Amazon.com description: Product Description: Although ethnicity is a modern concept and would not have been recognized by the Byzantines, throughout its history the Byzantine Empire was a multi-ethnic state. The papers in this volume examine questions of the uniformity and separateness of the various Byzantine populations and the degree and mechanisms of acculturation. The cultural uniformity that the Byzantine church and state pursued through Orthodoxy and the Greek language did not erase all distinct traits of different groups--nor was that their intention. This volume provides examples of the multiple forms of integration and resistance to integration in a society that for a long time functioned as an integral state and an articulated society that accepted diversity.