[Cronos]

I would more liken Byzantium to the re-establishment of the Hellenic Empire, which is an Empire much more proud even than Rome.

No way -- there was barely a gasp of the "Hellenic" Empire under Alexander and it quickly split up -- Egypt went back to it's Pharoahs, though now they were ethnic Hellenes, but they worshipped the same old gods and followed the old ways, Syria had Seleucus (or was it antiochus?) and there was an Empire in Greece proper and in Persia -- they were not one entity (unlike the Mongol Empire, which after Genghis, for 50 years was ONE empire with FOUR ulus'). Even the places where the Macedonians conquered retained their far more ancient civilisations with a veneer of hellenic thought -- Persia for example, or Egypt.

[AntiGuv]

Syria was part of the Seleucid Empire, but his base was in Mesopotamia. He also ruled the 'important' western parts of Persia. The Parthians controlled the bulk of Persia eastward, and eventually regained it entirely and became synonymous with Persia for a few centuries.

[dangus]

Call it a flash in the pan if you want, but it established Greek as the lingua franca of the Eastern Meditteranean, and Greek civilization as dominant. One could call the Romans just the rulers over a Greek Empire in a lot of ways.

As for Romanoi, "Roman" had come to mean "of the civilized world."