From that time forward, the term 'Byzantium' disappeared and the town took the name of New Rome or Constantinople. In the few cases where the old word Byzantium or Byzantis does occur, such use is deliberately archaic.
The inhabitants of the Empire were called Romans, for, with Julian the Apostate's championship of Hellenism, the name 'Hellenes' and the conception of Hellenism fell into disrepute. It was not until the fourteenth century that a new classical movement began and we find 'Byzantium' used once again for Constantinople and 'Hellenes' for Romans, and then chiefly by Western writers who saw in Byzantine literature a continuation of Greek classical tradition. These pioneers of Byzantine scholarship, basing their argument principally on the fact that, although it had lost its old vigour, the language remained the same, succeeded in convincing the rest of the learned world that Byzantine civilization was nothing more nor less than the continuation of that of ancient Greece. Thus, from a linguistic point of view, Byzantine civilization came to be regarded as a coda to the ancient and the Hellenistic world.