>>17972254 (OP)
>"muh Greeks LARPing as Romans"
The Romans of antiquity themselves were effectively LARPing as Greeks.
Their architecture was basically Greek architecture, the only major difference being the building materials used as the Greeks used limestone and marble while the Romans used concrete. But other than that, they pretty much used the same designs and styles.
Their religion was basically the Greek religion, the only major difference being the names of the gods. While Romans early on (during the kingdom and early republican eras) did have their own distinctly native gods, they syncretized with Greek ones over the centuries and by the time of the empire, they had effectively become the Greek ones under different names (for example, the Roman god Liber was syncretized with Dionysus to become Bacchus who is effectively just Dionysus under a different name). Roman mythological epics like Ovid’s Metamorphoses or Virgil’s Aeneid were basically retellings of Greek mythology. The Romans themselves claimed descent from the Trojans who in the Iliad are described as speaking a dialect of Greek and are generally indistinguishable from the Greeks (yes, I'm well aware that the actual historical Trojans were culturally and linguistically close to the Hittites, but there's a difference between the mythical Trojans and historical Trojans and it is the mythical ones that the Romans claimed descent from).
Greek had been an official language since the republican era with the Romans literally referring to Greek and Latin as “our two languages”. Most of the early church fathers like Origen, Cyril, Ignatius, etc came from the eastern half of the empire and wrote their works entirely in Greek. Many Roman emperors spoke Greek (Marcus Aurelius wrote his diary in Greek, many of Caesar’s famous quotes were originally said in Greek like Alea iacta est which was originally said as Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος).
