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Why did Greeks shed their Byzantine/Roman identity during the independence war?
It never made sense to me why the modern Greeks stopped being Romans, instead choosing to identify themselves more with the ancient pagan Greeks during their independence war. I mean, the Roman identity of Greece is a lot more closer to them both in time (being more recent) and religiosity (being christian) then the ancient Greeks are.
This would be like if the various Balkan states (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia), after getting their independence from the Ottomans/Austrians, decided to LARP as the ancient Illyrians, ditching their clearly more Slavic roots and ignoring the fact that they had pretty much no genetic connection to the by now extinct Illyrian tribes.
u/Fine-Regret-1825 — 9 days ago