a classicizing vein usually applied to other peoples, Byzantine authors regularly referred to their people as "Ausones", an ancient name for the original inhabitants of Italy. Most historians agree that the defining features of their civilization were: 1) Greek language, culture, literature, and science, 2) Roman law and tradition, 3) Christian faith. The Byzantine Greeks were, and perceived themselves as, heirs to the culture of ancient Greece, the political heirs of imperial Rome, and followers of the Apostles. Thus, their sense of "Romanity" was different from that of their contemporaries in the West. "Romaic" was the name of the vulgar Greek language, as opposed to "Hellenic" which was its literary or doctrinal form. Being a Roman was mostly a matter of culture and religion rather than speaking Greek or living within Byzantine territory, and had nothing to do with race. Some Byzantines began to use the name Greek (Hellen) with its ancient meaning of someone living in the territory of Greece rather than its usually Christian meaning of "pagan". Realizing that the restored empire held lands of ancient Greeks and had a population largely descended from them, some scholars such as George Gemistos Plethon and John Argyropoulos put emphasized pagan Greek and Christian Roman past, mostly during a time of Byzantine political decline. However such views were part of a few learned people, and the majority of Byzantine Christians would see them as nonsensical or dangerous. After 1204 the Byzantine successor entities were mostly Greek-speaking but not nation-states like France and England of that time. The risk or reality of foreign rule, not some sort of Greek national consciousness was the primary element that drew contemporary Byzantines together. Byzantine elites and common people nurtured a high self-esteem based on their perceived cultural superiority towards foreigners, whom they viewed with contempt, despite the frequent occurrence of compliments to an individual foreigner as an andreîos Rhōmaióphrōn (, roughly "a brave Roman-minded fellow"). There was always an element of indifference or neglect of everything non-Greek, which was therefore "barbarian". Official discourse In official discourse, "all inhabitants of the empire were subjects of the emperor, and therefore Romans." Thus the primary definition of Rhōmaios was "political or statist." In order to succeed in being a full-blown and unquestioned "Roman" it was best to be a Greek Orthodox Christian and a Greek-speaker, at least in one's public persona. Yet, the cultural uniformity which the Byzantine