Though the character of Byzantine culture is mainly Greek, and Byzantine literature is attached by countless threads to ancient Greek literature, yet the Roman element forms a very essential part of it. The whole political character of the Byzantine empire is, despite its Greek form and colouring, genuinely Roman. Legislation and administration, the military and naval traditions, are old Roman work, and as such, apart from immaterial alterations, they continued to exist and operate, even when the state in head and limbs had become Greek. It is strange, indeed, how strong was the political conception of the Roman state (_Staatsgedanke_), and with what tenacity it held its own, even under the most adverse conditions, down to the latter days of the empire. The Greeks even adopted the name "Romans," which gradually became so closely identified with them as to supersede the name "Hellenes"; and thus a political was gradually converted into an ethnographical and linguistic designation. _Rhomaioi_ was the most common popular term for Greeks during the Turkish period, and remains so still. The old glorious name "Hellene" was used under the empire and even during the middle ages in a contemptuous sense--"Heathen"--and has only in quite modern times, on the formation of the kingdom of "Hellas," been artificially revived. The vast organization of the Roman political system could not but exercise in various ways a profound influence upon Byzantine civilization; and it often seemed as if Roman political principles had educated and nerved the unpolitical Greek people to great political enterprise. The Roman influence has left distinct traces in the Greek language, Greek of the Byzantine and modern period is rich in Latin terms for conceptions connected with the departments of justice, administration and the imperial court. In literature such "barbarisms" were avoided as far as possible, and were replaced by Greek periphrases. Christianity. The Orient.