Roman

The Roman group gathers the Greek-speaking peoples of the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea: the Greeks, the Pontic Greeks of the Black Sea coast and the Griko of southern Italy. In the Byzantine Empire they called themselves Romans, heirs of the Roman state.

In 1337 Andronikos III ruled a shrunken empire at Constantinople. The Pontic Greeks lived under the Komnenos emperors of Trebizond, who survived until 1461. Constantinople fell to the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II in 1453 and the Morea in 1460. Under Ottoman rule the Orthodox Church led the Greek community until the war of independence began in 1821.