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The last Romans are still around

signoregalilei.com

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Re: The last Romans are still around

#61

Post by rayiner »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #58
beloch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Go stand in the Hagia Sophia and tell me the Romans did little to improve architecture and engineering. - I won't defend the Roman record on slavery, but I will point out that the Greeks (particularly the Spartans) were slave societies too. - The Greeks were significantly more xenophobic and sexist than the Romans. If you washed up on the shores of ancient Greece, you could never have become a citizen. The Romans w…

Also, our own society right now will be someday considered barbaric by our descendants. I don't know what for, but you can bet your bottom dollar it will happen. We should show the people of the past some grace, the same way we might hope the people of the future will show us some grace.

Eating meat. Changes in moral perception generally are downstream of changes in technology. E.g. the modern conception of women being equal participants in the economy arose alongside the growth of the knowledge economy, where your average worker was sit in front of a computer instead of bolting doors to a car frame on an assembly line. I strongly suspect that once lab grown meat becomes ubiquitous, our killing and eating animals will come to become regarded as barbaric.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#62

Post by scheme271 »

rob74 wrote: post #56
DuperPower wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when you see something histórical in Europe ask chatgpt if its something actually ancient that lasted until today or It was a xix century tourist marketing stunt made by the burgoisie

Of course the manhole covers aren't ancient, but they're a sign that Rome still sees itself in the tradition of the Roman Empire.

Or alterntively, that it's a relatively modern addition to add to it's mystique for tourism purposes. When did SPQR get added to the manhole covers and does anything else in Rome use similar signage?

Re: The last Romans are still around

#63

Post by r0m4n0 »

My name is Roman (father was Italian born in Rome and identifies as a Roman) and I always find it interesting that people try to speak something that sounds like Russian to me. Never thought about the fact they might think I’m Romanian and are speaking Romanian!

Re: The last Romans are still around

#64

Post by dhosek »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #30

This is strictly about linguistic similarity and not genetic similarity. On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap. Romanians cluster with their Balkan neighbors, (1) on account of massive Slavic migration from around the 7th century AD, and (2) on account of strong historical and genetic evidence to suggest that the Roman colonists sent to Dacia were largely recruited from neighboring B…

I still find it somewhat fascinating that the Slavs arrived in Europe during recorded history.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#65

Post by dhosek »

gerdesj wrote: post #57
rob74 wrote: post #50

I'm a bit surprised that the "people from modern Rome" only got an honorable mention. After all, Rome still sees itself as the successor of the Roman Empire. When first visiting it, I was surprised to see the famous SPQR ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPQR ) acronym all over the place - on trash cans, manhole covers etc. etc.

Senatus Populus ... Que Romani! The senate and people of Rome. Italy, per se, is a modern construct but the capital is still Rome and I think it fair to draw associations to the old empire. I love seeing the SPQR logo and I think it is a really useful link to the past.

Fun fact: The -gh endings of many English words share a proto–Indo European root with that enclitic¹ -que in Senatus Populusque Romani. I remember being skeptical of this when I first heard it assuming that the person was arguing for a shared Latin heritage until I dug in and discovered that it actually went back to PIE.²

⸻

1. For the non-linguists here, an enclitic is a suffix added to a word that either functions as a separate word (here -que means “and”) or as a grammatical modifier like the possessive ’s in English.

2. Proto–Indo European for those of you who don’t do acronyms.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#66

Post by rnewme »

dhosek wrote: post #64
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #30

This is strictly about linguistic similarity and not genetic similarity. On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap. Romanians cluster with their Balkan neighbors, (1) on account of massive Slavic migration from around the 7th century AD, and (2) on account of strong historical and genetic evidence to suggest that the Roman colonists sent to Dacia were largely recruited from neighboring B…

I still find it somewhat fascinating that the Slavs arrived in Europe during recorded history.

Arrived in Europe?

Re: The last Romans are still around

#67

Post by PeterHolzwarth »

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #8

Don't glorify Rome too much. It was a slavery based society that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks. Heck written Latin didn't even have punctuation marks, not even spaces. That's because it was only used by slave scribes. The nobility that could write, did so in Greek.

What a ridiculously myopic take. Slavery was the norm in most places in most of human history. Pick a continent: there was slavery there at one point or another, and often over extensive periods.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#68

Post by coldtea »

WalterBright wrote: post #54
coldtea wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather have a civilized prison system with human conditions, instead of an medieval revenge, profiteering, racism and exclusion, a prison-labor complex, and the death penalty - all created, ran, and cheered by bigoted Old Testament-types of human scum. Especially if I get far far worse crime outcomes than countries with much healthier prison systems. But, hey, that's just me.

I'd be content with a prison system that keeps the criminals away from victimizing more people.

People say that in support of the current us system that achieves the opposite, getting far worse outcomes.

Probably because what they really want is not safety or justice or rehabilitation, but retribution, revenge, and a non-criminal way to express their sadistic tendencies on some group, and since that group is prisoners anyway, so few care, even better.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#69

Post by coldtea »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #60
WalterBright wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be content with a prison system that keeps the criminals away from victimizing more people.

Humane prisons aren't incompatible with public safety from violent offenders.

If anything, those countries have so much better outcomes, that it's not even funny...

Re: The last Romans are still around

#70

Post by seliopou »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #30

This is strictly about linguistic similarity and not genetic similarity. On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap. Romanians cluster with their Balkan neighbors, (1) on account of massive Slavic migration from around the 7th century AD, and (2) on account of strong historical and genetic evidence to suggest that the Roman colonists sent to Dacia were largely recruited from neighboring B…

Why is genetics more important than any other tie to the Roman empire?
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