MACEDONIAN HERITAGE IN THE (EASTERN) ROMAN EMPIRE

In his book The Sum of History, René Grousset addresses something that many—intentionally or not—tend to avoid: the Greek cultural roots and heritage of the Roman Empire, particularly its eastern part, the pars Graeca. Not only does he refer to Hellenism, but he credits its foundation and expansion to Alexander and the Macedonians.

"In all, the Romans showed themselves the conscious heirs of the Macedonians. Like them, they were the protagonists of Hellas in Asia. They Latinized only their western and barbarian provinces. Wherever they found Hellenism, they respected it as one of the two official forms of their dominion. East of the Ionian Sea and the Syrtes, the Roman Empire remained Greek. And the really Hellene period lasted long! Western Anatolia for example enjoyed Greek civilization from Alexander to Mithridates, while, in comparison, the Roman period lasted from Pompey to the Palaeologi: Hellenism owed to the Pax Romana the best of its conquests. Once Persia had been sacrificed as indefensible, Alexander conquered Asia in the days of the Caesars. In the East, Rome performed not her own work but that of Macedonia. Moreover, the Romans brought to the Greek world an inestimable force which Alexander and the Seleucids had veinly tried to confer on it: namely political unity. It was the Byzantine Empire which was to realize Alexander's Idea - the Macedonian Panhellenism - in face of an Asia in revolt, and realize it for the Greeks; but it was thanks to Rome, in the first place, that it was so realized".

(The Sum of History, p.159)

Modern historians often avoid discussing the Macedonians and their invaluable contribution to the Greek nation and civilization; furthermore, they frequently omit references to Hellenism and its uninterrupted continuity from the era of Alexander through Rome to the present day.

René Grousset does not hesitate to write clearly about all the above. Alexander, the Macedonians, and the rest of the Greeks extended the borders of Greece to the depths of Asia, and along with those borders, they expanded Greek civilization. New Greek colonies and Hellenistic urban centers were founded; Greek cultural influence reached its peak, and prosperity and progress were observed in the arts, literature, theater, architecture, music, mathematics, philosophy, and the sciences, with Greeks at the forefront. The Macedonian Koine was established as the lingua franca, and the Eastern Mediterranean was transformed into a Greek-speaking lake.

Roman rule was simply a succession of Macedonian rule. The Romans, being admirers of Greek culture themselves, in no way interrupted—nor could they have—the flowering of the pre-existing Macedonian Hellenistic civilization. On the contrary, they adopted it as the official form of their sovereignty. A significant example is the Macedonian Koine, which remained the lingua franca of the Balkans and the East, evolving into the official language of Rome, the Romaic of the Eastern Romans and the Greeks of  the era of Ottoman rule. Moreover, the Romans gave the Greeks what the Macedonians could not: a powerful, united state and laws, making the ideal of Macedonian Panhellenism a reality.