Chapter 7 The first appearance of the “Greeks”, Anastasios Philippides
http://www.oodegr.com/english//biblia/r ... #Chapter_7

1) In Chapter 3 we mentioned how the subjects of the “Byzantine” Empire considered themselves Romans and how the Empire continued to call itself Roman, until its termination by the Turks. This was exactly what all the other peoples also knew them to be, who had any kind of contact with the Empire up until the 8th century. For example, the Arabs, who had conquered vast territories after 630 AD, were quite aware that they were conquering Romans (“Roum” in Arabic, as in Turkish too, later on). Even today, 1300 years later, there are, according to their own estimates, about 1.200.000 Orthodox Christians living in Syria and Lebanon, who speak Arabic, but declare themselves to be “Roum Ortodox”.

2) The narration up to the time of Heraclius presents no problems: “Heraclius, son of Heraclionus, assumed the governance of the ROMAN NATION.” [16] In fact, Tiberius, who acceded to the throne in 578, is clearly referred to as the “fiftieth emperor of the Romans”, in an uninterrupted succession from the Octavian Augustus. [17] Then, all of a sudden, the “Greeks” make their appearance around 650: “When the Greeks arrived in those days to plunder the sanctuary of the Holy Archangel [Michael], which was situated on mount Garganus, Grimwald [duke of the Longobards] attacked them with his army and slaughtered them.” [18] Further along, however, when referring to Constantine IV, he writes that “the governance of the Empire of the Romans was undertaken by Constantine, son of emperor Constantius, who reigned over the Romans for seventeen years.” [19] He repeats the same words for Constantine’s successor, Justinian II, who “undertook the government of the Romans and maintained it for ten years.” [20].

3) Oddly enough, after all of these events, the narrative continues to refer to Romans and to an emperor of the Romans in Constantinople, up until the reign of Leo II in 695. In other words, for as long as the Roman army under Emperor Constas was warring against the Longobards and freeing the enslaved Romans, it was not (according to Paul the Deacon) a Roman army, but a Greek army. As soon as the emperor returned to Constantinople, he became a Roman once again. These descriptions would have all been regarded as quite amusing, if they had not been written wittingly, and, even worse, if they had not been embraced by almost all the Western historians. However, given that these had been written wittingly, and because, as we know today, the adopting of forged national names always serves darker objectives, it is necessary to provide some kind of interpretation.

In our opinion, there is only one possible interpretation for this contradiction. It is the one that Romanides suggested. At some point after 750, the Franks conceived a colossal imperialist plan: the creation of an empire that would include Italy and, of course, the city-legend: Rome. In order to minimize the obstacles, they had to cut off the Romans of Italy from their capital, Constantinople, as well as from their fellow countrymen in the rest of the Roman Empire. So they started, gradually but systematically, to use the term “Graeci” in order to differentiate the Hellenic-speaking Romans from the Latin-speaking Romans. [26] What used to be an instrument of Frankish imperialism, ended up a commonly accepted historical “truth”, to the point that today the Christian Roman Empire is often called “Greek Empire” in Western histories – and of course the descendants of the Hellenic-speaking Romans are called “Greeks” everywhere.