Греко-рим әлемінің шығыс грек және батыс латынға бөлінуі

Division of the Greco Roman world into eastern Greek and western Latin parts

Greek East and Latin West are terms used to distinguish between the two parts of the Greco Roman world and of medieval Christendom, specifically the eastern regions where Greek was the lingua franca (Greece, Anatolia, the southern Balkans, the Levant, and Egypt) and the western parts where Latin filled this role (Italy, Gaul, Hispania, North Africa, the northern Balkans, territories in Central Europe, and the British Isles). Greek had spread as a result of previous Hellenization, whereas Latin was the official administrative language of the Roman state, stimulating Romanization. In the east, where both languages co existed within the Roman administration for several centuries, the use of Latin ultimately declined as the role of Greek was further encouraged by administrative changes in the empire's structure between the 3rd and 7th centuries, which led to the split between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire, the collapse of the latter, and failed attempts to restore unity by the former. This Greek–Latin divide continued with the East–West Schism of the Christian world during the Early Middle Ages.

In the classical context, "Greek East" refers to the provinces and client states of the Roman Empire in which the lingua franca was primarily Greek. This region included the whole Greek peninsula with some other northern parts in the Balkans, the provinces around the Black Sea, those of the Bosphorus, all of Asia Minor (in the loosest possible sense, to include Cappadocia and extending to Armenia Minor), Magna Graecia (southern part of the Italian peninsula and Sicily), and the other provinces along the eastern rim of the Mediterranean Sea (Judea, Syria, Cyrenaica and Egypt). These Roman provinces had been Greek colonies or Greek ruled states during the Hellenistic period, i. e. until the Roman conquests. At the start of late antiquity, beginning with the reorganization of the empire's provincial divisions during the reign of Diocletian (ruled 284–305), the concept of the Greek East developed to stand in contradistinction to the Latin West. Thereafter, Greek East refers to the Greek speaking provinces mentioned above (after 395 mostly in the Greek speaking Eastern Roman Empire) in contradistinction to the provinces in Western Europe, Italia (excluding the Catepanate of Italy, where they still spoke Greek) and Northwest Africa (after 395 in the Latin speaking Western Roman Empire).