ABSTRACT
How nineteenth-century Greek jurists situated themselves in relation to Byzantium and the Byzantine world is not, for the non-specialist, easy to understand. It is not obvious why Greek jurists of the nineteenth century felt it necessary to define their identity in relation to the Byzantine nation and the laws it had developed from the sixth century to the fourteenth. However, there are frequent examples of this type of phenomenon among nations trying to determine their identity - notably the German nation, which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had to define its identity in response to the major political and cultural restructuring it was experiencing. 1 The relationship of the Greeks to Byzantium in the nineteenth century involved a similar state of mind. In attempting to establish an identity they emphasized the differences between them and the 'enemy', in this case the Ottoman Empire, and reclaimed their origins. Their origins were to be found partly in antiquity and partly in the Byzantine Empire. The relation to antiquity revealed linguistic continuity, while Byzantium suggested the search for the continuity of the nation in the Orthodox confession.
