the word ethnos in ancient Greek can, in different contexts, refer to something roughly equivalent to what is called "ethnicity" and "tribe" in modern languages, "tribe", "nation" (meaning, of course, the citizens of a city-state), and so on, and its usage is similar to the broader usage of ethnic group in modern Western languages, i.e., it is able to refer to "communities" of various sizes, and it refers to a wide range of people, such as "people", "tribes", "nations", and so on. Its usage is similar to the broader usage of ethnic group in modern Spanish, i.e., it can refer to "ethnic groups" of various sizes, and the largest group it refers to is the nation; in modern Greek, ethnos combines the meanings of both nation and ethnic group, which also happens to be semantically consistent with the Chinese word "民族" (民族). ③ Therefore, at least in the Chinese expression of this paper, the choice of the traditional term "nation" to refer to the whole group of ancient Greeks is closer to the discourse of the ancient Greeks themselves than the use of the new term "ethnic group".

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Under Roman rule, the Greeks, though they lost their political independence, did not Romanize like the peoples of the western Mediterranean world who were also conquered by the Romans, and instead maintained their traditional national identity as a "cultural nation" until the eve of the ****ization of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was not Romanized as the western Mediterranean nations were, but remained a "cultural nation" that maintained its traditional national identity until the eve of the Roman Empire. ④

The national identity inherited by the Greeks in the Roman era consisted of three main elements: the identity of the homogeneity of their own blood, language, religion and way of life; the concept of the Greek-Barbarian dichotomy; and the identity of the Hellenized non-Hellenic people. These elements were formed in the Archaic (776-480 BC), Classical (480-323 BC), and Hellenistic (323-31 BC) eras, and although they were formed in different sequences, they were closely connected and formed an organic ideological system. ideological system.

During the period from the end of the 8th century B.C. to the middle of the 6th century B.C., Hellenes ("Greeks") evolved from the name of a Greek tribe to a generic term for all Greeks. This ethnonym was itself, of course, the most distinctive mark under which the Greeks of the various tribes and city-states established their identity. Among the various behaviors and discourses of the Greeks of the Archaic and Classical eras regarding their own identity, there is probably no more classical expression than that of Herodotus: "to Hellenikon, eon homaimon te kai homoglosson, kai theon hidrymata te koina kai thysiai ethea te homotropa . " 5 where to Hellenikon can be understood both in the sense of "Greeks" and in the abstract sense of "Greek identity". In the latter sense, it is equivalent to the words Greekness, Greekhood, Hellenicity, grécité, etc. in modern Western languages. Thus, the phrase can be translated either as "Greeks have the same blood, the same language, the same temples, the same rituals, and the same customs" or as "Greek identity is the same blood, the same language, the same temples, the same rituals, and the same customs. ". Obviously, the verb "to be" (eon) and the tense form make this sentence look very much like a definition of "Greek" or "Greek identity".

National identity is not only a question of identifying with the self, but also of distinguishing the self from the other. It is also a question of distinguishing between "self" and "other", i.e., other peoples. More scholars believe that by the early 5th century BC, barbaroi (plural, singular barbaros) had evolved from an occasional term used to ridicule a foreign language to a concept opposed to "Greek" and constituting a term of contempt for all non-Greeks.6 This barbaroi in the eyes of the Greeks was a term of contempt for all non-Greeks, but it was also a term of contempt for the Greeks, who were not Greeks. The barbaroi in the eyes of the Greeks could not speak Greek and lacked reason; they lacked political freedom and were ruled by tyrants; they were intemperate, barbaric, savage and vicious; they were naturally slavish, etc. In Chinese, we usually refer to the barbaroi as the "Greeks", or "Greeks". We usually translate this barbaros in Chinese as "barbarians". The most fundamental factor contributing to the formation of the Greek-Barbarians dichotomy was the Hippocratic War. This war was the first successful pan-Hellenistic joint action of the Greeks against a foreign invasion. The external threat and the victory in the war prompted the Greeks to shift to a focus on self-definition from the outside, from the "other", from a non-Greek perspective. (7)

As early as the late classical era, Isocrates, speaking of the then still isolated phenomenon of Hellenization, had already predicted the increasingly widespread identification of Greeks with Hellenistic barbarians during the Hellenistic era: "The name 'Greek' no longer manifests itself as the name of a race ( genos), but rather the name of an intellect (dianoia); instead of calling those who share our origin (physis) 'Greeks,' those who possess our culture (paideusis) are called 'Greeks' '" ⑧ With the rulers of the Hellenistic kingdoms using Greek civilization as the cultural basis for their rule, the number of non-Greeks who received a Greek education and culture, spoke the Greek language, and practiced a Greek religion and way of life increased, and they were increasingly identified as Greeks. Language, religion and way of life are essentially the specific contents of "culture", and their identification is, in general, a cultural identity.

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The Greeks have always been a typical "cultural nation", whose homogeneity has never depended on political unity, and thus the content of their traditional national identity has not been changed by Roman rule. Due to the influence of Greek culture and the support of Rome, the process of Hellenization did not stop in the Roman era, but was further deepened and expanded. For example, the Hellenization of the Galatians, a group of Gauls who migrated to Asia Minor, took place in the Roman era. Until late antiquity, a large part of the upper social and intellectual classes in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire were Hellenized non-Greeks.

The use of the ethnic name "Greek" in Roman times was no different from that of the Hellenistic era. Those called "Greeks" were both ethnically Greek and Hellenized non-Greeks. Rome established the province of Achaia in mainland Greece, but no Greeks called themselves "Achaians" for this reason. The Macedonians were not considered Greeks before the Hellenistic era, but are explicitly listed as a tribe of Greeks in Roman inscriptions: "Makedosin kai tois loipois ethnesin tois" (Macedonians and other Greek tribes). Hellenikois). "The Greeks of Asia" (tois epi tes Asias Hellesin), "the Asiatic