People

Byzantini

Byzantiner

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Byzantini, the Byzantines, marks the wide territory of the old city of Byzantion, which the map itself already calls Constantinople. The historian Herodian praised this land as extensive and prosperous, and the Black Sea harbour of Phileas can be seen belonging to it on the map. The spelling is the telling detail. Greeks called the people Byzantioi, without the n. The Latin form only appears from the Christian writer Tertullian onwards, and as a noun just once more in ancient Latin, so the label was probably added by a late Roman, Latin-speaking mapmaker, in the third century or later.

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