Modern Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people found to have Pictish ancestry

Modern Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people found to have Pictish ancestry
phys.org

And who wouldn't want to be Roman when the simple words "Civis romanus sum" were an effective passport through an empire that stretched months of travel? When it opened commercial opportunities with a large and relatively effective bureaucracy? A nation that built roads and exported consumer goods, spices and wines and finery, like none had ever before it? Most of Europe is still interconnected by the roads the Romans paved. They've been repaved with macadam, but the lines are the same.

People imitated the Romans because they were powerful. They formed alliances and married their daughters off to Romans who would keep them in relative luxury. The conquest was equally about minds as of arms.

This has been true in all conquests. Some have been more brutal about instilling their culture than the Romans, and to that end, they were more effective at suppressing or destroying the previous culture. But ultimately, it is the conquered people taking on the aspects of their conqueror more than genocide and recolonization that has succeeded in spreading cultures throughout history.

I hope that after I die I go into spectator mode, but with the added ability to move myself through time so I can see all kinds of stuff like this play out.

There are so many historical questions that I want better answers to.

The Picts are one of those historical questions, for me.

That's painting with a bit of a broad brush. The Romans had no problems killing off large swaths of the population.

Depopulation was a tactic that was absolutely on the table. For example, during the conquest of Gaul, ~1/3 of the population was killed and another ~1/3 were sold off as slaves. The tactics you're talking about were used on the remaining 1/3.

Those tactics, admittedly, work quite well when you only have to deal with the friendliest 1/3 of a population.