Louis defends the Carolingian principle of dynastic succession as validated by tradition. Furthermore, there should be no exclusive ethnic criterion for the Imperial dignity. Here Louis apparently refers to a claim by Basil that the Emperor should be a Greek ("Romanus" in the Byzantine parlance of the time) and not from a non-Greek ethnicity ("gens"). Also, the rule over the city of Rome is as good a claim to Roman Imperial dignity as the rule over the "Romans", i.e. the (Greek) subjects of the Byzantine Empire: