[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."

[Antoninus]

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.

I would agree with part of what you say, but to call the Romans "just" rulers over a Greek Empire is not accurate. The Romans managed to do something that no other civilization had been able to do: Consolidate practically all of the known world under one rule for a very long time. They did this with unsurpassed might in war and mildness in peace. They planted colonies all throughout the Greek east, adding a distinctly Roman flavor to the Hellenic territories (arenas, roads, arches, domes, military culture, etc.)

Culturally, the Greeks and Romans became practically the same people as they existed within the Empire for hundreds of years together. So really, what we're talking about by the time of Constantine was an amalgam civilization that was neither purely Roman or purely Hellenic as the terms had been known before 31 BC.