The literature on Ottoman history-writing carries a marked focus on Muslim Ottoman historians’ narratives, perceptions, and debates on Ottoman history. My proposed paper examines non-Muslim -and, in the final two decades of the Empire’s lifespan, increasingly “minority”- visions of the imperial long duree as constructed in the early 20th century by a number of Greek Ottoman writers and historians. What visions of the political and ethical nature of the early and “classical” Empire were formulated by Rum commentators, and how did that perceived Ottoman geist evolve over the imperial long durée? Why -in the Rum scholars' own words- did distant Ottoman history matter? In what ways were narratives of that usable 'classical' past bore the imprint of competing Rum visions of political Ottomanism, and, in turn, how did they seek to define post-1908 Ottoman Greek political activism and identity? How did modern anxieties about communal rights, assimilation, and integration in the Second Constitutional Period interact with Greek Ottoman efforts to create a usable or superannuated imperial past? What narratological strategies did academic and popular Rum histories of the Ottoman Empire utilize to dialectically reconcile competing commitments to the valors of Ottoman and Byzantine imperial pasts, Orientalist European historiography, a “local,” Ottoman identity, and a growing affinity with the Helladic state? Ultimately, drawing from theoretical work in reception studies, I elucidate and contextualize the possible cultural, political, and intellectual meanings of a classical Ottoman legacy for Rum intellectuals and activists of the 1910s and 1920s. Works discussed include Prof. Pavlos Karolidis’ Logoi kai Ipomnimata, (“Discourses and Memoranda”), Archbishop Ambrosios’ Istoria tou Tourkikou Kratous, (“The History of the Turkish State”), Emmanouil Emmanouilidis’ Ta teleftaia eti tou Othomanikou Aftokratoriou (“The Final Years of the Ottoman State”), Mentzos and Kyriazes’ Ta Mysteria Tou Soultan Xamit tou B (“The Mysteries of Sultan Hamid the Second”), A. Kavafakis’ I Istoria tou Valkanikou Polemou (The History of the Balkan Wars) -- all studies in Ottoman history compiled by Rum authors in the first two decades of the twentieth century.